Private guards keep watch at a hilltop mansion. A son apologizes for a father he barely knew. Friends and relatives of cult members who killed themselves seem resigned to their loss.
"I am deeply hurt by the knowledge that people have now lost their lives in connection with my father," Mark Applewhite said in a statement Saturday. "My sympathy and prayers go out to all those who are suffering the loss of loved ones."Applewhite, 40, is the son of Marshall Applewhite, the Heaven's Gate cult leader who committed suicide Wednesday with 38 followers in a swank mansion in Rancho Santa Fe.
"We're of mixed emotions," said Applewhite, who described himself as a born-again Christian "with the real ticket to heaven."
"My father is dead - that's painful. It's sort of like we've been through a grieving process and now we're seeking closure," he said.
Applewhite hadn't seen his father since he was 5, when his parents got divorced. It had been years, too, for the loved ones of many of his father's followers.
Investigator Bob Engel, who has been notifying families of the deaths, said most relatives were subdued.
"They seemed resigned to it," Engel said. "These families realize these people took their own lives of their own choosing."
Autopsies continued Saturday, with bodies stored in a refrigerated truck outside the coroner's office. Most families sent funeral homes to collect bodies rather than make the trip themselves.
"We got towels, we're crying so much," said Eartha Hill of Cincinnati, whose daughter-in-law, Yvonne McCurdy-Hill, was among the dead at the nine-room estate rented by the Heaven's Gate cult.
Twenty-one autopsies were finished, and pathologists planned to work through the weekend to finish the rest.
The family of cult member Erika Ernst went to the coroner's office in two campers. They refused to speak with reporters and were the only relatives to personally claim a body.