APPLEWHITE FOLLOWERS RECRUITED HERE IN '76

Two followers of cult leaders "Bo" and "Peep" tried to recruit members in the Cape Girardeau area in 1976.

They said believers would be transported to a new life aboard a UFO.

Bo and Peep were former music professor Marshall Applewhite Jr. and nurse Bonnie Nettles. They met each other while living in Houston, Texas.

Nettles died in 1985. Applewhite was among 39 members of the Heaven's Gate cult that committed mass suicide at a luxury estate in Southern California last week. Led by Applewhite, they were convinced they would leave their earthly bodies and link up with a spaceship they believed was trailing behind the Hale-Bopp comet.

The cult was founded more than 20 years ago as Total Overcomers Anonymous.

Two self-described followers were Peter Rush and Mechek Litener, who discussed their beliefs in an interview published May 28, 1976, in the Southeast Missourian. Neither name showed up on the list of California suicide victims.

Sally Owen worked as a Missourian reporter in 1976. She currently works in public relations at Southeast Missouri Hospital. She remembers interviewing the two cult members.

Owen said Monday that Rush and Litener believed the cult's followers would be transported to a new life aboard a spaceship.

"As I recall, they wanted everybody to come out to a hillside at Trail of Tears State Park," said Owen. "I didn't pack by bags," she said.

The newspaper story said that the cult members were waiting for the "harvest" that would take them from Earth to heaven. They believed they would have life everlasting and the freedom to travel among the planets.

Rush and Litener said they were among some 120 people in the nation who were traveling from place to place to spread their views.

The two cult members said there would be several "harvests" in which believers would be transported in UFOs to a new life elsewhere.

They told Owen that about 10 members of the cult were in the area.

Owen wrote: "The pair admits no one has left Earth yet, but that the `total truth' was brought to believers by a couple known as the `UFO Two.' The names of the couple who came to Earth from a life on another `garden' are `Bo' and `Peep.' They are apparently not, however, related to Mother Goose."

Litener told Owen, "We haven't met the UFO couple, but we know they're here somewhere."

The newspaper reported that the pair said they were once regular humans but had changed.

"In preparation for their harvest, members are weaning themselves away from emotions, habits and other traits," Owen wrote.

Rush told her, "We're filling ourselves up with energy so we can physically exist in the Kingdom of Space."

Said Rush, "Our idea of heaven is not one place, but the entire universe."