transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:01] Hi, everyone. Amy here. Once again, we're talking about some heavy stuff with this documentary. There's religious trauma, there's talk of cults, there's talk of sexual assault, talk of child sexual assault. So if any of that is not suitable for you, please feel free to skip this episode. Thanks and enjoy the show.

Speaker 2:
[00:21] Tom?

Speaker 3:
[00:22] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[00:22] We have the first fire truck that's come down this road is coming down here now.

Speaker 3:
[00:27] How far are you, how long would it take to get a firetruck from Waco?

Speaker 2:
[00:31] Well, 20 minutes, 15 to 20 minutes would be about right. We are 10 miles outside of town and a lot of it's two lane roads and they're not in the best condition.

Speaker 3:
[00:44] We want to show you now what happened earlier today. This began at about 6 o'clock this morning local time. They began to punch through various parts of the building and then filled it with CS gas. They didn't throw in tear gas grenades, but they began to close in on them. They said it was not the final assault. They wanted to make life uncomfortable. They demanded, the federal agents demanded to surrender earlier this morning. Now we're back on live picture, I believe. These are the first firetrucks arriving in Waco. A small village has grown up about two miles from the compound, that's where Jim Cummins is. How many press people were there today, Jim?

Speaker 2:
[01:26] Well, at the beginning of the day, Tom, there were probably fewer than three dozen of us, and now it's, of course, gotten up into the hundreds again, which it was during the early days of the siege. We have now seen at least three firetrucks go through here, and the town of Bellmead, which is nearby, also sent another truck in, so that's four, but it looked like a rather old, outdated firetruck.

Speaker 3:
[01:48] Yeah, well, the damage plainly is done. There is no saving any part of that compound now. Unless there are parts of it that I can't see that have escaped fire, it looks like it was just fully involved from my television point of view, Jim. Is that the same for you?

Speaker 2:
[02:02] Yes, absolutely. As I look at it on the horizon now, I'm seeing less smoke, which means it's probably near the ground.

Speaker 3:
[02:08] Yeah, it is. It's just a few charred ribs of the building standing.

Speaker 1:
[02:28] Hi, everyone, welcome to Little Miss Recap, the podcast where, Amanda, I'm gonna need the shame bell a lot.

Speaker 4:
[02:34] Okay, that's fine, that's fine. We can use the shame bell a lot if that's what needs to happen.

Speaker 1:
[02:39] The podcast where we talk about cults, and Amye, me, Amye, I come to terms with the fact that I probably would have belonged to a cult had I been left to my own devices.

Speaker 4:
[02:51] You would.

Speaker 1:
[02:51] At an early age, yes.

Speaker 4:
[02:52] You would, but would you be involved in the Branch Davidians?

Speaker 1:
[02:57] It's hard to say because.

Speaker 4:
[02:59] I feel like the atheist in you couldn't have bought into this.

Speaker 1:
[03:02] Right. I don't think that I would have done that.

Speaker 4:
[03:04] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[03:05] But had I met David Koresh at a music store all of David Thibodeau.

Speaker 4:
[03:11] Right. You might have just wound up there.

Speaker 1:
[03:13] Would I have gone back to his little hippie commune with him? Probably.

Speaker 4:
[03:18] Oh no. I'm so excited to talk about this. I've been waiting to talk about this.

Speaker 1:
[03:24] I've been waiting to talk about it too, guys. I just want to say upfront apologies. I don't feel well and my health is fading as we go.

Speaker 4:
[03:30] Right. I could see her face is just changing as we go. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[03:34] My daughter is really sick and I think I got it from her. I woke up this morning, I was like, but nothing keeps me from Waco. Nothing keeps me from Waco.

Speaker 4:
[03:43] No.

Speaker 1:
[03:43] Amanda, what is your history with Waco? Do you remember it happening?

Speaker 4:
[03:48] Oh, absolutely. I remember it happening for sure. So I absolutely remember it happening, and I remember multiple things about it. I was in college when it happened. I was a political science major.

Speaker 1:
[04:03] Okay.

Speaker 4:
[04:03] I was president of College Democrats. Oh, look at you. Oh, wow. At the University of Delaware, which is why I have received the very famous Joe Biden shoulder massage. I have received that. It was not creepy at all. He's very grandfatherly in everything he does. Okay. Anywho. So I remember it very vividly and feeling at the time, very disappointed in the federal government's handling of the whole thing. How old were you? I was 93, right? Yeah. I was 20 years old.

Speaker 1:
[04:49] Okay.

Speaker 4:
[04:50] Yeah. I was 20 years old.

Speaker 1:
[04:51] So you were probably a junior in college?

Speaker 4:
[04:53] Yes. Yes, I was. So that is-

Speaker 1:
[04:55] I was a junior in high school.

Speaker 4:
[04:57] Okay. Four years apart. That makes sense.

Speaker 1:
[04:59] So you feel like you understood the nuance of what was happening.

Speaker 4:
[05:05] At a very high level. But I also come from this from a mindset of, for those folks who are ladies of a certain age, or people of a certain age who are listening, not all ladies here, people of a certain age, listening who are in their late 40s, early 50s may remember MOVE, which happened in Philadelphia, which was- I don't know that.

Speaker 1:
[05:28] I'm not familiar.

Speaker 4:
[05:29] I'll give you a really high level of MOVE. MOVE was in a block of Philadelphia, Osage Avenue, and it was this kind of- I don't want to say cult, because I don't think that's what they are. I think it's more of a communal group of African Americans who were very much anti-colonialism. We're kind of ahead of their time in a lot of ways of thinking, of how we're thinking about our history now. Just saying that. Anyway, they also didn't have great living conditions. There was also potentially where they were trying to incite violence. I don't necessarily think they were. It doesn't really matter. Anyway, Wilson Goode, who was the mayor of Philadelphia, dropped incendiary bombs on their houses.

Speaker 1:
[06:17] Oh my God.

Speaker 4:
[06:18] Yeah, and basically set a city block on fire. Jesus. I remember it very vividly. I remember on the Today Show how they usually have some bit of hitch. Whatever they're going to talk about that day, they're like, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, happened, and it's like a minute or two, and then it's like, and the Today Show, it's like right before the intro, it's like the cold open. I will never forget this. I was getting ready for school, and the cold open of the Today Show was Bryant Gumbel saying the mayor of Philadelphia has set a city on, set his city on fire. Wow. So I also looked at it through that lens of like, this is what can happen when the government may or may not do the, I'm not going to cast, I'm going to say I don't know enough about MOVE to truly be an expert on it, but I look at it through that lens as well.

Speaker 1:
[07:05] It doesn't sound good.

Speaker 4:
[07:06] No, it wasn't good. It wasn't good at all. It was very terrible. And there are people who survived it who are still activists and working towards.

Speaker 1:
[07:16] I need to see if there's a documentary about that.

Speaker 4:
[07:18] Yeah, that would be a really good one to do. I know there's been podcasts about it. I should look back on it. I was assayed with it for a while.

Speaker 1:
[07:25] Here's the thing, like I love history. And if you love history and you know history, you know America's not great.

Speaker 4:
[07:34] We don't have a history. And here's the thing, can we just say that we can look at American history objectively and say things were bad without saying America itself is terrible and we hate the country? I feel like we're in this place right now if we criticize things that have happened in our history. We're somehow painted with this brush of...

Speaker 1:
[07:58] Well, that's because certain people in this country think they own patriotism.

Speaker 4:
[08:01] Correct, correct. And I just want to say, I feel like it's important to look at our history and be really honest about it so we don't do it again.

Speaker 1:
[08:09] Trevor Noah has a new standup special and he does a bit in the beginning about Germany and their owning of the Holocaust. It's worth watching. It's pretty interesting. Because you put that against the backdrop of America trying to literally whitewash their history.

Speaker 4:
[08:28] Correct.

Speaker 1:
[08:28] It's really interesting. And a lot of us know that Germany owns their history like that. But to hear him put the two side-by-side is, I fight stark difference.

Speaker 4:
[08:40] I've said that for a long time. In 2008, I went to Germany for a month. And Germany was like, I don't remember if it was the European Cup or the World Cup, some big soccer hullabaloo. And you know how we see people with like around here, it's eagle's flags sticking out of their windows or Philly's flags or whatever. Someone was telling me this is the first time they'd ever seen people flying German flags that way because Germans don't know how to feel proud of their country. It's such a scary slippery slope to nationalism and all that. Like they're so honest about it all the time.

Speaker 1:
[09:11] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[09:12] And I feel like we could learn a lot from that.

Speaker 1:
[09:14] Yeah. And to your point, I have always been, I've always considered myself a very patriotic person. And that patriotism is rooted in the potential of what America could be. And I don't feel like we're there yet.

Speaker 4:
[09:32] No.

Speaker 1:
[09:32] You know, have we been there at times? Maybe. Have we been close in some moments? Maybe. But I see, and I've always felt this way, I told you as a little kid, I was writing letters to Reagan. I mean, I was always patriotic.

Speaker 4:
[09:46] Right.

Speaker 1:
[09:47] And I always feel like America could be something phenomenal.

Speaker 4:
[09:52] Agree.

Speaker 1:
[09:53] And in many ways she is. But she is not with, like, it's like a parent loving their child. They're not without faults. Come on.

Speaker 4:
[10:02] And owning those faults doesn't mean you don't like the thing anymore. It's just being honest. And I feel like actually it is more loving, more genuinely loving to be honest.

Speaker 1:
[10:11] I agree. I agree. So I think that when I was a junior in high school and this happened, I might have even been, it was April of 93. I might have been a sophomore in high school.

Speaker 4:
[10:23] April 19th is the day that...

Speaker 1:
[10:25] Right, because that's when Columbine happened as well. And the Murrah building.

Speaker 4:
[10:30] Right. April 19th becomes a big day.

Speaker 1:
[10:33] So I believe, if I recall correctly, that as a sophomore in high school, I completely bought into the narrative of this was a dirty, dangerous cult. They needed to be destroyed. The good guys tried to destroy them and they murdered them. And I bought into all of that. This is what kids hear and this is what kids believe. And in 1993, I was 16, I was a kid.

Speaker 4:
[11:00] Yeah, and this was so much of the journalistic narrative.

Speaker 1:
[11:04] But it's interesting that somebody in college with, you know, a little bit of learning in terms of critical thinking, was able to see it differently. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[11:17] But I still believed like David Koresh and the Branch Davidians were bad. I just didn't know if they had to do, I didn't know if the government had to do what they did to stop bad people. Right.

Speaker 1:
[11:28] And let's not forget that I bought the book.

Speaker 4:
[11:30] Yes, I know, honey. I was telling Todd this last night.

Speaker 1:
[11:33] I, at the time, became very interested in Waco because I was a subversive teen. Like, I just wanted to do whatever was anti-popular. And so if hearing that Waco, the Branch Davidians were the bad guys, I wanted to like them and know them. Sure. Because that was how I operated in the world. Sure, makes sense. And so I bought the book Inside the Cult, the Branch Davidians. I probably still have it somewhere. It's a little paperback cover.

Speaker 4:
[12:02] It's amazing.

Speaker 1:
[12:03] And excuse me, it was written by a survivor and his wife, I believe. And I told you, the thing I remember from it is David Koresh used to pull his poop out of his butt when he would be constipated.

