SECOND ACTS

By BRUCE HANDY

HEAVEN'S GATE Mad About Memorabilia

Wherever they are now, those 39 Nike-clad members of the Heaven's Gate cult who committed the tidiest of suicides last March didn't leave behind much except for their bodily "vehicles," a few personal possessions and a handful of still living devotees who, in the cult's decidedly unsoaring ecclesiastical language, hadn't yet made it to the "level beyond human." Six weeks later, fellow "students" Chuck Humphrey and Wayne ("Nick") Cooke attempted to complete their course work in the approved manner--by swallowing a combination of alcohol and phenobarbital and tying plastic bags over their heads--in a Southern California motel room. Cooke made it to the next level; Humphrey didn't. Fortunately, he had work to do.

Today Humphrey--who prefers to be known by the name Rkkody--is running a Heaven's Gate Website where potential followers can buy videotapes of leader Do espousing his philosophy as well as gift items like Heaven's Gate mouse pads, NASA-style "Away Team" patches, "dishwasher-safe" mugs and T shirts emblazoned with the slogan WHAT IF THEY'RE RIGHT? In an E-mail interview with TIME, Rkkody claims that his site receives 1,000 hits a day but that he has sold "disgustingly few" of the merchandise items: "less than five mouse pads, no T shirts." He had been hoping to use the proceeds to supply the nation's libraries with free copies of Heaven's Gate videos and books.

Meanwhile, the owner of the mansion in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., where the cultists died, has taken a first round of bids on the property, which includes a sauna, a fitness room and tennis courts; even though the owner paid $30,000 to "sanitize" the house, no bid has yet come close to the mansion's pre-suicide value--about $1.5 million. The real estate agent handling the sale, Randall Bell, is an expert at moving "distressed" properties, having previously consulted, he says, on the sales of homes where Nicole Simpson, JonBenet Ramsey and Sharon Tate passed away, as it were. Not afraid to confront his chief marketing obstacle head on, Bell has renamed the property the Heaven's Gate Mansion, or the Gate for short--which, he says, is at least preferable to its usual media label: "the death house." --Reported by Paul Krueger/San Diego and Margot Hornblower/Los Angeles

DONORGATE The Unforgiven Giver

John Huang answers the phone and quietly tells a caller no, he cannot talk. The central figure in the White House fund-raising scandal, a former Commerce Department official who drummed up millions of dollars in the questioned contributions to the Democratic National Committee, comes close to begging forgiveness in his polite refusal. He says he wishes he could talk, but then congressional investigators and the FBI would also want to chat him up. His wife Jane, interrupted in the midst of her house cleaning, sometimes responds to a doorbell ring at her front door, and always with the same message: "We're not giving any interviews at this time--to anyone." She gently but firmly shuts the door.

To get to the Huangs' house in Glendale, a suburb of Los Angeles, you have to drive a mile up a steep hillside. Once known as the poor man's Pasadena, the town has become an enclave of wealthy Asian Americans--which is what drew Huang, a Taiwan-born U.S. citizen, when he moved here in 1986, returning from a stint working in Hong Kong. Last year, when the fund-raising scandal broke, the Huangs quietly left their old house and moved farther up the hill to escape notice. It worked. Neighbors say they rarely see the couple or their two college-age sons.

It can be a lonely life waiting around for Janet Reno's Justice Department to decide whether or not to indict you (of course, the current run of special prosecutors does not appear to work any more quickly). At this point, charges in the yearlong investigation are thought to be months--perhaps many months--away. There is, however, one bit of good news for Huang: sources say the department is no longer looking into the question of whether he might have been spying for the Chinese government or his former employers at an Indonesian financial conglomerate. His lawyer says Huang keeps himself occupied managing a couple of real estate properties. But a friend, Mary Miyashita, paints a bleaker picture: Huang is out of work, facing mounting legal bills and refusing offers of help. Not that many are lining up to start, say, a big-bucks defense fund. "The Asian community is very uptight about this," says Miyashita, in tears. "He's being snubbed. Even his friends are abandoning him." --Reported by Cathy Booth/Los Angeles and Viveca Novak/Washington

THE RAMSEY CASE Cold on the Trail

A year after her garroted body was found by her father in the basement of their Boulder, Colo., home, six-year-old JonBenet Ramsey's killing appears destined to join the disappearances of Amelia Earhart and Jimmy Hoffa and--as at least one well-known former defendant would argue--the killings of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman on the roll call of America's thorniest unsolved mysteries. Amid charges of police incompetence and foot-dragging cronyism in the district attorney's office, the investigation into the young beauty queen's death continues to sputter along with no indictments in sight. Though questions concerning the possible guilt of JonBenet's parents John and Patsy Ramsey have been the subject of lively debate in the press, the most police will say is that the two remain under "an umbrella of suspicion"--an inept metaphor, given that umbrellas are meant to protect, but maybe apt, given the increasing public frustration surrounding the handling of this case.

