Word: cults
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...identification papers for the authorities to find. The house, more than one awed witness noted, was immaculate, tidier even than before the victims had moved in. It was as if, in preparing for their death, the members of what the world now knows as the Heaven's Gate cult were heeding the words of the prophet Isaiah: "Set thine house in order; for thou shalt die, and not live...
...those odd confluences that keep cults and conspiracy theorists percolating, the day after the bodies were found Charles Manson was up for and denied parole for the ninth time at Corcoran State Prison. "These monks that just took their heads in San Diego," Manson noted at his hearing, "they're way behind the times." But cult experts disagree. What happened in San Diego, they say, was unprecedented. James Tabor, who teaches religion at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and was involved in the last desperate attempts to communicate with David Koresh by radio broadcast, says, "This group...
...Heaven's Gate victims did more than leave suicide notes; they left suicide press kits. One of the first to receive the materials was a former cult member using the name Rio D'Angelo (police say he is really Richard Ford), who got a Federal Express package containing two videotapes, a letter and two computer discs. He took the tape home last Tuesday night and watched it. On Wednesday he came to work at the Interact Entertainment Group in Beverly Hills, California, which had employed Higher Source, the cult's Web-page design service. Rio told his boss, Nick Matzorkis...
When Matzorkis and Rio finally watched the video together with the sheriff's deputies in the middle of the night, they were stunned by what they saw. The cult members were not just unthreatening in life, they were mild in death. Says Matzorkis: "They were sharing their joy and glee. The excitement really showed." When Matzorkis scanned the computer discs on Saturday evening, TIME learned, he found that they contained messages from cult members intended to be posted on the group's Website-in effect, suicide notes. One, from a woman who signed herself "Goldenody," seemed to support the notion...
...Yuba Country, Calif. Undersheriff Gary Finch yesterday reading from a note found near the dead body of Heaven's Gate cult member Robert L. Nichols, whose death was an apparent suicide...