Speaker 4:
[12:14] I know. That's...

Speaker 1:
[12:17] That was the lasting impression I had from that book.

Speaker 4:
[12:20] It's a level of detail I'm not sure I needed. But I'm going to look up who wrote that book while you...

Speaker 1:
[12:25] Okay. It was not David Thibodeau. I know that.

Speaker 4:
[12:29] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[12:30] And also, I want to say that I watched the miniseries that was out a few years ago that was really good.

Speaker 4:
[12:37] Yes. With the beloved Taylor Kitsch, who was Tim Riggins on Friday Night Lights as David Koresh.

Speaker 1:
[12:49] Yeah. But he was somebody else. Who was he? Because he was also in that was the dude from... Here we go. Boardwalk Empire.

Speaker 4:
[13:00] Yeah. There was a lot of good people in it.

Speaker 1:
[13:03] Gary Nessner was played by Michael Shannon.

Speaker 4:
[13:06] Yes. And he was fantastic.

Speaker 1:
[13:07] Who played the FBI agent in Boardwalk Empire, which was fantastic.

Speaker 4:
[13:11] Yes. He was absolutely fantastic.

Speaker 1:
[13:14] David Thibodeau was played by Rory Culkin. Did you know that? There were quite a few people in that miniseries. And I thought that miniseries was really good. It was called Waco Mad Men or Messiah.

Speaker 4:
[13:27] Yeah, I really liked it as well.

Speaker 1:
[13:29] Mad Man or Messiah.

Speaker 4:
[13:29] I feel like it was on early in the pandemic. I feel like I watched that then, but I could be wrong.

Speaker 1:
[13:34] I think you're right. I think you're right.

Speaker 4:
[13:36] I feel like it was one of the early pandemic binges that everyone was talking about.

Speaker 1:
[13:39] So who wrote my book?

Speaker 4:
[13:42] I can't find your book.

Speaker 1:
[13:44] Oh, I'll find it. I had it up not too long ago.

Speaker 4:
[13:47] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[13:47] Guys, the person who wrote the book that I read was Mark Brault. I don't know if he was the escapee or if he wrote it with someone else.

Speaker 4:
[13:58] I feel like he wrote it with someone else because that name doesn't ring a bell.

Speaker 1:
[14:00] Yeah. Martin King might have been the guy. It's called Inside the Cult, a member's chilling exclusive account of madness and depravity in David Koresh's compound, and it's in paperback, and it was published June 1st, 1993.

Speaker 4:
[14:15] Wow. So it was real quick.

Speaker 1:
[14:17] So it was really quick, and I don't know if this person was in the raid. I don't know if this person maybe escaped before. Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 4:
[14:27] Right.

Speaker 1:
[14:28] I don't know.

Speaker 4:
[14:28] Also, just to show you how good Amazon search is, I searched Waco inside the branch Davidians because that's what I thought it was called. One of the options that came up was Black and Decker, the complete guide to plumbing. Okay. So Amazon, go for it.

Speaker 1:
[14:42] So we are covering Waco, American Apocalypse, 2023, Netflix. It is three episodes. It is, oh, the guy is Taylor. Schiller is his name. Is that his name?

Speaker 4:
[14:54] Tiller. It's not Taylor. It's Tiller. It's T-I-L-L-E-R.

Speaker 1:
[14:59] Tiller Russell?

Speaker 4:
[15:02] Maybe.

Speaker 1:
[15:02] Yes. Yes.

Speaker 4:
[15:03] We're on it.

Speaker 1:
[15:04] We know him because he is the guy who also did Nightstalker, the hunt for a serial killer, which was amazing.

Speaker 4:
[15:12] Yes, that was amazing.

Speaker 1:
[15:13] That was fantastic. He also did, I want to say he also did one of those manhunt episodes, the one for the Boston bomber, I think.

Speaker 4:
[15:24] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[15:25] Okay. He's cult-adjacent here. Okay.

Speaker 4:
[15:30] This is what he spent in his time documenting, which is awesome.

Speaker 1:
[15:32] I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that.

Speaker 4:
[15:33] I'm totally fine with that.

Speaker 1:
[15:34] We start with what we call in the podcast world, the black screen of death. It says, in 1993, the government served a search warrant against David Koresh for machine guns. What followed was the largest gunfight on American soil since the Civil War.

Speaker 4:
[15:52] That is so crazy to think about.

Speaker 1:
[15:54] It's crazy to think about. Even Timmy was watching this with me, my husband, he's like, is that right? I'm like, yeah, that's right.

Speaker 4:
[16:02] We don't do this.

Speaker 1:
[16:03] Because we've never had a war in this country, aside from the Civil War and the revolution.

Speaker 4:
[16:07] We've never had a war on US soil since the Civil War. Most of our wars, we just go elsewhere and do it.

Speaker 1:
[16:13] We just rip up other countries.

Speaker 4:
[16:14] That's fine.

Speaker 1:
[16:15] So we're going to start episode one. And I have some key figures here. I have them listed out. David Koresh, obviously. Vernon, what's his real name? Vernon Howell.

Speaker 4:
[16:25] Okay. I'm gonna say Vernon Troyer, not the right person at all.

Speaker 1:
[16:28] Kathy Schroeder, Branch Davidian, still in it.

Speaker 4:
[16:32] Still in it. She's...

Speaker 1:
[16:34] Heather Jones, her parents were raised in Mount Carmel. She was one of the kids released. David Thibodeau, a teen who needed attention and found a cult, which would have been me.

Speaker 4:
[16:43] Right.

Speaker 1:
[16:44] Lee Hancock, Dallas Morning News reporter. I love her. I love her too. The one with the short black hair.

Speaker 4:
[16:49] Yep. I love her glasses.

Speaker 1:
[16:51] John Malcomore, the TV reporter who was kind of on the scene through the whole thing. Bill Buford from the ATF, Bald Guy with a Goatee. I'm just describing them for you guys in case you watched it.

Speaker 4:
[17:02] They are. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[17:03] Jim Cavanaugh, ATF, Sweet Little Grandpa with the Blue Shirt. This is a description from me. Bob Ricks, the FBI special agent in charge with a wild Buffon hairdo. Yes. Chris Whitcomb, the crazy sniper on the HRT.

Speaker 4:
[17:20] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[17:21] Gary Nessner, a negotiator and John Cox, a negotiator. Okay.

Speaker 4:
[17:25] I love Gary Nessner.

Speaker 1:
[17:27] I liked him too.

Speaker 4:
[17:28] I loved him too. Now, when we talked about the dramatization that we saw and he was played by Michael Shannon, he was so good in that. That's where I fell in love with him. I just thought he seemed very... I mean, to be an FBI negotiator, you have to be the calmest, coolest cucumber God ever created.

Speaker 1:
[17:46] It is wild, isn't it?

Speaker 4:
[17:48] It is a wild job.

Speaker 1:
[17:50] So we have the opening montage and we get some information and we learned that the compound is 77 acres. It's just east of Waco, Texas. It's called Mount Carmel. People say they legit believed David was the son of God. Right now, I have to say something.

Speaker 4:
[18:08] Oh God, okay. Wow, okay. Shame, shame.

Speaker 1:
[18:16] David Koresh was a bad man, okay? He was a bad man by all accounts.

Speaker 4:
[18:21] Correct, uh oh. Did I think he was a little cute? Of course you did. Of course you did, because he was dirty, he played music, he was charismatic.

Speaker 1:
[18:32] I need to be put to sleep. You're a horrible human.

Speaker 4:
[18:36] Here's the thing, like, I'm going to say, I'm going to, what I'm going to say is I hope people take it the right way. I think he was very smart.

Speaker 1:
[18:45] He actually, okay, so here's the thing. I listened to his background, I'm sure you did too. So he actually was kind of an academic dummy. He failed first grade twice, he dropped out of school, he couldn't get anything right. He was kind of like this fumbly-bumbly.

Speaker 4:
[19:02] He was also dyslexic.

Speaker 1:
[19:04] Yes, and he had a bunch of other issues. However, like most, if you're a teacher, I was a teacher for a long time. We know kids learn differently. Yeah. And he wasn't dumb, he just learned differently. And where this kid shown was with the Bible.

Speaker 4:
[19:24] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[19:24] And he picked up that Bible and it was like, he just ran to the top of the class.

Speaker 4:
[19:30] I mean, as people talk about, he could recite any word anytime, like he memorized the whole thing.

Speaker 1:
[19:34] They said he was a Bible scholar. That's what they said about him. So I think that he was misunderstood. He was considered dumb and like a buffoon, and they underestimated him completely.

Speaker 4:
[19:48] Is he a complicated historical figure?

Speaker 1:
[19:54] Now, after watching this, I regret putting him on my complicated historical figure board because the whole sex with girls thing. Nope.

Speaker 4:
[20:01] Yeah. No. There was some real gross dark stuff. I mean, there was a lot of dark stuff happening in there.

Speaker 1:
[20:08] So even though I'm like, what is he cute? I can't give it to him because-

Speaker 4:
[20:14] He's dead to you with the sex stuff. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[20:17] So there you go. Now, would 16-year-old Amy walk into his cult? 110 percent. I'm at a guitar center. You can't leave me to your own devices. Yeah. Okay. So the followers are talking about how peaceful and loving it was at Mount Carmel, and law enforcement and the FBI and the reporters are saying things like, David Koresh was having sex with underage girls. He took all the men's wives. He had 1.6 million rounds of ammunition. They were turning semi-automatic weapons into fully automatic weapons. Again, interspersed with that was, we were playing outside with our dads and everything was great and David loved each of us. Then we get, he was a scumbag, he was a calm man. It's really interesting how people can have such divergent views of this man.

Speaker 4:
[21:09] Probably both are right.

Speaker 1:
[21:11] I know, right? It's weird. They say that the core belief system, and this is an offspring of the Seventh Day Adventists.

Speaker 4:
[21:21] Seventh Day Adventists.

Speaker 1:
[21:23] Who were really, their core belief is end of days, correct?

Speaker 4:
[21:26] Yeah. It's real apocalyptic Book of Revelations shit happening there. He took on the Book of Revelations.

Speaker 1:
[21:33] He became obsessed with the Book of Revelations, which I feel like 16-year-old Jenny, my sister, would have done that.

Speaker 4:
[21:40] Oh, she would have been into?

Speaker 1:
[21:41] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[21:41] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[21:42] So they believe the end was coming soon and that they were going to be in battle with the federal government and that was how it was going to end.

Speaker 4:
[21:49] Right. That was his view of the apocalypse. Other people have, we just started watching The Leftovers last night.

Speaker 1:
[21:54] Oh, God.

Speaker 4:
[21:55] I love that.

Speaker 1:
[21:56] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[21:57] We've only watched one episode and we're like, the hell's happening, we need to keep going. But I love the apocalyptic thought. I don't love it personally.

Speaker 1:
[22:06] I find it fascinating. Did you watch The Silo?

Speaker 4:
[22:08] No, not yet. That's also on our list.

Speaker 1:
[22:11] Okay. We see David Koresh and he's preaching inside the compound. Kathy tells us that she was always searching for God. She would just be looking up at the sky, waiting for God to come around, whatever. When she met David, she found her God. That was her God.

Speaker 4:
[22:28] She still believes he was God. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[22:31] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[22:32] It's sad.

