AS relatives of the 39 cult members who committed suicide in a Californian villa were being informed of the tragedy yesterday, attention focused on the leader of the group, 65 year old Marshall Applewhite, who was one of the dead.
In a "farewell" video to the world left by the group, Applewhite said: "We have nothing to hide - even though to you we are a dangerous cult because we threaten the norm of family values."
Applewhite once studied to become a Presbyterian minister like his father but switched to becoming a successful professional musician. He soon abandoned that career, however, to begin an odyssey across the US attracting followers to his bizarre teachings mixing belief in UFOs, Christianity and apocalyptic warnings.
Why he made the transformation from musician to cult leader, eventually leading to the suicide of 39 people this week, is not clear, but it may have been the result of an "after death" experience in hospital and the influence of a nurse he met there, according to his sister, Ms Louise Winant.
In 1969, at the age of 37, he received a master's degree in music from the University of Colorado, where he is said to have starred in the musicals Oklahoma and South Pacific. By 1971 his marriage had broken up and he moved to Houston, Texas, where he taught at St Thomas University and sang with the Houston Grand Opera. He also directed a church choir.
Applewhite's plunge into sci fi religion apparently came when he met and married a nurse called Bonnie Lu Nettles, with whom he shared an interest in astrology and reincarnation. They came to believe they were the earthly incarnation of aliens or angels from a higher form of life.
The two opened a bookshop in Houston called the Christian Arts Centre, selling works on astrology, metaphysics and theosophy. Later they set up a retreat house for followers called "Know place".
Calling themselves Bo and Peep, they travelled more widely to preach their beliefs, but in August 1974 were arrested on charges of stealing credit cards and a car.
In 1975 they attracted national attention when they persuaded a group of about 20 people from a small town called Waldport in Oregon to abandon their families and go to Colorado for a rendezvous with a spaceship. Following the widespread publicity this episode attracted, Applewhite and Nettles disappeared and went underground for 17 years until 1992.
The cult's Internet site says that the pair called themselves Do and Ti after the musical notes. They kept contact with their dwindling followers and lived in motels, rented houses and wildnerness camps. Nettles apparently died of cancer in 1985.
In 1993, the group went public again with an advertisement in USA Today with the heading "UFO Cult Re surfaces with Final Offer". Then followed a lecture tour of various cities by the group, now calling itself Total Overcomers, in which it preached about the coming of the end of the world and the need to renounce worldly belongings and desires.
Now known as Heaven's Gate or Higher Source through its Internet websites, the group set out its beliefs in a series of documents and a book. The arrival of the Hale Bopp comet was hailed by them as "the marker we've been waiting for the time for the arrival of the spacecraft from the Level Above Human to take us home to Their World in the literal Heavens."
AFP adds: As the Heaven's Gate cult's bizarre beliefs and behaviour became public, San Diego Coroner Brian Blackbourne confirmed a particularly odd item that had been circulating - that six men, including cult leader Marshall Applewhite, had had their testicles removed.
It was also confirmed that one of the victims was Thomas Nichols, the brother of Nichelle Nichols, who played communications officer Lieutenant Uhura on the original Star Trek television series in the 1960s.