The problem, sources say, is that there simply isn't enough evidence to bring charges against the Ramseys or anyone else, though investigators may have a few new leads--including the possible use of a stun gun. Police have recently been asking friends of the Ramseys about footwear they may have worn in and around the house, suggesting police may have shoe-print evidence. Incredibly, they waited until only a few weeks ago to interview certain neighbors about what they may have observed on the night of the murder, including a woman who told reporters that she heard screams coming from the Ramsey house.

It has taken the outside agitation of a publicity-seeking New York City legal expert--no, not Geraldo Rivera--to put the heaviest formal pressure on Boulder authorities. Attorney Darnay Hoffman (clients include Bernhard Goetz, the famed subway gunman; family members include wife Sidney Biddle Barrows, the famed "Mayflower Madam") has filed suit against district attorney Alex Hunter, charging--under an obscure Colorado statute that allows private citizens to question the actions of prosecutors--that Hunter has "unjustifiably refused" to charge Patsy Ramsey. Hoffman's evidence? Testimonials from four writing experts alleging it is probable the ransom note discovered when JonBenet was first reported missing is in her mother's hand. A judge has yet to decide whether the suit merits a hearing.

Most Boulderites seem to wish the issue would just disappear. A recent Denver Post report found that citizens were more concerned with issues like traffic, parking and urban growth than with solving beauty-queen slayings. Fleet White, a close friend of John Ramsey's who was with him when he found JonBenet's body, wrote a letter to the New York Times pleading with the media to leave Boulder alone on the murder's first anniversary. That request will probably not be met. Earlier this month, the media coordinator for the Oklahoma City bombing trials surveyed news organizations about their interest in a JonBenet trial should an indictment of anyone ever be filed; 162 said they would attend. That would compare with a mere 74 on hand for Timothy McVeigh's trial. --Reported by Richard Woodbury/Denver

THE VERSACE KILLING Clothes Make The Heiresses

I don't think it was the best Versace ever," said CNN's Elsa Klensch after the house's show of spring fashions last fall in Milan, "but for her it was a triumph." The "her" is Donatella Versace, a designer in her own right, who took over the company's creative reins in the wake of her brother Gianni's murder last July in Miami. In the opinion of most observers, the Milan show--as well as a show for Versace's Versus line the same week--proved the house is in capable hands, its visionary wedding of cheap sex appeal, expensive classicism and odd materials still potent. Donatella's daughter Allegra, 11, who inherited her slain uncle's share of the business, is reportedly bearing up well. At the Versus show, she enjoyed the honor of being seated front and center, right next to Victoria Adams, the Posh Spice Girl.

In Miami the mansion where Gianni Versace was shot in the head by hustler and spree killer Andrew Cunanan has become an ad hoc tourist attraction, as has the houseboat where Cunanan put a bullet into his own skull after setting off one of the most intensive manhunts in recent history. A book published this fall, Death at Every Stop: The True Story of Andrew Cunanan--The Man Who Murdered Designer Gianni Versace, by Wensley Clarkson (author of Slave Girls), added a few new details to the once inescapable but now nearly forgotten Cunanan legend: he reportedly fathered a child and starred in two "graphic, low-budget, sadomasochistic gay pornographic videos." In a tribute to the speedy turnover of news cycles, few media outlets paid much attention to the revelations. They may be more interested in the official murder-investigation file, due to be released by year's end. The Versaces, worrying over personal information about Gianni that the file may contain, are moving to have it suppressed.