Speaker 1:
[22:33] At the detriment of her children, which is real sad.

Speaker 4:
[22:35] 100 percent. We'll talk about it.

Speaker 1:
[22:37] So her and her husband and their kids went to Waco and wanted to live for God. Heather Jones says both of her parents were raised in Mount Carmel. So she was born into it, which was really interesting. So Mount Carmel started in the 30s.

Speaker 4:
[22:51] Right.

Speaker 1:
[22:52] It started in the 30s. And the Branch Davidians, their offshoot, I guess, was founded in 1955 by a guy named Benjamin Rodin. And I guess they had moved locations at that point to the current compound. So anyway, so it's been around long enough that some of these kids are born into it.

Speaker 4:
[23:14] Right. Because I think without knowing a lot about it, we assume David Koresh showed up here, built this whole community.

Speaker 1:
[23:24] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[23:25] I think it's easy to forget that it existed before he got there.

Speaker 1:
[23:28] Yes. Yes.

Speaker 4:
[23:29] In some form.

Speaker 1:
[23:30] So David Koresh is her uncle. She says the kids played in the yard. It was like having 100 moms. Like it was really a great place to grow up. Kathy says they were living and doing God's will. We learned that David Thibodeau met David Koresh at a guitar center and fell under David Koresh's spell, which.

Speaker 4:
[23:48] Get it. This is where Amye would have come in.

Speaker 1:
[23:51] Yes. Okay. So now we have the ATF attempted siege. Let's talk about this. Okay. So Lee Hancock from the Dallas Morning News, again, the woman with the short black hair, tells us that David Koresh convinced his followers that he was Christ and they were going to follow him into a fiery end. They would all die and come back with him as the second coming of Christ. So in order to facilitate this, they start amassing guns. Okay. Kathy says David Koresh always told them the government was coming for them and they were buying and selling at gun shows and the followers are like, it's Texas. Guns are like water, guns are like the air we breathe. Like, this is Texas.

Speaker 4:
[24:32] Oh, God, do you think Toti could come into this as a gun seller?

Speaker 1:
[24:36] Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

Speaker 4:
[24:38] We've now come full circle.

Speaker 1:
[24:40] This is also after Ruby Ridge.

Speaker 4:
[24:42] Right. That's another lens that we've looked through, how the government handled this because they did not want another Ruby Ridge.

Speaker 1:
[24:50] Now, I will tell you that I don't know much about Ruby Ridge at all.

Speaker 4:
[24:54] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[24:54] I know, here's what I know about it, okay? Having done no research, because I was young. I was even younger.

Speaker 4:
[25:01] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[25:04] The FBI or the government, whatever branch of the government handled that, fucked it up. There was some guy who had a bazillion guns and was holed up in his property. They were trying to seize it or arrest him or take him. They shot his wife, I believe.

Speaker 4:
[25:19] Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[25:20] It was bad. It got real bad.

Speaker 4:
[25:22] It got real bad. Let's just do a real quick here. Ruby Ridge was the site of an 11-day siege of a cabin occupied by the Weaver family in Boundary County, Ohio.

Speaker 1:
[25:33] Oregon.

Speaker 4:
[25:34] Oh, Idaho.

Speaker 1:
[25:35] I thought it was in Oregon.

Speaker 4:
[25:35] Idaho. It was Idaho. August 1992. It began August 21st when deputies of the US Marshal Service came to arrest Randy Weaver under a bench warrant after his failure to appear on federal firearms charge. During the surveillance operation, Officer Rick Roderick and Weaver's dog shot Weaver's dog when it ran at them and then pointed his rifle at Weaver's armed son, Sammy. Sammy then fired at the team who fired back, blah, blah, blah. We had the hostage rescue team come in as well. I really want to say that Gary Nessner was there too.

Speaker 1:
[26:13] He was not there.

Speaker 4:
[26:14] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[26:15] They say that he was there in the mini-series.

Speaker 4:
[26:18] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[26:18] I just read this. Yeah, and he wasn't there. Okay. That was a little bit of dramatization, but he wasn't there.

Speaker 4:
[26:24] But the government was absolutely looking at this through, like, we don't want another Ruby Ridge.

Speaker 1:
[26:28] Correct. Correct. 100%. So, all right. Where are we? Okay. So Lee says, they were breaking federal laws by modifying guns. Okay. All right. So they also had live grenades. And how they found this was a UPS driver, UPS driver is doing the Lord's work here.

Speaker 4:
[26:49] Seriously.

Speaker 1:
[26:50] Saw a grenade fall out of a package. Can you imagine?

Speaker 4:
[26:55] There you are. Well, I mean, it's not, it wouldn't have been them, but like there you are with your Amazon boxes of like toilet paper thing. And then there's a box that a grenade falls out.

Speaker 1:
[27:02] I know. I know. And they tipped off the sheriff who called in the ATF. Okay.

Speaker 4:
[27:08] Which is the right thing to do.

Speaker 1:
[27:10] Sure. Absolutely. You can't have this.

Speaker 4:
[27:13] You can't have people amassing grenades.

Speaker 1:
[27:15] No. So Bill Buford is one of the ATF agents who was there. Jim Cavanaugh, grandpa, blue shirt. He tells us they had federal search warrants and arrest warrants. Bill Buford says they thought they had, I don't know, 40 to 50 machine guns and a dozen grenades. So they decided on a dynamic entry. You pull up, you get in the building before any of them have time to arm themselves. It's all based on the element to surprise. It was going to be February 28th, and the ultimate goal was just to arrest David Koresh and seize the weapons. That was the goal. What could go wrong, Amanda?

Speaker 4:
[27:52] What could possibly go wrong? And theoretically, if you are the government, again, I don't want to be a US government apologist because I think so much went wrong on every side here. But if you are believing that they are amassing weapons, this is against the law, this is what you have to do.

Speaker 1:
[28:08] Oh, I will say I do not think that the government was all in the wrong here. We will get into that. There are parts where they were, first of all, we will get into it, but when there are children at harm's risk, you know what I mean? So they are in this compound, they have all of these children in there and they have live grenades, they have machine guns, like they had to do something.

Speaker 4:
[28:30] What could go wrong?

Speaker 1:
[28:31] Now, the podcast I listened to was really interesting. It was the official podcast. You listened to it as well because Tiller brought up the point of why didn't the FBI just arrest him away from the compound?

Speaker 4:
[28:41] Right. He did leave.

Speaker 1:
[28:43] Right. He left frequently.

Speaker 4:
[28:45] Right.

Speaker 1:
[28:46] Why didn't they just arrest him? I think they wanted to get in there because I think they were afraid if they arrested him outside the compound, there was a plan in place, which there was.

Speaker 4:
[28:57] There was, and they would incite them to do more violence.

Speaker 1:
[29:00] Yes.

Speaker 4:
[29:01] I get it.

Speaker 1:
[29:02] John Malcomore, a TV reporter, gets this call that this is going down, and the ATF agents were in their undercover house close by, and Rodriguez was one of these undercover agents, and we met him in the mini-series.

Speaker 4:
[29:17] Right. UC House.

Speaker 1:
[29:19] Yes. They were pretending to be college students. It's so bizarre.

Speaker 4:
[29:24] I know. It's so crazy.

Speaker 1:
[29:26] That would be like Amanda and me pretending right now to be college students, like, let's go to the club, and we're home by 10.30. All right. The followers go, and they grab breakfast, everything's normal. The news crew pulls over on the road, and they wait, so John Malcomore, he's pulled over, he's waiting. He gets a call from one of the photogs who got lost and couldn't find the place. He's on the phone with the guy, and the guy, Jim Peeler, who is to blame for a little bit of this, decides he's going to flag down a passing mailman and ask him, how do I get to that crazy cult place? Because there's an FBI raid going down, and I need to be there.

Speaker 4:
[30:05] To take the pictures. Meanwhile, you're unaware that the postman is a member of the crazy cult.

Speaker 1:
[30:11] It's Heather Jones' father.

Speaker 4:
[30:13] Exactly.

Speaker 1:
[30:14] And he runs Scoop Speed back to Waco and immediately tells them. Sure. Robert Rodriguez is in there. He's like, oh, Jesus Christ. He's in a Bible study with Koresh when Steve Schneider, Koresh's right-hand guy, comes in. Oh my God, they're coming. Blah, blah, blah. Rodriguez thinks he's being made. It's a whole thing.

Speaker 4:
[30:34] Listening to the interview with Robert Rodriguez was really interesting. How he really ingratiated. I mean, he really went in undercover.

Speaker 1:
[30:44] He really did. I don't want to get too far down the rabbit hole here, but one of his undercover specialties was really acclimating to the environment. One of his things is he would never call Koresh. He always wanted Koresh to call him and invite him in because that's way less obvious. The one time he had to go in, he said Koresh made him. There are many accounts that say Koresh knew this was an FBI undercover. He was no dummy.

Speaker 4:
[31:15] He figured it all out.

Speaker 1:
[31:17] You run a cult, you know how to read people.

Speaker 4:
[31:19] That's right.

Speaker 1:
[31:20] Rodriguez gets out and he runs to the undercover house. He calls the ATF. He's like, we're done. They know you're coming. Element of Surprise is gone. The assistant special agent in charge says, nope, we're going in anyway. We're doing it. Now we're doing it faster. We're doing it right now.

Speaker 4:
[31:40] Right, because we can't fuck around anymore because we've now been figured out.

Speaker 1:
[31:44] Bill Buford is like, no, but okay, I have to do what I'm told. I think that's where I have sympathy for the agents involved because these agents are just doing what they're told. Sort of like soldiers in the military. They do what they're told for what they believe is the betterment of this country and you can't hold it against them.

Speaker 4:
[32:09] Now they are completing the mission with which they have been charged. What I think was really interesting and I'm sure you'll go down this rabbit hole is how uncoordinated each of these groups were and that's the problem.

Speaker 1:
[32:24] Yes, that's the problem. Bill's like, we lost the element of surprise, we're doomed, whatever. Now, we see helicopters approaching the compound. Bill's basically is like, this was going to be a fucking bloodbath and we knew it. Like this going in, he said two truckfuls of agents were coming in with the tarp over them. He said they had on flak jackets and helmets and basically raid gear, and they were all squeezing one another's hands because they knew they were going into what could be a fatal situation. Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[33:00] Can you imagine that?

Speaker 1:
[33:02] No. Jim Cavanaugh is like, this was real dumb because when we got there, if you looked at the compound, they had the high ground. They had a tower, they had all these areas that were real bad for us. This was a dumb thing to do. Thibodeau claims that David Koresh was all calm, and he just planned on going out and chatting to the agents. He was just going to go out and be like, hey, what's up guys? Have a little tea chat. It's me tea chat. Bill says they were squeezing each other's hands. Then he says, David Koresh sticks his head out and tells them to get off his property, and we do see him. They say they have a warrant and he slams the door. Thibodeau says, David was like, here's what David did. He went down and he opened the door and he said, oh, hey guys, wait, there's women and children. And he didn't even get children out and they started just shooting at him random. Right. Now, we don't know who shot first. The military, listen to me, the law enforcement says that the branch Davidians did. The branch Davidians say law enforcement, that may never be solved. Now, we don't know who did. Now, I don't feel comfortable saying who did. You probably don't feel comfortable saying who did. No. So we don't know. I will guarantee you it did not go down like that. Like David Dibbidoe saying.

