Word: cults
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...week progressed the FBI had to back off certain claims: that they had fresh evidence of child abuse, that they had actually seen a cult member lighting the fire, that some victims were shot by fellow Davidians for trying to flee. "The Justice Department is pressing emotional trigger buttons," charged Zimmerman, who had worked side by side with DeGuerin trying to end the standoff. "It's a public opinion-generated effort...
This is not a picture of the Branch Davidian cult compound outside Waco, Texas, where 86 persons died in a fire last week after the FBI began an assault. This is a reconstruction of the actual site in Oklahoma where, before the last bodies were removed from the real rubble in Waco, an NBC crew was recording an enactment for a made-for-TV movie airing next month. In Ohio, meanwhile, another standoff, quite real, came to a less violent end as the more than 400 prisoners who took over a state penitentiary surrendered. The death toll was still brutal...
...newly unsealed documents recount how an ATF undercover agent inside the compound, Robert Rodriguez, was talking with Koresh on the morning of Feb. 28 when the cult leader was called away by one of his disciples. When Koresh returned, he said, "Neither ATF or the National Guard will ever get me. They got me once, and they will never get me again. They are coming. The time has come." Rodriguez left the compound soon after and alerted officials. Forty minutes elapsed before the ATF moved...
...Ranch Road, most adults inside the compound were armed. Brandishing a search warrant, an ATF agent approached the open front door. By the ATF's account, a man slammed the door and gunfire erupted from within. Koresh's attorney counters that ATF agents fired first. Either way, the cult's barrage of automatic fire so overwhelmed ATF agents that some never got off a shot...
THERE WERE OCCASIONS WHEN David Koresh enforced discipline among his followers the hard way. One of his hand-picked lieutenants would paddle the rule breakers with an oar on which were inscribed the words IT IS WRITTEN. Most of the time that wasn't necessary. In the manner of cult leaders before him, Koresh held sway largely through means that were both more subtle and more degrading. Food was rationed in unpredictable ways. Newcomers were gradually relieved of their bank accounts and personal possessions. And while the men were subjected to an uneasy celibacy, Koresh took their wives and daughters...