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

by Jess Walter

  There was no answer from the cabin.

  Marnis was exhausted again, and Lanceley let her go home. It seemed as if this case could only end in a raid. The FBI played tapes of Vicki’s parents, her sister, and her brother but got no response from the cabin. Later, the negotiator said they had more tapes to play, from Vicki’s father and from a right-wing presidential candidate named Bo Gritz.

  Randy jumped at that one. “I want to talk to Bo Gritz! I want to talk to Bo Gritz in person!”

  THE PEOPLE PARTED, and Bo Gritz strode through the protester’s side of the roadblock. They joined his procession as he passed, chin high and weathered blue eyes calmly taking in the police tape and the armed officers on the other side. Two men slipped in alongside Gritz and one of them poked Bo’s thick shoulder and introduced his friend. “Bo, he was in Vietnam, too.”

  Gritz’s curly gray head stopped suddenly, and he looked the man over, slapped him on the back, and said, “Welcome home, son.”

  The veteran was a little confused as the Gritz entourage moved away. “Thanks,” he said. “I’ve been home twenty years.”

  In his autobiography, General William Westmoreland called retired Lieutenant Colonel Bo Gritz “The American Soldier.” He was rumored to be the model for Rambo, a crafty Green Beret commando who possessed that leadership quality possible only during war—he seemed invincible. He was cited sixty-two times for valor, more than any other soldier during the Vietnam War, and later became commander of Special Forces in Latin America.

  Gritz faded away after his retirement, only to resurface in the early 1980s, when he led several trips back to Indochina, promising to bring back POWs abandoned by the U.S. government. Financed by industrialist H. Ross Perot and some distraught widows, Bo skulked through the streets of Thailand and Pakistan and crept through the jungles of Laos but never brought home anything but a box of bones that turned out to be pig remains. Gritz was criticized for taking thousands of dollars from families to whom he’d given false hope. But his reputation only grew among the far right wing and by 1992—seemingly more eccentric by the day—he was the candidate for president of the Populist Party, which had last nominated the former Ku Klux Klan grand dragon David Duke.

  Sure, Gritz said, he remembered Randy as an engineer and munitions expert. Or, no, maybe he’d never met Randy. “Doesn’t matter,” he snapped at a reporter, a member of what he cheerfully called “the faggot press.” When his campaign was contacted by one of Weaver’s supporters, who said Weaver had a poster of Gritz, the candidate immediately changed his schedule and flew to northern Idaho. He arrived Wednesday, about 2:00 p.m., in a caravan of long, fifteen-year-old American cars, marched directly up to the roadblock, and announced, “I’m Bo Gritz, and I want to speak to the agent-in-charge.”

  Federal agents stared blankly at him and told him to wait. For the next two days, while his two-person campaign staff worked the crowd and the reporters—”Gritz. Rhymes with whites.”—Bo repeatedly volunteered to negotiate Randy’s surrender. “It takes Special Forces to understand Special Forces,” he said. He got no answer.

  Frustrated, Gritz and Jack McLamb—a retired Phoenix police officer who published a radical right newsletter—marched into the Deep Creek Inn and asked Lorenz Caduff if they could use a table to settle this whole matter. Lorenz said sure. Gritz and his aides quickly wrote out a citizen’s indictment, charging Idaho governor Cecil Andrus, FBI director William Sessions, U.S. Marshals director Henry Hudson, and FBI Special Agent-in-Charge Gene Glenn with twelve felonies (“10. Felonious abuse and coverup of abuse in refusal to allow Lt. Col. ‘Bo’ Gritz to mediate settlement …”). Lorenz watched over their shoulders, wondering if he was witnessing the beginning of the overthrow of the American government.

  At 10:00 a.m. on Friday, Gritz swaggered back up to the roadblock in a Thai safari suit specially made to avoid wrinkles, his navy blue epauletted shirt stretched tight over a red-meat-and-potatoes stomach. The silver-haired McLamb stood next to him, and fifty protesters fanned out on either side. Gritz held the citizen’s indictment in sausage-thick fingers and growled through his bushy gray mustache, “Is there any agent here that represents Gene Glenn from the Federal Bureau of Investigation?”

