David Koresh (born August 17, 1959 – April 19, 1993) was the leader of a Branch Davidian religious sect, believing himself to be its final prophet. A 1993 raid by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and subsequent siege by the FBI ended with the burning of the Branch Davidian ranch. Koresh, 54 adults and 21 children were found dead after the fire, though the time of death is in dispute.

 

Early life

Koresh was born as Vernon Wayne Howell in Houston, Texas, to a 14-year-old single mother, Bonnie Sue Clark. His father was a 20-year-old man named Bobby Howell. The pair remained unmarried. Two months before Koresh was born, his father met another pubescent girl and abandoned Bonnie Sue. Koresh never met his father and his mother began cohabiting with a violent alcoholic. In 1963, Koresh's mother left her boyfriend and placed her 4-year-old son in the care of his maternal grandmother, Earline Clark. His mother returned when he was seven, after she remarried to a carpenter named Roy Haldeman. Haldeman and Clark had a son together named Roger, who was born in 1968.

Koresh described his early childhood as lonely, and it has been alleged that he was once gangraped by older boys when he was 8. A poor student who was illiterate and diagnosed with dyslexia, Koresh dropped out of Garland High School in his junior year. Due to his poor study skills, he was put in special ed classes and nicknamed "Vernie" by his fellow students, but by the age of 11, he had memorized the entire New Testament.

When he was 19, Koresh had an affair with a 15-year-old girl who became pregnant. He claimed to have become a born-again Christian in the Southern Baptist Church and soon joined his mother's church, the Seventh-day Adventist Church. There he fell in love with the pastor's daughter and while praying for guidance he opened his eyes and allegedly found the Bible open at Isaiah 34, stating that none should want for a mate; convinced this was a sign from God, he approached the pastor and told him that God wanted him to have his daughter for a wife. The pastor threw him out, and when he continued to persist with his pursuit of the daughter he was expelled from the congregation.

In 1981 he moved to Waco, Texas, where he joined the Branch Davidians, a religious group originating from a schism in the 1950s from the Shepherd's Rod, themselves disfellowshipped members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the 1930s. They had established their headquarters at a ranch about 10 miles out of Waco, which they called the Mount Carmel Center (after the Biblical Mount Carmel), in 1955.