Hate American Made ////// The Prophet

Summary

True Crime Garage - Episode: "Hate American Made ////// The Prophet"

Release Date: April 8, 2025

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Introduction

In the episode titled "Hate American Made ////// The Prophet," hosts Nic and the Captain delve deep into the tumultuous life of David Koresh and the rise and fall of the Branch Davidians. This comprehensive exploration provides listeners with an in-depth understanding of the events that culminated in the infamous Waco Siege of 1993.

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Early Life and Upbringing of David Koresh

David Koresh, born Vernon Wayne Howell on August 17, 1959, in Houston, Texas, had a troubled and abusive childhood. Raised initially by his grandmother, Koresh faced severe bullying and abuse, which shaped his psychological landscape. As Steve Buscemi narrates at [10:02], “He was pretty horribly bullied as well by the other boys at school… Some of the bullying was sexual in nature.”

The instability continued as Koresh's parents separated, and he moved back in with his biological mother, Bonnie Sue Clark, and her new husband. Tragically, Koresh revealed that he was sexually abused by a male relative during this period, further exacerbating his emotional scars.

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Religious Awakening and Joining the Branch Davidians

At the age of 20, Koresh experienced a significant religious transformation, becoming a born-again Christian within the Southern Baptist church before joining his mother's denomination, the Seventh Day Adventist Church. This shift marked the beginning of his deepening involvement in religious movements.

In the summer of 1981, Koresh moved to Waco, Texas, and became involved with the Branch Davidians, a sect founded by Benjamin Roden in 1955. By 1983, Koresh began claiming prophetic gifts, asserting himself as a leader within the group. As highlighted at [18:12], “Lois Rhoden allowed David Koresh to begin teaching his own message to the Davidians.”

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Ascension to Leadership and Controversial Activities

Koresh's rise within the Branch Davidians was marked by controversial actions and relationships. In 1987, he began a sexual relationship with Lois Rhoden, the widow of Benjamin Roden and then-leader of the sect. Koresh claimed divine inspiration for this union, stating, “I'm closer to God and more involved with God than any of you” ([21:01]).

His provocative teachings and manipulative tactics led to significant infighting within the group. A pivotal moment occurred when George Roden, Lois's son and the designated successor, confronted Koresh after an alleged arson incident at the Mount Carmel compound. The ensuing gunfight resulted in Rhoden being wounded and subsequently declared insane, weakening his position ([37:07]).

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Consolidation of Power and Mount Carmel Acquisition

With George Roden incapacitated, Koresh capitalized on the power vacuum to consolidate his authority over the Branch Davidians. By 1989, the group began purchasing the Mount Carmel property in Waco after Roden failed to pay property taxes. This acquisition not only provided a strategic base but also symbolized Koresh's control over the sect.

Koresh's leadership style became increasingly authoritarian, with allegations of child abuse and stockpiling of weapons. As discussed at [47:35], “They are in possession of a bunch of illegal weapons,” raising suspicions and tensions with local authorities.

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Events Leading to the Waco Siege

The culmination of Koresh's controversial leadership and the Branch Davidians' activities triggered federal intervention. On February 28, 1993, agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) attempted to execute a search warrant at the Mount Carmel compound. The operation, intended to be swift and non-violent, quickly escalated into a deadly standoff.

At [49:21], Buscemi explains, “They wanted to learn what was actually going on inside those four walls. Was there any kind of abuse by David Koresh or any of the other adults in the group?”

The initial firefight resulted in casualties on both sides, setting the stage for an extended and tragic siege that would capture national attention and leave lasting scars on all involved.

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Conclusion

"Hate American Made ////// The Prophet" meticulously unpacks the complex layers of David Koresh's life, his manipulative rise to power within the Branch Davidians, and the series of events that led to the catastrophic Waco Siege. Through thorough analysis and engaging storytelling, Nic and the Captain provide listeners with a nuanced perspective on one of America's most infamous true crime cases.

Notable Quotes:

• Steve Buscemi ([10:02]): “He was pretty horribly bullied as well by the other boys at school… Some of the bullying was sexual in nature.”
• Steve Buscemi ([21:01]): “I'm closer to God and more involved with God than any of you.”
• Steve Buscemi ([47:35]): “They are in possession of a bunch of illegal weapons.”

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For more detailed discussions and episodes, visit True Crime Garage and join Nic and the Captain in their enthralling true crime journeys.

