Latest / Stuff You Should Know / The 1993 Waco Siege

Transcript

The 1993 Waco Siege · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:11
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome into the podcast. I'm Josh and there's
0:13
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you
0:16
Speaker 2: should know. And if you're gonna do it, do it right?
0:20
Speaker 3: Do it with us? Is that a song?
0:25
Speaker 2: It's a George Michael song. Okay, I don't remember the song.
0:30
Speaker 2: He's like, Babe, Babe, I'm your man. Don't you know
0:34
Speaker 2: why I am?
0:36
Speaker 3: I think that's wham, isn't it?
0:39
Speaker 2: Maybe could be they're virtually interchangeable. Sorry, Andrew, Oh my goodness. Yeah.
0:46
Speaker 2: Did you know George did everything with last Christmas? I
0:50
Speaker 2: mean he wrote it all, he composed it, He's sang it.
0:53
Speaker 2: Andy played the instruments.
0:55
Speaker 3: Uh No, I didn't know that. I didn't know he
0:58
Speaker 3: played instruments. And I even saw a document him.
1:00
Speaker 2: I didn't either, but I saw that somewhere. I didn't
1:02
Speaker 2: follow up about it. Now I'm sweating that it's not true.
1:06
Speaker 3: Well, hopefully at the end of this episode, no one
1:08
Speaker 3: more remembered George Michael's Christmas song.
1:11
Speaker 2: Great point, Chuck, because this episode is much more serious
1:15
Speaker 2: than George Michael's heart that he gave away. Foolishly last Christmas.
1:21
Speaker 2: This is about one of the darkest moments in American
1:25
Speaker 2: law enforcement history. Yeah, and very maddeningly one that the
1:31
Speaker 2: federal government just basically walked away from, like just kind
1:35
Speaker 2: of dusting off his hands, like, yeah, we got out
1:37
Speaker 2: of that one. There hasn't really ever been any real
1:40
Speaker 2: accountability for Waco, despite attempts, Like there are tons of
1:45
Speaker 2: like hearings and stuff like that, but really, like overall,
1:49
Speaker 2: there just wasn't any huge reckoning over it, and there
1:51
Speaker 2: should have been because it was an American tragedy, even
1:55
Speaker 2: if in some ways the Branch to Vidian group were,
2:02
Speaker 2: you know, at least partially responsible for sure, they're part two.
2:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like I hope that comes across in this episode
2:10
Speaker 3: because I know we're going to get a little probably
2:13
Speaker 3: riled up here and there about like how it was handled.
2:15
Speaker 3: But I'll go ahead and just say my takeaway at
2:18
Speaker 3: the beginning. You know, you can't you can't hole up
2:22
Speaker 3: and be a pedophile in a house, and you can't
2:26
Speaker 3: illegally like collect and sell and modify guns into machine
2:31
Speaker 3: guns and sell those Like no one's disputing that stuff, right.
2:34
Speaker 3: I think the issue is the way this all went
2:37
Speaker 3: down in the end when it could have probably gone
2:41
Speaker 3: down with the loss of zero lives, ye, much less
2:44
Speaker 3: the loss of what was at eighty six.
2:47
Speaker 2: People total, Yeah, including twenty kids.
2:50
Speaker 3: Yeah, So that that's sort of the issue at hand
2:52
Speaker 3: for me personally.
2:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that that hits it on the nose.
2:57
Speaker 3: Well, let's talk about the Branch Davidians. A. Yeah, because
3:01
Speaker 3: I up until two days ago, I thought that Davidians
3:07
Speaker 3: came from David Koresh. I thought they got that name
3:10
Speaker 3: from him as their leader, just because I didn't know
3:14
Speaker 3: a ton about it aside from, you know, kind of
3:16
Speaker 3: following it as it happened when I was in college
3:18
Speaker 3: on the news. But the Branch Davidians, they got that
3:21
Speaker 3: name because in nineteen fifty five, a guy named Benjamin
3:25
Speaker 3: Roaden started a branch, a new sect of Seventh day Adventists,
3:32
Speaker 3: a Davidian sect, which had, you know, to do with
3:36
Speaker 3: the monarchy of Israel under King David. It had nothing
3:39
Speaker 3: to do with David Koresh as David.
3:41
Speaker 2: Right, he retrofitted his name. He was actually born Vernon
3:44
Speaker 2: Wayne Howell, and he's like, yeah, you know, I could
3:46
Speaker 2: probably get a lot further trying to become the leader
3:49
Speaker 2: of this sect, if I changed my name to the
3:52
Speaker 2: same name as the name of the sect, yeah, so yes,
3:57
Speaker 2: they actually split. They were a branch, but then they
4:00
Speaker 2: split fully from the Adventist Church because they started to
4:04
Speaker 2: predict the date of you know, end times, started to
4:09
Speaker 2: follow leaders as prophets, and the Seventh day Adventists are like,
4:13
Speaker 2: we did that like a century ago. We don't do
4:15
Speaker 2: that anymore. You guys, go away. And so the teachings
4:20
Speaker 2: though of the people before David Koresh. When he came in,
4:24
Speaker 2: there was a woman named Lois Rodent. They attracted dozens
4:27
Speaker 2: of people at any given time. They were probably somewhere
4:30
Speaker 2: around one hundred people who were living and working in worshiping.
4:36
Speaker 2: I guess at the what was called Mount Carmel, their
4:38
Speaker 2: compound outside of Waco. The branch Davidians were pretty well
4:44
Speaker 2: suited for the Waco, Texas area. They were into guns,
4:49
Speaker 2: they were into religion. They interacted with the rest of
4:52
Speaker 2: the community. They were free to come and go. They
4:54
Speaker 2: didn't believe that David Koresh was God like. It wasn't
4:59
Speaker 2: like a cult in the way that it's often portrayed
5:01
Speaker 2: or that we generally think of cults, but at the
5:04
Speaker 2: same time, they were millennialists. They thought that end times
5:07
Speaker 2: was coming, and that essentially what they were doing and
5:10
Speaker 2: what the ATF was doing to them was bringing about
5:13
Speaker 2: judgment day. That's what was going on with these guys,
5:16
Speaker 2: and they were such believers that they were willing to
5:19
Speaker 2: dig in and sacrifice their own lives to help bring
5:23
Speaker 2: judgment day sooner, I guess.
5:26
Speaker 3: Yeah, but some of them fully believed he was the Messiah.
5:29
Speaker 3: By the way, that's really huh. Yeah, did you watch
5:33
Speaker 3: the documentary?
5:33
Speaker 2: No, I didn't see the documentary. I saw just the
5:36
Speaker 2: stuff I read, basically, was that they believed he was
5:41
Speaker 2: the Lamb, which is the person who can interpret the
5:43
Speaker 2: seven seals that will bring about judgment Day. But beyond that,
5:47
Speaker 2: he wasn't like God or anything like that. He was
5:51
Speaker 2: a prophet of sorts, but not like a Messiah. That's
5:54
Speaker 2: what I saw.
5:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, he said with his own mouth, I am
5:57
Speaker 3: the Messiah, and there are Davidians that are still alive
6:01
Speaker 3: that believe he was a Messiah.
6:03
Speaker 2: So well, there goes me.
6:07
Speaker 3: Another thing I didn't know is that that Mount Carmel
6:09
Speaker 3: had been active since nineteen thirty five, so it had
6:12
Speaker 3: been around a long long time. It's about thirteen miles
6:15
Speaker 3: northeast of Waco, Texas, And so they had been around
6:19
Speaker 3: for a long long time, and in fifty five is
6:20
Speaker 3: when that official split came, and then fifty nine was when.
