News reports are now identifying the leader of the mass-suicide
UFO cult "Heaven's Gate" as Marshall Applewhite, also
known as Herff Applewhite, and list him among
the dead. Applewhite is a well-known
figure in the history of cult-related UFOlogy. He made national
headlines back in 1975. He has, however, been out of the
spotlight for a long time.

In 1976, Hayden Hewes and Brad Steiger published a book about
Applewhite and his then-companion Bonnie Lu Trousdale titled 
_UFO Missionaries Extraordinary_ (Pocket Books, New York).
I do not know what became of Trousdale, or whether she is
among the dead. The two of them were widely-known as "Bo and
Peep", or sometimes simply "The Two". Here are some brief excerpts 
from the book:

  ...It was such a poster that brought three hundred people
  to the meeting in a Waldport, Oregon hotel on Sept. 14,
  1975. The people had come to attend a meeting conducted by
  a man and a woman who stated that they had come from a
  "higher level" to help people on earth ascend to the
  super-human level.
     This meeting in Oregon resulted in the scare headlines
  that were soon running in every newspaper across the United
  States - "Twenty Missing in Oregon After Talking of a Higher
  Life."...It was said that those who vanished had given away
  their property to friends and relatives and renounced their
  families after having attended the meeting... Those who
  attended the meeting were informed of a camp in Colorado
  that would prepare them for departure in a UFO. The 
  Colorado site was not specified.
  ...It was revealed that the man and woman were leaders of a
  group called Human Individual Metamorphosis (HIM)... at the
  core of HIM theology was the assertion that converts must
  develop one-hundred-percent faith The Two's capacity to die
  and then resurrect. After the promised event, those full
  believers would be rewarded with a UFO dispatched to carry
  them to a higher plane of existence.
   ...On October 18 [1975], authorities released to the press
  the results of their investigations. They had at last discovered
  who the UFO Pied Pipers were. Herff Applewhite, forty-four,
  and Bonnie Lu Trusdale, forty-eight, both of Houston, were
  identified as the couple known as The Two.
    The Release said that Applewhite had taught music from 1966
  to 1971 at the University of St. Thomas in Houston... Applewhite
  had been born in Spur, Texas, the son of a Presbyterian
  Minister, and had received his masters degree from Austin
  College in Sherman and his masters degree in music from
  the University of Colorado. He had been a choir director for
  a number of churches before joining the St. Thomas faculty in
  1966 as an assistant professor...
    Little could be learned of Ms. Nettles ("Peep"). Apparently
  she was an astrology devotee who had graduated from the
  Hermann Hospital School of Professional Nursing in 1948.... It
  was a matter of record, however, that in 1972 the two now known
  as Bo and Peep had formed the Christian Arts Center in Houston 
  to promote art activities...
    Authorities also released the information that The Two had been
  charged with auto theft and fraudulent use of credit cards. However,
  on September 25, 1974, Justice of the Peace Shelly Hancock had
  dismissed the charges against The Two on the recommendation of
  a sheriff's officer...
     Even though The Two appeared in the likeness of man, [they
  said] they had graduated from other planets. Bo was from one
  planet; Peep was from another.

Hewes and Steiger separately interviewed Bo and Peep; the book
contains transcripts of those interviews in which they describe
their teachings about UFOs and moving to a "higher plane."

  It was probably during 1976, while I was living in Maryland,
that I saw one of the posters announcing a UFO-related meeting
at the University of Maryland in College Park that sounded very 
much like it might be one of the recruiting meetings for the 
Bo-Peep cult. I attended it, and was not disappointed. Several
hundred people attended, to listen to about six members of the 
cult tell of the coming "harvest" by UFOs. Those who were ready
to be "harvested" (i.e., those who followed the teachings of
The Two) would be swept up by UFOs and taken to the next level
of existence; all the rest would perish in a global cataclysm.
The speakers were very evasive about the details of their
group. They said that they moved from one campground to the
next, waiting for the time of the harvest. They spoke of
their leaders in tones of great veneration, and claimed to not
know the whereabouts of The Two at that time. It was suggested
that they were at some camp far away, in the midwest perhaps. This
was a lie; Applewhite and Nettles were in the audience, easily
recognizable from their photos in the press. In fact, arriving
early, I recognized The Two immediately, and expected them to
speak, but they chose to sit in the audience instead.
   


        Robert Sheaffer - robert@debunker.com - Skeptical to the Max!

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