Randy Weaver

Randy Weaver
Born	(1948-01-03)January 3, 1948 Villisca, Iowa, U.S.
Died
Other names	Pete
Education	Iowa Central Community College (dropped out) University of Northern Iowa (dropped out)
Known for	Ruby Ridge
Spouse(s)	Vicki Jordison (m. 1971; d. 1992) Linda Gross (m. 1999)
Children	4
Military career
Allegiance	United States of America
Service/branch	United States Army
Years of service	1968-1970
Rank	Sergeant
Awards	National Defense Service Medal, Parachutist Badge

Randall Claude Weaver (January 3, 1948 – May 11, 2022) was a central participant in the 1992 Ruby Ridge standoff at his cabin near Naples, Idaho. Weaver and his family held white separatist views. Weaver, his family, and a friend named Kevin Harris engaged in an armed standoff with U.S. Marshals and Federal Bureau of Investigation agents. During the standoff, Weaver's 14-year-old son Sammy was shot in the back and killed by a U.S. Marshal, after which Harris shot and killed U.S. Marshal William Degan. Weaver was later shot in the back by a federal sniper. Harris was shot by the same sniper. The bullet that wounded Harris killed Weaver's wife, Vicki, standing behind the door of the Weaver's home. Vicki was holding the family's infant daughter.

Weaver surrendered to federal officers 11 days after the incident began. He was charged with murder, conspiracy, and assault as well as other crimes. He was acquitted of all charges except for failing to appear in court for the original firearms charge. Weaver was sentenced to 18 months in prison. His family eventually received a total of $3,100,000 in compensation for the killing of his wife and son by federal agents.

Early life

Randy Weaver was born on January 3, 1948 to Clarence and Wilma Weaver, a farming couple in Villisca, Iowa. He was one of four children. The Weavers were deeply religious and had difficulty finding a denomination that matched their views; they often moved around among Evangelical, Presbyterian, and Baptist churches. After graduating from Jefferson High School in 1966, he attended Iowa Central Community College before dropping out in 1968 after enlisting in the United States Army during the height of the Vietnam War. He was stationed at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. In 1970, Weaver returned to his hometown for a visit while on leave. During this leave, he first met his future wife, Victoria, introducing himself as "Pete," rather than his "hated" given name Randall.

Before Ruby Ridge

A month after leaving the Army, Weaver and Victoria Jordison married in a ceremony at the First Congregationalist Church in Fort Dodge, Iowa, in November 1971. Randy attended a semester at the University of Northern Iowa but dropped out after finding well paying work at a local John Deere factory. Vicki worked first as a secretary and then as a homemaker.

Partially as a result of the 1978 purchase of The Late Great Planet Earth, the couple began to harbor more fundamentalist beliefs, with Vicki believing that the apocalypse was imminent. To follow Vicki's vision of her family surviving the apocalypse away from what they saw as a corrupt civilization, the Weaver family moved to a 20-acre (8.1-hectare) property in remote Boundary County, Idaho in the early 1980s and built a cabin there. They paid $5,000 in cash and traded their moving truck for the land, valued at $500 an acre.

The Weavers subscribed to the white supremacist and anti-Semitic belief of Christian Identity. Like many Christian Identity adherents, Vicki Weaver developed a set of beliefs following Old Covenant Laws, and the family referred to God as Yahweh. After charges were pressed against her husband, Vicki Weaver wrote to U.S. Attorney Maurice O. Ellsworth, addressing him as "Servant of the Queen of Babylon" and writing, "The stink of your lawless government has reached Heaven, the abode of Yahweh our Yashua," and, "Whether we live or whether we die, we will not bow to your evil commandments."

On three or four occasions, the Weavers had attended Aryan Nations meetings at Hayden Lake, where there was a compound for government resisters and white nationalists.

At the time of the Ruby Ridge incident, the Weavers had four children: Sara, 16; Samuel, 14; Rachel, 10; and Elisheba, 10 months. Vicki homeschooled the children.

