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Speaker 4: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 4: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 4: written about them Gaesy Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK. Every
Speaker 4: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
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Speaker 5: Good Evening. No other event in the last fifty years
Speaker 5: is shrouded in myth like the nineteen ninety three siege
Speaker 5: of the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas. Today, we remember
Speaker 5: this moment for the seventy six people, including twenty children,
Speaker 5: who died in the fire, or its inspiration of the
Speaker 5: Oklahoma Alma City bombing, and for the wave of anti
Speaker 5: government militaryism that followed. What we understand far less is
Speaker 5: what motivated Davidian's enigmatic leader, David Koresh. Drawing on first
Speaker 5: time exclusive interviews with Koresh's family and survivors of the siege,
Speaker 5: best selling author Stephen Talty paints a psychological portrait of
Speaker 5: this infamous icon of the nineteen nineties, born Vernon Howell
Speaker 5: into the hyper masculine world of Central Texas. In the
Speaker 5: nineteen sixties, Koresh experienced a childhood riven with abuse and isolation.
Speaker 5: He found a new version of himself in the halls
Speaker 5: of his local church and love in the fundamentalist sect
Speaker 5: of the Branch Davidians. Later, with a new name and
Speaker 5: professed prophetic powers, Koresh ushered in a new era for
Speaker 5: the Davidians that prized his own sexual conquest as much
Speaker 5: as his follower's faith. As one survivor has said, what
Speaker 5: better way for a worthless child to feel worse than
Speaker 5: to become God. In his signature immersive storytelling, Talty reveals
Speaker 5: how Koresh's fixation on holy war, which would deliver the
Speaker 5: Davidians to the reward and confirm himself as Christ, collided
Speaker 5: with his paranoid obsession with firearms to destructive effect their
Speaker 5: deadly fifty one day standoff with the embattled FPI, and
Speaker 5: atf he shows embodied an anti government ethic that continues
Speaker 5: to resonate today, now thirty years after that unforgettable moment.
Speaker 5: Koresh presents the tragedy at Waco and the government mistrust
Speaker 5: it inspired in its fullest context. Yet the book that
Speaker 5: we're featuring this evening is Koresh The True Story of
Speaker 5: David Koresh and the Tragedy at Waco with my special
Speaker 5: guest journalist and author, Steven Talty. Welcome to the program,
Speaker 5: and thank you very much for this interview. Steven Talty,
Speaker 5: Thanks for having me. It's great to be here. Thank
Speaker 5: you so much, and congratulations on this incredible book.
Speaker 2: Thanks.
Speaker 5: Let's talk about how and why you came to this
Speaker 5: want to be the author of this story.
Speaker 2: Sure, So in nineteen ninety three, I was living in
Speaker 2: New York City. I was twenty eight years old, and
Speaker 2: I recall just turning on end one day and seeing
Speaker 2: these images of the place I'd never really heard of,
Speaker 2: Mount Caramel Compound in Waco. So you know, if you
Speaker 2: were around back then, you remember that it just dominated
Speaker 2: the cable news. It was really one of the first
Speaker 2: big cable news stories, and so it was NonStop. It
Speaker 2: was wall to wall. So for fifty one days we
Speaker 2: watched basically the same camera shot from about two miles
Speaker 2: away of this compound, and there wasn't a lot going on.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you recall, you could barely even see
Speaker 2: the faces in the window. So this whole tragedy unfolded
Speaker 2: and it seemed like everything was happening off stage. You
Speaker 2: couldn't see the negotiators, you couldn't hear them, you couldn't
Speaker 2: see the Davidians. We had very little idea of, you know,
Speaker 2: what their attitudes were, Were they being held, were they
Speaker 2: they're willingly? So even from the beginning, it was kind
Speaker 2: of an enigma. And after fifty one days, of course,
Speaker 2: we had the fire that ended the lives of seventy
Speaker 2: six people, and I remember shutting off the TV and
Speaker 2: saying to myself, what did I just watch? Really had
Speaker 2: no idea how these events had sort of come to be.
Speaker 2: So that was really the impetus, you know, for the book.
Speaker 2: I think of it almost as the origin story of
Speaker 2: David Koresh and the Branch Davidians. How did they set
Speaker 2: on this path that ended up with a leaf of
Speaker 2: confrontation with the FBI, and what did it mean for
Speaker 2: the country?
Speaker 5: Right away, in this book, you take us to August seventeenth,
Speaker 5: nineteen fifty nine, Bonnie Clark and Vernon Howell take us
Speaker 5: back to Vernon Howell's beginnings.
Speaker 2: Sure so, Vernon Howell was the future David Koresh's real
Speaker 2: birth name was also his father's name, but his mom,
Speaker 2: Bonnie Clark, grew up in a working class you know,
Speaker 2: you might call it a redneck family, and I think
Speaker 2: they would accept that without any shame or a Her
Speaker 2: father were construction had sort of moved looking for ways
Speaker 2: to support his family for years. So she was raised
Speaker 2: in the Seventh day Adventist household, pretty strict. It was
Speaker 2: the fifties and she was a religious girl, so she
Speaker 2: went to a Seventh day Adventist school. She went to
Speaker 2: Sunday School. By the time she was thirteen, she was
Speaker 2: rebelling a bit. She was going out with her friends
Speaker 2: from Houston. They would go to the clubs. They were
Speaker 2: boy crazy, and so that's sort of how her life
Speaker 2: was going at that time. When she met who she
Speaker 2: thought was a catch, Vernon Howell. He was older, he
Speaker 2: was eighteen, who was driving. So she was attracted to
Speaker 2: him and they, you know, they got together and she
Speaker 2: got pregnant. You know, this is the fifties and this
Speaker 2: is not acceptable in small town Texas life to be
Speaker 2: a pregnant teenager. So she felt a lot of shame.
Speaker 2: She felt a lot of I guess anger, if you will,
Speaker 2: from her family. Her father was an alcoholic, sort of
Speaker 2: a blackout alcoholic, and this baby didn't improve matters at all.
Speaker 2: Circumstances to which Vernon Howell came into the world were
Speaker 2: not auspicious. He had a father who didn't really want
Speaker 2: to be a father. Parents broke up soon after she
Speaker 2: got pregnant. He had a grandfather who kind of disowned
Speaker 2: him from the beginning. So this became a theme in
Speaker 2: his life. Rejectioned by older men, which he desperately wanted
Speaker 2: their approval, He wanted their love, but again and again
Speaker 2: he found difficulty in finding that. And to me, it's
Speaker 2: one of the keys to understanding young Vernon Howell what
Speaker 2: his needs were. He was a guy with a big ego,
Speaker 2: thought he could accomplish a lot of things in this world,
Speaker 2: but he wasn't getting that respect, that acceptance that he
Speaker 2: really craved.
Speaker 5: Even though his mother was Bonnie Clark, he was raised
Speaker 5: by his grandmother, Earlene. Tell us about that and did
Speaker 5: he know the circumstances and who his parents really were.
Speaker 2: He didn't know, and that became an issue. He really
Speaker 2: thought Arlene was his mom and Bonnie was his aunt.
Speaker 2: So from the get go he was kind of set
Speaker 2: up to feel not only unwanted, but sort of unsure
Speaker 2: of his own origins. So he had a loving grandmother.
Speaker 2: Arlene was a very loving woman. Bonnie was off, you know,
Speaker 2: working trying to create her future and her father and
Speaker 2: his father was you know, kind of in the wind.
Speaker 2: He didn't see him much, So up until about four
Speaker 2: or five years old, he thought Arlene was his mom
Speaker 2: and he loved her, and Bonnie was kind of an afterthought.
