Anniversaries of big news events often bring about a flood of related media. This month’s 30th anniversary of the tragic end of the government raid on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco is no exception. There’s a six-hour Netflix documentary, Showtime’s rebroadcast of a 2018 miniseries with a new sequel debuting, and a book (Waco Rising by Kevin Cook).
But Jeff Guinn’s tome Waco: David Koresh, the Branch Davidians, and a Legacy of Rage (400 pp., $29.99, Simon and Schuster) could be the definitive look at the event which by the numbers was a 51-day siege and standoff, resulting in the deaths of 82 Branch Davidians (both adults and children, most in the fire of the final FBI attack), and four ATF agents.
Historian and investigative journalist Guinn certainly has honed his chops writing about Messianic Madmen, having penned bios on both Charles Manson and Jim Jones. Guinn will appear April 4 at Murder by the Book with special guests including some ATF agents who were actually there. “I always want to do something special in Houston at Murder by the Book, because they are special,” Guinn says via Zoom.
Waco breaks new ground on the story in two areas. The first is that David Koresh likely borrowed number of his Biblical interpretations from an earlier prophet named Cyrus Teed, who also took the name “Koresh.” The Davidians originally broke off from the Seventh Day Adventists because their readings and practicing of Scripture weren’t literal enough.
“This started off as a group—not a cult—that was doing its best to prepare the world for End Times as described in the Book of Revelation. By the time we get to David Koresh, the group was going to now help instigate End Times,” Guinn says. “And we were able to definitively prove that David Koresh either consciously or unconsciously plagiarized his prophecies. So, we have to figure out how intelligent, discerning people who were Bible believers absolutely believed everything he said.”
The second is that Guinn spoke on the record with federal agents who hadn’t talked publicly before. “The ATF and the FBI have been [portrayed] as one-dimensional thugs who charged in and did stupid things and chaos and fired resulted,” he says. “In the book, we have the agents who trained and participated in the operation and others. Including those who had to go through the smoldering ruins and figure out what really happened past the misunderstandings, misinterpretations, and flat out lies of what happened there.”
No one thought much of Vernon Wayne Howell when he first came to the Mount Carmel compound in 1981 as a disheveled, somewhat bumbling 21-year-old who could fix cards and build things. But after his study sessions with then-leader Lois Roden—three times Howell’s age—went from Bible study to a sexual relationship, his already sharp mind was making moves to take over. He encouraged recruiting not just locally but as far away as California, England and Australia.
Eventually, Howell decided through revelations from God that he was the returned Messiah Cyrus, the “lamb” of the Book of Revelations who would lead a holy war against Babylon, open the Seven Seals, and usher in End Times. He and his followers would also die, return to Earth, then vanquish their enemies and rule. And his new name—David Koresh—mixed both religious symbolism and linguistics.
Say what you want about David Koresh, Guinn notes, but there’s no debating the fact that he knew the Bible, inside and out. Even impressing longtime religious scholars like James Tabor while the siege was happening.
“That sets him apart from what people joke about the Big Three. Charlie Manson was an ex-pimp who used a hustler’s jargon and LSD to get addled teenagers to get them to do what he wanted. Jim Jones would have been remembered as one of the greatest civil rights leaders. But then he got into religion to bring about social change for racial and gender equality. Then hubris and drugs got to him,” Guinn says.
“In terms of having a grasp of the symbolism and Scripture, Tabor said he’d never met anyone who knew about the Bible more than he did. But when he listened to David Koresh’s Bible Study tapes, he was bringing up possibilities that even he’d never thought of before,” Guinn continues. “Whatever else he was, David Koresh was not a fraud in terms of knowing the Bible.” In fact, Koresh could lecture for up to five hours, effortlessly quoting long Scripture passages without referring to the text.
Life at the compound and Koresh’s control began to crumble when he announced his “New Light” revelation. That he was called by God not only to take multiple wives in Waco, but all the women who could only have sex with him (even those under the Texas age of consent of 17 and possibly as young as 12). Existing marriages would be dissolved, and men would be forbidden from even masturbating so as to focus their energy on working for Koresh and God. Koresh would father more than a dozen children in the compound.
They also began selling refurbished/repaired guns at Texas shows, which led to the purchase of large lots of semi-automatic weapons they would covert to automatic in the belief that if Bill Clinton was elected President in 1992, he would ban their manufacture and sale. This is what caught the interest of federal authorities. Some followers began leaving and talking and an investigative series in the Waco Tribune-Herald brought unwanted attention to “The Sinful Messiah.”
The ATF’s bumblings were manifold. Branch Davidians almost instantly made the “college students” who had rented the nearest house to the compound as agents, along with a fake UPS driver and potential convert who spent hours in Bible study and even got to shoot guns with Koresh himself. Local media were tipped off as to the day of the raid by sources. ATF agents had swarmed into town, renting hotel rooms and buying supplies—many openly wearing their ATF jackets. Babylon was not only coming, they weren’t even hiding it.
Guinn’s prose retelling the siege picks up speed like a Train of Doom. Koresh could have ended things and brought his people out many times. But his demurring (he was “waiting for word from God”) and half-promises only prolonged the inevitable as food and water started running out.
Houston has a connection to the story in that Waco fell under the jurisdiction of the Houston ATF branch. That made the lead agent in charge of the entire operation and execution as Houston’s Phil Chojnacki with Chuck Sarabyn as his No. 2 (neither man chose to speak to Guinn for the book). Both were vilified in Congressional hearings a couple of years later.
“Whatever was going to happen at Mount Carmel on February 28, Houston agents would be leading in terms of planning the operation. They decided to go ahead even though they lost the element of surprise,” Guinn says, noting that policies at both organizations were changed post-Waco.
“They can’t erase the screw-ups, but they could learn from it, and they did. And frankly, they’ve haven’t gotten credit for it,” Guinn notes. “But here, there was no Plan B. And the fatal mistake the ATF and FBI made was they never took into account what the Branch Davidians actually believed. They ignored the religion completely. They brought the apocalypse to an apocalyptic group.”
The book ends with Guinn make direct correlations and drawing a straight line from Waco to today’s right-wing, anti-government militia movement. One of the more chilling photos in the book is of a man who (like a lot of onlookers and media) descended upon the siege site.
He’s sitting on the hood of his car selling bumper stickers with anti-government messages. And in what was no coincidence, two years to the day that marked the end of the siege that man—Timothy McVeigh—would set off a bomb at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people, with hundreds more injured.
Guinn modestly notes that his work may not be the “definitive” take on Waco (and in fact has donated all his research materials to Baylor University’s Texas Collection for use of future scholars). But he does feel that 30 years on, a better picture emerges of what really happened, and why.
“The first things that were written on the spot, you don’t have the complete context, you’re just trying to catch up with the headlines,” Guinn says. “But we have to keep thinking about Waco because of the way it affects us today. Like on January 6, 2021. And why Donald Trump chose to kick off this year’s Presidential campaign in Waco. What happened there fostered the militia movement in the United States. And it’s still [inspiring] violence today.”
Jeff Guinn will talk about and sign Waco at 6:30 pm on Tuesday, April 4, at Murder by the Book, 2342 Bissonnet. For information, call 713-524-8597 or visit MurderBooks.com. Please check the website for event and signing policies.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2023.
