David Koresh

• 1. Introduction

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  On the 19th of April 1993, fire swept through the Mount Carmel Center, a compound outside Waco, Texas. Among the dead was David Koresh, a preacher who had told his followers that he was the final prophet. He led the Branch Davidians, a religious sect, and he drew people in with apocalyptic readings of the Bible. His name became tied to a deadly confrontation with federal agents. This documentary asks how a boy from a troubled Texas household came to command that kind of loyalty. It asks what he taught, what he was accused of doing inside the compound, and who stood against him. And it asks about the final hours, because the evidence still leaves an unanswered question about how he died.

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• 2. A Lonely Childhood

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  David Koresh was born Vernon Wayne Howell on the 17th of August 1959 in Houston, Texas. Some details of his life vary between sources. His parents were not married: Bobby Wayne Howell was 20, and Bonnie Sue Clark was only 14. The relationship broke down about two years after the birth. Bonnie's first marriage, to a man named Joe Golden, was abusive and ended quickly in divorce.

  Around 1962, Bonnie moved to Dallas because she could not cope. She left her son with her own mother and an older sister. Bonnie's mother pretended to be the boy's mother. Bonnie visited only occasionally and posed as an aunt.

  In 1964, Bonnie married Roy Winfred Haldeman, a merchant marine, and finally felt stable enough to raise her son herself. Only then, at the age of five, did the boy learn who his real mother was. He carried that experience for the rest of his life. Around the same time, Koresh said, one of his mother's male relatives began to sexually abuse him. A half-brother, Rodger Winfred Haldeman, was born in July 1965, and a few weeks later the family settled in Richardson, Texas. Koresh had lasting difficulties with his stepfather, but the two boys got along well.

  Dyslexia, partly caused by poor eyesight, and weak study skills put Koresh in special education classes. Schoolmates bullied him, and he later described his early childhood as lonely. After about the age of 12, things improved, because he took up sport, proved good at it, and built up his physique. Even so, he dropped out of Garland High School in his junior year. He tried various jobs and was fired from or walked away from every one.

  At 19, Koresh had an illegal sexual relationship with a 16-year-old girl, who became pregnant. She judged him unfit to be a father, moved away, and refused to see him. He never met the daughter.

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• 3. Expelled From the Church

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  Isaiah 34:16 became a turning point in the young man's search for a spiritual home. After the pregnancy, Koresh claimed to have become a born-again Christian in the Southern Baptist Church. He soon joined his mother's denomination, the Seventh-day Adventist Church. There, at 20, he began a two-year relationship with the pastor's daughter, Sandy Berlin, who was 15.

  While courting her, Koresh allegedly prayed for guidance one day, opened his eyes, and found the Bible lying open at Isaiah 34:16. The verse says that "none should want for her mate". Koresh took this as a sign from God. He told the pastor that God wanted him to have the daughter as his wife.

  The pastor dismissed the idea at once and forbade Koresh from seeing her again. Koresh ignored the order. With the pastor furious and the congregation weary of, and repulsed by, his obsession with sex, the church expelled him.

  By the summer of 1981, Koresh had moved to Waco, Texas, and joined the Branch Davidians. This sect was a splinter of the Davidian Seventh-Day Adventists. Benjamin Roden had started the Branch group in 1955 with teachings unconnected to the original Davidians, and he had died in 1978. The sect that Koresh entered was led by Roden's widow, Lois.

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• 4. The Roden Rivalry

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  In 1983, Koresh began to claim the gift of prophecy. Lois Roden, then in her late 60s, let him start teaching a message called "The Serpent's Root", and it caused controversy in the group. David Thibodeau, in his 1999 book A Place Called Waco, speculated that Koresh had a sexual relationship with her. Koresh eventually claimed that God had chosen him to father a child with Lois, who would be the Chosen One. Her son George Roden, who was meant to lead the sect next, regarded Koresh as an interloper.

  Calm returned briefly when Koresh announced that God had told him to marry Rachel Jones, who then added Koresh to her own name. Then a fire destroyed an administration building and press worth $500,000. George Roden said Koresh had started it. Koresh replied that "no man set that fire" and called it a judgment of God. Roden, claiming the support of most of the sect, forced Koresh and his group off the property at gunpoint.

