Young girls and old women, innocent and worldly, virginal and fecund. Within the walls of the kingdom on the flat plains of Texas, David Koresh knew them all-in the Biblical sense, former followers say. He began a decade ago with Lois Roden. She was 67 and the widowed leader of the Branch Davidians when the 23-year-old Koresh, still called by his birth name of Vernon Howell, arrived at the Mount Carmel compound. He confessed to the group that he worried about his excessive masturbation. Ex-members say Roden felt sorry for him and they became lovers, even tried to have a child. Koresh now disavows the union, saying she was as ugly as Medusa.

His next lover was at least a little bit closer to his own age. In 1984, he married Rachel Jones, the 14-year-old daughter of two followers; she bore him a son, Cyrus, and a daughter, Star. Koresh claimed to be monogamous for two entire years. But then, followers say, God told him to build a new House of David, one with many wives, just as King David had. Many wives, like Robyn Bunds, then 17, and later, her mother, Jeannine, 50. Robyn Bunds says Koresh fathered her 4-year-old son, Shaun. According to the Waco Tribune-Herald, she fled when Koresh took up with her mother. Both women now live in California.

As the years passed, the "wives" got younger and younger. Michelle Jones, 12, was his wife Rachel's little sister and, an ex-follower says, Koresh's special favorite. At least a dozen other nubile members of the flock succumbed; they wore Star of David pendants, a sign that they had been chosen. When the ex-husband of one Branch Davidian heard that his 10-year-old daughter was wearing the star, he sued for custody and, after winning, whisked her away to his home in Michigan, according to the Waco paper. Former followers say Koresh claimed to pick his wives for their spirituality; it was probably just a coincidence that they were all good-looking. Some are now young mothers whose children's birth certificates show no father's name-a way of hiding the divine plan from civil authorities, according to the Waco paper.

Many of the girls' parents were Koresh's followers; they gave their blessings because "they believed in his message," says Robyn Bunds's brother David. All in the name of God, of course. Koresh often preached from the 45th Psalm, where it is written that the king's head is anointed with the "oil of gladness." Koresh's unique analysis: the oil refers to vaginal secretions. During intercourse, his "wives" anoint the head of their king's penis.

It sounds like crazy talk now. Who could have believed it? But there they were, dozens of devotees, lured to a lonesome place on the Texas prairie by the promise of salvation. They had traveled from all over the country and beyond-Hawaii, Britain, Australia. Koresh had recruited many on his forays around the globe in search of new blood. Some turned all their worldly goods over to him. In several cases, that amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars. They were holed up in the fortress with the man who claimed to be both a prophet king and a warrior angel with the keys to heaven. Maybe even the Messiah.

He was a ninth-grade dropout, but his knowledge of the Scriptures was so formidable it truly seemed superhuman. And he could talk for hours and hours and hours, from early morning to well past midnight, while they listened until they could hear no more, not moving, not eating, not sleeping. "They lived in constant fear," says Rick Ross, a deprogrammer who counseled a former Branch Davidian. "He developed a crisis mentality, constantly talking about the end of the world, telling them they always had to be ready for the aggressors who would come from without the walls to destroy them." They were ready for Armageddon, and when federal agents stormed their fortress, it must have seemed as though the Last Days had begun.

This wasn't what the Creator had in mind. The Branch Davidians are an offshoot of a schism of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Their ancestors are the Davidian Seventh-day Adventists, founded in the 1930s by Victor Houteff, a Bulgarian emigre and prominent Los Angeles area Adventist, who bolted to Texas when a book he had written upset church officials. Houteff believed that the Adventists had become lax. "He believed that the return of Christ was imminent but that it could not happen until there was a purer church that could receive Christ," says Bill Pitts, a Baylor University religion professor who has studied the sect.

Houteff attracted scores of members to his semicommunal farm in Waco, but the organization began to fall apart a few years after his death in 1955. His widow, Florence, took over the helm and moved the group to the current site. In 1959, Pitts says, she proclaimed that the Kingdom of God would arrive on Easter Day. Hundreds of followers across the country sold everything, quit their jobs and made the trip to Waco for the big event. They were looking for some sign that the kingdom would be coming-a war in the Mideast or some other signal of cataclysm. Alas, the Lord didn't come and the failed prophecy shook the Davidians to the core. "After two or three weeks," says Pitts, "they experienced what is called 'The Great Disappointment'."

Although a core group of about 50 stayed in Waco after this sad episode, most of the Davidians moved on. A power struggle ensued. The group splintered and eventually a man named Ben Roden rose up and declared himself the leader of a new group, the Branch Davidians. Roden ruled until he died in 1978 and was succeeded by his wife, Lois.

Enter Vernon Wayne Howell. A would-be rock musician, he was the illegitimate son of Bonnie Haldeman. Born in Houston, he grew up in Dallas where he was raised as an Adventist. "He was a very bright little boy in lots of ways," says his maternal grandmother, Earline Clark of Chandler, Texas, "but when he started school, he was dyslexic." He went to a special school for a year or so, but never did well. By the ninth grade, he had dropped out. Despite these difficulties, he studied the Bible and played the guitar, Clark says. At 18 he moved to Tyler, Texas, not far from Chandler, where he joined the Adventist Church. But his grandmother says local church leaders didn't care for his long hair and casual dress. Clark says Howell became disillusioned with the Tyler church and shortly thereafter moved to Waco to be with the Branch Davidians.

When Howell arrived, Lois Roden's control over the Branch was already waning. Her son, George, thought he should be his father's true successor, and some Branch Davidians were more than a little perturbed by Lois Roden's recent proclamation that the Holy Spirit was feminine. Former followers say they didn't like George Roden much, either. Thought he was nuts. Howell walked right into this power vacuum. Over the next few years, he bedded Lois Roden and married Rachel Jones, according to ex-adherents. After his marriage, he shunned the old woman, declaring that his beliefs were now the true revealed word. He had a charismatic manner and a scriptural answer for everything. "He knew the Bible awful well," says Doug Mitchell, a former member of the group who now lives in California. "He was always teaching that Sister Roden had lost her inspiration." Howell also pestered Roden to get rid of her son. Howell and George Roden got into a few fights (Howell's relationship with his mother couldn't have helped), and George began wearing a gun around the compound. It was the first weapon ever seen at Mount Carmel, Mitchell says. Around this time, Mitchell recalls going to consult with Lois Roden about some minor issue. "Ask Vernon," she said with a sigh. "He seems to be in charge."