Speaker 2: So when Bonnie came home and said, I met a
Speaker 2: new man. We're going to move to Dallas, you know,
Speaker 2: when to start a new life. And by the way,
Speaker 2: I'm your mother, it came as a tremendous shock to
Speaker 2: him because he'd already felt rejected by his grandfather, rejected
Speaker 2: by his father, and now he's finding out his mom
Speaker 2: is not really his mom. So you can imagine to
Speaker 2: a child with a big ego but a fragile ego,
Speaker 2: what a blow that must have been.
Speaker 5: You talk about the Seventh day Adventist and what they
Speaker 5: believed in and what they taught and what Vernon heard
Speaker 5: growing up.
Speaker 2: Yes, so you knoweventh Day Adventists go back almost to
Speaker 2: the eighteen forties. So they were one of these sects
Speaker 2: that emerged out of the revivals that kind of swept America,
Speaker 2: you know, swept upstate New York first of all, but
Speaker 2: then kind of spread across the country. And really the
Speaker 2: core of the sect of the belief was that the
Speaker 2: end times were coming and coming soon. So this is
Speaker 2: something that Vernon Howell heard frequently growing up, not only
Speaker 2: in the preachers in the radio. He listened to all
Speaker 2: those Texas preachers who have their famous speaking style and
Speaker 2: really kind of sucks you into the radio, but he
Speaker 2: heard it from his family members. He went to Sunday School,
Speaker 2: Sabbath School, so he grew up a little apart, you know.
Speaker 2: He grew up in Baptist country, essentially the Bible Belt,
Speaker 2: but an Adventist had slightly different beliefs to kind of
Speaker 2: set you apart. So David, let's call him Vernon for now,
Speaker 2: was very religious child. His brother remembered leaving him in
Speaker 2: the morning and Vernon is kneeling by the bed and praying,
Speaker 2: and his brother would come back hours later and Vernon
Speaker 2: was still there. So there was this real deep belief,
Speaker 2: deep faith that I think comes from his rejection from
Speaker 2: other people in his life. He was looking for reassurance.
Speaker 2: He was looking for a presence that loved him, and
Speaker 2: he found that in God. He became really obsessed with religion,
Speaker 2: wanted to go here live preachers. Of course, this was
Speaker 2: not completely unusual and his atmosphere there's a lot of
Speaker 2: religious families in Texas in the sixties, so he wasn't
Speaker 2: unusual in that way. But he was really almost obsessive
Speaker 2: in his faith.
Speaker 5: At the same time, at school, socially he did not
Speaker 5: succeed whatsoever. So tell us about school grades and socially
Speaker 5: at school.
Speaker 2: Sure, so Vernon had a learning disability. He had trouble reading.
Speaker 2: He would say later it wasn't dyslexia, it was just
Speaker 2: a problem with understanding the words on the page. And
Speaker 2: I think this is important when we think about him
Speaker 2: later as a preacher who's famous for getting up and speaking,
Speaker 2: flipping from one book to another and connecting them and
Speaker 2: giving giving the scriptures his own original interpretation. And one
Speaker 2: of the things we learned early on is that he
Speaker 2: couldn't understand a book the way that other people did.
Speaker 2: He couldn't read sentences and get the same sense that
Speaker 2: an average six or seven year old could. So he
Speaker 2: began to sort of invent what he couldn't understand. If
Speaker 2: he read something and there was a passage that he
Speaker 2: didn't quite get, he would kind of make up in
Speaker 2: his own head what was going on. And that's something
Speaker 2: he really did later on with the Bible. He would
Speaker 2: take liberties with the scriptures and say, you know, I'm
Speaker 2: giving this kind of a radical interpretation. And I think
Speaker 2: some of that goes back to his learning disability. He
Speaker 2: couldn't get the text, so he made things up. So
Speaker 2: his grades were not great. Socially, he was something of
Speaker 2: an outcast. He was put in a special class for
Speaker 2: slow learners, and of course he heard the chance of
Speaker 2: retired and four eyes in the schoolyard. He wore pretty
Speaker 2: big glasses that he kept through his life. So yeah,
Speaker 2: after the rejection from the men in his family, he
Speaker 2: felt the rejection of his peers. He was not popular,
Speaker 2: he was shy. And the interesting thing when you can
Speaker 2: prepare and contrast that to David later, you know, later
Speaker 2: on he's almost a Texas stereotype. He's a gun geek,
Speaker 2: he's into muscle cars, he loves rock and roll, he's aggressive,
Speaker 2: you know, this whole macho thing that goes with the
Speaker 2: Texas boyhood. Was really evident. But in his real boyhood
Speaker 2: he was very different. He was, you know, his stepfather
Speaker 2: would accuse him of being almost girly because he wore
Speaker 2: his hair long. It was the seventies, and so he
Speaker 2: was not this typical gung ho Texas boy. He even
Speaker 2: when he got into sports, he was a great runner,
Speaker 2: and he joined the football teams, which is what you
Speaker 2: do in Texas. There's nothing bigger than Friday night high
Speaker 2: school football. But Vernon didn't love it. He didn't love
Speaker 2: the aggressiveness. He didn't love the coaches say saying, go
Speaker 2: kill that guy. He was kind of a softer personality.
Speaker 2: So it's interesting that he kind of grew into something
Speaker 2: that he rejected early on.
Speaker 5: What he finds early on Vernon is the power of
Speaker 5: music to not only help him, but also the attention
Speaker 5: that he had never gotten before things had changed.
Speaker 2: Explain Yeah, and you know what a lot of people
Speaker 2: that I interviewed said, if David had made it It's
Speaker 2: a rock star, he would never have become this messiah,
Speaker 2: this cult leader. He was looking for a way to
Speaker 2: set himself apart and to be admired, even exalted, and
Speaker 2: he found that in rock and roll. He was a
Speaker 2: pretty good guitarist. He would play for the FBI later on,
Speaker 2: and you know, I spoke to some agents and they
Speaker 2: were like, you know what, not bad. He could play.
Speaker 2: So he had his little bands with his friends, you know,
Speaker 2: when he was a young teenager, you know, set up
Speaker 2: a rehearsal space in the little room he was living in.
Speaker 2: And he definitely had fans. You know, he was kind
Speaker 2: of a big deal in his high school and things
Speaker 2: like that. So this was his real first taste of admiration,
Speaker 2: of respect. The girls and the kids who used to
Speaker 2: tease him and mock him now came up to him
Speaker 2: and said, you know, great playing, great work. So that
Speaker 2: was the first sort of hint of approval that he got,
Speaker 2: and he just absorbed it like a sponge. That was
Speaker 2: very important to David. Like a lot of these cult leaders,
Speaker 2: like Charles Manson and Jim Jones, you know a lot
Speaker 2: of them have had these wounds from childhood that they're
Speaker 2: trying to repair, and that's certainly true of David Koresh
Speaker 2: In music. He found a way to impress the girls,
Speaker 2: but there was always a catch for him because he
Speaker 2: felt that he was playing the devil's music. He wasn't
Speaker 2: playing gospel. He was playing Jethro Tull fog hat kind
Speaker 2: of the soft rock of that era. And when he
Speaker 2: was playing sometimes he would actually take the guitar and
Speaker 2: throw it down on the ground and he would tell people,
Speaker 2: I felt the devil, you know, in the music. The
Speaker 2: devil was trying to get a hold of me. So
Speaker 2: even in this sort of joy he found with music,
Speaker 2: there was always this kind of snare that was he
Speaker 2: wasn't doing God's work, he was doing the devil's work.