  The agents on the other side stared back blankly.

  “Knowing that Gene Glenn is present on these premises, we as citizens of the United States and under the Constitution of the United States hereby present this citizen’s arrest for Gene Glenn.”

  Gritz read the indictment and handed it to a protester who leaned over the yellow police tape, set it down, and placed a big rock on top of it.

  “Consider yourself served!” the protester said, to the applause of his compatriots and a hug from a nearby woman. After a week of waiting and feeling powerless, the angry white people at the roadblock finally had a champion. If only the people at the roadblock were registered voters, Bo Gritz could have claimed another seventy or so votes. That afternoon, the people—gap-toothed and scruffy, skinheads and long-hairs, camouflaged vets and flannel-shirted loggers—cheered as federal agents led Gritz through the roadblock. They ushered him right past the citizen’s arrest that sat where they’d left it, anchored by the people’s rock, on which one of the people had written “Justice. Ours or God’s. Your choice.”

  IT WASN’T THE CITIZEN’S ARREST that had gotten Bo Gritz past the roadblock. Gene Glenn just couldn’t think of any alternative. He and the other federal agents had debated whether or not to allow Gritz up to the cabin.

  Richard Rogers, for one, was against it. But in the end, it had begun to seem like the last hope for avoiding a raid. They drove Bo up the hill, where he met with Glenn, got the ground rules, and talked about what they hoped to accomplish.

  Then they drove Bo past the lines of marshals and FBI snipers and up to Ruby Ridge in an APC, Lanceley right next to him. Lanceley quickly briefed Gritz about how to proceed, and when they reached the cabin, a little before 7:00 p.m., the hatch was opened and Gritz was given a megaphone.

  “Randall. This is Bo Gritz.”

  “Bo, is that you?” Weaver seemed distrustful and asked for some sort of proof.

  Bo had the same problem as the other negotiators, and he wriggled his head out of the hatch to try to hear better. “Is everyone all right in there?”

  Randy’s voice strained through the plywood walls. “No.”

  Lancely poked Gritz in the leg. “Follow up on that.”

  “I’ve been shot,” Randy yelled. “Vicki has been shot through the head, and Kevin has been shot through the arm and into the chest.”

  Lanceley said later he was devastated. For much of the last week, he and the other negotiators had been asking for Vicki, negotiating directly to her, asking her about the baby, inviting her outside. He thought about the pain he must’ve put them through, especially the children. All these gadgets—listening devices and closed-circuit televisions—and they spend a week negotiating without knowing Vicki had been shot. Lanceley’s job was to try to settle this standoff, yet, for all he knew, he may have made it worse.

  “So I can hear you better, we’re going to pull the APC forward still,” Bo said. “I’m going to talk to you from the side of the APC, direct voice.” The military vehicle moved toward the rock outcropping, and Gritz just hopped out. Lanceley and Richard Rogers stood behind the APC, nervous as Gritz edged closer and closer to the cabin. Bo moved away from the rocks, out into the open, and walked closer to the cabin, until he was right next to it. All around the rocky point alert FBI snipers watched through their scopes as Gritz approached the cabin, put his hands on it, and talked to Randy. Behind the APC, Lanceley tried to hear what they were saying but couldn’t make it out.

  “Bo,” Randy called through the wall, “they shot Vicki, and they won’t tell anybody.”

  DAVID AND JEANE JORDISON, their son, Lanny, and their daughter Julie, were led past the roadblock to a clearing where Gene Glenn was waiting for them. They’d met the warm FBI agent-in-charge the day befor
e, and now he told them to hold hands; he had something to tell them. They formed a small circle with Bo Gritz, Kevin Harris’s parents, and with Glenn, who said he had good news and bad news. The good news was that the girls were all okay, and although Randy and Kevin were injured, they were okay, and the standoff was going to end soon. When she didn’t hear Vicki’s name, Julie held her breath.

  “The bad news—” a tear pearled in Gene Glenn’s eyes, and his voice quavered, “Vicki is no longer with us.”

