In 1990, Howell legally changed his name to David Koresh. He claimed (erroneously) that koresh meant “death” and that he was the rightful heir to the biblical House of David. He also claimed to be the son of God, who could open the Seven Seals of the Book of Revelation. He reiterated this belief to FBI agents during the Waco siege.
Having taken over the group, Koresh made several improvements to the facilities and started up new commercial ventures to provide funding, including a gun business.
The Branch Davidians had always believed in imminent apocalypse, and Koresh wanted to be ready. Although his supporters explained their massive weapons stockpiles as simply being wares bought and sold for their business, the fact was that the compound had laid in quantities of weapons and explosives that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) found disturbing.
On February 29, 1993, the ATF finally made its move. A “surprise” attack failed to be a surprise—which was not all that surprising in itself, since a mile-long convoy of more than eighty government vehicles had been required to stealthily approach a compound in rural Texas, far from any town. Koresh, alone and unarmed, opened the door and asked the agents what they wanted. He was told to get down, and he closed the door. Shots were fired, but heated debate over who fired first continues to this day.
The Branch Davidians called 911 and reported the shooting as it was happening, and eventually a cease-fire was ordered. Four ATF agents were dead, and more were wounded. Six Davidians died, although it’s possible that two were shot by their fellow members to put them out of their pain when it appeared that medical help would not be coming soon. Among the wounded inside the compound was Koresh.
The FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team (HRT) took over the scene, and the cease-fire became a siege. During the first week, twenty-two children and two elderly women voluntarily left the compound, but the rest were determined to stay put, and they released video messages explaining their loyalty to the sect. The FBI tried various means of driving them out, including loud music played over public address systems and bright lights blasted at the compound all night.
The siege lasted fifty-one days. During that time, Koresh was busy inside, dictating a final explanation of his beliefs about the Seven Seals that would bring about Armageddon. Before he was finished, the FBI received approval from Attorney General Janet Reno to breach the walls and begin spraying gas into the compound. On April 19, the agents moved armored vehicles in to do that. They announced that no one would enter the buildings, but they were met with gunfire nevertheless.
Somehow—and this is a source of controversy—a fire started. The FBI and official reports claim that the Davidians themselves started it; the Davidians claim that the FBI fired an incendiary device into a building they had already filled with gas.
At least seventy-five Davidians died in the blaze. Some were shot, and again there’s disagreement over the circumstances of those shootings. Some say that the FBI shot people who were trying to escape the fire, and others say that the Davidians shot one another and themselves to avoid burning to death. Koresh was one of those shot.
The Waco siege was badly conceived and executed. Although no one can say with certainty exactly what mistakes were made, it’s obvious that there were many, and the whole tragedy is a black mark on the FBI’s record. April 19 became a day that antigovernment activists remember as a day of infamy, and it has been commemorated with other major attacks, such as the Oklahoma City bombing.
The episode “Minimal Loss” (403), in which a standoff at a polygamist compound called the Separatarian Sect Ranch, prompted by allegations of child abuse, ends in a bloody gunfight and a fire, is reminiscent of Waco as well as the investigation into child abuse complaints at the fundamentalist Mormons’ Yearning for Zion polygamist compound near Eldorado, Texas, in 2008. The Waco siege is also mentioned in the episode “Identity” (307), which recalls the Ruby Ridge standoff of 1992.
AS WITH WACO, the events of the Ruby Ridge standoff are fraught with controversy. Ruby Ridge, which was mentioned in the episode “Minimal Loss” (403), was the Idaho home of self-declared white separatist and ex-Green Beret Randy Weaver and his wife, Vicki, and their three children.
As extreme fundamentalist Christians, the Weavers had, over the years, become convinced that the so-called end times were near and that organized religions refused to acknowledge this truth. They started their own small church, preaching the gospel as they saw it.