Speaker 4:
[34:34] There are children. Come on.

Speaker 1:
[34:38] David Dibbidoe, he's a complicated historical.

Speaker 4:
[34:41] He's a complicated historical. I find it fascinating.

Speaker 1:
[34:46] Little Miss Recap will return in a moment. For ad-free episodes, visit littlemissrecap.com/support. Okay. So Bill says, we absolutely did not shoot first. In fact, we heard the M60 and the 50 caliber first, and we didn't have those weapons. Jim says, well, we knew the warrant was good, because we heard those machine guns.

Speaker 4:
[35:14] Right. I mean, that's the proof. If there was any question, the fact that all of a sudden, these people are, you know, the branch Davidians are shooting people with automatic weapons proves that Yeah, I agree. they were breaking the law.

Speaker 1:
[35:27] So Jim says, I mean, it gets... Let me back up. This is all unseen footage. We've never seen this before. It's unaired. It is real bad. I mean, there is just 25 minutes of shooting. It literally gave me anxiety watching the entire thing. It was terrifying. The news reporters are in the middle of it. They're running interference. They're yelling and helping the ATF, and it is wild.

Speaker 4:
[35:59] It is complete chaos that went off the rails so fast.

Speaker 1:
[36:03] It becomes pretty evident pretty quickly that the ATF has to retreat. They have to get out of there. I wrote, the footage is super intense. Bill walks us through it. It's interesting having Bill walk us through it because he's like, there I am right there with the red stripe on my helmet. There I am. We see him, which is wild. They try to go in the windows. They're shot. They're shooting people in the windows. Heather says David Koresh's wife was shot in front of her. She's crying about it. David Koresh took fire. The ATF gets out of there after they managed to call a ceasefire. We hear this audio of this ATF agent who is down. He's bleeding out and it's really bad. He's begging them to come and get him and save him. They can't get anywhere near him until they get a ceasefire. They're working frantically on getting the ceasefire. They get it. They get to him. They managed to save his life somehow. If you could see these guys, guys, if you haven't watched this, you need to watch this because seeing them and then hearing, they use, Tiller uses the white buffaloes, wish it was true, right over the top of this, which is perfect.

Speaker 4:
[37:19] Yeah, it's really powerful.

Speaker 1:
[37:21] It's really powerful.

Speaker 4:
[37:21] These men are crying about it 30 years later.

Speaker 1:
[37:24] Yeah. They didn't have enough vehicles or ambulances to get these guys out of there. They put Bill Buford on the hood of Jim John Malcolm Morris' news van. He's driving without being able to see. Somebody is like navigating. It's wild. The retreat is wild. The TV guy, the photog hides the tape and smuggles it out of there while they're being screamed at. This footage hits the news. What people hear is four law enforcement people are dead and 12 are injured. Four federal agents are dead and 12 are injured. We have no idea how many branch Davidians are dead. Nobody gives a shit or says anything. Yeah, exactly. Nope. The question then becomes who shot first. There are three central questions around Waco. Who shot first? Who lit the fires? What was happening in that compound?

Speaker 4:
[38:26] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[38:28] I think we have pretty good answers on what was happening in the compound.

Speaker 4:
[38:33] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[38:33] I think I have an idea, an opinion of who started the fires.

Speaker 4:
[38:38] I have an opinion too.

Speaker 1:
[38:39] But I don't think we know who shot first.

Speaker 4:
[38:42] I don't think we do either.

Speaker 1:
[38:44] So the FBI is now called in because four federal agents were killed in this raid and they're required to investigate the murder of federal agents. So Rix says that the eight Rix is kind of a dick. I'm just going to put it off.

Speaker 4:
[38:57] I'm not a fan.

Speaker 1:
[38:58] Not a fan. He says the ATF requested help from the FBI in the form of negotiators and the HRT. The HRT is the hostage rescue rescue team. I'm thinking it's like a Navy SEAL situation.

Speaker 4:
[39:13] I think it's the best of the best of negotiators and people who know how to get people out of sticky sticky situations.

Speaker 1:
[39:23] Yeah. Don't forget, this is the unit that was at Ruby Ridge. I don't know if this exact unit was there.

Speaker 4:
[39:29] If these were the same people, but it was the same organization.

Speaker 1:
[39:31] Same organization. They are the absolute last resort for the government in a hostage situation. You're being held hostage. The HRT is, if they can't save you, you're fucked. You're done.

Speaker 4:
[39:46] We're starting with negotiators. And then if that doesn't work, we go in.

Speaker 1:
[39:50] So Jim Kavanaugh at the ATF begins the negotiations with Koresh. And David Koresh, they learn pretty quickly, just wants press and he wants media and he wants to get his word out.

Speaker 4:
[40:01] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[40:01] He wants to be on TV. He's God.

Speaker 4:
[40:04] He believes he's God and he wants to be on TV so he can send his message to the world.

Speaker 1:
[40:08] Yep. So he was demanding the local media play a message from him. And each time they played it, he would release two kids, two by two. They do this for a couple of hours. We see Scott and Chrissy, they're Cathy's kids. Jim said they considered law enforcement to be evil. So the mom's releasing these kids to quote unquote Babylon, sending them out into the nightmare.

Speaker 4:
[40:30] Utterly terrifying. I feel awful for these parents.

Speaker 1:
[40:34] I do too. I do too. Especially somebody like Heather Jones who just grew up in this.

Speaker 4:
[40:38] Right. She didn't know anything else. Her parents grew up in it. They knew nothing else.

Speaker 1:
[40:43] Nothing else. So the moms were kind of pissed at David Koresh. They were like, we don't want to send them out there. So Jim Cavanaugh comes up with this idea that you send the kids out, they'll come right to me, and I'll put them on the phone with you and the moms.

Speaker 4:
[40:59] I'll show you right away that they're okay.

Speaker 1:
[41:00] Which was brilliant.

Speaker 4:
[41:01] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[41:02] So Cathy says it was hard, but she did believe in David, so she did it. The kids go to gym, the kids call, David Koresh, we hear the recordings and they play them for Cathy, and she listens and tells us what was going through their heads. She said, we didn't think, it's hard to look at this, this is from Cathy. It's hard to look at this and think, how could you not want to save your kids? She said, but that's not what we saw it as. We saw it as we had to get David's message out and sacrificing our kids was just the way to do it. And you're like, wow, okay.

Speaker 4:
[41:42] I mean, that's indoctrination and brainwashing to such an extreme level. When you are doing this and what you think you're doing is the right thing for your children, even if it's just wild.

Speaker 1:
[42:00] It's wild. And she said, we didn't care about living. I cared about living for God. We need eyes on this woman in current day because I'm worried. Where is she?

Speaker 4:
[42:13] Where? Oh, she is a fascinating person.

Speaker 1:
[42:17] And so now we have a new negotiator. Jim's exhausted, but also they had a transition from the ATF to the FBI. So they bring in Gary Nessner, and he is the one who was played by Michael Shannon in the miniseries. And Jim says, the ATF and the FBI are like bros. But, you know, we do fight, but we have each other's back generally. So Gary takes over. He's very complimentary to Jim. Jim did a great job, but, you know, get out and let the big boys play.

Speaker 4:
[42:45] Right. Let the person who's trained to do this do this.

Speaker 1:
[42:47] And Gary Nessner, I guess, was the head of everything. It wouldn't normally be on the phone, but he had nobody else there.

Speaker 4:
[42:53] He just was the first one who got there and it was like, okay, I guess I'm doing this.

Speaker 1:
[42:57] Yep. So we know they know David Koresh is shot. We know that he's agitated with the switch. We hear the recordings. We hear all these recordings.

Speaker 4:
[43:06] Yeah, which is fascinating.

Speaker 1:
[43:07] Fascinating.

Speaker 4:
[43:08] And I get it because like Jim, he and Jim had built a rapport. And now from David Koresh's perspective, he has some stranger on that he has no trust of.

Speaker 1:
[43:18] Yep. So Sniper Chris, who is, I don't know, ready to smash some skulls, is what I'm feeling. That's the vibe I'm getting from him.

Speaker 4:
[43:32] This little aggro.

Speaker 1:
[43:33] He says, there was no perimeter around Mount Carmel. Did you hear the interview with him where he talked about how he went through like every religion and even like tried out David Koresh's religion?

Speaker 4:
[43:45] Yeah, tried everything. Judaism. He was raised Catholic, realized that didn't work.

Speaker 1:
[43:50] Mormonism. He tried everything.

Speaker 4:
[43:51] Mormonism.

Speaker 1:
[43:51] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[43:53] All of them.

Speaker 1:
[43:54] And then he was like an atheist.

Speaker 4:
[43:55] Right. He was agnostic for a while and then he was like, no, nothing.

Speaker 1:
[43:59] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[44:00] Yeah, it was interesting.

Speaker 1:
[44:01] So he says, one of the problems is there was no perimeter around Mount Carmel. We had no eyes on the back of the place. We had no idea what was going on and that was dangerous. So we were in an abandoned farmhouse a mile away, we had a good picture of the front. But he says, it was crazy because there was this large structure just in the middle of nothing.

Speaker 4:
[44:23] Think about the difference in technology. Today, that thing would be covered in drones.

Speaker 1:
[44:30] 100 percent.

Speaker 4:
[44:31] They'd have eyes on every square inch of that property.

Speaker 1:
[44:33] 100 percent.

Speaker 4:
[44:34] Thirty years ago, we didn't have that.

Speaker 1:
[44:36] So in the first few days, they got 20 people out, most of them were kids. David Koresh said he would come out, he would come out and his followers. If they gave him a national broadcast, he makes a 58-minute sermon, and he wanted it on the Christian Broadcasting Network. I'm like, dude, Amy, really? NBC, come on, do something.

Speaker 4:
[44:58] Go to get your word out. We're going ABC, NBC, CBS.

Speaker 1:
[45:02] So they play it and he could have even, what year was this? 93. They could have put it on QVC, it would have got more viewers.

Speaker 4:
[45:08] That's true.

Speaker 1:
[45:09] So they play it and he says he'll come out peacefully and immediately. Then Koresh would come out first and everyone else, and then last would be Steve Schneider. Kathy says, coming out meant giving up everything you believe. Tibbito says, we honestly thought if we came out, they would shoot us. Now they're talking to David Koresh and he begins to stall. He's like, wait a minute, wait a minute, I got to put Steve on the phone. So Steve gets on the phone, he's like, oh my God, oh my God, Gary. Turns out God wants us to wait. Wait, David's getting a call from God. Hold on. I'm back. Yeah, God said, we got to wait. We got to wait this out. The FBI is like, what the fuck, dude.

Speaker 4:
[45:56] David's on the God phone right now. I'll let you know what the message is when we're done.

Speaker 1:
[46:00] So they were not coming out. Episode 2 starts with Jeff Jamar. He is the FBI head dude and he's given a press conference. He's saying they want no bloodshed, that 20 children, 47 women, and 43 men were still inside at this point. Ricks says, we now know this will not turn out well and that David Koresh is controlling everyone. They're saying this all based on the fact that he will not come out.

Speaker 4:
[46:25] Right.

Speaker 1:
[46:26] If he comes out, this is over. If he comes out, says, I'm coming out, it's over. David Koresh says, no one believed in Christ either. He had to die for them to believe him.

