March 26

Eleven years ago, 39 bodies were discovered in one of the wealthiest communities in the US, a small outpost in San Diego County called Rancho Santa Fe. The dead had been members of a religious cult known as “Heaven’s Gate,” and as far as they were concerned, they had just abandoned their home planet for a ride on a spaceship traveling the universe in the 20-million mile long tail of the Halle-Bopp comet.

The journey was a long time coming. In the early 1970s the cult’s founders, Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles, met at a Houston psychiatric hospital; Nettles was a nurse and Applewhite a patient who had admitted himself in hope of curing what he believed to be his errant sexual appetites. After severing ties from their families, “The Two” began a spiritual quest that took them from Texas to the woods of Northern California. There, Applewhite and Nettles -- who began referring to themselves as “Bo” and “Peep” -- founded a small band of followers who would call themselves many names over the next two decades before settling Heaven’s Gate a few years before their mass suicide.

Led by the teachings of Bo and Peep, members of the group came to believe that they had received “soul deposits” from the Kingdom of Heaven and that when the time was right, these souls would have the opportunity to leave their bodies and travel to a higher plane of existence. Meantime, the group foreswore earthly pleasures including alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, and sex. They pursued an ascetic lifestyle, dressed androgynously, and waited patiently for a spaceship to carry their souls away.

When the first rendezvous failed to materialize in Waldport, Oregon in September 1975, Bo and Peep shepherded their flock to the Colorado national monument. Again, the followers were disappointed, and by 1977, the group’s membership had dwindled from around a hundred to fewer than 20. By this time, Nettles and Applewhite had adopted new names -- “Ti” and “Do,” respectively -- and muddled along for next few years, migrating throughout the southwest and trying to rebuild their organization in preparation for their eventual “graduation” to the Next Level. When Ti died of cancer in 1985, Do explained to the group that she had done so in order to take over as pilot of their rescue craft, which would surely be coming for them soon.

Meantime, the arrival of the internet provided the group with a new means of publicizing their message as well as the financial means of securing a home base for their community. Several members earned their livings as web designers and computer programmers, and by the mid-1990s, their income enabled Heaven’s Gate to purchase a 9000-foot home in Rancho Santa Fe, where they relocated in 1996.

At this point, Do was already convinced that the comet Halle-Bopp -- sighted for the first time the previous year -- was the bearer of a message for which he’d been waiting a quarter century. In an October 1996 videotape, he warned viewers that

Planet Earth about to be recycled. Your only chance to survive or evacuate is to leave with us. Now, that's a pretty drastic statement -- pretty bold -- in terms of religion, in terms of anybody's intelligent thinking. To most people who would consider themselves intelligent beings, they'd say, "Well, that's absurd. What's all this doomsday stuff? What's all this prophetic, apocalyptic talk?" You know, intelligent human beings should realize that all things have their own cycle. They have their season. They have their beginning, they have their end. We're not saying that planet Earth is coming to an end. We're saying that planet Earth is about to be refurbished, spaded under, and have another chance to serve as a garden for a future human civilization.

The tape did not have a noticeable effect on the group’s membership.

On March 21, the members of Heaven’s Gate gobbled their final meal together at Marie Callendar’s, where they were served with pot pie, salad and cheesecake. The next day, with the comet at its closest point to Earth -- a mere 122 million miles away -- the members of Heaven’s Gate cleaned up their house, took out the garbage, and initiated a suicide pact they called “The Routine.” With help from each other, they spent their last conscious moments on Earth eating applesauce and pudding laced with elephantine doses of phenobarbitol. To wash down their final meals, they swigged vodka before climbing into their bunk beds and securing plastic bags over their heads for good measure. Their bodies were discovered three days later.

Several active members of the community were not present for the "Graduation." Two of them committed committed suicide during the next year, when the comet Halle-Bopp was considerably farther away.

August 10

Two days after members of his “family” disposed of the lives of Sharon Tate and three others, Charles Manson tagged along for the last of the murders perpetrated in his name. On August 10, 1969, Manson and his accomplices broke in to the home of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, whom they killed with a bayonet and steak knives. After the couple were dead, their blood was used to scrawl “death to pigs,” “healter skelter” [sic] and other insanities across the walls and appliances of their home.

Leno LaBianca’s body was scrawled with the word “WAR, ” which presumably referred to the deranged eschatology of the Manson cult. Believing that the Biblical book of Revelation and the Beatles’ White Album offered clues to an impending social catastrophe, Manson insisted that his followers had been called by God to provoke a race war, during which blacks would exterminate all non-racist whites -- only to be ruled in the end by the Manson Family. Needless to say, the plan had its flaws.

Eight years after the LaBianca murders, David Berkowitz, the notorious “Son of Sam,” was arrested in New York City, where over the previous year he had shot a dozen people with a .44 handgun. Six of his victims died. About two months before his capture, Berkowitz wrote a famous letter to New York Daily News reporter Jimmy Breslin, who covered the murders and the hunt for “Sam” throughout the summer of 1977. In the note, Berkowitz mused on the virtues of urban life

Hello from the gutters of N.Y.C. which are filled with dog manure, vomit, stale wine, urine, and blood. Hello from the sewer of N.Y.C. which swallow up these delicacies when they are washed away by the sweeper trucks. Hello from the cracks in the sidewalks of N.Y.C. and from the ants that dwell in these cracks and feed on the dried blood of the dead that has settled into the cracks.

After confessing to the murders, Berkowitz received six consecutive life sentences; Charles Manson, who had originally been sentenced to die in the gas chambers, eventually received a life sentence as well when the US Supreme Court struck down California’s death penalty statute in 1972.

On the fourth anniversary of Berkowitz’ capture, the head of Adam Walsh -- a six-year-old boy from Hollywood, Florida -- was discovered in a Vero Beach canal. He had been taken from a mall two weeks earlier after his mother left him in a video arcade while she shopped at Sears. The rest of his body was never recovered. Walsh’s father, John, became an advocate for missing children, hosting America’s Most Wanted and urging the passage of harsh criminal statutes to protect “victim’s rights.”

The LaBianca murders, the arrest of Berkowitz, and this discovery of Adam Walsh’s head each took place on the feast of Saint Lawrence; Lawrence was grilled to death by the Romans in the year 258.