Critique of Rolling Stone Interview from Randall Bell’s Visits to the Heaven’s Gate Rancho Sante Fe Mansion

I heard this story on NPR or perhaps it was a BBC broadcast re-broadcast on NPR. It stems from an article published in the Rolling Stone Magazine entitled:

Meet the Real Estate Appraiser of the World’s Most Gruesome Murder Sites

(The link to the article is posted at the end of this post. However, I separated out the parts that had to do with this person Randall having visited the Rancho Sante Fe mansion where the Group Members layed down their human vehicles. The story is from an interview with Randall Bell as follows to start my critique of the Heaven’s Gate part of story:

“Rolling Stone caught up with Bell to discuss Satanic worshipers, the creepiest part about the Heaven’s Gate mansion, and what, exactly, makes the Jeffrey Dahmer property so special.

Is it just the stigma or is there actual damage done to the house that reduces its value?
That’s a great question, because with the Heaven’s Gate mansion there was a lot of physical damage because — I don’t want to be graphic or anything, but —

You’re welcome to be as graphic as you want.

Oh, OK, then I’ll be really graphic. By the way, I don’t have any morbid curiosity. I don’t want to see bodies or crime scene photos, I’m not into that. With Heaven’s Gate, I waited till after they finished taking out the bodies. But when I went in, I just wanted to barf because it smelled so bad. There had been bodies decomposing for three days, and there was blood all over the place — blood on the carpet and the marble, all throughout the house.

Why blood? Didn’t they take phenobarbital?

Yeah. The reason why — they call their bodies vehicles, and when you have a decomposing vehicle for three days, when the bodies are picked up and put on gurneys, the vehicles leak. That’s the way I guess I could put it. So it was odd, but there was blood coming out from various orifices, and it smelled so bad. So we actually got a biohazard company to come in and test the porous surfaces, the vents and the carpet and the drapes. There was biological contamination and all that stuff had to be ripped out.”

Sawyer:

We have the pictures of the authorities loading bodies with white sheets wrapped around them and no hint of blood. We have the coroner reports that said it was very peaceful there on the 26th when they went in. I don’t know when their bodies were put in body bags but I suppose there could have been some leakage in each bed or mattress or foam pad each body was on. When a body dies if one is on it’s back, then the fluids settle along the back but if the heart isn’t pumping what would cause the blood vessels to leak. I suppose some may say the phenobarbital could have caused blood capillaries to rupture. I don’t know but I wonder if Randall is exaggerating, even by saying;

“…it was odd, but there was blood coming out from various orifices…”.

Like, why was it odd if that’s normal due to a body lying decomposing for 24 to at most 36 hours? It doesn’t bother me in the least if there was blood all over the house as he says as they were human bodies that died. It’s just par for the course for people to make of it much more than it was and especially someone who makes it his business to go to murder and suicide sites and then make his living having to do with those properties and what happened at those locations.

I remember in the Inside Edition show I was a part of where they quoted me out of context. The interviewer came to my house in Vermont from NYC area and we sat down to talk on camera and when I told the story of how DO had gone to jail for keeping a rental car longer than contracted, that got reported and resulted in his arrest, that when he had served 6 months before it was to come to trial, though the charges were dropped as soon as the rental car company got their car back, the DA finally came to him with a plea deal. He could plead guilty and get a 4 month sentence or take it to trial. He took the deal to get out of jail with time served and joked that they owed him 2 months. However, as part of the deal, considering that TI and DO talked about who they knew themselves to be, Souls from outer space, having taken over those human vehicles to perform a task, etc. the DA liked adding that to his resume for his reelection campaign. So with the plea the DA required him to undergo a psychological evaluation before being released, which he passed with flying colors, yet in his mind (at that time) not a day had gone by that he didn’t question his own sanity. When I told the Inside Edition interviewer that last statement, he had me repeat it and then repeat it again wanting to get it down to a sound byte and then publishing that DO thought he was insane which wasn’t the case. So I was trapped and not keen enough to stop giving him that sound byte.

But in that Inside Edition show, at one point they had someone walking through the house and he pointed out a large spot where they said 4 members of the group had died on the floor and the impression I got was that they all died in that spot which would have been impossible since they all died in a bed and four beds could not have fit on the one spot the size of half a bed at most. Perhaps that was Randall who I saw used in that broadcast. If that wasn’t him Randall seems to be of the same ilk, exaggerating because he knows many people like to hear the gore talk.

