Clive Doyle

1941 - 2022
Clive Doyle, 81, died on June 8, 2022 in Waco, Texas due to pancreatic cancer. He was born on February 24, 1941 in Melbourne, Australia.
After being raised in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, he and his mother became Davidian Seventh-day Adventists in 1956 by reading publications written by Victor Houteff. Clive and his mother became Branch Davidian Seventh-day Adventists in 1964 by reading the publications of the founder, Ben Roden, whose community was on property called Mount Carmel Center located northeast of Waco.
In 1966, Doyle and three other young Australians traveled to the Branch Davidians' Mount Carmel Center, where he settled, married, had two daughters with his wife, became an American citizen, and divorced.
When Ben Roden died in 1978, Doyle accepted Ben's wife, Lois Roden, as the next prophet of the Branch Davidians. In 1984 Doyle and other long-time Branch Davidians shifted their faith to a young man named Vernon Howell (later known as David Koresh) as the next prophet in the Davidian and Branch Davidian lineage of prophets. By 1992, Koresh's Bible students had torn down the little houses at Mount Carmel Center and used the lumber to build the large residence that became famous in 1993.
Doyle was present in the large residence on February 28, 1993, during the attempted "dynamic entry" by agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms and the subsequent shootout. He was present during the 51-day siege by FBI agents. He was present when the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team carried out a tank and CS gas assault on April 19, 1993. He was one of nine Branch Davidians who escaped the fire that was the culmination of the assault. His eighteen-year-old daughter, Shari Doyle, died by gunshot in the midst of the fire on the second floor. Clive escaped the fire from the first floor. Because of the fire, it was impossible for him to attempt to rescue Shari.
Doyle was among three survivors who were acquitted of all charges in the 1994 criminal trial and released. He lived at Mount Carmel Center from 1999 to 2006. In 2006 he moved to live in Waco.
Doyle accepted requests for interviews with journalists and documentary filmmakers to articulate his perspective as a Branch Davidian survivor. In 1995 he was one of the Branch Davidian survivors who testified in congressional committee hearings on the activities of federal law enforcement agencies toward the Branch Davidians. He was the moderator at annual April 19 memorials that remembered all those who died in the 1993 Branch Davidian-federal agent conflict, in which 82 Branch Davidians of all ages and four ATF agents died.
Clive Doyle's book, A Journey to Waco: Autobiography of a Branch Davidian (2012), provides a written record of his memories of his experiences, as told to historian of religions Catherine Wessinger in 2003-04.
He is preceded in death by his daughter, Shari Elayna Doyle, his mother Edna Doyle, and his daughter, Karen Elizabeth Graham. There will be a private memorial.