The Ghosts of Mount Carmel
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What ultimately happened was the self-fulfillment of Koresh’s apocalyptic prophecy—the ATF and the FBI played right into his hands. In the eyes of those who perished, this was the ultimate demonstration of faith in their messiah. To them, it wasn’t suicide; it was a deliverance into the presence of God. I think Koresh was the epitome of the false prophet in the end times in Revelation, the very book he based everything on.—Byron Sage, 55, FBI chief negotiator
You hear things in the wind, especially when you’re walking over fields of death. Wandering the grounds of Mount Carmel one Saturday afternoon, I heard, or thought I heard, music drifting in and out of the wind as I got closer to the little chapel at the back of the property. A woman came out, and I asked if I could come in. “Hold on,” she said, “I’ll get our leader—he’s playing the drums.”
Charlie Pace, 52, is a construction worker and massage therapist, a short, intense man with a mustache and dark, green-marble eyes. He came to Mount Carmel in 1973 and became a Davidian, following the teachings of Ben and Lois Roden. But Charlie became alarmed at the ascendant Koresh’s teachings and left Mount Carmel in 1985. He went to Alabama and returned after the fire, preaching in a tent. Eventually he rehabbed the only building left standing, an old dairy barn, and turned it into his chapel. Charlie, who also goes by the name Solomon Joshua Branch, gives Bible studies and plays, in his words, “contemporary Messianic Jewish songs” on a CD player while keeping the beat on his congas and singing along with his eyes closed. His congregation is small—his wife, their three children, and three other women. He sees himself as the legitimate heir to Lois, and refers to his church as the Branch. He believes Koresh corrupted the original Davidian message, that the church wound up following Koresh instead of Christ.
Charlie isn’t the only post-Koresh prophet to contest Clive’s message. Ever since the fire, Mount Carmel has seen all kinds of visionaries and squatters who claim authority over the 77 acres. The land, it turns out, doesn’t belong to any one person but to the church itself. The question is, Who is the church?
In the months after the fire, a sixty-year-old woman named Amo Bishop Roden claimed it was she. Amo said she was a prophet and that the land was hers because she had been married by common law to George Roden. (George, who’d lost control of the compound to Koresh in 1988, killed his roommate with an ax and was sent to a mental hospital, where he died trying to escape, in 1998.) For a while, Amo lived in a clapboard shack and sat under the large tree near the front gate, welcoming visitors, selling T-shirts, and giving her own spin on Koresh. He was a false prophet, she would tell tourists, and then charge them an entrance fee. She set up a couple of little clapboard museums too, which were both anti-Koresh and anti-government, but they burned, along with her shack, in a suspicious 2000 fire. She returned a few years later to find Clive with the keys to a new church and visitors center.
Around this time, Clive sued to establish his trusteeship of Mount Carmel, and he got signatures from 75 Davidians around the world supporting his claim. Amo filed a similar claim, while Charlie called the whole thing a family matter. Essentially, a judge and jury agreed: The judge declared that the property belonged to the church, and the jury said that neither Clive nor Amo was a legitimate trustee. They’ll all just have to share. Amo, who could not be reached for this story, left; in May 2001 she was stopped for questioning at the site of the Oklahoma City bombing for driving a truck covered with signs, photos of the burning Davidian compound, and bumper stickers, including one that read “Waco, Texas, and Oklahoma City are where the one-world government shot itself in the foot.” No charges were filed.
Since the court battle, the rest of the Davidians at Mount Carmel, even the ones with the biggest theological differences, seem to have found a way to calmly coexist. Charlie and Clive, who are separated physically by three hundred yards but theologically by a million miles, seem to genuinely like each other. They’re certainly uninterested in triggering a feud that would upset the peace. And perhaps their congregations benefit from having options. On the morning I visited Charlie’s church, I was shocked to find Ofelia Santoyo, a devoted Koresh follower who reluctantly left Mount Carmel during the siege, seated with her mother, Concepción. Ofelia told me that she moved to Mount Carmel in 1987 and that her daughter, Julie Martinez, and Julie’s five children joined her in the early nineties. Ofelia loved the simple life at Mount Carmel, and she believed in Koresh. When she exited, she said good-bye to her daughter forever; Julie and her five children perished in the concrete vault.
