Koresh, page 18
These young men and women were tired of analysis. They wanted words that were on fire.
One student brought the message to his girlfriend, Diana Henry.
She came from a solid and loving family of West Indian strivers. Her father, Sam, was a handyman. He did roofing, bricking, plastering. If he’d had a hundred hands, Sam would tell people, every one of them would have been busy.
Sam was proud of his children. His son Stephen worked alongside him, learning the craft. Philip wanted to be a doctor, Pauline wanted to be a nurse, Vanessa was doing secretarial work. His firstborn, Diana, was studying for her master’s, and wanted to be a psychologist.
Diana attended one of Steve’s meetings. Afterward, she was almost frantic. She tried to explain the message to her father, who couldn’t make heads or tails of it.
“Daddy, listen,” Diana said.
Sam thought Steve was preaching Satanic things. He tried to refute him point by point.
“Listen!” Diana cried.
Diana was popular; she introduced Steve to her friends and family, including a woman named Dimplets and Dimplets’s brother, an SDA member. The brother agreed to host a Bible study.
Word spread. When the night came, the brother’s house was packed tight: People were sitting on chairs, on the floor, squeezed into corners. Some even sat on the window ledges.
Steve began. He was different from how he had been on the Newbold campus. Tougher, more impatient. If a child started crying, he’d shout at the parents to get them out of the room.
Dimplets didn’t like Steve. She felt there was something wrong with him. At one point, she interrupted him and asked a question about the scripture. Faces turned. “Why are you questioning this man?” someone called out. Steve ignored her and went on with the teachings.
Another time, Dimplets asked Steve what time the study would end. “I don’t know that yet,” he said. “I need to make a telephone call and get my information from God.” He meant Vernon.
The studies went through the night. Ten, twelve, seventeen hours, day after day. Still, people wanted more.
Steve had leaflets printed up, and his new recruits started passing them out. One of them was dropped in the postbox of a young woman named Bernadette Monbelly. Bernadette, another child of West Indian immigrants, was sick at the time, feeling low. But she’d always been curious about God. When she went to the meeting listed on the leaflet, her family thought nothing of it.
Soon after the meeting, her sister Gail tried to call her. Gail could hear voices in the background. Bernadette hurried Gail off the phone, saying she was busy.
Gail called another night and heard the same swirl of voices behind her sister’s. “Bernadette, what are these people doing here?” she said.
“Oh, they’re helping me, they’re helping me.”
By the time Steve boarded his plane for Texas, he’d brought in more than twenty converts. Some began to leave for Waco. Dimplets sat in a black cab with her brother, who was a taxi driver, and her sister-in-law. She begged them not to go.
It was like their minds had been taken over by a virus, Dimplets thought. She had the feeling that the people sitting in the cab weren’t her brother and sister-in-law at all. For two hours they argued.
At the end, the couple told her she was the one with the problem. Nothing Dimplets said had registered in the faintest way. The couple left for Waco with their three boys.
One Sunday evening, Sam Henry was at home in Old Trafford. His wife, Zilla, and children were upstairs. Zilla called him up and he went to see her. The whole family was there, minus Diana, who was in Texas.
They crowded together in one of the bedrooms. Zilla said, “We’re going to Waco.”
Sam thought they were going to visit Diana, but then they told him they were moving to Texas to be with Vernon. They’d already bought their tickets. It was all arranged.
“You must be joking,” Sam said. “Why do you want to go to Waco?”
They didn’t answer. Sam begged Zilla. “Let’s talk about this. Let’s pray about this.”
“It’s too late,” Zilla said. “This man is the Christ.” They left the following morning.
Vernon’s trip to Australia was almost as successful as Steve’s. He brought in about fifteen new followers. The group was growing.
When the Australians and the Brits arrived in Waco, they settled in and learned the ways of Mount Carmel. The first issue was the food. Eating was different here. Vernon’s paranoia about what his followers ate ran second only to his paranoia about the government.
