Waco Survivor Story(s) --True or False?
The
September
9, 1999 edition of Salon magazine carried a story written by Branch
Davidian David Thibodeau, whom (we are told) survived the April 19, 1993 inferno
at the Mt. Carmel Center in Waco. Among other things, David T. discusses
that fateful day.
Can we rely on David Thibodeau's account of the events of April 19,
1993? Please read the following and come to your own conclusions.
I see two major problems with Mr. Thibodeau's account(s): (a) important
elements in his accounts keep changing, and (b) none of the accounts are
credible.
Some history: By the summer of 1995, the news of how the mothers an
children died in the Mt. Carmel center had made the rounds in the Waco
protest movement: The moms and kids had hidden from the CS in an old concrete
records storage room that was being used as a pantry in 1993. Instead of
protecting the moms and kids, the concrete room became their tomb.
The story worried me from the beginning. Mothers are practical
people. When the air is poisoned, the practical solution is to get
away from it. But the concrete room was a catch basin for poisoned
air. It was windowless. It had a doorway, but no door.
Poisoned air entering the room from the doorway would have nowhere to
escape. Why would the moms take their babies to a catch basin to
escape the CS?
I wanted to know more. So in July, 1995 I interviewed David Thibodeau
on the telephone.
I asked David T. whether he had seen the mothers and children on April
19. First he said no. Then I asked who told the mothers and children
to go to the concrete room. He said he did not know. However, he
confirmed that the mothers had gas masks and the children had no gas masks, so
to protect the children, the mothers had buckets of water and cloths and with
them; the mothers dunked the cloths into the buckets of water and covered the
children's faces with wet cloths.
But how could David Thibodeau know what was happening in the concrete room if
he had not seen the mothers and kids that day? I asked him.
Now he said that one of the mothers came out of the concrete room and told
him what they were doing. I asked which mother came out: He said he did
not remember which mother.
It is curious. First David Thibodeau had not seen any of the mothers,
then he had, but couldn't remember which. How likely is it that?
There were a limited number of mothers--friends and co-religionists with whom he
had lived for years.
One of the mothers inside that room was Michelle Jones, David Koresh's
sister-in-law, the woman David Thibodeau says was his wife. With Michelle
were her three children--two-year-old twin girls and five-year-old Serenity Sea
Jones. Since he remembered the incident, and given his personal interest,
we might expect that David would remember which mother had spoken to him.
And what of the buckets and gas masks that David Thibodeau said the
mothers were using? The Texas Ranger in charge of the collecting evidence
in the concrete room, Sgt. Raymond Coffman, did not report finding any buckets
or gas masks when he testified at the 1994 San Antonio trial of the Branch
Davidians. Nor do the Autopsy Reports indicate any buckets or gas masks
were found in the concrete room near the bodies, and they do not mention any
traces of gas masks on or near the bodies. (See Beware
of the Causes of Death.)
Some time after my telephone interview, I came across an article, "Marked
for Death," published in the Jerusalem Post, October 14, 1994.
Reporter Haim Shapiro interviewed David Thibodeau who was visiting Israel at the
time.
According to the Jerusalem Post, when David Thibodeau heard the CS attack
begin, he donned his gas mask. Later a tank crashed through the front
doors, and, according to Shapiro:
He tried to reach the children--whom he believes were in a buried
bus [emphasis added] which the group had prepared as a shelter--but with
stairways wrecked and sheets of flame all around him, it was impossible. He
staggered out the door and looked back to see Mt.Carmel totally ablaze.
"I knew that my friends were dying and I only hoped the kids
were safe in the bus."
Here is a
diagram
of the Mt. Carmel Center. Note in particular the locations of the
buried school bus and the concrete room (called "cinder block" in this
diagram). Very different places.
Now let's look at the September
9, 1999 Salon Magazine story. These are David Thibodeau's words:
"It remains hard for me to clearly remember what happened after
the tanks made their move. Walls collapsed, the building shook, gas billowed
in and
the air was full of terrible sounds: the hiss of gas, the
shattering of windows, the bang of exploding rockets, the raw squeal of tank
tracks.
"There were screams of children and the gasps and sobs of those
who could not protect themselves from the noxious CS."
But
remember that according to David Thibodeau's earlier statements, the children
were in the concrete room (or the buried school bus). How could he hear
their screams and gasps and sobs since he was not there?
Neither the concrete room nor the buried school bus would pass sounds from
the inside, such as "screams" and "gasps" and
"sobs," to the outside, particularly over the noise of
". . . the hiss of gas, the shattering of windows, the bang of
exploding rockets, the raw squeal of tank tracks."
Says David
Thibodeau:
"This continued for hours."
Let us look at what we are
being asked to believe. That on April 19, the day of the CS and tank
attack, the Branch Davidian mothers and children were herded into a catch-basin
for noxious air, and abandoned to their own devices.
Despite hearing their screams and gasps, the men, including David Thibodeau,
whose own wife and step-children were there, never checked in on them, even
though their agony went on "for hours." And apparently, to
David T.'s knowledge, none of the other Davidian men checked on the mothers and
children either.