Fernando Carreira, the caretaker who tipped off police to Cunanan's presence on the houseboat, ultimately received $55,000 in reward money, although the highly publicized $10,000 promised by New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has yet to materialize (trying to wriggle out on a technicality, the city claims Carreira called the wrong tip line; a lawsuit may be in the works). Carreira used most of his windfall to pay off debts. His only splurge was on a horse named Princess, which he bought for his 15-year-old son. "It keeps him occupied," Carreira told the Miami Herald. --Reported by Greg Burke/Rome and Greg Aunapu/Miami

THE PROM MOM "Seems Pretty Normal to Me"

Perhaps the most shocking thing about the crime allegedly committed by Melissa Drexler was her seeming lack of concern about it. Minutes after giving birth in a toilet stall and then allegedly choking or suffocating her 6-lb. 6-oz. son, Drexler returned to the floor of her high school formal dance in Aberdeen Township, N.J., where she ate some salad and danced with her boyfriend. Six months later, Drexler, now 19 and known outside her immediate circle by the tabloid sobriquet Prom Mom, is by most accounts maintaining her outward poise. Says a friend, Tim Hoban: "She seems pretty normal to me."

While living at home in nearby Lacey Township and waiting for a trial date to be set--she pleaded not guilty to murder charges at an October arraignment--Drexler has dropped plans to attend community college. Her notoriety has also led her to give up looking for a job. Friends say she passes her days going to the mall or hanging out at their homes watching TV. And nearly every day she sees the father of her child, John Lewis, 21, who, like the rest of Drexler's friends, claims he was not aware of her pregnancy. In a recent appearance on the TV newsmagazine show Extra, Lewis said, "I was mad, but what happened, happened." Monmouth County prosecutors, though less understanding, have chosen not to seek the death penalty; local defendants in other, far less publicized infanticide cases have generally accepted plea bargains with prison terms shorter than the murder sentence of 30 years to life, and have sometimes been released early.

Drexler's defense is likely to turn on questions of whether the baby was alive at birth and the mother's state of mind. Defense expert Margaret Spinelli, Ph.D., a New York City psychologist who has studied women who hide their pregnancies and sometimes kill their infants, refuses to discuss specifics of Drexler's case but answers the "How could she?" question in general terms. Most such women, she says, "describe things like watching themselves deliver from across the room." Dissociation can become so intense that some women deny their pregnancies even to themselves. "When they deliver, the pregnancy is a shocking reality: they think they're going in to have a bowel movement, and they have a baby," Spinelli says. "Yes, it's hard to believe, but things happen all the time that are hard to believe." --Reported by G. Patrick Pawling/Lacey Township

THE COSBY MURDER Songs in the Key Of Life

At his lastest pretrial hearing, in November, reporters noticed that Michael Markhasev had bulked up a bit--not exactly to Schwarzenegger size but far from the scrawny figure the Ukrainian emigre cut when he was taken into custody last spring. With a trial set to begin Feb. 17 in Los Angeles on a charge of murder in the death of Ennis Cosby--the real-life son of beloved TV-life father Bill Cosby--observers could come to only one conclusion about Markhasev's newfound passion for weight lifting: he's getting ready for life inside.

Not that the prosecution's case is a slam dunk: there is no physical evidence tying Markhasev to the murder last January on a freeway off-ramp near Brentwood, Calif., and the only eyewitness failed to identify Markhasev in a police lineup. Most of the case will rest on the easily impeachable testimony of various drug-taking and drug-dealing associates of the defendant's, and a friend who fingered him for a $100,000 bounty offered by the National Enquirer (the friend led cops to a wooded area where Markhasev supposedly hid the gun; police indeed found a pistol, but one lacking any fingerprints). Sources say the relative weakness of the case was the primary reason the district attorney chose not to seek the death penalty. Still, few expect Markhasev to receive much sympathy from a jury in such a well-publicized case and with such a sympathetic victim. Markhasev's reported habit of making incriminating statements to his jailers will probably not help either.

In memory of Ennis, the Cosby family has chartered the Hello Friend/Ennis William Cosby Foundation to aid people who suffer--as Ennis did--from dyslexia. Verve Records has just released a jazz album produced by Bill Cosby, with part of the proceeds to benefit the foundation. The disc features an all-star band playing standards--and an original penned by Bill himself that's actually pretty good, with a kind of mid-'60s Bluenote thing going on. --Reported by James Willwerth/Los Angeles

With reporting by PAUL KRUEGER/SAN DIEGO; MARGOT HORNBLOWER/ LOS ANGELES; CATHY BOOTH/LOS ANGELES; VIVECA NOVAK/WASHINGTON; RICHARD WOODBURY/DENVER; GREG BURKE/ROME; GREG AUNAPU/MIAMI; G. PATRICK PAWLING/ LACEY TOWNSHIP; JAMES WILLWERTH/LOS ANGELES