FBI Places Full Blame on Koresh for Tragedy : Waco siege: Agent says authorities had no role in fatal blaze, suggests some cultists were killed before fire.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, appearing almost defiant and on the defensive, placed all the blame for the destruction of the Branch Davidian compound on cult leader David Koresh on Tuesday, saying federal authorities were in no way culpable for the deaths of as many as 86 men, women and children who perished in the Monday afternoon inferno.

At a morning press conference--the last to be given by the FBI here on the 51-day siege--agent Jeff Jamar repeatedly insisted that authorities had nothing to do with the fire which, aided by strong winds, destroyed the compound in little more than half an hour.

“It’s not because of our actions,” said Jamar. “Those children are dead because David Koresh had them killed. There’s no question about that. He had those fires started. He had 51 days to release those children. He chose those children to die.”

Jamar, the special agent in charge of the San Antonio office, said there was some evidence to suggest that cult members were killed before the fire started. Jamar confirmed a report that a body was found with a gunshot to the head.

In other developments Tuesday:

* A forensics expert said that Koresh--presumably killed with most of his followers--may have murdered rivals in the past and buried them on the grounds of the 77-acre compound just outside Waco.

* Five cult members who survived the inferno appeared in federal court. One of them said an overturned lantern started the fire, conflicting with the federal version, which contends that it was set in at least three places.

* The Texas Rangers began their first full day of investigating the compound and Department of Public Safety director Col. James R. Wilson called it the “largest, most complicated crime scene the DPS has ever faced.” The Rangers also said it would be at least two weeks before anyone is allowed inside the remains of the compound.

* Three affidavits were released by the U.S. attorney in Waco, giving the most detail so far as to why the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms raided the compound in the first place on Feb. 28. One affidavit claimed that within the space of 1 1/2 years, the cult members purchased $200,000 worth of weapons.

* A federal judge ordered the federal authorities not to tamper with any video or audio recordings of the Feb. 28 raid which began the standoff.

* Texas Gov. Ann Richards joined in a Waco memorial service for those killed on Monday. Richards, who grew up outside Waco, said: “Now I think it is time for us to heal.”

At the press conference, Jamar said that he believed Koresh was planning the deaths of his followers from the beginning and that continuing a waiting game would have gained nothing. In response to a question, he likened the deaths of the cult members to the Jonestown massacre in 1978.

“Is it where the leader causes the deaths of all the people in the compound?” Jamar asked. “Yes, it is another Jonestown.”

Tuesday night, Dick DeGuerin, Koresh’s lawyer, said in a television interview that, based on information he received from two survivors, “It was not suicide. (The fire) was not deliberately set by David or his followers.”

DeGuerin said he believed that the fire was started by a “combination of lanterns, of battering rams, of tear gas canisters, of the bales of hay” and stored heating fuel.

In a further elaboration on what happened after the fire began on Monday, Jamar said agents shouted for the cult members to come out and save themselves. He said one of the reasons for the gaping holes made by a tank early Monday morning was to provide a means of escape for those who had been unable to do so until then.

“It was repeated, ‘Come out, come out, there’s openin” he said. “We were constantly telling them to come out. And some of the people came out and the people in the Bradleys (armored personnel carriers) were giving them instructions.

“We have some evidence--again it’s inconclusive--that there was gunfire when the fire started,” he said. “There might have been people killed who were trying to get out of the compound.”

The speculation that Koresh may have killed others in the past came Tuesday from John Fox, a Baylor University forensics expert who said his conclusions were based on aerial photos and other evidence which had led him to believe there were suspicious grave sites on the property.

“In a community of over 100 people such as this one, a community under stress from rivals, there are going to be dissenters who disappear,” Fox said. “There are going to be mortalities they don’t want to deal with civic authorities about. People are going to drift in and drift out. But some won’t drift out.”

