Cult Leader Also Led ’88 Shootout at Church Camp

Five years ago, a gun battle erupted on the normally placid Mt. Carmel church grounds, with Vernon Howell--now known as David Koresh--and a band of his Branch Davidian followers dressed in military camouflage and firing semiautomatic weapons.

It was a precursor of what was to happen at the same site Sunday morning, when Koresh and his Branch Davidian cult turned their guns on 100 federal agents who tried to surprise the congregation to serve a search warrant.

But after the incident five years ago, Koresh and his parishioners were given their weapons and ammunition back by local authorities when their trial on attempted murder charges ended without convictions. The arsenal consisted of seven semiautomatic weapons, three Ruger rifles, two pump-action shotguns and several boxes of ammunition.

McLennan County Assistant Dist. Atty. El-Hadi T. Shabazz remembers watching Howell and his attorney load the weaponry back onto his truck and head east out of Waco toward the church grounds.

“We tried to negotiate with them to keep the weapons and ammunition and just destroy it,” Shabazz said in an interview Monday. “And today there’s no question in my mind that these very weapons and ammunition were used again Sunday morning.”

What transpired five years ago gives a glimpse into the reclusive and at times odd ways of the Branch Davidians and, in particular, of Koresh.

The 1988 shootout had its roots in the early 1980s, when Koresh and then Branch Davidian leader George Roden were vying for control of the growing congregation. Mt. Carmel is located on Roden family property, a 77-acre site where Roden had stuck a sign into the ground proclaiming the place “Rodenville.”

Koresh and a group of unhappy church members eventually splintered off from the Roden faction. They moved to Palestine in East Texas. But they became homesick there.

And, according to authorities here, Koresh was concerned when he learned that Roden had exhumed the body of a woman buried on the church grounds and was attempting to “resurrect” her.

Court records allege that in the early morning hours of Nov. 3, 1987, Koresh and seven of his followers, armed and dressed in military fatigues, began stealthily inching their way back onto the church property. “They crawled up under the fences and snaked along the ground,” Shabazz said.

Gunfire broke out between Roden and Koresh’s group. Roden, hiding behind a tree, was wounded in the chest and right arm.

“There were so many bullets in that tree,” the prosecutor recalled, “that the tree almost fell over.”

Koresh and his followers were charged with attempted murder. But those who have expressed concern about the way the present crisis was handled pointed out one critical difference in how the previous incident was handled. The sheriff and a few of his deputies drove to Mt. Carmel, where Koresh and his followers had displaced Roden, and asked for the cult’s weapons. They were collected without incident.

During the trial in 1988, defense attorney Gary Coker portrayed his clients as law-abiding, Christian “soldiers.” Each day at court, he brought in large groups of Koresh’s followers, particularly mothers carrying infants. They dressed neatly. They were respectful in the courtroom.

Coker said he has not seen or spoken to Koresh in four years. But he remembered hearing him warn his church members to be alert. “Vernon (Koresh) had told them that some day somebody was going to be coming for them,” the lawyer said, “and that they better be ready.”