Now Playing
Nine Who Walked Out: The Survivors, the Prosecution, and the Accountability Gap
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Of the roughly eighty-five Branch Davidians inside Mount Carmel on April 19, 1993, only nine made it out alive — and the government's response to them reveals everything about how Waco was managed, not mourned. This chapter follows the survivors from the burning compound into federal custody, through a contested criminal trial, and into the silence where accountability should have been.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Of the roughly eighty-five people inside Mount Carmel on the morning of April nineteenth, nineteen ninety-three, nine made it out alive. Nine.
By April nineteenth, around seventy-six Branch Davidians were still inside Mount Carmel. The FBI had spent weeks trying to drive them out through negotiation, then through psychological pressure, then through sleep deprivation tactics, blaring music and recordings at the compound through the night.
The nine survivors escaped primarily through a single section of the burning structure. They were seen by federal agents outside and taken into custody.
The nine survivors weren't greeted as trauma victims. They were treated as criminal suspects.
That contrast is worth holding onto, because it runs through the entire aftermath of Waco. The Treasury Department's own internal review found that ATF commanders Phil Chojnacki and Dave Sarabyn had proceeded with the February twenty-eighth raid despite knowing the element of surprise was lost.
The trauma carried by the nine survivors is difficult to fully document because survivors have spoken publicly at different levels and in different contexts across the decades since. David Thibodeau's memoir is the most comprehensive first-person account.
The nine survivors are, in a real sense, the most direct evidence we have about what life inside Mount Carmel was actually like. They were there for the February raid.
Thirty years on, the nine survivors of Mount Carmel carry a weight that most people who discuss Waco never fully account for. They survived a fire that killed everyone around them.
Chapter summary auto-generated from the verified script. Listen to the full episode for the complete content.