A colleague, Susan Maki, said the main problems to solve in the wake of the mass deaths will be identification and cause of death. She said experts will have to sift through what has been described as compacted mounds of ashen debris for weeks in search of evidence ranging from teeth to slivers of bones that survived the inferno.

“Even though the fire was very hot, we expect to find whole bones,” she said. “It takes a tremendous amount of heat to destroy bones.”

In what has now become a familiar scene in Waco, another contingent of cult members, shackled and dressed in orange prison garb, were brought before a federal magistrate Tuesday. All were survivors of the Monday fire.

One of them, Remos Avrram, said “the tanks knocked over a gas lantern and it started a fire with the bales of hay laying around,” he said.

Jamar denied it. “At least three people observed a (cult member) spreading something . . . with a cupped hand and then there was a flash of fire. We have aerial observations of multiple fires.”

The fires began six hours after the FBI knocked holes in the compound and inserted tear gas in an attempt to force the cult members out. One reported impetus for the FBI’s action was information from bureau electronic listening equipment inside the compound. The FBI believed that Koresh was becoming increasingly violent in the days leading up to Monday’s climax of the siege, one official told the Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

Avrram, speaking as he left the federal courthouse, said the gas masks were able to protect them from tear gas “for awhile.”

“Then it got pretty bad,” he said.

The affidavits made public Tuesday included one submitted in February and two others this month. The most detailed was the one from February, which was used to obtain the warrant to raid the compound.

The affidavits chronicle the stockpiling of tens of thousands of dollars worth of legal and allegedly illegal weapons--including more than 200 assault rifles, thousands of rounds of ammunition, a grenade launcher, an anti-tank rifle, hand grenades and chemicals that could be used to make explosives.

Former cult members told federal agents that Koresh was “excited” by the feel of a military-style machine gun he had purchased, practiced shooting weapons often and once passed around his personal AK-47 rifle at a Bible study session.

Not satisfied with weapons purchased from what federal agents described as “questionable” suppliers and convicted felons, Koresh reportedly asked one follower, an engineer, to design a simple submachine gun that could be manufactured with a lathe and milling machine the group had acquired.

Federal agents also said that disaffected cult members warned that Koresh subjected his followers to physical and sexual abuse, and claimed exclusive sexual privileges with all women in the group and girls as young as 11.

One former cult member, Los Angeles nurse Jeannine Bunds, was quoted as saying that Koresh had fathered 15 children with “various women and young girls” at the compound--some as young as 12. She said she personally delivered seven such children.

Koresh introduced a fearful new doctrine when he took over the Branch Davidians after a 1987 shootout with a former leader, the former cult members said, and forced them to patrol the compound’s perimeter with orders to shoot and kill anyone who tried to enter.

Weapon deliveries had to be cleared first by cult sentries before a parcel truck would be allowed on the group’s property, United Parcel Service drivers told authorities.

Violent movies about Vietnam were added to Koresh’s rambling sermons as part of his apocalyptic doctrine, the former cult members told authorities.

That liturgy centered on Koresh as the “messenger” from God--and a prophecy that when he revealed himself as such, “the riots in Los Angeles would pale in comparison to what was going to happen in Waco, Tex.”

In another court-related development, U.S. District Judge Walter Smith ordered all the video and audio tape recorded during the initial raid be preserved. In doing so, the judge stopped short of ordering what the lawyers for Koresh and his lieutenant, Steve Schneider, had requested, which was that they be held by the court and not federal officials.

Meanwhile, relatives of the cult members who apparently perished in the flames continued to question the government’s action.

Shulamit Cohen, mother of Pablo Cohen, 28, who was recruited by Koresh during a visit to Jerusalem two years ago, had followed the 51-day standoff by television at her home in a southern Jerusalem suburb. She watched the FBI attack and then the inferno on television.

“He was a victim first of his own naivete and then of the FBI,” she said of her son Tuesday evening in an interview with Israel TV. “Why, why? Master of the universe, why?”

Times staff writer Michael Parks contributed to this story from Jerusalem.