- "The nine children had six mothers, of whom two
were Wesson's daughters and one his niece."
-
- NEW YORK -- A man
accused of murdering nine of his children told them that he was God and
ordered the older ones to kill the younger ones and then commit suicide,
a Californian court was told.
-
- Marcus Wesson, 57, is said to have sexually molested
his daughters and inflicted "week-long spankings" on them if
they broke rules such as not talking to men from outside the family.
-
- Fresno police described finding the children's bodies
in a pile in a bedroom when they searched Wesson's house. Eight of them,
aged from one to 25, had been shot in the right eye. The ninth had been
shot in the left eye.
-
- The eldest child was the mother of another of the dead
children. Wesson was the father of both. The nine children had six mothers,
of whom two were Wesson's daughters and one his niece.
-
- Wesson had lectured the children in 1995 about the need
to commit mass suicide if the police or social workers threatened their
way of life, the court was told.
-
- A detective said: "He would ask them, 'If the time
came, would you be ready to die for the Lord?' ".
-
- Kiani Wesson, one of the surviving daughters and the
mother of two of the victims, told police that, if the authorities tried
to break up the family, "the older ones would kill the children and
commit suicide".
-
- Rosie Solorio, a niece of Wesson's, whose child by him
was also among the victims, told another detective that Wesson called his
girls "his soldiers". When the time came to commit suicide, the
eldest ones were to "go out and kill the rest of the family members
that were no longer in his house", she said.
-
- Wesson has pleaded not guilty to murdering the children
as well as to multiple charges of sexually abusing the girls who lived
with him as far back as 1988.
-
- Some of his alleged victims he "married"; others
he told he was preparing for marriage.
-
- Wesson was obsessed with David Koresh, head of the Branch
Davidians who fought FBI agents at their compound in Waco, Texas, in 1993,
the court heard. He allegedly wanted to create a similar cult within his
own family.
-
- Family members told police that they were ordered to
watch reports about Koresh whenever they appeared on television.
-
- The man on the screen was doing God's work, he would
tell the children, who were forced to read the King James Bible twice a
day and listen to Wesson's "sermons".
-
- © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2004. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/04/10/
wwess10.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/04/10/ixworld.html
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