PALMDALE, Calif.  The frantic search began after police issued an alert: Members of a cult on the edge of the Mojave Desert had disappeared, leaving behind handwritten notes that raised fears they had planned a mass suicide.

But Sunday afternoon, the search ended when the women from a small breakaway religious sect were found praying with their children on a blanket at a local park.

The police had been searching the region for the five women and eight children since Saturday afternoon, after the husbands of two of the missing women brought letters their wives had left behind, in purses filled with cellphones, identification and legal papers, to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office.

The letters mentioned “taking refuge,” “going to heaven” and wanting their families to join them. One of the husbands told the police that his wife and others were part of a cultlike group who had been “brainwashed” by the presumed leader, Reyna Marisol Chicas, 33.