SAN ANTONIO, Texas -- Smiling broadly at her former friends, a star prosecution witness Wednesday gave chilling details of life, death and religion inside the branch Davidian compound.
Kathryn Schroeder testified that day after day cult followers of David Koresh stockpiled weapons and prepared themselves for a "final confrontation" months before federal agents raided the compound Feb. 28.
"If you can't kill for God, you can't die for God," Schroeder quoted Koresh as telling disciples. "Everybody was armed at some point."
Schroeder - considered the prosecution's most powerful witness - testified cultists tried to lure federal agents into a fatal firefight and explosion. Four agents died during the raid. Schroeder's husband and at least four other cultists also died.
She broke down when she described how cultist Neil Vaega told her to stay with four other women during the raid. "Neil gave me a grenade for the purpose of blowing up the girls," she said, her voice breaking. "I kept it in my belt loop."
Schroeder, 31, an Air Force veteran nicknamed "Sarge," said the day of the raid Vaega asked Koresh for "permission to finish . . . off" another badly wounded member. But Koresh, who lay on a floor wounded, didn't respond. Vaega later returned "and said it had been done. It took two shots to finish him."
Schroeder, one of Koresh's multiple wives and the second Davidian to testify against her former cult members, said she saw guns in the hands of eight of the 11 defendants. But said she didn't see any of them shooting.
The 11 defendants could face up to life in prison if convicted of the murder and murder conspiracy charges.
She also said Koresh had described Passover 1992 as the sect's last, then decreed a summer of fun, buying Go-Karts, boats, motorcycles.
Her reaction to seeing people killed in the gunfight: They "beat me to heaven."
