SAN DIEGO (AP) -- Armed with cash and a taste for the macabre, Cathee Shultz and J.D. Healy hope to buy a relic from the worst mass suicide in American history.

The couple, owners of a bizarre shrine known as the Museum of Death, say they will be among the expected hundreds at a Nov. 20 auction of property belonging to 39 Heaven's Gate cult members who committed suicide at a mansion in Rancho Santa Fe.Other than the famed bunk beds, few if any of the items -- televisions, VCRs, kitchen utensils, furniture, sleeping bags, a trampoline and a fax machine -- have much connection to what happened March 26, 1997, at the cult's rented home.

That doesn't matter to Shultz and her husband.

"Even if it's just a linen napkin, we hope to get something," said Shultz, 37, who plans to move their museum from San Diego to Hollywood in January.

The item the couple most wants is one of the 20 bunk-bed frames. The cultists were found in the beds poisoned to death from a mixture of applesauce, vodka and barbiturates. They were dressed in black outfits with "Away Team" patches, Nike tennis shoes, purple shrouds and a plastic bag over their heads.

The cultists left a video message saying they were shedding their "earthly containers" to join a spaceship trailing the tail of the Hale Bopp comet.

Shultz and her husband have already acquired from an anonymous donor one of the outfits, she said. A bunk bed would allow them to create an exhibit duplicating one of the rooms in the house.

"I'm doing it because it's weird and I like that kind of stuff, but I'm a historian, too," Shultz said.

All the cult's intellectual property, including the writings of its leader Marshall Applewhite and anything bearing the cult's logo, were given to two former cult members, Mark and Sarah King of Phoenix, as part of a legal settlement earlier this year with San Diego County.

"They didn't want those things to be part of any ghoulish auction," said Jillyn Hess-Verdon, a lawyer for the Kings.

The county administrator is listing the sale as that of the John Craig Estate, named for a cult member, to downplay its connection to the mass suicide. The estate has been appraised at $50,000, but the sale could generate more. Proceeds will go to the cultists' families.

"We have no idea who will show up or how much they'll offer," said Kent Schirmer, head of the property division of the county administrator's office. "We don't know if people will put a premium on it just because of the incident."

In June, a developer bought the seven-bedroom home where the mass suicide occurred for $668,000 -- less than half of what the two-story home was listed for before the deaths.

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Relatives of the cult members dislike the idea of the Museum of Death creating an exhibit of the suicide and hope the auction passes without much notice, said Nancie Brown, whose son, David Moore, 40, died with the cult.

"This is another step toward closure," said Brown, a semiretired teacher in northern California. "Nobody wants the auction to be some kind of a scene, something that's going to be bring more bad publicity."

Randy Bell, an Irvine, Calif., real estate appraiser who specializes in establishing the value of "stigmatized" property, said the cult members are not widely admired, so their belongings wouldn't likely appreciate in value.

"There may be some people looking for a cheap deal on a VCR, but the fact that it belonged to Heaven's Gate won't mean much," Bell said.

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