Interview of Randall continues:

Can you tell me about the properties you’ve looked at with paranormal activity? I know you said you didn’t believe in that, but I know you’ve been called to appraise those properties.

“I haven’t see any ghosts. I’ve seen some weird things, but I haven’t seen ghosts. I’ll tell ya one interesting story about Heaven’s Gate: the owner of the property put me in charge of everything basically, and I took the media through the house on a tour, and every single person I took through the property, I would take them through the house and we saw where the bunk beds were, and at the end of every single tour I said, “What’d you think? Were you OK with that?” Because a lot of people were nervous or creeped out about the whole thing. And I swear to you every single person said the same thing: “Oh, I was fine with it, except for this one room where I felt creepy.” And everyone identified the same room. I kept that to myself, but the room everyone was referring to was a room where there were four bodies, two bunk beds with four bodies. There was no blood in the room, there was nothing — you gotta understand, there were 39 bodies in the house, so there were bodies in every single room, so there wasn’t anything special about that particular room, but everyone said that who I took through the house.””I haven’t see any ghosts. I’ve seen some weird things, but I haven’t seen ghosts. I’ll tell ya one interesting story about Heaven’s Gate: the owner of the property put me in charge of everything basically, and I took the media through the house on a tour, and every single person I took through the property, I would take them through the house and we saw where the bunk beds were, and at the end of every single tour I said, “What’d you think? Were you OK with that?” Because a lot of people were nervous or creeped out about the whole thing. And I swear to you every single person said the same thing: “Oh, I was fine with it, except for this one room where I felt creepy.” And everyone identified the same room. I kept that to myself, but the room everyone was referring to was a room where there were four bodies, two bunk beds with four bodies. There was no blood in the room, there was nothing — you gotta understand, there were 39 bodies in the house, so there were bodies in every single room, so there wasn’t anything special about that particular room, but everyone said that who I took through the house.”

Sawyer:

First he says there was blood in every room of the house and then he says there was no blood in this one room. More evidence that this person is exaggerating and may be lying as well to make a bigger media spectacle. No doubt he charges for the tours he gave to the media. He attended a party at the Mansion some time after the event there and he brought his daughter with him to the party. He said it was outdoors mostly and was nice because they had a nice pool his daughter liked to swim in and the owner Sam’s kids were also there at the party. So to him this is entertainment and business, likely hired by Sam.

What are the properties you get asked about the most?

The strangest case was Heaven’s Gate. It was just so bizarre on so many levels. I was really fascinated by the brainwashing techniques that [Heaven’s Gate leader] Do used, and the way he rigged the house to control his followers was generally not known in the media, but it was bizarre. There was a whole process — he would entice people who were actually very bright, who were academically smart people, with a new, magical world kind of pitch. Once he had them in the house, he controlled all the thinking. In fact, I was walking through the house with a reporter, and everything in the house was labeled. I’m not exaggerating: every light switch, every drawer, every cupboard, every shelf, every jar, every single thing you saw was labeled. And she said, “That was because he was trying to eliminate the need to think for himself about anything.” Even the most mundane detail, the thinking was already done.

The other thing he did: literally there were wires going through the chimney. There were wires everywhere. It was fanatically wired. Every square inch of that house was bugged. You could not go anywhere and have a private conversation. I remember the phones — they had these folding tables, like phone banks, and every phone was rigged, so if you were on the phone somebody was listening in on your conversation. He eliminated any private moments or any ability to think for yourself or reason to think for yourself. Nobody slept in the room by themselves. Nobody went to the bathroom by themselves. Through this process, people who were otherwise intelligent were believing the craziest stuff they’ve ever heard. And that’s how he did it.”

Sawyer:

Randall has expressed his observations of the house well after they exited and gives his opinions about what he saw. I will provide from 19 years of experience in the group and from listening to tapes after I left in 1994 and with the testimony of two other former students why Randall is mostly misconstruing what he observed and misinterpreting why they did what they did grossly exaggerating what he did observe and attaching his uneducated opinion to it.