Transcript

[Steve Buscemi]

In 1932, one man opened a two room business school above a nondescript storefront in downtown Manchester, New Hampshire. How did it become one of the largest universities in the country? Okay, this case isn't exactly a mystery. Southern New Hampshire University offers over 200 degrees you can earn from your couch. And with low online tuition, Southern New Hampshire University makes earning your degree affordable too. Find your degree at SNHU Edugar. That's SNHU Edugar. Hi, this is Steve Buscemi. You know, the actor. Well, now I'm an actor and podcast host. From Piece of Work Entertainment and Campside Media in association with Olive Productions, comes Big Time, an Apple original podcast. Each episode follows the story of one misfit with big dreams who isn't afraid to bend a few rules or take a short shortcut to get there.

[Captain]

Well, who steals bees? I was duped.

[Steve Buscemi]

I shoot you in the leg.

[Captain]

This is Big Time.

[Steve Buscemi]

Follow and listen on Apple podcasts. By an unspeakable Act 8, the apocalypse would occur soon. More white supremacist groups, more anti government groups. David Koresh, Ruby ridge siege. Timothy McVeigh, more than 80 people dead. Bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City. Hate. By an unspeakable act. There is so little hope left. Hello? Hello? Yeah, this is Lieutenant Lynch. May have you. Yeah, there are 75 men around our building and they're shooting at us in Mount Carmel. Mount Carmel? Yeah. Tell them there are children and women in here and to call it off. All right, all right. Hello? I hear gunfire. Oh, hello? Who is this? Hello? Call it off. Who is this? Hello? Yeah, this Lynch. Hey, Lynch. Yeah, that's a kind of funny name there. Oh, listen, who am I speaking with? This is David Koresh. Okay, David. Notorious. Why did you guys do that for?

[Captain]

Well.

[Steve Buscemi]

What I'm doing is I'm trying to establish some communication links with you. No, no, no. Let me tell you something. Yes, sir. You see, you brought a bunch of guys out here and you killed some of my children. We told you we wanted to talk. No. How come you guys try to be ATF agents? How come you try to be so big all the time? Okay, David, there's a bunch of us dead. There's a bunch of you guys dead. Now that's your fau. Foreign. The Branch Davidians. To talk about this Christian group known as the Branch Davidians, we first need to introduce the Seventh Day Adventist Church. The Seventh Day Adventist Church is a religious group. It's a Protestant Christian denomination which is distinguished by its observance of Saturday the seventh day of the week and the Christian and Hebrew calendar as the Sabbath. Its emphasis on the eminent second coming of Jesus Christ and the end of days. The Branch Davidians is a fringe offshoot of the Seventh Day Adventist Church. The Branch Davidians emerged from the Davidian Seventh day community. A guy named Benjamin Roden established the branch Davidians in 1955. This is a group that are known for their apocalyptic beliefs and then in the 1990s, known for their leader, A1 Mr. David Koresh. The Branch Davidians believed in the imminent end of the world and identified the American government as the lamb like beast of the Book of Revelation. Now, much of the Bible is open to interpretation, but with some understanding. The second beast that appears in Revelation poses as a lamb someone who may present himself as a messiah, but actually is a false messiah whose speech and talk is satanic in nature. Then I saw a second beast coming out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb, but it spoke like a dragon. It exercised all the authority of the first beast on its behalf and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast whose fatal wound had been healed. And it performed great signs, even causing fire to come down from heaven to the earth and full view of the people. Because of the signs, it was given power to perform on behalf of the first beast. It deceived the inhabitants of the earth. It ordered them to set up an image in honor of the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived. The second beast was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast so that the image could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed. It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark which is the name of the beast or the number of its name. This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of man. That number is 666. In the 1980s, David Koresh became the leader of the Branch Davidians. As the head of the Branch Davidians, Koresh claimed to be its final prophet. His apocalyptic Bible teachings, prophecies, including interpretations of the book of Revelation, the seven seals, and the End of days, attracted various followers. The group lived at the Mount Carmel center, which was a large property near Waco, Texas. And the Davidians had their own flag. The flag depicted a six winged serpent and a star which resembled a star of David. When viewed from afar, flying over top of the seven seals. David Koresh was born in Houston, Texas on August 17, 1959. His parents were young and not married. I would describe his upbringing as dysfunctional. And David Kesh was not his birth name. He was born Vernon Wayne.

[Captain]

How wonder why he changed it.

[Steve Buscemi]

You know what I mean, Vernon, his mother was 14 year old Bonnie Sue Clark and his dad was 20 year old Bobby Wayne Howe. And some details of Koresh's early life vary among the different sources that are out there.

