Five days after 39 bodies were found in a Rancho Santa Fe mansion, authorities are winding down their investigation and insisting that no evidence indicates anything but a mass suicide.
A forklift hoisted the corpses of the Heaven's Gate cult members from a refrigerated trailer into unmarked vans Monday for transportation to mortuaries for burial or cremation.The cult members believed they would be picked up by a spaceship trailing the Hale-Bopp comet after they shed their earthly "containers."
Sheriff's Lt. Jerry Lipscomb said authorities have found nothing to suggest that anyone other than the 39 members of the high-tech UFO cult planned to kill themselves.
In 1994, 48 members of the Order of the Solar Temple died in Switzerland. Five more members died that same year in Canada, followed by 16 others in the French Alps in 1995 and five more in Canada as recently as March 22.
Authorities believe there was only one other Heaven's Gate member, Richard Ford, and he left the cult about a month ago because he didn't want to commit suicide.
"He was not ready to go to the next level at this time," Lipscomb said.
Ford, previously identified as "Rio," received two farewell videotapes on March 25 from cult members describing their death plans. The next day, he and his employer drove to the hilltop mansion, found the bodies and called police. Ford has not talked with reporters.
There was also no evidence to support reports that group leader Marshall Applewhite told his followers he had cancer, Lipscomb said. He said none of the victims had a terminal illness.
Investigators were still trying to determine the source of the drug phenobarbital used in the suicides, but Lipscomb doubted it would lead to charges.