Joslyn Lamontagne

American cultist, virtually second in command to Appelwhite in the Heaven's Gate mystical cult. Her relationship with Appelwhite was "as close as a marriage, except for the physical part," she said, "Like executives who travel around while the rest of the company is doing something else, we lived apart from the rest of the class." She turned all of her talents over to the cult, her love of cooking, her intellect, her sense of order. She ran the bakery of Heaven's Gate, wrote a book called "The Transfiguration Diet" and published a newsletter on nutrition. La Montagne's position of privilege, always at Appelwhite's side, helped make her one of his most ardent believers. A pretty woman with long dark hair, she sublimated her sexuality into her spiritual striving and into her place in the cult. Joslyn was one of four kids and the only girl. Her dad, a former boxer who worked in a rubber factory, walked out on her mom when she was an infant of four months. Joslyn blamed her mom for the marriage breakdown and the absence of her father. She and two of her brothers were sent to a loving foster family, the Boucher's, who raised them in the rural town of Brimfield. Their birth parents would visit occasionally, her dad always with a whiskey flask in his pocket. She worshipped him. A bright student, she thrived in school and went on to nursing studies at the University of Massachusetts in 1971. It was the time of the Vietnam peace protesters, and Joslyn blended in with her torn jeans, long hair and tie-dyed tee-shirts. She kept her own core of reality, grounded in her nursing studies and meditation, with no history of drugs or bizarre groups. After she graduated in 1974, Josyln continued her spiritual search living happily in a number of New Age communes in New Hampshire and Vermont. In February 1975, she took a trip to Mexico that would change her life. She and her friend Sandy traveled deep into the countryside. While there, her friend accidentally drowned, and Joslyn was alone with the body for several days before reaching help. Back home, after a short investigation she was released, but deeply distraught. Her family felt that this was when she went over the edge. A few months later, she joined Heaven's Gate in Oregon. The cult renounced all possessions, cut all ties to families or to the outer world and established communes in the countryside, expecting a UFO to appear and spirit them to "the next level." It was headed by Marshall Appelwhite and Bonnie Nettles, calling themselves by dual names such as "Bo and Peep," or "Ti and Do." They focused their proselytizing mainly in "good energy" states, New Mexico, Utah, Arizona and California. Transient, they moved to 50 places or more in the next 15 years. Appelwhite chose the two women as his top assistants because of fears about his own sexuality. He did not want to be tempted by a close male associate. Sex was a constant threat to the group and it was considered a Major Offense to be aroused in thought, even to be tempted by a picture or TV image. When Nettles died in 1985 of cancer, LaMontagne took her place as First Lady. At the final hours when the group committed suicide together at their mansion near San Diego, CA, LaMontagne apparently used her nursing skills to assist her classmates, making them comfortable as they ingested Phenobarbital mixed with applesauce or pudding, chased it with vodka then lay themselves to rest in their black uniforms. She then joined her friends in the suicide that was to lead them all to the waiting UFO. Police found the bodies of 39 people on March 30, 1997; they had been dead for three days. Despite her family's efforts to find her, Joslyn spent 22 years missing from them, crossing the Western states, staying in motels, TV parks, wooded camps, bunkers, log cabins and mansions. One of her brothers hired a private detective, and another brother took a motorcycle trip across country in 1985 in his search. On a few occasions, she turned up out of nowhere to see her family, then disappeared again into the countryside.