[Captain]

Just like Jesus Christ himself, not much of his childhood is known.

[Steve Buscemi]

After two years, his parents split up. Eventually little Vernon would go to live with grandma, his mother's mom, and she will briefly raise him as her own. To the point of it was implied that she was actually his mother. And they gave off this appearance, especially within the confines of most company. So when his mother, Bonnie, his actual mother Bonnie would come and visit, she would pretend to be an aunt. I mean, of course that's strange. We've heard of those types of scenarios before. But it, this seems a little odd and a little more askew to me because you would think that Bonnie would when she's around, that she would just pretend to be the older sister rather than an aunt, which means she's the sister of her own mother.

[Captain]

Well, Bobby Wayne, his father, at 20 years old, why would he be interested in a 14 year old? Just a little strange.

[Steve Buscemi]

When he was about five years old, he did go back to living with his real mother and her new husband. And this was after being brought up to speed on things, right? Learning the truth about all of the family's secrets and who his real mother was. Koresh would later say that it was around this time that a male relative started molesting him. Koresh described his childhood as lonely, struggling with poor study skills and dyslexia, which led him to being placed in special education classes. Some of his troubles learning actually came from poor eyesight. He had quite poor eyesight when he was little. He was pretty horribly bullied as well by the other boys at school. He was called horrible names and had long running horrible nicknames. Some that are so offensive that I don't feel comfortable repeating any of them. Some of the bullying was sexual in nature. There was sexual assault according to Koresh and some others, with some reports stating that he was gang raped by some older boys when he was just a small boy.

[Captain]

Yeah, look what you did, you bullies, you turned this kid into a ped file with a messiah complex.

[Steve Buscemi]

But then he started to grow up. And he, he got good at sports which was a huge transformation for him for and for his childhood. His interest in sports and physical development brought him some improvements, but he still dropped out of Garland High School anyway in his junior year. As we said, David Koresh wasn't great at school and he wasn't great at work either. He, he tried various jobs but was either fired or would eventually quit them. At the age of 19, he had a sexual relationship with a 16 year old girl who became pregnant. The teenage mother thought that David Koresh was unfit to be the father of the kid, so she moved away and refused to see him again. And thus he never saw this baby which was his firstborn. It was his daughter.

[Captain]

Well, obviously he's going to have a lot of confidence issues when you have this weird situation. You have a young mother so she's not able to take care of you, you're passed off to your grandmother and then you find out that, well, now that my mother's in a better situation, she's going to go, surprise, I'm actually your mother. So this I think would lend itself to some confidence issues and maybe a lot of other issues. Especially if a child doesn't feel safe.

[Steve Buscemi]

Yeah, his, him feeling safe is complicated by the fact that he was bullied because of his learning disabilities when he was a kid and some of that too. I know that bullying still goes on today and it's, it's unfortunate and something that we are doing better about policing within our schools and it's carried on and migrated a bit online quite heavily online. Especially for a lot of these, these poor kids that get bullied over the Internet and over social media. But I think, I hope there's a big part of me that hopes that the bullying that he experienced was somewhat a sign of the times or, or more so a sign of the times than it would be today. Based off of his.

[Captain]

Well, say I think it actually be harsher online because I would assume that there'd be a percentage of kids that wouldn't say it to your face and so be a lot easier to text or type to a kid. So I can imagine growing up in these times.

[Steve Buscemi]

Yeah, harsh online. But gang rape is pretty, pretty harsh. Pretty, pretty downright harsh. Yeah.

[Captain]

But I speak it in general. Maybe you should pay attention. Thank you.

[Steve Buscemi]

This is so around the same time, right. David Koreshi's going through a lot of changes. This, this 16 year old girl who he got pregnant, she moves away, refuses to let him be a part of her life and thus he doesn't get to see his, his daughter. I don't know how involved he would have been anyway. It's. It's too tough to say. I took a, a lot of looks at this part in this portion of his early life and it's difficult to say if he would have stepped up and been or attempted to be a legit father. But regardless, he didn't get the opportunity to do that now. But he does start to pull some things together here, Captain. This is when he became a born again Christian and wanted to kind of change his ways. He became born again in the Southern Baptist church and he later joins his mother's denomination and she is a member of the Seventh Day Adventist Church. He's 20 years old at this point. Now he starts up a relationship with the pastors 15 year old daughter.

[Captain]

That's bizarre.

