What Happened To The Bodies Of The Heaven's Gate Cult Members?

Early accounts of the Heaven’s Gate members’ bodies state that they were scheduled to be either buried or cremated, like a 1997 report from Deseret News. Presumably such a decision would have fallen to the surviving family members of each cultist, if such people existed. However, we’ve only got scattered information about what happened to the bodies of individual cult members, outlined on Find a Grave. Thirteen, its seems, were buried, while nine — including leader Marshall Applewhite — were cremated. The fate of the remaining bodies remain unknown or unrecorded. Out of all of those who were cremated, Heaven’s Gate second-in-command John Craig has received the most biographical attention in various articles. According to People, his ashes were spread over the San Juan Mountains in springtime. 

One additional cult member not present at the scene in 1997 was Heaven’s Gate co-founder Bonnie Lu Trousdale Nettles, who created the cult along with Applewhite in 1972. Nettles was a nurse who met Applewhite while he was undergoing psychiatric treatment following his dismissal from a music teaching job at University of St. Thomas in Houston after he’d been found having an affair with a student. Nettles died in 1985 from an unspecified type of cancer and was cremated — her ashes were scattered over White Rock Lake in Dallas, Texas. But while Applewhite was also apparently cremated, we have no information on where his ashes were scattered, or if they were scattered at all.

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