Original subtitles

This programme contains some scenes which some viewers may find upsetting.

I was absolutely terrified to go beyond this gate. Mm-hmm.

Do you remember the church?

Mm-nm. I just remember the baby headstones.

Yeah.

Well, it was a nice church.

It still looks the same,

even though it's not there any more.

Everything looks exactly how it did.

I miss it.

SHE SOBS

TEARFULLY: Half of my family is dead because of this.

And to think about all the pain that they went through...

SIREN WAILS

RADIO CHATTER

NEWSREADER: There's a major story developing at a religious commune

just outside of Waco.

There are believed to be some 75 members of a religious sect,

known as the Branch Davidians living at the commune.

It's a very ugly situation, almost a warlike zone going on here.

RAPID GUNFIRE, SCREAMING

You can hear people getting shot, people screaming,

you can hear their kids.

I figured, it's possible we might all die today.

GUNSHOTS, SHOUTING

All I knew about the Branch Davidians is that they were led

by an individual by the name of David Koresh.

You mean, God in heaven has a book called truth?

A book that no man can reveal but who himself?

We believed that David was an incarnation of God.

He danced around so fast that you were bewildered,

beguiled, mesmerised,

at the knowledge he had, you see?

He was so believable.

It was just like God being there.

He was a con man.

He had a Bible in one hand and a machinegun in the other.

It was the highest honour to be taken as God's wife.

You start thinking, is he really a prophet?

Are we a cult?

SIRENS BLARE

CAMERA SHUTTERS CLICK, SHOUTING

Stop, stop, stop.

David Koresh is dangerous, irrational and probably insane.

We've got this sociopathic cult leader,

and a 51-day stand-off.

We need to cut the head off the snake.

VOICE OF DAVID KORESH:

At this point, we're saying come out with your hands up,

this matter is over.

CRASH

Who else was 33 years of age

when he was executed based upon his religious beliefs?

Jesus Christ.

Want to see one of the holes here?

It's kind of painful.

Oh, it ain't nothing, to a tough guy like me!

I think David Koresh knew what God was asking of him.

But he was willing to do it.

He was willing to die for you and me.

We believed that the end of the world was going to come

and we were going to be some of the first chosen.

And so that's why my parents moved to Mount Carmel,

and became Branch Davidians.

They used to have a fence,

and we had horses in here,

we had a barn.

You know, we had the administration building right over there.

That's where Daddy and I got married.

We moved there when I was eight.

I remember when we first got there it was, of course, very strange.

We had to wear tops that came down, you know,

in between our thigh and our knee,

so that when we bent over in the garden,

the boys couldn't see our bottoms.

I lived in a house with my mom

and my dad and my two brothers,

and my grandpa and my grandma.

It was like, we didn't have to worry about anybody else

outside of Mount Carmel. It was safe.

When I was 18, I went on a quest for the truth.

At that time, I was doing a lot of marijuana,

but I was not happy, inside.

And then when I came here to Mount Carmel,

I just felt that I'm in the right place at the right time.

But some of the buildings were in shambles,

it wasn't the perfect place.

We called it boot camp.

Because you were here to have self booted out of your system.

So you really had to have a love for the truth that you were hearing.

CLAP OF THUNDER

We were taught that the end was coming soon.

And that we would never have to grow up, get married,

have kids, work out in the world.

We believed God was going to bring his kingdom to Earth

and we were going to be...

We were going to be special.

According to the by-laws that our church works under,

the leader has to be chosen of God and they have to be a prophet.

So all of our spiritual leaders were all prophets,

OK? Ben Roden was a prophet.

VOICE OF BEN RODEN:

But in 1978, Ben Roden died.

And it was very tragic,

because everyone thought he was going to live forever.

After Ben Roden died, his wife, Lois Roden,

became the prophet.

She had the light, the word, from God.

She liked fancy cars and clothes and shoes.

She liked power.

But it wasn't really all that long,

and that's when David Koresh came along.

THUNDER ROLLS

COUNTRY MUSIC ON RADIO

David felt that he had not served God properly.

He wanted to go find a prophet or a prophetess

to give him more guidance.

He felt compelled to do that from the Lord.

I remember this long-haired kind of hippie dude and I was like,

you know, who's he?

This is not my guitar...

And then he spent a lot of time with our prophet,

Lois Roden.

And from what I understand,

they had a relationship.

Which blew my mind.

I mean, she was old enough to be his grandmother!

I don't know how in the world David was able to persuade her.

It had to be something in scripture,

you know, similar to what Eve

experienced with the serpent.