Speaker 4:
[46:38] Right.

Speaker 1:
[46:39] Now, Sniper Chris says, this amped up their plans. They needed to secure the perimeter now because now they know Koresh is not coming out. He's not playing with them. He's not cooperating. They decide to set up this abandoned garage behind the property, but they had to drive past the compound to get to it. So they're rolling through there and fucking tanks and shit, and David Koresh is not happy about this. He's on the phone going like, What are you doing?

Speaker 4:
[47:08] Right. Why are there tanks showing up?

Speaker 1:
[47:10] The negotiators are like, What is happening?

Speaker 4:
[47:13] Right. This is where it starts falling apart.

Speaker 1:
[47:15] This is where it starts falling apart.

Speaker 4:
[47:16] You don't have a coordination between ATF, the FBI, the HRT. There's no head dog in charge.

Speaker 1:
[47:23] Right. You need a head dog in charge.

Speaker 4:
[47:25] Right. I mean, the Department of Justice is, this is why Janet Reno was lambasted to hell.

Speaker 1:
[47:34] This is the beginning of these two arms of the same agency undermining one another. David Koresh is on the phone. Gary freaking out that these vehicles are surrounding the property. Gary knows nothing about it. The HRT finally secures the garage. They have a perimeter. Now, at this point, Cathy says, and this is what leads me to believe the Branch Davidians started the fire. Okay. That's my belief.

Speaker 4:
[47:56] I believe they started it too.

Speaker 1:
[47:58] Cathy says, we had a plan to commit suicide if they entered the building.

Speaker 4:
[48:02] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[48:03] I had a grenade and we all did. We also know part of what's not talked about in this documentary, and they could have put this in very easily, is that the FBI had been sending in recording devices all along. They were sending them in milk cartons, they were sending them in deliveries. That's where we're getting all that audio that's inside. It's not over the telephone.

Speaker 4:
[48:26] It's not over the phone, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[48:27] They had heard them, and they played the tapes. They had heard them talking about having kerosene, having hay, being raised at the place on fire if something happened. Also, I read a thesis by a student who did their doctorate on this. They did all the Freedom of Information Act stuff to get all the recordings released. They said they 100% started the fire, the Branch Davidians.

Speaker 4:
[48:52] Okay. I believe they did.

Speaker 1:
[48:54] Yeah, I believe they did. Rix says, the HRT just wanted to get in there and get it done, and we wanted to establish trust and take time. But the HRT saw David Koresh and his followers as criminals and murderers. Now, Jeff Jamar was hearing a gentle approach from Gary, and a harder and more aggressive approach from the HRT, and he was often siding with the HRT and letting them do what they want. Why? Because this was costing a lot of fucking money.

Speaker 4:
[49:27] I remember seeing the news every day that this just ticked on, ticked on, ticked on, look way worse for the federal government. They're like, we can't hit 30 days of this, we can't hit 40 days of this, this has got to stop. Because it makes us look weak. It makes the federal government look really weak.

Speaker 1:
[49:44] A hundred percent. But I don't, we'll talk about it at the end, hold on. Okay. Because I don't think he would ever have come out. I mean, he said he had to write a book.

Speaker 4:
[49:54] Yeah, he was very busy.

Speaker 1:
[49:56] So Sniper Chris says, we had the same goal and he brings up a good point here. He says, it's a completely different mindset when you're used to busting into a place, securing it and getting everybody out as opposed to spending time with people, earning their trust, trying to get them to change their mind. He says, it's a different mindset.

Speaker 4:
[50:16] The goal is the same. The way you get to the goal is vastly different.

Speaker 1:
[50:20] Yes. So we see footage of Gary telling the other negotiators, we can't pay attention to what's going on out there. We need to focus on Koresh and us, and that's it. We're ignoring the HRT, we're ignoring whatever. All right. So the negotiators now are taking the stance of like, we're trying to separate ourselves from the men in the backyard with the guns pointed at you. Gary tells us David is hurt, he's been shot, and we see video of him showing the bullet holes. The next tactic was they wanted to convince him that he needed medical attention. So they told him they showed the video to a doctor, and the doctor is like, oh, that looks infective. Now, what did they show to you, Doc Baker? I mean, come on. Well, you might die, you might not. We don't know. Time will tell.

Speaker 4:
[51:06] We've got doctor on a little house. Who was the doctor on the love boat?

Speaker 1:
[51:11] Doc, he was not a fucking doctor either.

Speaker 4:
[51:15] Of course not.

Speaker 1:
[51:16] Kathy says he was 33 and shot up. There was a lot of similarities between him and Christ, because when Christ was shot up.

Speaker 4:
[51:26] He was that time's version of shot up, and they were both 33. Okay.

Speaker 1:
[51:32] Gary's like, we're rooting for him to die at this point, or to come out for medical assistance. That's what needed to happen. Now, Thibodeau's mom, Belinda, shows up and she's pleading to talk with David, her son David, not David Koresh.

Speaker 4:
[51:46] Right.

Speaker 1:
[51:46] But she says the FBI won't let her do that. They have a strict policy against that, and I get it.

Speaker 4:
[51:52] I get it too.

Speaker 1:
[51:53] We don't want to give them things. They need to understand they can only go through us. That's how the trust is built.

Speaker 4:
[52:00] Exactly. Then that becomes a carrot to dangle.

Speaker 1:
[52:04] Yes.

Speaker 4:
[52:05] You want to talk to your family, your mom is right here. You come out, your mom is right here waiting for you.

Speaker 1:
[52:12] Yep. They didn't know what this woman would say to him.

Speaker 4:
[52:17] No, that's the other thing.

Speaker 1:
[52:19] She confronts Rick at a press conference, media coverage is really heating up over this. Now, everybody's into it.

Speaker 4:
[52:25] I loved her at the press conference.

Speaker 1:
[52:27] Me too. The FBI is doing research on David Koresh, and they find an ex-girlfriend who says he had a breakdown in 1979 and had hallucinations and he was talking to God.

Speaker 4:
[52:39] Good. Nothing ever goes wrong there.

Speaker 1:
[52:41] I don't know if we learned this or if I did outside research on this, but he had a rough upbringing. We learned it in the doc, I think. He dropped out of school, he was abused. He came to the Branch Davidians as a young, quiet, goofy guy, and he befriends Lois Rodin. Lois Rodin was the wife of Benjamin Rodin, the founder who had died. She was at least 50 years older than him, and he seduces her and starts banging her, which is a baller move. I have to say, you go in there and you just bang the oldest, most powerful person.

Speaker 4:
[53:14] That's a baller move.

Speaker 1:
[53:16] So when she dies, her son and David Koresh fight for leadership. He gathers up a posse and he tries to kill the son. He admits this on tape. He's like, we were shooting at him just to scare him.

Speaker 4:
[53:33] This is not funny. It's ludicrous, is the reason I'm laughing.

Speaker 1:
[53:36] It's ludicrous. George was slightly injured, so David Koresh gets arrested for attempted murder, and it was a hung jury, so he gets off. Okay. Now, in 1992, a current affair did an exposé on the Branch Davidians, so the FBI gets the tape and the raw footage and everything, and they're watching it. Do you remember a current affair?

Speaker 4:
[53:57] Oh, I sure do.

Speaker 1:
[53:58] Oh, yeah.

Speaker 4:
[53:59] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Zoom, with that big triangle, zoom.

Speaker 1:
[54:02] Yep.

Speaker 4:
[54:02] Yep.

Speaker 1:
[54:03] It showed that David Koresh had a revelation that he needed to take the other wives. Okay. So David Koresh and his followers and everyone who escaped kind of talk about this. This is verified as much as it could be. And David Koresh admits it on tape that he had a 14-year-old wife. Yep. Her name was Rachel, whose parents gave permission for her to be married to him at 14. Way to go, parents. Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[54:35] Quality parenting there.

Speaker 1:
[54:36] Then one day he decided he wanted to also be married to her 12-year-old sister, so that happened. Then he decided that he needed to start sleeping with everybody's wife and that the men could not have sex.

Speaker 4:
[54:50] Right. He's the only one. And everyone becomes his wife.

Speaker 1:
[54:54] And let me tell you something, there are a lot of things that are putting the pressure. This is turning into a pressure cooker. You have a bunch of men around who can't bang their wives, who can't, you know what I mean?

Speaker 4:
[55:05] Or watching their wives bang this guy, literally or figuratively. They're like, Kathy gets pregnant. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[55:13] Yeah. But the thing that would have turned me into a monstrous rage and had me become a crazy cult member, David Koresh has the only air conditioning in the building.

Speaker 4:
[55:22] Oh, fuck no.

Speaker 1:
[55:26] So no one has running water. No one has electricity. And now David Koresh has the only air conditioning. No, I'm sorry. He has electricity. He has the air conditioning. Yeah. Yep.

Speaker 4:
[55:38] No. That would be where I'm done.

Speaker 1:
[55:41] That would be a deal breaker for me. I'd be running out there with my arms up in the air. Take me. I'm yours.

Speaker 4:
[55:46] Yeah, I can be air conditioning quickly. It's hot here. It's Texas, man. It's hot.

Speaker 1:
[55:52] Now we have the breakdown of communication. There's a 50-caliber weapon pointed at Sniper Christ supposedly. Sniper Chris, not Christ. Sniper Christ, I just called him new character.

Speaker 4:
[56:06] Sniper Christ would have been like a grunge band in the 90s. Can you see that? Sniper Christ out of Seattle?

Speaker 1:
[56:13] That would have been David Koresh's band name, I think. Band name. The head of the HRT calls the negotiators and he's like, David Koresh is pointing a.50 caliber weapon. I don't know anything about guns, but this.50 caliber weapon sounds real bad.

Speaker 4:
[56:32] I don't know anything either, but it's bad.

Speaker 1:
[56:35] They're like, get him to put it down. David Koresh is on the phone saying, I don't know what you're talking about. It's a whole thing. What happens is the negotiators get David Koresh to stand down, but the HRT then is pissed because they've lost sight of the 50 caliber now. I don't know what they wanted them to do then.

Speaker 4:
[56:55] I don't either.

Speaker 1:
[56:56] Me either. Sniper, you need to get your shit together.

Speaker 4:
[56:59] Sniper Christ, get it together, man. Come on.

Speaker 1:
[57:02] Now there's a back and forth on Day 10 with Koresh saying, I have something that could blow your vehicles 50 feet in the air, so the FBI brings in huge armored vehicles now.

Speaker 4:
[57:10] Right. You can't blow those in the air as easily.

Speaker 1:
[57:14] The rhetoric is getting real heated. David Koresh is releasing tapes of kids saying, God is going to destroy our enemies. It's real bad.

Speaker 4:
[57:21] It is.

Speaker 1:
[57:22] Okay. Now, a key mistake is made. Okay. The FBI could point to like three things that really turn this sideways. The negotiators decide to send in a tape of the released kids playing in a group home, and Kathy sees her kid, Brian, looking upset. I need eyes on Brian currently.

Speaker 4:
[57:44] I do too. What is Brian's life like right now? Is Brian with his mom? What's happening?

Speaker 1:
[57:49] He looked upset, and the reason why his brothers and sisters, Kathy's ex-husband came down was like, give me my fucking kids. I'm out of here.