6:25
Speaker 3: And I think that's why they were like, hey, don't
6:26
Speaker 3: predict these second comings, because when they don't happen, you
6:30
Speaker 3: end up looking kind of dumb, exactly, And that happened
6:32
Speaker 3: in nineteen fifty five. The second coming did not happen,
6:35
Speaker 3: and so they ended up there with that last group,
6:38
Speaker 3: Like you said, about one hundred people. Koresh had been
6:41
Speaker 3: around since he was in his early twenties. He got
6:45
Speaker 3: off to a kind of a rocky start there because
6:48
Speaker 3: he had had an affair with Lois Roden, who I
6:50
Speaker 3: guess was Benjamin Roden's wife, Yes, if the math checks out.
6:55
Speaker 3: She was in her sixties and he was in his twenties,
6:57
Speaker 3: and he got into a squabble with her son about
7:00
Speaker 3: who was going to become leader and ended up shooting him,
7:04
Speaker 3: and like he was arrested and everything, and it was
7:07
Speaker 3: a hung jury, so he never he never had to
7:09
Speaker 3: serve time for that shooting.
7:11
Speaker 2: Right, So he took over like after that he was
7:14
Speaker 2: pretty much the undisputed leader. One of the first things
7:18
Speaker 2: he did was he married a fourteen year old member
7:21
Speaker 2: of the church, and her parents consented and said, yeah, sure,
7:26
Speaker 2: be married to our fourteen year old daughter who you're
7:29
Speaker 2: ten years older than, which made it legal in Texas
7:33
Speaker 2: at the time. That was you know, sign number one.
7:37
Speaker 2: But if you rewind a little bit before he showed
7:40
Speaker 2: up at the branch Davidian compound, he had actually been
7:44
Speaker 2: d fellow shipped is what it's called where the Adventists
7:47
Speaker 2: kick you out, because he had seduced, Yeah, which I
7:51
Speaker 2: think means that he sexually assaulted and actually successfully sexually
7:54
Speaker 2: assaulted a fifteen year old daughter of one of the
7:57
Speaker 2: church's elders.
7:59
Speaker 3: Yeah. You know, he had a pretty rough upbringing before that.
8:04
Speaker 3: Like you said, he was born in Houston. He was
8:06
Speaker 3: reportedly had suffered sexual abuse of his own at the
8:10
Speaker 3: hands of older boys. He had dyslexia and did not
8:14
Speaker 3: do well in school. I think he failed first grade
8:16
Speaker 3: a couple of times and was a dropout by the
8:18
Speaker 3: time he was in middle school. And yeah, so you
8:22
Speaker 3: know that was his sort of rough childhood.
8:26
Speaker 2: For sure, and over the years he kind of got
8:28
Speaker 2: into guns. He really got into the Bible like that
8:33
Speaker 2: was one of the things that I think people were
8:35
Speaker 2: drawn to about him at the Branch Davinians sect was
8:39
Speaker 2: like he knew what he was talking about. He was
8:42
Speaker 2: also very charismatic, and he could essentially run Bible studies
8:48
Speaker 2: that ran, you know, ten twelve hours at a length,
8:52
Speaker 2: and people weren't getting fatigued, like they were still just
8:54
Speaker 2: jazz the whole time. So he definitely knew what he
8:57
Speaker 2: was talking about. He wasn't just making stuff up the
9:00
Speaker 2: top of his head, like he very much understood the
9:03
Speaker 2: Book of Revelations in particular.
9:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. One of the first things he did
9:10
Speaker 3: once he was in charge was he said, God has
9:13
Speaker 3: told me that I need to bear a lot of children,
9:18
Speaker 3: and I need to have multiple wives in order to
9:20
Speaker 3: do that. I think he was supposed to God told
9:23
Speaker 3: him to have or at least he said, God told
9:24
Speaker 3: him to have twenty four children and they would be
9:27
Speaker 3: sort of the rulers in the future kingdom. And so
9:30
Speaker 3: at first he started with the single women of the group,
9:34
Speaker 3: and then that wasn't enough and he was having a
9:36
Speaker 3: lot of kids. I think he had seventeen in the end.
9:40
Speaker 3: Then he moved on to the married women and separated
9:42
Speaker 3: the couples out and said, all right, you can no
9:44
Speaker 3: longer be with your husband. I'm the only one here.
9:47
Speaker 3: I'm the only male here who was allowed to have intercourse.
9:51
Speaker 3: All the other guys have to remain celibate. And they
9:53
Speaker 3: all went along with it. And you know this included
9:56
Speaker 3: taking children up girls. That was this one woman, Cathy Schrow,
10:00
Speaker 3: who was very disturbing because she still believes all this stuff.
10:04
Speaker 3: But she was interviewed who said that they were all
10:06
Speaker 3: trying to stay awake, all the girls at the end
10:09
Speaker 3: of these marathon Bible studies, even though they were exhausted,
10:11
Speaker 3: so he would pick them to go back to his
10:15
Speaker 3: room and have sex with them. And she also it
10:18
Speaker 3: was really hard to watch, but she still to this
10:21
Speaker 3: day was like, they weren't children. We weren't children. They
10:25
Speaker 3: sure some of them were as young as ten, but
10:28
Speaker 3: they were adults in our culture. Yeah.
10:32
Speaker 2: Man, you know how the world found out about that too?
10:35
Speaker 3: Chuck about which part.
10:37
Speaker 2: Well about him sexually abusing minors children. It was a
10:42
Speaker 2: current affairs show. Well, first the Way Tribune Harald did
10:46
Speaker 2: a series of articles on it, so that caught the
10:50
Speaker 2: local attention. But a current affairs show called a Current Affair,
10:54
Speaker 2: the Australian version, back in nineteen ninety two went and
10:57
Speaker 2: interviewed David Koresh. And this is before anybody knew who
11:02
Speaker 2: David Koresh was, so they had a lot of foresight
11:05
Speaker 2: and they went and investigated it because this is a
11:08
Speaker 2: I mean, obviously it's a really big deal that there's
11:10
Speaker 2: a yeah, essentially what everyone thought of at the time
11:13
Speaker 2: and still do in a lot of ways. A cult
11:16
Speaker 2: leader who is sexually abusing the children of his sect,
11:19
Speaker 2: that's definitely worth investigating. That's not what the ATF investigated
11:24
Speaker 2: him for them.
11:26
Speaker 3: No, they're the ATF. They don' dabble in that kind
11:29
Speaker 3: of stuff. What they do dabble in is guns and firearms,
11:33
Speaker 3: and that is what got them. You know, I mentioned
11:35
Speaker 3: early on they were illegally collecting and buying and selling
11:40
Speaker 3: and retrofitting basically making machine guns and then selling those
11:45
Speaker 3: illegally at gun shows, and so that's what caught their attention.
11:50
Speaker 3: And you know, they were collecting these guns and supposedly
11:54
Speaker 3: like more than like close to two million rounds of ammunition,
11:58
Speaker 3: training everyone in there to use, like including the kids.
12:03
Speaker 3: To use these weapons. They were preparing for the end days.
12:07
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly, and they were going to go out with
12:10
Speaker 2: guns blazing.
12:12
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, well, which is what they did allegedly.
12:14
Speaker 2: The thing that initially caught the ATF's attention. They were
12:19
Speaker 2: already aware that there was such a thing as the
12:21
Speaker 2: Branch Davidians and that they had a business selling guns
12:24
Speaker 2: at gun shows. But the thing that really caught their
12:27
Speaker 2: attention was apparently a UPS driver was delivering a box
12:32
Speaker 2: and I guess the box fell open and a bunch
12:34
Speaker 2: of grenade shells fell out, and the UPS driver thought
12:39
Speaker 2: that's odd, like who gets fifty grenade shells delivered to
12:42
Speaker 2: their compound? And I guess alerted the federal authorities, and
12:46
Speaker 2: that's when they really started investigating the Branch Davidians. I say,
12:51
Speaker 2: we take a break and talk about how well that
12:53
Speaker 2: investigation was conducted. How about that?
12:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll be right back, all right. I think I
13:16
Speaker 3: snickered when we left because you Riley said, we'll talk
13:20
Speaker 3: about how that went, because it did not go well
13:23
Speaker 3: for a while. In fact, none of this went well
13:26
Speaker 3: before the raid ultimately happened. There were a lot of
13:29
Speaker 3: just kind of stupid moves from the ATF one time,
13:34
Speaker 3: they were like, hey, we need to keep an eye
13:36
Speaker 3: on this. So there's a house sort of nearby. I
13:40
Speaker 3: think it was like seventy acres the whole compound, but
13:43
Speaker 3: there was a house about a half a mile away,
13:44
Speaker 3: and they said, let's pose this college students. They're like
13:47
Speaker 3: renting this house, but they come in there. I feel
13:51
Speaker 3: like anytime like these people try to go undercover like that,
13:54
Speaker 3: like let's pose as kids out having a good time,
13:57
Speaker 3: and it just never goes well. And it didn't. They
14:00
Speaker 3: had suitcases, they had rental cars, like new rental cars.
14:06
Speaker 3: They eventually were like, I think they're onto us, so
14:08
Speaker 3: let's have a party. And one of the branch Davidians
14:11
Speaker 3: came to the party and I'm sure they were like, hey,
14:13
Speaker 3: would you like a Bruski and the branch Davidian went
14:16
Speaker 3: back on like, by the way, those are definitely not college.
14:18
Speaker 2: Students, right right. Don't you hate mortgages too, fellows, Yes,
14:23
Speaker 2: young person. I saw they also carried briefcases as well,
14:27
Speaker 2: rather than backpacked and stuff. So yeah, it wasn't the
14:30
Speaker 2: best undercover operation. They sent another undercover agent to pose
14:35
Speaker 2: as a UPS employee, and he did all sorts of
14:38
Speaker 2: stuff that ups employees don't do, Like he insisted that
14:41
Speaker 2: they Branch Davidians let him use the phone in a bathroom,
14:45
Speaker 2: and then he went to another part of the compound
14:48
Speaker 2: and tried the same thing, and they met him at
14:50
Speaker 2: the door with a roll of toilet paper, and then
14:54
Speaker 2: another guy, Robert Rodriguez. He actually managed to successfully embed
14:59
Speaker 2: himself in the Branch Davidians. He showed up as a
15:02
Speaker 2: student and a follower and started attending Bible studies and
15:07
Speaker 2: it was successful in that, like he was never kicked out,
15:11
Speaker 2: but it was unsuccessful in that they knew that he
15:13
Speaker 2: was a federal agent almost from the outset, and later on,
15:17
Speaker 2: I think during these negotiation talks, the FBI was like, well,
15:21
Speaker 2: if you knew he was undercover, why didn't you kick
15:23
Speaker 2: him out? And I don't remember who said it. One
15:26
Speaker 2: of them said, we liked him, like we saw it
15:29
Speaker 2: as core. He was a good guy and we liked
15:31
Speaker 2: being around and we came to like him, so why
15:33
Speaker 2: would we kick him out? So it was really weird,
15:37
Speaker 2: like they were almost toying with the Feds because they
15:39
Speaker 2: knew the Feds were investigating them, And it was so
15:42
Speaker 2: clumsy that they didn't feel particularly threatened at this point,
15:47
Speaker 2: but the whole thing started in May nineteen ninety two,
15:49
Speaker 2: and by February nineteen ninety three, I guess the ATF
15:52
Speaker 2: was like, we have enough information that we're going to
15:56
Speaker 2: we're going to carry out a raid. We're not just
15:58
Speaker 2: going to show up and ask him to come out.
15:59
Speaker 2: We're going to carry a hard hitting raid. And why
16:02
Speaker 2: did they do that?
16:03
Speaker 3: Chuck Well, I mean, they got a warrant, so they
16:06
Speaker 3: had enough information to at least get a like a
16:09
Speaker 3: legal warrant to search everything. Their goal initially was to
16:14
Speaker 3: just get those illegal weapons. Arrest David Koresh, who, by
16:18
Speaker 3: the way, and I think you found this was that
16:21
Speaker 3: like he had a relationship with the local sheriff, and
16:23
Speaker 3: at any point the local sheriff could and I think
16:26
Speaker 3: did say like hey man, once you come in and
16:28
Speaker 3: like talk to us about what's going on, and that happened,
16:31
Speaker 3: so like none of this seemed to have been completely necessary.
16:35
Speaker 3: I think they also were the und of the impression
16:37
Speaker 3: that like they were bunkered in and like he never
16:40
Speaker 3: left the compound, But upon further investigation, they found that
16:45
Speaker 3: he kind of regularly would leave the compound and they
16:47
Speaker 3: probably could have lured him out, but they you know,
16:51
Speaker 3: they were kind of bungling this from the beginning, so
16:53
Speaker 3: they planned a surprise kind of raid warrant serving where
16:58
Speaker 3: they would force entry, and they were like, we're going
17:01
Speaker 3: to catch them off guard, they won't have time to
17:03
Speaker 3: arm themselves, and it's going to go great.
17:06
Speaker 2: They had a lot of bad intelligence too, that this
17:09
Speaker 2: raid was based on. One. I don't know where they
17:11
Speaker 2: got this, but they were under the impression that all
17:14
Speaker 2: of the weapons were kept under lock and key and
17:16
Speaker 2: that you only access those with Koresh's direct permission. That's
17:21
Speaker 2: not true at all. The weapons were all over the
17:23
Speaker 2: compound and basically everybody walking around the compound knew how
17:26
Speaker 2: to use them and was prepared to right. That's a
17:30
Speaker 2: really big intelligence failure when you're planning a raid. Another
17:34
Speaker 2: is there was a pit that they assumed that most,
17:37
Speaker 2: if not all, of the men would be working in,
17:39
Speaker 2: and apparently during the surveillance the most bend that had
17:43
Speaker 2: ever been seen there at one time was thirteen. So
17:45
Speaker 2: that was a bad assumption. And then, like you said,
17:48
Speaker 2: they were like, he never leaves the compound, so we
17:51
Speaker 2: have to raid them there's one other thing about the raid.
17:55
Speaker 2: So the ATF was conducting the raid at the time.
17:59
Speaker 2: The ATF reported to the Treasury Department, and they planned
18:03
Speaker 2: this raid based on the element of surprise, right, The
18:07
Speaker 2: whole thing was supposed to have the element of surprise,
18:11
Speaker 2: And later on there would be a lot of disagreement
18:13
Speaker 2: about whether this was said or not. But supposedly the
18:16
Speaker 2: higher ups of Treasury were like, if there's no element
18:18
Speaker 2: of surprise anymore, if you lose it, yeah, don't do
18:21
Speaker 2: the raid. And that's not what happened.
18:25
Speaker 3: No, And you know, part of this makes me wonder
18:27
Speaker 3: if they were feeding that informant bad information too. Oh yeah,
18:31
Speaker 3: I didn't ever see anything about that, but like I've
18:34
Speaker 3: seen enough movies to know if they kept inviting this
18:36
Speaker 3: guy back to Bible study, then they may have been saying, like,
18:39
Speaker 3: you know, all the guns here are under lock and
18:41
Speaker 3: key or whatever. But who knows. That is chuck speculations.
18:45
Speaker 3: Don't quote me on it.
18:46
Speaker 2: It seems like it could be.