David thought it was God's will

that they were supposed to produce a holy child.

And so he actually tells everyone that Lois is pregnant,

and she's going to have a baby,

and her faith is going to bring forth this child.

She miscarriages, and so he immediately

drops her like a hot potato and says, OK,

she didn't have enough faith, so she can't be the spiritual leader.

I must be THE spiritual leader.

So Lois lost her authority,

and I remember an incident...

They were driving in a van down the road.

Well, the van door, you know, opened up...

They pushed her out the truck, backwards.

"We don't need you any more, we've got David."

I... Here, I need somebody to...

Huh?

Right, this is live.

DISTANT SIRENS

It's a very ugly situation,

almost a war-like zone going on there.

But we're held with plenty of gunfire,

here goes another ambulance headed for some of the wounded.

At the time, we couldn't figure out what went wrong.

There were some really bad things that I saw.

You know, one agent is dead on the back of a pick-up

and another agent walks up and folds his arms across his chest.

And, uh, that's one of the saddest things that you could see.

HE SIGHS

Gosh.

It's all coming back, I'm telling you.

INDISTINCT SHOUTING

CHURCH BELLS RING

David Koresh wanted to go to Israel,

because Israel is a focal point of Bible prophecy.

And he says that while he was there,

in Israel, he had a divine visitation.

He says a chariot came down,

and the angels in it took him

up higher and higher until finally,

he arrived beyond the constellation Orion.

And he says there,

"I saw civilisations that were so advanced."

He describes these civilisations as having all kinds

of laser technology.

He saw the eternal God.

And when he returned to the Earth,

he said then that he had a panoramic view and understanding

of the entire Bible,

where he could interpret it and understand it.

After this encounter, something happened.

It was as if he now had a divine destiny.

After Israel, he went from basically like,

to me, like being a bum, just a drifter,

to somebody that suddenly had so much knowledge.

It was amazing.

Here it is.

All this stuff behind here.

OK, there's a lot of brick up front,

that's not been there, that's new.

The gate...

I remember having a gate, but it didn't look like that, that I know.

And then this is where the building was.

Now they've got a new church.

I think...

..I'm parked in my room.

I think this is right about where my room was.

I haven't been back.

This is the first time.

But it's changed a lot.

Well, he teaches the Bible, and he seems to know

what he's talking about, so I listen to him.

What about his person? He's pretty nice, yeah.

He's nice? I'm mean.

Don't listen to him! He says he's mean. I'm mean.

Do they? Yeah.

I actually did not like David,

but I could not argue with the man.

Everything that he taught,

I refuted, I rebutted,

I said, why, how, where, when?

And he answered every single one of my questions...

..with the book.

So, no matter how much I didn't like him,

I loved him.

I had no choice, because I loved God.

No-one will ever forget David.

Charismatic...

..but full of truth.

CHANTING: ..in the Book, it is written to me.

After meeting David in California, I was shocked, I was floored

with the amount of information I learned in a couple of hours,

being more than, you know, most of my life put together.

So, me and my husband, we sold our belongings

and we moved to Waco

to hear David and learn on a regular basis.

He will bring forth his judgment to light every morning,

but the unjust know...

ALL: No shame.

INDISTINCT

It was a lot of disbelief at the beginning, and yet,

here he was, going through the scriptures, the way...

..I'd never seen done before.

Just remarkable.

DAVID PREACHES

He danced around so fast that you were bewildered,

beguiled, mesmerised,

at the knowledge he had, you see?

He often would write something on the blackboard.

His spelling was atrocious, though.

But the spelling wasn't the issue.

What he could do was put all these ideas,

collect them all together, and make it sound sensible.

And that's what blew me away.

There's a revelation of Jesus Christ to be dealt with here.

And you are to read it, you are to become aware.

You, as a person, should know what is stated there.

David could not only teach the Bible,

he was more than that.

He was a messenger of God.

That guy had purpose.

He dug real deep, I mean, he made me stretch,

you know, my mind and my heart, OK?

To finally embrace him for who he really was.

Our Messiah.

REPORTERS SHOUTING

Stop, stop, stop, please.

We're here because David Koresh and his followers killed

four ATF agents.

Following this tragic incident, the ATF requested FBI support.

We've responded with necessary personnel and equipment.

HORN HONKS

ROCK MUSIC

# Darkness in the light

# Frantically

# Watching the night... #

I loved when David played music.

That was like...

It was the best thing to go to church and listen to.

# Riding on white horses

# Fearing the night... #

David's music became a part of the teaching.