Speaker 5: He had an obsession with music somewhat, but his real
Speaker 5: obsession was with the Bible, and that obsession grew, and
Speaker 5: he also was reading the studies of William Miller and
Speaker 5: the lectures of Ellen G. White, who were major figures
Speaker 5: in the Seventh day Adventist Church. He was looking for something,
Speaker 5: you wrote, So tell us a little bit about what
Speaker 5: he reads with the writings of Ellen White and William Miller.
Speaker 2: Sure, so, yeah, David was searching. He was definitely on
Speaker 2: a quest. He wanted answers, He kind of wanted revelation.
Speaker 2: So he went to different churches. He went to the Baptists.
Speaker 2: He would sort of attend their services. He would go
Speaker 2: to these big tent revivals that they still had in
Speaker 2: the seventies and Texas where preachers would come in and
Speaker 2: talk about the end times coming. But again and again,
Speaker 2: what David wanted with sort of immediate answers. He wasn't
Speaker 2: looking for something in the afterlife. He really felt, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm in pain now, I have problems now, I need
Speaker 2: solutions now. So he kind of turned away from the
Speaker 2: traditional churches and went back to his mother's church, the Adventists.
Speaker 2: So he went to Tyler, Texas and found this congregation
Speaker 2: and he was you know, he would tell people like,
Speaker 2: I'm a newborn baby, I need to learn, I need
Speaker 2: to have prophecy. And he was at first quite popular
Speaker 2: because he was so passionate about it, and they were like,
Speaker 2: you know, this young man has come in very sincere,
Speaker 2: really looking for what they call the light, the new light,
Speaker 2: you know, the new sort of truth about God. But
Speaker 2: what you soon realize about Vernon Howell is that it
Speaker 2: was never enough. He would be in the pews and
Speaker 2: he would be listening, but soon he wanted to preach.
Speaker 2: He kind of tried to take over these, you know,
Speaker 2: these church meetings. So at times he would actually rush
Speaker 2: up to the pulpit, kind of shoulder the pastor aside
Speaker 2: and give his interpretation. So I think right here we
Speaker 2: see the kind of just how insatiable he was for control. Really,
Speaker 2: he didn't want to be a receiver of wisdom. He
Speaker 2: wanted to give it out. He wanted to be, you know,
Speaker 2: in the spotlight. So this caused a lot of This
Speaker 2: caused a lot of consternation among the congregation, and they
Speaker 2: began to sour on him. But to your question about
Speaker 2: what was Ellen White, what were the other sort of
Speaker 2: prophets of that church teaching? A lot of it was
Speaker 2: about prophecy. This is a prophetic church. They were looking
Speaker 2: for sort of signals that the end times were coming
Speaker 2: for the Adventists and a lot of similar sex. That's
Speaker 2: not a horrible thing to imagine, because the end times
Speaker 2: of course bring the return of Jesus and God's new kingdom.
Speaker 2: So it was actually something to look forward to, so
Speaker 2: very much a millennial church, very much looking for the
Speaker 2: return of Christ soon as opposed to two hundred years
Speaker 2: from now. And this really, this is something that David
Speaker 2: took in and began to be It began to be
Speaker 2: part of his theology.
Speaker 5: You write about a woman named Linda, a girl named Linda,
Speaker 5: fifteen years old, and the relationship that David or Vernon
Speaker 5: strikes up with her, and the relationship that the father
Speaker 5: allows as well. Tell us about that.
Speaker 2: Sure, that was his real first girlfriend, and he became
Speaker 2: infatuated with her. And you know, when you think about
Speaker 2: his mother getting pregnant at thirteen, he was three or
Speaker 2: four years older than her, So it wasn't so unusual
Speaker 2: for rural, working class Texas to be dating a girl
Speaker 2: in her mid teens, as sort of crazy as that
Speaker 2: seems to us now. So of course she felt pregnant
Speaker 2: and this completely changed the relationship. David actually told her
Speaker 2: I'm impotent. I can't be the father over the phone
Speaker 2: when he first heard this news, and she was crushed
Speaker 2: and he hung up the phone and felt terribly guilty.
Speaker 2: She ended up getting an abortion, and David was very
Speaker 2: sort of depressed about this. He felt that he had
Speaker 2: murdered somebody. And he had actually grown to like the
Speaker 2: idea of being a father. He thought, I can do
Speaker 2: it in a way that, you know, I don't have
Speaker 2: to raise a child the way that I was raised.
Speaker 2: He was going to do it better. So this whole
Speaker 2: relationship kind of threw him into impression. Who was living
Speaker 2: in his car, who was writing poetry that at times
Speaker 2: seems suicidal. So he was definitely in this kind of
Speaker 2: emotional spiritual crisis. And again just goes back to the
Speaker 2: churches looking in the scriptures. David really wanted answers. Now
Speaker 2: that's really kind of what sets him apart. And that
Speaker 2: goes on to the Branch Davidians. He promised the Branch
Speaker 2: Davidians the apocalypse in your lifetime, not in the afterlife.
Speaker 2: So that became very important to his theology.
Speaker 5: Now along the way in his development, he goes to
Speaker 5: a Seventh Day Adventist preacher, Jim Gilly in Arlington, Texas,
Speaker 5: and you write that Vernon was wrapped. He went to
Speaker 5: the seminars seven days that week, and then he approached
Speaker 5: Jim Gilly. What did he have to say to Jim Gilly?
Speaker 5: And how about the ideas that were forming in his
Speaker 5: mind as a preacher himself.
Speaker 2: Sure, So what Gilly did that was kind of interesting
Speaker 2: is that he would take passages from the scriptures and
Speaker 2: compare them with things that were in that day's news.
Speaker 2: So you'd actually have a video screen setup and he
Speaker 2: might have an image from you know, the Bible, and
Speaker 2: he would have not a screenshot, but a picture of
Speaker 2: a headline about a disaster in Indonesia or locusts or
Speaker 2: some other disaster. And what he was saying is that,
Speaker 2: you know, if you look at the news, you can
Speaker 2: tell that the end times are approaching. So David was
Speaker 2: absolutely entranced by this. As you said, he came every
Speaker 2: night for the whole week and what he saw were
Speaker 2: two things. I think one was the ability of one
Speaker 2: man to move a crowd and really get those people
Speaker 2: behind it and totally you know, feel what he was saying.
Speaker 2: So David always wanted to be that guy at the
Speaker 2: head of the room. He was in the pews listening,
Speaker 2: but he had to go and talk to Jim Gilly,
Speaker 2: so he went backstage and what he said to Dave
Speaker 2: Jim Gilly was, you know, it's a fantastic presentation, but
Speaker 2: you're skipping the Seventh Seals. So the Seventh Seals are
Speaker 2: a part of revelation that book of you know, the
Speaker 2: end Times in the Bible, and the unlocking of each
Speaker 2: seal is very important. Each seal has to be sort
Speaker 2: of unlocked to unleash the apocalypse and bring about this
Speaker 2: new Kingdom of God. So David Koresh was like, you're
Speaker 2: almost there, but if you don't talk about the Seven Seals,
Speaker 2: you can't really be speaking the truth. And he actually
Speaker 2: volunteered to become part of Gilly's presentation and sort of
Speaker 2: specialized in the Seven Seals. And Gilly, I'm sure he'd
Speaker 2: heard things like this before, told him thanks for your time,
Speaker 2: but no thanks. And I think David really walked out
Speaker 2: of those meetings thinking I can do what this guy does.
