Heaven's Gate was an American UFO religious group based near San Diego, California. Founded in 1974 and led by Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles. On March 26, 1997, members of the San Diego County Sheriff's Department discovered the bodies of 39 members of the group in a house in the San Diego suburb of Rancho Santa Fe. They committed mass suicide in order to reach what they believed was an extraterrestrial spacecraft following Comet Hale–Bopp.