It became a part of what he did on a daily basis.

He taught us we were part of something bigger than us.

Koresh made audio tapes of sermons he had given.

And people passed them on to each other.

We had a logo,

and we had a David Koresh T-shirt with the guitar on,

I have one.

# I've got a secret

# That I'd like you to understand... #

David was at the centre of what the people

in Mount Carmel believed.

They believed that complete knowledge of the Bible

was planted in his head.

People come from England and Australia and Hawaii,

and I mean, we had people from every walk of life,

different colours, different nationalities.

So it was like, I got a bigger family.

# Mysteries in life... #

The diversity was incredible.

He had the nurses, the teachers, he had the old, the young.

I began to realise what this was all about -

the pursuit of truth.

# Understand

# The book is sealed... #

The time I arrived at Mount Carmel,

I had a job as a school teacher.

I think the people there were just normal people.

Some of them... I guess more simple country people

and some of them were more educated.

But they were just a normal range of people.

# Feel the rain fall

# Don't you understand?... #

Back in those days, Mount Carmel was very run down.

I mean, it was a mess.

There were no toilets.

If you needed to go, you dug a hole

at that end of the property!

But there was a lot of work rebuilding

and trying to clean the place up.

So, David Koresh built the building that everyone's seen...

..and I call it a hotel. That's basically what it was.

But he was smart, because he gave everybody a room.

They eat centrally, they bathe centrally.

He said, "Let's live together as one big family."

We had mealtimes that we would all get together.

We did not live on soda

and chocolate and sweets.

That was not in our lifestyle.

So, water, that was our drink.

He didn't want us to watch cable or anything,

because he thought that there was just too much

violence and drugs

and everything on TV.

THEY SHOUT AND LAUGH

I don't know why everybody believed so much in David,

just...

He was just a really good leader.

Everybody just hung on to every little word he said.

I mean, he could tell you the grass was blue

and he would get you to believe it.

Yet, when David was a boy, no-one would have ever thought

he would be a leader of anything.

OK, this is where David used to live.

This is his grandmother's house.

Growing up, his name, we called him Vernon,

that was his name to us.

To me, still.

I was five here, Vernon was probably almost eight years old.

My sister, Bonnie, was 14 when she had Vernon.

So she was much too young to care for a baby,

and so my mother cared for him.

Vernon was a very busy little boy.

If he wasn't taking a bicycle apart and putting it back together,

he was fishing or building something, or...

..playing on the guitar.

He had a lot of talents.

After he was five, Bonnie, my sister, married.

And that's when she decided to take Vernon to live with her,

because she'd married Roy.

And they then had Roger.

My dad was very rough on Vernon.

Very unfair, and, you know, shoved him out on the street

at an early age and...

And just did some horrible things to him.

Roy, yeah. Yeah, he was a jerk.

He was not, to put it bluntly, a very good father to him, at all.

I don't think Vernon ever adjusted to the move.

He missed being with my mom, I think he missed being with me

and my little brother.

I remember we left one day and he couldn't come home with us.

He rode his bicycle after the car, just, he cried.

He cried.

It made me sad then and it makes me sad now.

SCHOOL BELL RINGS

I'm not aware of him ever being bullied at school.

But I think he was having some issues there.

He did have a problem with dyslexia.

He didn't graduate.

Vernon was always looking for acceptance.

He was fighting so many things,

so many feelings, so many questions he wanted answered.

He was torn.

He would come and he would walk out in the woods,

and the next day I'd see him several times.

I'd say, "What have you been doing?" He'd say, "I've been praying."

I've came in and seen him kneel down, and go out one night,

come in and he's still in the same position.

You know, eight, ten hours later.

I mean, I honestly think when he seeked, he seeked hard.

This is where David attended church.

He got into some arguments with the elders

and the pastors of the church.

He picked holes in the theology,

he questioned them at every turn.

So, he's been thrown out of several churches,

you know, because he'd stand and ask the preacher why this,

or why that, and they couldn't answer, so, you know,

he kind of put them on the spot.

He needed answers, they couldn't give him any,

so he left and a family friend introduced him to Mount Carmel.

I do believe that God talked to Vernon.

All the time, I think he held a special place in God's heart,

and I think that God was going to use him for things.

And he told me that one day the government would kill him.

He told me this.

And I've never forgotten it.

Hello from Waco!

There seems to be no indications that Davidic cult leader

David Koresh is planning to give up any time soon.

An FBI spokesman says the cult leader is rejecting reasonable

compromises that could end the stand-off,

now in its eighth day.

