Former Cult Member Leaves Hospital After Suicide Try
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SAN DIEGO — A former follower of the Heaven’s Gate cult who tried to imitate the mass suicide of 39 members was moved Saturday to an undisclosed facility after his condition improved.
Charles Humphrey, 55, of Denver was moved from Scripps Memorial Hospital in Encinitas to an undisclosed facility, hospital spokeswoman Sue Pondrom said in a statement.
“Scripps will not give the name of the facility, its location or describe it in any way,” Pondrom said, citing legal and privacy constraints.
Humphrey’s condition was upgraded from fair to good before he was moved, she said.
Humphrey was barely alive Tuesday when San Diego sheriff’s deputies found him and the body of Wayne Cooke, 56, of Las Vegas in a hotel room four miles from the rented mansion where the mass suicide occurred March 26.
Cooke and Humphrey had taken alcohol and phenobarbital. Cooke also had a plastic bag over his head. Authorities said the method was similar to that used in the mass suicide.
The followers believed that they were shedding their bodies for a trip to a “level beyond human” aboard a spaceship trailing Comet Hale-Bopp.
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