  It was a blow that hollowed them all out at first, until the thoughts rushed back like water to fill the emptiness: memories, black sadness, and intuitions—hindsight, maybe—the overwhelming feeling each of them had had for days that they would never see Vicki again; that it had to end this way, and that in some way, she had been gone for years. David didn’t seem to understand at first, and Lanny was just dumbfounded. Julie’s knees buckled, and Jeane felt lost, crying in a clearing in the woods 1,500 miles from her home, holding hands with an FBI agent who explained that they had accidentally shot one of her babies. They sobbed and squeezed each other and tried to muster questions about how it had happened.

  “There will be time for that, and believe me, I have as many questions as you do,” Glenn answered, and they were glad to have him there. He seemed so understanding and so genuinely sorry, and they were relieved, at least, to have people like him in their government.

  Julie looked up the dirt road, through the dark forest. In a whir of grief, anger, and pity for her sister, she knew one thing: They had to get those girls out safely, and she had to take care of them.

  THE FIRST SIGN OF TROUBLE Friday night was the lights. They were huge spotlights, pointed into the crowd at the roadblock, the last bugs of summer frying in the yellow beams. Flak-jacketed officers stood three deep in a military line on the suddenly claustrophobic bridge, passing out riot gear, plastic handcuffs, and canisters of tear gas. The protesters exchanged worried glances and wondered if they were going to be attacked.

  And then the police tape was lowered, and Bo came down the mountain. They gathered around him, and he blew out a deep breath and rubbed his head. The night was cool again, and the mountain folk gathered around, pulled into their worn coats, and nudged past reporters and camera crews.

  Bo swung his head around slowly. “I want all of you in the vigil to join your hands. I want you to get close. I want you to get warm. I’ve got good news, and I’ve got bad news.

  “The good news is that we went right up to the top of the hill and established an immediate dialogue like I knew we could with Randy. Wasn’t any problem at all.” Then Gritz explained that the girls were okay, that Kevin had been shot, but was doing well, that Yahweh was taking care of him. He said he expected to resolve the standoff the next day, Saturday. “The communication was tough,” Bo said. “Tomorrow I’m gonna throw a bullhorn right through the winda’ so we can talk.”

  A deep breath. “I want your hands joined. That’s an order. I’ve got a reason for it. The bad news—now get a grip on yourself—is that Vicki was killed.”

  A woman cried, “Oh, no.”

  Someone else said, “Damn.”

  Bo talked fast, trying to keep the crowd in control. “I want you to listen to what I gotta say, so you get it right. Randy and Sara seem to be okay and in pretty good spirits. I had a good dialogue with Randy. The only thing that is shameful is that I could have had this conversation three days ago…. A wonderful woman, a pioneer woman, has had her life taken,” Bo said, “and she’s in God’s hands as we speak.

  “There’s a bureaucrat up here that’s guilty,” he continued, trying to talk through the protesters’ anger. “Somebody is going to be brought to the bar of justice. I believe we’re gonna find some fat bureaucrat who authorized this to go down.”

  The protesters formed a wide prayer circle, while uncomfortable reporters backed away. Judy Grider gathered some of the patriot women into a chain, and they turned and faced the roadblock, their arms interlocked, Judy yelling in a singsong growl, her Bible study voice, “Feel the strength of the women of Yah! And believe in your hearts that together we stand. Put arm and arm together. Now!

  “And show everybody that we are women of Yah! And you will not let this come to pass again because we are the virtuous women! You are his enemy and you will never receive us in your hands again. From our savior, never will you take another woman down! Never!”

  One of the Vegas skinheads screamed, “We’re goin to war!”

  The ATF agents and state police watched the crowd closely, their eyes shifting from angry face to angry face.

  Tall and intimidating, Bill Grider puffed on a cigar and stood a few feet away from the lines of federal officers, casting long shadows from the spotlights as he tried to stare the enemy down. “You ve got a lot of hair on your asses. You’re all standing for what you think is right. This isn’t right, is it?” He poked a finger at them, jumpy, as if he might leap over the police tape. “You proud to serve these fuckin’ morons? They don’t care if you die. They put you out here in front! You’re fuckin’ nothin’!”

  They prayed and screamed all night, forming and re-forming the circle, the collective rage threatening to send them all up like bone-dry kindling. Reporters took short odds on whether or not the roadblock would erupt that night as a white-bearded man who looked like he’d been shaken from the Old Testament led two dozen protesters in prayer.