Speaker 2: You know, I have this knowledge, but I have actually
Speaker 2: more knowledge. I know the Seven Seals intimately. And he
Speaker 2: began to think of himself not as a full blown prophet,
Speaker 2: but someone who saw visions. He always felt that God
Speaker 2: spoke to him and he had a direct connection with
Speaker 2: the Lord. So what did Jim Gilly have that he
Speaker 2: didn't have? So very soon after that he ended up
Speaker 2: in Waco and discovered the branch Davidians.
Speaker 5: We didn't talk about Linda, but Linda doesn't want to
Speaker 5: have anything to do with him, but at this time
Speaker 5: with Jim Gilly, even though he is not detracted from
Speaker 5: his mission by listening to Jim Gilly. He also has
Speaker 5: a vision at that time, and the vision is that
Speaker 5: the Lord would bring Linda to him in good time.
Speaker 2: Yes. So this is where we begin to see something
Speaker 2: kind of disturbing about David, and that is he begins
Speaker 2: to reinterpret the Bible to justify events in his life
Speaker 2: and justify his own behavior. So after he and Linda
Speaker 2: broke up several times, but after one of the breakups,
Speaker 2: he read the Bible and somehow got out of it
Speaker 2: that if you sleep with a woman, she is your wife,
Speaker 2: which does not say in the Bible. It actually says
Speaker 2: the opposite, that the Bible of the course is very
Speaker 2: anti extramarital flings things like that. But David, in his
Speaker 2: sort of obsession and in his narcissism, said well, this
Speaker 2: is my interpretation. So he called Linda up and said
Speaker 2: everything's fine, we're actually married in the eyes of God.
Speaker 2: And she told him to get lost. That's not true.
Speaker 2: So he actually went and started dating the daughter of
Speaker 2: the pastor at the Tyler, Texas church that he attended.
Speaker 2: So really the same pattern repeated. It starts out, really, well,
Speaker 2: they're both into the Bible, Sandy's a very intelligent girl,
Speaker 2: holds her own with him scripturally. But over time she
Speaker 2: sees that whatever David wants, he starts finding in the Bible,
Speaker 2: he starts finding passages that he says authorize him to
Speaker 2: do what he wants. So it's almost like he's taking
Speaker 2: the place of the prophets, almost like he's taking the
Speaker 2: place of God and his words more important than God's.
Speaker 2: And the people around him, those people who are rooted
Speaker 2: in the Bible and in the scriptures finding this very
Speaker 2: disturbing and to try to deter him, Sandy told him
Speaker 2: many times, Listen, if you're having a vision, it's not
Speaker 2: necessarily from God. It just might be your own voice,
Speaker 2: your own desires speaking to you. But David would never
Speaker 2: accept that.
Speaker 5: David or Vernon meets a woman in her fifties and
Speaker 5: name Harriet. Tell us about this relationship with Harriet, and
Speaker 5: what does Harriet direct him to?
Speaker 2: Right, So, Harriet was a member of the Adventist Church
Speaker 2: in Tyler, and he grew friendly with her, actually stated
Speaker 2: at her house, and what he would come home and
Speaker 2: tell her again and again is I need the new life.
Speaker 2: Meaning I've read the Bible, I've read all the prophets,
Speaker 2: I've read all the Adventist thinkers. But I need new
Speaker 2: revelations to help me with the problems in my life,
Speaker 2: and I'm not getting that from the church. So he's like,
Speaker 2: where are the living profits. I'm tired of living. I'm
Speaker 2: tired about reading about dead people and their thoughts. And
Speaker 2: Harriet knew of this sort of very small, obscure sect
Speaker 2: called the Branch Davidians, led by a woman named Lois Rodin,
Speaker 2: who were camped out in Waco, Texas. And she said,
Speaker 2: the Branch Davidians follow a profit. Lois wrote is a
Speaker 2: living prophet and she's giving new light. She's giving Bible
Speaker 2: studies that you give these new interpretations that will help
Speaker 2: you out. And David is you know, David is game.
Speaker 2: He drives up to Waco and it's kind of this
Speaker 2: dusty compound actually outside the city limits, buildings scattered all
Speaker 2: over and really a population of probably back then fifty
Speaker 2: or sixty people. The sect had been around since the thirties.
Speaker 2: It was kind of a split off from the Adventists,
Speaker 2: shared a lot of the philosophies, but with their own
Speaker 2: sort of quirky interpretations of different scriptures. So David goes
Speaker 2: there and at first he's really a nobody. He's like
Speaker 2: a handyman, a cleaner. So he begins to study and
Speaker 2: listen to Lois Rodin, who who's been leading them for
Speaker 2: over a decade by now, and he finds something new here,
Speaker 2: which is Lois is saying the end times are right
Speaker 2: around the corner. And so the interesting thing about the
Speaker 2: Branch Davidians is they're looking for what they call the
Speaker 2: seventh Angel, meaning the final prophet before the end times,
Speaker 2: who's going to guide the followers through the apocalypse and
Speaker 2: into God's new kingdom in the Bible. That's, you know,
Speaker 2: that's an actual figure, the seventh Angel. So Lois Rodin
Speaker 2: has proclaimed that she's the sixth Angel. So he founds
Speaker 2: sort of a ready made situation for himself. They were
Speaker 2: looking for a new leader, and he said to himself, well,
Speaker 2: I'm the guy. And he started to give Bible studies,
Speaker 2: which is the way in the Branch Davidians. The way
Speaker 2: to sort of advance is to give prophecy, to give
Speaker 2: new interpretation, and so Vernon began to do that.
Speaker 5: And what were some of these new prophecies that he
Speaker 5: brought to the grit Well.
Speaker 2: One of the main one was ones was he called
Speaker 2: the Cyrus doctrine. King Cyrus in the Bible is the
Speaker 2: king that defeats Babylon, defeats the Infidel, And David said
Speaker 2: the Branch Davidians had these sort of disbelief in types
Speaker 2: and anti types, meaning people appear in different stages in
Speaker 2: the Bible. So one figure might be the type, say
Speaker 2: Saint John the Baptist preparing the way, and later on
Speaker 2: you'll see a similar figure. And to the Branch Davidians,
Speaker 2: this is an anti type. This is sort of a
Speaker 2: not an exact reincarnation of the first person, but someone
Speaker 2: continuing the same work and serving the same purpose in
Speaker 2: the Bible. So David says, well, I believe I'm the
Speaker 2: anti type of King Cyrus. He defied, he defeated Babylon
Speaker 2: in the old days. I'm going to defeat the New Babylon.
Speaker 2: And for him in the Branch Davidians, David began to
Speaker 2: teach that the United States was part of the New Babylon.
Speaker 2: The Federal government was sort of tyrannizing Christians, becoming more
Speaker 2: and more secular, and they became the enemy of people
Speaker 2: of faith. So he discovered that I'm in the Bible,
Speaker 2: I'm a major figure, and I have this ability to
Speaker 2: confront the infidels. So that was one of his first
Speaker 2: sort of prophecies, it's first revelations.
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Speaker 5: You talked about the development of his message, and his
Speaker 5: style and his delivery, because when he first tried to
Speaker 5: do any lead of Bible study he failed miserably.
Speaker 3: To say.
Speaker 5: The third time that he was given an opportunity, he
Speaker 5: really shown what had Vernon discovered, especially in terms of
Speaker 5: the message he delivered.
Speaker 2: Sure, so I think what he discovered was his voice.
