THIRTY years on from the deadly culmination of the Waco siege, one survivor has recounted the "needless destruction" that unfolded in the standoff's final hours and how the trauma of it all left him with PTSD.
David Thibodeau, now 54, was just one of only nine people to make it out of the inferno that engulfed the Mount Carmel compound near Waco, Texas, on April 19, 1993.
The fire - which brought a horrific end to a 51-day impasse with the FBI - claimed the lives of 76 residents of the enclave who were all members of the religious community known as the Branch Davidians.
Among the dead were 25 children, two pregnant women, and the group's leader David Koresh, a self-proclaimed prophet who preached of an impending rapture.
Hours earlier, federal authorities had driven tanks through the sides of the compound's walls and deployed hundreds of canisters of CS gas in an attempt to smoke the group out.
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The FBI has long denied the gas played any part in igniting the blaze and that instead the Davidians inside intentionally started a series of fires to fulfill Koresh's doomsday prophecies.
Survivors like Thibodeau, however, fiercely contest those claims.
In an interview with The U.S. Sun, he accused the government of spreading "treacherous lies" over the last 30 years in order to demonize the people of Mt. Carmel and cover "their a**es."
He also said the heavy-handed tactics they employed led to needless and deadly destruction that could've otherwise been easily avoided.
"[The FBI] throw everything to demonize the group so they can get away with their actions because that's how this works," claimed Thibodeau.
"But the truth is, there were very real people inside that compound, and those people were optimistic and they joined because they wanted to be enlightened and do God's will.
"These were not bad, terrible, or evil people, but they've been painted that way to justify the actions of the ATF and the FBI and that affects me greatly."
He continued: "I think the narrative that's been painted is that we were just a bunch of religious fanatics who wanted to kill themselves - and that's it - and we were following God and wanted to stay there no matter what.
"We expected to be harrassed for our faith, I just didn't think that it would come to tanks and helicopters and all that stuff, but it did.
"Not only has [the FBI and ATF] done a great disservice to the truth over the years of what really happened, they've definitely covered their butts.
I'm a 'time traveler' - the 'worst case scenario that could kill us all'
"That place burning, all the evidence inside burning, has greatly helped the government's case.
"But it was all so needless. The destruction and everything that occurred, it didn't have to happen like this."
THE BEGINNING OF WACO
The saga at Mt. Carmel began on February 28, 1993, when agents from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) attempted to serve a warrant at the compound.
The ATF had received reports Koresh and his followers were illegally stockpiling weapons and potentially abusing children inside Mt. Carmel.
Unbeknownst to the ATF, Koresh had been tipped off about the planned raid minutes before it was executed.
And moments after two of the agency's trucks pulled up outside the enclave, a gunfight ensued.
Who fired the fateful first shots remains the subject of fierce debate to this day, but four ATF agents and six Branch Davidians would be killed in the almost three-hour gunfight.
A ceasefire was eventually reached, but Koresh and the roughly 100 other occupants of Mt. Carmel refused to surrender.
We expected to be harrassed for our faith, I just didn't think that it would come to tanks and helicopters and all that stuff, but it did.
David Thibodeau
For days on end, FBI negotiators manned an open phone line to Koresh trying to find a peaceful way to end the conflict.
The chief FBI negotiator, Byron Sage, struck a deal with Koresh allowing him to broadcast a two-minute mini-sermon on the radio each time he agreed to release two of the 45 children still inside.
The bureau's peaceful and patient approach to negotiations proved fruitful early on, with a total of 21 kids released in the first five days.
But soon, negotiators hit a wall.
Koresh had agreed to leave the compound at one stage but then recanted his word.
He then prolonged the stand-off by debating with authorities about his interpretations of the Bible, declaring that his God-appointed authority placed him above the jurisdiction of the U.S. Government, and prophesizing the FBI's actions would result in rapture.
Two factions soon developed within the FBI, with one side believing peaceful negotiation to be the best way to achieve a resolution and the other believing that increasing hostility would will Koresh into submission.
It was the latter approach that prevailed, with investigators blaring music, recordings of jet planes, and Buddist chantings outside of the compound all night to deprive them of sleep.
They also cut all power and water to the building, forcing the remaining members to survive on rainwater and stockpiled military rations.
Additionally, cops mooned and flipped off members of the sect, and threw flashbang grenades at any who dared to step outside the building.
In mid-April, after religious scholars reached out to Koresh through a radio discussion of the teachings of Revelation, Koresh sent a message to the FBI that he'd received word from God and was now writing his message on the Seven Seals.
Koresh said he would surrender to authorities when the work was complete but he was never afforded the chance.
Had he been, Thibodeau - then a 23-year-old musician - said it's his belief that Koresh would've then surrendered himself to police, and additional bloodshed would've been avoided.
"I do think he'd have kept his word and surrendered," said Thibodeau.
"I've spent many years thinking about this ... and I believe if he was able to write out his message on the Seven Seals and put it out in the scholarly world, ... I think that's something that David wanted more than anything.
"I think that David's dream was to be taken seriously for his message. And I think if they would have played that angle more ... I think his curiosity to find out what people thought about his message would be greater than his wanting to stay [inside Mt. Carmel].
"I know there are people who thought he wasn't coming out, period, but I just don't see it" he added.
"David was radical when it came to his scripture, but there was another side to him and he wasn't unreasonable. I saw the other side of him where he was willing to work with people.
"But most men become unreasonable when they're pushed into a corner.
"There's only one way to get out of the corner once you're pushed into one: fight or die."