What put Vernon in charge was his new revelation. He was the seventh and final angel destined to be the agent of God who brought about the end of the world. This was truly an apocalyptic vision, but it was also the logical conclusion of Howell's earlier prophecies. He had originally preached that the end would come when he moved to Israel and began converting the Jews. The conversion, he claimed, would cause worldwide upheaval, start a war and would cause American armed forces to invade the Holy Land. That would signal the beginning of Armageddon. Then Howell would be transformed into a warrior angel who would cleanse the earth in preparation for the New Jerusalem.

Howell actually went to Israel in the 1980s but things didn't work out as he had predicted. So he switched to Plan B. In 1990, he legally changed his name to David Koresh (Koresh is Hebrew for Cyrus, the Babylonian king who allowed the Jews to return to Israel). Abandoning the notion of an Apocalypse starting in Israel, he began predicting that the great battle would be in Texas, says David Bunds. The group would stay at Mount Carmel and await the moment when the American army attacked and brought about the end of the world.

In the meantime, they managed to keep fairly busy with the mundane details of pre-apocalyptic earthly life. Howell and a core group of about 25 members left the compound after Lois Roden's death in 1986 and wandered through Waco, other parts of Texas and California. In 1987, they were living in the aptly named town of Palestine, Texas, when they decided to wrest back Mount Carmel from George Roden, who at that point claimed to be the true prophet of the Branch. Roden heard about their intentions and challenged his rival to a grisly contest. He dug up a coffin containing the corpse of an 85-year-old woman and announced that whoever of them could resurrect the woman was the true leader. Howell wisely declined to participate.

On Halloween of that year, Denise Wilkerson, then a prosecutor in Waco, received an unusual request from sheriff's deputies. Howell wanted to prosecute Roden for corpse abuse. "Given that it was Halloween, we thought it was a joke," Wilkerson says. Nevertheless, she told the sheriff's department that without evidence of a crime, say a photograph showing that there was actually a corpse in the coffin, she could not file charges. A few days later, in the early morning hours of Nov. 3, Howell and seven heavily armed comrades dressed in camouflage fatigues made their way from Palestine onto the grounds of Mount Carmel. Their alleged goal: to get a picture of the corpse. The invaders waited until many of the adults and children at Mount Carmel had left for work and school, then went from building to building warning members to leave because there might be trouble. One member notified Roden instead. Wilkerson says Roden grabbed his Uzi and a 20-minute fire fight followed. The sheriff was called and the shooting stopped. No one was killed, but Roden was slightly wounded in the hand and chest.

Howell and his men were charged with attempted murder and released on bond. Then Roden was jailed for contempt of court in an unrelated case after he filed "some of the most obscene and profane motions that probably have ever been filed in a federal courthouse," says Wilkerson. Howell seized the moment, moving his followers into Mount Carmel and fortifying the place.

In early 1988, Howell and the seven members of his team went on trial for attempted murder. Claiming that he was aiming at a tree, Howell admitted shooting in Roden's direction, and that his colleagues had merely fired their guns into the air to scare Roden into giving up. Howell's accomplices were acquitted, and Howell's trial ended in a hung jury. "After the verdict was announced," Wilkerson recalls, "a couple of jurors came over and hugged Vernon because they found him to be a very sympathetic character." Then, as the spectators were filing out of the courtroom, Howell invited everyone, including the jury, out to Mount Carmel for an ice-cream social.

A few months later George Roden got out of jail on the contempt charges and moved to Odessa. Not long afterward he was sent to a state mental hospital after killing a man. (Still there last week, he said, "I've been trying to warn people about Vernon for years.")

Since the trial, Mount Carmel has presented a quiet front to the outside world. Neighbors reported that Howell/Koresh was a regular guy, who often turned up at local clubs to listen to live music. Brent Moore, manager of the Chelsea Street Pub, says he last saw Koresh about a month ago, when he came to the pub with a man and a woman in their early 20s. They were happily chowing down bean and cheese nachos with iced tea.

But within the cult, former followers say life grew more and more bizarre. At the compound, there was an armed guard at all times and Koresh was in total control. In August 1989, former followers say, he announced that not only was he allowed to have as many wives as he wanted; he was the only man allowed to have wives. Every other marriage was annulled. Many happily married couples in the group were shocked and quite a few left. Marc Breault was one of them. After moving to Australia, he organized other former Branch Davidians and hired an investigator to go to Waco to get local authorities to bust Koresh, according to the Waco paper.

In addition to the weird sex, there were charges of child abuse. Followers claimed that Koresh beat even very young children until they were bruised and bleeding. Koresh has denied these claims, and child-welfare workers who visited Mount Carmel said they found nothing wrong-although some followers say Koresh was tipped off before their arrival.

But just as Koresh had predicted, the end of the world-at least his world-was near. A few years ago a bus was buried to serve as a bunker; in recent months stores of food and ammunition have been brought in. None of the children Koresh released after the shoot-out were his, the heirs to the House of David, ex-members believe. So all is still in place for the grand finale. The adults, says Bunds, are probably happy to stay. "They are waiting to get zapped up to heaven where they'll be transformed and fight a war where they get to kill all their enemies ... The only people that may be sorry are the parents who had to let their children be released." With the youngsters gone, they had but one life to lose for their prophet.

http://www.newsweek.com/messiah-waco-191160

The announcement blared over loudspeakers just before dawn on April 19. Many of the Branch Davidians were sleeping; a few were awake, reading their Bibles. "This is not an assault! Do not fire! Come out now and you will not be harmed!" FBI agents were warning cult members to leave Ranch Apocalypse on what the agents hoped would be the last day of the standoff. Survivors heard a different message. "Some of the very religious people," says Jack Zimmermann, a cult member's lawyer, "thought it was the last day of the world." For most of them, it would be.

Even after 51 days of facing each other across the wind-swept plains of central Texas, the FBI and the Branch Davidians were still aliens to each other -viewing reality through very different prisms. Outside the barbed wire encircling Ranch Apocalypse, the imperative was clear: uphold the law. Inside, the Branch Davidians believed they answered to a higher authority. It was a recipe for disaster.

Weeks of negotiations and broken promises, glimmers of hope and crushing disappointments. It all led to the ending that the FBI had tried to avoid. How could the federal authorities have so misjudged the cult's intentions? Did the Branch Davidians really intend to commit suicide, or was the fire an accident (page 28)? In the first hours after the fire, it seemed important to find someone to blame for the terrible loss of life: 86 people, including at least 17 children. Was that someone cult leader David Koresh? The FBI? Attorney General Janet Reno? President Clinton? Polls, including NEWSWEEK'S, showed the public quickly decided Koresh was the villain. Was the whole operation doomed from the start? From dozens of interviews with Branch Davidians, law-enforcement officials, former cult members and lawyers, a team of NEWSWEEK correspondents pieced together the last days of the cult-the final act of the tragedy in Waco.

