He was the self-proclaimed messiah who looked like a rock star.
A mesmerizing personality and passionate Bible knowledge combined to allow him to gain ascendancy
over a small group of followers, to manipulate them, use them for his sexual desires and
to prepare them for his own version of Armageddon.
Early Life Vernon Wayne Howell, the child who would become
David Koresh, was born on August 17th, 1959 in Houston, Texas.
His mother, Bonnie Clark, was just 14 at the time, while his father, carpenter Bobby Howell,
was a twenty-year-old drifter who abandoned his pregnant girlfriend when another girl
caught his eye.
Bonnie soon took up with a man who was a violent drunk.
They were married, with the union lasting for just two years.
They proved to be tortuous years for the infant, who would often recall in later life how his
step father mistreated him.
When the marriage was dissolved, Vernon was taken in by his maternal grandmother, Earline
Clark.
He grew into a likeable, mischievous child who was highly active.
In fact, he was given the nickname ‘Sputnik’ due to his boundless energy and in recognition
of the Soviet satellite.
At age six, Vernon was taken back in by his mother.
Bonnie had just married a man by the name of Roy Haldeman.
When he moved in with his mother she was pregnant again and, in 1966, she gave birth to Vernon’s
younger brother, Roger.
Vernon struggled in school, unable to keep up in elementary school to the extent that
he was placed in a remedial class.
The other kids in his school soon had a nickname for him – ‘Mr Retardo’.
Years later, Vernon recalled the effect that this ostracism had on his self esteem . . .
I mean, you’re, you know, ‘here comes the retarded kids.’
And its like I stopped in my tracks.
It is believed that one of the main reasons that Vernon struggled academically was that
he suffered from dyslexia, a condition which was little recognized at the time.
He was also a stutterer.
It was clear, however, that the boy wasn’t stupid.
He had a natural mechanical ability and loved nothing more than pulling gadgets apart and
then putting them back together again.
By the time he was a pre-teen, Vernon’s affinity with mechanics had morphed into a
love for cars.
It also led him, in a round -about way, to music.
Finding an abandoned, broken guitar in a barn, he fixed it up and began teaching himself
to play.
A Religious Bent
Vernon’s other great interest was in religion.
His family were Seventh Day Adventists and his grandmother often had him accompany her
to church.
He was reared within the moral confines of that way of worship, which meant no chasing
after girls, taking drugs or going to teen parties.
While his peers were engaged in these activities, Vernon was busy reading the Bible and watching
everything religious he could find on TV or read in books and magazines.
By the age of ten, he was able to recite long passages of scripture and was giving his own
mini sermons at home.
As a pre-teen, Vernon was still a stutterer.
He combined his passion for scripture with his efforts to overcome this speech impediment
by listening to powerful sermons on the radio and then reciting the preacher’s words.
He would study and emulate the vocal skills of the speaker, discovering that, when he
did so, his stutter disappeared.
Vernon’s formal schooling finished when he dropped out during his junior year at Garland
High School.
The eighteen-year-old gained work as a carpenter in Garland.
It was there that he began a relationship with a 15-year-old girl.
When she fell pregnant, the girl’s father became enraged.
He forced his daughter to break off the relationship and warned Vernon to stay away.
Vernon was in love with the girl, but saw no option but to heed the father’s advice.
By now his family were living in Tyler, Texas.
It was there that he approached his local Seventh Day Adventist elders and revealed
his dilemma to them.
He told them that he felt a moral obligation to marry the girl.
He was surprised, however, when the elders tried to persuade him against doing so.
He attempted to reason scripturally with them, only to find that they were getting angry
with him.
In the end, they ordered him to leave the church.
Finding the Branch Davidians
As a result of Vernon’s situation not only he, but his entire family, were excommunicated
from the Seventh Day Adventist Church.
Thoroughly disgusted with that organization, he began looking around for an alternative
church.
He was told about a group called the Branch Davidians who were based in Waco, Texas.
The Branch Davidians are an off-shoot of an off-shoot of the Seventh Day Adventist.
The original group was founded in 1929 by a Bulgarian immigrant to the US named Victor
Houteff.
Originally called The Shepherd’s Rod, the sect was set up in Waco, Texas.