I broke down his observations and conclusions to follow and will address each one:

1) Randall says DO was using “Brainwashing techniques”.

Sawyer:

It’s interesting that none of what Randall says he observed would necessarily constitute proof of any “brainwashing”. Many media groups can actually be proven to have brainwashed much of the public by using the known brainwashing technique of constantly bombarding people with their own slant on the Information and teachings from TI and DO. Hardly any like to report why there were rules, what the group called procedures. Plus next to no one even quotes the few psychologists who said things that didn’t automatically put DO and Crew among the ranks of Jim Jones, David Koresh, Charles Manson and many others. I have given at least a dozen 3+ hour interviews and next to no one seems to think there is a value to including much of what I say because what I say doesn’t confirm the narrative they want to sell to the public, while what I say hides nothing because there is nothing to hide. Of course it was a traumatic event that media groups don’t want to appear to their constituents as supportive of, but because of that they fear reporting the facts except what they can spin to be the juiciest parts. It’s a sad state of affairs and this article puts some icing on that dis/mis-information “cake”. It’s easy to make a case that much of the American public is systematically brainwashed by the repetition of lies and deceit and half truths and we all should know that repetition is the biggest method to convince someone of any point of view. Yet TI and DO knew this but had no methods of doing so and in fact did the opposite and kept changing their understanding and not at all fearing losing students who found objection with their doing that though it can be shown that TI and DO never changed things for the novelty of doing so, nor to confuse anyone, nor to justify things they said before that may not have played out in exactly the ways they first thought they might. I know some students found fault with them for that reason among many others which is why the dropout rate was large.

For instance if repetition was a technique as Randall calls it, then how come students weren’t forced to listen to their tapes over and over and over. They actually wanted students to listen to them over and over but over 19 years I believe there weren’t more than 3-4 times that TI and DO gave us instruction to re-listen to one of their meeting tapes. People who are ignorant about what and why and how TI and DO presented their information are often some of the ones who make the biggest erroneous claims and yet get the most airplay because again, this is an easy story to continue to play on for the appearance of seeing it for what it really was, ignoring what the facts say it was. And by “facts” I’m not expecting people to “believe” in what TI and DO and Crew believed. Those are understandably not the “facts” I’m talking about. I will present many of the facts in response to each point made by Randall and show why what he reports, though sometimes accurate, doesn’t add up to the brainwashing techniques he claims and are actually his misunderstanding and misinterpreting what they did and why.

2) Randall claims DO “Rigged the house to control his followers”

Sawyer:

This is completely false. No I wasn’t in that Rancho Sante Fe house but all Randall’s examples of the so called way in which he claims DO “rigged the house” is full of holes. I will address them as they come up to follow.

3) Randall claims DO “…would entice people who were very bright? Academically smart people with a new magical world kind of pitch”.

Sawyer:

Just look at the language Randall uses as Judge, jury and executioner. For example, one of the thoughts TI and DO talked about from the start was that some of what people and governments were having experience with labeled, “UFO’s” were actually nothing more than “transportation” for the physical members of the Next Level Above Human who had physical bodies they wear like suits, the way a human will put on an astronaut suit to travel in space or a diving suit to go underwater.

Maybe Randall thinks about the subject of UFO’s as “magical” but I for one, when I saw the first poster used to advertise for the public meetings we were giving in 1975 and 1976 had a headline of UFO’s in large lettering. That abbreviation meant nothing to me at the time yet something about what they said in that poster and in the subsequent meeting I attended in Waldport, Oregon made sense to me. In fact, if one reads their material and listens to audio tapes you will have a hard time seeing anything they talked about as “magical” as if a parlor trick of thinking. Contrary to what TI and DO often said, they referred to things done with the spirit world “tricks,” like reading minds and past life regressions and purporting of gemstones through the palm of one’s hands or “channeling” or certain types of faith healings. They weren’t saying that people couldn’t do all these things but they simply weren’t things the Members of the Next Level Above Human would do. Even including miracles like what Jesus was said to have done, they said were “90% exaggerated”. TI and DO were actually quite scientific and un-mystical or magical.

When Hayden Hewe’s, in the book he and Brad Steiger published entitled, “UFO Missionaries Extraordinary,” that was mostly from the interviews they and Dan Garcia had with TI and DO in 1974 and 1976, wrote about his experience with TI and DO when they left the location of the 1974 interview, where he said, “they vanished,” TI and DO joked that they had just walked away.

