Self-proclaimed messiah and master manipulator David Koresh created a
death cult, then made his prophecy come true. If you think you know the story,
you might not have the whole thing. This is the messed up truth of cult leader David Koresh.
David Koresh's start in life was turbulent. He was born Vernon Howell in Houston, Texas,
in 1959. For clarity's sake, we'll be calling him David Koresh. His mother
Bonnie was either 14, 15, or 16 at the time, depending on the source,
and he never knew his father. Bonnie was in a couple of abusive relationships,
and one of her boyfriends beat young Koresh. Eventually he moved in with his grandparents.
Bonnie maintained that her son had plenty of friends, but he later told FBI agents
he'd been lonely as a child. His teachers suspected he had learning difficulties,
placing him in special classes, and he was bullied. Still, in an interview with ABC News,
Bonnie recalled her son's good qualities, saying,
"He was a very cute, lovable little boy. Very inquisitive. A doer. He learned by doing things."
She said he loved being outside, taking things apart,
and making up stories — useful practice for a future cult leader.
After struggling in school, Koresh dropped out in
ninth grade. Even after everything went down at Waco, Bonnie told ABC:
"I think back then, God was working on David to prepare him for the work he had for him later on."
Bonnie was found stabbed to death on January 23, 2009. Her sister was charged with her murder.
David Koresh connected with Christianity at an early age. His mother Bonnie said
he started reading the Bible and listening to Christian radio stations when he was 12 or 13.
She said he would dissect the Bible in the same obsessive way he pored over truck engines. By 14,
he'd claimed to have memorized the New Testament. And by about 18, he knew the Old Testament
as well. Koresh claimed that, when he was a child, God told him he was "the chosen one."
Koresh joined the Seventh Day Adventists, but was kicked out for being a bad influence. He
got a girl named Linda pregnant when he was 19 and she was 15. Her father's rage kicked off
Koresh's religious awakening. Bonnie said that, around this time, Koresh became obsessed with the
idea that the Holy Spirit was a big-breasted woman, an interpretation his church did not
appreciate. She said he hung out in graveyards and questioned local preachers. Koresh was eventually
driven out of town after he decided God wanted him to have sex with the preacher's daughter.
By 1990, David Koresh had established himself as the Davidians' leader, and decided his birth name,
Vernon Howell, lacked a certain Messiah-esque quality. So he gave himself a new name,
drawing on Biblical references that connected him to the prophesied second coming of Christ.
David is a reference to King David, of David and Goliath fame. In the Bible,
David is a model king – pious, repentant, submissive before God, and musically talented.
Taking this first name not only identified Koresh and the Davidians as one and the same,
it anchored him within a long line of spiritual leaders. And "Koresh" is the
Hebrew word for Cyrus, a Persian king and the only non-Jew referred to in Scripture as
a "messiah" or "anointed one." This was supposed to indicate that David Koresh was chosen by God.
"Is he the son of God?"
"I hope he is."
The name backed up Koresh's 1989 claim that he was
the Lamb of God. For non-Sunday school graduates, in the Book of Revelation,
the Lamb is the only one who can break the Seven Seals on a scroll that kicks off the apocalypse,
which in turn triggers the second coming of Christ, who takes the worthy to heaven.
"A messenger of the covenant, who is to bring God's people a spirit of grace and truth."
David Koresh was effectively saying he was the new Messiah.
Like everyone else in the 1970s with long hair and an aversion to authority, David Koresh's Plan
A was to be a rock star. His mother Bonnie said that he taught himself to play guitar, adding,
"In those years he was a little bit rebellious."
Koresh moved to Hollywood to pursue his dream but it didn't pan out. He kept playing music
when he joined the Branch Davidians in 1981. And when he became their leader,
Koresh had a collection of guitars customized by one of
the cult members — who was an airbrush artist — with explicit scenes inspired by the Bible.
In 1992, he had a band called Messiah, whose music was described as "jazz fusion,
with an L.A. sound." Koresh convinced local bar Cue Sticks to let him host live music nights,
with Messiah jamming between other bands. He used the opportunity to
preach about his religious beliefs, and managed to recruit a few local musicians.
Others didn't buy his stories about his success
in L.A. Local record store owner Calvin Ross told Spin,
"He couldn't be a rock star, so he decided to be Jesus."
David Koresh didn't found the Branch Davidians: it was an offshoot of the Seventh Day Adventists
founded in 1934 by Bulgarian Victor Houteff. Victor bought what became the
Mount Carmel Center in 1935. When Victor died 20 years later, a power struggle kicked off,
pitching his wife Florence against wannabe-leaders including Ben Roden,
who eventually took control. After Roden's death in 1978, the group was torn between
following his wife Loisand his son George. Koresh took Lois's side and supposedly had
an affair with the 67-year-old. When she died in 1986, George took over, but Koresh fought back.
The two men decided to determine leadership by seeing who could reanimate a corpse. George dug
up a dead Davidian and laid the body on the altar. While he prayed for a miracle,
Koresh set to work getting him arrested for corpse abuse, but first he needed a photo.
George got wind of the set-up and dragged the body into the woods, where Koresh showed up
with a bunch of heavily armed men. The inevitable confrontation came in the form of an hour-long
machine gun battle, during which no one was actually hurt. But George pressed charges.
"He burned down our administration building.
He raped my mother. And now he came out here to try to kill me."
Somehow, Koresh walked free, while George went to prison for six months. By the time he got out,
Koresh was in full control. George ended up in a psychiatric institution
for murdering a man he thought was sent after him by Koresh. Ironically, in 1987,
Koresh wrote a song titled "Madman in Waco" about his former rival.