The group were convinced that the Apocalypse was to occur in 1959.
When it didn’t, a group broke away under the leadership of a man named Benjamin Roden.
He called this group the Branch Davidians, in recognition of their holding to the coming
restoration of the Davidic Kingdom of Israel.
In 1978, Roden died and his wife, Lois, assumed leadership of the church.
Vernon Howell arrived at the Branch Davidian compound in 1980.
The twenty-year-old had long flowing hair, a charismatic personality and a self-effacing
manner.
He appeared to be extremely spiritual to those he met at the compound, holding to a strict
moral code and judging himself as chief among sinners.
He turned up with his guitar and a desire to use his music to reach young peole with
the message of the Lord.
Lois Roden was immediately taken with Howell and she invited him to move into the compound.
Before long the two became romantically involved, despite the fact that she was in her sixties.
Lois began to give Vernon growing prominence as a teacher at the compound.
She would give him time at the pulpit so that he could expound his scriptural interpretations
to the congregation.
Vernon’s preaching style was very different to what church goers were used to experiencing.
He wore a t-shirt and jeans and spoke with illustrations that were often startling in
their directness.
On one occasion he likened sin to snot on a person’s finger that he just can’t get
off.
Above all, he acknowledged himself as imperfect, weak and sinful.
Vernon’s natural charisma, his unkempt looks, the down to earth style and his deep scriptural
knowledge were a potent mix.
He purposefully positioned himself in the light of Jesus in opposition to the staid,
formulaic and hypocritical Pharisees of mainstream religion.
His status was elevated even further when he began to proclaim the gift of prophesy.
A few months after Vernon had moved in, Lois made the bombshell public announcement that
she was pregnant with his child.
She told her followers that this was all part of God’s divine arrangement.
However, she would go on to miscarry the baby.
Still, she elevated Vernon as her spiritual heir and the next leader of the Branch Davidians.
Battling for Control
Many in the congregation were in agreement with Lois’ consecration of Vernon as her
successor.
But there was one who definitely was not, Lois’ son, George.
George viewed Vernon as a dangerous usurper who had shamefully manipulated his way into
his mother’s good graces and was now poised to take over the leadership that was rightfully
George’s to inherit.
Over the next three years a power struggle was to play out between Vernon and George,
with the congregation split between the two.
Tensions came to a peak in 1984 when George and his armed supporters forced Vernon and
about twenty-five of his followers to leave the compound at Mt Carmel.
For the next two years, this group was situated at Palestine, Texas, some 90 miles away, where
they had to live in buses and tents.
During this time, Vernon put his skills into building up his base of followers.
Through his music and the power of his personality he was able to attract new members from far
and wide.
In 1985, he travelled to Israel with his pregnant wife, Rachel Jones, who was one of the congregation
members.
It was while in the Holy Land that he became convinced that he was the modern-day incarnation
of King Cyrus of Persia.
He had been tasked, he claimed, with opening the Seven Seals of the Book of Revelation
and proclaiming them to the world.
Back at Mt Carmel, George Roden was acting increasingly erratically, which was causing
his following to decline rapidly.
Many in the compound openly supported Vernon Howell and longed for his return.
Lois Roden had died in 1986, and George was determined to eliminate the threat that Vernon
posed to his leadership.
He decided to call Vernon out by challenging him to a resurrection competition.
The man that could successfully raise a dead person would be the acknowledged leader of
the church.
In order to achieve his ends, a now clearly psychotic George had a body exhumed.
When Vernon heard about this, he went directly to the authorities and laid a complaint that
George had been tampering with a dead body.
He was told that the authorities could do nothing unless they had photographic evidence.
In order to obtain the needed proof, Vernon led seven armed supporters into Mt Carmel.
Before they could find the exhumed body, however, they were discovered by George’s followers
and a gunfight broke out.
In the skirmish, Roden was wounded.
The police broke up the battle and Vernon and his followers were arrested and put on
trial for attempted murder, only to be acquitted of all charges.
Over the next couple of years, as Vernon’s following at Palestine grew, back at Mt Carmel,
George became ever more irrational.
When one of his supposed followers challenged him, claiming to be the messiah, George lost
control and killed the man with an axe.