The new followers found out that the French fries at McDonald’s were out. Juice from the supermarket—even if your doctor prescribed it, which happened to one follower—was out. Chocolate was a definite no. Milk, too, was off the list. Vernon’s reasoning was that milk is what you drank when you’re a baby and they were adults now.
Vernon targeted the overweight. He told them to have some willpower and get those pounds off. He’d buy a dozen doughnuts, and then hold one in front of the Davidian’s face before whipping it away. Or he’d tell one of his loyal followers to stuff the offender’s mouth with the forbidden food until they were sick of the taste of it.
“All of you are gluttons,” Vernon told the newcomers. “If I relax the rules even for a minute, you’ll all go out there and eat Babylonian food.”
Breakfast was cornmeal mush. Lunch, served at one p.m., was salad, usually lettuce, tomatoes, and onions, maybe some squash and corn, too, along with bread and beans. On special occasions, Vernon would allow grilled chicken on the salad. Dinner was more of a snack: just popcorn. There might be some ice cream afterward: vanilla, praline, or strawberry, never chocolate. But most of the Brits and Aussies found that they were constantly hungry at the Waco compound.
Pregnant women suffered. They couldn’t eat pasta or other things. When pancakes were on the menu, they only got two small ones. Vernon went into the pantry and marked the items the pregnant mothers could have. If he caught them eating something unmarked, he’d fly into a rage. You’re feeding my future kings and queens filth, he told them.
“Think how much money in the name of God you’ve been spilling out over these past few years and what the food value is in that stuff? I mean, just to get this feeling of these little squishy, little run, little long, little wormy, little things always through your mouth going ‘Slurp! I love spaghetti, I love spaghetti!’ Right? But really, what are you eating? Dead, cooked, starchy, little, funny, little, long piece of bread . . . called a noodle.
“Potato chips are a sin. It’s part of the Mark of the Beast . . . A Hostess Twinkie is the Mark of the Beast . . . Yeah, the Mark of the Beast is Snickers candy bars and soda pop.”
Some of the Davidians broke the rules: They snuck in some Ho-Hos from the local supermarket or dashed into the nearest Whataburger when they had ten minutes of unsupervised time in town. If you were caught, the punishment depended on whether you were one of Vernon’s favorites or not.
Even Vernon sinned. One afternoon, Debbie was at a restaurant in Waco. It was owned by Margarita and Neal Vega, two Branch Davidians. One of their specialties were crepes, exactly the kind of sugary treat Vernon had forbidden.
When Debbie walked into the restaurant, she spotted Vernon scarfing down a stack of crepes. Every time somebody passed by or he thought someone was watching him, he’d put his hand on his stomach. “Oh, God is telling me to eat,” he’d moan. “I don’t want to, but I’m supposed to eat because I’m weak and thin.”
He snuck into steakhouses, too, which were on the forbidden list. Vernon loved a good rib eye.
24
The Scream Tape
THE TRUE REVELATION of Mount Carmel, however, was Vernon himself. The man the new followers met or been told about—in Manchester or Melbourne—was not the man they met in Waco.
One morning, the newcomers filed into the meeting room for a Bible study along with the rest of the followers. The benches were crowded. Mount Carmel’s population had swelled to about a hundred twenty men, women, and children, so the room was nearly full. Vernon walked in, carrying his enormous Bible. He began slowly.
“In our study this afternoon, we are going to lay out some wonderful information. It’s wonderful to me! Some of you may not be able to comprehend it. Some of you have not had enough experience in the things of God to know why God is, and why we are, and why God is the way that he is, and why we are the way we are.”
His tone got chillier. “My God is . . . hard, cold, feelingless,” he said. “I want to show you about a God that you haven’t yet known. You’ve all been spoon-fed. You’ve all been diaper-padded. And now it’s time for this cloak to be thrown off, and you’re going to go through the fires. You’re gonna see whether you believe this message.”
As he went on, the material got darker and darker. Vernon’s voice ratcheted up. If his followers didn’t accept that God was intent on a mass slaughter of Babylonians, they would pay the cost. “I guarantee you,” he shouted, “I’ll kill you one day . . .”
