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05/05/93
4 bodies found in tunnels; Officials think they were killed in raid
By Lee Hancock and Bruce Nichols / The Dallas Morning News
From tunnels filled with water and mud, investigators Tuesday recovered the bodies of four Branch Davidian followers believed killed in the initial shootout with federal agents Feb. 28.
The bodies of 73 cult members, including 17 children, have been recovered from the burned wreckage. As many as a dozen cultists, and possibly more, had gunshot wounds, authorities said, although it has not been determined whether they were self-inflicted.
Also Tuesday, a child psychiatrist in Houston said the 21 children he treated who were released from the Branch Davidian compound during the siege were not sexually abused and have a good chance of overcoming any mental and emotional scars from the ordeal.
Meanwhile, the federal agents involved in the raid on the sect compound will return Saturday to Waco to the site of the cult's destroyed headquarters, federal officials said Tuesday. The visit is designed to help them deal with the emotional aftermath of the raid and firefight.
On Wednesday, FBI Director William Sessions will arrive in Waco to thank city and county officials for assisting the agency during its management of the 51-day standoff.
FBI officials said Tuesday that the agency's director, a former Waco City Council member, will present a plaque to local officials Wednesday afternoon and will visit the ashes of the compound, which was consumed April 19 in a massive fire that started after FBI agents began pumping in tear gas in a failed effort to force the cult's surrender.
All five bodies of cult members who apparently died in the initial raid have been found, four of them pulled from water- and debris-filled tunnels at the compound, said McLennan County Justice of the Peace James Collier.
One body was believed to be that of cult member Peter Ghent, said Texas Department of Public Safety spokesman Mike Cox.
Nine cult members escaped the fire, and 35 left the compound during the siege, including the children. Three cultists remained at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas: Misty Ferguson, listed in fair condition;
Marjorie Thomas, in critical condition; and Clive Doyle, in fair condition.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents who stormed the compound will be allowed to examine its remnants Saturday and will be briefed by federal prosecutors investigating the killing of four ATF agents during the raid, several federal officials said.
A number of agents from ATF's special operations teams, which planned and executed the raid, have said they want to view the compound to help deal with the emotional strain of the event.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Ray Jahn, who is overseeing the Branch Davidian prosecutions, declined to comment Tuesday.
Next week, Assistant Treasury Secretary Ronald K. Noble, who oversees the ATF and the department's other law enforcement branches, will travel to Texas to visit with agents who participated in the raid, a department official said. The official would not say whether Mr. Noble will meet in Waco with the agents.
"He's going down, really, to listen to the agents in those offices,' the official said.
In Houston, Dr. Bruce Perry, a Baylor College of Medicine psychiatrist specializing in post-traumatic stress syndrome, called a news conference to respond to inquiries resulting from the disclosure of previously confidential information in The New York Times.
"We had no evidence that the children released from the compound were sexually abused,' Dr. Perry said. "I think there was a sense and some evidence to suggest that there was inappropriate exposure to sexually explicit materials . . . in the context of Bible studies.'
But he stopped short of calling cult leader David Koresh or anyone else in the compound a child molester.
"That's a tough one to call. I really can't comment,' Dr. Perry said.
What the children told about sexual discussions and the fact that Mr. Koresh considered girls as young as 12 candidates for sexual relationships were suggestive of abuse, he said.
"I would have a tendency to say that corroborates previous reports,' Dr. Perry said.
He also would not say that what experts understand about conditions in the compound met the legal definition of abuse.
"I feel there were many destructive and abusive elements to that (Branch Davidian) environment, but having an abusive environment to grow up in is not necessarily the same thing as saying that you meet the state standard for having been physically abused and have to be taken out of the home,' Dr. Perry said.
Immediately after the compound fire, U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno said she decided to approve FBI plans to tear gas the compound after FBI officials gave her graphic accounts of children being brutally beaten at the compound during the siege.
FBI officials, in Waco to manage the siege, later said they had no proof that child abuse was going on during the standoff but had historical accounts of alleged abuse.
Dr. Perry called for increased understanding of the role of Children's Protective Services, the state welfare agency. He said clinicians can say they sense abuse has occurred but that the agency has legal standards to meet.
One new disclosure in documents released Tuesday was a reference to children talking about dead babies being kept in a freezer until they could be buried or burned, a ceremony with a male baby underwater and "other incomplete and unformed stories. . . . The relationship of these issues to potential physical abuse is unclear at this point,' Dr. Perry said.
Dr. Perry said his understanding of the children's world might change as they become more cooperative about disclosing details.
The doctor expressed some concern that releasing details of the children's mental and emotional state might cause them further harm.
Baylor officials said that neither Baylor nor the state released the details and did not know how they had been released.
The Times reported Tuesday that the doctor gave the newspaper the report.
In another development, the McLennan County district attorney's office has dropped two misdemeanor trespassing cases involving news photographers trying to take pictures of the burned-out Branch Davidian compound.
Rick Bowmer, 37, of The Associated Press' Houston office, and Kerwin Plevka, 42, of the Houston Chronicle, were arrested April 21 by the DPS.
Staff writer Enrique Rangel in Waco contributed to this report.
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