Speaker 2: I think his delivery came before any sort of major
Speaker 2: new theology, and I think it harkened back to those
Speaker 2: old creatures that he used to listen to on the
Speaker 2: Texas Radio who are exceptionally good at sort of dramatizing
Speaker 2: the Bible and taking a passage from one book and
Speaker 2: relating it to another and a way that is sort
Speaker 2: of new and fresh. And that's really what David did.
Speaker 2: He would stand up and would give these Bible studies.
Speaker 2: Eventually they grew to six eight hours, and he knew
Speaker 2: the Bible so well, even though he had trouble reading,
Speaker 2: he almost had a photographic memory. He could remember an
Speaker 2: obscure figure from the Book of Daniel and related to
Speaker 2: somebody who occurs two hundred pages later on. So what
Speaker 2: David's gift was as an orator was if he had
Speaker 2: you in the room, if he had you in front
Speaker 2: of him, he could persuade almost anyone that he was
Speaker 2: that he had a special connection with God. It's just
Speaker 2: a verbal gift that he had. So people really stood
Speaker 2: up and took notice, because when he first showed up,
Speaker 2: he was kind of a bum. People expected nothing of him.
Speaker 2: So what they saw was God doing work in this man.
Speaker 2: He had started off kind of stuttering, shy, and now
Speaker 2: he was as good as any preacher you saw on TV.
Speaker 2: So to them it had to be God doing his work.
Speaker 2: Some people actually thought that he was kind of faking it,
Speaker 2: that he had started out mumbling and kind of slurring
Speaker 2: his words in order to have this rapid progress. That
Speaker 2: would be evidence of his specialness. So anyway, David, you know,
Speaker 2: after that third try at Bible studies, he was actually
Speaker 2: a better speaker than Lois Rodin. She'd been teaching the
Speaker 2: same stuff for ten years, and the people had sort
Speaker 2: of been waiting around for for the end of the world.
Speaker 2: This was a millennial faith that was supposed to happen soon,
Speaker 2: and David really latched onto that. He said, God is
Speaker 2: watching us, he has plans for us. We're going to
Speaker 2: be by his side when we fight the infidels, and
Speaker 2: I'm going to lead you there, and that was something
Speaker 2: that was new. David was saying, it could be next year,
Speaker 2: it could be two years from now, and Lois Rodin
Speaker 2: had never said that. It was always off in the
Speaker 2: sort of the misty future. So to hear that, you
Speaker 2: might be meeting Christ in a year was tremendously exciting
Speaker 2: for these people.
Speaker 5: Now, Vernon was spiritually ambitious, to say the least. What
Speaker 5: happens with Lois this idea of an immaculate conception, and
Speaker 5: how Vernon is able to wrestle the command of this
Speaker 5: group in short order.
Speaker 2: Sure, So you know, David was a young guy. Lois
Speaker 2: Roden was in her sixties, her husband had died and
Speaker 2: she was lonely. So what David did, whether it was
Speaker 2: genuine or whether it was you know, kind of canny
Speaker 2: of him, is he started spending a lot of time
Speaker 2: with Lois, and eventually the two fell in love, if
Speaker 2: you can believe that. I think it was more love
Speaker 2: on Lois's part. She had this handsome young man sort
Speaker 2: of catering to her. And so that's how David sort
Speaker 2: of approached the throne of power. He fell in love
Speaker 2: with Lois and became sort of her partner. You know,
Speaker 2: he would travel with her. She was traveling all of
Speaker 2: the world, meeting with the Marcoss, the Philippines, meeting with
Speaker 2: her friend's famous preachers like Jimmy Spiger, and David was
Speaker 2: always there. So he sort of glombed onto her, learned
Speaker 2: her tricks in a way, and then slowly began to
Speaker 2: kind of cast out on her. And one of the
Speaker 2: main reasons he did the main ways he did this,
Speaker 2: Lois declared that she was pregnant. David had told her,
Speaker 2: like Sarah in the Bible, even though you're past the
Speaker 2: age of childbearing, God is going to give you a
Speaker 2: child and we're going to raise him together. And of
Speaker 2: course Lois fell for this story head over heels. She
Speaker 2: actually had a pregnancy test that she showed to the
Speaker 2: other Davidians which showed a positive result, and apparently it
Speaker 2: was just a defective test. So of course no baby arrived,
Speaker 2: and whispers began about this prophecy that had not come true.
Speaker 2: So David began telling people behind Lois's back, well, it's
Speaker 2: because Lois is not holy enough, she's not obeying God's law,
Speaker 2: and he's punished her by, you know, basically with a miscarriage.
Speaker 2: So this really worked on the minds of the branch Davidians.
Speaker 2: You know, they began to separate. There was a Lois
Speaker 2: camp and there was a David camp, and so he
Speaker 2: really caused dissension. It was kind of divide and rule
Speaker 2: at this point, he really kind of undermined her, this
Speaker 2: woman he was supposedly in love with, but it's pretty
Speaker 2: clear to see that he was just after the power.
Speaker 5: An important person in Lois's world and in the church
Speaker 5: itself was someone named Perry Jones. Now Burnan sidles up
Speaker 5: to Perry Jones. What does he ask of Perry Jones?
Speaker 4: What does he do?
Speaker 2: Sure? So, Perry Jones is a longtime member. He brought
Speaker 2: his whole family into the Branch Davidians, and he has
Speaker 2: a large family. And at one point David says, God
Speaker 2: has spoke to me in a dream, in a vision,
Speaker 2: and he's told me that I have to marry your daughter.
Speaker 2: And the daughter is fourteen years old. So Perry Jones
Speaker 2: is at first very disturbed by this. But again in
Speaker 2: the Branch Davidian tradition, prophecy is almost everything. If somebody
Speaker 2: is speaking to a member, you have to obey what
Speaker 2: they say, And David was starting to abuse this whole
Speaker 2: idea of the vision, you know, to get his way.
Speaker 2: So he went to Harry said I need to marry
Speaker 2: your daughter, and the two of them just ran off
Speaker 2: and got married in town, and David raped her that
Speaker 2: night of course she was under the age of consent.
Speaker 2: She might have agreed verbally, but this was, you know,
Speaker 2: against the law. So it began a pattern of David
Speaker 2: using visions to sort of get his way, and his
Speaker 2: way involved young girls. I think the tragedy of David
Speaker 2: Koresh is that he escaped a very painful childhood and
Speaker 2: then recreated that childhood at Wakego. I mean, he used
Speaker 2: the same fear and terror that his stepdad had used
Speaker 2: with him, the same humiliation against his followers. He used
Speaker 2: sexual abuse to get what he wanted the same way
Speaker 2: that he had been subjected to it. So, you know,
Speaker 2: to me, the disaster is that David realized that these
Speaker 2: things that had been done to him were wrong, and
Speaker 2: he told people they were wrong, but he couldn't helped
Speaker 2: himself in a way. Once he got power, he just
Speaker 2: recreated the nineteen sixties childhood that he'd experienced and was
Speaker 2: unable to really get beyond it.
Speaker 5: We talked about the battle for this Davidian group. George
Speaker 5: Roden is criticizing Vernon and calling him the anti Christ
Speaker 5: or Satan, and so is Lois as well tell us
Speaker 5: about this criticism church.
Speaker 2: So George roden was Lois's Rodin's son, and until Vernon
Speaker 2: showed up, he thought he was going to inherit the title.
Speaker 2: You inherit the throne. He was mentally disturbed. He wore
Speaker 2: a gun on his hip all the time at Tourette's syndrome.
Speaker 2: Not a natural leader, and so David sort of took
Speaker 2: over from him and created an enemy. So George Roden
Speaker 2: said that, you know, David crashes a snake. He's an impostor.