And we are asked to assume that inside the concrete room the moms (who had
gas masks) were holding onto the children (who didn't have gas masks), covering
the kids' faces with wet cloths while the kids spluttered and gagged and
writhed in their death throes, but the mothers' nerves never snapped. The
moms didn't dream of getting up and running out of the gas chamber with their
babies.
The story is not credible. In order to believe that story, we would
have to believe the Davidians -both the menfolk and the mothers--were callous,
monstrous people, and I see no reason to believe that.
David Thibodeau again:
"Inside Mount Carmel, the notion of leaving seemed insane; with
tanks smashing through your walls and rockets smashing through the windows,
our very human reaction was not to walk out but to find a safe corner and
pray."
Well, all right. If the concrete room was so safe, why
wasn't David T. there too?
"As the tanks rolled in and began smashing holes in the building
and spraying gas into the building, the FBI loudspeaker blared, 'This is not
an assault! This is not an assault!'
"Around noon I heard someone yell, 'Fire!' I thought first of the
women and children, whom I had been separated from."
David
Thibodeau became "separated" from the mothers and children? That
implies he was with them at one point that morning, but he told me he had not
seen them (except for the one mother whose identity he couldn't remember).
On the other hand, David T. did not tell the Jerusalem Post about being
"separated" from the mothers and kids--he just thought they were in
the buried bus.
David Thibodeau escaped the CS and the fire, and did so very well.
Neither he nor any other of the "fire survivors" needed
treatment for smoke or CS inhalation, yet all the moms and kids died.
I remember the Branch Davidian men as protective of the women and
children. Recall Wayne Martin's words during his 911 call on February 28,
1993: "We have women and children in here. Tell them to call it
off!"
Or David Koresh's words at the front door on that same day: "Now hold
on! We have women and children in here!"
But we are asked to believe that on April 19, the Branch Davidian character
suddenly changed, that the Davidian men became utterly indifferent to the fate
of the women and children and ran like cur dogs to protect their own hide
. . .
After a catastrophic event in which family members and loved ones die,
survivors are often tortured by regrets and remorse. They often ask
questions based on both intelligence and emotion, questions like:
"What could I have done differently?" or "Why didn't I check
in on them?" or "Why didn't I keep them with me?" and "Why
did they die, and why did I live?"
But six and one half years after the event, not one of the fire survivors has
publicly made such an utterance and re-examined a most callous and uncaring
action: sending the moms and kids to a dead air cul-de-sac on the day of
the CS attack, never once checking on them, running out of the burning building
themselves . . . and letting the mothers and children die.
The Autopsy reports present even further problems with David Thibodeau's
account(s). Surely the Davidian survivors, their families, and their
lawyers have looked at the Autopsy Reports, yet they never have raised one
question about the anomalies in those reports.
For example, whose child was Mt.
Carmel Doe 51A? The skull of this two year old was found in the
concrete room, but it has not been identified. Is it likely that one of
the Davidian mothers had a two year old, and no one noticed? Hardly.
What about Doe
65 (remains of a two-to-four year old), Doe
31DE (remains of a 11-14 year old) ,and Doe
59 (remains of 14-19 year old Caucasian girl.) If these were
Davidians, why have they not been identified?
And if those people were not Davidians, who were they, and how did their
bodies come to rest in the concrete room?
And why are the Davidian survivors, their families, and their lawyers not
talking about the bodies that are entirely MISSING? Where on earth could
those bodies be?
For more information, see Identification
of the Remains.
And why have there been no comments or questions from Davidian survivors,
their families, or their lawyers about the mutilation, beheading, and selective
incineration of bodies in the concrete room? (See Dismemberment
and Agglutination and Incineration.)
Look at the quadruply amputated and beheaded body of John McBean, Doe
32.
or the sawn off arm of Mary Jean Borst, Doe
45.
In Western culture, defilement of human remains is one of the most heinous
acts one can perform. This is particularly true if you are a Christian and
believe the body is the vessel of the soul, to be resurrected on the Last Day
and rejoined with the soul to live in Everlasting Glory with God. But not
one of the survivors talks about this defilement. Instead, we hear about
how the FBI agents pulled their pants down and mooned the Davidians while they
were driving the tanks around . . .
Surely even the most ardent atheist deplores the defilement of human
remains. But the Branch Davidians are quiet.
Yes, there is something very wrong with the survivors' accounts of what
happened on April 19, 1993, and their reactions to those events.
Without the survivor's stories, our attention would be focused on the
evidence, and the evidence SCREAMS that the mothers and children were murdered
with malice aforethought. The evidence SHOUTS that their bodies were
laundered--mutilated, decapitated, blown apart, and selectively burned--to
disguise the time, cause, circumstances, and even the identities of the dead.
But the survivors stories divert or attention from the evidence. We are
so horrified by events that as decent, caring people, we can only offer
solace. We would never dream of questioning their word. We never
notice the survivors' stories and the government's story are one and the same:
The US was only trying to get the Davidians to come out that day, when, ooops!,
the mothers and children got dead.
Without the survivors' stories, no one would believe the government's
tale. The unbelievable stories of the Waco "fire survivors" are
essential elements in the cover-up the Waco Holocaust.
See
also Veracity
of Branch Davidian Statements
See also David
Thibodeau Denies Knowledge of Ham Radio Tower
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Alert! Learn about the continuing attempts to cover up the Waco Holocaust.
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