Marshall Applewhite, the son of Louise Haecker Winfield and Marshall Herff Applewhite Sr., and was born in Spur, Texas. Applewhite's father was a Presbyterian minister who started new churches and moved from place to place in Texas about every three years. Applewhite hoped to follow in his father's footsteps and become a preacher as well, but his sister and father encouraged him to develop his musical talents. In high school, Applewhite proved more dedicated to music than religion, and joined the school choir. In 1950, at age 19, he enrolled at Austin College, where he pursued a degree in Music and Pre-Theology at his father's urging.
In 1954, Applewhite graduated. He was drafted into the U.S. Army upon his graduation. He was stationed in Salzburg, Austria, and then White Sands, New Mexico, where he became a Signal Corps instructor. He was drafted a year after the Korean War ended, so he did not go to Korea, nor did he see any action while in the service. According to his sister, he was Honorably Discharged at the rank of Sergeant in 1956 after two years of service.
After his service was up, Applewhite became a college music teacher. By age 28 in 1959, Marshall Applewhite had written about outer space, aliens, and the galaxy which he shared with his college students. He believed that there was another species on another planet in the solar system.
Applewhite was gay. There are rumors that he had one or more affairs with male students when he was a music teacher. He is believed to have checked himself in to a hospital over two decades ago in order to overcome his homosexual feelings. This occurred when many therapists believed that a person's sexual orientation could be changed. Needless to say, the therapy was unsuccessful. One theory being proposed is that he was unable to accept his sexual orientation because of the homophobia that he had adsorbed during his youth. This motivated him to live an celibate life and to create a group which also suppressed their sexual behavior. Another theory is that among UFO groups, there is a widespread belief that extra-terrestrials have no vocal cords, an atrophied digestive system and no sexual organs. This is symbolic of three common religious disciplines: silence, fasting and celibacy. Perhaps Applewhite was attempting to emulate both the UFO inhabitants and ancient Christian tradition.
Later, in his thirties, Applewhite led a musical career. He played starring roles in stage musicals in Colorado and Texas, was the choir director at St. Marks Episcopal Church in Houston, sang 15 roles with the Houston Grand Opera, and taught music at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. In 1962, Marshall Applewhite got married in a Presbyterian church. He had a son, Mark (born 1965) and a daughter, Mary (born 1967).
While in Houston, Applewhite's life began to falter apart. He and his wife divorced in 1968. He was fired from his job as a Music professor at the University of St. Thomas in 1970. The official reason given by the University was "health problems of an emotional nature," although local news reports at the time stated that the reason was a relationship with a male student.
In 1972, Applewhite met a 44-year-old nurse named Bonnie Nettles at a Houston psychiatric hospital, where he had hoped to be "cured" of homosexuality. He saw her again in a theatre and they started courting each other. Two years after he met Nettles on August 28, 1974, the 43 year old Applewhite was arrested in Harlingen, Texas and charged with stealing credit cards.
After Nettles told him that he was "mightily powerful", Applewhite declared himself a messiah, the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. By 1975 they had begun Total Overcomers Anonymous together, which was eventually to become Heaven's Gate.
In 1975, Applewhite and Nettles convinced 20 people from Portland, Oregon to join their group. Applewhite told them there would be an alien abduction and when the abduction never happened they left the group. However, more people joined and had 93 people total in their group. The cult meetings were held in a mansion at Rancho Santa Fe, California, the eventual site of the group's mass suicide. Nettles died in 1985 of cancer and Applewhite led Heaven's Gate alone from her death to his suicide in 1997.
On March 19, 1997, Applewhite taped himself speaking of mass suicide and believed "it was the only way to evacuate this Earth." The Heaven's Gate cult was against suicide but they believed they had no choice and had to leave Earth as quickly as possible. After claiming that a spaceship carrying Jesus was hidden behind the comet Hale-Bopp, Applewhite convinced thirty-eight followers to commit suicide so that their souls could board the supposed craft. Applewhite believed that after their deaths, a UFO would take their souls to another galaxy known as Heaven. This and other UFO-related beliefs held by the group have led some observers to characterize the group as a type of UFO religion.
Applewhite committed suicide with 38 other members in Rancho Santa Fe, California by mixing liquid with rat poison and cyanide. The cult members, aged between 26 and 72, are believed to have died in three groups, 15 the first day on March 24, 15 the next and nine on the third. Applewhite was the last member to go down. In the heat of the California Spring, many of the bodies had begun to decompose by the time they were discovered. The corpses in the San Diego mansion underwent autopsies; cyanide and arsenic were found. The bodies were later cremated.
Authorities discovered other curiosities upon investigating the scene: each of the cult members wearing black Nike sneakers, and eight of the male members of the cult had been castrated.
Only one of the members did not commit suicide, and video taped the mansion in Rancho Santa Fe. However, the tape was not shown to police until 2002 - five years after the event.