If you're aware of the inner workings of certain controversial religious organizations,
you know they don't appreciate being called cults. The Branch
Davidians were the exception. Former Davidian Dana Okimoto told ABC News,
"We knew it was a cult. We would joke about it all the time, like, 'Yep, we're cult members.'"
While the c-word might give many people pause,
Koresh saw it as another connection between himself and Christ. He pointed out that Jesus
started with 12 guys following him around while he preached radical religious ideas,
which could also be deemed a cult. Experts in cults and religions may beg to differ, however.
Koresh made more distinctly un-Christ-like admissions. He called himself the "sinful
Messiah" and claimed that only someone who sinned could fully relate to humans and lead them to
redemption. The nickname came back to haunt him on February 27, 1993, when the Waco Tribune-Herald
published an article with the headline "The Sinful Messiah," detailing abuse allegations from former
cult members against Koresh. The ATF would raid the Davidian compound the following day.
In 1989, David Koresh declared that all female Davidians were
his spiritual wives. This included married women
and pre-teen girls. All the other men were to be celibate and any marriages dissolved.
"I have separated couples."
"You have?"
"You better believe I have."
Koresh selected "carnal" wives, who were expected to sleep with him whenever he wanted. He would
then brag about his sexual experiences with them in front of everyone. Koresh wanted to start his
own bloodline, and he fathered as many as 20 children. By the time of the raid, he had 10
to 15 carnal wives, who were referred to as the House of David. It was supposed to be an honor.
"God would tell him which one. So God would be choosing them. So, in essence, God chose me."
Some of Koresh's "wives" were as young as 14. In 1995, 14-year-old Kiri Jewell,
who was taken to the Davidians as a child by her mother, testified to Congress that
she'd been groomed to become Koresh's next "wife" and forced into a sexual
relationship with him when she was just 10. Her father, who was not a Davidian,
eventually won custody of Jewell and took her away from Mount Carmel.
"He had uncommonly powerful capacities to manipulate
people and instantaneously decay souls."
Although David Koresh could be charming, he used psychological and physical abuse
to keep his followers in line. The Mount Carmel Center's remote location helped.
The compound was 13 miles from the city of Waco, which kept the inhabitants isolated.
Koresh dictated every aspect of his followers' lives. He decided when and where people slept,
when they could use the bathroom, what they read and watched, which jobs they did,
and where they went. Women weren't allowed to wear jewelry or makeup. Everyone had to
listen to him preach for hours on end. He also persuaded many members to give him their money
and possessions. Anyone who broke a rule would be subject to a Koresh tirade in front of the group.
Former Davidians have said that, from the age of eight months, children were expected
to instantly follow orders from adults and were beaten with paddles if they disobeyed,
sometimes to the point of drawing blood. Former Davidian Joann Vaega told ABC,
"You're raised with just fear. Everywhere is fear."
She was six at the time of the raid, and was released from the compound on March 2.
David Koresh invented weird and confusing rules about food. Followers weren't allowed sugar,
processed flour, or dairy products, the latter because he considered milk
to be "baby food." There were also certain forbidden food combinations:
apples and bananas were fine to eat together, but not bananas and oranges. You couldn't eat
fruits and vegetables in the same meal. Koresh didn't necessarily believe his rules. He wanted to
see if his followers were loyal enough to give up their favorite foods just because he told them to.
There were, however, large supplies of certain foods on the compound.
The Justice Department reported that Koresh had stocked up on enough canned
goods and MREs — non-perishable meals used by the military — to last a year.
The Branch Davidians were not a happy-clappy commune. David Koresh was turning them into
an army of religious fanatics, preparing to fight their way through an imminent apocalypse.
"They weren't firing at bulls-eye targets. They were firing at men silhouette targets."
"It looked like they were preparing for a war."
The Davidians believed they would have to fight the Beast of Babylon — which Koresh
identified as the government — to trigger the apocalypse and prove themselves worthy of heaven.
Koresh spent years putting his followers, children included, through military-style training,
to prepare for what he said would be a huge attack from the government.
"He always said that they would come for us,
and we were gonna defend ourselves, and we were all gonna die."
This all played into his vision of the apocalypse, based on the Book of Revelation in the Bible.
Unfortunately, the ATF's subsequent raid seemed to corroborate his ideas. As Kiri Jewell told ABC,
"They did exactly what he said they were gonna do."
Contrary to popular belief, David Koresh was not killed by the fire that engulfed the Mount
Carmel compound on April 19, 1993. A report by the Texas Rangers and FBI determined Koresh's cause
of death to be a bullet wound to the temple. Of the 50 adults and 25 children whose bodies
were recovered from the compound, 17 died from gunshot wounds, including at least four children.
"David's biggest failure was the fact that the kids were not released during
the siege at some point. [...] These kids never had a chance."
The report did not draw conclusions over whether
Koresh committed suicide or was killed by one of his followers.
The FBI had feared Koresh would order a mass suicide during the siege,
despite his constant assurances that this wasn't his plan. After all,
he wasn't exactly reliable. According to the Justice Department, on March 2,
one of the Davidians who had been released from the compound told the FBI that Koresh
was planning to come out with a small group and blow himself up, while everyone else killed each
other and themselves. He then canceled this plan, saying God told him to wait.
"I believe that David will be resurrected. And I'm gonna see my grandchildren again."
What actually happened in David Koresh's last moments will likely remain a mystery,
but his thirst for power and its deadly consequences will never be forgotten.