  Around 25 followers went with Koresh to Palestine, Texas, 90 miles from Waco. For the next two years they lived in buses and tents under rough conditions. From there, Koresh recruited new followers in California, the United Kingdom, Israel, and Australia. Lois Roden died in 1986. The exiles wondered whether they would ever return to Mount Carmel, yet the majority of the community now backed Koresh.

  A dead body pushed the feud toward violence in 1987. George Roden dug up at least one corpse from the community cemetery. Roden said he was simply moving the cemetery. Koresh claimed instead that Roden had challenged people to resurrect the body, with the winner to become the new leader. Koresh went to the authorities to press charges for the illegal exhumation, but he was told he needed proof, such as a photograph.

  Koresh returned to Mount Carmel with seven armed followers to get that photograph. Roden discovered them, and a gunfight broke out. When the sheriff arrived, Roden had been shot in the hand and chest and was pinned down behind a tree. Koresh and his followers were charged with attempted murder. The followers were acquitted, and a mistrial was declared in Koresh's case.

  In 1989, Roden killed Wayman Dale Adair with an axe blow to the skull after Adair said he believed himself to be the true messiah. Roden claimed that Koresh had sent the man to kill him. He was judged insane and confined to a psychiatric hospital at Big Spring, Texas. Roden owed thousands of dollars in unpaid taxes on Mount Carmel, so Koresh and his followers raised the money and reclaimed the property. From custody, Roden kept harassing them by filing legal papers.

  Back at Mount Carmel, the returning group found that tenants who had rented from Roden had left behind a meth lab. Koresh reported it to the local police and asked them to remove it.

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• 5. A Borrowed Name

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  On the 15th of May 1990, Vernon Howell filed a petition in California State Superior Court in Pomona. He asked to change his name to David Koresh "for publicity and business purposes". Judge Robert Martinez granted the petition on the 28th of August 1990.

  The first name, David, claimed a line of descent from the biblical King David, from whom the new messiah would come. Koresh is the Hebrew form of Cyrus the Great, a Persian king who is called a messiah for freeing the Jews from the Babylonian captivity. One account notes that Koresh professed himself a spiritual descendant of King David even though nothing in his DNA connected him to the peoples of the Mediterranean.

  Cyrus already held a place in Koresh's visions. On a trip to Israel, he claimed to have seen a vision in which he was the modern-day Cyrus. His teachings leaned on the Book of Revelation and the Seven Seals, and these apocalyptic interpretations attracted followers.

  Victor Houteff, the founder of the Davidian movement, wanted to be God's implement and to establish the Davidic kingdom in Israel. Koresh wanted the same role, with his kingdom in Jerusalem. Until at least 1990, he believed his martyrdom might take place in Israel. By 1991, he was convinced it would happen in the United States. He said the prophecies of Daniel would be fulfilled in Waco and that Mount Carmel was the Davidic kingdom.

  Koresh was also infatuated with the American singer Madonna. God, he claimed, had once told him: "I will give thee Madonna."

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• 6. Accusations and Doubt

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  A six-month investigation by Texas child protection officials in 1992 found no evidence of sexual abuse. That may have been because the Branch Davidians hid a spiritual marriage between Koresh and Michele, the younger sister of Rachel Jones. Michele was 12 at the time. To keep up appearances, the group assigned her a surrogate husband, David Thibodeau, who was 10 years younger than Koresh. Koresh's doctrine of the House of David led to "marriages" with both married and single women in the sect.

  No evidence of physical abuse was ever found. Two incidents were widely reported. In one, ex-members claimed that Koresh grew irritated at the cries of his son Cyrus and severely spanked the child for several minutes on three consecutive visits to the bedroom. In the other, a man involved in a custody battle visited Mount Carmel and claimed to have seen a young boy beaten with a stick.

  The justification for the final assault leaned on such claims. After the fire, Attorney General Janet Reno told reporters, "We had specific information that babies were being beaten." FBI Director William Sessions publicly denied it and said the FBI had no such information about child abuse inside the compound. A careful look at the other child abuse charges found the evidence weak and ambiguous.

  Most of the allegations came from detractors and ex-members. Legal scholars note that the ATF had no jurisdiction over child protection, and they suggest its accounts were inserted to inflame the case against Koresh. One example is the account of former member Jeannine Bunds, reproduced in an ATF affidavit. She said Koresh had fathered at least 15 children with various women and girls, and that she had delivered seven of them herself. She also said he annulled the marriages of couples who joined and kept exclusive sexual access to the women and girls.