When I first spoke to David Koresh,

who I knew as Vernon Wayne Howell,

I believe it was about half an hour

into the raid on Sunday.

I said, "How do you pronounce that last name?"

Shots are being fired, people are screaming in the background.

And he very calmly says,

"Agent Sage,

"have you ever heard a person die?"

SIREN BLARES

"It's like that last exhalation of breath.

"It's Koresshhh."

When I met him, he was Vernon Howell.

And then he went and legally changed his name to David Koresh.

David, of course, is the king of Israel that is to come some day

and bring the world peace.

And Koresh, the last name that David took,

is based, of course, on the Hebrew, Cyrus,

the Messiah to redeem the true people of God.

You mean God in Heaven has a book called truth? Mm-hmm.

A book that no man can reveal but who himself? Jesus Christ.

So when we start getting into the subject of the Seven Seals,

and the world wants to twist up and turn around,

and then we'll be honest, it looks like somebody's

going to get a butt whooping in the near future, aren't they?

How come religion's not weeping?

Here's a revelation of Christ nobody knows.

All I care about when I judge them is one thing.

As David Koresh studied the Bible,

he began to see that the Book of Revelation

was the key to understanding everything.

It speaks of the Seven Seals.

Each seal has to be opened,

and it would reveal the coming kingdom of God on Earth,

and that leading up to his coming

would be many types of end time events that would be catastrophic.

It's a drama. It's an apocalyptic drama

of what will happen in the last days.

As this drama unfolds, you get these key figures.

CREATURE ROARS

One is a horrible looking beast.

And that is identified as Babylon,

the whole political, military power of the world.

THUNDER AND LIGHTNING

And then there are the people of God, that are being opposed

by Babylon and persecuted by Babylon.

So as David is reading these things,

he believes the Branch Davidians

are going to be this special chosen group.

And when you finally get to the Seventh Seal,

that's the end of the world.

That's the final judgment.

When I read the Book Of Revelation I say,

"Oh, the guy who wrote it was on acid.

"First acid work."

When you get to interpreting people riding horses of different colours

with spears and arrows, and monsters around them...

This is a big job.

But David Koresh claimed he could make sense of it.

We're told in the text that no-one in heaven or on Earth could open

the Seven Seals and cause Babylon to fall.

And then suddenly the text says, "Wait, wait, there is this lamb

"who can open the seals."

So David Koresh, he knew that only the Lamb of God

could open the Seven Seals and explain it.

And because he was interpreting the seals, he became convinced

that he was more than just a Messiah,

he became convinced he was the Lamb of God.

Messiah means someone that was anointed

to fulfil a purpose for God.

Come on in.

David Koresh was more than that.

He claimed to be Christ.

This is a letter that he wrote.

"I am the Son of God, I am here on Earth to give

"you the word of God, and I ride on a white horse."

Do you believe he's the son of God?

Yeah.

I hope he is.

He convinced his followers that that's who he was.

So they believed him.

SOFT FOOTSTEPS

If David was the true Lamb of God,

we became the spiritual elite

from the Book Of Revelation.

The people of God, who were actually going to fight the last battle.

Koresh taught that the group would suffer persecution and martyrdom.

And some of them would fall by fire.

We constructed an obstacle course.

We had to train, we had to get physically fit

for the tribulation that would come.

GUNFIRE

We knew a war was coming, and it was inevitable

that we were going to die.

I think shooting guns was a way to...

..ease that pain a little bit.

Me and my two older brothers,

we were taught how to shoot guns.

We were God's soldiers,

and we had to be ready when the enemy came.

CHILD'S VOICE: We surrender! Don't we?!

My mom had bought me this Wetsy Betsy doll.

And when you...

When she drank water, she peed.

You can see the...

The privates.

David saw it and...

..told me to...shoot it.

Because it was...not proper.

A lot of people say, he's got guns, that makes him bad,

that makes him a cult.

Would you use a gun if somebody came in here?

They come in here with a gun,

and they start shooting at us,

what would you do?

KIDS SHOUTING, PLAYING

THEY ALL SING:

We knew if we got killed...

..or anything, it's was OK,

because it was God's will.

You know? We were taught we would fight till we died.

# This is for the little children... Right?

# God knows how it should be

# Stars and stripes a-flying

# Give us justice and liberty... #

For the children's sake, you know,

you might have to bear a gun one day.

If you like shooting us in the head,

we're going to shoot you in the head.

Pow, pow, pow, pow, pow! Right in the eye!

Pow, pow, right in the eye!

David believes that he is the messianic deliverer

of the people of God,

to deliver them from the evil powers of Babylon.

