Heaven's Gate cult leader Marshall Applewhite Jr. The pair were known as "Bo and Pee," and later "Do and Ti." That nurse was Bonnie Lu Trusdale Nettles, and the pair would develop a mentor-student relationship that grew into a spiritual partnership. “She sort of talked him into the fact that this was the purpose - to lead these people - and he took it from there.”Īlso on : Left for dead, this Texas Ranger walked 120 miles to San Antonio 177 years ago "One of the nurses there told him he had a purpose, that God kept him alive," Winant told the New York Times. Winant told the Express-News in 1997 that her brother had undergone a “near death” experience in the early 1970s, when he was hospitalized in Houston with a heart blockage. Most found it difficult to pinpoint what went wrong. in the first 40 years of his life remembered him as a likable, roving minister’s son who was a talented choir director and energetic music professor in Houston. They had two children and divorced 16 years later. married Ann Francis Pearce of Corpus Christi. Jim Coker/Houston ChronicleĪfter graduating from Austin College and studying briefly at a theological seminary in Virginia, Applewhite Jr. Marshall Applewhite Jr., right, leads a rehearsal of the Festival Chorus shortly before its initial concert appearance on Nov 21, 1969, at Jones Hall in Houston. Only about 300 acres were owned by family members in the 1990s, and pieces of the ranch have recently gone up for sale. The ranch was more recently used as a cattle ranch and dairy farm. The Applewhite ranch, once encompassing more than 4,500 acres, led to the naming of Applewhite Road, a largely rural road that runs south from Texas 16 and ends about halfway to Poteet.Īfter the Civil War, during which the cult leader’s great-grandfather fought for the South, the Applewhites shifted to tenant farming.
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You might also like: ‘Drama, value and meaning’: Behind Bexar County’s strange and colorful marriage license The cult leader’s great-great-grandfather, Stephen Applewhite, was one of three brothers who settled on a South Bexar County ranch in 1853, bringing numerous slaves and establishing a cotton plantation. After the autopsies and the victims were identified by authorities, all the bodies were ordered to be cremated. However, subsequent stories indicate that some families took issue with it. Shortly after the mass suicide, Applewhite Jr.'s older sister, Louise Winant, told reporters that he would likely be buried at the family plot in San Antonio. The "away team" was a cheeky joke about how they would be leaving the planet.
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The youngest of four children, his father, a Presbyterian minister, traveled throughout Texas, moving his family every two or three years as he started churches.Ī patch made by the Heaven's Gate cult. He attended Brackenridge High School in San Antonio in the mid-1940s and graduated from Corpus Christi High School in 1948, where he was president of the school's National Society chapter. was born in Spur, a small city 60 miles east of Lubbock. Marshall Herff Applewhite Sr., was born in the Alamo City and is buried in the family plot at Mission Park South Cemetery, just blocks from the San Antonio River.Īlso on : San Antonio murderess Emma 'Straight Eight' Oliver was among first women to be sentenced to die in TexasĪpplewhite Jr., a former Houston choir and music director, and members of the Heaven’s Gate cult were in San Antonio for a short time before they moved to California, according to a 2020 HBO Max docu-series, “Heaven’s Gate: The Cult of Cults.”Īpplewhite Jr. Applewhite Road on the South Side still carries the family name.
Axel Koester/Sygma via Getty ImagesĪmong them, Applewhite’s family can be traced to Bexar County slave owners in the 1850s. In March 1997, Marshall Applewhite Jr., leader of the Heaven's Gate cult, convinced 38 followers to commit suicide so that their souls could board a UFO. There are a myriad of San Antonio and South Texas connections to Applewhite Jr., according to Express-News archives. San Diego and Los Angeles County Medical Examiner personnel place some of the 39 victims of a mass suicide onto a truck for transport to the morgue on Main Rancho Santa Fe, Calif. Among those who committed suicide were a San Antonio massage therapist and four other Texans. Members of the Heaven’s Gate cult killed themselves with drugs and vodka in California in March 1997. and a former Houston nurse convinced followers that a “higher level” awaited them via an awaiting spacecraft that would transport them if they were willing to rid themselves of their earthly “containers.” Mixing apocalyptic rhetoric with science fiction, Applewhite Jr. You might also like: A woman was brutally killed in her Terrell Hills home 46 years ago this month.