At the same time, Vicki had a vision of a mountain refuge where she and her family would be safe from the coming apocalypse. In her vision, Vicki, who had only one child, saw two more, a boy named Samuel and a girl named Rachel. The Weavers feared what white supremacists and neo-Nazis call ZOG, the “Zionist Organized Government”—by which they mean the .S. government. The Weavers believed that their refuge would be safe from that evil as well.
The Weavers had a son, Samuel, in 1978, and a daughter, Rachel, in 1982. The pieces were falling into place, just as in Vicki’s vision. They sold their home in Iowa and went west, looking for safe harbor. They found it at Ruby Ridge, Idaho.
After a while they took in a troubled teenager named Kevin Harris, whose father had died and whose mother couldn’t control him. Many of their Idaho friends held views just as racist as theirs, but even so, their constant proselytizing got on people’s nerves. In January 1985, Randy, who was associated with white-supremacist organizations, was investigated by the Secret Service for threats against the president and other officials. He reportedly had a large cache of weapons at home and was convinced that the world would end in two years.
At a 1986 World Aryan Conference, Randy met an ATF informant who stayed in contact with him during the next few years. The informant was invited to the Weavers’ home in 1989 to discuss ways to fight ZOG. Randy sold the man two shotguns. The informant said the barrels were sawed off—an illegal alteration—but Randy insisted that they were of legal length when he sold them.
Randy was arrested, and when he declined to act as an informant for the ATF, he was indicted for manufacturing and possessing an illegal firearm. After his arraignment and the setting of a trial date, Randy was released on a personal-recognizance bond. There’s some evidence that an unclear explanation of the process caused Randy to believe that the government would take his cabin and his land, regardless of the outcome of the trial. Vicki sent two letters to the U.S. Attorney’s Office declaring that the “blood of tyrants will flow” and promising, “We will not bow to your evil commandments.”
Another mistake complicated things further. A letter was sent to Randy giving a date of March 20, 1991, for his trial—but it was really scheduled for February 20, 1991. A clerical error was blamed. In any event, the trial date came and went and Randy Weaver didn’t show up, so a warrant was issued for his arrest. Randy sent the sheriff’s office a letter stating that he would not come out and that law enforcement would have to take him out by force. U.S. marshals held off on enforcing the warrant because of concerns over the possible danger of approaching the Weaver home.
For the next sixteen months, nobody left the Weaver cabin unarmed. The government explored a number of avenues to take Randy without bloodshed, but they knew that the Weavers had plenty of weapons and apparently longed for a war against the government. Given Randy’s Green Beret background, they believed that the area around the cabin was probably booby-trapped. Nothing had yet come to fruition on August 21, 1992, when a surveillance team was chased by one of the Weavers’ dogs.
The marshals saw Kevin Harris, Sammy Weaver, and the two daughters, all armed, following the dog. Then Randy came out. The marshals identified themselves and told Randy to halt, but he turned and ran back toward the cabin. The dog caught up to one of the marshals, who held it at bay but didn’t shoot because he didn’t want to antagonize the family.
Two marshals rose from cover to identify themselves, and Harris opened fire.The marshals returned the fire. The dog looked ready to attack, so one of the marshals shot a
nd killed it. Harris then shot and killed Marshal William Degan.
At least, that’s the way the marshals tell it. The Weaver family’s supporters have a different version; they say that the marshals showed up in ninja outfits and face masks and ambushed Sammy Weaver and Kevin Harris. The first shot fired was the one that killed the dog; after that, gunfire blazed in both directions, Degan went down, and Sammy was shot in the back while retreating and died on the scene. Only after Sammy fell did any marshal identify himself, in the white supremacists’ version.
The marshals called for help while Randy and Vicki Weaver took their son’s body into a guest cabin near their main cabin. The gunfight brought the county sheriff ’s officers, the FBI’s HRT, the Idaho State Police, the National Guard, and the U.S. Border Patrol to the scene. A command post was established, and Degan’s body was retrieved.
