Lee Hancock Collection

On February 28, 1993 the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) attempted to issue an arrest warrant for Vernon Wayne Howell and a search warrant for the Mount Carmel Center near Waco, Texas on the basis of illegal weapons possession. The Branch Davidians in Mount Carmel and the ATF began a shootout that ended in the deaths of four ATF agents and six Branch Davidians. The occupants of Mount Carmel and government agencies remained in a standoff for fifty-one days until the FBI launched CS gas into the compound in an effort to make the Branch Davidians exit. The CS gas assault on April 19, 1993 ended in a fire in which seventy-six people inside Mount Carmel died, including twenty-three children.

After the fire a series of lawsuits and investigations began, including the 1994 criminal trial of the Branch Davidians, the 1995 congressional hearings, and a wrongful-death civil trial in 2000. The ATF and other government agencies were investigated by the FBI, the Texas Rangers and others for their handling of the raid, the standoff and the tear-gas assault.

As a journalist for the Dallas Morning News, Lee Hancock reported about the Branch Davidian standoff near Waco from the first day of the siege on February 28, 1993 until the fire on April 19, 1993. She continued to follow the story for the next ten years, including covering the subsequent investigations and trials. Through her sources, Hancock was able to retrieve documents from government agencies and release important information to the public, including the 1999 revelation that pyrotechnic CS gas was used on the last day of the siege before the fire.

After the tenth anniversary of the April 19, 1993 Mount Carmel fire, Dr. Catherine Wessinger, Professor of the History of Religions at Loyola University in New Orleans, contacted Hancock for an article Wessinger was writing about Branch Davidian standoff coverage in the media. At that point, Hancock had turned her focus to covering other stories, so she donated her research materials to Wessinger. Dr. Wessinger placed the materials in the Loyola University Archives in 2004 where initial processing of the collection began. Additional materials from Lee Hancock were donated in 2006.

In 2009, Dr. Wessinger met Wittliff Collections archivist Joel Minor at a memorial in Waco, and was impressed with his work on the Dick Reavis Papers and the Ashes of Waco digital collection. Since the Loyola University Archives had not completed processing the collection, Wessinger recommended to Lee Hancock that the collection be moved to Texas State University. The collection was relocated to Texas State University in late 2010 and processed in 2011.

Dr. Catherine Wessinger wrote two articles related to the Hancock collection, “The Lee Hancock Collection: Federal and State Materials on the Branch Davidian Case,” and “Deaths in the Fire at the Branch Davidians’ Mount Carmel: Who Bears Responsibility?” Both articles can be found in the November 2009 issue of Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, volume 13, number 2. It is available in the Wittliff Collections.

Today, Lee Hancock continues as a journalist at the Dallas Morning News. Besides the Branch Davidian standoff, Ms. Hancock has written investigative articles about such topics as the April 19, 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing, the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and the November 5, 2009 Fort Hood Shootings

Sources: Catherine Wessinger correspondence with Maggie DeBrecht, Wessinger’s article “The Lee Hancock Collection,” and materials from the Lee Hancock Research Collection.