Word: cult
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...even waited for a craft to pick us up on several dates, and it didn't happen. Ti and Do both had a lot of depression over that." Then in 1985 came a reformulation of tenets. "In the early days," says Theo Althuiszes, who joined and left the cult twice, "Ti had the real control. Do looked to her for guidance." At first the group believed that when believers "advanced to the next level," they took their human bodies with them. But when Ti died, says Althuiszes, Do "had to reinvent everything." Soon there emerged the doctrine of spiritual graduation...
...first. He won the toss." The surgery took place in Mexico. "It was very traumatic for Do. He was not sure it was right." Coroners, however, reported that Applewhite was among eight castrated males found at Rancho Santa Fe. (Sawyer, who decided against castration and subsequently left the cult in September 1994, is now an expectant father...
...brought prosperity to the group. Two members inherited about $300,000, allowing the cult to rent houses, called "crafts," in Denver and later the Dallas-Fort Worth region. (In the Rancho Santa Fe area, the group appears to have rented two different crafts.) Thus Applewhite had enough assets to initiate the cult's last great recruitment drive, on New Year's Day 1994. An estate sale was held at the Escondido mansion, raising money to buy four vans and gear to tour the country...
Perhaps the last recruits, Yvonne McCurdy-Hill and her husband Steven, ran into the cult while online. But only after they had passed a face-to-face interview did Do ask the Cincinnati, Ohio, couple to "put their affairs in order." Says Steven Hill's mother Eartha: "They were told to get rid of all their debts, even parking tickets. Do didn't want anybody coming after them for something like that." Hill left the cult by November. Says his mother: "He just didn't buy into the grandiosity of the thing, but that's exactly what got his wife...
There has been one copycat suicide in California, apparently by a nonmember, a sobering presage to the cult's Web invitation posted soon after: "During a brief window of time, some may wish to follow us...If you should choose to do this, logistically, it is preferred that you make this exit somewhere in the area of the West or Southwest of the United States...You must call on the name of Ti and Do to assist you...We suggest that anyone serious about considering this go into their most quiet place and ask, scream, with all their being." Enough...