[Steve Buscemi]

This is not something that the pastor approved of. But Koresh wanted to marry the girl. And so he prayed to God for answers and guidance on the matter. Or at least he says that he prayed to God for answers and guidance on the matter. And so as this story goes here, Captain Koresh allegedly during this time of praying for guidance, he opens his eyes only to find his Bible sitting there in the open position. It was previously closed when it before he closed his eyes, he opens his eyes and his Bible is Open to Isaiah 34:16 which reads, look in the scroll of the Lord and read, none of these will be missing. Not one will lack her mate, for it is his mouth that has given the order and his spirit will gather them together. So with his bible in hand, he approached the pastor and explained the open Bible story to him, proclaiming this to be a sign from God that it was God that wanted him to have the pastor's daughter for a wife. The pastor wasn't so easily fooled. He dismissed the suggestion out of hand and forbade Koresh from ever seeing his daughter again.

[Captain]

Well, good for him because I would have said, hey, want to be Jesus boy? How about you pray to God so you don't be a pedophile, you freaking creep.

[Steve Buscemi]

But Koresh was like tlct boss. So he creeped. Yeah, just keep it on the download. Nobody's supposed to know. But Koresh gets caught and they get found out and this gets him expelled from the church and from the congregation as a whole.

[Captain]

Well, when you're looking for signs, you're going to find one.

[Steve Buscemi]

Well, I, I'll go and say this. This is completely absurd. Okay, I'm not saying that he didn't open his eyes and His Bible was suddenly open. I. Let's pretend that that happened for a moment. But the reason why it is absurd. Think about a Bible. Think of how short that portion of the scripture is. Isaiah 34, 16, it's a whole three sentences. So I, what I'm pointing out here is how would anybody be able to look at an open Bible that is two pages long, appearing to be two pages in front of your face and go, oh, that's the one. Out of these two pages, here's the three sentences that God is trying to tell to me that, that wants me, he wants me to read these three sentences.

[Captain]

Yeah. Chances are he was sitting in the corner holding his, his Bible in one hand and pulling on his pee pee in the other. And this vision came to him of this 15 year old girl and he said, oh, well, there's, there's my sign.

[Steve Buscemi]

Even if, even if it's one of those tiny little Bibles with maybe you only have a reading on, on each page, who is he to decide which of the two pages he's supposed to read or, or that is supposed to be the message. So I mean it's completely. But he's the prophet, backwards as hell. And I'm sure that, look, the pastor probably didn't need to see through that portion of the story. He just likely didn't want this man being with his 15 year old daughter or handing over his 15 year old daughter to this grown man.

[Captain]

And I'm not trying to justify anything that David did, but when you come from a situation where Your father is 20, your mother is 14, when they have you. So that seems like a little more normalcy for you to be into somebody younger. But also anybody that is sexually abused or physically abused, or they have some kind of traumatic thing that happens to them when they're younger, they normally are attracted to people of the same age of when that abuse happened to them, if that makes any sense.

[Steve Buscemi]

So now we're at the summer of 1981 on our timeline here. And Koresh's next move was to go out to Waco, Texas. Remember, he's just been excommunicated from the church and congregation.

[Captain]

Yeah.

[Steve Buscemi]

So this is where and when he joins this other group, the Branch Davidians. So the summer of 1981, he goes out to Waco, Texas where he joined the Branch Davidians. Benjamin Roden, who had originated the branch group in 1955, died in 1978. So by the time that Koresh gets there, the founder, if you will, of the Branch Davidians, Benjamin Roden has Recently passed away. About three years prior, in 1983, Koresh began claiming the gift of prophecy. Around this time, Koresh began a sexual relationship with Lois Rhoden. She's the widow of Benjamin Rhoden and she's the current leader of the sect of the Branch Davidians. Lois is 67 years old at this time. So David Koresh was a man who clearly had issues with having age appropriate relationships.

[Captain]

Well, he's going to sleep his way to the top.

[Steve Buscemi]

Exactly. That's what the captain did. Koresh eventually became.

[Captain]

Slept my way to the bottom.

[Steve Buscemi]

Yeah. Reverse order. Koresh eventually began to claim that God had chosen him to father a child by Lois, who the child would be the chosen one. This is, this is a really interesting and integral part of the story here that I, that I don't think many people know about. Right. Because because of her age, not only is she the leader, and like you pointed out, he's, this is a strong attempt by him to create this, this relationship with the leader that nobody else in the group will have. And, and if he's a good boy, he'll probably get favoritism from the leader and sleep his way to the top. But on top of that, he devises this plan once it's. Once they're outed because they kind of keep this relationship secret from, from the group. Once they're, this relationship is discovered, Koresh turns it into this whole thing of like, well, it's okay, we're meant to be together.