Speaker 2: He seduced my mother in order to get power, which
Speaker 2: was not wrong, but George Roden was not really credible
Speaker 2: figure at that time because of his mental illness and
Speaker 2: his sort of erratic behavior. So David was able to
Speaker 2: beat both of them, Lois and George at their own game.
Speaker 2: He was reaching more exciting things. He was giving the
Speaker 2: branch Davidians a promise of eternal life in this life,
Speaker 2: so they really couldn't compete with that, and David was
Speaker 2: just more charming in person and more persuasive, so he
Speaker 2: won that battle. He actually had a gunfight with George
Speaker 2: Roden that went to trial, And the importance of that
Speaker 2: is that even though David was acquitted along with his men,
Speaker 2: he found the whole experience humiliating, being arrested, thrown down
Speaker 2: on the ground, being booked, put in jail with everyday criminals.
Speaker 2: He felt humiliated in a way that he hadn't since childhood. Again,
Speaker 2: these were older men disrespecting him, and he vowed never
Speaker 2: to do that again. He said, I will never be
Speaker 2: back in jail again. And of course this comes into
Speaker 2: play when he's surrounded by the FBI and he knows
Speaker 2: if he comes out, he's going to jail. So a
Speaker 2: terrible experience that really sort of changed the course of
Speaker 2: his life.
Speaker 5: You write about how important Israel is to Vernon's plan
Speaker 5: and the Davidian's plan and Rachel. You rite of Rachel
Speaker 5: being pregnant and them going to Israel. What is the
Speaker 5: purpose us? How does Israel play into his plans?
Speaker 2: So branch Davidians before David, and David himself often preached
Speaker 2: that the end times were going to begin with a
Speaker 2: war in Israel between Israel and the Arabs. So America
Speaker 2: would come into the war on israel side, Soviet Union
Speaker 2: would come in on the Palestinian side, and we'd have
Speaker 2: beginning of the apocalypse, which to him into his followers
Speaker 2: was a desirable thing. They wanted this to happen, so
Speaker 2: God come back to Earth. So yes, he went over
Speaker 2: when she was pregnant. He wanted to have the child
Speaker 2: born in Israel to sort of cement his relationship with Israel,
Speaker 2: and later on he went back to actually see where
Speaker 2: he could move the branch Davidians. He was looking for
Speaker 2: a landing spot where they could live and wait for
Speaker 2: the war to happen. So I'm jumping ahead a little here,
Speaker 2: but one of the dissidents from the group eventually called
Speaker 2: the Israel consulate and said, you have this madman over
Speaker 2: there trying to convert people and a very dangerous guy.
Speaker 2: And so David was banned from Israel, which was a
Speaker 2: crucial blow to his theology, because if you don't have Israel,
Speaker 2: how are you going to have the End Times? So
Speaker 2: that's another way in which David sort of corrupted the Bible.
Speaker 2: He said, well, Israel really means wherever I am. It
Speaker 2: could happen in Waco, Texas. As long as I'm there,
Speaker 2: we can have the End Times. That was the importance
Speaker 2: of Israel. It was supposed to be the location of
Speaker 2: the beginning of the apocalypse, but David changed that when
Speaker 2: he could no longer visit the country and said, you know,
Speaker 2: Israel is kind of a state of mind is where
Speaker 2: I am.
Speaker 5: Tell us about Mark brill b.
Speaker 2: Sure, Mark, it's actually pronounced bro. Mark Brow joined the
Speaker 2: group sort of later on in the late eighties, very
Speaker 2: smart guy, theology student, and he was actually David's equal
Speaker 2: when it came to theology. He could sort of go
Speaker 2: blow to blow with David on scripture. So he joined
Speaker 2: the group and kind of became David's, you know, right
Speaker 2: hand man. But Mark Bro, unlike the others, still maintained
Speaker 2: this sort of independent mindset. When David said said something,
Speaker 2: Mark would analyze it in compared to the Bible, and
Speaker 2: if wasn't, if it didn't sort of correspond with that,
Speaker 2: he would confront David and say, you know, you're preaching
Speaker 2: false doctrine. And David loved this and he hated it.
Speaker 2: He loved having an intellectual like Mark Bro in the group,
Speaker 2: loved his knowledge of scripture, but hated any kind of descent.
Speaker 2: You know, you didn't challenge David koresh It was his group.
Speaker 2: So the two of them were friends. They played in
Speaker 2: the band together that David formed, but slowly Mark Brow
Speaker 2: started to have doubts and eventually he said, I believe
Speaker 2: David is actually leading a Satanic movement. He's abusing the
Speaker 2: Bible and he's leading these people into false doctrine. And
Speaker 2: he left the group and he became the main rival
Speaker 2: for David. He moved to Australia and he tried to
Speaker 2: sort of get authorities to pay attention to what was happening.
Speaker 2: He said, this is going to be another jonestown, It's
Speaker 2: going to be another massacre. And so he really became
Speaker 2: David's nemesis.
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Speaker 5: Let's fast forward somewhat to get to the point where
Speaker 5: there is interest in David Koresh, Vernon Howell and this
Speaker 5: Mount Carmel.
Speaker 2: Sure, So the government first really starts taking interest when
Speaker 2: a UPS deliveryman notices a grenade casing fall out of
Speaker 2: the package that was being delivered to the branch davidians
Speaker 2: So it's not an actual grenade, it's just the casing
Speaker 2: that needs to be filled with powder, et cetera. So
Speaker 2: he reports this to the shriff. The sheriff calls the ATF,
Speaker 2: and the ATF opens a case on David Koresh, and
Speaker 2: what they find is that he's illegal guns. He's buying things,
Speaker 2: and allegedly he's changing weapons from legal weapons into illegal
Speaker 2: automatic weapons which cannot own. He even had a fifty
Speaker 2: caliber sniper rifle, again illegal to own. So it really
Speaker 2: began with weapons investigation, and then on top of that,
Speaker 2: there was a state investigation of sexual abuse, but that
Speaker 2: didn't really figure into the federal indictment the federal warrant
Speaker 2: against David Koresh. So we're talking about nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 2: early months of nineteen ninety three. The ATF is investigating.
Speaker 2: They have a surveillance team across the road from the compound.
Speaker 2: But their tragic mistake is they don't pick up on
Speaker 2: the fact that David koresh leaves the compound. He does
Speaker 2: it quite often. He goes to restaurants that he likes
Speaker 2: in town. He goes to car shops, he goes to
Speaker 2: guitar shops. He's pretty well known around Waco. But somehow,
Speaker 2: and this just goes down to incompetence. I think the
Speaker 2: ATF misses the fact they believe that he only stays
Speaker 2: on site. So really, from the beginning, this investigation is
Speaker 2: really kind of being bought not by the guys who
Speaker 2: carried out eventually, but by middle management, by the planners.
Speaker 5: You have the ATF plan to be able to do this.
Speaker 5: They have three options. What is the option that they
Speaker 5: decide upon.
Speaker 2: It's called dynamic entry. It's basically what you see on
Speaker 2: cop shows on TV, going to the location, confronting the individuals,
Speaker 2: busting through the front door if you have to, and
Speaker 2: sort of shock and awe, sort of getting in there
Speaker 2: and getting the person you need out before any resistance
Speaker 2: can form. So you know, They didn't feel they could
Speaker 2: arrest him in town, they didn't know about his visits.
Speaker 2: They didn't want to do a long siege because the
Speaker 2: compound is a huge property, would take an incredible amount
Speaker 2: of manpower to surround it, and they felt that, you know, David,
Speaker 2: if they were running out of food, David would feed
Speaker 2: himself and his lieutenants first and the other people would suffer.