18:48
Speaker 3: But yeah, so the raid is blown because of another
18:56
Speaker 3: just this wasn't so much a blunder by the ATF.
18:59
Speaker 3: It was just a blunder by the media. Yeah, because
19:02
Speaker 3: it was a cameraman named Jim Peeler and a reporter.
19:05
Speaker 3: He was he's all over this documentary. He stopped on
19:10
Speaker 3: the way out there because he was tipped off. They
19:12
Speaker 3: don't know who. Maybe a shriff, steput or somebody tipped
19:14
Speaker 3: him off that this is going to be going down.
19:16
Speaker 3: So he wanted to scoop so he couldn't find the compound,
19:19
Speaker 3: and he stops a mail truck, a friendly mail carrier.
19:22
Speaker 3: It's like, hey, where's this Branch Davidian compound. I think
19:26
Speaker 3: there's a raid going on and I want to cover it.
19:28
Speaker 3: And that mail carrier was a Branch Davidian. So he
19:31
Speaker 3: high tailed it back there and was like, we're about
19:33
Speaker 3: to get raided, you guys.
19:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so when he tells David Koresh this, we're
19:37
Speaker 2: about to get raided. Robert Rodriguez, the undercover student who
19:42
Speaker 2: had embedded himself as a follower who they knew was
19:45
Speaker 2: a fed, he's standing right there talking to David Koresh
19:48
Speaker 2: when the mail carrier, David Jones, runs up and tells
19:50
Speaker 2: him they're about to get raided. So, knowing that the
19:53
Speaker 2: element of surprise has been blown, Robert Rodriguez runs back
19:57
Speaker 2: to the safe house to call his superiors, gets int
20:00
Speaker 2: such of them and apparently is like, the surprise is blown,
20:04
Speaker 2: we need to call off the raid, and the I
20:06
Speaker 2: guess the speers were like, oh, bad, bad connection, I
20:09
Speaker 2: can't hear you, see you. We're gonna go rate them now,
20:11
Speaker 2: And that's essentially what happened. They carried on with the raid,
20:15
Speaker 2: knowing full well that koresh knew they were coming, and
20:18
Speaker 2: that apparently gave them a sense of urgency that hadn't
20:22
Speaker 2: even been there before. And then on top of that,
20:25
Speaker 2: one of the reasons why they planned the raid in
20:28
Speaker 2: the first place, this big, whizbang fourth century raid with
20:32
Speaker 2: like like a tactical team going in, was that they
20:36
Speaker 2: were up for a budget review, congressional budget review, and
20:39
Speaker 2: they wanted something splashy to get the attention of Congress
20:44
Speaker 2: and be like, see, this is what you give us
20:46
Speaker 2: money for. So they had every incentive to go in
20:50
Speaker 2: unnecessarily roughly.
20:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. So on February twenty eighth, there were
20:56
Speaker 3: seventy six armed agents that came up from Fort Hood.
21:00
Speaker 3: They were obfuscated and cattle trucks. They had canvas thrown
21:04
Speaker 3: over the back of these trucks hiding. Of course h
21:08
Speaker 3: and them knew they were coming anyway, so it's not
21:10
Speaker 3: like that mattered. And at the very beginning of this thing,
21:13
Speaker 3: David Koresh comes to the front door, and it's on video,
21:16
Speaker 3: like all the stuff you can watch happen, and eventually
21:19
Speaker 3: you were watching it in real time as it played out.
21:22
Speaker 3: But it's it's all over this documentary. Like Koresh comes
21:24
Speaker 3: to the front door and opens it and says, hey, man,
21:27
Speaker 3: there's a bunch of women and kids in here. You
21:30
Speaker 3: don't want to you don't want to do this kind
21:33
Speaker 3: of quickly shuts the door and goes back in and
21:36
Speaker 3: all hell breaks loose. And from the descriptions I saw
21:39
Speaker 3: and and just sort of watching it like rewatching it,
21:43
Speaker 3: I guess it was. It was a war, like thousands
21:46
Speaker 3: and thousands of rounds being exchanged.
21:49
Speaker 2: Yes, And there is a lot of disagreement still today.
21:54
Speaker 2: Who was the first one to shoot? Right?
21:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that's the thing is. And again later
21:59
Speaker 3: with the fire, you still get two completely conflicting stories
22:03
Speaker 3: from each side.
22:03
Speaker 2: Right, So the Branch Davidians say that the Feds fired first,
22:07
Speaker 2: and the Feds obviously say the Branch Davidians fired first.
22:11
Speaker 2: The thing that supports the Branch Davidians claim is that
22:16
Speaker 2: there was an ATF agent who was part of the
22:18
Speaker 2: raid who apparently told an investigator right after the raid
22:22
Speaker 2: that they may have shot first because one of the
22:24
Speaker 2: agents shot a dog as they were coming into the
22:27
Speaker 2: compound and that that would have set off all of
22:29
Speaker 2: the shooting in general. He apparently later retracted that when
22:34
Speaker 2: asked about it. But apparently the Branch Davidians also say
22:38
Speaker 2: that their dogs were shot too, So it's entirely possible
22:43
Speaker 2: that that's when the shooting started. It's also possible the
22:45
Speaker 2: Branch Davidians started shooting first.
22:49
Speaker 3: Yeah, because in their on their side, at least, this
22:52
Speaker 3: is what they say. They said that the first rounds
22:55
Speaker 3: that they heard as the ATF speaking, were from an
22:58
Speaker 3: M six and a fifty cow rifle, and those are
23:01
Speaker 3: guns that they didn't have. And I'm just reminded, didn't
23:05
Speaker 3: they shoot the dogs at Ruby Ridge too?
23:07
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, So, like you said, this was like a war.
23:11
Speaker 2: People died here, Like I think four four agents died
23:17
Speaker 2: during this raid. I mean, the Branch Davidians had like
23:21
Speaker 2: massive firepower, and I think six Branch Davidians were killed
23:27
Speaker 2: in the exchange as well. A bunch more were wounded.
23:31
Speaker 2: David Koresh was wounded, and all of a sudden, this
23:36
Speaker 2: raid had been so thoroughly botched that it became day
23:40
Speaker 2: one of a fifty one day siege where the atf
23:45
Speaker 2: and then eventually the FBI surrounded Mount Carmel and we're
23:51
Speaker 2: trying to get the Branch Davidians to come out, and
23:53
Speaker 2: the Branchavidians were like, no, we're not coming out, you guys,
23:56
Speaker 2: go away.
23:57
Speaker 3: Yeah. And you know, they also had the superior ground.
24:02
Speaker 3: I think one of the guys that was like, you know,
24:03
Speaker 3: when we pulled up on this place, we were all
24:07
Speaker 3: of a sudden a little shaken. He said it was
24:08
Speaker 3: full of windows. He said it was the high ground.
24:11
Speaker 3: And he said, this is not the kind of like
24:14
Speaker 3: like we were immediately at the oh what do you
24:18
Speaker 3: call it. When you're at a disadvantage, that's the worst.
24:21
Speaker 2: Yeh yeah, yeah, like a siege of a castle up
24:25
Speaker 2: on a cliff. You're not in the best position unless
24:28
Speaker 2: you're in the castle.
24:29
Speaker 3: Yeah. And it also had a tower that's where Koresh's
24:31
Speaker 3: bedroom was.
24:32
Speaker 2: Oh yeah. It was also made almost entirely of like plywood. Right,
24:37
Speaker 2: there was some concrete to it, but wasn't the most part,
24:41
Speaker 2: wasn't it wood?
24:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it was huge, but it was definitely
24:44
Speaker 3: one of those things that was kind of built by
24:47
Speaker 3: hand over many years. Yeah, for sure. I think it
24:50
Speaker 3: was a three hour gun battle, and eventually there was
24:53
Speaker 3: a call from the inside to the outside where David
24:57
Speaker 3: Koresh gets on the phone with an Officer Lynch and
25:00
Speaker 3: he says, he says, he's Officer Lynch, and Koresh says,
25:02
Speaker 3: that's kind of a funny name. And then he says,
25:04
Speaker 3: this is David Koresh, the Notorious, And he said, what'd
25:07
Speaker 3: you guys do that for?
25:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the I think that's the thing, Chuck, Like,
25:10
Speaker 2: I'm so conflicted about this is like he was genuinely
25:13
Speaker 2: a bad person for sexually abusing kids. They were preparing
25:18
Speaker 2: for the end of days, but at the same time,
25:20
Speaker 2: he was aware enough of what they must have looked
25:23
Speaker 2: like to outsiders, like a crazy cult or something like that,
25:26
Speaker 2: that he wasn't just like, he wasn't out of his mind.
25:29
Speaker 2: It seems like at any given point in time, he
25:32
Speaker 2: was just kind of like an average dude who had
25:36
Speaker 2: kind of worked his way into this really unique situation
25:40
Speaker 2: and then abused it in many, many different ways. But
25:45
Speaker 2: he wasn't crazy. He wasn't some relig It wasn't like
25:48
Speaker 2: talking to Charles Manson, Like imagine trying to negotiate with
25:51
Speaker 2: Charles Manson. It was nothing like that. It was like
25:54
Speaker 2: negotiating with somebody who had different views with you than
25:58
Speaker 2: you that were so far out as far as religious. Yeah,
26:03
Speaker 2: this goes that even a religious negotiator wouldn't have common
26:09
Speaker 2: ground in that sense. Right, So they seemed crazy to
26:13
Speaker 2: the FBI, even though they weren't crazy people. It's really
26:18
Speaker 2: hard to get that across and not sound like an
26:20
Speaker 2: apologist or like I'm crazy myself.
26:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. We should point out that Koresh was
26:26
Speaker 3: wounded in this initial gunfight, and the religious imagery was
26:31
Speaker 3: not lost on his followers because he was shot through
26:34
Speaker 3: the wrist and he was shot through the side. You know,
26:38
Speaker 3: those were the wounds Jesus suffered on the cross and
26:41
Speaker 3: he was thirty three at this point, and I think
26:44
Speaker 3: most people think that's how Jesus was when he was crucified,
26:47
Speaker 3: so they all think this is like, you know, supreme
26:51
Speaker 3: like religious symbolism. Happening, right, Do.
26:55
Speaker 2: You want to take a break and come back and
26:56
Speaker 2: start talking about the siege and the negotiation attempts.
27:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, sure, okay, okay, Chuckley.
27:19
Speaker 2: So, like I said, the raid very quickly turned into
27:22
Speaker 2: a fifty one day siege, which makes it very ironic
27:25
Speaker 2: that one of the ATF agents was so confident that
27:29
Speaker 2: the raid would be over and done with very quickly.
27:33
Speaker 2: He had set up a tea time for the same
27:35
Speaker 2: afternoon as the raid, and he missed the tea time obviously, because,
27:39
Speaker 2: like I said, it turned into a siege at first.
27:43
Speaker 2: So the FBI was on the scene almost immediately, because
27:45
Speaker 2: when a federal agent is killed, the FBI investigates and
27:49
Speaker 2: they're like, well, we might as well stick around, since
27:51
Speaker 2: this is now a siege, we're going to take over
27:53
Speaker 2: from the ATF. So basically, on day one, the FBI
27:57
Speaker 2: took over this and their negotiators started to getting to work.
28:01
Speaker 2: Apparently they had trouble finding the phone number for the compound,
28:05
Speaker 2: but I think the branch Davidians called them first. Is
28:08
Speaker 2: that correct?
28:10
Speaker 3: I mean, I know that during the shootout they called out,
28:15
Speaker 3: but I'm not sure about afterwards.
28:16
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, at any rate, they were in communication on
28:19
Speaker 2: the phone very very quickly, I think maybe even the
28:22
Speaker 2: same day.
28:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, and things were going pretty well, like negotiations were
28:26
Speaker 3: going well at first, I mean, I think for front
28:30
Speaker 3: and everyone's mind was let's get these kids out of here,
28:34
Speaker 3: because they knew there were a lot of children inside,
28:36
Speaker 3: and so they were trying to get you know, Korresh
28:39
Speaker 3: to agree to get the kids out. He said, yep,
28:41
Speaker 3: we can do the do this two by two is
28:44
Speaker 3: what he said. And he said in return, I want
28:47
Speaker 3: to broadcast this hour long sermon on the Christian Broadcasting
28:53
Speaker 3: Network and that'll be the swap for the kids. And
28:57
Speaker 3: so they're working on this. They're trying to get everybody
29:01
Speaker 3: out basically and surrendering. And on March second, it was
29:04
Speaker 3: almost there, like everybody was about to come out and
29:08
Speaker 3: they were relenting, and then Koresh said, no, I got
29:11
Speaker 3: a message from God and he told me to wait.
29:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm sure the FBI negotiator pinched the bridge
29:17
Speaker 2: of his nose harder than he ever has in his life. Yeah,
29:20
Speaker 2: for sure, So that that kind of did that. I
29:24
Speaker 2: think more children were released after that, twenty one total
29:28
Speaker 2: between the first day and the fifth of March that
29:32
Speaker 2: left about twenty still remaining in there, and they started
29:37
Speaker 2: negotiating for milk. I guess Kathy Schroeder, who you mentioned earlier,
29:42
Speaker 2: she was on the phone with the FBI negotiator saying, Hey,
29:45
Speaker 2: we need a bunch of milk for the kids, and
29:47
Speaker 2: they're like, all right, you send out some kids and
29:48
Speaker 2: we'll give you some milk. And she's like, what are
29:50
Speaker 2: you talking about. Our little kids need some milk. Just
29:53
Speaker 2: give us some milk. This isn't a bargaining chip. They
29:56
Speaker 2: ended up bringing them I think six gallons of milk
29:59
Speaker 2: three times. And I guess the branch Davidians gave them
30:03
Speaker 2: proof of health and wellness by sending videotapes of the kids.
30:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think the other thing those videotapes did
30:11
Speaker 3: was it sort of sent a chill through the FBI
30:16
Speaker 3: because it was really clear when you watch these videotapes
30:18
Speaker 3: that no one was being held hostage, nobody was being
30:21
Speaker 3: held against their will. They all were believed that what
30:25
Speaker 3: they were doing was right and was God's plan in
30:29
Speaker 3: the end, Like Janet Reno never saw those tapes, so
30:34
Speaker 3: there's a lot of speculation on what information she was
30:37
Speaker 3: being fed because she'd ha been on the job for
30:38
Speaker 3: like a week or two.
30:39
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's right, I forgot about that.
30:41
Speaker 3: And so they are basically saying, like, no, they kept
30:44
Speaker 3: those tapes from her because it showed a different picture
30:48
Speaker 3: of what was going on inside. And he was painted
30:51
Speaker 3: to her as like, you know, a sex offender illegally
30:54
Speaker 3: selling guns. They killed four of ours, and it's a
30:57
Speaker 3: cult that's holding like he's kind of holding all these
30:59
Speaker 3: people hostage, yeah, which apparently was never the case.
31:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that was the general consensus among law enforcement.
31:04
Speaker 2: This is a crazy cult, just like all the other
31:06
Speaker 2: crazy cults, and that just did not fit into that
31:09
Speaker 2: whole paradigm, right, And so that kind of undermines a
31:13
Speaker 2: lot of what you're trying to do. And there was
31:16
Speaker 2: a lot of undermining going on within the FBI itself
31:22
Speaker 2: because essentially it was almost like two different branches of
31:25
Speaker 2: the multiverse that were this event layered over one another
31:30
Speaker 2: at once in one reality, because you had the FBI
31:33
Speaker 2: negotiators who were trying to negotiate and get this resolve peacefully,
31:38
Speaker 2: and simultaneously you had the FBI's hostage Rescue Team, which
31:41
Speaker 2: is like the FBI's version of the swat team. Yeah, like,
31:45
Speaker 2: let's just go in there and get this guy and
31:47
Speaker 2: we'll just end it like that. And they kept there,
31:50
Speaker 2: was like just this tension, like the negotiators would would
31:53
Speaker 2: make some progress and then the hostage rescue team would
31:56
Speaker 2: do something to take off the branch of idiots and
31:59
Speaker 2: so that would put a kaibash on those recent negotiations.
32:02
Speaker 2: And it just kept going like that.
32:04
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was. They weren't communicating well either. It was
32:07
Speaker 3: just a real mess. At one point, they a very
32:11
Speaker 3: sort of legendary criminal defense attorney in Texas was called
32:16
Speaker 3: by Koresh's mom and said, I need you to go
32:19
Speaker 3: get my son out of there and like do this
32:21
Speaker 3: in court. And so he went out there. He managed
32:25
Speaker 3: to talk to the FBI and to letting him walk
32:28
Speaker 3: up and knock on the front door, and he went inside.
32:31
Speaker 3: He's the only one who ever got inside and met
32:34
Speaker 3: with Koresh and was like, hey, listen, man, I'm a
32:35
Speaker 3: criminal defense attorney. My job is to look after you
32:39
Speaker 3: and see that you and everyone here gets out alive
32:42
Speaker 3: and that we handle this in court. He said, because
32:44
Speaker 3: between you and me, they haven't done this right. And like,
32:48
Speaker 3: you know, you've got a lot going in your favor,
32:50
Speaker 3: and Koresh was like, all right, I trust you, but
32:54
Speaker 3: what I need to do is stay in here until
32:56
Speaker 3: I write. God told me to write my own version
32:59
Speaker 3: of like an up book of Revelation basically, and when
33:02
Speaker 3: I delivered that manuscript, I'll willingly come out.
33:05
Speaker 2: Yeah. And that was thanks to two Bible scholars, Philip
33:09
Speaker 2: Arnold and James Taber, who had been following this like
33:12
Speaker 2: the everybody else, at least in the United States, on
33:15
Speaker 2: CNN and every news network. It was just constant, wall
33:19
Speaker 2: the wall coverage. You could just get up in the
33:21
Speaker 2: middle of the night and watch what was going on
33:23
Speaker 2: at the siege in Waco for weeks. Right, these guys
33:27
Speaker 2: had seen it, and they it became clear to them
33:29
Speaker 2: that like the FBI had no idea, no touch point
33:33
Speaker 2: with what the Branch Davidians believed, and that they were
33:37
Speaker 2: just talking over each other. They just couldn't grasp who
33:40
Speaker 2: they were dealing with. And these guys are like, we can,
33:43
Speaker 2: We're Bible scholars, we understand what's going on. So I
33:45
Speaker 2: guess they went on TV and we're talking about what
33:48
Speaker 2: the Branch Davidians believed. Koresh saw it and he That's
33:52
Speaker 2: when he was like, I need to write down my
33:53
Speaker 2: interpretation of revelations and give it to these two who
33:56
Speaker 2: can actually do something with it that are trustworthy for
33:59
Speaker 2: safe keep. Yeah, so that lawyer, like you said, negotiated
34:02
Speaker 2: that and Koresh was like, sure, I will come out.
34:06
Speaker 2: And there I read a transcript of him talking to
34:09
Speaker 2: negotiators and they're like, what does that mean though, what
34:11
Speaker 2: does it mean you're going to come out? Like you
34:12
Speaker 2: can come out guns blazing, you can come out two weeks,
34:14
Speaker 2: ten days, one day, Like when are you going to
34:17
Speaker 2: come out? And he's like, I'm going to come out
34:18
Speaker 2: right after I'm done.
34:19
Speaker 1: What is that like? Two weeks?
34:21
Speaker 2: What does it mean you're going to come out? It's
34:22
Speaker 2: like I'm going to come out and go into a
34:24
Speaker 2: jail house. So it was very clear that he was
34:28
Speaker 2: willing to come out after this. The FBI was like,
34:31
Speaker 2: we don't believe you, Like we've already you've already missed
34:33
Speaker 2: deadlines left and right. This is just a stalling tactic.
34:37
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. So they're hearing one thing from the
34:40
Speaker 3: FBI negotiators like trying to get them out peacefully. In
34:44
Speaker 3: the meantime on the news and with their own eyeballs
34:46
Speaker 3: out the windows. They see them pulling up with Bradley
34:51
Speaker 3: fighting vehicles, like clearing obstacles and setting up a perimeter.
34:55
Speaker 3: So they see some of the kids get let out
34:57
Speaker 3: and immediately like our kind of jumped on and having
35:01
Speaker 3: all their stuff searched right in front of them. They
35:04
Speaker 3: see Kathy Schroeder leave and get arrested, and like see
35:07
Speaker 3: her in an orange jumpsuit on the news, and so
35:10
Speaker 3: they're getting all these mixed messages. Eventually they see two
35:15
Speaker 3: Abrams tanks pull up. That's the mother of all as
35:21
Speaker 3: I think it's the largest war vehicle in the US
35:23
Speaker 3: fleet is an Abrams tank, and they at one point
35:27
Speaker 3: one of the guys is Bragg and he's like, you know,
35:29
Speaker 3: I could take one of these tanks and drive through
35:32
Speaker 3: this house from one end to the other. And the
35:36
Speaker 3: FBI negotiators said, why would you do that? Yeah, like
35:39
Speaker 3: what are you even talking about? So it just kind
35:41
Speaker 3: of puts a pin on like how in conflict they were.
35:45
Speaker 2: Right and the FBI in general was just treating this
35:48
Speaker 2: like a normal hostage situation. But again, the Branch Davidians
35:52
Speaker 2: weren't hostages. They were there on purpose and I guess
35:56
Speaker 2: when you have a normal hostage situation, you have demands,
36:01
Speaker 2: and then you also are slowly or maybe even not
36:04
Speaker 2: that slowly increasing like your tactical presence, like showing up
36:08
Speaker 2: with tanks. I think there were fourteen other combat vehicles
36:11
Speaker 2: on site, basically showing like there's no way out of
36:14
Speaker 2: this except you coming out if you want to do
36:17
Speaker 2: this peacefully. And they also did a lot of tactics
36:21
Speaker 2: that had been used before in normal hostage situations, which
36:25
Speaker 2: was basically, you keep everybody inside from being able to sleep,
36:28
Speaker 2: from being able to think, from being able to hear themselves,
36:31
Speaker 2: and you do that with really bright lights all night
36:34
Speaker 2: and loud speakers playing all sorts of annoying stuff.
36:38
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, like they were. I think on March
36:41
Speaker 3: twenty first, they were close to having this resolved again.
36:46
Speaker 3: I think Koresh was in the final stages of his
36:49
Speaker 3: book of revelation, and they were negotiating, like fairly successfully
36:53
Speaker 3: to get more people out. I think they got five
36:55
Speaker 3: people out of March twenty first. The guy in the
36:58
Speaker 3: documentary said a two dozen more were set to be released,
37:02
Speaker 3: and that's when the hostage the HRT team started unilaterally
37:09
Speaker 3: just making decisions like playing that music they played, these
37:12
Speaker 3: boots are made for walkin twenty four hours a day.
