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RUTH MOSHER WILL ALWAYS WONDER WHAT LED HER DAUGHTER SHERRI Jewell
to David Koresh. The pictures scattered around the house are
Sherri: winning a medal in a marathon; accepting her high school
diploma; hugging her mother; whom she considered her best friend.
"I thought her childhood was pretty happy," says Mosher,
"but maybe it wasn't." Sherri, born 43 years ago in
Honolulu, the only child of a salesman and schoolteacher, was
uprooted when her parents separated and her mother moved with
her to California. But "I gave her everything-all the ballet,
music, gymnastics, swimming classes-so she could decide what she
liked," says Mosher. "We were very close; we didn't
have anyone else." When Sherri graduated from Loma Linda
University, the same year her mother earned a master's education,
the two celebrated with a month-long trip to the Far East.
But Sherri was already drifting into another life. During college
she converted to the Seventh-Day Adventist Church; she had been
brought up to a Methodist. She went to Michigan to teach high
school, and married a student seven years her junior, David Jewell,
who was also a Seventh-Day Adventist. Mosher did not trust David.
The couple had a daughter, Kiri, but the marriage was turbulent.
Mosher found that out when Sherri asked her to spend a month
with them. "She was so sad," Mosher recalls. "Sherri
was always a very up person. She was having such a hard time."
Sherri and David split up and finally divorced in 1984, Broke
and distraught, Sherri took Kiri back to Hawaii. At a Seventh-Day
Adventist church there, she was befriended by Marc Breault, a
disciple of Vernon Howell's-the leader later known as David Koresh.
When Sherri was back and California and living with her mother,
Breault "would call her at all hours of the night and talk
for hours," says Mosher. Sherri was introduced to Koresh,
who thrilled her with his preaching. "Are you telling me
you think this guy is the Lamb of God? You think he's Jesus Christ?"
her mother asked. "I'm just reading the Bible and trying
to find the truth." Sherri always answered. David thinks
Sherri wasn't emotionally secure. "The areas of her life
that were of greatest importance to her-her religiosity and spirituality-were
where she felt the least amount of security," he says. "She
had a desperate need to be led."
Once she moved to Waco, Sherri withdrew even more. She was impossible
to contact, and she sought to end David's regular visits with
Kiri. He grew alarmed when Breault, who had broken with Koresh,
warned him and Sherri's mother of the abusive practices going
on in the cult. Sherri, Breault said, was one of Koresh's favored
wives. The gold pendant worn by Kiri, only 10 was a sign that
Koresh planned to take her too as wife.
When Kiri went to Michigan just after Christmas in 1991 to visit
her father, he won emergency custody of the child. David recalls
Sherri's foreboding words to her daughter when they parted for
the last time: "have as much fun as you can in the time
that you have left." It was Sherri though, who had only
a year to live.