Ruby Ridge incident

Main article: Ruby Ridge

Ruby Ridge was the site of an 11-day siege in 1992 in Boundary County, Idaho, near Naples. It began on August 21, when deputies of the United States Marshals Service (USMS) initiated action to apprehend and arrest Randy Weaver under a bench warrant after his failure to appear on a firearms charge. Suspecting a conspiracy against him, Weaver chose not to surrender. He remained at his home with his family and friend Kevin Harris. The Hostage Rescue Team of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI HRT) became involved as the siege developed.

During the Marshals Service reconnoiter of the Weaver property, six U.S. Marshals encountered Harris and Sammy Weaver, Randy's 14-year-old son, in woods near the family cabin. A shootout took place. U.S. Marshals shot the Weaver's dog Striker, then shot Sammy Weaver in the back as he ran away, killing him. During the firefight, Harris shot Deputy U.S. Marshal William Francis Degan in the chest, resulting in Degan's death.

In the subsequent siege of the Weaver residence, led by the FBI, Weaver's wife Vicki was shot and killed by an FBI sniper while standing in her home holding her 10-month-old daughter. Harris was also critically wounded and almost died during the subsequent standoff. Weaver was shot once and was not holding a weapon at the time. All casualties occurred in the first two days of the operation. The siege and standoff were ultimately resolved by civilian negotiator Bo Gritz who was instrumental in getting Weaver to allow Harris to get medical attention. Harris surrendered and was arrested on August 30. Weaver and his three daughters surrendered the next day after being convinced by Gritz that there was no other sensible solution.

Weaver and Harris were subsequently arraigned on a variety of federal criminal charges, including first-degree murder for the death of Degan. Harris was acquitted of all charges. Weaver was acquitted of all charges except for the original bail condition violation for the single firearm charge and for having missed his original court date. He was fined $10,000 and sentenced to 18 months in prison, credited with time served plus an additional three months, and released after 16 months.

During the federal criminal trial of Weaver and Harris, Weaver's attorney Gerry Spence made accusations of "criminal wrongdoing" against the agencies involved in the incident, in particular the FBI, the United States Marshals Service, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF), and the United States Attorney's Office (USAO) for Idaho. At the trial's end, the Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility formed the Ruby Ridge Task Force (RRTF) to investigate Spence's charges. A redacted HTML version of the RRTF report, publicly released by Lexis Counsel Connect, raised questions about all the participating agencies' conduct and policies. The Justice Department later posted a more complete PDF version of the report.

To answer public questions about Ruby Ridge, the Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Government Information held hearings between September 6 and October 19, 1995, and subsequently issued a report calling for reforms in federal law enforcement to prevent a repeat of the losses of life at Ruby Ridge and restore public confidence in federal law enforcement. It was noted that the Ruby Ridge incident and the 1993 Waco siege involved many of the same agencies (the FBI, HRT, and the ATF) and some of the same personnel (the FBI HRT commander). The GAO also conducted a review of federal policies about use of deadly force, publishing it in 1995.

Michael Kahoe, the chief of the FBI violent crime section, pled guilty to obstruction of justice for destroying a report critical of the agency's role in at Ruby Ridge. He was sentenced to 18 months and a $4,000 fine.

The Boundary County prosecutor indicted FBI HRT sniper Lon Horiuchi for manslaughter in 1997 before the statute of limitations for the charge could expire; the case, Idaho v. Horiuchi, was moved to federal court, which has jurisdiction over federal agents. It was dismissed because of the Supremacy Clause. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in 2001 that Horiuchi could be tried on state charges. County prosecutor Brett Benson, elected in 2000, dismissed the case, saying it was unlikely the state would be able to prove the criminal charges.

Aftermath of the Ruby Ridge incident

Weaver was charged with multiple crimes relating to the Ruby Ridge incident – a total of ten counts, including the original firearms charges. Attorney Gerry Spence handled Weaver's defense, and successfully argued that Weaver's actions were justifiable as self-defense. Spence did not call any witnesses for the defense, rather focusing on attacking the credibility of FBI agents and forensic technicians. The judge dismissed two counts after hearing prosecution witness testimony. The jury acquitted Weaver of all remaining charges except two, one of which the judge set aside. He was found guilty of one count, failure to appear, for which he was fined $10,000 and sentenced to 18 months in prison. He was credited with time served plus an additional three months, and was then released. Kevin Harris was acquitted of all criminal charges. Spence later wrote that he took the case against recommendations from peers and friends who thought it would legitimize Weaver's racist beliefs. However, Spence countered that he emphatically rejected Weaver's extremist opinions but took the case because he believed the previously law-abiding Weaver was a victim of government entrapment and further believed the shooting of his wife and child were unconscionable.

