Mother of Heaven’s Gate Victim Reflects on Cult’s Possession of Her Son

In March 1997, 18 men and 21 women dressed in identical black clothing and sneakers were found dead in their beds in a mansion in Rancho Santa Fe, near San Diego in California. The 38 deceased were members of the cult Heaven’s Gate, a group founded in 1974 by Marshall Herff Applewhite Jr. A year after the mass suicide, the mother of one of the cult’s members spoke to Inside Edition about how she lost her son.