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Cult leader’s tape airs, but no surrender follows
WACO, Texas — The self-styled Messiah who led his followers in a bloody weekend showdown with federal authorities said yesterday that he would surrender after local radio stations aired a one-hour tape in which he offered a rambling, at times threatening, description of his religious beliefs.
But hours after the tape was broadcast, David Koresh and an estimated 70 heavily armed followers had yet to emerge from their fortified compound, which remained surrounded by more than 300 law enforcement officers and a fleet of military and emergency vehicles.
At the outset of his taped message, the 33-year-old leader of the Branch Davidians said he was prepared to give himself up. Yet his proselytizing also included ominous messages that reflected the Christian cult‘s apocalyptic vision.
“If anybody dares to try to go against the truth of God and tries to hurt Christ because they know not and they refuse to know, well then we’re talking something serious,” he said.
The midafternoon broadcast followed several nail-biting hours during which authorities ordered heavy security measures at two local hospitals and told medical officials to expect an undetermined number of sect members wounded in a Sunday raid that left four federal agents and two Koresh followers dead.
A federal official said yesterday in Washington that agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which staged the raid on Sunday, believe that at least 10 more members of the sect were killed in the shootout and that their bodies remained inside the compound last night.
The official added that the raid, which had been planned and rehearsed in minute detail to take place during a religious service when Koresh’s followers would be separated from their weapons, was compromised minutes before agents
closed in. The critical element of surprise was lost, the source said, when someone telephoned Koresh followers inside the compound and tipped them as to what was about to take place.
The ATF agents had warrants accusing Koresh and several of his Branch Davidians of converting semiautomatic weapons into machine guns and of stockpiling ammunition.
The source, speaking with the understanding he would not be identified, said agents had trained for the mission for three months, and rejected suggestions in some published reports that they had botched the raid. The agents were well-armed and wore bulletproof vests over ceramic body shields, the source said, but the four officers who were killed were hit by .50-caliber machine-gun fire, which is so powerful that body armor is not sufficient.
Several of the agents who were killed or wounded in the shootout were inside the compound when they were hit by shells blasting through walls, the source said. The source, who is aware of internal ATF accounts of the standoff, did not say how they know about the casualties inside the compound, but several of the agents now recovering in local hospitals were inside the compound at the time of the attack.
In a strange twist in keeping with the events of the last several days, the airing of Koresh’s tape followed a news conference held yesterday at a state mental hospital in Vernon, Texas, where a patient, who once had been the cult’s leader, spoke in an unsteady voice and urged Koresh to enter federal custody.
“For the sake of all the people, he ought to surrender to the authorities and do the right thing,” said George Roden, who was wounded in a 1987 gun battle that was part of a power struggle within the sect. Koresh and seven others were charged with attempted murder as a result of the shooting but the charges against him were dropped.
During the 1987 trial, it was reported that Koresh and Roden initially had attempted to settle their rivalry by seeing which of them could raise a former sect leader from the dead.
Many local residents said that until recently they were content to leave the Branch Davidians alone. “People thought they were nuts, but harmless,” said Jim Chase, a 41-year-old producer of industrial films interviewed at Schmaltz’ Sandwich Shop, a popular eatery in this city’s otherwise sleepy downtown.
Although some of the immediate neighbors of the sect’s commune used to complain about gunfire, people interviewed said they did not suspect Koresh of harboring military-style weapons, having more than a dozen wives or sexually abusing children, allegations published by the Waco Tribune-Herald.
The newspaper began running a seven-part series on Koresh and the Davidians on Saturday, the day before ATF agents arrived at the compound with a warrant to arrest Koresh on weapons charges. Some law enforcement officers have blamed the newspaper for causing tensions to rise within the compound on the day before the ATF raid.
But the coincidence of the series and the arrival of more than 100 ATF officers at the sect’s headquarters remains unexplained.
Many residents, for example, said they will need to hear a more thorough account of the events leading to the 9:30 a.m. raid before they believe federal officials, who say that the first shots in the showdown were fired by sect members.
It also is not clear whether sect members had been informed about the raid beforehand, allowing them to lie in wait for federal agents. Nor is it clear whether ATF officers knew the extent of the arsenal inside the compound and, if not, why they did not.
Officials have said that the raid had been planned for months, but went awry when ATF agents encountered overwhelming firepower, including at least one .50-caliber machine gun.
Some at the sandwich shop said the community’s tolerance for sect members may have sprung from the local twin legacies of Christian fundamentalism and a proudly independent way of life, one generally considered to include the possession of firearms, in the Lone Star State.
Olga Willingham, a 42-year-old personnel director at a retirement center, said she knew of the sect’s 77-acre compound on the outskirts of the city but always believed its members had a right to live by the teachings of its leader.
“I was conscious of their presence and conscious that it was a cult organization, but that wasn’t enough for me to want anyone to stop them from going their own way,” she said, “particularly when they weren’t bothering anyone.”
And Cindy Pack, manager of the sandwich shop, said she initially was puzzled by the ATF raid because many people in the area have guns. ”Everyone’s entitled to have firearms, and I’d hate to think what would happen if they went after everyone with illegal firearms,” she said.
However, Pack and others said the volume of weaponry in the compound, and new allegations of the sexual abuse of children there, warrant arrests. “As a society we need to address that,” Willingham said. “I don’t think we can sit back and let something like that happen.”
In addition, people interviewed said Koresh and the Branch Davidians were easily tolerated in part because, at least until two or three years ago, they mingled regularly among city residents, with their children attending public school and a Koresh spouse, Rachel Jones Koresh, working at a local outlet of the HED grocery chain.
“She was very nice, very level headed,” said a cashier.
Yesterday’s airing of a tape by Koresh was only his latest. On Sunday a radio station agreed to air a statement at the request of federal authorities who said Koresh had agreed to release children from the compound in exchange.
Koresh began releasing the children later in the day. Before yesterday’s broadcast, eight more children left the commune, bringing to 16 the number who had been premitted to leave. Two women also left, the first to leave Koresh’s side voluntarily.
Michael Putzel of the Globe staff contributed from Washington to this report. Wire service material was also used.
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