After the fire, Ofelia went back and forth between Clive’s and Charlie’s churches. “Eventually I found out that Charlie had the truth. David used to pretend to be God. I believe it’s wrong. At the time, I believed him. The way he talked, there was no place for doubt.” But when I asked how she coped with the death of her daughter and grandchildren, she gave the only possible response a devout follower can give: “I think everything happens for a reason.” Then, after a pause, she added, “I’m here now and I believe we have the truth.”
Before it’s all over, Ofelia and the others may have yet another version of the truth to choose from. Renos Avraam, one of the six Davidians convicted in 1993 of manslaughter, is due out of prison in 2006. Like Koresh, Renos has written a manuscript about the Seven Seals and claims to be Koresh’s successor. Renos has some followers, both in and out of prison, but he also has detractors, who think he’s leading his people to hell. Waco County sheriff Larry Lynch isn’t looking forward to Renos or any of the ex-cons returning. “I really hope they don’t come back,” he says. But he continues, “If they do, as long as they abide by the law, there’s not gonna be a problem. That’s their right—to worship as they please, as long as they maintain law and order.” But whose law, the surviving Davidians might ask, and which order?
We’re waiting for David’s resurrection. This is our last chance. This is everybody’s last chance. He said there was going to be an earthquake on a fault near Lake Waco that would lead to a terrible flood and then the resurrection. This earthquake won’t just be a little tremor. It’s gonna kill a lot of people; let’s face it. We’re waiting every day and every minute of the week.—Catherine Matteson, 87, Davidian survivor
The past is never past, especially at Mount Carmel, where nobody is absolutely sure what happened back in 1993. In the aftermath, the government was shown to have handled so many things so badly that conspiracy theories ran wild—from tanks setting the fire and FBI agents shooting at fleeing Davidians to soldiers from the Delta Force slaughtering women and children. In 1999 Attorney General Reno appointed a special counsel to look into the government’s actions. After ten months, former Republican senator John Danforth concluded that although a lot of serious mistakes were made by the ATF and the FBI in the aftermath, mostly regarding the withholding of evidence, there was no systematic cover-up. Danforth also found that the FBI had not shot at anyone on April 19. Most important: the Davidians set the fire. Bugs planted by the FBI inside the compound revealed dozens of references to fuel and fire in the final six hours.
Conspiracists still cry foul, but ultimately, ten years later, we have to conclude that both sides share the blame for what happened. It’s obvious that the Davidians set the fire; it’s also obvious that the FBI knew all about their apocalyptic theology. It’s obvious that Koresh saw the whole thing as a fulfillment of prophecy; it’s also obvious that those government agents had a higher duty to protect the innocents inside the compound and that they breached it by driving an unstable bunch even crazier.
At Mount Carmel, at least, the small group of remaining Davidians is trying to focus on the time to come. They are waiting. Charlie foresees war and talks about the connections between September 11 and April 19: “September 11 was just a taste of what has yet to take place worldwide, a worldwide spiritual war, the battle between the descendants of Ishmael and the descendants of Isaac.” Clive sees similar things. When asked about a timetable for Koresh’s return, he says, “We’re always looking to the Middle East.” It’s not surprising, really, that the Davidians would see connections between 9/11 and their troubles——the central players that caused each drama share the passionate arrogance of those who believe they are entitled to more of God’s favor than the rest of us. Some prove their faith by setting fire to a building full of their own children; others do it by flying airliners full of human beings into skyscrapers.
“People say we’re apocalyptic,” says Clive, “all doom and gloom. Well, sure there’s a lot of doom and gloom, but there’s also a lot of hope and promise.” In his last letter, Koresh wrote that the earthquake would strike near Lake Waco, the land settled by Victor Houteff in 1935, and put Waco underwater. On Mount Carmel, high above the city, everything will be just fine.