Speaker 2: So it was dynamic entry, which meant a large rating
Speaker 2: team about eighty agents, largest in the ATF's history. So
Speaker 2: this was going to be a big operation. Helicopters, a
Speaker 2: lot of agents, a lot of command control. But again,
Speaker 2: you know, all goes back to the planning. It was
Speaker 2: a flawed plan from the beginning. So even all these
Speaker 2: agents couldn't correct what was wrong from the start.
Speaker 5: They get reports as well. Authorities get reports about his
Speaker 5: continued visions about women, young girls, So there was talk
Speaker 5: of abusing children, but also the sexual assault and rape
Speaker 5: of these young girls. Just to add to the warrant itself.
Speaker 5: The warrant is for weapons, but they have this picture
Speaker 5: that much more is going on behind Mount Carmel doors.
Speaker 2: Sure, and the state opened an investigation and investigators went
Speaker 2: out there and actually interviewed Koresh and interviewed some of
Speaker 2: the children, but what they found is they couldn't get
Speaker 2: any of the children to testify that David was abusing them.
Speaker 2: They felt, i mean, the investigators felt he's exercising mind
Speaker 2: control over them. But you can't build a case without
Speaker 2: a witness. So that is mentioned in the warrant, but
Speaker 2: it's kind of irrelevant. I mean, the federal laws do
Speaker 2: not have jurisdiction over or, you know, sexual abuse. The
Speaker 2: weapons charge is a federal charge, so it was kind
Speaker 2: of thrown in there almost as like added inducement to
Speaker 2: do this raid, but they had no standing in law
Speaker 2: to charge him with sexual abuse.
Speaker 5: You read about all the conflicting agendas here. There's the negotiators,
Speaker 5: there's the ATF. I'm jumping ahead a little bit, but
Speaker 5: the FBI come in after this failed beginning. But you
Speaker 5: say that there is a lot of differences in the
Speaker 5: ideas to approaching this raid in the first place.
Speaker 2: Sure, and it's not the first time it happened. There's
Speaker 2: always a tension between the tactical team, the guys with
Speaker 2: the rifles, and the negotiators. The tactical team often wants
Speaker 2: to apply pressure wants to intimidate, wants to make the
Speaker 2: person on the other end uncomfortable so that they come out.
Speaker 2: The negotiators always seem to always take a different tack,
Speaker 2: which is to gain the person's trust, to feel that
Speaker 2: they're being heard, and to sort of entice them in
Speaker 2: a positive way to come out. So these two philosophies
Speaker 2: clashed again and again at Waco, and the negotiator's got
Speaker 2: a significant amount of people out that got kids out.
Speaker 2: But at least when I look at this, I feel
Speaker 2: that this clash between the two teams really led to
Speaker 2: fewer people coming out. I think they could have gotten
Speaker 2: more Davidians off the compound. So the negotiating team is
Speaker 2: talking to David for fifty one days and the tactical
Speaker 2: team is pressuring for an end to this. It's a
Speaker 2: very expensive operation, you know, it's in the public eye.
Speaker 2: The FBI agents need additional training, they have to keep
Speaker 2: up their skills the hostage rescue team. So there's a
Speaker 2: lot of sort of conflicting motivations going on, and it
Speaker 2: really detracts from this sort of unified effort that the
Speaker 2: FBI wanted to put forth.
Speaker 5: You say, all the authorities are very, very impatient, and
Speaker 5: there's all kinds of pressure on them in every way
Speaker 5: to succeed. But David also exacerbates this with some of
Speaker 5: the decisions he makes in terms of the statements he
Speaker 5: wants to make before he can do anything else.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, David's on the phone with the FBI.
Speaker 2: He's very charming, he's got a good old boy personality,
Speaker 2: but he promises things and then does not deliver. He says,
Speaker 2: we're coming out. I've decided to bring my followers out.
Speaker 2: He's actually thinking of hiding hand grenades in the stretcher
Speaker 2: that brings him out. He was wounded in the initial raid,
Speaker 2: so he's thinking of a kind of a suicide mission
Speaker 2: to sort of bring on the end times. But the
Speaker 2: FBI just think things they want. They think he's coming out,
Speaker 2: and when he doesn't, they become furious. And David also
Speaker 2: has his own complaints.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: He says, you know, you're running these tractors, you're crushing
Speaker 2: my cars, you're disrespecting my home. So each side over
Speaker 2: these fifty one days sort of gathers their own grievances,
Speaker 2: as you will in any negotiation, but David sort of
Speaker 2: has a hard line you know, he won't allow any
Speaker 2: of his biological children to come out. He won't allow
Speaker 2: sort of his hardcore followers to listen to the FBI.
Speaker 2: So you have really kind of a stalemate by the
Speaker 2: day fifty one, and that's when the FBI decides to
Speaker 2: insert the tear Guess you.
Speaker 5: Talk about this element of surprise being the cornerstone of
Speaker 5: this strategy to strike first, tell us about the decision
Speaker 5: to throw in tear gas and the result.
Speaker 2: Sure, so it was originally going to be a very
Speaker 2: gradual insertion of the tear gas. They were going to
Speaker 2: sort of hit one area of the building and decrease
Speaker 2: the living space until over hours or even days, it
Speaker 2: just becomes super uncomfortable for the Davidians and they come out.
Speaker 2: But David has other plans. He's stockpiled a lot of fuel, kerosene,
Speaker 2: things like that, there's hay inside the compound, and what
Speaker 2: he has in mind really is the FBI attacking, getting
Speaker 2: a bunch of agents inside the compound, lighting the fires,
Speaker 2: and them all dying Davidians and FBI in one big inferno,
Speaker 2: and this will sort of satisfy the needs to sort
Speaker 2: of trigger the end times. There'll be a final confrontation
Speaker 2: between God's people in Babylon. But of course the FBI
Speaker 2: isn't coming in. They're just sticking, you know, tubes on
Speaker 2: the ends of tanks and armored vehicles into the building,
Speaker 2: spraying the tear gas and then backing them off of
Speaker 2: The fires have already begun. This is around noon on
Speaker 2: the final day, and they quickly grow out of control,
Speaker 2: so it takes only about twenty minutes for the whole
Speaker 2: thing to burn down. A few Davidians escape, but yes,
Speaker 2: it's just a total it's a total defeat, really on
Speaker 2: both sides. One of the interesting things I found in
Speaker 2: looking at Waco is that, you know, in past tragedies
Speaker 2: in American history, there was always at least one hero,
Speaker 2: Pearl harbor Head guys who won the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Speaker 2: There were heroes there, even nine to eleven. You know,
Speaker 2: you could look at Giuliani leading the city out of
Speaker 2: that tragedy. The thing about Waco is they're no heroes,
Speaker 2: they're no good guys walking out of this looking better
Speaker 2: than when it started. So the FBI, the negotiators, feel
Speaker 2: they failed. Bill Clinton, who approved the final order, has regrets.
Speaker 2: Of course, the Davidians are not now dead, most of them,
Speaker 2: so it's just really kind of a tragedy all around.