[Captain]

Had another vision. Touching his pee pee.

[Steve Buscemi]

Not only that, proof of that is I. She's pregnant.

[Captain]

Are you Greg Knight?

[Steve Buscemi]

I'm no doctor here, but a 67 year old, 68 year old woman getting pregnant would seem like a bit of a miracle to me.

[Captain]

Not when you have a prophet's penis.

[Steve Buscemi]

And so what he's telling the group is that, look, I'm not, I'm. I'm more than a man. Yeah.

[Captain]

From the prophet Britney Spears. I'm. I'm not a girl, not yet a woman.

[Steve Buscemi]

And I'm, I'm closer to God and more involved with God than any of you. And proof of that is I was able to impregnate this old woman, this older woman. And it's, it's God's will. God wanted this to be done, so he, he's using this whole thing to separate himself, elevate himself from the rest of the group and eventually take over as the leader of the Davidians. Now and we haven't got to that point yet, but meanwhile, this is. These are all lies. Obviously, the Lois was not pregnant with David Koresh's child.

[Captain]

Well, one of the things I thought was interesting when looking into this whole Waco situation is it seems like this is the start of more radical ideas coming from David. And at this point, I don't. I don't even believe that he's going by David. Right. I think he's still Vern. It seems like his initial teachings were positive peace, love, a little more hippity dippity. And then it starts changing into this end times prophecy. I'm the chosen one, or I'm supposed to give, you know, I'm supposed to impregnate somebody so they have the chosen one. It seems like these ideas start shifting a little bit.

[Steve Buscemi]

It's around this time that Lois Roden allowed David Koresh to begin teaching his own message to the Davidians, the Branch Davidians. And his message at was called the serpent's root, which caused controversy within the group. Lois's son, George Rhoden, was intended to be the group's next leader after Lois. But as you can see, Koresh is doing one hell of a job to wedge himself in the middle of the mother and son that were running the show so that he himself could jump rank and become the Branch Davidian leader. You're right, Captain. He's still going by Vern at this point. Or Vernon Howe. It was in 1990 that he filed a petition with the state of California to legally change his name. And you have to give a reason for that. And he stated that it was for publicity and business purposes and wanted to change his name to David Koresh. His first name, David, symbolized a. A direct connection to the biblical king David, from whom a new messiah would descend. Then we have Koresh, which is a biblical name of Cyrus the Great, a Persian king who is named a messiah for freeing Jews during Babylonian captivity. So by taking the name David Koresh, he is, according to online reports, professing himself to be the spiritual descendant of king David. And of course, David Koresh. David would make sense as well. As this group is called, is known as the Branch Davidians.

[Captain]

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[Steve Buscemi]

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[Captain]

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[Steve Buscemi]

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[Steve Buscemi]

Foreign.

[Captain]

We are back. Cheers mates. To the windows. To the walls. Cheers to you Colonel.

[Steve Buscemi]

Cheers to you Captain.

[Captain]

Body of Christ.

[Steve Buscemi]

All cans in the air.

[Captain]

Blood of Christ.

[Steve Buscemi]

Now this is around the time that David Koresh is going to say that he's going to get some more instructions directly from the lips of God. So this is when he announced to the group that God had instructed him to marry a God's just all up in his sex life woman named Rachel Jones. And I I hesitated there because I I don't know. I didn't list here in my notes, how old she was her age at the time of this announcement. But they do get married. Yeah, they do get married. And she is technically, through the rest of our story and the rest of Deva Koresh's life, she will be his legal wife. Now, remember George Rhoden, the son of Lois, who was going to take over control of the branch Davidians after his mother was no longer in power? We have George Rhoden and David Koresh. They're essentially at this time, battling for control of this sect. Now, there's a large fire that did over $500,000 worth of damage to the compound and the property. It's mysteriously a mysterious arson, let's say.

[Captain]

And by somebody in the church.

[Steve Buscemi]

Yeah. George Rhoden said that David Koresh started the fire. So you can see where they're starting to try to push and pull and get people, get the majority to choose a side so that that person, that individual, could go on to become the. The new leader. So George Rhoden says, david Koresh started this fire. He's to blame for the fire. He did all this damage to us. He doesn't love us. He doesn't love you. But Koresh, in response to this, says, no man set that fire. That was a judgment of God, was an act of God. So George Roden had the support of the majority of the group at this time, and he decided to force Kesh and his small group of followers off of the property. And they didn't do this peacefully. They did this at gunpoint. Kesh and his 25 followers were forced off of Mount Carmel's compound and large property. And they went and set up camp in Palestine, Texas, where they lived in very rough conditions. Think about. They're pretty much camping out long term. They're living in buses and tents for the next two years. Lois Roden died in 1986. In 1987, George Rhoden exhumed a body from their. From the group's community cemetery. Rhoden said that he was just moving the cemetery. That. That does happen. In fact, the. The cemetery closest to my home was moved in the 1970s, and it was almost 2,000 grave sites that were moved.

