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03/06/93
Koresh tells negotiators he won't kill self, denies he's Christ
By Jennifer Nagorka / The Dallas Morning News
WACO-David Koresh says he isn't killing himself, isn't coming out of his lair yet and isn't Christ.
Authorities said Friday that the 33-year-old rock musician and religious leader has related those and other messages to federal negotiators trying to end the armed standoff that began Sunday after a raid on Mr. Koresh's millenarian and militaristic sect went awry. Four agents of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and an undetermined number of sect members were killed.
Mr. Koresh has said he and his followers will abandon their fortified, well-supplied compound only when God tells him to. Again Friday, he gave no hint of when that might be.
Still, there was cause for optimism on the part of federal authorities striving to avert further bloodshed. Mr. Koresh allowed another child, a 9-year-old girl, to leave the besieged fortress. That brought to 21 the number of children released.
Negotiators remain in nearly continuous communication with Mr.
Koresh, said FBI Agent Bob Ricks. Mr. Koresh seems lucid, and for the most part, the discussions are cordial, the agent indicated.
However, he said, Mr. Koresh "has taken offense' at being likened to Christ, an identity the sect leader readily embraced in interviews with news organizations before his phone lines were cut.
"I believe it would be more accurate to say that he describes himself as a prophet,' Agent Ricks said.
DEA involvement
A federal official told The Dallas Morning News on Friday that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has joined the investigation of the sect because of reports that Mr. Koresh and his followers may have been involved in drug dealings.
A day earlier, The News was told that Internal Revenue Service officials were trying to determine the sect's sources of income.
Meanwhile, the released children, ages 5 months to 12 years, are together in the temporary care of state workers, who describe them as healthy, happy and alert.
"The children are in remarkably good psychological condition considering what they've been through,' said Joyce Sparks, a supervisor with the state Child Protective Services in Waco.
Another state official working with the children said, "Immediately before they eat, they automatically join hands and start to pray.' She also described them as "voracious readers' of children's books.
The parents of most of the freed children are in the compound. Some of those parents, Ms. Sparks said, lovingly prepared their children for the trip out. Some carried little bags of belongings or notes listing favorite foods.
Federal authorities Friday delivered a videotape and photographs of the kids into the compound "to assure the families inside that the children are well-cared for,' said Agent Ricks.
He said the children, who are staying at an undisclosed location, "express a strong desire to be reunited with their families.'
Suicide report
Mr. Koresh laid to rest immediate concerns that he'll end the standoff by ending his own life.
"He has been specifically asked if there is an intent on his part to commit suicide. He has denied that,' said Agent Ricks, one of those in command at the scene of the standoff, about 10 miles east of Waco.
Nor, the agent said, will Mr. Koresh order the suicides of the more than 100 followers he says are with him in the compound.
The Associated Press, quoting an unidentified ATF official in Washington, said one reason ATF agents decided to storm the compound Sunday-rather than surround it and demand Mr. Koresh's surrender- was concern that members of the sect, known as Branch Davidian, would stage a mass suicide if given the chance. The agents intended to search the compound for illegal weapons and arrest Mr. Koresh on weapons charges.
ATF spokeswoman Sharon Wheeler called the statement from the unidentified source "absolutely false.'
Authorities refused to confirm the veracity of a Houston Chronicle interview with an unidentified member of the ATF raiding squad. The newspaper quoted the ATF agent as saying Mr. Koresh "smiled defiantly and slammed the front door' on agents right before his followers filled the air with gunfire.
In the hail of bullets, he said, were heavy rounds that easily penetrated automobiles and military-style helmets. In all, the agent was quoted as saying, the sect had amassed an arsenal valued at $100,000, including .50-caliber weapons "capable of going through a tank.'
Authorities believe that a telephone caller tipped the sect to the raid minutes before the ATF agents arrived. The source of that call is under investigation.
The last of the funerals for the slain agents were Friday. Services for Steve Willis were conducted in Houston, those for Todd McKeehan in Elizabethton, Tenn.
Sixteen ATF agents and an unknown number of sect members were wounded in the raid. The last of the ATF agents to remain in a Waco-area hospital was listed Friday as being in fair condition, with six wounds to the chest, abdomen and arms.
Mr. Koresh claims to have been wounded as well. On Friday, in response to his request, agents sent medical supplies-including sutures and suturing tools-into the compound.
The sect leader did not request a doctor, despite having said Sunday night that he was shot more than once and was bleeding profusely from a stomach wound.
On Friday, he spoke of a wound to the wrist, Agent Ricks said.
Preliminary examination of a body found Wednesday outside the
sect's compound revealed that it was that of a man 25 to 35 who had been shot in the head, chest and thigh, said McLennan County Justice of the Peace David Pareya. Authorities believe that the man was a member of Branch Davidian.
There was no information released on the status of any bodies in the compound. Authorities are convinced, based in part on interviews with the children and two elderly women who've been allowed to leave, that some inside the fortress were killed in Sunday's gunbattle. If so, those corpses-unless refrigerated-would by now be severely decomposing, said a field investigator for the Dallas County medical examiner's office.
In one more small step toward rapprochement with Mr. Koresh, agents allowed his followers to haul outside the carcasses of two dogs killed in the shootout.
They also were permitted to release a goose.
Staff writers Bruce Tomaso and Lee Hancock in Dallas contributed to
this report.
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