Plus in that same book, TI and DO are recorded to have told a woman who had children that since she was unsure she should not join them and that she could possibly join them at another time in the future during another “season”.

What I’m saying was there was no “pitch” as there was no recruiting the way most people think of recruiting. There certainly have been many religious oriented groups who were actively recruiting. The Moonies tried to recruit me in 1976 by offering me a meal and I had to attend a talk before I’d get the meal. So did a disciple of Sri Chin Moy try to attract me to their group. Also the Maharishi Mehesh Yogi had an ongoing recruitment program in NYC that I didn’t want to join because they required I stop smoking pot and I didn’t want to quit. Plus the Sufi’s tried to recruit me in 1975. What TI and DO did was put up posters, perhaps announce in some media that they were having a meeting. When people came to the meeting, TI and DO would say to the crowd, if this speaks to you or you have more questions stay after the meeting and some students will help you with them. Then if they wanted to join they had to meet us at the next city we were planning to travel to, to have another meeting and they had to do so on their own steam. I was given a campground to travel to at the Colorado National Monument near Fruita, Colorado, coming from Waldport, OR. I got that instruction by going to Eugene where two students had a table set up in the middle of a field that I went up to and when I did was given the park near Fruita to travel to.

When I was overseer of a public meeting group in 1994 (after having no public meetings for nearly 17 years) in Chicago at the University, where I was also a speaker with several other students, two in the audience stayed after the meeting and spoke to Chkody and I (as overseers). I told them about our current lifestyle as we had run out of our own money so we were asking for help with food from various restaurants and sometimes fast food restaurants and eating whatever we were given if it wasn’t trash. These two said to us that they couldn’t join as they were strict vegans.

Chkody wasn’t sure that was right to turn them away but then checked with DO and I was never corrected as having turned away someone inappropriately though in my own opinion I think I should have consulted with Chkody further than I did and even checked with DO since we had cell phones then for that purpose. Mind you, I had no personal interest in having new members, though nor did I want to turn someone away who clearly felt they wanted to join us. However the way I thought at the time, was if they weren’t willing to change their diet, they were not going to work as fellow crewmembers, though I respected their desire to eat a vegan diet and that was actually closer to the kind of diet we had at the time before we went public and the funds dried up.

These are not unusual stories. In fact there were 19 separated from the larger group in Wyoming in 1976 that TI told those of us who remained with them, “didn’t make the first cut”. Plus from about June of 1976 to 1994 there were no public meetings and the only ones who joined were 99% those who had joined in 1975 and 1976 but were sent out of the Group or chose to leave, which happened all the time.

TI and DO never wanted large numbers as they worked hard with each student and yet we students didn’t even know they were working hard to help us. No one will be able to see this unless they are willing to dive into listening to the audio tapes they left behind that demonstrate what they expected and yet only wanted each of us to seek through constant exercise of our own free will.

Once a year they required us to think about whether we wanted to leave or not. In around 1990 DO offered each of us $2000 to leave because staying became very easy as we lived in a tight knit commune that was a lot easier than living in the “real world” outside the group where each person has to worry about paying their own bills, etc. If some in the Group lost their jobs, others could take up the slack to still pay the bills and that did happen. So DO didn’t want that to be the reason someone stayed. DO wanted to see a continuous effort from each student to learn all they could about making applications to become crew members on a Next Level spacecraft. TI and DO’s standards were very high to that end and they used as a learning ground all the things we each needed to do to pull our weight in a crew minded way and it was tough but again, I didn’t know how tough it was because I was choosing not to conquer some of the behaviors and ways that were not compatible with Next Level Members. I thought I was doing a good job and I was fooling myself and that led to my leaving of my own free will. Even those who were sent out in 1976 and Mark and Sarah who were sent out in 1987 left of their own free will because they didn’t want to follow all the procedures. But each of them were given the choice to return, though some didn’t want to stay in touch so lost touch while others did return or were given some chances to serve in some capacity after they left, which is what happened with Mark and Sarah, known in the group as Mrcody and Srfody.

4) Randall claims “Once he had them in the house he controlled all the thinking.”