By early April, FBI officials in charge of the siege were frustrated by negotiations with Koresh and his lieutenants. To his followers, Koresh was the chosen one, but the FBI saw only a grandiose fanatic who prophesied awful calamities. They were haunted by the deaths of four agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in the original Feb. 28 raid on the compound. They feared that more agents might die before Koresh was captured. Experts consulted by the FBI-psychologists, theologians, cult deprogrammers--were alarmed by Koresh's apocalyptic visions. In an April 9 letter to the FBI, Koresh predicted that there would be an earthquake and that a dam would burst. The FBI feared Koresh sympathizers might be inspired to blow up a dam in Waco to make their prophet look good. "We are listening to the ramblings of a diseased mind," Syracuse University psycholinguist Murray Miron told the FBI. "These are one-sided delusional tirades made by a paranoiac." In the first four weeks, 34 people voluntarily left the compound, including 21 children. No one else seemed ready to come out. The FBI was tired of waiting.

In the days before the final assault, the Davidians had settled into a comfortable routine, according to cult members' lawyers who visited Ranch Apocalypse. The children, some of them believed to be Koresh's own by a multitude of mothers, spent much of their time in dormitory-like rooms on the second floor. The walls were decorated with drawings and construction-paper cutouts: cowboys and Indians, flowers, letters of the alphabet. The cult members didn't forget their manners when the lawyers visited, offering them some of the two-year supply of military rations they had amassed-chicken A la king, recalls attorney Jack Zimmermann, who represented Steve Schneider, Koresh's right-hand man.

The Davidians had adapted to the FBI's pressure tactics, the lawyers say. Earthly inconvenience didn't matter much in their grand scheme. Spotlights shining through their windows all night? More illumination for Bible study, and especially welcome since the electricity had been cut off. The nightly loudspeaker renditions of Nancy Sinatra, Tibetan monks and of rabbits being slaughtered only intensified their solidarity. They exercised regularly, trying to keep in shape. Koresh was articulate and charming, always eager to share his version of the Scriptures. He had a stubble of beard, "like a guy who used an electric shaver and ran out of batteries," Zimmermann recalls. Schneider was always well groomed, even worried about his appearance. At one point, he asked Zimmermann: "Should I get one of our people in here to cut my hair before I come out or let the people at the jail cut it?"

The Davidians didn't trust the government. They were still outraged over relatively minor incidents. Six Alaskan Malamutes, "nice dogs," were hit by ATF bullets in the first raid, according to Dick DeGuerin, Koresh's lawyer. "They shot them but they didn't finish them off," DeGuerin says. "They were the kids' pets. The dogs were squealing and squawling. They had some mongrels out there, too, that got hurt in the razor wire. That angered them."

The FBI was angry, as well: too many false promises. On March 2, the third day of the standoff, Koresh had vowed to come out after the FBI allowed the broadcast of a 58-minute religious message Koresh had taped. But later that day Koresh announced that God had told him to wait. On March 20, Koresh demanded that he be allowed to preach to his flock while he was in jail awaiting trial, Two days later the FBI agreed in a letter to Koresh signed by Special Agent in Charge Jeff Jamar. Schneider was pleased, but then told negotiators that Koresh "had taken the letter, wadded it up and thrown it in the corner."

In early April, there was once again reason for hope. Koresh agreed to surrender after the cult members celebrated Passover. But it turned out that only he knew when his version of the holiday ended. Then Koresh pledged to come out after finishing his manuscript on the Seven Seals of the Book of Revelation. By this time, the FBI didn't believe Koresh would ever leave voluntarily. Agents say Schneider, who logged more than 100 hours of telephone conversations with the FBI during the siege, told them that Koresh wasn't even working on the manuscript. Says Jamar: "It was just another stall."

On April 7 and 8, FBI Deputy Director Floyd Clarke and Assistant Director Larry Potts took an unannounced trip to Waco. The trip's purpose was for Jamar and his aides to brief Clarke and Potts on a plan to end the siege. Jamar wanted to roll in tanks and shoot the compound full of nonlethal gas.

On April 12, Attorney General Janet Reno, in office for just a month, convened a 90-minute meeting at the FBI's fifth-floor command center in Washington with senior officials of the FBI and the Department of Justice: Director William Sessions, Clarke, Potts and a handful of others. The tank-and-gas plan was outlined in great detail. Reno asked scores of questions. Two days later she widened the task force, calling in about a dozen Justice and FBI officials, along with representatives of the army's elite Delta Force and an expert on tear gas. For early two hours Reno played prosecutor, cross-examining the participants. "Why now? Is there anything else that can be done? What's the likely effect on the children? Is this the best chance of getting the most people out of there?"

Associate Attorney General-designate Webster Hubbel, who was at the meeting, told NEWSWEEK that Reno was relentless: "I don't know of any question people have asked since that she didn't ask then." Reno's primary concern appeared to be the welfare of the children, Hubbel says. Several participants at the meeting, including Reno, said FBI agents told them that a cult member who left the compound early in the siege had talked of babies being beaten, being slapped around. Reno asked: "Do you really mean beaten?" The agents said yes.

Reno was also worried by reports that sanitary conditions were rapidly deteriorating. Ranch Apocalypse never had proper toilets or running water. Before the siege, the adults would collect human waste, in a bucket and trudge out every morning to a grassy area beyond the pool to bury the waste. But after Feb. 28, those sorties stopped because cult members feared being shot by FBI snipers. In the end, members were reduced to tossing buckets of waste out the front door. In an interview later on CNN's "Larry King Live," Reno said her "horrible fear" was that "if I delayed, without sanitation or toilets there...I could go in there in two months and find children dead from any number of things."

Reno also asked a lot of questions about the gas, NEWSWEEK has learned. It was CS gas, which is much more debilitating than normal tear gas. She listened attentively as Dr. Harry Salem of the army's Edgewood Research Development and Engineering Center in Maryland assured her that the gas was nonlethal, wouldn't permanently harm adults or children and wouldn't start a fire during delivery. Salem methodically listed the possible effects: eye irritation, crying, mucous-membrane irritation, coughing, sneezing, difficulty in breathing. The gas, he told Reno, was "the best nonlethal alternative that's available."

The gas had another advantage, the experts told Reno. It was their "unanimous and constant opinion" that gas was the best way to prevent mass suicide, Hubbell says. FBI agents told the group, he says, that "they would go in and knock huge holes in the wall and give people the opportunity to run out. The gas would disorient anyone who would presumably be doing the shooting" in a homicide or suicide scenario.

