Cults Series

David Berg, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, arrived with his family at Ellis Island in 1904. In 1968, he founded the California cult known as the Children of God. The diminutive group grew quickly, and by the 1970s, the group had communes around the country and worldwide.

David communicated with his followers through 3,000 letters written in two years. Berg encouraged female members to recruit new members by showing “God’s love and mercy,” which became known as “flirty fishing.” In one letter, David felt that God created boys and girls to have children even at the young age of twelve. Many would categorize him as a pedophile.

In 1974, Heaven’s Gate was founded by Bonnie Nettles and Marshall Applewhite. They had met a couple of years earlier and claimed to be witnesses of Revelation. Their teachings amassed several hundred followers by the mid to late 1970s. Their central belief was that they could reject their human nature and ascend to heaven as immortal extraterrestrial beings. This group was widely denounced as a religious group when it became widely known that they believed they were certain to go to Heaven on a UFO. When, in 1985, Bonnie died from cancer, her death, naturally, caused many members to question the authenticity of their teachings. After Applewhite died in 1997, the remaining thirty-nine members committed mass suicide. This was the largest American-group suicide since more than 900 members of the cult called the Peoples Temple died in a mass suicide Jonestown, Guyana in 1978.

Heaven’s Gate's end is perhaps best known for the fact that they wore identical outfits. The bodies of 21 men and 18 women, each clothed in black tunics and covered by a purple blanket, were found with shaved heads. Each had $5.75 cash in their pocket and a travel bag next to them on the floor. Death was caused by consuming a lethal cocktail of apple sauce and vodka blended with phenobarbital. Multiple copycat-suicides of several former members of Heaven’s Gate soon followed.

In 2002, after the passing of his father, Warren Jeffs was annotated “President of the Priesthood" of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The FLDS had roots in the Mormon faith which shed polygamy 100 years ago. However, the FLDS group practiced polygamy with multiple husbands and/or wives at the same time. In fact, with his father's grave less than a week old, Warren married all but two of his father's wives, one refused to marry and another fled the compound. Then there were the wives Jeff already had, all in all, the estimate is about 70 to 80 women who gave him dozens of children. His fundamentalist followers numbered more than 10,000 and were scattered throughout Arizona, Utah, and Texas.

Angel’s Landing, a Wichita, Kansas cult, was conceived by Daniel Perez, AKA Lou Castro. He convinced his followers that he was the embodiment of a 1,000-year-old angel who could see into the future. He even claimed to tell people exactly when they would die, which proved very beneficial as he often took out a high dollar life insurance policy on select followers. Police suspicions arose in 2003 when one of his followers, Patrica Hughes, died in 2003, followed by her husband in 2006. Both deaths were initially deemed accidental. However, in 2010, after more in-depth investigations, authorities arrested Perez at his new home in Tennessee after hearing what had been going on at Angel’s Landing. This new information came through interviews with previous members of the commune. Perez was charged with 28 felonies. He was sentenced to two terms of life in prison and will not be eligible for parole until 2095.