The next day, the HRT commander on the scene issued a proposed amendment, applicable only in this particular case, to the unit’s standard rules of engagement. Ordinarily agents are supposed to use deadly force only if someone is in imminent danger of death or serious bodily harm. Among the revised rules was this one: “If any adult male is observed with a weapon prior to the announcement, deadly force can and should be employed, if the shot can be taken without endangering any children.”
FBI headquarters didn’t approve the amendment, but the assistant director of the bureau’s criminal affairs division told the local field commander that it had been approved and that the agents had been briefed accordingly. Some of the bureau’s SWAT members later admitted that they thought the amended rules were “crazy,” and they decided not to follow them.
The next morning, the FBI wanted to get a phone to the cabin, since it didn’t have one and the agents wanted to be able to negotiate a surrender. They were still getting into place when a sniper named Lon Horiuchi saw someone he thought was Harris, apparently moving around an outbuilding to get a shot at a bureau helicopter. Horiuchi fired and wounded the man, who turned out to be Randy Weaver. The man ran back into the cabin, along with his daughter Sara and the actual Kevin Harris. Horiuchi fired again. This bullet passed through the cabin door, killing Vicki Weaver and seriously wounding Harris. Vicki was holding the couple’s fourth child, ten-month-old Elisheba, in her arms when she was shot.
The FBI was unaware that either Vicki or Sammy Weaver had been killed. After a few more days, when Randy and the rest of the family refused to come out of the cabin, the HRT warned that it would start removing the outbuildings. When the agent took down the one called the “birthing shed,” they found Sammy’s body and assumed that Randy Weaver had killed his own son.
Randy still wouldn’t come out or even answer the telephone that an unarmed robot had taken to the cabin. Finally, the bureau brought in Colonel Bo Gritz, a decorated Vietnam veteran and a hero of the antigovernment movement. Randy agreed to talk to Gritz, and they conferred for two days, initially through the cabin’s closed door. On the second day, when Randy opened the door, Gritz became aware of a horrific odor: Vicki had been lying on the kitchen floor, her skull shattered by the bullet, for seven days. Randy agreed that Gritz could take her body out. When Gritz returned the next day, he managed to talk Randy into letting the badly wounded Harris go as well. Next, Gritz made a deal with celebrity lawyer Gerry Spence, who agreed to represent Randy, and with that in place, Randy finally surrendered on August 31.
The trial had its share of missteps as well, including the revelation that at no time did federal agents bother to simply knock on the cabin door. During his closing statement, the prosecutor collapsed in court. The defense, which had called no witnesses, largely prevailed. Harris was declared not guilty of any counts, and Randy Weaver was convicted only on the counts of failing to appear in court and violating bail conditions. After a short prison stretch, he filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the government, which was settled out of court with an offer of a hundred thousand dollars and a million dollars to each of his daughters. Several FBI agents were disciplined for their actions during the siege.
Similarly, the Freemen Standoff was an eighty-one-day ordeal in Montana. A group of antigovernment “Montana Freemen” lived in a self-declared town called Justus Township and rejected the authority of the federal government. They refused to pay taxes or renew their driver’s licenses, and they created their own counterfeit checks to pay for merchandise. When foreclosure proceedings were initiated against the land on which Justus Township stood, they refused to vacate, held mock trials, and issued a writ of execution against a federal judge. On June 13, 1996, at the end of a peaceful standoff, they surrendered to the authorities.
David Rossi tells the team it was these failures—at Ruby Ridge and Waco and with the Freemen—that made him leave the FBI, but now he has returned.
13
Safe at Home
A PERSON’S HOME is supposed to be a sanctuary. It’s not for nothing that the home is often referred to as a “castle.” Figuratively, at least, one can close the door and keep out the rest of the world. The threshold can, of course, be crossed by door-to-door peddlers and proselytizers, and it’s a rare human being these days who doesn’t bring some of the daytime cares of the world into the house at night. Nevertheless, most of us do feel safe when we’re inside our homes; we feel safe, at a remove from the world beyond the walls.