So, as he begins to understand those Seven Seals,

it becomes apparent to David that the Babylon that he's facing

is the United States of America.

The first time I remember coming across Koresh,

my brother and I, Mike, who was also a deputy US marshal

at the time, we were on Valley Mills Drive,

and this Camaro was right beside us.

And we look over, and it's David Koresh.

And so he takes off real fast,

smoke in the tyres, fishtailing.

And my brother looked at me and he was laughing,

and he said, "My gosh, there goes Jesus."

ENGINE REVVING

David and I were very close.

He was like an older brother.

We genuinely liked one another.

I want to introduce you to some of the people you see

around the table. This is Mark.

How are you doing? Nice to meet you.

And this is David.

David and I used to talk a lot in private.

Usually late at night, we were both night owls.

And he would say to me things like, "Can you imagine what it's like when

"God tells you that you are the one foretold in the prophecies,

"that you are the chosen one?"

He really believed what he was saying.

And he was also tortured by it.

And slowly but surely, David Koresh began to change.

Bible studies would often start in the middle of the afternoon,

and they would go until morning, until daylight.

DAVID PREACHING, INDISTINCT

He would just keep going on and on and on.

You'd be praying, please don't ask a question.

I want to go to bed!

We had been in there for hours already.

And, you know, I had to use the rest room.

He was, like, "Well, you're just going to have to wait

"and you're going to have to do it on yourself."

There was a rumour round Waco

that David Koresh was taking some form

of what we call speed.

HE YELLS:

So, this new David that was emerging began to tell us

that we shouldn't question what he had to say.

DAVID SINGS

It was becoming all about him, his role, his special purpose,

his special importance,

because he was the chosen one,

and he began to emphasise that more and more.

# There's a mad man living in Waco

# Who's bowing his knee to them

# Didn't want to hurt anybody

# Just let our own people free... #

As time went on, the emphasis started to shift,

and some of that camaraderie that was around in the early days

started to erode.

And you had more of a Gestapo mentality.

I don't know. It seemed like he just got a...

..big head after a little while. He started to get more controlling.

I was monitored on, like, how many hours I worked.

If you didn't dress right.

I mean, me, personally, I just was always scared.

It's very oppressive to live like that.

Well, we had one armed guard at the back

and one armed guard at the front.

Because you couldn't just leave the property when you wanted to,

you had to get permission from David.

I mean, eventually you start kind of questioning everything.

You start thinking, OK, is he really a prophet?

Is he really telling you the truth?

Are we a cult?

One night I got up to go to the bathroom,

and I found David Koresh on his knees, praying.

He had tears coming down his face,

and I said, "Are you OK?"

And he said, "I'm just struggling with the enormous weight

"on my shoulders of the job that I have to do."

So David was under a lot of pressure

because if you're specially chosen by God, you can never be wrong.

He thought he was moving toward the end time.

But as life pretty much continued, there was a little bit of disquiet

so he had to start to make things happen.

He had to make the apocalypse happen.

At about 6pm yesterday, several gallons of milk,

cheese and crackers for the children were delivered to the compound,

along with a video camera to provide us with information

about the condition of the children.

The question is, what am I doing with all these children,

you know? What's really going on here?

These children that I have are for a reason.

What David taught the group was that the new generation

of specially born children would be the beginnings of a whole

new generation of the kingdom of God that was coming.

It's in the Book Of Revelation, where it says after the Lamb of God

conquers Babylon, and he brings about the end,

there would be a special group.

24 elders who are going to sit as rulers of the Earth.

Revelation of John the Apostle...

David concludes, perhaps conveniently,

that he had to be the father of those 24 elders.

The problem with that is the elders were born of virgins.

Pretty hard to find a virgin in Waco, Texas,

or anywhere else these days.

And perhaps that's why he slept with some women who were underaged.

Oh, boy, it's lonely out here.

I came from Australia.

My mother and I, and my two daughters,

were living here long before we ever heard of Vernon Howell,

or David Koresh, or whatever.

Then my youngest daughter,

she got involved with David, uh, sexually.

She never talked to me about it.

She was mature enough to know what she was doing.

INTERVIEWER: How old was she?

I don't remember, at the time maybe...

..14 or so, maybe 15.

I can't remember.

But God asks his prophets or his messengers

to do some strange things.

He certainly didn't take all the pretty ones, necessarily.

This is a picture of Rachel and David Koresh.

Rachel is my dad's sister,

and this is the one he was married to, legally.

David Koresh and my aunts and my uncles,

I guess, had grown up together.

