Blog 6: The Forgotten Nikon

Turns out, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives’ (ATF) raid in 1993 was not the first time Mount Carmel—what the Branch Davidians affectionately called their home near Waco—was under siege. While casually browsing their Wikipedia page on a random Wednesday (as one does), I came across a detail we had not discussed in class: David Koresh was the leader of a siege before the siege.


But first, a quick recap. Before he was David Koresh, he was Vernon Wayne Howell, a bullied kid with a lonely past who arrived at Mount Carmel in his early twenties. Howell barely had time to learn everyone’s name before he began an affair with Lois Roden and challenged her son George’s claim to the Davidian throne. After both Lois and her husband, Benjamin, died, George inherited power. Once Davidians, now members of the town of “Rodenville.” Howell wasn’t having it. He left, his loyal band of followers by his side, leaving the Rodenites to fend for themselves. 


In a desperate bid for attention, Roden challenged Howell to a messiah showdown: raise the dead to prove spiritual supremacy. Desperate for a win, he went digging (literally) and exhumed the corpse of a Davidian. No matter how he tried to spin it after the fact, there is no way that he was simply moving the community cemetery. So, Howell filed criminal charges against him.


Reading this series of events, I was on the edge of my seat. What would Howell do next? How did this once-bullied, lonely kid with a single mother (#relatable) choose to strike back? Naturally, with a bunch of men in camouflage carrying big guns.


The police told Howell he needed to find more evidence. So, he staged his own coup. In late 1987, Howell and seven of his guys raided Mount Carmel with Texas-sized rifles and enough ammo to hold off an entire county’s worth of law enforcement. Armed with vigilante claims to “gather photo evidence” against Roden, camera blissfully forgotten, Howell and his team barged into the Mount and took it by force. In the chaos, Roden was shot in the chest and hands. No idea how someone could take a gunshot to the hand, but he did.


This power struggle ended with Howell on top, of course, and he later changed his name to David Koresh—because nothing says divine revelation like a legal name change.


What struck me most was that the 1993 ATF siege was not the first confrontation at Mount Carmel. The Branch Davidians had already experienced internal violence years earlier. Koresh believed he was fighting a holy war long before the federal agents arrived, and decided to turn his obsession with power into a gun show. His need for control foreshadowed the tragedy to come. It made me wonder… before we go to war with someone, do we even stop to ask what they think they’re fighting for?


References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branch_Davidians

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/waco/davidkoresh.html

https://wacohistory.org/items/show/176

https://www.nytimes.com/1993/03/10/us/warning-of-violence-was-unheeded-after-cult-leader-s-gun-battle-in-87.html

 

Comments

  1. williams.dan76October 28, 2025 at 1:08 PM

    Thanks for the research. If I read about how Koresh seized power, I guess I had forgotten the violent part. Demagogues can always find justification for seizing power, and there's nothing better than a message from God. Waco still saddens me, though it is engaging to consider the unavoidable, inevitable tragedy.

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