  David Thibodeau, one of the few people to escape the fire, called Koresh a friend in 2018. He added that Koresh "certainly was guilty of something. He was either a polygamist or he was guilty of statutory rape. Probably both." James Tabor, in his book, writes that Koresh acknowledged on a videotape sent out of the compound that he had fathered more than 12 children by several "wives". On the 3rd of March 1993, while negotiators were trying to secure the release of the remaining children, Koresh told them: "My children are different than those others." He was referring to his direct lineage.

  Bruce Perry, the chief of psychiatry at Texas Children's Hospital, led the team that cared for the 21 children who survived the siege. After a two-month investigation, he wrote that "the children released from Ranch Apocalypse do not appear to have been victims of sexual abuse." Yet in an article published on the 4th of May 1993, he said that "the kids became increasingly open about 11 and 12-year-old girls being David's wives." He added that being a wife clearly included sex.

  Perry's findings on physical abuse were contradictory. He did report that the children were "likely exposed to inappropriate concepts of sexuality" and were subject to "a whole variety of destructive emotional techniques... including shame, coercion, fear, intimidation, humiliation, guilt, overt aggression and power." Perry repeated this view as late as 2018.

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• 7. Fifty-One Days at Mount Carmel

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  The ATF raided Mount Carmel on the 28th of February 1993, and the gun battle that followed killed four ATF agents and six Branch Davidians. Soon afterward, the FBI Hostage Rescue Team took command, because the FBI has jurisdiction when federal agents die. Koresh had been seriously wounded by gunshots to his wrist and his left side. Negotiators made contact with him inside the compound, and talks continued by telephone for 51 days.

  Koresh and his closest male associates used the talks to win delays. He said he needed time to write religious documents before he would surrender. His conversations with negotiators were dense and full of biblical imagery. The FBI treated the standoff as a hostage crisis.

  On the 19th of April 1993, Attorney General Janet Reno approved FBI recommendations for a final advance to remove the Branch Davidians by force. To flush Koresh out, the FBI pumped CS gas into the building using an M728 Combat Engineer Vehicle, which carried a battering ram. During the advance, the Mount Carmel Center caught fire. Inside, 79 Branch Davidians died, and 21 of them were children under 16.

  Coroner reports showed that many of the dead, including Koresh, who was 33, had died from a single gunshot wound to the head. A postmortem on his badly burned body could not establish whether he killed himself or was killed. One FBI official speculated that Steve Schneider, Koresh's right-hand man, "probably realized that he was dealing with a fraud". On that theory, Schneider shot Koresh and then himself. The medical examiner reported that 20 people had been shot, five of them children under 14, and that a three-year-old had been stabbed in the chest.

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• 8. Afterlives and Echoes

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  Koresh is buried at Memorial Park Cemetery in Tyler, Texas, in the section called "Last Supper". Several of his albums have been released, including Voice of Fire in 1994. His 1968 Chevrolet Camaro, damaged in the raid, sold at auction in 2004 for $37,000. It is now owned by Zak Bagans, the host of Ghost Adventures.

  Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols cited the Waco siege as their motivation for the Oklahoma City bombing. They timed it for the 19th of April 1995, the second anniversary of the assault.

  Three documentary films have examined the siege, including different versions of Waco: The Rules of Engagement, Waco: A New Revelation, and Waco: Madman or Messiah. In 2018, BBC Radio 5 Live released a podcast called End of Days about Koresh's life and death. It also covered the recruitment of people from Nottingham, Manchester, and London into the Branch Davidians. The Court TV series Mugshots made an episode about him. A Mexican film, Tragedia en Waco, written by Ulf Kjell Gür, aired on EstrellaTV in April 2021.

  Taylor Kitsch played Koresh in the 2018 miniseries Waco, and Keean Johnson played him in the sequel, Waco: The Aftermath. Koresh was among the inspirations for Joseph Seed, the fictional cult leader in the 2018 video game Far Cry 5. He also inspired Salem Koresh in the 2021 game Outriders. In 2011, the British indie rock band The Indelicates released a concept album, David Koresh Superstar.

  In March 2023, Netflix released Waco: American Apocalypse, a three-episode series. It features real footage that had never been released, along with interviews with surviving members of the sect and others involved.

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