So my grandparents let him marry their daughter.

And I think she was 14 at the time.

And it was kind of like, well,

OK, she's a little...

..a little young.

And they had Cyrus, their first child.

David actually had kids by two of my dad's sisters.

Michelle was very young.

She was only, like, 13 or 14.

And I started thinking,

how can this be right?

One of the times when David confided in me,

he said to me in private, he said,

"You know, the Lord said to me, you must take Michelle."

And he said to me, "Can you believe it, she's been with me since

"she was 12 years old?"

One night I was downstairs, playing a game.

So, I just, you know, looked like I was busy

doing something on the computer.

And I waited and waited until I saw this girl go into his bedroom alone.

And at that time, she was one of his favourites.

So, I stayed there for a little while longer,

to make sure that I could say definitively

that this was happening.

I'd been away from the group for about two years,

and I was shocked at how different the group was.

Some of the young girls, who'd been happy-go-lucky people

two years ago, had shut down, completely.

I was disgusted.

Absolutely disgusted.

And I was even saying things to Marc like,

"Can't you see this is wrong?!

"There's something seriously wrong going on here."

The facts were, before David slept with any underage girls,

he got permission from their parents.

When David would present the idea to the girls,

they bought into it.

So, I respect that decision on their part,

whether it's my daughter's or somebody else's daughter's,

if they made that commitment, uh, I can deal with it.

What we don't understand is that David Koresh was living by

what he understood to be biblical law, the laws of the Bible.

For that reason, he could find examples of multiple wives

held by the men of God - Abraham, David, Solomon.

He'd also find examples in the Bible

of younger women being those wives.

To bear these 24 children,

David had relationships with multiple women.

I was one of those women.

But I can guarantee you that these relationships

weren't about sex.

They were about God.

Let me just ask you a question flat out...

# Darkness

# Darkness in the light... #

As David was building Mount Carmel

really as an association that worshipped him,

he came up with a doctrine that almost split the group,

and caused problems that lasted for years.

He called it The New Light.

The New Light,

it annulled marriages, it annulled human marriages.

He said it was word that he'd got from God

that we were not to have marital relations.

We weren't allowed to hold hands, we weren't allowed to kiss.

It was...

..very difficult.

My mom had to tell me and explain,

all the women, they should be with David

and have babies with him.

Come on, look over here.

He's always fascinated with me.

Kiss?

Thank you.

Can I have a kiss?

What he said was he was the only one

who could produce righteous children,

and all the women in the world belonged to him.

That was his divine instruction.

Steve and Judy, their story's very sad.

They were very close to me.

They had tried for many years to have children,

but they couldn't.

The day after The New Light, I remember Steve Schneider saying

to Judy, "You know what's going to happen, you're going to go

"with him, and eventually you're going to fall in love with him."

And Judy was in tears, because she loved Steve,

she loved Steve to the day she died.

But Steve would say, "But what if he IS the son of God?

"We risk eternal punishment."

So, unfortunately, eventually they did go along with it.

This is Steve Schneider filming.

The date today is the 8th, which is Monday, the 8th of March.

And what is your name?

My name is Judy Schneider Koresh.

This is my daughter, Mina.

So, when Judy went with David Koresh,

the two of them did manage to have a child,

David and Judy had a child.

And that would have been very difficult for Steve.

Okey doke. Can you say your ABCs?

# A, B, C, D,

# E, F, G,

# H, I, J, K,

# L, M, N, O, P

# Now I know my ABCs

# Won't you come and sing with me? #

Well, that's some of it.

But Steve decided to love the child as much as he could,

because it was Judy's child.

So, when The New Light first came out, my husband, Mike,

he had to burn some pictures,

he was told, that he had of me.

And it was rough on him.

It was not that hard for me to give up Mike.

DAVID PREACHING, INDISTINCT

And I hurt probably more...

..for the pain HE went through.

But Kathryn Schroeder

was in love with God.

And did not have an issue with giving up Mike.

So I'm revealing elements to this that I really

have never gotten into. This is pretty deep.

David gave me my own special session one night.

It was...the highest honour

I could have ever felt in my life.

TEARFULLY: To be taken as God's wife,

when you don't even feel like you deserve it.

And I didn't.

If he chose to have relations with you,

you were his wife.

He could do that.

And, um... I...

I did feel like my time was coming.

Mount Carmel. That was home.

I mean, that was where our family was.

That was where everything we knew, everybody we knew.

I even met my husband there.

What would I do for David?

I love him as a brother.

But then David, he told us that...