In August 1995, the U.S. government avoided trial on a civil lawsuit filed by the Weavers by awarding the three surviving daughters $1,000,000 each, and Randy Weaver $100,000 over the deaths of Sammy and Vicki Weaver. The attorney for Kevin Harris pressed Harris' civil suit for damages, although federal officials vowed they would never pay someone who had killed a U.S. marshal (Harris had been acquitted by a jury trial on grounds of self-defense). In September 2000, after persistent appeals, Harris was awarded a $380,000 settlement from the government.

Controversy over the Ruby Ridge Rules of Engagement led to a standardization of deadly force policy among federal law enforcement agencies, implemented in October 1995 after the Ruby Ridge hearings by the United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security.

In 1996, Weaver offered to "help end the standoff between" the Montana Freemen and the FBI, but his offer was declined.

In 1997, the District Attorney for Boundary County, Idaho charged Horiuchi with involuntary manslaughter, but the indictment was removed to federal jurisdiction based on the Supremacy Clause and eventually dismissed at the federal prosecutor's request. Kevin Harris was also charged with the murder of Bill Degan in spite of the fact he had been acquitted on that charge in federal court; that charge was dismissed also based on violation of double jeopardy.

Timothy McVeigh, who was convicted of killing 168 people in the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995, cited the Ruby Ridge incident as a contributing factor in his decision to attack the United States federal government.

Later life

Weaver testified about his racial beliefs before a U.S. Senate Judiciary subcommittee in 1995, saying, "I'm not a hateful racist as most people understand it. But I believe in the separation of races. We wanted to be separated from the rest of the world, to live in a remote area, to give our children a good place to grow up."

In 1998, Weaver published The Federal Siege at Ruby Ridge: In Our Own Words, which he partly sold in person at gun shows.

In 1999, Weaver married Linda Gross, a legal secretary, in Jefferson, Iowa.

In 2000, Weaver visited the site of the former Branch Davidian church in Waco, Texas, where 76 men, women, and children died when the complex burned to the ground at the end of the Waco siege. A new church was being built at the time of Weaver's visit, and Weaver indicated that he supported the assertion that government agents had deliberately set the complex on fire. The visit was documented by British journalist Jon Ronson in an episode of his five-part documentary, The Secret Rulers of the World titled "The Legend of Ruby Ridge" and his book Them: Adventures with Extremists.

On June 18, 2007, Weaver participated in a press conference with tax protesters Edward and Elaine Brown on the front porch of their home in Plainfield, New Hampshire. He declared: "I ain't afraid of dying no more. I'm curious about the afterlife, and I'm an atheist."

His daughter Sara posted online that her father had died on May 11, 2022 after being sick since at least mid-April. A cause of death was not given. He was 74 years old.

Appearance in media

Randy Weaver and the siege at Ruby Ridge have been the focus of several documentaries including the following:

• A CBS miniseries about the Ruby Ridge incident, titled The Siege at Ruby Ridge, aired on May 19 and 21, 1996. It was based on the book Every Knee Shall Bow by reporter Jess Walter. It starred Laura Dern as Vicki, Kirsten Dunst as Sara, and Randy Quaid as Randy. Later that year the television series was adapted as a full-length TV movie, The Siege at Ruby Ridge.
• PBS American Experience: "Ruby Ridge", February 14, 2017.

See also

• The Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord
• FBI Critical Incident Response Group
• MOVE
• Rainbow Farm

External links

• "Idaho vs Randy Weaver" from the CourtTV Crime Library
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Summary of an Appeals Court ruling on Horiuchi; includes Special Rules of Engagement and a dissent by Judge Alex Kozinski