This act saw him being sent to a hospital for the criminally insane.
Enter David Koresh
With George now well and truly out the way, Vernon and his followers re-entered the Mt
Carmel compound.
He was now the undisputed leader of the Branch Davidians.
Not long after his return, he had his name legally changed to David Koresh.
The word Koresh is the Hebrew name for Cyrus, who David was convinced he was the modern
day incarnation of.
With his new name came the conviction that Koresh was more than a prophet – he was
the modern-day messiah and the words that he spoke were of divine origin.
As the 1990’s dawned, David Koresh was a thirty-year-old self- proclaimed messiah with
a young wife and two children.
He presided over more than a hundred faithful adherents who lived together in a single large
building.
Having mastered the fusion of religious music and inspirational proselytizing, Koresh’s
marathon sermons could last all day – and all night.
Still, the believers would hang on to his every word.
Koresh began using his position as the revealer of God’s will to announce supposedly divine
decrees that were increasingly to his personal advantage.
One of the most controversial was that all of the women in the complex were to be available
at any time for his sexual pleasure.
This included all married women.
Koresh did not confine his sexual liaisons to adult women.
Girls as young as twelve became his sexual partners.
These ones had been convinced that to give themselves over to God in the form of Koresh
was the greatest privilege that they could attain to.
The men at Mt Carmel, including those who were married, were to remain celibate.
This was because there was only one seed that was holy, and it flowed from Koresh.
As a result, the majority of the children at the complex were his.
At the time of his death, he was father to 15 sons and daughters.
While the majority of the Branch Davidians accepted this arrangement as the will of God,
there were a handful of dissenters who left the church because of it.
Some of those who left were Australian.
After returning Down Under, they made a beeline for the American Embassy where charges of
child abuse were laid.
Back in the United States, other defectors made similar charges.
In response to the allegations, Child Protective Services sent investigators to the Mt Carmel
complex.
Their specific brief, however, was to assess the validity of an accusation that children
had access to firearms.
Koresh showed the agents that the firearms were all under lock and key and Child Protective
Services closed the case.
In the wake of the defections, Koresh became increasingly angry and violent towards his
followers.
When one woman expressed a desire to take her child and leave, he denied her permission
and, to teach her a lesson, raped her.
He then went on to recount the incident as a warning to the congregation.
At the same time, his sermons became darker, with a constant theme of the coming day of
judgment.
He told his followers that Armageddon was going to be initiated right there at Mt Carmel
and that they had to be prepared to give up their lives in order to usher in the Davidic
Kingdom.
Arming the Fortress
By 1992, Koresh had imbued a siege mentality into the minds of his followers.
The governmental authorities were the agents of the Devil and they were preparing for a
cataclysmic showdown with the true followers of God who were holed up at Waco.
By divine inspiration, Koresh revealed that he had been instructed to stockpile weapons
at the compound.
David soon discovered that the trading of guns was a lucrative business, providing much
needed funds for the ongoing costs associated with the compound.
He would have members buying up cheap weapons and then selling them at gun trade shows.
Any excess fund would be used to build up their arsenal.
Meanwhile the information about the presence of weapons at Mt Carmel had been passed on
by the agents who had visited from Child Protective Services to the FBI who had, in turn, given
it to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
The ATF now began surveillance of the property.
The situation went up a notch when a UPS delivery package was seen by agents to contain hand
grenades, which were illegal.
This discovery led to an 8-month investigation which revealed a trail of everything from
grenade launchers to assault weapons ending up at Mt Carmel.
By early November, 1992 the ATF had amassed enough evidence to take Koresh into custody.
They were worried though that his followers, who sincerely belived that he was the messiah,
would fight to stop them taking him away.
They could have arrested him when he was in town buying supplies but, for some reason,
chose not to.
Instead they placed some undercover agents in a small cabin that was situated right in
front of the entrance to the compound.
One of the agents, Robert Rodriguez, managed to befriend members of the group and get himself
invited to a Bible study class where he could observe Koresh up close.
The ATF concluded that Koresh was an imminent danger to society who could unleash his followers
and their lethal force upon any target at any time.
They decided that the best course of action was to stage a raid on the complex.
The date was set for February 28th, 1992.
