Lives on Fringe

Lives on the Fringe
Families: Loved noes tell of cult victims' many talents and promising stars--and a dark thread of pain and vulnerability.
March 30, 1997|MARIA L. La GANGA and TINA DAUNT | TIMES STAFF WRITERS

They were so smart, say their survivors in pain and in puzzlement. So smart. Way too smart to die like this.

They were computer whizzes, musicians, a National Merit Scholarship winner, a former Republican candidate for state office, a jewelry store owner who was frightened of death, the daughter of a real estate agent, a father of six.

"He was so smart," said Betsy Schultz, a family friend of John M. Craig, a.k.a. Brother Logan of Heaven's Gate, the alien-loving cult that died en masse last week wearing brand-new Nikes. "I just didn't think that type of person would be lulled into thinking life would be much better [if he committed suicide]."

Scattered in sorrow throughout the nation, the loved ones left behind by the 39 Heaven's Gate members remain cloaked in grief and plagued with questions. In many cases, the cult members were so estranged from their families for so long that memories of them are like high school yearbook pictures: fuzzy, out of date, tinged with optimism.

But woven through the happy, if sometimes vague, descriptions of the 21 women and 18 men who died in a San Diego suburb--"highly intelligent," "beautifully gentle"--is a more ominous thread of pain and vulnerability.

Somehow their links with the world were easily broken and they cast off their biological families--described in Heaven's Gate literature as "only entrapments"--for a very different kind of family unit.

"I want to rejoin my heavenly father, and my classmates [other cult members], the students of my heavenly father," said Gary Jordan St. Louis in a videotape he left for his girlfriend when he left Idaho to join Heaven's Gate in 1992. "I'm really happy about this."

For Margaret Ella Richter, 46, it was the hurt of a bad divorce. For Raymond Alan Bowers, 45, it was the death of a brother. For Gail Maeder, 27, it was the loss of both a boyfriend and her business.

Even Marshall Herff Applewhite, 66, was jolted from his family by a "near-death experience" while being treated for heart problems during the 1970s, said Louise Winant, sister of the Heaven's Gate leader.

His nurse at that very vulnerable time was a woman named Bonnie Lu Nettles, Winant said, who recruited him for cult membership while he was in a hospital bed.

"When he came to, Bonnie said God had a purpose for him, and he was going to do all this great work for God," said Winant, who tried to steer her brother away from Nettles in the beginning of their relationship.

When Richter graduated from Las Plumas High School in rural Oroville, Calif., in 1969, she had a raft of accomplishments behind her and more ahead. She was class valedictorian, a National Merit Scholarship winner, an accomplished musician with a warm smile.

At UC Berkeley, she went on to major in computer science, math and German and graduated in only three years.

"She was very pleasant, creative. . . . She seemed to enjoy life a lot. I would say she was as happy as anybody in the '60s," said Bill Henneker, Richter's high school music teacher and a longtime family friend.

But then came a short and painful marriage, a divorce that "devastated her" and probably knocked her out of the orbit of family and friends. Richter moved south in 1975, got a master's degree in computer science from UCLA and stumbled onto Heaven's Gate.

"She went with a friend to hear Applewhite," recalled Henneker. "In this vulnerable period she was very lonely and wanting to have contacts with friends."

In the 22 years that followed, she largely broke off contact with the folks back home in Oroville. She would visit on occasion, and sometimes there would be phone calls.

A little over a decade ago, she came back to visit and went to the Methodist Church in which she had grown up. It was the first time Henneker had seen her since she left; it would be the last.

"She was dressed very neatly," he recalled. "We talked briefly. I encouraged her to keep in communication with her family. I know they were hurting."

Today, they await their daughter's coffin and plan her memorial service.

As a teenager growing up in Sag Harbor, N.Y., Gail Maeder was petite and bubbly, had lots of friends, acted in productions of "Bye Bye Birdie" and "The Pajama Game," was easily led and was frightened of death.

"She did not want to go to her grandfather's funeral," said her mother, Alice Maeder. "She was 17 or 18 and she sat in the back of the church. She never looked up. I always had the feeling she wasn't crazy about this dying idea. This is what really enticed her [into the cult]. She was going to be able to do this without dying."

Five years ago, with her then-boyfriend, she traveled to California and worked in a store selling tie-dyed fabrics near Santa Cruz. She borrowed money from her parents and bought a jewelry store.

But then the store failed, the relationship ended, and she slowly broke off contact with the family that loved her. Her mother was heartbroken.

"She was never a science fiction buff," her mother said. "She never cared for 'Star Trek.' I thought she would try to save the world, save the whales. I think what lured her to this was they promised she would never die."

The man cult members called Brother Logan walked out of his home and into Heaven's Gate 22 years ago, leaving behind a note with a simple yet startling explanation: I'm going to Florida to catch a spaceship.

He was 41. He had six young children. A successful dude ranch. A loving family. And a wife who had been his college sweetheart. He never saw any of them again.

Brother Logan contacted his family just once, through his oldest daughter, according to longtime family friend Betsy Schultz. "That was it," Schultz said. As far as she knew, he never even found out he had grandchildren.

His wife, Mary Ann Craig, raised the six children on her own. Supporting her family with a nursing job, she sent all of the kids through college.

"We were all just so shocked that he would do this because he seemed to be in a really good real estate business, he had a family, and he was not the typical person you'd think would be in a cult," said Schultz, who was friends with the tall, good-looking Craig through high school and college.

"I had always thought of [cult members] as being outsiders, as needing a group to identify with, but he had a great family and it seemed like everything was fine. Who knows what's going on in someone's head?" Schultz said.

Certainly not his family.

"For me, he died 22 years ago," Mary Ann Craig said of her ex-husband, who once ran for a seat on the Colorado Legislature. "When we found out he was dead, there was a sense of closure more than anything for us."

Closure comes harder for the family of LaDonna Brugato, 40, of Englewood, Colo. One of nine children born to a real estate agent and a former math teacher, Brugato was an outstanding violinist and a computer programmer.

Three years ago, she lost touch with her family when she became involved in Heaven's Gate. Her father, Joe, hired a private investigator to help reestablish contact, but to no avail.

"We haven't had contact with her for a year," said Brugato's mother, who declined to give her first name. "We didn't know she was in a cult. . . . Three years ago we knew she had joined a group. We had no idea it was a cult. We didn't hear from her except for twice. Christmas cards. We didn't get one this year."

Brugato's parents live in Newberg, Ore., and speak only gingerly about their daughter's death, their love for her, their loss. Details, says the soft-spoken, grieving mother, are trivial when there is a more important message to tell the world:

Cults "are dangerous even though they seem inviting," she said. "They say they're the answer to what people are looking for. They're not. They're not. If a person is looking for a purpose in life and looking for spiritual life, then go to the mainstream religions but don't go to cults. That's the worst thing that could happen."

* PETER H. KING: This was not Jonestown. This was not Waco. What happened in Rancho Santa Fe was almost banal by comparison. A3