Missing 'Cult' May Have Planned Suicide

(Sept. 19) -- Police in southern California are searching for 13 alleged members of a cult -- five adults and eight of their children -- who left behind notes saying they're awaiting "the Rapture" and telling relatives farewell.

The missing are all El Salvadoran immigrants and include three sisters ages 30, 32 and 40, an 18-year-old son and eight children aged 3 to 17.

They're part of a "religious off-shoot group" that's "cult-like" and "fundamentalist in nature," Los Angeles County sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore told the local KTLA TV station. "If you're watching this, come home," he said in a plea on live TV. "Come home alive to the people who care for you."

The search began Saturday afternoon when two husbands went to a sheriff's station to report their wives missing, and told authorities they suspected the women had joined a cult that broke off from a mainstream Christian church in northern Los Angeles County, San Diego's Channel 6 TV station reported.

One of the men told investigators he was ordered to guard and pray over a purse, but after several hours he got suspicious and looked inside. He found five cell phones, ID cards, deeds and letters in English and Spanish, the Los Angeles Times reported.

"The letters essentially state that they are all going to heaven shortly to meet Jesus and their deceased relatives," the California governor's office said, according to CNN. "Numerous letters found say goodbye to their relatives. It is believed, through further investigation, that the missing persons' intentions are to commit mass suicide."

One of the husbands told investigators that he believes his wife and the other missing people were brainwashed by the cult's leader, Reyna Marisol Chicas, and that they may be at risk, the L.A. Times reported.

California highway patrol have put out an alert for three vehicles: a silver Toyota Tundra pickup, a 1995 Mercury Villager and a 2004 white Nissan, according to The Associated Press.

Police helicopters are scanning Antelope Valley, a nearby area mentioned in some of the letters left behind. They're also searching Vasquez Rocks, another wilderness spot where authorities believe the group had planned to go six months ago to wait then for the apocalypse or other catastrophic event. That previous trip was called off after a cult member told relatives about their plans.

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