FEARS OF A CULT MASS SUICIDE AS 13 MEMBERS OF A CHURCH GO MISSING!

California authorities are frantically searching for a missing religious sect apparently bent on mass suicide.
Authorities across the state were seeking five Salvadoran adults and eight children, ranging in age from 3 to 17, who disappeared after leaving a prayer service Saturday morning, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department officials said.

"The letters essentially state that they [missing persons] are all going to heaven shortly to meet Jesus and their deceased relatives," a representative of the California governor's office said. "Numerous letters found say goodbye to their relatives.

"It is believed, through further investigation, that the missing persons' intentions are to commit mass suicide."

The husbands of two group members reported their wives as missing Saturday afternoon after finding a purse full of left-behind belongings - including deeds to homes, cell phones and personal notes - the Los Angeles Times reported.

Police say the group is a breakaway sect of a Palmdale, Calif., church and is headed by Reyna Marisol Chicas, 32.

"She was a good mother, always with her kids. She was not fanatic," family friend Ricardo Giron told the Times.

The Sheriff's Department, however, was patrolling the Antelope Valley region in cars and helicopters Sunday fearing the worst, especially given the "goodbye notes" found in the purse.

In March 1997, 39 members of the Heaven's Gate cult committed mass suicide in a mansion outside San Diego over fears that an alien invasion tied to the appearance of the Hale-Bopp comet was imminent.