Today in True Crime

As the days count down to Hale-Bopp’s arrival, 39 people prepare for ascension. They’d abandoned their old lives, embraced a new ideology, weathered the death of a beloved leader… and finally, made themselves worthy of the Next Level. Now, the comet was coming. And with it, the spaceship that would ferry them onward. In March of 1997, they left everything behind. From Cults, a Spotify Original from Parcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The group’s belief system had never been infallible. There had been adjustments along the way; revisions meant to keep the wheels turning whenever prophecies didn’t manifest. But then, in 1985, Bonnie Lu Nettles died. And her passing threw Heaven’s Gate’s whole world askew. From Cults, a Spotify Original from Parcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

1976 was a turning point for Heaven’s Gate. The spaceship that was promised had not arrived. Members were defecting. Nettles and Applewhite gathered their truest believers in Wyoming and made it clear: Things were going to be different from here on out. Much different. From Cults, a Spotify Original from Parcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, we’re sharing a special four-part series from Cults on one of the most notorious cults in American history. In March 1997, a police officer responding to a 911 call discovered 39 bodies in a Rancho Santa Fe mansion. Twenty-five years later, we’re taking a deep-dive into the so-called “UFO cult” to understand who they were, what they believed, and why they died. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

16-year-old Laura Beyerly vanished after leaving her 1st period class at Los Altos High School. Her body was found a year later in the Santa Cruz mountains. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Maurizio Gucci was gunned down in the foyer of his office building in Milan, Italy. His murder went unsolved for two years before an informant shed light on the fatal shooting. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The theoretical physicist vanished after sending a cryptic letter to his employer. Seventy years later, a man came forward with new information that changed everything. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sarah Chesham was executed for a series of murders she swore she didn’t commit. Was she a victim of England’s poison panic? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The passenger aircraft crashed into the Alps, killing everyone on board, after the co-pilot locked the pilot out of the cockpit and sabotaged the flight. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After claiming to be the victim of an obsessed sex worker, Joey Buttafucco was charged with the statutory rape of 16-year-old Amy Fisher. He was released after 4 months. Guest hosted by Kate Leonard from Dictators, a Spotify Original from Parcast. Hear their latest series on World Conquerors, free and only on Spotify! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

15-year-old Christopher Endicott shot his legal guardians with a hunting rifle before attempting to run away with his 12-year-old girlfriend. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After eating at a café with her friends, 13-year-old Milly Dowler called her father to tell him she’d be home in half an hour. But she never arrived. Six months later, her remains were found in the woods. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

49-year-old Martha Place became the first woman executed by the electric chair in the state of New York. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

14-year-old Cinnamon Brown shot and killed her 23-year-old stepmother Linda Brown. The tragic situation turned worse after the District Attorney realized who stood to gain financially from Linda's death. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Two men posing as police officers talked their way past security and into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, then stole 13 famous pieces of art worth over 500 million dollars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

21-year-old David Cotton dressed as a leprechaun and robbed a Tennessee bank. The event would end in tragedy after police pursued Cotton and his driver in their getaway car. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

15-year-old Latasha Harlins was shot and killed by shopkeeper Soon Ja Du just moments after the two came to blows over a bottle of orange juice. Guest hosted by Greg Polcyn from Haunted Places, a podcast that takes listeners on a supernatural journey through chilling locations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Raging Bull actress Theresa Saldana was brutally stabbed multiple times by a stalker. She would survive the attack and start a support group called Victims for Victims. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Delaware's only confirmed serial killer, Steven Pennell, was executed on this day in 1992. He was known as the "Route 40 Killer" and even requested the death penalty at one of his trials. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Even though he confessed to killing around 50 patients, respiratory therapist Efren Saldivar was released by the Glendale Police Department in California. They hadn’t gathered enough evidence to corroborate his claim. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A jury rejected the insanity defense of Andrea Pia Yates and convicted her of drowning her children in the bathtub. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Brian Nichols overpowered a Fulton County courthouse deputy and stole her gun. He would then escape the courthouse and go on the run, but not before killing the judge overseeing his case. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Former wrestling star Adolfo Bresciano, also known as "Dino Bravo," was shot to death in his home near Montreal. There was no sign of forced entry, leaving police to theorize that Bresciano likely knew his killer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Supreme Court ruled on whether a group of enslaved people who seized control of the slave ship Amistad should be set free or returned to Spanish bondage. Guest hosted by Carter Roy from Solved Murders, a podcast that delves into real-life murder mysteries. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mario Orozco was walking home from work early in the morning when he was shot in the back in Brooklyn, New York. It was the first crime connected to New York's own Zodiac Killer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A crowd of 600 people began a march from Selma, Alabama to the state capital of Montgomery to protest for voting rights when they were met with resistance from state troopers. When the protesters refused to disperse, the officers got violent. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Vatican investigators verified that assassinated archbishop Oscar Romero was responsible for a miracle involving a Salvadoran couple and the birth of their child. This recognition was one of the final stops on Romero’s road to sainthood. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In what was one of the worst shootings in recent Cleveland history, Davon Crawford killed his wife and four other members of her family, including a five-year-old girl and her two-year-old twin nephews. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The cooperation between multiple police precincts led to the capture of Aaron Thomas, also known as the East Coast Rapist. His crime spree lasted 14 years across four different states. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

