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In 1973, Bonnie Lou Nettles and Marshall Applewhite left everything behind to search for their cosmic destiny.

And in the years that followed, they urged hundreds of other people to do exactly the same.

Walk out of your life, abandon your loved ones to prove you're worthy of the next level.

But Nettles had a secret. She stayed in contact with her daughter Terry the whole time, defying her own rules.

According to the documentary, Heaven's Gate, the Cult of Cults, Nettles sent letters once a month and sometimes even called her daughter on the phone.

Terry said that they didn't really talk about Heaven's Gate. Her mom just wanted to know how

she was doing, hear all the things she was up to. Then sometime in 1985, the letters just stopped.

Terry in her 30s now was more than worried. She was frantic, checking the mailbox almost every day.

But she didn't hear anything until the following March, when two members of Heaven's Gate

called her up, they needed to tell her something in person.

When Terry saw them, she assumed the truth almost immediately.

She asked point blank, Mom's dead, isn't she?

Nettles had died nine months earlier from cancer.

Terry found out later that her mom had been in Dallas at the time, less than four hours away.

She could have been there. She could have said goodbye. Instead, Nettles

died surrounded by the members of Heaven's Gate. Her body was cremated. Marshall Applewhite

most likely scattered her ashes himself. But Terry and her family never had any kind of memorial.

She explained, nobody seemed to be interested.

Beyond Terry, the only people who mourned Bonnie Lunettles were the members of Heaven's Gate,

and in the aftermath of their grief, her death opened the door for their final exit.

Hi, I'm Greg Poulson.

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