Reno convened still another meeting on Saturday. Her senior staff had gathered early to watch the Rodney King verdict come in. At 3:30, they ordered a late lunch and shared pepperoni pizza in Reno's conference room. At 6, they met again, with the leftover pizza strewn about the table. Once more, Reno asked FBI officials about the safety of the children. That evening she made up her mind. The next day, Sunday, April 18, she called President Clinton and talked to him for 15 minutes. Reno recalls the conversation: "'Have you carefully considered it?' he asked. 'Do you feel this is the best way to go?' And I said, 'Yes, sir, it's my responsibility, and I think it's the best way to go'."

At 4 a.m. on April 19, in the predawn darkness of the Texas prairie, Jeff Jamar was concentrating on the wind. For 51 days Jamar had waited for this moment. The FBI was in full force, with all 170 agents in Waco on duty. The Feds had brought in M-60 tanks reconfigured into Combat Engineering Vehicles-CEVs. Attached to the front of two of the CEVs were large booms, or arms. The plan was to poke those booms through the walls of the compound on the far left and right sides of the building and then pump gas into the upper and lower levels of the compound to try and drive the cult members into the center and out the front. Dick Rogers, head of the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team, led the actual gassing operation. He was buttoned up in an A-1 Abrams command tank outside the compound, linked to the rest of his team, who were either in CEVs or standing by in four Bradley armored personnel carriers stationed outside the wire perimeter. FBI snipers were posted in two houses more than 100 yards across from the compound on Double EE Ranch Road.

As Jamar and his aides gathered in the FBI's forward command post a mile from the compound, everything was set for a final push-an end to the standoff at Ranch Apocalypse. Everything except the wind.

Around Waco, the wind is always blowing, sending clouds of dust through the grass. Now, if it was blowing too hard, it would dissipate the effect of the tear gas by blowing the gas out of the compound. At 4 a.m., it was still blowing. Finally, after almost an hour of tense waiting and watching, there was a lull. It was time.

At 5:55 a.m., Byron Sage, the FBI's negotiations coordinator on the scene, picked up the phone and called the compound, as he had done many times before. He asked for Koresh or Schneider. Schneider came to the phone and Sage told him: "There's going to be tear gas injected into the compound. This is not an assault. Do not fire. The idea is to get you out of the compound." The same message was broadcast simultaneously to the Davidians via the elaborate speaker system that the FBI had set up around Ranch Apocalypse. Schneider's response was unequivocal. "Everybody grab your masks!" he yelled to his fellow cult members. Then, in a gesture of defiance, he picked up the phone and threw it out the front window.

The Branch Davidians had known for weeks that this moment was coming. Koresh had predicted it: Armageddon, right here on the ranch. They had fortified the compound. Zimmermann had seen the makeshift barricade near the front door: a piano, sacks of potatoes, industrialsize canned vegetables. In the same location, there was also a large metal drum of propane gas that the Davidians used for cooking. Most of the windows had been shot out; they were covered with cloth to keep out the wind and rain. The cloth was attached to the top of the window with nails or thumbtacks and anchored with bales of hay to the floor. The window coverings made even the exterior rooms so dark during the day that after power was cut off, almost every room had a Coleman lantern.

Around 6 a.m., Jaime Castillo, a 25-year-old native of El Monte, Calif., asleep in the compound's chapel, was awakened by a horrendous crash. He groped his way to the first-floor room where he normally slept, only to see that a large hole had been punched into the wall. Later, he tried to move around the building, but the repeated pounding on the exterior had left piles of rubble everywhere. The central stairway between the first and second floors was littered with plasterboard and wood and had partially collapsed. He didn't see or hear any of the children, usually asleep in their upstairs bedrooms. Sources told NEWSWEEK the children donned adult-size gas masks with wet towels stuffed around them to make them fit.

David Koresh had been up all night, working on what one survivor said was his manuscript. When the assault began, he was still dressed in sweat pants and a tank top. Later he donned a canvas hunting vest with numerous pockets, the kind used for holding ammunition.

Jamar says that almost immediately after the tanks started punching holes into the building and injecting gas, the cult members fired at the tanks-a charge survivors deny. "They fired with automatic weapons, probably AR-15s or AK-47s," says Jamar. The FBI did not return the fire, Jamar says, but because they were under attack, they moved on to the next phase of their plan: gassing the entire building. They were prepared to wait up to 48 hours for all the cult members to come out. Inside the compound, survivors say, Davidians read their Bibles through the lenses of their gas masks. The gassing continued for 30 minutes, Jamar says, and then the FBI pulled back for two minutes to give cult members time to get out. No one did. The gassing resumed. The FBI also fired teargas projectiles through windows and walls.

At 8:30, after the second round of gassing ended, Jamar received bad news: more wind. In a matter of hours there were gusts of up to 35 knots. Jamar met with aides halfway between the command post and the compound. "There was a lot of activity in front of the windows," he recalls, "people with long rifles. So we decided to gas the front, but we also thought, maybe people can't get out. They're blocked or there's someone blocking the doors." Tanks bashed in the wall next to the front door.

The last time any of the survivors say they saw David Koresh was at about 10 a.m., when he was walking up and down the second-floor hallway, checking cult members' gas masks, Zimmermann says. Survivors say they last saw Steve Schneider about a half hour later, wearing headphones, listening to the radio.

The final round of gassing was over by about 11:50, Jamar says. Eighteen bottles of tear gas had been injected into the compound. Then, at 12:05: smoke.

Jamar saw the first ominous dark curls fanning out of the front right corner of the compound. At the same time, an FBI plane flying overhead videotaped a huge fire that had started behind the tower. Altogether, there appeared to be as many as four separate blazes starting almost simultaneously, Jamar says. At that point a few people finally fled the compound. "I saw the smoke, I saw the flames and I saw people coming out," Jamar says. "And I thought, 'Well, he's burning the crime scene'." Then the full impact hit Jamar. "People stopped coming out and the fire just roared ... It was just horror."

One cult member, Renos Avraam, appeared on the top of the burning roof. He fell to the ground, and FBI agents rescued him. In another part of the compound, a distraught woman, Ruth Riddle, emerged from the flames. She tried to go back in, but agents rescued her, too. Six other cult members, including Castillo, escaped from the right side or the rear of the building. A ninth cult member, Graeme Craddock, came out of his hiding place near the old water tower about an hour after the fire went out. Everyone else, including Schneider and Koresh, was presumed dead.

