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At lengthy sessions of biblical preaching that cult members attended twice a day, Koresh underlined his authority by impressing upon them that he alone understood the Scriptures. He changed his interpretations at will, while his unsteady flock struggled to keep up. In a tactic common to cult leaders, Koresh made food a tool for ensuring obedience. The compound diet was often insufficient, varying according to the leader's whim. Sometimes dinner was stew or chicken; at other times it might be nothing but popcorn. On their infrequent trips to Waco, cultists could be seen wolfing down packaged cheese in convenience stores. Household and dietary rules at the compound were as changeable as the theology. Koresh established strict bans on sugar and ice cream, then reversed them without explanation. He told his disciples they could buy chicken hot dogs, but exploded in anger when they brought home chicken bologna instead.
Having convinced his followers that he was the messiah, Koresh went on to persuade them that because his seed was divine, only he had the right to procreate. Even as Koresh bedded their wives and daughters -- some as young as 11 -- in his comfortable private bedroom on the second floor, the men were confined to their dormitory downstairs. Behind the mind games and psychological sadism lay the threat of physical force. In addition to the paddlings, administered in a utility area called the spanking room, offenders could be forced down into a pit of raw sewage, then not allowed to bathe.
No amount of adulation seemed to satisfy Koresh, whose egomania apparently disguised an emptiness at his center. Fallen-away follower Marc Breault, who sometimes played bass in the rock band Koresh organized at the compound, says that even practicing together was difficult because Koresh threw tantrums when he hit a wrong note in front of the others. "It's very difficult being in a band with God's messenger," says Breault.
As the Davidians stockpiled guns and ammunition, Koresh's theology centered more obsessively upon the coming Apocalypse, binding Koresh and his followers in a vision of shared catastrophe in order to maintain their focus and resist the overtures of the authorities outside the compound. "Koresh would say we would have to suffer, that we were going to be persecuted and some of us would be killed and tortured," recalls David Bunds, who left the compound in 1989.
As Koresh and his followers heightened the melodrama, their ties with the outside world became irretrievably broken. "The adulation of this confined group works on this charismatic leader so that he in turn spirals into greater and greater paranoia," says Murray Miron, a psychologist who advised the FBI during the standoff. "He's playing a role that his followers have cast him in." In the end, Koresh and his flock may have magnified one another's needs. He looked to them to confirm his belief that he was God's appointed one, destined for a martyr's death. They looked to him to bring their spiritual wanderings to a close. In the flames of last week, they all may have found what they were searching for.