Ruby Ridge: The Truth and Tragedy of the Randy Weaver Family

by Jess Walter

  “‘Yes,’” the other man answers. “‘But have you thought?—this talk of war, these reckless challenges, these wild aggressions—’”

  Later in the story, the man and woman flee, but they are followed—”‘There is no refuge for us,’” he says in his dream. They escape down their hill into Naples, Italy, and are followed by airplanes. In the end the couple stays together in the face of horrible danger—”‘Even now I do not repent. I will not repent; I made my choice, and I will hold on to the end.’” Finally, the man and woman are killed and the dream, like the short story, ends.

  Vicki told friends that H. G. Wells’s fifty-year-old stories had a lot of relevance in modern America, especially for someone like herself, someone who had begun getting messages from God while she took baths and who was having dreams of great violence and a cabin on a mountaintop.

  CAROLEE FLYNN WAS THIRTEEN YEARS OLDER than Vicki but nowhere near as learned about Scripture and the Lord’s plan and all that business. When she and her husband, Dewey, moved in next door to the Weavers in 1979, Carolee—a short, Pall Mall-voiced bank clerk and pizza waitress—took them for just a couple of nice kids going about the business of raising a family. Randy and Dewey went fishing a few times, but Carolee and Vicki became the real friends, leaning across their driveways for “How you beens” that turned into forty-minute soul-searching conversations and explorations of faith.

  It was Vicki who taught her to coupon, clipping and saving and challenging herself to find the best deal. And garage saleing, too—that was Vicki. But mostly Vicki was her teacher, trying to bring her to the Lord and make her understand how Christianity fit in with everything happening in the world. Carolee was glad to be there for Vicki when she needed a friend, like the time—after Sam was born, right around the time the visions became stronger—when Vicki miscarried. She was so brave and strong and smart, she hardly talked about losing the baby, except at first. And then she just said it was God’s will. They became best friends over gallons of iced tea, sitting in the backyard, watching Sammy and Sara play.

  Randy was always talking about money, how it was going to be devalued, how the banks were going to collapse. If you had to let someone keep your money for you, Randy said, the credit union might be the best bet. Randy loved to talk. He could charm any room, and he had a new best friend every week—factory workers, cops, professionals, even a black guy he worked with at John Deere who came by the house sometimes. If Randy knew something, he found it impossible not to tell people about it. Everything with him was right or it was wrong, and he tossed off authoritative opinions like so much small talk.

  At night, he’d sneak off when the kids were getting ready for bed, when Vicki was in the tub, and walk down University, a Bible in his hands, a cigarette dangling from his mouth, until he got to Sambo’s, an all-hours restaurant and coffee shop that filled every evening with the guys from the Deere plant, grumpy retirees, off-duty cops, and neighborhood Christians. Randy was known well enough there that he could pour himself a cup of coffee and cruise along the booths, talking to the people eating a late dinner and to the other restless Christians who came down to witness. He’d warn anyone who listened about current politics, tell them to repent, and launch into biblical prophecy and the coming end time. It wasn’t long before he found a group of about ten people who felt the way he did, born-again coffee-swilling Christians who met at the restaurant at night, debating and sharing Scripture. Sambo’s became the center of the radical born-again movement in Cedar Falls, and Randy became a spirited recruiter.

  For instance, it was Randy who brought Vaughn Trueman to Sambo’s. Vaughn owned a gun store—The Bullet Hole—at the other end of University, and in 1980, Randy started coming in, shopping for guns to protect himself during the end time. The first time Randy introduced Vaughn to Vicki, she looked him in the eyes and said she’d seen him already—in a vision—coming to the Lord. They talked more and more about the Bible until something sparked inside Vaughn, and in 1981, he found himself holding hands with one of Randy’s friends, accepting the Lord as his personal savior. Such miracles were happening up and down University, and for some people the Lord’s work seemed to be centered around that little white and brick rancher.

  Another member of the Sambo’s Bible study was Mike Roethler, a tall, gentle Cedar Falls police officer who was undergoing his own religious transformation. Roethler didn’t know Weaver very well until one day when he brought a homeless man into Sambo’s and asked some of the regulars to help the man out. While the others just sat there, staring at their coffee, this short, quick guy, Randy Weaver, pulled out a twenty-dollar bill. Randy was that way with strangers, always bringing home some lost soul to save. He brought them into his house, gave them clothes and food, even a place to stay. Even after one of them stole from the family, Weaver brought other strays home.

  That’s how Shannon Brasher started coming around. Shannon was a former Marine who’d been in Vietnam and was a security specialist at the Deere factory. Shannon was in the middle of his third divorce and hanging out in Sambo’s when Randy struck up a conversation with him. He recognized Randy from the plant, and the two became friends. Later, Randy even helped him root out some thieves at the plant. Randy said it didn’t matter that Shannon had been married and divorced three times.

  God loved him anyway. Soon, Shannon accepted Jesus and became a regular at the Sambo’s late-night Bible studies, which quickly became too animated—with healings and people speaking in tongues—to hold in the middle of a family restaurant.