He was shouting by now. “What has God spoken? Follow the vision! He’s got a book! He gives the book to the Lamb! The Lamb shows you the man on the white horse! Get it in your minds! That’s what he says! You stupid idiots! . . . You’d better start fearing God, ’cause he’s going to burn you in the lowest hell!
“Do you hear?! Do you understand! It’s war!”
The talk lasted eighty-seven minutes. By the end Vernon was shrieking at his followers, almost out of control. Recordings of the meeting filtered out among the believers worldwide. Some called it “the scream tape.”
The Australians Bruce and Elisabeth Gent joined the group in 1986. Bruce came to America with his wife, son Peter, and daughter Nicole to learn the message. They’d liquidated their property and arrived in the US in December, giving $12,000 in Australian dollars as a tithe.
When they met with Vernon, he was furious. He said they should have given a full third of what they made on the sale of their home and belongings. They’d cheated him.
Nicole, the Gents’ daughter, came over with her fiancé, James Tom. Soon after they arrived, Vernon propositioned her. Was she up for a threesome with himself and one of the other girls?
Nicole was horrified. She went to her suitcase and put on several layers of clothing, including her Ugg boots. Then she sat in a corner, as far away from Vernon as she could get.
Vernon kept trying. He offered James other girls for marriage; that way, he’d get his green card and could stay in America. Vernon suggested Robyn Bunds, David’s sister. James turned him down, but Vernon wasn’t put off. “Well, how about Brenda?” he said, naming another teen girl. It was like being sold a used car.
James said no to everything. Eventually, their resistance paid off. Vernon let them marry.
But that wasn’t the end of it. When anything went wrong among the Davidians, Vernon lashed out at James and Nicole. They were the reason bad things happened at Mount Carmel. They wanted to do their own thing by getting married, and in so doing, they’d opened the group up to God’s punishment.
The abuse of Vernon’s adult followers was mostly verbal. The children had it harder. If a child displeased Vernon, they were spanked, often violently. Vernon could be set off by a variety of things: a sour glance, crying, backtalk. If a child accidentally spilled a drink or knocked over a plate, the boy or girl would often turn their heads and put their hands behind their backs. They crouched, faces near the floor, expecting a blow.
Vernon demanded respect. If he passed by a child and they didn’t smile at him, or they gave him a look, oftentimes he’d beat them. One time, Vernon whaled on the Tomses’ eight-month-old daughter Tarah with a wooden spoon. It went on for thirty minutes. By the end Tarah’s bottom was bruised and bleeding.
Another trigger was pacifiers. “If I ever see you giving them to our children,” Vernon told parents, “I will personally kill them by smashing them against the wall.” Children who were disobedient were forced to take cold baths. There was even a “whipping room” at Mount Carmel. If the Davidians didn’t want their children’s screams to be heard, they’d take them there.
Vernon would informally “adopt” the children he liked. They were told to regard him as their father. The others were often called “bastards,” the same word his grandfather had called Vernon back in Little Elm.
The Gents brought their son Peter over from Australia, and he fell deep into the message. Once, when Bruce Gent opposed Vernon on some minor theological point, Peter threatened to kill his father. Bruce was convinced that, if Vernon ordered it, Peter would indeed murder Bruce and his wife.
Vernon’s first son, Cyrus, got the worst of his anger. One time, Cyrus acted up and Vernon sent him away. After a few minutes, he set his Bible down and walked out to spank the boy. The Davidians sat in silence, listening to Cyrus scream. After about ten minutes of this, Vernon walked back and resumed his teaching. Ten minutes later, he set the Bible down again and walked out of the room. The screaming resumed.
James Tom couldn’t stomach it. He spoke to his wife, Nicole, about it, told her it wasn’t right. Nicole must have reported the conversation to Vernon—informing on people was still popular at Mount Carmel—because a few hours later, Vernon emerged and called Floyd Hautman, the boxer. He told Floyd to take James to the backyard and discipline him. Floyd did what he was told and beat James with a fence paling.
