The star of the Branch Davidian trial last week wasn’t a person. It was a battered, bullet-ridden white metal door. The left-hand door, recovered
from the ruins of Mount Carmel shortly after the deadly fire on April 19, 1993, was introduced into evidence by Department of Justice attorneys last Thursday as it began presenting its defense in the $675 million civil lawsuit brought by the Davidians and their survivors.
And while the door, which clearly shows indentations on the back side from tank treads, was the biggest and most visually compelling piece of evidence yet seen in the trial held in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Walter Smith, it raises a series of questions, the first of which is: Where’s the adjoining right-hand door?
The two doors were in plain view of reporters and TV cameras during the entire 51-day siege. But shortly after the fire, while Mount Carmel was still under the control of the FBI, the right-hand door disappeared and has never been found. Conspiracy theorists have long argued that the government purposely hid the right-hand door because it showed too many bullet holes traveling into the compound. Earlier in the trial, Houston attorney Dick DeGuerin, who went inside Mount Carmel during the siege, testified that all of the bullet holes he saw in the doors were on the right side, and all were made by incoming rounds.
Long before the final fire, the Davidians were discussing the evidence contained in the doors. During a phone conversation with the FBI, Steve Schneider, who was one of Koresh’s main confidantes, told FBI agents that “the evidence from the front door will clearly show how many bullets and what happened.”
Last Thursday, ATF agent Kris Mayfield testified about arriving at Mount Carmel on Feb. 28, 1993, and seeing David Koresh standing inside the building with the right door open. Koresh closed the door when he saw the ATF agents approaching and a few seconds later, gunfire erupted. No one is certain which side shot first. Mayfield testified that people inside the building began firing through the doors and walls, and that he and other agents returned fire.
After examining the door at the request of government lawyers, Mayfield told the court that there were nine bullet holes in the left-hand door — four of them incoming rounds and nine outgoing. The incoming rounds, he said, were of larger caliber than the outgoing ones. But under cross-examination, he admitted that he could not say when the holes were made.
After testimony ended, Michael Caddell, the Houston attorney who is representing the Davidians, offered his own theory about the missing door. “The fact that the left-hand door is in the condition it’s in tells you that the right-hand door was not consumed by the fire,” said Caddell. “It was lost on purpose by somebody.”
For his part, Michael Bradford, the U.S. Attorney from Beaumont who is leading the government’s defense effort, said Mayfield’s testimony impeached that of DeGuerin and lays to rest questions about which direction bullets were traveling during the gun battle. And Bradford, a tall, laconic man who speaks in a deep, slow baritone, was unconcerned about the right-hand door. “What’s the big deal about the door being missing?” he asked.
This article appears in July 7 • 2000.