Speaker 4:
[57:56] Right. He lost his brothers and sisters.

Speaker 1:
[57:58] He's all by himself.

Speaker 4:
[58:00] Right. I think he would not have been nearly as upset if he'd been with his siblings.

Speaker 1:
[58:04] Right. Yeah. They lure her out with Brian, and when they get her out, they fucking arrest her.

Speaker 4:
[58:10] I know.

Speaker 1:
[58:11] Gary is irate. He's like, people inside are watching. What is going to happen to them when they come out, and you're throwing them in jail, you idiots. Right.

Speaker 4:
[58:24] They let her see her kid for a minute, and then they arrest her.

Speaker 1:
[58:27] David Koresh is irate.

Speaker 4:
[58:29] I'm not saying Cathy shouldn't have been arrested. But I'm not saying she should or shouldn't have been arrested. I have no comment on that for that.

Speaker 1:
[58:37] She should not have been arrested, in my opinion. Stupid.

Speaker 4:
[58:41] But this fucked everything up.

Speaker 1:
[58:44] I'm only saying that because I want leniency when I eventually fall into a cult, and I have to come out. I can't be arrested.

Speaker 4:
[58:51] I'll make sure you're not arrested. If you get shot though, I will make sure the iPad is in the.

Speaker 1:
[58:56] Please do. Please do. Sniper Christ now tells us that one night at 2 AM, he had the opportunity for a headshot on David Koresh, and he could have taken him out right there, and he would have went to jail, and I wrote, what do you have though? You're a white dude in law enforcement. Would you have gone to jail?

Speaker 4:
[59:15] After this 40-day siege or whatever.

Speaker 1:
[59:18] Probably not. Not saying he should have done it. I'm just saying.

Speaker 4:
[59:21] I'm good that he didn't do it because we do not want our government shooting us with impunity.

Speaker 1:
[59:24] Don't tell us that you would have gone to jail because that is not a certainty.

Speaker 4:
[59:28] No.

Speaker 1:
[59:29] He says, but I would have saved lives. Okay. So now, episode 3 comes up. So Dick DeGurin shows up. Okay. Now, if that name sounds familiar, it's because he also defended Robert Durst. This guy's got a real good history of picking them. He's hired to represent Koresh by Bonnie Haldeman, Koresh's mom. The FBI decides, okay, we're going to work together here. You want him out, we want him out. Dick DeGurin wants nothing more than David Koresh in a courtroom. He says it so many times, I think he's getting a little chub over it. He's like, I want you in the courtroom. What do you want to do to him in the courtroom? I don't know what's happening.

Speaker 4:
[60:11] If you think about it, if you're like somebody who's like this nationally famous defense attorney or wanting to be one, you want to get the biggest story that all America is talking about all day, every day.

Speaker 1:
[60:22] True. In the courtroom. True. Well, he failed. The FBI claims, we're going to put you on the phone with them, we're not going to listen in, but they're 100 percent listening in. It's like, here, you pretend, you do the two-way conversation, okay? You're diggering, talking to David Koresh.

Speaker 4:
[60:40] Go ahead. So David, what I want you to do is when they ask you to send out children.

Speaker 1:
[60:49] That's what it was like. Come on, dude.

Speaker 4:
[60:52] You hear the beep of the recording.

Speaker 1:
[60:57] You can hear. Did you ever watch the special about the Mafia tapes when they did, what is that called? How they brought them down? The RICO Act?

Speaker 4:
[61:06] Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[61:07] Right? The FBI agents are sitting there like chain-smoking listening. That's what you hear. Anyway, so they're listening. David Koresh tells Dick that he was willing to go in and talk with the FBI, but the FBI did not want any part of it. Dick DeGurren is like, I don't know, he sounds reasonable to me. David Koresh sounds like a normal dude to me. I think I can get him out. Everybody's like, okay, Dick DeGurren, new hero.

Speaker 4:
[61:37] Hey, everything else we've done this far has failed, so let's give him a shot.

Speaker 1:
[61:40] Bring him in. March 21st, a bunch of people get released and Gary says, our strategy was starting to work. We had Dick DeGurren assuring David Koresh he was not going to go to jail. The HRT seemed to be a little quiet for a while, and then all of a sudden, for no fucking reason, the HRT starts driving tanks over David Koresh's classic cars.

Speaker 4:
[62:03] I know, like, what the fuck?

Speaker 1:
[62:05] I will tell you, just being married to a car guy, this is the equivalent of killing your child in the street.

Speaker 4:
[62:12] I know. You can't do that.

Speaker 1:
[62:15] Gary Nester is like, what is the rationale here?

Speaker 4:
[62:19] Right. He's so angry, and I think he has a right to be so angry.

Speaker 1:
[62:24] Rix is like, this was one of the hardest days because we thought people were coming out, but David Koresh got real, real, real mad at us.

Speaker 4:
[62:33] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[62:35] Now, Jeff Jamar tells Gary, they needed to speed this up because it's costing like a million dollars a day and we don't have any money.

Speaker 4:
[62:42] Nobody gets in for this. Okay.

Speaker 1:
[62:43] Right. They're ratcheting the pressure up now, and this is where we see them blasting the music and bizarre sounds 24-7. But the HRT unilaterally decided to do this, he says. They're playing this shit at 130 decibels, which is real, real loud.

Speaker 4:
[63:31] That's way louder than my hair dryer when my Apple watch yells at me.

Speaker 1:
[63:34] Oh, okay.

Speaker 4:
[63:36] Because quite often I'll listen to a podcast while I'm drying my hair and then my watch is like, you're in a loud environment.

Speaker 1:
[63:42] So would your watch be going off if you were in the compound? I'd be like, your body heat is 110. Getting that air conditioning.

Speaker 4:
[63:57] You're a lady of a certain age without air conditioning. This is not going to work.

Speaker 1:
[64:00] You would have to try to bang Koresh just to get into the air conditioned tower.

Speaker 4:
[64:04] Worth it.

Speaker 1:
[64:05] So you'd have to do the Cathy, she describes it like a Bible study.

Speaker 4:
[64:10] Yes, we'll call that Bible study. They were having sex and he was doing Bible study the whole time.

Speaker 1:
[64:15] What a Bible study.

Speaker 4:
[64:18] It's going to get me into a tizzy real quick.

Speaker 1:
[64:20] So Thibodeau says, we're all mentally unstable and you're trying to make us more mentally unstable?

Speaker 4:
[64:26] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[64:26] What's going on here? Gary's pissed and they get rid of them. They ship them off. Gary, you're done here. Get out. Now, they send Dick DeGerben in again and HRT is against this. FBI is just trying to hang on here. Thibodeau is like, we really thought Dick DeGerben would save us. Our rights were being trampled on. I mean, you can't have that amount of ammunition.

Speaker 4:
[64:54] No. You can't be scrolling away a lot of grenades.

Speaker 1:
[64:59] No, and you can't be banging underage kids.

Speaker 4:
[65:03] That's the bigger problem. Well, that's not the bigger problem. That's a very big problem.

Speaker 1:
[65:09] Little Miss Recap will return in a moment. For ad-free episodes, visit littlemissrecap.com/support. So Dick DeGerben says he went in there and he wasn't worried about the Branch Davidian shooting him. He was worried the snipers would shoot him. He says it's stunk in there like sewage and garlic.

Speaker 4:
[65:33] I'm curious about the garlic piece.

Speaker 1:
[65:36] They were using it as a homeopathic.

Speaker 4:
[65:39] Curing on David's. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[65:42] He told David, I want to get you in court. Oh, I want to get you in court, baby. I want to bend you over the defendants. I'm like, what?

Speaker 4:
[65:49] Wow. That took a turn.

Speaker 1:
[65:51] He said he had been told by God. David said now that he had been told by God that it was his mission to write his interpretation of the Book of Revelation said, yeah, I'm taking my time, taking my time. As someone who's been under pressure to get out of manuscript, I totally relate to this.

Speaker 4:
[66:07] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[66:08] If I could have held the country hostage while I was writing Fat Girls Game, I would have. I would have. Don't rush me.

Speaker 4:
[66:14] Right.

Speaker 1:
[66:15] So it's day 48 and people who are into gun rights and militia people show up and we see Timothy McVeigh. And he's selling anti-government bumper stickers.

Speaker 4:
[66:25] Sure is.

Speaker 1:
[66:26] Sure is. Now the press is waiting for David Koresh to finish his manuscript. And everybody's just sitting around like, talk about fucking pressure. The entire country is waiting for you to finish your manuscript. And Rix is like, this might be another stalling tactic. And Dick deGerben is like, no, no, no, no, no, no. He's really writing the Book of Revelation. Give him time. Give him time. He's hand writing it. So Steve Schneider tells the negotiators that all the tanks and shit are really fucking with David's creative process. Like, what are you doing?

Speaker 4:
[67:01] You're a writer. I've written. You can't have tanks there. That's not going to help you.

Speaker 1:
[67:06] Finally, Briggs is like, okay, I've had enough of this.

Speaker 4:
[67:09] this noise.

Speaker 1:
[67:10] We're done. So Dick Roberts, the head of the HRT, goes to meet with Janet Reno. Reno has to be the one to say, okay, you can use tear gas. Lee says, they should have shown Janet Reno the videos with David Koresh being sweet with the kids and being gentle. But they didn't show her that. I'm like, but he's banging them.

Speaker 4:
[67:34] Right.

Speaker 1:
[67:35] It's not okay.

Speaker 4:
[67:36] No, it's not okay.

Speaker 1:
[67:40] Janet Reno was going off of the evidence that she had, which was the file, including a lot of testimony from former members who said there were definitely child sexual abuse happening. Reno gives the order. April 19th, 1993. The FBI calls Steve Schneider inside. Okay, this is horrific. I just want to say this.

Speaker 4:
[68:02] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[68:03] But there's also little element of absurdity to this part that made me want to chuckle.

Speaker 4:
[68:09] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[68:09] But I can't. Okay. That is the FBI heading towards you in a tank screaming, this is not an assault. I'm like, they call Schneider and they're like, this is not an assault. We're not entering the building, but we're tear gassing the fuck out of you. And Steve Schneider goes, this is not an assault. And he hangs up.

Speaker 4:
[68:30] As someone who has actually been tear gassed, it's not fun.

Speaker 1:
[68:34] You've been tear gassed? Yes. Oh, gosh. Were you in the library too late?

Speaker 4:
[68:41] No, my dorm was tear gassed. So I went to the University of Delaware and I lived at Christiana Towers, if anyone knows anything about the University of Delaware, 16 story dorm apartment type thing. And it was the Thursday before Thanksgiving and some kid got really pissed off as he was studying that the people in the hall were being loud. And so he had stolen military tear gas from Aberdeen Proving Ground and sent it off.

Speaker 1:
[69:09] Wow. So you weren't tear gassed by law enforcement, you were tear gassed by a motherfucker trying to cause trouble.

Speaker 4:
[69:17] Motherfucker trying to cause trouble.

Speaker 1:
[69:19] Wow. Okay.

Speaker 4:
[69:21] It's a whole story.

Speaker 1:
[69:22] Were your eyes burning? Did your skin fall off? What happened?