37:15
Speaker 3: They just as a complete like show of power, they
37:21
Speaker 3: ran a tank over David Koresh's antique Ford Ranchero vehicle
37:27
Speaker 3: in full view of everybody. So they're doing this stuff
37:29
Speaker 3: to like they're purposely agitating them these people that are
37:34
Speaker 3: already And one of the Davidians is like, we were
37:37
Speaker 3: already Like like you think this is going to solve anything?
37:41
Speaker 3: To agitate us further with this music and by keeping
37:44
Speaker 3: us a week awake, He's like, this could only lead
37:46
Speaker 3: to tragedy.
37:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so since the FBI started buying the idea
37:51
Speaker 2: that his agreement, Koresh's agreement to come out after he
37:54
Speaker 2: finished this book of revelations interpretation was just stalling. They
37:59
Speaker 2: went to Jane Reno and they're like, look, we have
38:01
Speaker 2: this plan to go in with gas. It's not lethal gas.
38:05
Speaker 2: They're not going to like it, but it'll make them
38:07
Speaker 2: come out and just sign off on this. But that
38:12
Speaker 2: was essentially like the premise of them going in, and
38:16
Speaker 2: they basically did. But you said that one guy was
38:18
Speaker 2: talking about they drove a tank through the wall at
38:22
Speaker 2: least one wall of the compound for sure.
38:26
Speaker 3: But yeah, they called in and said, hey, we're not shooting,
38:29
Speaker 3: we're not coming in, but we're placing tear gas in
38:32
Speaker 3: the house. Like that's what we're doing. I know, you
38:34
Speaker 3: see it's coming to the house. All we're doing is
38:36
Speaker 3: placing tear gas in there. It's not going to kill you.
38:40
Speaker 3: It'll just irritate your eyes and skin. Because we're trying
38:42
Speaker 3: to get you guys out so we can get this
38:44
Speaker 3: resolved without any more bloodshed. So they fully announced they
38:47
Speaker 3: were doing this. They filled the house up with tear gas.
38:51
Speaker 3: There were a lot of high winds, so they think
38:53
Speaker 3: it was like kind of blowing the tear gas away.
38:55
Speaker 3: So that's when they rammed the tank through because they
38:57
Speaker 3: thought they were kind of huddled in this bunker where
38:59
Speaker 3: the tear guests couldn't get to them, and they also
39:01
Speaker 3: had gas masks. So they're ramming this thing with the
39:04
Speaker 3: tank at this point, and all of a sudden, you know,
39:08
Speaker 3: hell kind of breaks loose again.
39:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, the place starts to catch on fire. Very importantly,
39:15
Speaker 2: this was about four hours after the tear gas was used, right,
39:20
Speaker 2: So just remember that once the place caught fire, that
39:25
Speaker 2: was that was essentially it. We kind of talked about
39:28
Speaker 2: how it was made mostly of wood and it was
39:30
Speaker 2: kind of made slipshod, it was, and it went up
39:34
Speaker 2: really fast, not just because it was made of wood,
39:37
Speaker 2: but also they had like blocked entrances with hay bales
39:40
Speaker 2: and mattresses and stuff like that. So yeah, there were
39:43
Speaker 2: Coleman lanterns everywhere. There was a lot of fuel and
39:46
Speaker 2: accelerant for the fire, so it went up pretty quick.
39:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think what I took from listening to
39:54
Speaker 3: the people, like all the agents and everyone was they
39:57
Speaker 3: all to a person said we thought, all right, they
40:00
Speaker 3: got to come out now, Like they just kept waiting,
40:03
Speaker 3: like any second now, people are going to come pouring
40:05
Speaker 3: out of there and we're not going to lose any
40:07
Speaker 3: more life. And that didn't happen. I mean, I think
40:11
Speaker 3: a handful of people came out, but everyone basically stayed
40:16
Speaker 3: in there, and it's sort of anyone's guess what happened
40:19
Speaker 3: in there. I know Koresh was found dead from a
40:23
Speaker 3: single bullet to the head and forehead, and there's a
40:27
Speaker 3: lot of speculation that his number two, Steve Schneider, kind
40:31
Speaker 3: of realized he was a fraud and shot him in
40:32
Speaker 3: the head and then killed himself, but no one knows
40:36
Speaker 3: what bullet ended up in David Koresh's forehead.
40:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you said some people, just a few
40:43
Speaker 2: people rushed out of the building. There were nine people
40:45
Speaker 2: who left while this building was on fire, right, Like
40:49
Speaker 2: imagine like your dedication to your beliefs that you're like, no,
40:52
Speaker 2: not going to leave this burning building. There were seventy
40:55
Speaker 2: five other people inside. At least twenty were kids, and
41:00
Speaker 2: I think thirteen of the adults were found to have
41:02
Speaker 2: fatal gun shot wounds. Two most were to the head,
41:07
Speaker 2: two were in the back, which is very awful to
41:09
Speaker 2: think what was going on with that. And then three
41:14
Speaker 2: kids were shot to death, and I think six women
41:18
Speaker 2: and children were deemed to have died of blunt force trauma,
41:21
Speaker 2: and the narrative that was created around that was that
41:24
Speaker 2: they were beating each other to death. Apparently, later on
41:29
Speaker 2: they it was determined that they died of blunt force
41:31
Speaker 2: trauma when the FBI came through with their tank and
41:34
Speaker 2: a bunch of concrete fell on these women and children
41:37
Speaker 2: and killed them. That was where the trauma came from.
41:40
Speaker 2: But that's not to say that they didn't do other
41:42
Speaker 2: unspeakable things, Like we said three kids were shot. One
41:45
Speaker 2: boy died of a stab wound to the chest. Like
41:48
Speaker 2: there's just no other way to interpret that, you know,
41:51
Speaker 2: like you don't accidentally stab a three year old to
41:55
Speaker 2: the chest at when the FBI's coming through your door,
41:58
Speaker 2: you know.
42:00
Speaker 1: Yeah.
42:00
Speaker 3: And I think that's where all the speculation comes from,
42:02
Speaker 3: is like what was going on inside there. I know
42:05
Speaker 3: one of the guys was like shot in the stomach
42:07
Speaker 3: and asked to be put out of his misery by
42:09
Speaker 3: his own people, which they did. So yeah, it's just
42:14
Speaker 3: I mean, I can't imagine what was going on inside
42:16
Speaker 3: that place. It's horrific to think of it.
42:18
Speaker 2: And I mean all this happened in minutes, you know.
42:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, once that fire started, it was pretty quick.
42:23
Speaker 2: The thing is is, you know, there are plenty of
42:27
Speaker 2: accusations by the Branch Davidians and their supporters and critics
42:31
Speaker 2: of the federal government that the FBI actually started this fire.
42:36
Speaker 2: The FBI said right off the bat, we didn't use
42:39
Speaker 2: any incendiary tear gas canisters, and then three years later
42:42
Speaker 2: they're like, well, we used some incendiary tear gas canisters.
42:46
Speaker 2: Despite that, it does not seem that the Feds started
42:50
Speaker 2: this fire. Remember, they used tear gas, and the fire
42:53
Speaker 2: didn't start for four more hours. It started in three
42:56
Speaker 2: different places, none of which coincided with where tear gas
43:00
Speaker 2: was used, so the tears almost certainly didn't do it.
43:04
Speaker 2: They also had I guess they had like monitored like
43:07
Speaker 2: listening devices inside, is that right.
43:10
Speaker 3: I don't know.