Sawyer:

This is ridiculous. How does one literally control one’s thinking as if DO caught someone and then chained them in the house or lured them with some kind of mental “carrot”. This person has no concept of how easy it is for some leaders in society to keep people under their control and it was the opposite in the Heaven’s Gate Group. The doors were never locked from the outside so anyone could leave and some did leave in the middle of the night so not to face TI and DO or Classmates, not that anyone would have tried to talk them out of leaving if that’s what they truly wanted to do. To the contrary, TI and DO didn’t want anyone there who didn’t 100% want to be there. They weren’t at all like all these religious groups and the armed forces that force their members to find new members, to convert others or to play out their enlistment period they signed up for.

However, if we wanted to stay in TI and DO’s program then we needed to learn to control our own thinking. That’s the only context to “washing one’s brain” which is the true meaning of “baptism” to clean out one’s old ways of thinking and replace it with the thinking from Members of the Next Level who have no human interests. But this was all on the honor system. It was hard to hide one’s real thoughts while in the group. As soon as someone showed signs of not wanting to be there, they were given help to leave. That’s what I can testify to. I was given $600 and an airplane ticket to Phoenix from L.A. and a ride to the airport the day after I decided to leave.

5) Randall claims “everything in the house was labeled. Every light switch, every drawer, every cupboard, every shelf, every jar, every single thing you saw was labeled.”

Sawyer:

While I was in the group we often labeled light switches. That was because there were some lights they wanted to be kept on, inside or outside so they wanted people to know what they did. There was a crew assigned to change the lights for daytime or nighttime. This way, a new member of that crew wouldn’t have to guess what lights did what. Plus when one has lots of procedures, it can easily be something someone may balk at doing and if they balked maybe that was another sign they weren’t happy and were encouraged to either conquer that vibe or leave. Rkkody didn’t like to be restricted. We did at times have procedures of who could go outside the house and when and for how long. Like we had a procedure to take daily walks outside or to use the tennis court or to swim in the pool in one Arizona mansion I lived in with the group. While others were on the crew to take care of the plants and lawn if there was one and to clean the pool if there was one and put the garbage out. But part of the procedure is to stay with one’s “check partner” which was yet another test of whether or not one wanted to be there. I’ll talk more on this later.

For the cupboards that was strictly organizational. The kitchen was treated as a laboratory would exist on a Next Level SpaceCraft and it was important that any member of the crew knew where tools were and where to put them back when they are cleaned, so labeling is the most efficient way of doing that, especially when there are new crew members serving in that “lab”. All this was to also test whether we really wanted to act in a crew minded way and for some it challenged their being cooperative. For me, I enjoyed all the procedures. Some would question whether they were always as efficient as they could be and TI and DO addressed that they weren’t trying to be most efficient but were doing things based on what they felt their unseen Older Members would give them to choose. I know that sounds far-fetched for some but that’s because some people have arrived at knowing there are discarnate spirits all around us with some who become attached to us, to even help us. So a big part of the program was to learn to recognize when a discarnate or thought form wasn’t from their Older Members Mind and if it’s not then get rid of it (if one wanted) and that was not an easy chore at times because we often don’t even know when a discarnate is behind some of our thoughts. But one can learn about their reality by putting into effect the teaching TI and DO provided. One can recognize that no matter what thoughts we have, if it’s negative, it’s not from the Next Level, so one needs to get rid of it OR not and choose to leave the classroom as they only wanted those few who wanted to go the distance of controlling their own thoughts as there was no mechanism besides the honor system to know if someone was thinking against what TI and DO were teaching, though it seemed eventually it would surface.

Jars of spices, etc. needed to be labeled so that someone wouldn’t use the wrong ingredient in a recipe. These things are not at all evidence of brainwashing. If that was the case then every professional kitchen in the U.S. could be accused of brainwashing.

6) Randall quotes a reporter he was with in the house who says:

“That was because he was trying to eliminate the need to think for yourself about anything.” Then saying “Even the most mundane detail, the thinking was already done”.