"It was a mass murder," Jamar insists. It wasn't a mass suicide. Those people would have done whatever he said. If he told them to 'leave, I'll stay here and burn,' they would have left."

In the days and hours afterward, accusations of blame flew as fast as the fires had spread through the compound. The FBI claimed that the fires were part of a suicide plan; the survivors just as adamantly denied it. They said the FBI had knocked over the lanterns and the propane, and the combination of hay, kerosene and wind had turned the compound's long corridors into a tragically effective flue that spread flames instantly through the building. NEWSWEEK has learned that late last week arson investigators uncovered new evidence that the fires were set: metal lantern-fuel containers with what appeared to be deliberate punctures.

As the law-enforcement officials combed through the debris, devastated survivors, former cult members and their families around the world tried desperately to make sense of the pain. In Manchester, England, Nellie Morrison, the grandmother of 6-year-old Melissa Morrison, could only scream hysterically at her television set as she watched the compound where the little girl lived go up in flames. Nellie Morrison's daughter, who also died, had been a dedicated Branch Davidian. Samuel Henry, another Briton, lost his wife and his five children. "There's no point in anger," he says. "My family's dead already."

In the McLennan County Jail, Livingston Fagan, a Branch Davidian who left the compound four weeks ago, told NEWSWEEK he's sad because he didn't die with his friends and family. The fact that so many of them chose to burn together, rather than surrender, he says, was "an indication of the strength of their faith."

In Los Angeles, two women are piecing together new lives. Jeannine Bunds, 51, lived in the compound for several years and was one of Koresh's "wives." A nurse and midwife, she delivered many of the children who died in the fire. She left in 1991, when Koresh asked her if she was capable of killing her children. "Personally, I don't believe much of anything anymore," she says. "I put my whole heart and soul in this. To go through what I did, it's hard to know what to think." Her daughter, Robyn Bunds, 23, was one of Koresh's wives too. Four years ago Jeannine delivered Robyn's son, Shaun, at the compound. The father was David Koresh. Of the many children Koresh sired, Shaun may be the only one still alive. Last week Shaun proudly showed off a stamp on his hand, a picture of Rocky from the "Rocky and Bullwinkle" cartoon show. He got it that morning at a Mexican restaurant. "He doesn't really understand anything," his mother explained. And then she cried.

The fire may have consumed 86 Davidians (and six died Feb. 28), but the FBI has not identified all who were in the compound. Here is what we know about 104 cult members who perished-or got out:

AGE : Adults 18 and older 34 Adolescents 14 to 17 2 Children under 14 17 

Age unknown 8 

NATIONALITY American 32 British 14 Australian 3 New Zealander 3 Filipino 1 
 Israeli 1
 Unknown 7 

GENDER Females 37 Males 24 

CHILDREN FATHERED BY KORESH 7

Cult members who left the compound after Feb. 28 (includes 21 children 12 and under) 34 

Cult members who survived April 19 fire 9 

Among the many oddities surrounding the 1993 conflagration at Waco, Texas, there is the mystery of page 49. The story goes like this: after the disastrous siege that ended in the deaths of David Koresh and some 80 of his Branch Davidian followers, Attorney General Janet Reno ordered up an exhaustive investigation. She had directed that nothing pyrotechnic be used in the standoff, and now she wanted to be assured that her orders had been followed. Justice Department lawyers interviewed scores of FBI agents and reviewed thousands of documents. Buried somewhere among them, on the 49th and final page of a dry FBI crime-lab report, was a small reference to a "fired U.S. military 40mm shell casing" used to disperse tear gas. To anyone who understands weaponry, it should have been a bright red flag: unlike plastic "ferret rounds" of tear gas that are often used to break up unruly crowds, military shells burn when released. They can start fires--precisely what Reno had prohibited.

But when Justice turned over that report to congressional investigators in 1995, page 49 was missing. "It appears that the page on which mention is made of a shell casing for military CS round... was not produced to Congress," a Justice Department lawyer explained in a recent memo obtained by NEWSWEEK. Congressional investigators want to know what happened to the page. Was it accidentally lost in some cardboard box? Or did someone purposely remove it? Justice officials say they haven't a clue.

The story of page 49 is much like the tale of Waco itself. The Feds made mistakes and then exercised painfully poor judgment by covering their tracks, making their motives look more suspect than they probably were. After it was revealed in court papers last month that FBI agents at Waco had in fact used incendiary devices--and that elite units from the Army's secretive Delta Force may have played a larger role than was previously acknowledged--an angry Reno made a show of seizing evidence from FBI headquarters, embarrassing FBI Director Louis Freeh. Last week, amid calls for her resignation, she tapped former Missouri senator John Danforth, an upright Episcopal priest and Republican, to lead an unfettered probe into the Waco catastrophe. His mission: find out what really happened.

Barring still more surprises, it's unlikely that Danforth will unearth any proof that the nation's most storied crime-fighting outfit set the fatal fire in Waco. After all, among the damning bits of evidence against the Davidians is a chilling audiotape in which members can be heard talking about the need to pour fuel around the compound so they can start the "fire." The two pyrotechnic devices fired by agents were likely irrelevant; they were launched at an underground bunker 40 yards from the main compound, and about three hours before the fire even began. The outcome was undeniably disastrous; about 80 people, 25 of them children, were brought out of the compound dead. But for all the tragic missteps, it would seem, there's no evidence that the FBI had a plot to cover up.

Even so, the Feds may have committed a damaging crime in the aftermath of Waco: they concealed and may have lied about relatively minor mistakes, and fueled a conspiracy when there didn't need to be one. Virtually every right-wing antigovernment group points back to Waco as the moment that Washington waged war on its own people. Even the Oklahoma City bombing has its roots in the faith that the Branch Davidians were murdered by the FBI after they had fended off the "jackbooted thugs," as the National Rifle Association once referred to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. "Had there been an honest investigation and inquiry into Waco in 1993, and had there been justice or the appearance of justice, then clearly there would have been no Oklahoma City bombing," says Stephen Jones, the lawyer who represented Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. That may be a stretch, but by failing to reveal all the facts in Waco, the FBI may have legitimized the views of the survivalist fringe. "The FBI didn't set the fire," a Justice official says. "But they set the conspiracy fire. That's the tragedy here."

The roots of the debacle are hard to trace. From the earliest reports of families with children holed up in the heavily-armed compound, the Waco affair had all the makings of a disaster. After four agents died in the Feb. 28, 1993, ATF raid, the FBI began a long and frustrating siege. Reno had been on the job for only weeks--and like many in the Clinton White House had no federal law-enforcement experience--when the FBI began pressing to launch a tear-gas attack. She questioned the agents and then reluctantly went along with their plan, stipulating no use of incendiary devices. Then on the climactic day, she went to Baltimore to give a speech.