Speaker 4:
[69:26] My skin absolutely did not fall off, but my eyes were burning. So, you know, college dorms, like fire alarms are going off all the fucking time, right? Because kids are assholes. So my roommate and I, we lived on the 14th floor and we had made a decision that every other fire alarm, one of us would go down because we're like, just make sure nobody's on fire.

Speaker 1:
[69:44] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[69:44] Right. And so the fire alarm went off and my roommate, Cecily, was like, your turn. I was like, fuck. Okay. So I like go to put pants on and I breathe in. All of a sudden, I'm like, oh, fuck. Cecily, this is not a joke. Like, get going. Ran out without a bra on. Grabbed, just grabbed my car keys, didn't have my wallet. Nothing. And we were out of our dorms. We were out of our rooms for five days before they could let us back in.

Speaker 1:
[70:14] Oh my gosh.

Speaker 4:
[70:15] But yeah, I mean, we were running down the stairwell. People were throwing up. People were passing out.

Speaker 1:
[70:20] Where did they put you up is my question.

Speaker 4:
[70:22] Oh, they didn't really.

Speaker 1:
[70:23] For the five days.

Speaker 4:
[70:24] So the first night, the first night, a bunch of us went to a hotel room and just shared a hotel. This is like two in the morning. So we just went and did that. And then they were putting people up. Like there was a commons between the two towers. So they were putting like cots and stuff in there, but all of us were like, this doesn't work. If I had known it had been five days, I just would have gone home. Yeah. Yeah. Cause I lived 45 minutes from school. But I slept on my friend Vanessa's floor for a couple of days. My roommate had a boyfriend, she stayed in his dorm. And then we told our parents we needed all new bedding, because they told us we had to have it.

Speaker 1:
[71:04] Okay.

Speaker 4:
[71:05] So we went shopping and got new bedding.

Speaker 1:
[71:08] I would be like, can I tell my parents I need to stay at like the Four Seasons? Like, I don't want to.

Speaker 4:
[71:14] Very traumatized. Well, I mean, there really was no Four Seasons in Newark, Delaware.

Speaker 1:
[71:18] I will tell you that I could never at this age sleep on a floor. Yeah. In my 20s. Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[71:25] In my 30s.

Speaker 1:
[71:30] So they're getting tear gassed. And we have audio from the inside and we hear people screaming, everybody grab your masks. Like they were ready for this. Sniper Christ says the plan was to insert the gas very gently. I'm just going to bust a hole into your house and put a little canister of gas in there that will eventually turn flammable.

Speaker 4:
[71:54] Right. And fill up the whole house. That's fine.

Speaker 1:
[71:56] So he says, but here's the thing. We were ready for a fight because we assumed they would fight their way out of this. Over the speakers, they're like, we're placing gas in the building. This is not an assault. We are not assaulting you. But come the fuck out right now. We're going to gas you to death, motherfuckers. But this is not an assault.

Speaker 4:
[72:18] It's not funny. It's absurd.

Speaker 1:
[72:21] They're busting holes in the building. They're putting tear gas in. Tibbido says they hurt. Tibbido says, again, I feel like he is just crying out for attention.

Speaker 4:
[72:31] He's a fascinating character. I don't like him. I just find him fascinating.

Speaker 1:
[72:34] We heard 40-millimeter ferret rounds. Okay, so Tibbido says, we heard ferret rounds being shot around us, okay? Now, the director puts audio in to kind of confirm or debunk this. And I feel like he debunks this a little bit because we have audio inside of some guy going, what's that sound? And everybody's like, tear gas. He's like, what's that sound? Tear gas. Nobody says it's a bullet. No. Nobody says there's a gun. Nobody says shooting. So that could have applied to anything. They were busting holes in the sides of the house. That's what the sound was. Right.

Speaker 4:
[73:18] Exactly. It wasn't being shot at.

Speaker 1:
[73:19] It was. There's two pivotal moments that they do this, that they rely on audio. So Rick says, as soon as they started doing this, the Branch Davidians started firing. Now, that's what Rick says.

Speaker 4:
[73:33] Right.

Speaker 1:
[73:34] Dick deGurbin is going, I'll go in there. He calls up, I'll go in there. I'll go in there with the tear gas. Right. They're like, we're fucking done with you. We're done.

Speaker 4:
[73:43] Right. You haven't gotten us what we need here. We're done. Bye.

Speaker 1:
[73:46] The sun comes up now and we see footage of the tanks destroying the buildings. There's also a bunker. So they need to go through the front door to insert the tear gas into the bunker, because the bunker is an internal structure. So Thibodeau is like, when the tanks start coming through your front door, you know you're going to die. And at a news conference, Rix is like, I think they're coming out today and we're done negotiating. They come out or they don't. Oh, whatever. Sniper Christ says he sees flames and it's on fire. And he says it's heavy fire. And he says that the fire started in two areas that are like not downwind of each other.

Speaker 4:
[74:30] Right.

Speaker 1:
[74:32] The overhead surveillance, which is the FLIR video, shows the fire breaking out simultaneously at three separate locations. And there are no tanks near those locations. That's important.

Speaker 4:
[74:44] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[74:45] The news is watching and waiting. And they're like, nobody's fucking coming out.

Speaker 4:
[74:50] What's going on?

Speaker 1:
[74:53] Rix says the fires were 100 percent started by the Branch Davidians. Sniper Kreis says, they're lighting the place on fire. Thibodeau says, not true. No one ever spoke of starting a fire. And Rix says, David Thibodeau is a liar. Who knows the truth? And again, we do have audio. Here it is. This is where they use audio to confirm or debunk what he's saying. There's audio of the Branch Davidians saying they're pouring gasoline over hay. They're starting the fires.

Speaker 4:
[75:20] They're starting the fires.

Speaker 1:
[75:21] They had a suicide pact. Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[75:24] They weren't coming out of this alive.

Speaker 1:
[75:26] So everyone just sat there and watched. There's no running water inside, so nobody can get these fires out.

Speaker 4:
[75:32] Right.

Speaker 1:
[75:32] Thibodeau says, I was just seeing fireballs flying around. One of the mothers is outside with Thibodeau's mom, like in their hotel or whatever. She has, I thought it said her two daughters and granddaughters were inside. Definitely one daughter.

Speaker 4:
[75:49] Yeah, I don't remember the exact.

Speaker 1:
[75:51] She and her granddaughters and she's like watching them die. I was heartbroken for these mothers.

Speaker 4:
[75:58] It's so heartbreaking.

Speaker 1:
[76:00] David Thibodeau sees a window and a hole and he runs out with two others and he's out, he says for about a minute and you see the building explode. Sniper Christ says, we're still waiting and nobody's coming out and he's like, it's crazy. Then he claims someone tried to shoot him, like, okay, Sniper Christ, take a seat. The whole place is like burning to the ground, nobody's taking a shot at you.

Speaker 4:
[76:23] No, they got bigger problems.

Speaker 1:
[76:26] The reporters are like, where's the fire trucks? What's happening here? At some point, there's a woman and the HRT member runs across the building to grab her, he's screaming at her, where are the kids, where are the kids and she's just looking at him. Heather Jones recalls seeing this and she's sobbing. Now, Heather Jones has been released, she's out.

Speaker 4:
[76:47] She was the last little kid released.

Speaker 1:
[76:50] She was the last kid released and they brought them to the group home where Brian was having his little temper tantrum. She overhears the women in the group home saying, the children's parents mustn't love them and she starts to cry. That's really sad.

Speaker 4:
[77:06] That is sad because Heather Jones, I have so much empathy for.

Speaker 1:
[77:10] Me too.

Speaker 4:
[77:11] Because, I mean, Jesus, at eight years old, she lost everything.

Speaker 1:
[77:15] Everything. Okay. So nine people ended up surviving that day, nine. Lee says, this was a tragedy the entire country watched at the same time. Sniper Christ says, there were Bible pages burning, there were skulls and there were bodies and ammo and it was like apocalyptic. April 20th, we see Clinton make a statement announcing the disaster and he pretty much says, he says, David Koresh was dangerous, irrational and probably insane. Like the FBI and the government has officially, that is their line. This is the crazy guy who killed four federal agents and this needed to happen. No, it didn't, but okay. Do we see Chuck Schumer and John Conyers? Yep. And they're saying the FBI fucked this up. A bunch of house representatives, Republican and Democrat agree this is bad. Then we see April 19th, 1995, Timothy McVeigh blows up the, what was the name of the building? Murrow Building, but what was the first name? The Edward R.

Speaker 4:
[78:28] Murrow? Edward, no, because that's Edward R. Murrow.

Speaker 1:
[78:30] Sorry.

Speaker 4:
[78:30] I think it's the Arthur Murrow Building. I'll look it up to be sure. I don't want to get that wrong.

Speaker 1:
[78:35] So that is in Oklahoma City, as you guys remember. It is the-

Speaker 4:
[78:39] I've been to the memorial.

Speaker 1:
[78:41] It was real bad.

Speaker 4:
[78:43] My God, it was awful.

Speaker 1:
[78:44] There was a daycare in that building. It was-

Speaker 4:
[78:48] Yeah, it was the Alfred P. Murrow Building.

Speaker 1:
[78:51] Thank you. Lee says she had to stop her car and throw it up in a ditch when she realized it was the same. I love Lee's dramatic, like her pensions for drama. Just pulling over and throwing up in a ditch. I believe it.

Speaker 4:
[79:05] I believe it too. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[79:08] Rick's was also the FBI special agent in charge of the Oklahoma City office, so there's a direct connection. Don't forget, didn't Columbine happen on the 19th or was it the 20th of 99?

Speaker 4:
[79:20] I think it's the 20th, actually, but let's find. We can find this out.

Speaker 1:
[79:24] It was April 20th.

Speaker 4:
[79:26] Columbine was not at all these groups of people.

Speaker 1:
[79:30] It was not these groups of people, but I feel like this time of year for me gets squirrely.

Speaker 4:
[79:38] It does.

Speaker 1:
[79:39] Because I have a lot of just bad feelings around all of it.

Speaker 4:
[79:44] I had a friend growing up, her birthday is April 19th, and I remember when both of these things happened on April 19th. We're Facebook friends, I haven't talked to her in a million years, but I think about that every year. I have friends who have, two friends of mine have September 11th birthdays.

Speaker 1:
[79:59] I know, that's terrible.

Speaker 4:
[80:00] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[80:02] So Gary says, look, David Koresh is ultimately responsible. But that doesn't mean we didn't make mistakes. We did, a lot of them. Rix says, the FBI were the real hostages here. We were held hostage by David Koresh. We were actors in his play. And he's not wrong when he says this part. He had already written the script. We tried to change it, but we couldn't.

Speaker 4:
[80:30] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[80:30] I do have a plan. I do believe that they had a plan.

Speaker 4:
[80:33] I don't know if the plan they had is exactly what wound up getting executed. But they did not plan on coming out of their life. David Koresh did not plan on them coming out of their life.

Speaker 1:
[80:43] Correct. Right. The followers might not have known that, but he did not plan on that. Right.

Speaker 4:
[80:48] Or they might have known that and believed him, but I don't feel like it's their choice at that point, because they're so brainwashed by him.

Speaker 1:
[80:54] Thibodeau says, the people who died in Waco were martyrs and they died for their beliefs. I wrote, even the babies, stick back, even the babies? I can't with that. I can't with those people were martyrs and we have it. Yes, it was horribly sad, but there were children and babies who died in there that had no-

Speaker 4:
[81:13] There were children and babies that they put under grant.

