The Fire That Time
(Page 7 of 7)
Thibodeau I jumped out of the hole, and when I turned around, I saw Clive coming out after me. He was patting his arms because they were on fire. I heard a big explosion behind me, and I saw the building falling in on itself. Only nine of us got out.
Sage I had to turn my back to the monitor, because I needed to remain focused on what I had to do. I kept repeating instructions over the loudspeakers until 12:35 p.m., when the central tower imploded. Then I called in to the negotiation center. And I’ll tell you, that was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to do, because I had to admit that we had failed. I said, “Negotiations officially terminated at 12:35 p.m.”
McGee I saw a Davidian jump out of a second-story window, and as soon as she hit the ground, I saw her stand up and run back inside the building. So I ran in after her. I found her inside, lying facedown on the concrete slab. I grabbed her and said, “Where are the kids?” Things were burning all around us, and there wasn’t much time left. I asked her again, “Where are the kids?” She was completely nonresponsive. She wouldn’t give me an answer. She looked at me like, “I’m not telling you anything.”
Noesner The Branch Davidians were seeing Armageddon. In their view, our actions validated David Koresh’s end-of-the-world prophecies that he’d been telling them about.
Sage I was in a daze. I walked outside, and I could feel the heat radiating on my face from two hundred yards away. The building was collapsing in on itself and being reduced to about eighteen inches of rubble. I stood there and watched that place burn. I’ll never forget the stench and the heat and the magnitude of that moment. Rounds were cooking off, and there were explosions every now and then. Ultimately we found that all the kids inside had perished. I don’t give a damn about the parents; it was their decision to stay inside. They’re responsible for it, and I can live with that. But my God. To have intentionally allowed those kids to die is unconscionable. There’s a special place in hell for David Koresh.
“WE ARE STILL WAITING FOR THE RESURRECTION.”
Seventy-four Branch Davidians died on April 19, 1993. The enormity of the loss spurred questions that are still being debated: Did the Davidians commit mass suicide, as the FBI claims? Or did the bureau’s actions spark the blaze—either when its tanks knocked over lanterns or when two pyrotechnic tear-gas grenades, which were later discovered in evidence, were fired into Mount Carmel?
Ray Before the fire had even begun to cool, the feds just disappeared. I was going down this road pretty close to the compound to check on some of my troopers, and something up ahead looked like it was sitting in the road. I came over this little rise, and I saw that it was an armored personnel carrier that someone had left there, with the keys in it and everything. Someone had just gotten out of it and walked away.
Sage I didn’t leave Waco until May 6. I helped locate and exhume bodies. Some of them were the people who I had talked to for 51 days. That might sound crazy, but I had to work through it. I just couldn’t make sense of what had happened.
Dr. Nizam Peerwani, 61, was and is the Tarrant County chief medical examiner, in Fort Worth. His office performed autopsies on the fire’s victims. David Koresh had a gunshot wound to the forehead. His associate Steve Schneider had a gunshot wound to the mouth, and we found multiple people who had similar gunshot wounds. There was one person, I can’t recall his name, who had a gunshot wound to the back. So there were people who were shot or who asked to be shot. I can’t be absolutely sure as to what the scenario was when all this happened.
Lane Akin, 55, was a Texas Ranger who assisted with the fire investigation. He works in corporate security in Dallas. At that point, I was no fan of the FBI, so if for some reason you could point the finger at them—if there was evidence there—I dang sure would’ve done it. But it was obvious that that fire was started on the inside, and I get aggravated to this day when I hear people saying otherwise. You could see that the sides of the Coleman fuel cans we found had been stabbed with a knife and vented so the fuel would come out faster. We picked up at least twenty of those. They wanted to pour that fuel out in a hurry because it was the end. We were able to determine that fires broke out in three different locations at basically the same time, so it was obvious that Koresh was manufacturing his own Armageddon.
Matteson We didn’t start any fire! The fire was set by the government.
Thibodeau Until one of the survivors who was there tells me that they lit the fire, I’ll never believe that we started it. Because where I was, that didn’t occur.
Sage I ended up reviewing all the audiotapes that our concealment devices recorded on April 19, and there are 47 times when the Davidians mention spreading the fuel: “Do you have more fuel?” “I need some Coleman over here,” and so on. Now, we didn’t hear these tapes in real time; if we had, I’m confident that we would have changed course. Right after Steve hung up on me on the nineteenth, there was a clear order: “Spread the fuel.” The last recording on that mike is also, I’m convinced, Steve, and he says, “Start the fires.” This is not us trying to make up some story. These are actual audiotapes of Davidians inside the compound.
Peerwani We found the women and children huddled together, under blankets. There were 27 bodies, two of them pregnant women. They were covered in debris—not just construction debris but spent rounds of grenades and ammunition. I suspect that the blankets were moist, to try and keep out the smoke. But there was such a rip-roaring fire that they were trapped. That was the most profound and distressing aspect of this entire case. To see that mass of human remains was a horrific thing for all of us.
Martin My oldest son, he was twenty. His name was Wayne Joseph Martin. Anita Marie Martin, she was eighteen. Sheila Renee Martin, she was fifteen. And Lisa Marie Martin, she was thirteen. She was the hardest one. At the Salvation Army, we were watching TV when the building burned to the ground. Afterward, someone asked me the names of my husband and children. When I got to Lisa, I saw her face and I realized that she was gone. I had left Mount Carmel in March to care for my youngest ones, and the older kids had stayed there with their father.
Buford Initially, I think the public was very much on our side. As time went on, it seemed like the media only reported that the Davidians were just good Christian people who had wanted to be left alone, that they would have gladly surrendered their arms if we had only asked them. I don’t believe that would have been the case. When public opinion turned, it felt like when I came home from Vietnam. We had become the enemy, or at least in the media we did. It was hard because all you heard about was poor Koresh. No one talked about Rob Williams’s wife and his mom and daddy or Conway LeBleu’s kids or Todd McKeehan’s folks and his wife. It just seemed like they were forgotten.
Charles Pace, 58, is a Branch Davidian who was living in Alabama at the time of the standoff. He is now the trustee of Mount Carmel. This is a historic site, but the city of Waco doesn’t want anyone to know where it is. There’s no information downtown about how to get here. There are no signs or memorials. People find us anyway; not a day goes by that we don’t have visitors, and they come from all over the world. But the city wants to forget what happened here. They’re planning to run the Trans-Texas Corridor right through here and pave us over.
Balenda Ganem, 56, is David Thibodeau’s mother and a teen counselor in Bangor, Maine. Many of the Davidian children’s remains went unclaimed because whole families were dead or their relatives were too poor to pay for funeral services or no one wanted them. And so all those bodies that had been at the coroner’s office were buried, without markers, in paupers’ graves in a Waco cemetery.
Martin We had to stand behind the caution tape. We watched them bring out coffin after coffin and drop them in the ground. It was a horrible thing.
Doyle Some of us have stayed in Waco. A few of us meet once a week to have Bible studies. And we wait. We are still waiting for the resurrection. It’s not just David who will be resurrected but all our people who died. I consider them martyrs, you know.
Haldeman I have my faith in the resurrection. We’ll see them all again.
