8. Branch Davidians
David Koresh was a troubled youth who was kicked out of his mother’s church for insisting that God had ordered him to marry the pastor’s daughter. He went on to join the Branch Davidian cult in Waco, Texas, where he pursued the founder’s 65-year-old wife, claiming that God had told him to father a child with her. Koresh soon lost interest in her and set his sights on a 14-year-old girl, who consented to marry him. He and his wife had a fallout with the founder and led members of the Branch Davidians to live in tents and buses 90 miles away in Palestine, Texas. When the founder died, he gained control of the entire group in Waco.
The group’s members engaged in behavior that would be considered disturbing at best, such as exhuming corpses in the attempt to resurrect the dead. However, what would make the group go down in history was when federal agents surrounded the Waco compound with a warrant for illegal firearms. A four-hour gunfight ensued, followed by a 51-day siege in which none of the federal agents apprehended that the cult members believed that they were doing God’s will. The compound caught on fire, and 76 people were killed.
