AUTHORITIES completed the post mortems yesterday of all 39 members of the Heaven's Gate mass suicide cult, clearing the way for the bodies to be released to grieving families as early as today.
Teams of forensic experts worked through the weekend to complete the examinations, using special refrigerated trucks outside the coroner's office to store the bodies.
The victims, members of a small religious cult, killed themselves over a period of several days by eating drug laced pudding or applesauce, washing it down with vodka and putting plastic bags over their heads. Their bodies were discovered on Wednesday in a $1.6 million mansion the cult rented in the exclusive San Diego suburb of Rancho Santa Fe.
The San Diego County Medical Examiner, Dr Brian Blackbourne, said some of the cultists died from drugs but others suffocated. According to videotaped suicide notes, the cultists believed a spaceship hiding behind the HaleBopp comet nearing Earth would take them to heaven.
Meanwhile, the US media mogul Mr Ted Turner described the mass suicide as "a good way to get rid of a few nuts".
"There's too many people anyway," said Mr Turner, founder of Turner Broadcasting and owner of the Atlan a Braves baseball team. "We've got too many nuts running around anyway, right?"
Mr Turner, who is married to the actress Jane Fonda, was speaking at a news conference before the opening of the Braves' new stadium, Turner Field.
"You turn on the TV and "there's one murder after another," the media mogul, who built the Cable News Network (CNN), said.
Of the cult members he said: "They did it peacefully. At least they didn't go in like those SOBs who go in a McDonald's or the post office and shoot a lot of innocent people, then shoot themselves. At least they just did it to themselves."
The son of Marshall Applewhite, the Heaven's Gate cult leader, apologised yesterday to the relatives of his father's followers, saying he was "appalled" by the group's mass suicide.
"I am appalled by the things that have resulted from the actions of my father and others in that cult," Mr Mark Applewhite said in a statement.
It also emerged over the weekend that members of the Heaven's Gate cult had been trying to make a film in the months before their mass suicide.
Mr Alex Papas, a Phoenix film producer who met the cultists when they were living in Arizona, said they used him in late 1995 to launch the project, which was based on their beliefs about life on Earth and moving on to the "Kingdom of God".
The NBC network had shown some interest in producing a movie before deciding against it.
"They were rational, lucid, reasonable people," Mr Papas said.