[Captain]

What I would do is just buy a giant boombox, turn on Thriller, and lead the dance parade to the new, new location.

[Steve Buscemi]

Let them do the work for you.

[Captain]

Yeah. And be entertained in the process.

[Steve Buscemi]

That's brilliant. Work smarter, not harder. George Rhoden exhumed this body, or at least Koresh claims so. And Roden says, no big deal. You know, I'm in charge of the Properties here. I'm. I'm moving this gravesite. I'm. I'm going to be moving the cemetery. The entire cemetery. I don't know the size of this cemetery. I'm guessing it's rather small. David koresh has got an answer for this, too. So he claims that, no, George Rhoden is not moving the cemetery. George Rhoden had actually issued a challenge to David Koresh and to. And to the followers who could resurrect the body. Right. Who could resurrect the body would then prove who the leader should be, because that's the powerful one. That's the one that is doing God's will. And so whoever resurrected the. The body would become the new leader. Or this, as David Koresh is explaining and telling to the. The other followers. And Koresh even takes this to the local authorities. He goes to the sheriff's office to file charges against George Rhoden for illegally exhuming a corpse. Yeah, the sheriff's like, hey, no problem. Just come back here. We need some proof, right? We can't just go and arrest this guy and charge him with something. We need some evidence to back up your claims that he committed this crime. So Koresh and a posse of about seven armed Koresh Davidians went to the Mount carmel center, attempting to get a photograph of the body, of the exhumed body. But George Rhoden wasn't dumb. He believed that Koresh would pull some shit. So Rhoden, now, by himself, gets the jump on Koresh and company, and a gunfight breaks out. By the time the sheriff and the deputies respond to this gunfight, George Rhoden had already suffered a gunshot wound and was pinned down behind a. Behind a tree. They had him surrounded. He couldn't come out. As a result of this incident, David Koresh and his followers were charged with attempted murder of George Rhoden. Now, at the trial, Koresh explained that he went to Mount Carmel to uncover evidence of a criminal disturbance of a corpse, of a crime committed by this George rhoden, the one he's accused of attempting murder on.

[Captain]

Right.

[Steve Buscemi]

Koresh's followers were acquitted. And the David Koresh portion of the case and trial, it ends in a mistrial. So a mistrial was declared. No real outcome there. Nobody gets in trouble. In 1989, Rhoden, George Rhoden murdered a man named wayman Dale adair with an axe.

[Captain]

This guy's a loser.

[Steve Buscemi]

This is after he says Adair stated his belief that he himself was the true messiah.

[Captain]

Well, think about how crazy this is. You have a very small group of people Basically worshiping and studying a small group or a small section of Christianity, picking and choosing what they preach. And within this group, you have all these individuals jockeying for position. Right. So you have multiple male individuals basically claiming that they're the chosen one.

[Steve Buscemi]

Well, and I'll tell you what this portion of the story is. So it's often not told.

[Captain]

No.

[Steve Buscemi]

And what. What is. What I'm taken aback by here is that you. Once you start factoring all these things in, let's. Okay, so we have this. This battle, this infighting that's going on within these branch Davidians. And a lot of it had there never been the Waco standoff and siege. I don't know that anybody would know about all these goings on here.

[Captain]

No. And it's kind of sad though, too, because they. We. We know this event as Waco, Texas. Oh, remember Waco? This is poor Waco. This is outside of Waco. This is not in the city limits of Waco. But they've been painted with this brush because they were kind of out there on their own. If these yahoos would have just killed each other off, we wouldn't have known any of this story.

[Steve Buscemi]

They were awfully close to doing so on, it appears, would appear to be several occasions. But.

[Captain]

Yeah.

[Steve Buscemi]

So you have all this infighting now. Let's compound that with all the guns, the gun fights, the digging up of a body, attempted murder, the fighting for power, the attempted murder. This is like. And it's all happening in Texas. It's like the wild west of church.

[Captain]

John Wayne meets Jesus Christ superstar.

[Steve Buscemi]

So after George Rhoden murdered this other man with an ax, this is after this man stated that he was the true messiah. George Rhoden's defense was that the man was sent by David Koresh to kill him. So he was just simply defending him himself.

