Fresno Suspect May Have Had Family Suicide Plan

Marcus Wesson devised a plan nearly a decade ago for his children to kill themselves if authorities came to retrieve the clan, according to a police detective testifying at a preliminary hearing Thursday on charges that Wesson murdered nine of his children.

Wesson maintained strict control over his many children and would inflict “weeklong spankings” if they broke his rules, which included not talking to men outside of the family, homicide Det. Carlos Leal testified that one of Wesson’s adult daughters told him.

The 20-year-old woman said the family was forced to study the King James Bible twice a day and listen to Wesson preach, Leal said, adding that she claimed Wesson began molesting her and her sisters when they were as young as 5.

In 1995, Leal said, Wesson began talking to his family about a plan to commit mass suicide if there was a threat that the children would be taken away. “He would ask them, ‘If the time came, would they be ready to die for the Lord?’ ” Leal said.

Leal said the woman told him that if authorities came to break up the family, “the older ones would kill the children and would commit suicide.”

Another detective, Richard Byrd, testified that an adult niece of Wesson’s, with whom the man also had a child, told of an even more gruesome plan.

Wesson called the girls “his soldiers,” Byrd said, adding that when it was time to commit suicide, the niece said, Wesson would order them to “go out and kill the rest of the family members that were no longer in his house.”

Wesson was obsessed with David Koresh, the leader of the Branch Davidian cult that had a deadly 1993 confrontation with federal agents outside Waco, Texas, Byrd said. Wesson allegedly wanted to create a similar following within his own family.

Wesson, 57, has pleaded not guilty to charges that he murdered a 25-year-old woman and eight of his other children, ranging in age from 1 to 17.

Police said the woman, who was Wesson’s daughter, also was the mother of one of the slain children.