Reno was only nominally in charge. The FBI's vaunted Hostage Rescue Team viewed her as a mushy-headed social worker, and the agents were determined to do things their way. The FBI director at the time, William Sessions, was under an ethical cloud and was less engaged than his successor Freeh, who took office on Aug. 6, 1993. (Freeh himself has not been implicated in a cover-up.) Bureau sources say the agents saw the 51-day standoff at Waco as an opportunity to put their expertise to use, and to break out some new weaponry. They apparently ignored Reno's orders; agents can be heard on tape getting authorization from the head of the hostage-rescue team to fire the military-style tear gas. "Some of the cowboys at FBI were strutting," says a former law-enforcement official. When their plan failed, Reno took full responsibility--and assured Congress that nothing incendiary had been used.

Many people knew otherwise. Documents provided to Congress last week show that Justice Department interviews of FBI agents produced numerous mentions of the military shell casings. One agent talked about using a "military... outdoor pyrotechnic." A senior FBI official told NEWSWEEK that as many as 100 FBI agents and officials may have known about the devices. It's still not clear why no one spoke up earlier.

Conspiracy theorists believe Reno and the FBI covered up the murder of the Davidians. This still seems farfetched. The "evidence" for FBI gunfire centers on murky infrared videotapes that supposedly capture gunfire going into the compound. In a recent film, Waco critic Michael McNulty points to FBI footage that shows black shapes and flashes of light. McNulty's film claims the shapes are agents and the flashes gunfire. In fact, an unedited version of the footage shows FBI tanks rolling over the shapes, so it's highly unlikely they were agents.

Conspiracies aside, FBI agents may have had a more mundane reason for staying in the background: if they volunteered information about the pyrotechnic weapons, they may have faced accusations that they disobeyed a direct order from their new boss. And they may have justified their silence, in a Clintonian way, by assuming that the pyrotechnic rounds were irrelevant as long as they didn't actually start the fire.

Others, including Justice officials, may have been confused about the evidence. Bill Johnston, a federal prosecutor who brought charges against some of the Davidians, acknowledged in a recent letter to Reno that he may have been in a 1993 meeting when FBI agents referred to "military gas rounds." But Johnston said he probably wouldn't have understood the significance. In his letter, he warned Reno that "facts may have been kept from you--and quite possibly are being kept from you even now."

The confusion over who knew and who should have known has further strained relations between the FBI and the Justice Department. FBI agents say they told Justice the truth about the incendiary weapons, but nobody listened; Justice says the FBI hid evidence of its insubordination. Freeh was said to be miffed at the heavy-handed way Justice confiscated evidence from FBI headquarters. Reno was said to be furious at having been misled. Still, a friend who had dinner with Reno last week says she was upbeat about her relationship with Freeh. Some of her deputies see it differently. Freeh and his agents "have been sabotaging her all along," says a Justice official. "That's SOP [standard operating procedure] at the bureau."

It's up to Danforth to slog through the mutual recrimination--as well as the fuzzy videotapes, missing audiotapes and slippery documents. Known in the Senate as "Saint Jack," the former prosecutor's word is trusted by some of Reno's most ardent foes. If Danforth says there were no "dark crimes," as he put it, most critics may listen. Then again, maybe not. Indiana Rep. Dan Burton, who spent years chasing an alleged plot to kill Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster, has taken up the Waco cause and is consulting with filmmaker McNulty. Thanks to the mishaps at Justice, the Waco conspiracy lives on.

http://www.newsweek.com/fire-wont-die-166178

The fire engulfs the Branch davidian compound at Mount Carmel in Waco.

4 U.S. Agents Killed in Texas Shootout With Cult

By Sam Howe Verhovek

Special to The New York Times

Waco, Tex., Monday, March 1 -- A raid on the heavily armed compound of a religious cult here erupted into a bloody gun battle on Sunday, leaving at least four Federal agents and two cult members dead and at least 15 agents injured.

The cult's 33-year-old leader, who has told followers that he is the Messiah, told a local radio station that a 2-year-old inside the walled compound had been killed in the shootout and that several other people were hurt. But a standoff at the compound that continued early this morning prevented any independent confirmation of his account.

The battle erupted after more than 100 agents, seeking to arrest the leader on a weapons charge, emerged from hiding in livestock trailers about 9:30 Sunday morning and entered the fortified 77-acre compound, 10 miles outside of Waco. The agents retreated after 45 minutes of shooting, their dead and wounded carried away by ambulance and helicopter, and negotiated a cease-fire with the group by phone.

An Evening Shootout

Then, at 7 P.M., three members of the sect came out of the compound and began shooting at agents, said a spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in Washington, which conducted the raid. Two were killed and one captured. The leader of the group, David Koresh told CNN that he himself had been 'shot through the guts.'

In a rambling interview with CNN, Mr. Koresh said that he would release children in the group two by two if radio stations played his religious messages. Two children were released around 9 P.M. after a statement by Mr. Koresh was read on a local radio station, and later four more left the compound in pairs, officials and agents said. Mr. Koresh and officials continued to negotiate by telephone into the early morning hours.

The raid came the day after a long investigative article on the sect appeared in a local newspaper, but an official of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms said the raid had been planned for months. The official, Ted Royster, special agent for its Dallas field office, who spoke at a news conference here Sunday afternoon, said, however, that it was clear that despite elaborate preparations, members of the sect, the Branch Davidians, had somehow learned of the raid in advance.

'They knew we were coming,' Mr. Royster said. 'I cannot tell you what went wrong. It appeared as though they were waiting for us.' He did not elaborate.

But a bureau spokesman in Washington, Jack Killorin, said later that officials believed the cult received a telephone tip just as the agents were moving into place.

It was one of largest operations ever mounted by the bureau, an agency of the Treasury Department that enforces Federal law on trafficking in illegal weapons. And it was 'the greatest loss of life ever suffered by the bureau,' Mr. Royster said, his voice breaking.

'We realized we were at risk going in as compared to other situations,' he said. 'We knew this was very dangerous.'

On Saturday, The Waco Tribune-Herald in a report on the sect, called attention to the weapons and discussed accusations by former members that Mr. Koresh sexually abused girls in the compound. In an editorial, the newspaper criticized what it called a lack of government action against the group.

On Sunday morning, with helicopters circling overhead, more than 100 Federal agents approached the group's fortress, called Mount Carmel, and were met almost immediately by heavy and sustained fire from automatic weapons, officials said. The Federal agents were carrying warrants to search the Davidians' compound for guns and explosives and to arrest Mr. Koresh.