Sawyer:

Yes we had many procedures but it would be very easy to prove by the many audio tapes and by my testimony of many examples that 99% of the thinking was not done for us. Even with procedures there was often a new context in which to apply them or not or partially. We had a procedure to not use any more toothpaste than needed, not needing to cover all the bristles with toothpaste but they didn’t spell out exactly how much to use and despite what Randall says here, most bathroom time was alone time. The only exception was when two people would be scheduled to use the bath chamber during the same 12 minute period. Then we either had a divider between the shower side and the lavatory side or we’d put up a sheet to separate the shower side from the lavatory side and one was on the honor system to not try to peek at the other when they took their clothing off to take a shower. No one showered with one another, nor used the commode together, nor used the lavatory together. During the lavatory side time, one would brush their teeth or shave (if they were a male with beard growth). Using the commode for number two, what we called “solid elimination” was not a procedure during the bath time when two could be in that bath chamber.

But toothpaste amount and shampoo amount had procedures out of respect of all the supplies we needed to make them last as long as possible without affecting the best outcome. Also water usage was encouraged to be minimal so we’d take a shower by first getting wet and then turning off the shower while soaping up and then turning it on when rinsing. Some of that thinking came about when like 30 or more of us were living in a zoned single family house in some suburb like Denver so our water usage wouldn’t stand out as being a flag that more people were living there than was allowed.

Not only was thinking done for us, it was just the opposite, we were expected to be exceptionally thoughtful and conscious about everything we did. When we took steps not to be loud. When we open and close cabinets, do so quietly. When speaking, do so quietly so as not to disturb others. These things and many, many others required more thought than one might find in the human kingdom because one had to keep those ideas on the top of their mind. So Classmembers were quite mindful.

And by the way, there wasn’t any punishment for not following these procedures but we did have a self reporting mechanism to expose our “slippages” in these and other regards and if someone was increasingly not abiding by these procedures it was yet another sign they weren’t happy being in that Classroom. There weren’t any individuals in the Class that weren’t capable with learning to abide by all the procedures. It was always a constant choice.

7) Randall claims DO had “…wires going through the chimney. There were wires everywhere. It was fanatically wired. Every square inch of that house was bugged. You could not go anywhere and have a private conversation.”

Sawyer:

That is also ridiculous while at the same time if that was the case then if one had a problem with it, just leave. I had no problem with procedures that could be seen as having no privacy. For instance in the 1980’s TI instigated a program where two students that would rotate among all the students were assigned to be “eyes”. The duty of those assigned to be “eyes” for an hour shift was to record anything anyone in their view did or didn’t do that was not according to procedures. So lets say someone was picking their nose with their finger. The procedure was to use a tissue to pick one’s own nose and to do so in the bath chamber preferably though not exclusively. Then Eyes would say nothing but they would write down exactly what they saw and who did it. No one else would read that log and that log would be sent directly to “links” (aka Lnks) – the joint name for TI and Do working together which came from the way they felt they were links in a chain of Mind/Spirit that went through every Member of the Next Level to their Older Members and then to the Chief of Chiefs who was the most experienced member and who we wouldn’t know more about where that person came from until we became a member of the Next Level because our brains aren’t capable of comprehending that information.

Sometimes Overseers were given the task to bring those things to an individual’s attention. Sometimes TI and DO would talk directly to a Classmember. Sometimes TI and DO would have something put in a procedure book about it and sometimes they would bring up some things in a group meeting.

8) Randall claims “…the phones — they had these folding tables, like phone banks, and every phone was rigged, so if you were on the phone somebody was listening in on your conversation.”

Sawyer:

Rigged? From the start when TI was present we had a procedure to have two people on the telephone at the same time whenever possible. That was because Members of the Next Level love to work with a check partner. It’s like partners in the police force – two minds are better than one kind of thing. How many times does one person get an instruction and find out that they heard it wrong. If someone in the Class didn’t want a check partner on the telephone with them then they shouldn’t be in the classroom. For instance when we called our vehicles family one would be silent on the other line listening to what the family member said and what the one making the call said. This way they could report to TI and DO what was said and not said so we could be helped or if in some cases the family member could be helped. It was also to protect against security leaks. We were being looked for by private investigators and even by the FBI sometimes over the years and yet we were all adults and had no children and wanted to be there so had a right to do what we wanted to do that wasn’t harming anyone or even ourselves. But sometimes someone might slip up and give a clue to what town we were in. We learned of a situation where one student when visiting families in 1985 and/or in 1987 when we had many visits scheduled told that student that another family member hired a private eye to find her and that he was in the same town as we were at one point and that we moved out of the house shortly before the private eye found the house. TI and DO didn’t want authorities to find us because we were no longer feeling part of that past family unit. We identified with our Next Level Family now. Many humans no longer identify with their human families who might be down on them for their choices, etc. They may stay in touch and so did we after a period of time in the beginning of weaning from their influence on us. We knew many could not understand what we were doing but to us we were doing exactly what we wanted to do, yet did hope our vehicles family could accept us. After TI left, DO instigated the second visit and about every year we made a call and/or in between sent a card letting them know we were okay and happy and doing what we wanted to do. That was done to relieve their anxiety about our absence from their lives which also would relieve any anxiety we feel from having that genetic yet very real connection with them. We also didn’t want to be in touch so often that those family members might hope to reestablish a relationship with us. That would have been cruel to do since all of us if our heads were in the place we wanted them to be knew we’d someday leave this planet, preferably with our human vehicles that were changed over into a Next Level vehicle or without our vehicle as the Soul only that would board TI’s spacecraft. We knew how strange that can sound to most humans but we knew and I still know such spacecrafts exist and that may be where some Souls in human vehicles might go after their vehicles die, by whatever way that happens. We know that we need our vehicles to learn lessons through and so hope to have this opportunity for as long as possible.

9) Randall claims “He eliminated any private moments or any ability to think for yourself or reason to think for yourself.”

Sawyer:

This is also ridiculous and totally uninformed as to the reality of the Group. Humans think they are thinking for themselves. What I’ve learned by many experiences is that we humans are possessed by discarnate spirits/minds from deceased humans who can only feel and express themselves by using a living human vehicle. They give us ideas of what to do with our lives. They give us ideas for inventions. They lead us to use substances to alleviate stresses. They would have us think we are the sole decider over everything we do when we are often under their influence all through life. When we have a negative thought it’s from some kind of influence, be it from our genetic programming from ancestors past or from the people who raised us and the society we were raised within, from what we chose from all that or from discarnates and/or from thought forms that we are bombarded upon us by the space aliens and by other humans.

Some are plagued with thoughts that they are worthless while others that they are great. Some are plagued with thoughts that they are too fat or too thin or incapable of succeeding in something or have no hope for a better life or that others are to blame with their shortcomings.

10) Randall claims “Nobody slept in the room by themselves.”

Sawyer:

That is likely because we generally had “rest chambers” where we often slept on bunk beds if we had them. However, there were times when we slept alone. For instance there was one time when I slept on a mattress in the hallway by myself. In that circumstance some who got up before I did, as we often had procedures to have different amounts of sleep, as little as 6 hours and as much as 8 hours. I remember DO came to me and told me that it had been reported that I let my hands go below my waist while sleeping and into the groin area. We had procedure to try to maintain control of the vehicle’s desire for sensuality that would apply even to down (sleep) time. I guess I wasn’t successful in instilling that program so I tried harder after that. DO wasn’t mad at me or angry with me. He didn’t threaten me in any way or want me to even be embarrassed yet I wanted to know if I did anything to break procedures so I was getting my wish to be told about this.

We generally had males sleep in a different rest chamber than females, even though at times there were some who were attracted to the same gendered vehicle as they occupied. DO was found by the coroner to be sleeping in a room by himself so there goes that “nobody… slept by themselves” statement.

11) Randall claims “Nobody went to the bathroom by themselves.”

Sawyer:

See my reply to point number 6 that describes how inaccurate that is in part. But it’s really the opposite. Using the BC (Bath chamber) was one of the only times we did something without our check partner.

But even that is not true. For instance for many months in Dallas and in Denver I would drive our white Cadillac with up to three other students in it, to deliver them to their OOC Tasks (Out Of Craft Tasks) – jobs in the world and then I would proceed to my OOC-T by myself and then after work would pick some up on the way back to the Craft (house). Plus during my lunch hour at some tasks, I would drive the car by myself to book stores trying to sell the Transfiguration Diet Book we had just published (though later sold to David Christopher of the School for Natural Healing).

12) Randall claims “Through this process, people who were otherwise intelligent were believing the craziest stuff they’ve ever heard. And that’s how he did it.”

