The Story Behind Heaven's Gate Suicides.

To Heaven's Gate Cult suicide meant turning against the "Next Level" when it is being offered. In their last days, they were focused on two primary tasks the first one was making a final attempt at telling the truth on how to enter the Next Level. It was essentially their last effort at offering individuals a way to avoid suicide. The second was taking advantage of the opportunities to work individually on our personal over comings and changes, so that they would be able to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

The story goes as follows. Inside a mansion in San Diego, California, 39 friends lay dead in their beds after the largest mass suicide in the United States. All members of this crazy cult had each drunk a lethal cocktail of drugs mixed with vodka in a deluded attempt to leave earth and board an alien spaceship. The tragedy was timed to meet with a UFO they believed was trailing the Hale-Bop comet blazing in the sky above them. All of the members were dressed in a tracksuit with a 'Heaven's Gate Away Team' patch on the sleeve, as well as black Nike running shoes with the comet-like slash on the side. The 21 women and 18 men had each packed a suitcase for their journey and each had five dollars in their pockets.

Rio DeAngelo was the one who found 39 of his closest friends dead in the California mansion. Rio met the group at a California hotel in 1994. There he listened to nine cult members, in identical loose clothes and short haircuts, describe how an alien spacecraft would arrive to take the chosen few away to paradise. When Rio first met the group he was around 40 years old and had recently been divorced. He said he was in search for meaning in his life. To him, the group seemed so happy and calm, and it was as if they had found what he had been in search of. On the first day that Rio had joined his hair was cut short and he was given the new name Neo. (All the members abandoned their real names and replaced them with different names such as Ti or Bo). For the next three years Rio lived with the believers and followed the instructions from the Messiah. The rituals eventually began to seem absurd to him. Some days members had to report to their "superiors" every 12 minutes. Sometimes they even wore cones on their heads to help them focus on their soon to be new alien bodies. They were forbidden from having sex and were not allowed to hug each other or even shake hands. Some members took this to the extreme and even castrated themselves in order to have more control over their bodies. Everyday words were changed in hopes that members would not remember their human past once they were eventually carried off into space (House became "craft"). But then their "Messiah" sent message which made him wonder. Rio remembers: that day in December of 1995 when the leader sat all the members down and said there was another way to do this if everyone is willing to leave their bodies behind. Only one guy walked out, the rest of the members did not have a problem with it and trusted the leader's advice.

Eleven months after this took place someone took a photo of the Hale-Bop comet which showed a mysterious object trailing in the sky. The photo was later exposed as a hoax, but the leader convinced the group, that it was a spaceship coming to take them away and that his deceased friend was flying it. One month before the suicides, Rio decided he wanted to leave the group, and he moved to Beverly Hills and started working for a web design company.
The leader agreed that this was part of the plan that Rio would stay behind. But he was always sure to keep in touch by phone or email all the time.