'They came right in, parked right by the front door and made a frontal assault on the building,' said John McLemore, a local television reporter who witnessed the shootout.

'The Agony, the Pain of It'

Television reporters knew of the raid in advance -- it was not clear how -- and were there before it began. Cameras recorded the scene as Federal agents wearing body armor crawled up ladders onto roofs of the compound, only to be blasted by machine-gun fire from within. 'It sounded like a war zone,' Mr. McLemore said. 'People were being hit. You could hear people screaming with the agony, the pain of it.'

Mr. Koresh asserted on CNN that the agents had fired first. Group members and law officers negotiated a cease-fire after hundreds, perhaps thousands, of rounds were fired. For the next several hours, ambulances and helicopters removed the wounded as the authorities -- their numbers bolstered by hundreds of officers from half a dozen Federal, state and local agencies -- remained encamped at the scene.

Two helicopters were hit by gunfire during the shootout, and a TV news van and a newspaper photographer's car were also hit.

After the shootout the authorities spoke with Mr. Koresh and another member of the cult who is also its lawyer, said Mr. Killorin, the bureau spokesman.

The man captured during the second shootout was jailed on a firearms violation, Sgt. Jim Fry of the Sheriff's Department told The Associated Press. Another cult member arrested earlier in the day faces attempted murder charges, he said.

The bureau estimated that 80 to 100 people were in the group. But Mr. Koresh said that the number was greater, telling CNN: 'There are a lot of children here. I've had a lot of babies these past two years. It's true that I do have a lot of children and I do have a lot of wives.'

Late Sunday, the bureau identified the dead agents as Steve Willis, 32, of Houston; Robert J. Williams, 26, of Little Rock, Ark., and Conway LaBleu, 30, and Todd McKeehan, 28, both of New Orleans. The injured officers were taken to two hospitals in the area. The whereabouts of injured sect members were not known.

Guards and a Lookout Tower

Most of the agents were hospitalized for gunshot wounds and their conditions ranged from stable to critical, said Marsha Jepson, a spokeswoman for Hillcrest Baptist Hospital.

The group's compound is dominated by a tower with lookout windows facing in all directions. Guards are said to patrol the grounds at night. Mr. Killorin said the agency believed that there were members trapped inside against their will, but would not elaborate.

The shootout on Sunday was the second at the compound. Mr. Koresh and seven other cult members were accused of attempted murder after a 1987 gun battle with a former leader. The seven followers were acquitted, and charges against Mr. Koresh were dismissed after his trial ended with a mistrial.

The Branch Davidian sect claims to be an offshoot of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, but that denomination has renounced any connection to the sect or Mr. Koresh, who legally changed his name from Vernon Howell two years ago.

The sect moved its base from Los Angeles in 1935, the year after it was formed in a dispute over interpretations of the Bible.

In its long report on the group, The Tribune-Herald said the group was known to have a large arsenal of high-powered weapons. On Saturday, Mr. Koresh told The Associated Press that the group did have guns but that they were 'regular, legally bought' weapons.

Reuters quoted people who live near the compound as saying that Mr. Koresh and several cult members routinely held paramilitary exercises to practice using machine guns and other military-style weapons.

The Tribune-Herald said members believed that Mr. Koresh was the 'lamb' referred to in the Bible's Book of Revelation. They believe he is the only one who can open the 'Seven Seals' that will set loose catastrophic events that will end mankind and propel the group to heaven.

The newspaper, which conducted an eight-month investigation into the Branch Davidians, said former members claimed that Mr. Koresh was the father of several children and sexually abused child members. Many former members have fled to Australia, it said.

'Being Christ Ain't Nothing'

The Tribune-Herald quoted investigators as saying that Mr. Koresh might have abused children of group members and that he claimed to have at least 15 wives. In contrast to his comments on his wives on Sunday night, Mr. Koresh denied those accusations, telling the newspaper that he and his wife, Rachel, were married in 1984 when he was 24 and she was 14.

'If the Bible is true, then I'm Christ,' he said. 'But so what? Look at 2,000 years ago. What's so great about being Christ? A man nailed to the cross. A man of sorrow acquainted with grief. You know, being Christ ain't nothing.'

He told The Associated Press: 'I claim my father sits on the throne. Doesn't yours? Isn't your father God? I claim my father gave me a book. The reason God gave me the book is he wants me to show it to you.'

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms was formed in 1972 as a separate unit within the U.S. Treasury, which had previously enforced laws on weapons, alcohol and tobacco through other agencies.

The last agent to die on duty was killed last July in Seattle when a device he was trying to disarm exploded. An agency spokesman said only two or three other agents have died on duty since 1972.

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0228.html

Was It Friendly Fire?

Freed by fortune from the grip of a false Messiah, they know that their sisters and brothers, their mothers and fathers, died in the flames of Waco. Now comes the hard part: trying to build lives out of the ashes of Ranch Apocalypse.

Late on the last Sunday in February, the first young refugees from the Branch Davidian cult arrived at the Methodist Home for children in Waco, Texas. The staff and extra volunteers were on call, beds were freshly made, snacks at hand if the youngsters needed a comforting cookie or two. But someone had left the television on, and as the first little girl walked into the living room, the image on the screen turned violent. Jack Daniels, president of the home, reached across and snapped off the set. "Oh," said the little girl surprised at his caution. "We watch TV. We watch war movies." Daniels froze in her innocent stare. "We were trying to protect her," he says, still startled two months later, "and she's talking about war movies."

"Platoon," as it turned out, wasn't the half of it. She and the others had stepped out through the looking glass. Away from a world where apocalyptic visions were fulfilled in a deadly fire fight with federal agents. Away from the Orwellian reign of a charismatic, iron-willed prophet who demanded obedience, faith and the sexual favors of 12-year-old girls. And away from a world that, despite obvious deprivation and harsh discipline was also filled with joy and affection and the adults she and the others loved and trusted.

Many mysteries of Branch Davidian life will remain lost forever in the charred rubble of Ranch Apocalypse. But last week stories began to emerge about what life was like for the youngest members of the cult, tales that were by turns horrifying and poignant, tales of beatings and sexual abuse. The children's accounts raised larger questions: Though their bruises have healed, what about the emotional toll? VThat kind of future awaits the children of the cult? Can they ever expect to lead normal lives (page 52)?

The answer is, maybe. Unfortunately, therapists have had a surfeit of experience with children traumatized by war, inner-city life, family abuse and other present-day horrors. Typically such children suffer from flashbacks and nightmares for many years, reliving the early terror over and over again. And, without treatment, they may later repeat the abuse-this time as aggressors.

