Waco (Part Five: Showtime)

Unresolved

Unresolved Productions

True Crime, Society & Culture, History

4.5 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 27 March 2023

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

"We fell right into the hands of Koresh and all those nuts. This is what he wanted, to make it appear that the government was going to kill his people. He wanted Armageddon. Our biggest mistake was that we made it so easy for him."

In 1992, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms opened up an investigation into David Koresh and the rest of the Branch Davidians living in their compound near Waco, Texas. Hoping to find evidence of illegal weapons, the ATF began a series of undercover operations to obtain proof the following January.

After nearly two months of surveillance and infiltration, the ATF gave the order to move forward with a plan to raid the Mount Carmel Center, which Koresh and the Davidians had recently transformed into a stronghold. The ATF's operation, codenamed "Showtime," would set the stage for the fiasco that followed...

Part 5/8

Research, writing, hosting, and production by Micheal Whelan

Learn more about this podcast at http://unresolved.me

If you would like to support this podcast and others, consider heading to https://www.patreon.com/unresolvedpod to become a Patron or Producer

Music Credits

Half Light - "From Below (Instrumental)"

Adi Goldstein - "Behind Clouds (Instrumental)"

All other music composed by Micheal Whelan

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Larry Gilbreth was an unwitting participant in what would later become one of the biggest
0:15.6	news stories of the late 20th century.
0:18.6	But months before he became officially caught up in that saga, Larry was just a UPS driver
0:24.2	that worked in the region of O'Waco, Texas.
0:27.3	At the time, Waco was a moderate-sized city of approximately 100,000 people, located
0:33.0	in central Texas, roughly halfway between Dallas and Austin.
0:37.6	There, Larry worked in a pretty large geographic area, as he later described to reporters with
0:43.0	48 hours.
0:44.0	A typical day for myself was I would go out with anywhere from 80 to 100 stops and cover
0:49.3	anywhere from 250 to 400 miles.
0:52.8	They knew me, I knew them.
0:55.4	While Larry was never a part of the branch-divided church located near Mount Carmel, he did know
1:00.7	of the group.
1:02.1	Over time, he would deliver more and more packages to the group, oftentimes delivering
1:06.4	them directly to the group's leader, a man he first knew as Vernon Howell, and later
1:11.8	as David Kresh.
1:13.4	Larry recalled stopping to talk to the other man several times, and actually seemed to
1:17.8	kind of like David and his followers.
1:20.5	They were incredibly cordial and talkative to him.
1:23.2	Being true to his role as a delivery driver, Larry never paid too much attention to what
1:27.9	the packages he delivered were.
1:30.2	However, he would eventually notice that the packages increased in size over many months.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Unresolved Productions, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Unresolved Productions and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.