Customer Reviews

Memories of the Branch Davidians: The Autobiography of David Koresh's Mother

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There are plenty of books on the market with dry presentations of facts and figures about the tragedy that has come to be known simply as "Waco." This book shows the people and the lives that were touched by the tragedy. It is both informative, and heartbreaking.

I expected to gain a better understanding of what David was about and how he came to be the leader of the Branch Davidians but unfortunately I found myself unable to follow the ramblings of his mother. There was no clear timeline. She was back and forth and all over the place and when I got through reading it I didn't feel like I had gained that much knowledge on the subject.

This work is an authoritative and reliable account about the Branch Davidian group at Mt. Carmel outside of Waco, Texas who were almost all killed in the tank assault and fire that consumed their church and home on April 19th, 1993. It is the first of three survivor autobiographies slated for publication by editor Catherine Wessinger that sheds light on what life was like in the group that studied with David Koresh. Wessinger has enabled Bonnie's oral history interviews to become accessible source material in this published book format. First hand accounts from survivors who remain aligned with the group's theology have not yet received balanced press coverage in the mainstream print and media world (with the exception of survivor David Thibodeau's account published by Public Affairs in 1999) in comparison to the federal government perspective that saturated the global landscape during the siege and has unfairly colored popular opinion about the nature of the Branch Davidians to this day.

While scholarly material and critical perspectives about Davidian history and law enforcement tactics employed during the siege have permeated a variety of special interest periodicals, academic journals, and the documentary world ("Waco: The Rules of Engagement", "Waco: A New Revelation", "The F.L.I.R. Project" just to name a few), Bonnie's autobiography provides the general public with the survivor's voice. In this respect, her account opens an opportunity to learn about the Branch Davidians from the perspective not of an investigator, a scholar, an activist, a theologian or third party, but of a mother who deeply loved and misses the community she was an intimate part of. Her account is extensively footnoted with rich supplemental material researched by the editor, which helps to provide an even greater context for the many people, places and events recounted in this important testimony whose time has definitely arrived.

I met Bonnie Haldeman years after she had lost her son and all of her grandchildren in Waco. Her niece is married to my only son. All Bonnie had left after Janet Reno got done with the Branch Davidians were her two little dogs. She was a nurse who spent her life caring for others. Despite what one reviewer here thinks of her or her son and his family, she was a good hearted woman who kept going when her family was needlessly burned to death by the clueless Clinton administration. She was a beloved aunt to my daughter in law, and she loved my grandchildren; all of hers were gone. I didn't realize who she was when I met her, and I asked if she had any children. It was then I was told that all of her children died in the fires at Waco. My son and his wife and two beautiful boys lived next door to Bonnie and Beverly. Beverly was severely schizophrenic. She heard voices who told her to do things to people when she did not take her medicine. Bonnie was trying to get her to take her meds the day she was murdered. It was her own sister Bonnie she killed for telling her this, the one who had taken care of her and their aging mother for years. It may be that the loss of her life protected an entire household of little ones who lived next door, not just my grandbabies, but their cousins as well. Bonnie was a good woman and she did not deserve to die that way. Neither did her son. Neither did her grandchildren. Whatever Janet Reno was trying to prove, it cost this woman everything. In the end, she died protecting her aged mother, who was there at the time she was murdered. The media reports they were alone in the house, but that isn't true. Their helpless mother was yards away.

This book is about the family a mother lost, and no matter how Vernon Howell was conceived, he was loved. She didn't abort him, she raised and loved him. This is the story about the slightly peculiar but not dangerous people that Reno ordered poisoned, shot, blown up and burned to death. All of the obits for Bonnie call David Koresh 'infamous'. But he had permits for all of his guns, and they were locked up in the shed out back. The charges of child abuse proved to be without merit. The Davidians killed no one that day when the ATF assaulted their home, all the bullet holes on the building were incoming. The guns were only a way to put food on the table, and they were not even in the house. He bought and sold them, and he kept them in a shed for the safety of the children.

Bonnie's story is the story of a mother who lost her family in a horrible holocaust, and still she kept taking care of others til the day she died. Mr. Baranyi's brutal review shows that he has no heart and deserves a far worse fate than these people. He also never read her book. Neither have I, but I knew her and I know her family. I suggest people read her book to see what sort of Americans the government under a democrat administration saw fit to poison with gas, shoot with high powered rifles, burn and bomb to death. Yes, they were different, but they didn't deserve what the ATF under Clinton and Reno did to them. Baranyi wants us to believe the Davidians had it coming, but they were not more deserving of this than any of us. A must read for this reason alone. If we put a man in the white house who has no heart for anything but his own glory, this is what can happen. Read this book about ordinary americans who died for nothing. Who died so the ATF could look macho. Read the story of the woman who loved them and died trying to help her schizophrenic sister and save her mother.

The story was good but I, like another reader thought there was a problem with the time lines and going back and forth. There was also a lot of repetition.

It is not often that a woman freely admits to being of such loose slutty moral character that she is having sex at 14 and giving birth to a monster later known as David Koresh. David Koresh's sexual appetite was voracious probably due to his excessive masturbation early years- all the way from 68 yeat old Lois Roden to a number of 10 year old girls which he readily impregenated with their parent's consent. Thankfully David Koresh is now fertilizing the ground instead of 10 year old girls and doing a good impression of an overdone steak. Ms.Handle-Any-Man was murdered by her psycho nutcase sister and why am I not surprised to learn that Mental Illness runs in David Koresh's family? I also recently got an Email from his sister telling me that David koresh wanted to have sex with her too. This is what happens when a retarded piece of white trash bedazzles his followers with the Promise of Heaven in order to fulfil his perverted and evil lustful desires. And before any of you condenmn this review I want you to know that I am the only reviewer of this book who ever met David Koresh and I got to know him well. I ran him out of Australia the last time he was here and then me and my family "Shut Him Up And Then Shut Him Down". Nuff said.