'THERE'S A FIRE UP HERE'
On April 19, 1993, the FBI moved ahead with a plan to breach the compound by breaking holes into the building using Army vehicles and deploying hundreds of canisters of tear gas inside to smoke Koresh and his acolytes out.
FBI spokesman Bob Ricks said at the time that negotiators had called Steve Schneider, Koresh’s second-in-command, that morning and notified him about the plan, but Schneider had slammed the phone down in response.
The gassing began around 6am - but by noon, tragedy would strike as several fires suddenly broke out around Mt. Carmel.
Thibodeau had been standing in the chapel area of the compound when the gassing began.
He recounted hearing scratching and scraping all over the building as tanks plowed into the sides of Mt. Carmel, shaking the enclave's foundations.
At one point he went down to the foyer area and saw only debris everywhere.
As he stood marveling at the destruction - a scene he described as "crazy" - he was forced to flee back in the direction of the chapel to avoid being hit by a tank as it came crashing through the wall.
"I kind of hid behind a stack of David's guitar amps, but then I thought if that tank comes back, he's just going to run the amps over and kill me," recounted Thibodeau.
"So I got out from behind them and suddenly I heard someone say that there was a fire upstairs.
"They were just yelling, 'there's a fire up here,' ... it was very shrill.
"But the staircase in the foyer area had been completely destroyed, so I found a different way up and headed back towards the chapel area."
MIRACULOUS ESCAPE
Throughout the six hours tear gas was pumped inside the walls of Mt. Carmel, Thibodeau said he and other Davidians were hopeful the FBI would realize they had no intention of coming out and would have to re-establish rational negotiations with Koresh.
However, by the time he made it back to the chapel, the second floor of Mt. Carmel was already engulfed in thick smoke.
Then, suddenly, a "wall of flame" shot down the hallway in front of him.
He spoke briefly with a group of Davidians but many were fearful that if they tried to get out of the building FBI agents would shoot them on sight.
It was around this time he noticed Wayne Martin, a Harvard-educated attorney, leaning up against a wall near him.
Martin took off his gas mask, and slid down the wall onto his haunches, before being engulfed by the smog.
Thibodeau never saw him again.
"I looked over to the window and two people were climbing out of it - there was a huge gap that had been left by a tank," he recounted.
"I could feel my hair singeing and crinkling in the heat and so I just followed those guys out of the window, realizing it was better to be shot than to burn to death.
"I never thought anyone was going to make it out behind me, but I turned to see Clive Doyle coming out of the same hole I did. And he was patting his arms down and they were on fire."
Soon after Thibodeau escaped Mt. Carmel, the building was razed to ash.
He said it was devastating to lose so many of his Davidian counterparts, and even harder to understand was the suffering the children in particular must've been subjected to in their final throes of life.
"Those kids suffered immeasurably, and I just cannot imagine what they went through," he said.
"And yet the government asked why the mothers' instinct didn't kick in and the kids just didn’t come out of the holes the tanks had made in the building.
"But how do you grab your kids and run out with all that gas being pumped into such a small place? Answer me that."
LASTING IMPACT
In the aftermath of Waco, as he attempted to reckon with the scale of the devastating loss of life, Thibodeau said adjusting to the outside world again was no easy feat.
He described grappling with trauma and PTSD caused by the horrors he'd witnessed during his final moments inside Mt. Carmel which ultimately frayed his bind to reality.
"It was like the Matrix," Thibodeau said, insisting that life outside of Mt. Carmel felt more like a simulation than anything else for several years.
"It felt like nobody believed the truth, they only believe this lie, and [...] it just blew my mind.
"It felt like I was plugged into some system where nobody knows anything and nobody sees the truth, it's all been fabricated.
"It took me a little while to get away from that way of thinking."
Compounding his struggles, Thibodeau said, was learning of numerous accusations of abuse leveled against Koresh by other survivors and former members, including child abuse.
During his time leading Mt. Carmel, Koresh took as many as 19 wives, many of whom were underage, reportedly fathering 13 children with them.
His only legal wife was Rachel Jones, whom Koresh had married when she was just 14 years old.
Two years after the fire, ex-member Kiri Jewell told congressional investigators that she was sexually molested by Koresh in a motel room when she was just 10 years old.
Thibodeau said he was unaware of the allegations of the abuse until much later.
The Koresh described by Jewell and others wasn't the David he knew, Thibodeau said, but the allegations horrified him all the same.
"That was devastating to hear," Koresh said
"All I know is that David was good to me, but as I read testimonies and as I get older, I learn more from people that felt victimized by him, and then, I have to listen to them and accept their truth as being their truth.
"It's not easy because of how he was with me," he added, "but at the same time, he did a lot of damage and he's got a lot to account for in the final judgment."
REFLECTION
Thibodeau was in Waco on Wednesday to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the fire.
Looking back on the last three decades, he says sometimes he has to remind himself the siege really happened, and it wasn't all just some dream.
"As time goes by, you get caught up in life just trying to get by, and you just sort of forget for a while, then suddenly you'll turn on the TV and they're showing the building on fire and it all just comes rushing back," he sad.
"And then you're reminded, 'Oh, that did happen. I was there and it wasn't just a dream.'
"I’ve been working very hard over the last 30 years to alleviate my anger, I’ve been doing things to try and get over that a bit, and now I'm just disappointed.
"Not only has [the FBI and ATF] done a great disservice to the truth over the years of what really happened, they've definitely covered their butts.
"That place burning, all the evidence inside burning, has greatly helped the government's case."
