Condition of Cult Member Is Upgraded

ENCINITAS, Calif. —  As the condition of a former Heaven’s Gate member who attempted suicide improved Wednesday, cult and suicide experts warned that other former cult members might be tempted to follow the 40 cultists who have killed themselves.

Michael Peck, a psychologist and chairman of the Los Angeles-based Suicide Prevention Institute, said the cult’s suicides might have the same impact on remaining former members and other people dabbling in similar offbeat beliefs as a celebrity’s suicide can have on impressionable adolescents.

“I see a real possibility we could see more suicides, particularly as the millennium approaches,” Peck said. “When a celebrity commits suicide, adolescents who are confused or in pain start thinking about suicide. This case doesn’t involve adolescents, but it does involve people who are uncomfortable and unhappy in this world.”

Larry A. Trachte, a chaplain at Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa, who teaches a course in religious cults, called the suicide of cultist Wayne Cooke and the attempted suicide of Charles Humphrey “an ongoing dimension of the Heaven’s Gate tragedy that I don’t think we have seen the last chapter of. . . . [When] they see their entire ‘family’ gone, it could make them want to follow them.”

Cooke and Humphrey had spent years following Heaven’s Gate leaders Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Lu Nettles. Although they had drifted away from the cult, they remained true to its basic tenets--a kind of residual fervor common with cults, experts said.

“Many Heaven’s Gate members have remained true believers even years after leaving the cult,” said Robert Balch, a sociology professor at the University of Montana who has studied Heaven’s Gate. “I see no reason to think that they won’t be caught up in the belief that the time has come to leave this planet.”

At Scripps Memorial Hospital, Humphrey, 56, of Denver, one of the cult’s computer programmers, was listed in serious condition. He was initially reported in critical condition after being rushed to the hospital Tuesday afternoon when San Diego County sheriff’s deputies found him unconscious in a room at the Holiday Inn Express in Encinitas.

The San Diego County medical examiner said an autopsy done on Cooke, 54, showed that he died after ingesting phenobarbital and alcohol and then placing a plastic bag over his head, the same death recipe used by the 39 cultists who committed suicide six weeks ago in a Rancho Santa Fe mansion believing they would ascend to a spaceship following the Hale-Bopp comet. Among those 39 was Cooke’s wife, Suzanne.

Medical Examiner Brian Blackbourne estimated that Cooke died early Tuesday. That would be about the same time Cooke’s daughter and Humphrey’s former girlfriend were receiving farewell videos.

Cooke’s daughter, Kelly, who lives in New York, contacted CBS News reporter Lesley Stahl, who in turn called the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department.

Humphrey had ingested phenobarbital but not alcohol, which may have helped save his life because alcohol makes the phenobarbital take effect more quickly. Also, he apparently ripped the plastic bag off his head, a possible indication that he changed his mind about dying.

Sheriff’s spokesman Sgt. Don Crist said the department considers the investigation to be complete and has no information that anyone else is traveling to the San Diego area to kill themselves.

“There is no indication there is anybody else out there waiting to commit suicide,” Crist said. “San Diego is not any closer to the Hale-Bopp comet than anywhere else in the United States. So why come here?”

Both men left behind “exit notes” and farewell videos expressing the same belief as their 39 “classmates” that they were destined for a better place in the hereafter. The two had spent weeks giving interviews and trying to convince a skeptical public that the 39 were not really dead.

In his video, Humphrey said he could understand why people who had not had the benefit of Applewhite’s teachings might be misled by the pictures of the inside of the death mansion in Rancho Santa Fe:

“All they see is their vehicles [bodies] laying there without any life in them and they jump to the conclusion they’re dead. They’re not dead.”

Dick Joslyn, a former Heaven’s Gate member now living in Tampa, Fla., said he was not surprised at the actions of Cooke and Humphrey but added that he knows of no other former members considering ending their lives. Other members “may be thinking about [suicide], but I hope not,” Joslyn said. “I’m doing everything I know how to do to encourage such people to stay here, to work on this planet, to work to change human society.”

Former cultist Richard Ford (also known as Rio DiAngelo) said, “I have no idea what anyone is planning to do.”

Within hours of the suicide and suicide attempt becoming known, callers to the Holiday Inn Express were asking to rent Room 222. The motel owner has decided not torent the room for several days out of a sense of decorum.

Cooke and Humphrey had expressed remorse at not being among the 39 who died in Rancho Santa Fe and not having had the stamina to remain in the “classroom,” their phrase for the indoctrination received in the cult.

A theologian who has studied cults said the suicide of Cooke and the attempt by Humphrey are not surprising given the strong hold that many cult leaders exert over their followers, even in death.

“It was wholly predictable,” said Theodore F. Peters of Pacific Lutheran Seminary in Berkeley. “The problem is that predicting and preventing are two different things.”

Times staff writer Stephanie Simon contributed to this report.