After the initial shoot-out in February with federal agents, 21 youngsters, age 5 months to 12 years, were released to the custody of the Texas child-welfare agency. They were sent to the Methodist Home. There, psychiatrists and social workers helped them prepare for new lives; all but five children now live with relatives.

In their conversations with therapists, the youngest survivors described a twisted universe completely dominated by David Koresh. Former cult members corroborate much of what the children say. For the children, the ordinary now seems exotic. At the Methodist Home, one 3-year-old was transfixed by the magic of a flush toilet. He kept pushing the silvery lever, watching the water swirl down the bowl.

The children indicate that their life was, at best, spartan. They lived with their mothers in dormitory-like rooms decorated with colorful drawings and paper cutouts. But just below the surface, there was evil. According to ex-followers who have talked to the children, Koresh repeatedly committed statutory rape. He filled his sermons with graphic sexual talk. Corporal punishment was the rule; visitors to the ranch and ex-followers say the beatings lasted many minutes. Lonnie Little, a Michigan man, observed one such beating when he visited the compound in 1990 in an unsuccessful attempt to rescue his son Jeff, who died in the April 19 fire at the age of 32. When a young boy was "acting up," Koresh told his mother to "take care of that." According to Little, she complied immediately, beating her son with a stick for 15 minutes.

Such accounts played an important role in Attorney General Janet Reno's decision to inject tear gas into the compound on April 19. She cited concern about ongoing physical abuse of children as one of her main reasons for agreeing to the attack-although the FBI later backed off a bit. Much of her information came from FBI officials who had read a report prepared by Dr. Bruce Perry, a Baylor College of Medicine psychiatrist who worked with 19 of the children.

They had been indoctrinated to believe that there were only two kinds of people: good and evil, Perry says. All the righteous people were at Ranch Apocalypse; everyone else was bad. "The group was safe but under constant threat," says Perry. The paranoia was reinforced by the Feb. 28 shoot-out in which six cult members and four agents of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms were killed. To most children, that day would have been unmitigated horror-bullets flying, adults they loved lying dead and wounded while helicopters hovered nearby. To the cult children, it was the fulfillment of Koresh's prophecy.

In their world, weapons and violence were the norm. Scott Mabb, 11, and his brother, Jake, 9, who now live with their father in South Dakota, often talked about Koresh's arsenal. The boys said they used to watch Koresh fire a giant gun that stood on a tripod, and then retrieve the casings to earn privileges, like firing BB guns.

It took a while for the children to feel comfortable enough to talk about one of their big secrets: their belief that the standoff would end violently and that their parents would die. "The kids were quite smug about the concept that they knew what was going to happen and we didn't," says Perry. "They were under the presumption that everybody in there was going to die and that David was going to return from heaven and kill all the evil ones who had killed the members of their community, and then they'd all be reunited in heaven." At the Methodist Home, some of the children were excited when they saw a white van similar to one Koresh had driven. Officials made sure the van stayed away from the children after that.

Koresh's prophecies were his justification for the hardships inflicted on his followers and their children. In 1989, he declared that only he would be allowed to have sex with the female cult members, including mothers and young daughters. At 12, girls moved from the second-floor quarters they shared with their mothers to gender-segregated adult quarters. "It was an intrinsic part of his teachings that he would have sexual relations with young girls," says David Bunds, a former member. Bunds says that when Koresh took up with one girl, he "was having problems penetrating her, because she was so young and little. He told her to start using tampons, the kind that you insert in, to make herself larger."

At least five of the 17 children who died in the fire at the compound were believed to be Koresh's. Three were sired in liaisons with child brides; two others, Cyrus, 8, and Star, 6, were the products of Koresh's legal union with his wife, Rachel, 23, who also died. They married when she was 14.

To many girls, being chosen by Koresh was an honor they eagerly sought. Koresh "wouldn't do it unless you wanted it," says Jeannine Bunds, 51, who was one of Koresh's wives, along with her daughter, Robyn. "It wasn't about sex, but he was a very appealing, sexual person ... He didn't say, 'Oooh, you've got sexy boobs.' He just loved the idea of womanhood ... and he made you feel special." A union with Koresh was spiritual, says Robyn Bunds, who met Koresh when she was 14 and slept with him when she was 17. "You're going to marry this guy and he's God, and someday he will be resurrected as a perfect human being," says Bunds, now 23 and living in California. "He's perfect, and he's going to father your children. What more can you ask for?" In fact, Bunds says she was so committed to Koresh that she left in 1990, nine months after Koresh started sleeping with her mother, because she was tired of the abuse. Her son by Koresh, Shaun, is now 4.

Younger children, boys and girls, were exposed to explicit sexual material in Koresh's "sermons." Perry, the psychiatrist, has an audiotape of one Bible-study session where he says children were present. In it, Perry says, Koresh "talks about stripping off the clothes of a young girl and 'whacking' it to her right there." Lonnie Little heard similar sermons in 1990. On one occasion, Little says, Koresh "went on for about an hour and a half about the evils of masturbation. He used every gutter word and teenage word you could think of in front of this mixed group," which included young children.

At times Koresh did try to control his own sexual impulses toward children--and the impulses of other men in the cult. Several years ago Koresh decreed that no Branch Davidian man could change a girl baby's diapers because they might become aroused. Koresh was proud of this restriction. When child-welfare workers investigated allegations of child abuse last year, Koresh told them about the rule and his reasons for imposing it, according to Perry's report.

In his report, Perry says that all of the children exhibited a "permeating and pervasive fear of displeasing David or betraying his 'secrets'." However, the only evidence of physical abuse he and other child-welfare workers found were small circular bruises on the buttocks of several of the little girls.

Dick DeGuerin, the lawyer for Koresh's mother, contends that none of the activities at the ranch constitutes abuse, although he concedes that the Davidians had a lifestyle outside broadly accepted norms. "At what point does society have a right to step in and say you have to raise your family our way? It's applying Yuppie values to people who choose to live differently. These were loving families." He points out that Perry failed to find any physical evidence of sexual abuse, although the psychiatrist does say that the girls did not have gynecological exams.

Some of the children's more fantastic stories may not be true. In his report, Perry mentions that several children said dead babies were kept in the freezer until they could be buried or burned. Perry says that there's no way to determine the accuracy of these stories.

The next few months will be a crucial test of the children's ability to recover. "These children have many, many strengths," Perry says. "Everyone who worked with them liked them." They adjusted to David Koresh and Ranch Apocalypse. Can living in the outside world be any worse?

http://www.newsweek.com/children-cult-193582