High school student Micaela Costanzo was murdered at the gravel pits outside of West Wendover, Nevada. Her childhood friend Kody Patten and his fiancé Toni Fratto were both convicted for the crime, though the case remains shrouded in mystery. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Kate Webster chased her boss Julia Martha Thomas up the stairs of her home, threw her down the steps, and strangled her to death. Guest hosted by Richard Rossner from Unexplained Mysteries, a podcast that examines everything from suspicious deaths to scientific paradoxes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A 17-year-old mentally disabled girl from Glen Ridge, New Jersey was sexually assaulted in a basement by three high school football players while four of their friends watched. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After already surviving one attempted poisoning, the co-founder of Stanford University died mysteriously while on a trip in Hawaii. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Expecting to meet his lover, Teresa, U.S. Attorney Philip Barton Key II was surprised by her husband, Congressman Daniel Sickles, instead. The two would take their confrontation to Lafayette Park where Sickles would shoot Key dead. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Just six years after leaving Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple, Jeannie, Al and Daphene Mills were shot and killed in their California home. Many believed it was an act of revenge by their former cult, but police suspected somebody else. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Eleven years after winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in the film “The Killing Fields,” doctor, actor, and Cambodian refugee Haing S. Ngor was murdered. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What was initially believed to be the result of a car accident, the death of Rosemarie Essa was just the beginning for law enforcement. Suspicions of foul play would lead them to their prime suspect, and on a cross-country manhunt to catch him. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Known as the “Freeway Killer,” 49-year-old William Bonin was executed for the murder of 14 teenage boys. Guest hosted by Molly Brandenburg from Conspiracy Theories, a podcast that delves into the complicated stories behind the world’s most controversial events. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In rural Winfield Township, Pennsylvania, eight-year-old Cherrie Mahan disappeared while walking home from her bus stop. Although she was declared legally dead in 1998, her abduction still remains unsolved. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Having lost his home in a firebomb attack just one week prior, civil rights leader Malcolm X was gunned down on stage at the Audubon Ballroom. His pregnant wife and four kids took cover in the front row. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Along with his bodyguard, McKinley Lee, rapper Snoop Dogg was acquitted of first- and second-degree murder charges in the death of Philip Woldemariam. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Barry Seal was one of America’s most notorious drug smugglers. He was killed by cartel hitmen for being a DEA informant. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Following years of tax issues with the IRS, Andrew Joseph Stack flew his single-engine airplane into an IRS office in Austin, Texas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After checking out with a clean bill of health, candy heiress Helen Brach left the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and was never seen again. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Wilbert Rideau’s botched bank heist would escalate to kidnapping… and then murder. Guest hosted by Greg Polcyn from Serial Killers, a podcast that journeys past the headlines and into the minds and motives of murderers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Three-and-a-half years after the murders which gave him the moniker “The Gainesville Ripper,” serial killer Danny Rolling entered day one of his trial with a shocking plea. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

English explorer James Cook was killed on the beach of Hawaii’s Kealakekua Bay after his plan to kidnap a local leader went awry. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After being tortured and held for ransom, 23-year-old Ilan Halimi died in France. He had been targeted by a gang known as The Barbarians, who wrongly assumed the young man’s family was wealthy enough to pay the ransom because they were Jewish. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Two boys became the youngest convicted murderers in 20th-century Britain for the brutal beating and killing of two-year-old James Bulger. They were sentenced to a young offenders’ institute, where they were released at 18 years old and given new identities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

15-year-old Tim Masters didn't realize the body he saw in a field on the way to his bus stop was actually real. But it was the remains of Peggy Hettrick, who had died from a single stab wound. Police believed Masters had something to do with the crime. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices