American registered nurse who was co-leader of a group with Marshall Applewhite that later became the Heaven’s Gate group (a UFO religious millenarian sect) after Nettles’s death. Nettles died of liver cancer in 1985, twelve years before the group’s mass suicide in March 1997.
Nettles met Applewhite in March 1972, and directly after their meeting, Nettles did an astrological reading for Applewhite, from which she found an alignment between their stars. Applewhite then explained to her his ideas about heavenly connections, thoroughly convincing Nettles of their truth. He decided that Nettles was “to be the sage, he the speaker.” They left together on New Year’s Day of 1973, leaving behind Nettle’s husband and four children.
Many events passed in creation of the Heaven’s Gate group and the formation of its core members, with Nettles continuing to be the interpreter of signs and the mystic of the group. In 1983, she had to have an eye removed due to cancer, and her doctor informed her that the disease was already spreading through the rest of her body. She stated that the doctor was ignorant and believed, along with Applewhite, that she could not die, as they had to ascend together. The cancer continued to worsen, moving to Nettles’ liver. She died on 20 January 1985, aged 57, at Parkland Memorial Hospital. While there as a patient, she used the pseudonym Shelly West. Applewhite and Nettles had used a variety of aliases over the years, notably “Bo and Peep” and “Do and Ti”, along with “Guinea” and “Pig” at some points in time.
After Nettle’s death, Applewhite convinced the rest of the group that her “broken-down vehicle was left behind”. Heaven’s Gate contined in her absence and on 26 March 1997, police discovered the bodies of thirty-nine members of the group who had participated in a mass suicide in order to reach what they believed was an extraterrestrial spacecraft following Comet Hale–Bopp.
Link to Wikipedia biography