GAS, GUNFIRE & INFERNO
A meeting was held on April 7 for all the agencies involved in the Branch Davidian siege. The FBI reported to the Attorney General that they had concluded from the meeting the possibility of using tear gas as a resolution. By April 12 managing attorneys in the Criminal Division received a briefing from the FBI that CS gas would be released into the compound if the Davidians did not come out by the end of passover. This action had been ordered by the Attorney General herself, Janet Reno. It was believed by the agencies that they were at a stale mate with the Branch Davidians and there was no other alternative. Also, if the children inside the complex were getting physically and mentally abused they needed to be removed as soon as possible. But surely gassing these people out was always going to do more harm than good?
As armoured vehicles cleared cars from the front of the property on April 18, Davidian members were reportedly seen holding children up at windows in a tower with a sign saying: ‘Flames await’.
At around 6.00 a.m. on April 19, 1993 the gassing began. A negotiator telephoned the compound and told Schneider what was about to happen. He was informed that the gas was not deadly and they should come out peacefully. Schneider responded by ripping the phone out of the wall. The message was announced again over loud speaker but as the gassing vehicles approached Mount Carmel, gun-shots were fired towards them. The gassing continued for several hours, and at the same time the armoured vehicles began smashing holes in the building to weaken it for entrance and exit purposes. Three hours into the demolition and the main entrance had been broken down.
At noon, several fires started around the compound and shortly after the Davidians fled the building. They were the lucky ones, as rapidly the wooden structure of the building became engulfed in flames and even though openings had been made in the building no one else survived the fire. David Koresh and 76 of his avid followers, including 20 children, died on that grim afternoon.
MYSTERY
To this day so many things related to the Waco disaster remain questionable. It will never be known for certain who fired the first shot on February 28. ATF agents who were part of the raid testified in court that the Branch Davidians had fired first. Immediately after the raid (and off the record) however, one of the ATF agents told an investigator that a fellow agent may have fired the first shot when he killed a dog that was roaming around just outside the compound. The agent later withdrew his statement. Surviving Davidians still maintain that they did not shoot their guns until they were fired at.
It can also be questioned whether negotiations should have continued for longer before resorting to a gas attack. Were Koresh and his followers given the freedom of speech and belief that is meant to be part of the American Dream? Many lives may have been saved if people with more theological and biblical knowledge had been allowed to talk directly to the Davidians as opposed to going through an agency that are more renowned for shooting first and asking questions later. Was it right to use the FBI as a peace-making tool?
It seems more factual and fair-minded to spread the blame between the government agencies and the Branch Davidians, as, with a bit more rationality, maybe events would have turned out differently.
As to who started the fire that was to end the siege, and many lives, again remains to be seen. Independent arson experts concluded that the fire was deliberately set from within the compound and a Texas jury ruled that the US Government were not to blame for the deaths of the 80 Branch Davidians. Jurors heard audio tapes made inside the compound which contained conversations between unidentified Davidians asking incriminating evidence such as ‘Start the fire?’ and ‘Should we light the fire?’.
Even if the Branch Davidians can be seen as responsible for the act of starting the fire maybe the government should be held responsible for not dealing with such a complex situation in a more discerning manner.
The Branch Davidians may not have become aggressive if they had not had a provoking aggressor such as the FBI or the ATF on hand to persecute them but then again it may have become worse if the situation had been left any longer. Only the people who were inside with Koresh really know what went on and if abuse to children really happened.
Maybe if religious groups such as the Branch Davidians were not so taboo and demonized within everyday life then it would have been easier to understand how things had got to this stage and the situation could have been diffused silently and carefully.
David Koresh may have known exactly what he was doing form the beginning, he may not have believed anything that he was saying and if this is the case he was an evil criminal with innocent hostages. On the flip side if he believed he was the Messiah then he was a religious fanatic with fanatical followers. Either way innocent people, however they had got themselves in the situation, could have been saved.
Just how much the Branch Davidians brought their end on themselves is hard to say, and will never really be known but it was definitely a situation that could have been handled in a more humane manner by the authorities. David Koresh went out of the compound most days so therefore could have been picked up at anytime by the ATF in a peaceful manner.
All we can definitely say is that this was a mass tragedy and although a certain amount of brain-washing may have taken place, the lives of these men, women and children could have been saved.
One question that nobody seems to have thought of though is, maybe he really was the Messiah? . . .
The Order Of The Solar Temple
When the fire service was called out to a blazing property in the well-known ski resort of Morin Heights in Quebec, they treated the call as they would any other emergency. Unfortunately though, on reaching the scene, it appeared that they had arrived too late to save the former occupants, and two charred bodies were recovered from the burned-out wreck of the building. The property was owned by Jo Di Mambro, so it was assumed that one of the bodies must be his. The other, they thought, would be that of his friend, Luc Jouret. But an autopsy revealed this not to be the case.
Di Mambro had leased the property out to the Dutoit family – a couple and their young son – and as the autopsy proved that one of the bodies was female, this seemed to provide the answers to the identity of the corpses. It did not explain however, where their three-month old child was at the time of the blaze.
With the fire out and the site deemed safe for further inspection, a team of forensics went into the property. A more thorough search discovered another three bodies crammed in a cupboard – that of a man, a woman, and a small baby. This was the family to whom Di Mambro had rented his property. They, however, had not died in the fire. The bodies were punctured with multiple stab wounds and covered in blood. Experts estimated they had all been dead for a couple of days before their bodies burned in the fire.
This gruesome discovery solved the mystery of the boy’s absence, but it opened a completely new enquiry as to why this family had been killed, and whose were the two bodies originally discovered?
It turned out that the family had once belonged to ‘The Order of the Solar Temple’, a sect run by Jo Di Mambro which was believed to have in the region of 600 members. News spread to the police that Di Mambro had believed the young boy to be the anti-Christ and had therefore sent his henchmen to the property to murder him. A warrant for Di Mambro’s arrest was immediately issued.
CHEIRY, SWITZERLAND
The following day in Switzerland, the Cheiry fire department was called to an equally gruesome scene at a farmhouse owned by the elderly Albert Giacobino. Having extinguished the fire, they entered the building and discovered a man’s body lying on a bed. He had been shot in the head and a plastic bag had been tied over his face. They also found a collection of explosives around the farmhouse.
A police team was called, and they made a search of what they thought was Giacobino’s garage. It appeared to be more like a meeting hall, and inside were the belongings of several different people but no evidence of any further bodies.
There were no internal doors in the garage, but the space inside the hall did not fit the perceived size of the building from the outside so inspectors began to test the walls. One wall appeared to be hollow, and so the team opened it up.
