Police Link ‘Copycat’ Suicide to Cult

RANCHO SANTA FE, Calif. —  In the first apparent “copycat” suicide after the Heaven’s Gate mass suicide, a backwoods recluse in Northern California killed himself so that he could join “the spaceship with Hale-Bopp to be with those who have gone before me.”

Cult experts said Tuesday that they still believe the deaths of 39 cult members in Rancho Santa Fe will not trigger other large-scale suicides--noting that cult leaders commonly need to spend years convincing their followers to take such extreme steps.

As hearses continued to arrive Tuesday at the medical examiner’s office in San Diego to pick up the bodies of the cultists, Sheriff’s Department investigators used a search warrant to seize belongings of Heaven’s Gate members from a storage facility in nearby Escondido.

Among other things, investigators uncovered a cache of rifles, handguns and ammunition. A handgun was found last week at the mansion where the suicides took place.

The lead investigator, Lt. Gerald Lipscomb, sees no link between the weapons and the mass suicide.

“It’s an interesting find but not one that seems significant,” Lipscomb said. “There were no weapons used in the suicides and no indication they were going on a crime spree.”

Cult leader Marshall Applewhite had teased for years about the advisability of his followers being adept with firearms.

In one of his communiques on the Internet, Applewhite, using the name Do, said to prospective followers: “If you do recognize me and choose to look to me for guidance, I would recommend that you purchase firearms [and] get comfortable with using them.”

In another message, Applewhite referred approvingly to the Branch Davidians, the Unabomber, the defiant Freemen militia group in Montana and Randy Weaver, the racist-separatist who engaged in a shootout with FBI agents at Ruby Ridge, Idaho. He pointed to them as examples of people who have “connected mentally” and chosen “to separate from what they feel is a corrupt world.”

Investigators have received several tips about other groups being on the verge of suicide, but the suicide of Robert Leon Nichols, 58, in his trailer in Yuba County is the first case of a suicide with any tenuous link with Heaven’s Gate, officials said.

Yuba County Undersheriff Gary Finch said Nichols placed a plastic bag over his head, inserted a propane hose and turned on the gas. Nichols lived in the foothills of the Sierra in a rugged area accessible only by four-wheel-drive vehicles.

Finch said that Nichols, who lived alone and had recently been arrested for vandalizing a cabin, left a note saying he was joining others on a spaceship behind the Comet Hale-Bopp. The Heaven’s Gate cultists believed that by committing suicide they would hitch a ride on the spaceship to the “next level.”

Finch said Nichols had fashioned a galaxy and a spaceship out of tin foil and hung it from the ceiling above the bed. His body was covered by a purple scarf, similar to the shroud found on the Heaven’s Gate cultists.

Finch said he knew of no tie between Nichols and Heaven’s Gate or any other religious or UFO-obsessed group.

“We have religious groups living in the hills but he wasn’t part of them,” Finch said. “You may think there are similarities [between Nichols’ death and the Heaven’s Gate suicides] but there are large differences. From what I hear, the Heaven’s Gate people were very neat and orderly. That’s not the case here.”

Nichols had a computer but no electrical power to run it, Finch said. He said that Nichols once wrote a book about his experiences following the Grateful Dead, “Truckin’ with the Grateful Dead in Egypt.”

Two university professors who have studied Heaven’s Gate and other cults said it is unlikely that other groups will be tempted to commit mass suicide because of what happened at the mansion in Rancho Santa Fe.

Margaret Thaler Singer, an emeritus adjunct professor of psychology at UC Berkeley and author of “Cults in Our Midst,” said cults that end in suicide have often undergone years of indoctrination by their leaders.

“The followers have to be desensitized to the idea of death, and propagandized into a new belief system that the leader has special knowledge,” Singer said.

Frank K. Flinn, an adjunct professor of religious studies at Washington University in St. Louis who teaches a course on cults in America, said that the Heaven’s Gate suicides actually may make other cults less likely to commit suicide.

“There might be some individual imitators, but in general, cults tend to become more cautious when another cult has done something to attract attention,” Flinn said.

Along with the three assault rifles and five handguns found in the Escondido storage facility, Sheriffs Department investigators also found computers, New Age literature and dozens of video and audiotapes.

Those belongings will be sent to the warehouse run by the county’s public administrator. If not claimed by relatives, the belongings may be auctioned, with proceeds used to reimburse the county for the cost of the suicide investigation.

Among items removed from the home in Rancho Santa Fe were six televisions--including a 72-inch set--a gas barbecue, a small trampoline, a wedding ring, the bunk beds where the corpses were found, a washer and dryer, a seating chart for watching the big television, and dozens of videotapes, including an Applewhite favorite, “The Sound of Music.”

Even as they prepared to kill themselves, the cultists kept pantries stocked with soda, frozen pizza, candy, maple syrup, tomato sauce, apples and potatoes. About $5,400 in cash was found.

One item not among those at the mansion was the $3,700 10-inch Meade LX telescope bought by two cult members in late January in hopes of spotting the spaceship they felt was trailing the Hale-Bopp comet. The telescope was returned a week later to the Oceanside Photo and Telescope store after failing to spot the “companion” in the skies.