[Captain]

And that's a good possibility. I mean, we have to remember Dave Kish was on trial for attempted murder of Rhoden. He gets off on a mistrial. Not much after that. A man that is now claiming to be the messiah himself is coming after you. It's plausible that Rhoden was telling the truth, that this man, this man was sent to him by David Koresh.

[Steve Buscemi]

Very likely, it would stand to reason, because it goes along with a lot of the other items that we covered so far leading up to this portion of the timeline. Ultimately, George Rhoden was deemed to be insane by the courts. So he ends up being sent away to a psychiatric hospital. And this will allow David Koresh to. And his group with a lot of the. The. The downward spiral of George Rhoden. Rhoden was losing followers. Right. And they were all starting to go to David Koresh, who were living in tents and buses outside of Waco, not even at Mount Carmel. But with George Rhoden gone and Roden wasn't paying the taxes on the property on the Mount Carmel proper.

[Captain]

Well, he probably didn't believe that he had to.

[Steve Buscemi]

Yeah. And I don't know what type of income was being generated by Roden or his followers at the time, because regardless of. Of your beliefs, if you live here in this country anyway and you own land, you're going to have to pay taxes on that land. Right. Eventually. What takes place, Koresh and his group, which is almost everybody now by this point, plus Koresh has picked up some additional followers. In the meantime, they're able to pull together their funds and purchase the property, the Mount Carmel property, because of all the. The it defaulting on the taxes.

[Captain]

I was thinking about this. I actually think this is actually a important part of the story in the sense of we have this group that probably most of the locals are not paying attention to. They know that the there. They know that they have maybe some strange religious beliefs or teachings, but you have this property that nobody's paying taxes on. So when they get rid of Rhoden and they actually pay the taxes, you would think that the locals would be going, well, they paid their taxes. They now own the land. And then on top of that, they find some. And I don't know if it was confirmed or not to be a meth lab, but there's some people that were renting stuff off a Rodin. And so then Dave Koresh goes to authorities and says, hey, there's this drug lab or meth lab. Can you have it removed? So now if you're the locals, you're probably thinking, well, at least this religious compound is changing for the better.

[Steve Buscemi]

Well, yeah, and this. This ultimately, and this is something that's not really discussed or talked about, but the. The local authorities had no problem with David Koresh or his or the Branch Davidians. And part of that was because George Rhoden was deemed to be wrong. Right. Even though they're. They're breaking laws and fighting each other.

[Captain]

Right.

[Steve Buscemi]

But ultimately he gets sent away to the mental hospital. And so in the eyes of everybody in the community in. In the county, Jefferson county, they all believe. Well, as George Rhoden, who was the crazy one and who was wrong and maybe even his mother as well. So whatever problem they had with the Branch Davidians, the local authorities that the, the slate gets wiped clean when the rodents are no longer around this act, like you said of this meth lab. So these people that were renting from, from Roden, when Koresh gets back there, they, they stumble on this meth lab and they do, as you said, report it to the local authorities that go in and shut it down and clean everything up. And this is ultimately deemed to be an act of good faith by the Branch Davidians to the local authorities. Where now the local authorities are going, okay, well, clearly the rodents were the problem if they're, you know, and so we, we can get along with. And we don't mind these Branch Davidians being here. They are, they're reporting things that are illegal. And that's kind of how things were at the local level for quite some time now. That's going to start to change because where we left off with the Koresh and his crew coming back to Mount Carmel, that's around 1989. And it actually wasn't until the following year when Koresh changed his name from Vernon Howe to David Koresh, Old Vern. You know what I mean? Vern. But we start to have some problems, right? So there's, there's some rumors going on and part of this is still some additional infighting. So there were, there were Branch Davidians that were no longer part of the group that, that when Roden was removed and when the rodents went away that they left the group and those persons were coming out and going to local authorities with complaints about David Koresh specifically and saying that he's having sex with underage girls that are members of the. That church and that they are stockpiling weapons. And there's truth in these allegations. There's also, there's also reason to kind of hit the brakes on some of these allegations as well. It's again, some of the, there's truth in some of these allegations, but some of these allegations are just purely come about because of bad blood where somebody who was no longer part of the community, no longer part of the Branch Davidians decided they didn't like David Koresh and they were going to go and tattle on him. And it's, it gets very dicey to say what allegations were true and what allegations were completely made up, but they were stockpiling weapons. But part of that was their income that they were generating. Part of their income that they were generating is think of, think of like a guy that owns a comic shop or baseball card shop. They're buying guns and then hoping to sell them later. At an increased price to make a profit. Now, they do believe in end times. Not only end times. They believe that they're eminent, that they are closer, that they are close. And so part of the stockpiling of weapons is to stockpile weapons, but part of it, too, is to generate some form of income.