An hour before the raid was scheduled to go down, undercover agent Rodriguez went into
the compound and showed Koresh tht morning’s copy of the local paper with its blazing headline
‘The Sinful Messiah’ alongside a picture of Koresh.
Koresh, who had already been informed that there was a build-up of law enforcement and
media around the area, told Rodriguez that he knew that the ATF were about to attack.
Upon exiting Mt Carmel, Rodriguez tried to warn his ATF bosses that Koresh already knew
about the surprise raid.
But it was too late; fully armed agents were already closing in on the compound.
To this day it remains unclear as to which side fired first, but within minutes a fierce
firefight was underway.
More than 70 ATF officers were secreted around the building while army helicopters circled
above.
Inside, Branch Davidian members poured fire on the invaders who had come to take away
their messiah.
The shooting lasted for more than sixty minutes.
Koresh was hit in the wrist, while six of his followers were shot dead.
Four ATF agents were also killed.
As the fighting continued, Koresh made a phone call to the local police department, urging
that the raid be stopped.
The request fell on deaf ears, and he hung up and proceeded to go upstairs.
It was then that he was wounded a second time, this time more seriously.
The bullet penetrated his hip, confining him to the floor.
When the shooting ended, the ATF had multiple casualties and no David Koresh.
Their handling of the raid was roundly condemned, leading to the intervention of the FBI.
With worldwide attention now focused on Waco, the new men in charge were determined to end
the stand off as quickly as possible.
The Siege
The final battle that Koresh had been proclaiming for so many years was now upon his followers.
With him were 117 of the faithful, including 46 children.
Nobody wanted to leave, but Koresh sent out 14 children, none of which were his offspring,
in the days after the raid.
Koresh’s main pre-occupation during the siege, which was to last for 51 days, was
to get his message about the Seven Seals out to the world.
The raid had created a media frenzy and he belived that he could capitalizes on the publicity
to get the word out.
For hours on end he proselytized over the phone to FBI negotiators.
Three days after the raid, Koresh agreed to bring out all of his followers if he could
get one of his sermons aired on the radio.
This was duly complied with but Koresh failed to live up to his side of the bargain, claiming
that God had told him to hold off until he received further instruction.
After two weeks, food, water and milk for the young children was running dangerously
low inside the compound.
Koresh told his slowly starving followers that the hardship they were facing was a direct
test of their faith in him.
Things got worse when the FBI cut off all power to the complex and began playing loud
music and shining blazing lights throughout the night to prevent the Branch Davidians
from sleeping.
Still the people inside would not budge.
Koresh had been letting out a trickle of people thus far but now he angrily declared that
no one else would leave Mt Carmel so long as the government kept up the torment.
An increasingly frustrated FBI now brought in Abrams tanks which proceeded to smash and
destroy all property outside the compound, including vehicles.
With the pressure tactics falling flat, the FBI allowed a defense attorney, hired by Koresh’s
mother, to go in and talk to his client.
Koresh told the lawyer that he knew that the government would not let him live.
Even though the FBI had offered to arrange for a worldwide television broadcast of his
message if he promised to come out, his trust in them was shattered and he refused the offer.
There was a breakthrough of sorts on April 14th when Koresh announced that God had instructed
him to write down the entire message of the Seven Seals of Revelation.
When this majestic work was completed he promised, the siege would be over and the Branch Davidians
would come out.
The seven seals offer, however, was never passed on to US Attorney General Janet Reno
who, on April 17th, authorized a plan to use tanks and tear gas to bring the siege to an
end.
End Times
The end began at 6am on April 19th when an FBI agent phoned Koresh and told him that
tear gas was being placed in the building by mechanical arms attached to tanks.
He stressed that it was not an assault and urged the Davidians not to fire their weapons.
The tank smashed into the building as it delivered CS gas.
Inside the people were in agony, unable to breath and feeling as if their throats and
lungs were on fire.
Still nobody came out.
After six hours, a fire erupted which quickly got out of control.
Now, surely, onlookers reasoned, those inside would come out.
But it wasn’t to be.
The fire raged through the building, killing 79 people including 22 children.
Koresh had made his way to the chapel.
With the flames closing in he died of a gunshot wound to the head.
Nobody knows whether or not he claimed his own life.