He was 21 years old and looking for a new church. His reception at Mount Carmel was chilly. Most of the hundred or so people who lived in the cluster of trailers and cheaply built houses outside Waco were significantly older or younger than Howell. One of them remembered later that Howell had a hard time expressing himself, and tended to talk about rock and roll and his masturbation habits. Defying these expectations, Howell thrived. The Branch Davidians in Waco were led by a woman in her sixties called Lois Roden, who had become known across the Bible Belt a few years earlier for claiming that the Holy Spirit was female.
Howell took to her instantly. Before long he was sleeping with her, trying to get her pregnant, despite her age, in the hope of creating a new generation of leaders in time for the apocalypse Howell thought this would happen in She bought him a new guitar, which he used to write Christian rock songs, and took him to Israel β his first trip out of the country.
He railed against Howell from the pulpit, calling him a rapist, and chased him and his followers out of Mount Carmel at gunpoint. Howell abandoned Lois, married a year-old called Rachel Jones and travelled around with his followers recruiting new members, waiting for the right moment to return to Mount Carmel and drive George out.
His chance came when Lois died from cancer in The following year, Howell and George had a gunfight: George was shot in the chest and hand, and Howell charged with attempted murder. The Davidians had been converting semi-automatic rifles into automatics and selling them at gun shows for a handsome profit. Worried about the size of the arsenal Koresh and his followers seemed to be amassing, ATF agents set up a surveillance operation.
The operation failed to produce much hard evidence that the Davidians had violated gun laws, but a judge gave them a search warrant anyway. A fierce gun battle followed, in which four ATF agents and five Davidians were killed. The FBI then took over and conducted a day siege of the compound. It seems to have been a frustrating experience for everyone. Government agents sometimes blared out loud music or the sound of crying babies or power drills in the middle of the night. During phone calls with the hostage negotiators, Koresh embarked on lengthy monologues about his beliefs.