[Captain]

Well, one of their main focuses as part of their religious studies and beliefs and sermons, a lot of this was just based around the Book of Revelations.

[Steve Buscemi]

And the thing here, though, is it's Texas. You're allowed to own guns. But the claim is that they are. They are in possession of a bunch of illegal weapons. And then, of course, the claims that he is sexually abusing the children or some of the children within this group of the Branch Davidians.

[Captain]

Well, I. I also believe there's claims of physical abuse to some of the children as well.

[Steve Buscemi]

Correct. So this is going to morph itself into what us, the general population, know to be of Waco. And. And when we think of Waco, what we remember and what we've heard and seen over the years, those are the. That's a very general telling of what led up to February 1993. So on Sunday, February 28, 1993, agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, they are going to attempt to execute a. An arrest in search warrants against David Koresh and the Branch Davidian compound. The way this story goes, Captain, is that this was supposed to be an easily executed warrant. The ATF wanted to see what they could find within the walls of the compound, that is Weapons, firearms. They also wanted to learn what was actually going on inside those four walls. Was there any kind of abuse by David Koresh or any of the other adults in the group?

[Captain]

Right.

[Steve Buscemi]

They wanted to video. They wanted video documentation of the intrusion for documentation purposes. And then many suspect after the fact that they wanted to videotape this for the purpose of. Of sending out to the media. Because keep in mind, this is 1993. The ATF and the FBI, the US Marshals just had the horrific standoff the year prior at Ruby Rich. And now we all know how that went down. So a lot of people point to this and say this February 28th execution of this arrest and search warrant was to be a way for them to clean that up, to clean up that mess and say, look, no, this is what we do. This is. This is how we are handling things now. This is to save face a bit. And we're going to go in there, we're going to do it nice and clean. Nobody's going to get hurt. We're going to uphold the law. We're going to find, detect and see if there are any illegal activities. And if there are, we are going to bring those persons to justice and we're going to shut down this operation quick and easy, nice and clean. The problem here though, that we should point out part of this is for them to go in and detect potential signs of child abuse, sexual or physical abuse or what have you. The ATF does a lot of things, but they're not in charge of that. That's not, those are not crimes that they are to be investigating. They hold no jurisdiction over those type of crimes. So it befuddles me how that worked its way into the search warrant in the first place. A judge had to sign off on that.

[Captain]

Well, they have an undercover agent that's made their way into the group, so they're getting reports from him.

[Steve Buscemi]

But they absolutely have jurisdiction and have power if in fact the Branch Davidians are housing, purchasing and selling illegal weapons.

[Captain]

But there's a couple other things that are happening here too, because the ATF is in contact with some ex members of David's clan, if you will. So they are warning against the idea that this serving in the search warrant is going to go as easy as they believe because they're trying to explain to the ATF and other law enforcement that this is kind of what David preaches about. You might just spark, you know, ignite things into motion that we don't even know are prophecies that are in David's head.

[Steve Buscemi]

And that's exactly right. They, again, this is a group that, that believes in the teachings of end times, of the Apocalypse and that they will ultimately everybody will then be judged and some people will go to heaven in the arms of the Lord and the, the, the truly wrong people, who is, as this group would believe is the majority of mankind would go elsewhere, would go, would go to hell. In fact, I believe that part of their belief system is their. I don't know if they refer to it as purgatory. I know the Catholics do, but they are a big believer in purgatory or a place similar to purgatory where you go and even, even after you have passed, after you have died, you would go there and, and wait until the actual end times come and judgment comes for all before you can ascend to heaven or descend to hell. And so you're exactly right, Captain. That is what the authorities need to be informed of and be concerned of because they're taught that the end times are near and they may very likely come in. They could come in any form or fashion, truly. But there's a possibility that one of those forms that could lead to the. To the apocalypse could be your own government, your own government coming after you for your religious beliefs.

[Captain]

So much more to get to on this. The siege at Waco. Check out true crime garage.com go to the store page. We got a promo code. Easter 25 for 25% off. Join us back here in the garage. And until then, be good, be kind, and don't litter.

[Steve Buscemi]

SA.

[Captain]

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[Steve Buscemi]

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[Captain]

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[Steve Buscemi]

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