LIFE INSIDE A SUICIDE CULT
Frank Lyford escaped the infamous cult and the mass suicide of 39 of his friends. Now he reveals how he broke free – and rebuilt his life
Survivor reveals life inside the Heaven’s Gate cult
The silence. It’s what haunts Frank Lyford most about the last conversation he had with the woman he calls the love of his life. It was two days after he’d left the Heaven’s Gate cult, late in 1993, and Lyford was on the phone with his girlfriend, Erika Ernst, begging her to leave and start a new life with him. “I told her I felt like it would be good if she could spend some time outside [the cult] as well,” says Lyford, now 65. “After I spoke, she didn’t respond … She didn’t say anything.”
She never left. Four years later Ernst would
be among the 39 Heaven’s Gate cult members who killed themselves in the largest mass suicide in the United States. Authorities responding to an anonymous tip arrived at the Rancho Santa Fe, California, mansion the group called the Monastery on March 26, 1997, to find the dead – ranging in age from 26 to 72 – dressed in matching black tracksuits with brandnew Nike sneakers on their feet and plastic bags over their heads. All had wilfully ingested apple sauce laced with barbiturates (central nervous system depressants), which was washed down with vodka. Through years of systematic
“It’s about people and truths and lies” —Screenwriter Craig Mazin
brainwashing, the cult’s wild-eyed leader, Marshall Applewhite, 65, had somehow convinced followers they needed to free their mortal souls in order to board a spaceship – flying in the wake of the Hale-Bopp comet – that was bound for a distant planet of androgynous aliens called the Next Level.
The cult’s bizarre beginnings – and gruesome end – are the focus of US TV show People Magazine Investigates: Cults, Heaven’s Gate, airing on June 17 on Foxtel’s Discovery Channel. But for Lyford, who also lost a cousin, David Van Sinderen, in the mass suicide, the 22 years since the deaths have done little to ease his pain. “It was a very emotional time for me – feeling the loss of all of my friends and the loss of Erika,” says Lyford. “Part of me still loves her.” Part of him also wonders what he would have done if he had remained in the cult a few more months. “Who knows if I would have gone through with the suicide; I don’t know,” he says. “Probably not, but we’ll never know.”
As a child, Lyford was a voracious sciencefiction reader. Growing up in Calgary, Canada, with his parents and two brothers, he would often contemplate the universe and wonder what else was out there. “I was thinking, ‘Is this all there is? I feel like there’s something I’m missing,’ ” he recalls. An uninspired student, he dropped out of high school and at 18 was working as a shop attendant when he met Erika, 15. “I was immediately attracted to her,” he says. The two began spending time together, as Lyford talked to her about science-fiction stories and UFOs. When the young couple attended a meeting at a local motel about Heaven’s Gate, Applewhite’s teachings about other worlds and alien planets resonated with them. They would spend the next 18 years living with the group. “Every activity we did, how and what we ate, how we did everything, how we slept – it was all controlled,” Lyford says. Fortunately for Lyford, his job building corporate websites gave him a glimpse of the outside world, and a kind boss finally inspired him to break free from Applewhite. “She treated me with respect,” he says. “She allowed my uniqueness. She saved my life, in effect.”
Lyford, now twice divorced and working as a life coach in Missouri, admits he’s still haunted by his ordeal and his failure to persuade Erika to leave with him. But he knows nothing he could have said in that last call would have made a difference. “People who are in the midst of a brainwashing, they need to come to their own awakening,” he says. “I just hope she’s at peace.”