Sawyer:

This is among the many biggest misconceptions and misinterpretations and outright putting his own spin on this tiny part of the story and would like to see some of my replies here posted to not leave people with all the misconceptions many will think is the absolute truth. I hope you all would do a new story and use me as one of your primary sources since I am an eye witness to the many things that were done and even reported here and why.

Mind you, I don’t care about publicity. In fact the more publicity I get the worse it can be for me since there are some people who claim I am dangerous which is ridiculous and I can prove it, which will be shown to come.

After all, I joined with TI and DO in 1975 and left them in 1994, started a family, fathering a daughter and raising her in a nice home in Vermont and only went public with my side of the story in 1997 after they exited this world and then went back to my life in the mountains. It wasn’t until 9/11 that I experienced from 30 miles away from ground zero, knowing people who worked in the World Trade Center but who just so happened to not go to work that day, that I began to research what happened as it seemed to me very apocalyptic and so started to write a book about my experience with TI and DO, that had nothing to do with what most of the mainstream media claims.

Fifteen years ago or more I started a youtube channel: 3spm and Facebook page, Sawyer.Heavensgate and a blog called sawyerhg.wordpress.com to talk about what I experienced with TI and DO and their teachings, behaviors and ways I witnessed in person for 19 years. I’ve never ever monetized. I have never ever promoted suicide. In fact I have said I am against both kinds of suicide, same as the group said, that of, human suicide and Soul suicide. DO and Crew were very clear that we need our human vehicles (bodies) in order to learn the lessons of life we need to truly progress if we desire to.

I am not a “teacher” nor a “leader”, only a student with a huge story to tell for those who want to hear it. There is no new group or commune or cult of any kind. It’s completely unnecessary and wasn’t to happen in TI and DO’s Mind (though nor do I try to stop people from seeking that experience of living communally by TI and DO’s teachings). I’m not actually living by all of TI and DO’s teachings. Some of their teachings they said themselves in their Book weren’t meant for people to live by now, after they had exited this planet.

Ironically, because I received certain of the Heaven’s Gate Intellectual Property in 1997 from one former member named Rkkody, since deceased, that I had been sharing with people since about 2007 and then in 2021 another body of TI and DO’s Information as over 900 audio tapes, from another former member known as Juan (Jhnody in the group) who shared some of what he had from the group, when I began to share what Juan gifted me with others, mostly audio tapes from the internal meetings of the group, most of which I was present for and can be heard in many asking questions and being corrected by TI and/or DO, those who became the web masters of the Heavensgate.com website sued me and another former student and another who never was in the group but believes in what TI and DO taught and is my partner.

This lawsuit is in progress and is a huge story in and of itself, starting from when DO and Crew exited and left instructions to former members, those who still believed in him, to disseminate all their information to whoever wanted it.

But Mark and Sarah, (who were called in the group Mrcody and Srfody), two who were sent out of the group by DO in 1987 because they didn’t want to live by the procedure described in short as “I could be wrong,” but who said they still believed in TI and DO, who DO didn’t want to cut off 100%, gave them some tasks to do for him before they left, and then let receiving those tasks go to their heads and tried to take control over all the Groups intellectual property by copyrighting some of it and suing for what they didn’t have. Those copyrights were fraudulently obtained which I am attempting to prove. Still they use those copyrights to keep others from having access to it all, all the 1061 audio tapes recorded from 1982 to 1997. Those tapes reveal the full depth of all TI and DO were doing. Some don’t want that information to get out. Mark and Sarah have their own reasons for not wanting that information to get out but much of it has already been provided throughout the internet but they are trying to stop me and a few others from making it part of the public domain and want to punish us for doing what DO wanted that they don’t want to take responsibility to do, yet won’t relinquish the tiny task they still do by keeping the website up and running.

Like I said, it’s a long story and if I live long enough I will make a documentary about all my experiences with TI and DO and Crew.

There is nothing at all about the time TI and DO spent here that I and others experienced that I want to hide. Yes, I know many will find fault with them as this person in this article does. But I intend to tell the truth, what really happened with lots of details.

Here is the url to the full text of this article:

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/manson-oj-simpson-heavens-gate-murder-real-estate-appraiser-randall-bell-804463/