THE BOTCHE
On a remote, dusty, wind-swept road a few miles from the Texas city of Waco, Dr Phil Arnold stood watching in horror as a devastating fire killed 76 members of one of history’s most notorious cults.
It was 25 years ago, but this wellspoken biblical scholar remembers the blaze, whose victims included 24 people from Britain, like it was yesterday.
Worse, Dr Arnold still believes to this day that he could have saved them.
“Had the authorities given me access to what they were hearing, I could have saved the lives of all the people inside, I really believe I could”, he told me in between gulps of water as we endured the midday sun in the dry, arid heat.
Long hot days like this one are remembered well by eyewitnesses to those events in early 1993. Charismatic cult leader David Koresh believed he was the new Christ and had attracted more than 100 followers to join him
They were known as Branch Davidians and they would live peacefully on a 77-acre site called Mount Carmel for many years, until events began to take a far more sinister turn.
Credible allegations from former cult members of child abuse and the stockpiling of military grade weapons prompted the authorities to act.
A botched raid then led to one of the longest gunfights in American law enforcement history, with four agents and six cult members killed.
A protracted siege situation followed, lasting for 51 days. On one side, David Koresh and his right-hand man Steve Schnieder. On the other, FBI negotiators. According to Dr Arnold, they could not have been further apart.
“When the siege began, I realised the FBI would never understand the religious ideas of this group and how seriously they were taking them,” he recal a wo auth to ta abou
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