Koresh’s Path Led to Violent Siege : Cult: He memorized the New Testament by age 12. After splitting with the Seventh-day Adventists, he turned a once-placid sect into a world of weapons.

It is an odd trail, this one left by David Koresh--cult leader, lover of guns, lover of women, quoter of Scripture, master of control.

He stands now as the center of intense curiosity raised by a shootout with federal officials, and heightened by a standoff in which dozens of his followers--the majority of them women and children--could be killed.

His cult’s compound is now a fortress and his people seem to obey him without question, as if holding off the world is a perfectly natural course. Some speculate he revels in his role.

His lawyer from a court case five years ago believes a movie contract might be just the honey needed to avoid another confrontation.

David Koresh, 33, once known as Vernon Howell, a man claiming to be Christ, has gone from being a shy, almost reclusive boy growing up in Texas to a man who moved a once-placid religious sect called the Branch Davidians into the world of high-powered rifles and heavy duty machine guns.

If the stories are to be believed--and there are many--he also used women as his playthings, even those who were married to men who also belonged to the cult.

He dropped out of school in Dallas in the ninth grade, characterized as a boy with learning disabilities. Yet part of his legend is that he had memorized the New Testament by the time he was 12 years old.

He has the ability to hold his followers in rapt attention. Yet in his telephone talks with radio and television interviewers in the aftermath of the gunfight, he wandered aimlessly in the face of direct questions, using a verse--and sometimes many verses--to make his very obtuse points.

There are a few moments in Koresh’s life--particularly in his younger years--that are seen as benchmark events, particularly by the Seventh-day Adventists, the faith from which the Branch Davidians split more than 60 years ago. The first key year was 1979, the year the then-Vernon Howell was baptized a Seventh-day Adventist. The second is 1981, when he was thrown out of the church.

“Because of his behavior, as well as his interpretation of the Bible, he was asked to leave,” said Gail Thomas, a spokeswoman for the church.

It was that same year that he went to Mt. Carmel, a grouping of humble, clapboard houses set on farmland outside Waco, the home of the Branch Davidians. His job was to work as a handyman for the group’s leader, Lois Roden.

Two years later, Koresh would begin vying with Roden’s son, George, for control of the group, an event that would lead in 1987 to a pitched gun battle with George for control of Mt. Carmel.

That gunfight, in turn, would lead to charges of attempted murder against Koresh. The charges ended in a hung jury, but it was another benchmark--the first time he had been such a focus of attention by people other than his loyalists.

He accelerated his travels, spreading the word of the Branch Davidians in Australia, Hawaii, Canada and England.

In Hawaii, according to the Seventh-day Adventists, he attracted a following by wearing long, white flowing robes.

Koresh became a major source of irritation for the Seventh-day Adventists. Thomas said he would mount protests against the religion at their general conference sessions.

Koresh began to preach that he was entitled to 140 wives, the Adventists say.

Koresh himself has said that he has a number of wives. A series of articles in the Waco Tribune-Herald names several women--some of them underage when Koresh made his first sexual advances--who have borne children by him.

Michelle Tom, 24, of Melbourne got involved with Koresh during his 1986 visit to Australia, and she and her fiance James Tom followed Koresh back to Texas.

Michelle said Koresh wanted James Tom in the group because he was a musician and Koresh needed him for his band. But “he wouldn’t let James and I get married and he requested me to be one of his wives,” Michelle said. She said she refused.

Michelle and James eventually left the group.

In the years after the trial, Koresh seemed to evolve, exercising even more control over his flock, tearing down the small houses on the 77-acre property and starting to build the compound, a huge structure that sticks out like a boastful relative surrounded by poor cousins in the farmland countryside.

The group spent long hours in studies, poring over scriptures sometimes from afternoon to early the next morning, according to Michelle Tom. People were not allowed to go into town for months at a time. Food was used as a weapon, being withheld when things went wrong.

One day, she said, everyone had to go without food because something was missing from the kitchen.

Gary Coker, who was Koresh’s lawyer in the shootout trial, remembers more than anything the sense of absolute power Koresh evidenced. He recalled a church outing for non-alcoholic beer and pizza at a former tavern.

The women, he said, seemed to “adore” Koresh. All of the followers deferred to the cult leader.

“If he told you to sit in the corner for 10 hours, you did it,” he said. “He was hyper all the time and he clearly dominated the others.”

Coker said he was surprised by the shootout, but not so Eli-Hadi T. Shabazz, the assistant district attorney who prosecuted Koresh and the others involved in the 1987 gun battle.

“They thought of him as God,” he said. “Something like this was bound to happen. They saw him as Moses or Aaron and they did not want to be left out of the Promised Land.”

Times staff writer Mike Ward contributed to this story from Los Angeles.