All 39 were dressed in identical black shirts and sweatpants, brand-new black-and-white Nike Decades athletic shoes, and armband patches reading “Heaven’s Gate Away Team” (one of many instances of the group’s use of Star Trek terms). Each member carried a five-dollar bill and three quarters in their pockets. According to former members, this was standard for members leaving the home for jobs and “a humorous way to tell us they all had left the planet permanently”; the five-dollar bill was for covering the cost of vagrancy laws and the quarters were for calling home from pay phones.
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You can go straight to the source. One of them volunteered to stay behind and keep the website up to make sure people knew their beliefs.
Porcupine tree did a song with samples of the cult leaders tapes.
In a 2020 interview with Harry Robinson, two members who were not in Rancho Santa Fe when the suicides happened said that the identical clothing was a uniform representing unity for the mass suicide, while the Nike Decades were chosen because the group “got a good deal on the shoes”.
There is something deeply, darkly, cosmically funny about this that I can’t articulate.
“These are our deeply held beliefs”
“well what do the shoes mean?”
“There was a sale at Penny’s”
Nike retired the Decades real quick, making surviving specimens rare and rather valuable.
