"Away Team" holds public video showing to endorse suicide cult teachings

BY RON HARRIS Associated Press Writer

BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) -- In an attempt to tap into the San Francisco Bay area's penchant for life on the fringe, the Heaven's Gate "Away Team" held a public video presentation Sunday.

About 50 people showed up to hear the teachings of the late suicide cult founder Marshall H. Applewhite. The Away Team, those who didn't follow suit in the cult's suicide pact, is comprised of four members led by Rkkody, aka Chuck Humphrey.

"We are not recruiting for new members," Humphrey told the audience at the Berkeley Conference Center. Humphrey repeatedly tried to allay fears that the meeting was a veiled recruiting seminar for new members to join the cult.

The Away Team members gave only their cult nicknames: Humphrey of Denver, Stewody of Berkeley, Juan of Venezuela and Crlody from "all over." With close-cropped haircuts and casual shirts buttoned to the cop, the four men bore an eerie resemblance to Applewhite's former assemblage.

Humphrey was uncertain if the opportunity still existed to join his 39 brethren, whom he believes ascended to a spacecraft behind the Hale-Bopp comet following their March suicides.

"We're not saying that the window of opportunity is closed, but I'm definitely not saying that it's still open," Humphrey said. "I don't know. I wish I had an answer to that. It's a question I wrestle with daily."

In the Rancho Santa Fe mass suicide, Applewhite convinced his followers that by shedding their "containers" they would be able to rendezvous with a spaceship trailing the Hale-Bopp comet that would spirit them away to paradise.

In May, Humphrey and cult member Wayne Cooke were found in a hotel room in an attempt to imitate the cult's suicide. Cooke was dead, but Humphrey was merely unconscious after the two downed a concoction of alcohol, drugs and applesauce.

"We're a bunch of dropouts," Humphrey said of the Away Team and his failed suicide. "We couldn't do the kinds of things that the others did in order to go with Do (Applewhite)." Humphrey said the team was not answering to any undisclosed leader -- but alluded to an old friend.

"There is no other person I am taking my orders from -- on this planet," Humphrey said.

The video titled "Last Chance to Evacuate Earth -- Before It's Recycled," was a 70-minute monologue by Applewhite, and professed to be a warning for earthlings to shed their "vehicles" and catch a ride on a spacecraft.

"If you want to go there, then you've got to follow me because I'm the guy who has got the key at the moment," Applewhite said in the rambling diatribe.

The reaction from the audience was lukewarm at best.

"I do want to hear what they have to say and judge them fairly," said Keith Schurholz, 33, of Oakland. "I think there's a tradition of hearing people out in the Bay area."

"A lot of people committed suicide at Masada in Israel back in the Roman period, and that's looked upon as a glorious part of Israeli history," Schurholz said. "But we still give the Israeli government quite a bit of money and military aide. No one seems to think they're insane."

"It's funny," said Mark Gerolimatos, a 30-year-old Berkeley resident. He doubted the cult's effectiveness on the savvy audience looking on with a skeptical eye.

"None of the Christian churches got me after 30 years, I don't know why these guys would," Gerolimatos said, although he did plunk down $30 for two video tapes of the cult's teachings.

"Morbid curiosity" brought in 37-year-old Barry of San Francisco, who preferred not to give his last name. He said the Bay area has long been a haven for cult recruitment.

"I've lived in Northern California half my life. When I first arrived the Moonies were here. Then the Hare Krishnas tried to recruit me," he said. "It has always been someone with a faraway look in their eye."

Not all in attendance were as lightheartedly amused by the cult. Janja Lalich, director of the Cult Recovery and Resource Center, is wary of the cult's past -- and future -- motives.

"My concern is they're trying to romanticize and glorify what was very tragic," Lalich said. "I don't think (the Away Team) has the capacity to rebuild what Do did."

"When I first heard they were going to sell books, videos and mousepads, I just thought that was kind of sad," Lalich said.

"We never had Jonestown mousepads."

Humphrey said no future meetings have been scheduled yet.

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