The Ghosts of Mount Carmel
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At 52, Houteff had married a seventeen-year-old girl named Florence, and when he died, in 1955, she assumed control. Florence, in her enthusiasm for the end of the world, set a date for it, April 22, 1959, attracting hundreds of Davidians for the final days to a larger, 941-acre settlement ten miles east of Waco, near Elk. When the sun rose on April 23, disappointed Davidians started leaving the compound, and the group dwindled. Most of the land was sold, and eventually the remaining 77 acres came under the control of Ben and Lois Roden. Ben saw himself as another prophet, as the “Branch” (a name sometimes given to Jesus), and his followers were called Branch Davidians. When Ben died, in 1978, Lois took over.
When Howell arrived at Mount Carmel, he attached himself to Lois, who was then in her sixties, and seduced her, physically and theologically. She chose him as her successor, much to the agony of her son, George. Howell married a fourteen-year-old named Rachel Jones, and after winning a bizarre power struggle with George that involved George digging up a corpse in an effort to prove he could raise the dead, Howell took over as undisputed leader in 1988; George eventually wound up in a mental hospital. Howell began solidifying his messianic teachings, preaching the “New Light,” which allowed him to “marry” more than one woman, with the goal of fathering 24 children to sit on the 24 thrones surrounding God, as foretold in Revelation. Many of the wives he chose were between the ages of twelve and twenty. Soon after, he changed his name to David Koresh (“David” for the king of the Jews, and “Koresh” for the ancient Persian king Cyrus, who was considered an “anointed one”). He said he was a messiah, a Christ—not the Christ, though sometimes he crossed that line, claiming to be the son of God.
Life at Mount Carmel was spartan and self-sufficient. Residents lived in a large two-story compound that included a chapel, a gym, and a cafeteria. The men slept in one place, the women and children in another. The women did all the cooking, and the children were disciplined harshly. For the most part, the Davidians kept to themselves, and if some in Waco condemned them for being outsiders, others accepted them, or at least their business. Koresh went into town often, especially to music stores, where he bought guitars and amps and other equipment. He and his band, made up of other Davidians, sometimes played in the gym, wearing T-shirts that read “David Koresh/God Rocks.” As late as the summer of 1991, Koresh went to Los Angeles seeking a record deal.
Koresh was in charge of most aspects of the Davidians’ lives; for example, he regulated consumption of alcohol, cigarettes, and junk food. The men were required to be celibate, while he could take whomever as his wife. He was a randy messiah (he fathered seventeen children), once telling a group of women, “There’s only one hard-on in this whole universe that really loves you.” He reveled in his lusts and even called himself a “sinful messiah,” reasoning that his transgressions let him understand how bad man could be. Koresh, who knew the Bible intimately, also knew how to harmonize the words of the Scripture with his followers’ lives.
The most important words were those written in Revelation on the Seven Seals. Koresh would sermonize about bad guys like the Assyrians, the Babylonians, and the Beast, always bringing the lesson back to the Davidians’ unconventional world. Persecution was coming, he said. And war. Residents began stockpiling food, including military “meals ready to eat.” They became weapons dealers, buying and selling at weekend gun shows and eventually building a small arsenal. Koresh had them cut six-inch gun slots in the walls of the compound and fortify them with concrete. He was preparing them for battle, saying that many of God’s people would die. “If you can’t kill for God,” he told them, “you can’t die for God.”
The authorities began to take notice. In February 1992 Child Protective Services (CPS) social workers made the first of several visits to Mount Carmel to check into allegations by apostates of child abuse; Koresh was said to have spanked an eight-month-old for forty minutes. But the CPS didn’t find enough evidence to take action. Then, in the spring of 1992, a UPS package being delivered to the Davidians broke open, revealing empty grenade hulls. The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) started investigating the Davidians and found receipts for deliveries of other ammo and arms, including black gunpowder and powdered aluminum that could be mixed to make homemade grenades and devices for converting semiautomatic weapons into automatics. No law prevented them from stockpiling weapons, even automatic ones, but Koresh hadn’t obtained a license or paid the expensive per-weapon fee. The ATF began surveillance at Mount Carmel. By December, agents had occupied a house across the street from the compound and were watching its residents closely.
Soon the ATF had drawn up a plan: storm the compound, subdue the residents, and search for illegal firearms and explosives. Despite the fact that agents knew that the Davidians had been accidentally tipped off, at nine-thirty on the morning of February 28, 1993, three helicopters approached from the rear, and two cattle trailers, with tarps hiding fifty agents, sped up the front driveway. About fifty feet from the front door of the compound, they burst from the trailers, armed and dressed in black. To the Davidians, some of whom had gone to get their own weapons, it was as if everything Koresh had predicted was coming true.
If kids would ask about my father, I’d say he died in a fire. If they asked for more and I told them more, they’d say, ‘You’re one of those people who followed that madman?’ All this happened where I was born. That’s where my family died.—Kimberly Martin, 14, Davidian survivor
The first person most tourists meet at Mount Carmel today isn’t a Davidian at all but a Messianic Jew. Caretaker Ron Goins was born Jewish but raised a Christian. He had tried other religions, such as the Hare Krishna, but he did not find a spiritual home until he visited Mount Carmel from Philadelphia in 1998. He decided to stay, leading tours, mending broken windows, and scaring away vandals and college kids who come in the middle of the night and steal mailboxes and bang on the front door of the chapel. He lives in a tiny room off the side of the church at the front of the property. “We get at least a dozen people a day,” he says, “and sometimes a dozen different cars. Most people are sympathetic, though they qualify their sympathies. They say, ‘I don’t agree with David and his ideas, but what happened here shouldn’t have happened.’”
Though not of the Davidian faith, Ron usually attends Clive’s Saturday services, or “studies.” On a warm Saturday afternoon in January, I joined him. Clive’s congregation looked even smaller in this commodious space with sixty or so mismatched chairs and no art or color on the walls. In the front row, Catherine Matteson, 87, followed along in her Bible, which has extensive blue and black notes written in the margins. She came to Mount Carmel in 1960 and exited early in the siege. Also up front were Sheila Martin, 56, and her 14-year-old daughter, Kimberly. Sheila was attentive, while Kim, like most teenagers, slumped in her chair, antsy in church on a Saturday afternoon. Sheila came to Mount Carmel with her husband, Wayne, in 1988. She and Kim left during the siege, but Wayne and four of the Martin children, ages 13 to 20, died in the fire. All three church members have been living in Waco since the tragedy, but they’ve returned here almost every Saturday afternoon since the new chapel was built.