  THEY CALLED THEMSELVES LEGALISTS, because they believed that the Bible was the literal word of God and that it all must be taken as the truth, even the laws of the Old Testament, which many churches treated as arcane and pointless dogma. One of the beautiful mysteries of the Old Testament was how often God just up and spoke to people, told them what to do, when to do it, and—most fulfilling and frightening of all—what was going to happen in the future. It made the religion far more dynamic when God was telling people directly what to do. To the Cedar Falls legalists, if God’s word could come that way 10,000 years ago, there was no reason to believe it couldn’t come that way now. So when Vicki decided her family would follow Old Testament law and stop eating unclean meat like pork and oysters (“The Lord says, ‘Don’t eat it’—He knows it’s got trichonomas and isn’t good for your body,” Vicki wrote to a friend), no one in the group thought she’d come about the decision from anywhere but Scripture and His divine will.

  There would be anywhere from four to ten people at the Weavers’ house, sometimes as often as four nights a week. Randy led the Bible study most of the time, but everyone read chapters and commented on what they might mean. Vicki was clearly the scripturalist and scholar of the group. It was as if she had memorized the whole thing, from Genesis to Revelation, Acts to Zechariah.

  They read only the King James Version of the Bible, because Vicki said other translations weren’t divinely inspired and were pagan-influenced. By 1981, the Old Testament books were opening up for Randy and Vicki, not as outdated stories, but as the never-ending law of the Maker. He was opening their eyes to what was happening now, in the United States, just as Hal Lindsey had foretold. The forces of evil (the Soviet Union, the U.S. government, Jewish bankers) were ready to strike at any time against American people. From Ezekiel, they read: “Son of man [Christian Americans], set thy face against Gog [the grand conspiracy] …

  “Be thou prepared, and prepare for thyself, thou, and all thy company [their Bible study group] that are assembled unto thee, and be thou a guard unto them. After many days thou shalt be visited: in the latter years thou shalt come into the land that is brought back from the sword [somewhere in the American West], and is gathered out of many people, against the mountains [the Rockies] of Israel [the United States], which have been always waste [the desolate mountains of Montana? Colorado? Idaho?]: but it is brought forth out of the nations, and they shall dwell safely all of them.”

  In that w
ay, the Scriptures spoke to the Bible group in the early 1980s, through Randy and especially Vicki. There were tears and laughter and languages no one understood. Sore backs were healed, and the Weaver house filled with a spirit they’d never felt before. But God was trying to warn them of something darker, too. The couple agreed that all the signs that Hal Lindsey warned of were there: Some force was moving them to action, trying to gather the believers for the coming end time! From Ezekiel:

  Thou shalt ascend and come like a storm, thou shalt be like a cloud to cover the land, thou and all thy bands, and many people with thee.

  And I will call for a sword against him throughout all my mountains, saith the Lord God; every man’s sword shall be against his brother’s.

  Clearly, they would need weapons. First, to fight the Communists, who would likely come through Canada, and then, once the Tribulation started, government agents and nonbelievers who would come for them, and scavengers with guns who would be roaming the countryside. Randy began sleeping with a loaded pistol under his pillow.

  The book of Daniel, the Old Testament prophet, sounded an alarm even more shrill:

  … and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time …

  And Matthew!

  … and then shall the end come … And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye not be troubled: for all these things must come to pass … For nation, shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines and pestilences, and earthquakes in diverse places.

  Yes! All those things were happening. Randy and Vicki shook news clippings and applied news events to the war, famine, and pestilence litmus test. It all fit! Praise be His glorious name!

  All these are the beginning of sorrows. Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake. And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another.

  Yes! Already, they had been mistreated at church and Randy had gotten in trouble for preaching at work. The persecution was beginning.

  When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:)

  Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains.

  Matthew 24 stopped them cold. Dear God! There it was, right in front of them. Vicki shook with the message. It was so clear! And it wasn’t just in their readings.

  “We have dreams,” Vicki confided in Carolee Flynn. Randy’s visions, especially, were vivid and profound. He dreamed of a configuration of buildings on a hillside, a cabin and outbuildings. For her part, Vicki took baths and the spirit showed her an empty cabin that would need to be fully supplied for the coming tribulation. There were cynics in her family and in the neighborhood who imagined what might happen to a couple who believed that every loose thought, every inexplicable picture that popped into the subconscious was a message from the Creator.

  But to Randy and Vicki, the inspiration came only in close association with the Scriptures. There were dozens of biblical chapters warning of the evils of images and so, when He showed Vicki that she should purge herself and her house of all images, they knew it was true. And so, the TV—that most devilish purveyor of images—was sold. Many of the children’s toys were simply images, too. It wasn’t that Vicki wanted the children to give up their teddy bears, but God had spoken and such bears were images of real bears and therefore a disrespect unto Him. Vicki and Randy went through the house that way, getting rid of photographs and coffee tables with images of leaves on them. One day, Vicki gathered up her Bird of Paradise dishes—with tiny, beautiful bluebirds painted on each one, including the gravy boat and the decorative wall dishes she’d scoured garage sales for—and she knocked on Carolee’s door. Carolee felt awful, but in the end Vicki pleaded, and so Carolee traded her plain, ugly plates for Vicki’s beautiful set. Carolee got end tables and a glass lamp because of God’s message.