On another occasion, Cyrus didn’t want to sit next to one of Vernon’s wives. So Vernon decided he wouldn’t get any food. He couldn’t leave his bedroom, either. Vernon had the windows closed and locked and the blinds pulled down.
It went on all day and into the night. When Vernon finally decided to feed Cyrus, the child was like a rag doll. He couldn’t sit up; he just slumped on the ground and ate that way. When he was finished, Vernon left him lying on the vinyl floor in the kitchen, without a pillow or a blanket.
James Tom went to Vernon and told him that this wasn’t right. The boy shouldn’t be forced to doze on the cold vinyl. “Do you want to sleep with him on the floor?” Vernon said. He ordered James to take the boy out to the garage and lock him in there. Vernon had always told Cyrus that the garage was prowled by big rats who ate naughty boys. The boy had terror dreams about the place.
James took him out. Cyrus was raving with fear, nearly out of his head. James locked him in the garage. The followers could hear Cyrus’s cries, but no one dared move. It was hours before Vernon went himself and let him out. The traumatized boy didn’t seem to know himself.
The strange thing was that Cyrus was Vernon’s favorite. He even looked like Vernon. That, for some deep reason none of the Davidians could fathom, sent Vernon into paroxysms of rage.
Later on, when he was eight, Vernon let Cyrus get a pierced ear. And he bought him a leather jacket, similar to his own. He could go to the local music bars with Vernon, while the other kids stayed home. There were other special treats that came only to Cyrus.
In Vernon’s treatment of his son and the other children, his obsessions and his insecurities met. He told his followers that, once he was slain in battle, his sons would rule over God’s coming kingdom. But the idea of another person having power, even his own children, even after his death, drove him to violence. Certainly, the beatings he took as a boy played a part in the abuse, but there was something else, something brittle. He was so insecure that he saw six-year-olds as threats to his power.
At times, he treated Cyrus like his heir. At other times, he seemed to hate the boy with his entire being.
25
Unreal Colossal Supermarket
THE NEWCOMERS ALSO came to suspect what those already at Mount Carmel had known for years now: Vernon was having sex with young girls. Though he’d vowed to stop after Karen Doyle, in fact, he regularly added new victims. Girl after girl were brought into what had been named the House of David.
Vernon hid his depravities from the outside world, but inside Mount Carmel, he hinted at his skills as a lover. “I’m a real professional in bed,” he told the Davidians during one Bible study. He described the first time he had sex with Michele, Rachel’s sister. How he’d slipped into bed next to her, how Michele thought he was just trying to get warm, until he stuck a finger under the band of her panties.
“You know when an animal’s scared, how its heart just pounds?” he told the others. “That’s how her heart sounded.” It was like hunting a rabbit.
Vernon did set up some guardrails to protect young girls, but they only emphasized just how all-encompassing his pedophilia had become. He decreed that the Davidian men shouldn’t change the diapers of their baby daughters, lest they be tempted. The reason: Once, when he was changing his own baby daughter, he’d become aroused. Vernon imagined this was a common response, and so he forbid men to be around naked infants.
All the sex, licit and illicit, had a purpose. Vernon was building a ruling class for God’s new kingdom. Eventually, he told the Davidians, he would have a thousand wives. When the End Times came, Vernon would be fighting the infidel Americans in the deserts of Israel. Eventually, the GIs would slay him in battle. Then his widows would marry Jesus.
Contraceptives were out. Vernon demanded the girls get pregnant and bear him children—preferably boys, who’d become soldiers and judges during the End Times. Vernon ordered the girls and women he slept with to keep track of their menstrual cycle and inform him when they were in the fertile stage. That’s when he would invite them to his room and have sex with them.
“You know, you ever heard the word, well, like on the TV: ‘Well, I’m so horny,’” he told his followers. “Right? What does that mean? It’s your strength, your power to rule. And your power to rule in this world is your power to have a family. No family, no war. No army, no war. No wife, no army. You got to first conquer by obeying God’s will. And then you get the army. Okay?”