43:10
Speaker 2: I saw somewhere that they had monitoring, like they were
43:13
Speaker 2: monitoring them over audio, and that they had heard them
43:16
Speaker 2: talking about like previously talking about lighting the place on fire.
43:20
Speaker 2: So it's almost one hundred percent certain that the branch
43:24
Speaker 2: Davidians set the place on fire.
43:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, the surviving Davidians say that absolutely
43:30
Speaker 3: did not happen, and it was all framed to look
43:32
Speaker 3: that way. So it's and then the guy comes on
43:35
Speaker 3: right after and says, well, he's a liar, so it's
43:39
Speaker 3: it's definitely one of those things where they're both still
43:41
Speaker 3: digging in.
43:42
Speaker 2: The thing that got me chuck, this really upset me
43:46
Speaker 2: was after all this was done, after the fires were
43:49
Speaker 2: put out and everything was like starting to get calm,
43:54
Speaker 2: somebody raised the ATF flag on the compound's flag pole.
43:59
Speaker 2: They had just been conquered and I found that really awful.
44:04
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's pretty awful. And like you mentioned earlier, no
44:07
Speaker 3: one from the government side was brought upon charges or anything.
44:12
Speaker 3: The FBI and the Clinton administration was clear to brongdoing
44:16
Speaker 3: in two thousand. There was a report in nineteen ninety
44:21
Speaker 3: three that was, you know, they didn't say they did
44:23
Speaker 3: it right, that it was a pretty damning report about
44:25
Speaker 3: the ATF raid and that became like, you know, a
44:29
Speaker 3: teaching moment for any new ATF students coming in there, like, hey,
44:33
Speaker 3: look how bad things can go when you really screw
44:35
Speaker 3: things up. And the one big result from this was
44:41
Speaker 3: it really inspired and galvanized the militia movement and right
44:47
Speaker 3: wing anti government radicals. Like there's there's video footage of
44:51
Speaker 3: Timothy McVeigh there he went to Waco during the fifty
44:54
Speaker 3: one day siege and was like selling anti government bumper
44:57
Speaker 3: stickers and talking about how awful this was. And then,
45:00
Speaker 3: of course, you know, on the same day, on April nineteenth,
45:04
Speaker 3: two years later, carried out the Oklahoma City bombing.
45:06
Speaker 2: YEH killed one hundred and sixty eight people and nineteen
45:09
Speaker 2: children in as payback for Waco. And yeah, I remember
45:14
Speaker 2: very clearly in the throughout the nineties, like that whole
45:17
Speaker 2: New World Order, black helicopter, FEMA, concentration camps, conspiracy theories,
45:25
Speaker 2: and that was I mean Waco. To people who believed
45:28
Speaker 2: in that, this was like proof positive that yes, the goverment,
45:32
Speaker 2: if you had guns and you were religious, the government
45:35
Speaker 2: would send a tank through your house and set it
45:39
Speaker 2: on fire and kill you. So this really helped that
45:43
Speaker 2: and Ruby Ridge both really fed into this end of
45:47
Speaker 2: the millennium paranoia that I think the X Files roaded
45:50
Speaker 2: so high on.
45:51
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I mean this was less than a year
45:53
Speaker 3: after Ruby Ridge, So I'm not that guy at all,
45:57
Speaker 3: but I remember being in college and all this stuff
45:59
Speaker 3: was going on, and it was just a real uneasy
46:03
Speaker 3: feeling in time.
46:04
Speaker 1: For sure, it really was.
46:05
Speaker 2: For sure, the Branch Davidians are still around too, Chuck.
46:10
Speaker 2: Did you know that although they have changed their name
46:12
Speaker 2: to Branch the Lord Our Righteousness, but they're still at
46:15
Speaker 2: Mount Carmel.
46:17
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. Nine of them were convicted. Nine of
46:20
Speaker 3: the nine survivors, that is, five on voluntary manslaughter and
46:24
Speaker 3: weapons charges. I think a few got weapons charges and
46:28
Speaker 3: one other I don't know what the charge, but it
46:30
Speaker 3: just says a lesser charge, but they're all out. They've
46:34
Speaker 3: all been out since at least two thousand and seven,
46:37
Speaker 3: and you know, at least the two surviving members that
46:43
Speaker 3: stayed till the end, or I guess the one was arrested.
46:46
Speaker 3: They're still believers and still think David Koresh was the
46:52
Speaker 3: Messiah and that they were doing God's will and they
46:54
Speaker 3: don't have any regrets. The one woman who got out
46:58
Speaker 3: as she was one of the children that was really
47:00
Speaker 3: just really really all of her interviews were just devastating
47:04
Speaker 3: because she's just a lost person now, you know.
47:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, she lost both of her parents.
47:09
Speaker 3: Right well, her mom split once they said separate and
47:13
Speaker 3: I'll start impregnating you. Her mom left him in the
47:15
Speaker 3: middle of the night, but they removed her from her
47:17
Speaker 3: father basically and said you can't even be with him
47:20
Speaker 3: in the compound anymore.
47:22
Speaker 2: Man's that whole story is just rough from beginning to end.
47:25
Speaker 3: Huh, Yeah, for sure, I mean there're nobody won you know.
47:29
Speaker 2: No, definitely not. There's a lot more that you can
47:33
Speaker 2: read about this stuff if you're interested. Be very very
47:36
Speaker 2: careful who you believe in, in where your sources are,
47:40
Speaker 2: because there's a lot of conspiracy theories out there, and
47:43
Speaker 2: then of course there's a lot of cover up associated
47:46
Speaker 2: with it too, but there's a lot more to read.
47:48
Speaker 2: This is basically just the tip of the iceberg.
47:51
Speaker 3: I'll tell him about Madonna. You gotta tell him about Madonna.
47:54
Speaker 2: So apparently David koresh he had a picture of Madonna
47:59
Speaker 2: taped to his motor cycle and he had told one
48:02
Speaker 2: of the Brench Davidian members that God had told him
48:06
Speaker 2: I will give Madonna onto the So basically he was
48:11
Speaker 2: just waiting for God to have Madonna come hang out
48:14
Speaker 2: at the compound and he get to impregnate her too.
48:18
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we started out talking about George Michael and
48:21
Speaker 3: we ended up talking about Madonna.
48:23
Speaker 2: Right. The funny thing is is under different circumstances, like
48:27
Speaker 2: you know, he might have had a shot with early
48:30
Speaker 2: nineties Madonna, he might be right. You got anything else?
48:36
Speaker 3: I got anything else?
48:37
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, then that's it for Brinch Davidians as far
48:39
Speaker 2: as we go. And that means it's time for listener mail.
48:45
Speaker 3: You know, I don't have a listener mail prepared, So
48:48
Speaker 3: we just want to remind everyone once again that if
48:51
Speaker 3: you are interested in getting a board to the the
48:54
Speaker 3: Valiant Lady of Virgin Voyages and spending a little time
48:57
Speaker 3: with us out at sea. You can do that this fall.
48:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, October second to seventh. We're going from New York
49:03
Speaker 2: City to Bermuda and then back to New York City
49:06
Speaker 2: and we're going to be doing a live show. Stuff.
49:08
Speaker 2: They don't want you to know it's going to be
49:09
Speaker 2: doing a live show. It's going to be a lot
49:11
Speaker 2: of podcast centric fun on this voyage the whole time.
49:15
Speaker 3: That's right, And just go to Virgin Voyages dot com
49:18
Speaker 3: slash stuff and we'll see on the high seats.
49:22
Speaker 1: Uh yeah.
49:22
Speaker 2: And in the meantime, if you want to send us
49:24
Speaker 2: an email, you can do that. Send it off to
49:27
Speaker 2: Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
49:33
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
49:35
Speaker 3: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
49:39
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.