Web Of Death

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By Newsweek Editors

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They were watching the skies--and the Internet--for a sign. They found one. As Comet Hale-Bopp grew bright, the 39 members of Heaven's Gate descended into darkness. They did it quietly, in a rich California suburb called Rancho Santa Fe. Orchestrated by a spectral former choir director, their suicides were supposed to liberate them. His promise? That by dying, they would ascend on a cloud of light to a higher place.

Marshall Herff Applewhite--known as "Do" to his true believers-- is not the first millennialist seer, and he almost certainly won't be the last. What in his strange brew of twisted Christian theology, castration, science fiction, belief in UFOs and mastery of the Internet led 38 others, ranging in age from 26 to 72, to forsake their families and then suffocate themselves? A special, behind-the-scenes report on the worst mass suicide in U.S. history--and whether it could happen again.

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