..we were no longer...

..husband and wives.

Well, it didn't work out.

My husband was put in the house with the single men.

And I was moved into a duplex.

And I remember several times him asking me if I could

still have children.

And, um...

..I...

..I did feel like my time was coming up,

and I just...

..I couldn't deal with that.

And so, one night...

..I packed up my stuff and I left.

I didn't say goodbye to my children.

I didn't have anywhere to take them.

I had no means to take care of them.

That was...

That was the hardest thing I ever did in my whole life.

But I just...

I just knew I had to get out.

We woke up and...

..my mom was gone.

And then after she left...

Uh...

..David wouldn't even let me see her.

Because then I would be, like, tainted by the outside world.

So, he told me that if...

..I wanted to see my mom outside Carmel,

that I was a traitor

and I didn't belong there any more.

Hi, David!

Love you!

I don't know who would tell any kid

that they would have to pick

between one of their parents.

Elizabeth had to go back to Australia.

So we were actually separated for five months.

And during that five months,

the relationship between

David and I became more and more fractious.

I decided I couldn't stay any longer,

that I had to make a break from the group.

But I had learned that Koresh had ordered

a couple of his loyal henchmen to watch me carefully.

And if I stepped out of line,

they were going to... They had orders to beat me to a pulp.

So, I had to be very careful, meticulously plan my getaway.

Everybody thought I was going to bow down to the Messiah in the end.

And then one day, I just disappeared,

and ended up in Australia in the end.

Marc Breault, after he left Mount Carmel,

began trying to get the authorities to investigate

what was going on there.

Particularly David Koresh sleeping with underage females.

We tried the Sheriff's Department in Waco,

we tried anybody who we thought would listen,

and nobody gave us the time of day.

Finally, the child welfare authorities looked at the place,

talked to all the parents...

..and could not get any confirmation

of the allegation Marc Breault made.

Marc, he was involved...

..with bringing the authorities

against our group at Waco.

In terms of whether God had a design for Marc,

you'd be saying the same thing about Judas.

It's very easy for us to blame David Koresh.

But we couldn't have found ourselves in that situation

if we also weren't to blame.

No-one gains absolute power

unless somebody lets him gain absolute power.

GUNFIRE

OK. Step up here.

You cut loose with that.

OK. When you hear fire, that's when you open fire.

Ready?

Fire.

It just don't get no better than this.

We were getting information that weapons were being converted

to full automatic machine guns.

And that takes them to a whole new level.

Extremely dangerous, extremely fast firing

and extremely illegal.

David was going to gun shows and buying and selling guns,

and found that he could make some money this way.

We did make illegal weapons.

We had some kind of mill or something,

that took semi-automatic weapons, and took some pin out or something

that would make them fully automatic.

David, whether he had guns simply to make money on the side,

or whether he had guns to bring the ATF down on us,

so we could have our final battle, it doesn't really matter to me.

The bottom line is, guns were a part of our lives.

So, the guns were good for money and good for God.

We were also getting information from a UPS driver

that was delivering this box.

And he sees these dummy or empty hand grenades.

At that point, that driver contacted the Sheriff's Office

because the dummy hand grenades can be activated and made live.

So, we're thinking, what in the world is a religious cult

doing bringing in hand grenades and stockpiling weapons?

It was very concerning.

SIREN WAILS

At the time, the ATF had to go to get its budget renewed

before a Democratic Congress...

..which was preoccupied with what we call social issues.

Then they get a report that there's this armed cult in Texas.

The perfect thing to show Congress when you need budget money.

So the ATF starts looking into what's going on at Mount Carmel.

There's a lot of what he did which I never had any involvement in

and some of what I'm hearing now, I'm hearing for the first time.

But it was, I guess, a decision of mine,

I didn't want to get involved in that side of things.

How would you describe David Koresh?

He's everything to all people.

If you're kind to him, he's kind to you.

But if you're... Um, you try to deceive him,

or if you try cheating on him, uh...

..he... He, um... What would he do?

I don't know.

The point is, David's being used by God.

It's a spiritual battle.

And that's what it is.

REPORTERS SHOUTING

One at a time, please.

Sir, we don't comment on investigative techniques.

I could tell you that. I'm sorry.

In 1992, I was working with the Department of Public Safety,

and a good friend of mine calls.

"Hey, bro, what you doing, man?"

He said, "I need your help.

"I need somebody to do undercover work on this cult."

When we got the compound, it was, like, man...

What is this place?

It was like a fortress.

So, the ATF rented a house across from the compound.

We set up cameras in the house.

CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS

And we also made up a story that we were all roommates.

We knew who he was. We knew that he wasn't a college student.

David knew that he just wanted to see how many illegal weapons we had.

But yet he was still trying to give him a message.

That's the way David was.

He would have taught Satan himself if he would have let him.

So, I went in to meet with David Koresh.

It was just he and I and one of his soldiers.

In case I did something crazy.

But here, the revelator says, the next bit for Christians

to look forward to is there's going to be a judgment in heaven.

It was a constant bombardment on the Bible.

And he would get upset if I did not follow properly.

Now, if you set against the Holy Spirit,

can it be forgiven?

And I would try to, you know, kind of daydream.

But I had to come back, because all of a sudden

he would say, go ahead and read.

Man, I was wasted.

I think Robert Rodriguez was becoming converted

to what David was teaching him.

I think part of Robert Rodriguez

was starting to believe what David was saying.

I couldn't stand him.

I'm sorry to say, I just did not like him.

Because, to me, he was a fake.

But I was there to play a role.

One day he told me, he said,

"Robert, people think I am the Messiah."

He said, "What do you think?"

And I looked at him and I hated myself for doing this later,

but I put my arm around him and said, "I don't know, David.

"But your words are so strong."

And he says, "That's good enough."

SIGHING: Oh, God!

You see, another test, you know!

David told us, because of the prophecies that we knew were coming,

that it wasn't going to be much longer

before the government ended our time.

I remember him saying that we were going to get raided,

and him talking about a siege.

Police cars surrounding the property.

I remember he mentioned that we could all end up getting

burnt to death.

So David said, "Let's just enjoy this last summer.

"This is probably going to be our last summer on Earth."

The Davidians, they were there to die.

So, I told the ATF, you have to hit them quick.

We had to catch them off guard.

Don't film me!

The ATF wanted a raid, it wanted a raid on film.

It wanted to be able to go before Congress and say,

"We busted an armed fundamentalist sect."

The operation itself was called Operation Trojan Horse.

And some agents were calling it Showtime.

You know, we approached the team leaders

and asked them, well, what happens if something goes astray?

What is Plan B?

And the response that was given to us was, run like hell.

The morning of the raid, the local media had been tipped off.

was going to take place.

My dad was a postman,

and a newsperson got lost,

and had asked him if they knew where Mount Carmel was

and what they were doing.

And that was when my dad turned around and went straight

to Mount Carmel and told David, and warned everybody about it.

The element of surprise was paramount, I think,

for this raid to go on effectively.

For once in my life, I was scared.

How am I going to do this?

And then one of his followers comes in and says,

"You have a phone call."

He gets up real quick, and goes and leaves.

And then when he comes back, everything changed.

Everything changed.

And he says, "They're coming, Robert, they're coming."

And all this time I'm thinking, relax.

Relax.

And that's when he just comes up to me,

"OK, Rob."

He says, "Good luck."

And I looked at him and said, I said...

"Good luck, David."

I said that to him.

And I turned and started walking.

And the first thing I felt was,

"Oh, they're going to shoot me in the back.

"I know they're going to shoot me in the back."

But, no, I get to the truck, and my hands were shaking so hard.

ENGINE STARTS

I knew I had just faced death

and it just passed me by.

POLICE RADIO BLEEPS

I went back to the ATF and I said, "He knows we're coming."

The information that was relayed to us was that they know

we're coming, hurry up, we're going.

Well, obviously if the element of surprise was the paramount factor

for a successful raid plan,

then we certainly were doing the wrong thing.

The mission should have been aborted.

SIREN BLARES, VOICE OVER RADIO

The ATF didn't realise what kind of people they were dealing with.

Everybody's belief was that strong,

and everybody was willing to die for what they believed in.

That's just how it was, from the beginning to the very end.

SIREN WAILS

Come here, quick, get out of the way!

Before you're going to raid somebody,

you've got to learn who you're dealing with.

GUNFIRE

SIRENS BLARE

Everyone in that building had complete devotion,

to doing God's will before man's will.

because he didn't expect to get out of there.

This is definitely not what the FBI had intended.

They did NOT want to burn the people inside that building.

EXPLOSION

I said, "God, you're not going to wipe them out, are you?"

And he said, "Yes."

And I wept.

All the skin's rolling off my hands.

It's not blistering, it's kind of just rolling off.

I should not have come out. I should have died in the fire.

KORESH: I'm in big, big trouble with you people.

But you know something else, what really grieves me,

is that if this Bible is true,

you are in a lot more trouble than me.