Speaker 5: It's fascinating that you describe the some of the negotiations
Speaker 5: with David Koresh, but also negotiations of family members that
Speaker 5: try to get people out of Mark Carmel before it
Speaker 5: was too late.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it's interesting. A lot of people at
Speaker 2: this time talk about a second Waco that you know,
Speaker 2: it's going to happen again, and I think the FBI
Speaker 2: and ATF made horrible mistakes, but they did learn from
Speaker 2: those mistakes, and so during Waco they would phone in
Speaker 2: and have some of the members talk to their family members,
Speaker 2: but they would never allow the family members to actually
Speaker 2: go to the compound, you know, and try to persuade
Speaker 2: the guys to come out. In later confrontations, they actually
Speaker 2: did that. There was one in Montana later on, and
Speaker 2: they brought in family members and they settled that peacefully.
Speaker 2: So this was you could say, a mistake, even though
Speaker 2: it's understandable that, you know, the Davidians were heavily armed,
Speaker 2: so they allowed the family members to speak on the phone,
Speaker 2: but it's rarely successful because David has almost total control
Speaker 2: and he's controlling who speaks to their family members and
Speaker 2: who doesn't, but he's often by the phone, sort of
Speaker 2: influencing the person on the phone to stay.
Speaker 5: You also say that one person that was paying attention
Speaker 5: to the Davidians and then later to the tragedy at
Speaker 5: Waco was a person named Timothy McVeigh.
Speaker 2: Yes, Timothy McVeigh became obsessed with Waco. He saw it
Speaker 2: in the way that many people on the far right did,
Speaker 2: that this was tyranny in action, that all the rumors
Speaker 2: that we've been speaking about for years were finally seeing
Speaker 2: it on CNN. So this was an important event for him.
Speaker 2: He actually went to Waco. He was selling bumper stickers
Speaker 2: off the hood of his car, but he was really
Speaker 2: there just to support the Davidians, and when he saw
Speaker 2: the inferno on TV, he was filled with his need
Speaker 2: for revenge. That's why he planned the Oklahoma City bombing
Speaker 2: for the Waco anniversary. It was really the trigger that
Speaker 2: activated McVeigh and activated a lot of the militias that
Speaker 2: sprang up right after that.
Speaker 5: You're right, that's very interesting that McVeigh had listened to
Speaker 5: some of the same things that Koresh had listened to
Speaker 5: when he was a kid, a lot of the anti communist,
Speaker 5: anti government rhetoric, and also the role that the Roman
Speaker 5: Catholic Church would have in the end times being the
Speaker 5: representation of Satan. So they shared in that some of
Speaker 5: the preachers and some of the talk they had both
Speaker 5: listened to the same kinds of messages growing up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they sure did. And what's also interesting is that
Speaker 2: it kind of had similar life histories. McVeigh was very
Speaker 2: upset that he didn't have successful relationships with women. You know.
Speaker 2: David of course lost his two first loves, his two
Speaker 2: first girlfriends. So yeah, they had similar outlooks on life.
Speaker 2: And I think McVeigh really saw Koresh as the model.
Speaker 2: Here was someone who had stood up to the government
Speaker 2: ad stockpile weapons, had defended his home. He saw David
Speaker 2: Koresh as incompletely in the right, and so he wanted
Speaker 2: Oklahoma City to be almost the anti Waco. In Waco,
Speaker 2: it was the Davidians who died, and McVay said, in
Speaker 2: Oklahoma City, it's the government employees and their families who
Speaker 2: are going to die. So it's almost like, you know,
Speaker 2: it's almost like a colin response. He saw this as
Speaker 2: an answer to Waco.
Speaker 5: What's fascinating too, is that the FBI had an undercover agent,
Speaker 5: Robert Rodriguez, that had infiltrated the group. So it's fascinating
Speaker 5: that you're write of the many things that he had seen,
Speaker 5: in witnessed, and that was reporting back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is one of the ATF's huge mistakes. On
Speaker 2: the day of their initial raid, they emphasized again and
Speaker 2: again they needed the element of surprise. So Rodriguez was
Speaker 2: in the compound that morning talking with David and a
Speaker 2: branch Cividian comes rushing in and says, the Feds are
Speaker 2: on their way and you know they're coming to get us.
Speaker 2: So Rodriguez goes out, calls his boss and says, you know,
Speaker 2: call it off. They know they know we're coming, and really,
Speaker 2: by any measure, they should have called it off. They
Speaker 2: had multiple opportunities even that morning, you know, to stop it.
Speaker 2: But it's kind of the fog of war. It's the
Speaker 2: momentum of these kind of bureaucracies. It didn't happen. So
Speaker 2: Rodriguez is just an example how badly the ATF knew this,
Speaker 2: and later on they really attempted to kind of blame
Speaker 2: it on him in the media. That the media tipped
Speaker 2: off the Davidians, which was not true. So not only
Speaker 2: did the ATF mess up this operation, but they also
Speaker 2: attempted to cover up, which I think has led to
Speaker 2: some of the myths and rumors and misconceptions that surround
Speaker 2: this whole event.
Speaker 5: You mentioned the misperceptions and inaccuracies in the writing of
Speaker 5: this book. One other major I would say issues were
Speaker 5: uncovered with the writing of this book that dispelled some
Speaker 5: of the misinformation.
Speaker 2: Well, the other always been rumors the FBI snipers were
Speaker 2: executing Franch Davidians during the fire. Those were really disproven.
Speaker 2: I think what bothers me about this whole conspiracy culture
Speaker 2: around Waco is that, you know, government decisions did lead
Speaker 2: to the deaths of people, both ATF agents four died
Speaker 2: in that initial raid and the Davidians who were killed
Speaker 2: initial raid and then later on. I mean, it was
Speaker 2: really their arrogance and their and just doing a bad
Speaker 2: job that led to these deaths. I think David Koresh
Speaker 2: is responsible for Waco. He initiated it. He actually in
Speaker 2: a way looked forward to it. But in a way,
Speaker 2: the conspiracy theories give cover to the government. They come
Speaker 2: up with these really fantastical theories when the plain truth
Speaker 2: in plain view is that the government the operation and
Speaker 2: caused death. So you're looking away from what really happened,
Speaker 2: and you're kind of giving the government a pass on
Speaker 2: what they really did by accusing them of these things
Speaker 2: that didn't happen. So it's almost defeating the purpose of
Speaker 2: the conspiracy theorists in giving the government a pass.
Speaker 5: Another very interesting thing was the idea that when the
Speaker 5: ATF agents were injured and wounded, they requested that they
Speaker 5: be able to get those wounded agents, and the Davidians
Speaker 5: did not fire upon them.
Speaker 2: Some of the injured agents were fired upon, but yeah,
Speaker 2: there were cases where there was an injured agent and
Speaker 2: ATF guys went forward to dragging back and the Davidians
Speaker 2: let that happen. So the real scandal was there was
Speaker 2: no medical backup, There was no ambulances in cases shoot
Speaker 2: out occurred. So again it just goes back to this
Speaker 2: kind of just terrible job that the planners did and
Speaker 2: organizing this whole operation. There was were no sort of
Speaker 2: contingencies if it went wrong. If it went wrong, and
Speaker 2: it did, it was going to go wrong in a
Speaker 2: big way.
Speaker 5: I want to thank you so much for coming on
Speaker 5: and talking about Koresh, the true story of David Koresh
Speaker 5: and the tragedy at Waco. For those people that might
Speaker 5: want to take a look at a website, do you
Speaker 5: have a website and do you do any social media?
Speaker 2: Sure? My website is just my name, Stephen S. T
Speaker 2: E p h A N t A L t y
Speaker 2: dot com and I'm on Twitter at Stephen Talty as well.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much, Steven Talty, Koresh, the true story
Speaker 5: of David Koresh and the tragedy at Waco. Thank you
Speaker 5: very much for this interview, and you have a great
Speaker 5: evening and good night.
Speaker 2: Thanks then,