Speaker 1:
[81:15] They weren't prescribing to this ideology. They were innocent victims here. They're not martyrs now. Kathy says, yeah, that was painful, but they died for their own reasons and they did it for God.

Speaker 4:
[81:28] Sure.

Speaker 1:
[81:29] Jim Cavanaugh is crying and he says, we tried everything and he had such a hold on their minds. Bill says, he thinks about Waco every day. David Koresh, you're an asshole and I hope you're in health. That's what he says.

Speaker 4:
[81:48] I'm like, okay, Bill.

Speaker 1:
[81:49] Okay. Now, Tic de Gerbin, again, another one with the flair for the dramatic says, there was a law book with the page open to the Fourth Amendment that did not burn. We all know the Fourth Amendment is free from unreasonable search and seizure. No, they had reasonable search.

Speaker 4:
[82:07] Yes. They knew they had grenades and automatic weapons in there.

Speaker 1:
[82:12] This was not the Revolutionary War where we're just ripping open doors. This was you had amassed a arsenal, right?

Speaker 4:
[82:22] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[82:23] Sniper Cry says, I've tried to make sense of how a cow field became the dying spot for 80 people. All I know is, and this was an interesting quote, I thought, violence appears out of nowhere, destroys lives and drifts off to another scene. I've given up trying to figure out why. I thought that was interesting.

Speaker 4:
[82:46] That's an interesting metaphor.

Speaker 1:
[82:48] I know, and I want to like Sniper Christ. I really do, but I feel like he's a little aggro.

Speaker 4:
[82:56] There's some things I like about him and some things I don't.

Speaker 1:
[82:58] Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 4:
[82:58] Jim Cavanaugh, I like a lot.

Speaker 1:
[83:00] Me too.

Speaker 4:
[83:00] Gifford, I like a lot. Gary, I like a lot. These three people, I have a ton of respect and empathy for. Not to say they didn't do things that weren't great, but I think they were all trying to do the right thing.

Speaker 1:
[83:12] I think they tried to do the right thing. I think they saw the Branch Davidians as humans, as people, and tried to treat them as such. Heather has some real survivors' guilt. Her whole family was murdered. She feels alone. She was the last child to come out alive.

Speaker 4:
[83:34] The video of her listening to her dad's voice on the recording, the last time they talked on the phone. I don't cry. I almost cried. Yeah, it was heartbreaking.

Speaker 1:
[83:45] The black screen of death tells us that four agents and 82 Branch Davidians died during the standoff, including 28 children. I also have a note here. Did you know that this is where, and I'm saying this with as much sarcasm as I can muster, National Treasure Alex Jones got his start?

Speaker 4:
[84:06] I did not know this.

Speaker 1:
[84:07] He started Infowars after he tried to rebuild a church at Mount Carmel and realized there was an appetite for this kind of thing. Then he started Infowars. We have the FBI to thank for him as well.

Speaker 4:
[84:19] Great. Good job.

Speaker 1:
[84:21] Good job. That's it. That's the end of the miniseries. I mean, it's a lot. It's intense. It's important though, I feel like.

Speaker 4:
[84:30] It is important. What do you think could have, do you have a theory on what could have prevented this?

Speaker 1:
[84:37] I do believe that if they had continued negotiating, that they could have either gotten him out or got somebody else out. You know what I mean? They were working on the mothers. That was a good angle.

Speaker 4:
[84:54] They were making headway. I really think if they hadn't done the driving the tanks over his cars, they would have had a lot more time.

Speaker 1:
[85:07] I mean, it's hard to say, because I think the whole situation was fucked up right from the beginning. I think they were honestly, they had, don't forget, they had microphones in there. They had a lot of evidence. They had Robert Rodriguez in there. They knew how committed these people were.

Speaker 4:
[85:26] Right. And they were not up to good.

Speaker 1:
[85:28] Committing suicide if something were to go down. And I honestly think they thought that if they arrested David Koresh at a Sheetz, that that would happen. Yeah. It's, I don't know.

Speaker 4:
[85:42] The whole thing is heartbreaking. And I'm not sure, I'm not sure we as a country have learned a lot from it.

Speaker 1:
[85:50] I will say this. There are days that I hate social media and there are days that I love it. And when I see something like this, it reminds me of the level of transparency we have today thanks to social media that we have never had before. True. If this happened today, there would be people inside that compound tweeting out what was happening. Absolutely. And there would be people with drones. Yes.

Speaker 4:
[86:18] There would be all sorts of people who decide they're going to become reporters and investigators.

Speaker 1:
[86:24] But there would also be like...

Speaker 4:
[86:26] There would be citizen detectives, Amye.

Speaker 1:
[86:28] There would be citizen detectives. Somebody like us would go and get the Freedom of Information Act, and get a bunch of shit and put it all out on the internet, so everybody knew what was going on. There's so much more transparency now than there has been in the past. Is there enough? No.

Speaker 4:
[86:45] No.

Speaker 1:
[86:46] But there's more, and that's always a good thing, because shit like this can't happen when people are watching.

Speaker 4:
[86:56] Agreed.

Speaker 1:
[86:58] I feel that way about police brutality. I feel like-

Speaker 4:
[87:01] They should all be in cameras.

Speaker 1:
[87:03] The more eyes on the situations, the better.

Speaker 4:
[87:06] The more transparency we have, the less opportunities there are for corruption.

Speaker 1:
[87:10] Absolutely.

Speaker 4:
[87:11] Period. But this is heartbreaking. I find, again, David Thibodeau to be fascinating because I don't think he was a true believer in the way, say, Kathy was.

Speaker 1:
[87:20] I don't know what his deal is.

Speaker 4:
[87:22] I think he was a true believer of David Koresh. I don't necessarily think he was a true believer of the religion, if that makes sense.

Speaker 1:
[87:29] There was just a time, and this might have been a Gen X thing, and David Thibodeau is firmly in Gen X.

Speaker 4:
[87:35] Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[87:36] Where there was this real sense of like, we were just searching for something all the time. We wanted to belong to something, we needed to, I don't know where that comes from in our generation, but it's there.

Speaker 4:
[87:49] He's 54, so yeah, he is 100%.

Speaker 1:
[87:52] And so like, I don't, I do believe, like I see this happening, that, you know, as a young man, he's looking for something, he finds it, that's it. I mean, that's how cults start. I mean, Jonestown started that way, you know, people were just looking for like a quality and a simple life, and, you know, Manson too, like it's, I don't know, he was just looking for something, and he found it, and it's, this is how people corrupt religion.

Speaker 4:
[88:18] Which I think is one of the, I love that Sarah Edmondson from NXIVM says this. People don't join cults, they join things that they think are positive. Yes, she joined NXIVM because she wanted to become a more successful actor and wanted to basically worthy up, level up her life, and then she winds up in this. People want to find love, so they wind up with Jeff and Shalaya.

Speaker 1:
[88:49] Yeah. No, I get it. I get it.

Speaker 4:
[88:51] They're not starting out in a cult.

Speaker 1:
[88:54] Yes, I get it. And then very subtly, these leaders start to turn you to paranoia, turn you to... There's an outside threat, there's an external threat to us, and then you want other-

Speaker 4:
[89:07] Very slowly turning up the heat.

Speaker 1:
[89:08] Yes, yeah.

Speaker 4:
[89:09] Very slowly, so you don't realize you're on fire until you're on fire.

Speaker 1:
[89:14] Right. Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[89:15] It's heartbreaking.

Speaker 1:
[89:16] It's heartbreaking. Anything else?

Speaker 4:
[89:20] No, we could probably talk about this for 17 more years, but the one person I feel like we didn't talk a ton about was Kathy.

Speaker 1:
[89:28] I need to know what she's doing now. Who's Brian? Where's Brian?

Speaker 4:
[89:31] Where's Brian? And it was interesting to listen to the podcast about how once Brian was born, her husband kind of separated from him because they all wanted all the children to be raised as David's.

Speaker 1:
[89:44] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[89:45] It's nuts.

Speaker 1:
[89:46] Oh, also in that podcast, guys, they talk about that reporter, John McElmore. Is that his name or am I trying to say?

Speaker 4:
[89:54] McElmore.

Speaker 1:
[89:56] How his career was ruined because somebody erroneously said he was the dude who tipped off the ATF, and his career was completely ruined.

Speaker 4:
[90:04] And he thought this was going to be the thing that made his career.

Speaker 1:
[90:07] Yep.

Speaker 4:
[90:07] And it destroyed his career.

Speaker 1:
[90:09] It's really sad.

Speaker 4:
[90:10] It is. I mean, the break happened because this photographer just went to Heather's dad and was like, hey, do you know where this crazy compound is? Because shit's going down there today.

Speaker 1:
[90:20] Like, yeah. And the guy's not even mentioned. His name is Jim Peller. We know you, Jim Peller.

Speaker 4:
[90:27] The whole thing was just botched start to finish.

Speaker 1:
[90:29] Yeah. I mean, it's not Jim Peller's fault, but, you know.

Speaker 4:
[90:33] There were so many things that went wrong.

Speaker 1:
[90:35] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[90:36] And it's heartbreaking because a lot of people died.

Speaker 1:
[90:39] A lot of people died. A lot of kids died.

Speaker 4:
[90:41] A lot of kids died. Jesus.

Speaker 1:
[90:44] All right, my friend, guys, watch this documentary. It's worth a watch. 100 percent.

Speaker 4:
[90:51] And if you haven't watched the dramatization, I'd also say that's well worth a watch as well.

Speaker 1:
[90:55] I would say that as well. And as always, be a critical thinker. Watch the documentary. Don't take it for gospel. Fact-check it. Do some research. I do that with everything. I don't trust anything a documentary tells me. Yeah, I always look up stuff too.

Speaker 4:
[91:11] Because every documentarian, try as they might, has an agenda. The way you choose to tell the story is your agenda.

Speaker 1:
[91:18] Yes. Yep.

Speaker 4:
[91:19] And it's impossible to be completely fair to everybody. It just is.

Speaker 1:
[91:27] I agree.

Speaker 4:
[91:28] It just is. But this is good.

Speaker 1:
[91:30] All right, guys. Thanks so much for listening. Make sure you jump in our Facebook group, Backdoor Friends. We have a lot of fun in there.

Speaker 4:
[91:35] Almost at 800, Amy.

Speaker 1:
[91:37] I can't believe how we're growing.

Speaker 4:
[91:39] I know. It's amazing.

Speaker 1:
[91:40] It's amazing. And it's so supportive and loving in there. I love it so much.

Speaker 4:
[91:44] I love it so much too.

Speaker 1:
[91:46] And follow us on Instagram. We're building up our Instagram presence as well, which is exciting. And if you like what you hear, leave a five-star review. If you don't like what you hear, go outside and garden. You don't have to leave a two-star review. You don't have to do that.

Speaker 4:
[91:59] It's winter, so go organize your spice cabinet.

Speaker 1:
[92:04] Yes. Yes. Redo your pantry like I just did when my sister was here.

Speaker 4:
[92:08] Ah, I'm going to redo mine this week.

Speaker 1:
[92:10] There you go. All right, guys, thanks so much for listening. We'll see you soon.

Speaker 4:
[92:14] Take care, everyone.