Marshall Herff Applewhite Biography

Cult leader, professor. Born in 1931. With Bonnie Nettles, Marshall Herff Applewhite created a religious cult commonly known as Heaven’s Gate that drew from science fiction as well as scripture. In 1997, he led his followers to commit suicide in hopes of being transported onto a spaceship traveling with Hale-Bopp comet. Before finding his unusual calling, Applewhite seemed to a fairly normal life. He graduated from Austin College in 1952 and got married that same year. He spent two years in the Army Signal Corps.

Applewhite was known for his musical and dramatic talents. He sang opera and was a good public speaker, impressing people with his strong baritone voice and good diction. In the early 1960s, he tried for a while to make it as an actor in New York City, but he failed, according to an article in The New York Times. He then became an assistant professor of voice at the University of Alabama where served as choirmaster for several groups. Then he returned to Texas to head up the music department at a university in Houston.

While in Houston, Applewhite’s life began to falter apart. He and his wife divorced in 1968; they had two children together. There are some reports that he struggled with his sexual identity. In 1970, he left his job and seemed to be having a sort of nervous breakdown.

Two years later Applewhite met Bonnie Lu Nettles, a nurse with a strong knowledge of the Bible as well as an interest in more unusual spiritual matters. They would later decide that they were “The Two” mentioned in the Book of Revelation and that they were on an important spiritual mission. Applewhite and Nettles spent months on the road, wandering around the country. Believing that their higher calling allowed them to ignore earthly laws, the pair was arrested for credit card fraud in 1974. Those charges were dropped, but Applewhite had another crime to answer for—the theft of a rental car. He rented one in St. Louis and never returned it. 

Applewhite was sentenced to six months in prison. During his confinement, he began trying to refine the beliefs he shared with Nettles. They thought that they came from what they termed the “Level Above Human”—a physical and literal version of Heaven in outer space—and were sent to help others reach this “Next Level.” To them, the human body was just a vehicle and that to ascend from this world people had to separate from all that was human in themselves, including their earthly needs and desires. They believed that a UFO would soon take them back to the Next Level after completing their mission. 

Wanting to share their knowledge with others, Applewhite and Nettles began traveling again. Applewhite did most of the talking during the informational sessions they held while he relied on her strength and spiritual wisdom. People became interested in them and they started to develop a following. In 1975, they attracted around 20 followers after a meeting in Oregon, which caught the attention of the national news. Applewhite and Nettles were also the subject of a 1976 book entitled U.F.O. Missionaries Extraordinary.