So when our homes are attacked—invaded, in law enforcement parlance—it’s even more shocking than being assaulted on a street corner or a subway platform. Murder victims are often involved in some activity that makes them vulnerable, that puts them into the category of high-risk victims. The most obvious are prostitutes, who regularly go to private places with men they don’t know. Hitchhikers also rank high on the list of high-risk victims. But an individual or a family at home, enjoying the evening meal or unwinding in front of a fireplace—these people are supposed to be left alone.
George Foyet, Aaron Hotchner’s nemesis in the fourth and fifth seasons of Criminal Minds, has some home invasions on his record (including Hotchner’s home). So does Karl Arnold, the Fox, from the episodes “The Fox” (107) and “Outfoxed” (508). Other episodes that focus, at least in part, on home invasions include “Plain Sight” (104), “The Big Game” (214), “Ashes and Dust” (219), “Children of the Dark” (304), “Catching Out” (405), “Bloodline” (413), “Hopeless” (504), and “The Slave of Duty” (510).
A MAJOR home-invasion case in this country that looms large in the minds of many Americans began on November 14, 1959, outside the town of Holcomb, on the windswept plains of western Kansas. The home belonged to successful farmer Herbert William Clutter, one of the bedrocks of Holcomb society, and his wife, Bonnie. They worked the River Valley Farm with the help of a resident hand (who lived in a separate house with his family), their son, Kenyon, and their daughter Nancy. Two older daughters were married and lived away from the farm.
On that cold autumn night, two men who had briefly been cellmates in the Kansas State Penitentiary at Lansing drove up to the farm. They saw someone awake and moving about—the farm hand, tending to a sick child—and almost turned around. But they had been thinking about this burglary for months. It was their big score, their main chance to get the money they needed to buy a boat and go diving for treasure off the coast of Mexico.
Shortly after midnight, Herb Clutter woke up with a flashlight beaming into his eyes. Two intruders were in his bedroom, armed and angry. One was a bowlegged little man with his jeans rolled up at the ankles; the other was taller (but still not large), lithe, and athletic and had a scarred, lopsided face. They took Herb to his office and demanded to know where his safe was. He didn’t have a safe, so he couldn’t point one out, but the taller of the two men called him a liar. Herb stuck to his guns, insisting that there was no safe.
Upstairs, Nancy, sixteen, heard strangers in the house. Worried about thieves, she hid her most valuable possession, a watch that her father had given her, in a shoe. But the intruders heard her moving about, a
nd they forced Herb to lead them back upstairs and show them where the other family members were. Herb pointed out the doors to Nancy’s and Kenyon’s rooms, then took them into Bonnie’s room. Bonnie was an invalid, thin and frail.
The intruders consulted briefly, then took Bonnie into the bathroom adjoining her bedroom, put a chair in it so she could sit, and locked her in. Next they went into fifteen-year-old Kenyon’s room, and the taller man punched Kenyon. The boy was then taken into another bathroom and locked inside. Nancy came out into the hall, and they grabbed her and put her in the bathroom with Kenyon.
Deciding that their captives should be bound, the two men tied Herb’s hands, and the smaller man took him down to the furnace room in the basement. Seeing a cardboard mattress box leaning against a wall, he moved it so that Herb could lie on it and wouldn’t have to lie on the cold floor. He tied Herb’s feet and lashed his hands and feet together. Then he brought Kenyon down and bound him to a couch in the basement’s other room, a playroom, and put a pillow under his head. The man went back upstairs, tied Bonnie up in the bathroom, tucked Nancy into her own bed, and tied her up there. The two men taped everybody’s mouth except Nancy’s.
The intruders discussed their options again, but the plan had been set long before they ever got to the farm. The shorter man started to cut Herb’s throat, then handed his partner the knife and told him to finish the job. The partner failed, and Herb fought back. Finally, the short man had his partner hold the flashlight on Herb while he shot him with the 12-gauge shotgun they had brought with them.
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