  But the most important message was about the time. Of course, the time! Vicki pored over the Bible and prayed endlessly, begging to know exactly how much time they had before the end of the world, how much time she had to get ready. From Daniel—”Blessed is he that waiteth and cometh to the thousand three hundred and five and thirty days.”

  And, of course, Revelation.

  And he said unto me, Thou must prophesy again before many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings … and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months.

  Forty-two months! Thirteen hundred days! Three and a half years! Dear Heavenly King!

  They had to leave as soon as possible.

  CAROLEE FLYNN WAS AMAZED by the energy and commitment at Vicki and Randy’s Bible studies the few times she attended, but she never quite felt like she fit in. It all flew over her head. Still, she and Vicki talked all the time about spiritual matters, and Carolee believed she was learning a lot from her neighbor and best friend.

  One Christmas, Carolee watched the Weavers go about their lives without decorations or presents or anything.

  “Why don’t you have a tree?” she finally asked. “It’s Christmas. Aren’t you supposed to be celebrating the birth of the Lord?”

  Vicki told her that Jesus was probably born in September, certainly not December. “It’s considered a pagan holiday to put shimmery things on a tree,” she said.

  Even if she didn’t quite agree with everything, Carolee learned a lot from the Weavers. At one Bible study, Randy interpreted a verse of Revelation for the group.

  The beast “causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand or on their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name … and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.” Six-six-six.

  The beast, Randy said, was a metaphor for computers. Soon, everything would be catalogued on computer: births, schooling, purchases, homes. And every credit card, connected as they are by computers, would mark people with the number of the beast, Vicki said. Of course, once the currency was devalued and finally changed, no man could buy or sell without a credit card, without 666.

  Later, Carolee admitted she was confused. “My credit card doesn’t have six-six-six on it.” Vicki, patient as always, explained that every card would have numbers that were derivatives of 666.

  Randy and Vicki were trying to reach others as well, especially their families. Sunday dinners at the Jordisons had become theological debates over the form of the coming Tribulation—David’s moderate RLDS version versus Randy and Vicki’s survivalist Christian beliefs. The whole family would eat dinner first, David, Jeane, their kids, and a blossoming flock of grandchildren. Then the women would go shopping or form a circle in the kitchen and drink coffee, leaving the men alone to do what they did best together—argue and debate.

  There was soon going to be a social breakdown, Randy would say. The government would use the opportunity to declare martial law, crushing democracy and killing the good Christian Americans. People will be rioting in the streets and the traitorous government would turn against its own people. The only protection would be clusters of good Christians with guns—

  And that’s where Julie’s husband, Keith, wouldn’t be able to hold his tongue any longer. Reeling over the death of John Lennon, he’d say all guns ought to be illegal, tossing out statistics that showed how many people were wounded by their own guns—

  And, on that point, Lanny would have to agree with his brother-in-law Randy about the gun thing, although his beliefs—

  His beliefs are all wrong, David would point out. You can’t prepare physically for the return of Jesus, only spiritually—

  And somehow, farm subsidies would come up, and everyone would switch sides—

  And then Randy would throw out something that ended the argument because it was so ridiculous. �
�Someone ought to kill the Supreme Court justices.” Or: “The Holocaust never happened.”

  That was too much for Vicki’s dad, who had been a young man during World War II and who knew real evil when he saw it. “Are you crazy? I was alive then, and I will tell you, it happened.” And that subject was closed.

  But mostly they argued with Randy about his plan to leave Iowa and move up into the mountains of Oregon, Montana, or Idaho. David had seen that Randy wasn’t the most mechanical guy in the world, and he figured the family would starve to death as soon as they got five miles out of Iowa. “You’ve got a family to think about, you bonehead,” David said. But Randy wouldn’t budge. And if his in-laws wanted to survive the Great Tribulation, if they didn’t want their children turned into slaves of the New World Order, the Jordison family would be wise to follow them.

  In the kitchen, the women rarely talked about such stuff. Julie knew when they stopped celebrating Christmas that her sister was becoming more radical, but she also knew there was no way to talk her out of something once she was so deeply into it. And in every theological breakthrough, Julie saw her sister’s personality. So while everyone else in the family argued with Randy about the Great Tribulation and moving to Idaho, Julie could tell Randy’s bluster was coming from Vicki’s ideas. They’d make eye contact and she’d give him a small nod or correct some point, and off he’d go again on a wild tangent about holidays being the work of Satan. Once, when Randy was losing an argument, Vicki stormed into the living room and told her dad and brother to leave him alone.

  Julie knew her sister, and she guessed there was another side to this transformation. She wondered if Vicki liked the way she and Randy revolved around each other while they were becoming the instruments of the Lord. It had seemed to her that in the mid-seventies, Randy had all these other things going on in his life—his job, his toys, his friends—and she knew Vicki was threatened by all of that. While she didn’t doubt their sincerity, Julie thought she saw the psychological tracks that led to where the Weavers were going: Vicki with her tight family—alone in the woods—and Randy with his toys—every kind of gun he could afford—and his macho lifestyle, the survivalism.