  “For Kevin and the girls and for little Sam,” he prayed. “Father guide us and help us and lead us. Yahweh saves! Yahweh saves! Praise Yahweh.” And then he lost it, too. “Arise O Israel! It is time for war!”

  LORENZ CADUFF HAD BEEN MOST OF A WEEK without sleep. Strange people slept on his floor and in tents all over his yard. Reporters from Boston and Los Angeles used his telephone, and people displaced from their homes begged him for help. He ran from table to table, delivering food and catching bits of conversations from the angry people who said the government had murdered that Weaver woman, shot her right in the head even though she had no gun. The government was filming the protesters, they said, and eventually would track them all down and kill them, too. It was all so confusing.

  Saturday morning, Lorenz gathered grapes, a gallon of milk, a half-gallon of apple juice, and a baby bottle and put them all in a box. Bo Gritz, Jack McLamb, Jackie Brown, and a local Baptist preacher were sitting at a table, preparing to go up the mountain and end the standoff, and so Lorenz brought the box over and gave it to them as a peace offering to take up to the cabin. On the side of the box, he taped a tiny Swiss flag, the symbol of neutrality.

  The four negotiators were taken through the roadblock, up to the meadow, and finally, to the base of the driveway and to the huge rock near the cabin door. Gritz moved immediately to the cabin and began talking, but the family seemed distant again.

  Inside the cabin, Sara had no intention of giving up. They had agreed to let Bo Gritz come up to the house the day before just to buy some time and to make sure they got their story out. But Sara didn’t completely trust Bo. She knew her dad liked him, but Sara had her mother’s intuition about people, and she didn’t like the way Bo kept asking to speak to Randy face-to-face.

  No, Sara argued, they should sit tight, mourn Vicki’s and Sammy’s deaths, read the Bible, and pray to Yahweh for guidance. Under no circumstances should they budge from the cabin. Sara knew what would happen if she let her father give up. The feds would tell Randy to send the girls out first, Sara, Rachel, and Elisheba. Chances were, they would kill all of them. But even if the girls lived, they’d kill her dad and Kevin. Ever since Saturday, when they’d shot at the two men without any warning, Sara knew what the One World agents were trying to do. With Kevin and her dad dead, they could blame Vicki’s and Sam’s deaths on the men. Sara’s parents had told her many times what would happen next: The government would say the girls were mentally disturbed and throw them in nuthouses, where they would be drugged and used as guinea pigs for scientific experiments. Sara would die b
efore she’d let that happen.

  Gritz wanted to come in the house, but Sara insisted no one except her family was ever coming in the cabin again. Bo used his secret weapon. “Sara, Rachel,” he said, “do you want to hear from Jackie?”

  “Yes!” Their voices rose. Jackie had visited them almost every week for the last year or so. Doe-eyed and earthy, Jackie Brown had a strong personality like their mother’s, a sensé of pioneer competence and warmth. For the past couple of years, she had been almost like an aunt to the kids.

  “I’ll walk her to the door,” Bo suggested.

  “No,” Randy called. “You stay there.”

  Jackie was standing behind the Weavers’ outdoor shower with Richard Rogers, the head of the HRT. He told her that if she stayed in there a long time, they would assume she had joined the family or was a hostage. Jackie nodded. Rogers asked if she wanted a bulletproof vest, but she shook him off. As she was walking away, she said, “Maybe if I wear it backwards.” She walked around to the back of the house—the one that jutted out over the ridge—climbed the rickety steps, and stood on the porch, the valley opening up behind her. She told the Weavers to unbolt the door and step back, and when they did, she slipped inside and locked the door behind herself.

  It was dark and clammy inside, and messy, not at all the way Vicki kept the house. When her eyes adjusted, Jackie saw Kevin slumped in a reclining chair in the living room. He was jaundiced and thin, and when she felt his pulse, his heart was racing. The girls were standing next to their father in the corner, wearing their gun belts. When they saw she was alone, they came over, grabbed Jackie, and sobbed. Sleeping bags and blankets were spread over the floor, and Elisheba sat in the middle of the nest, playing with blocks.

  Randy told Jackie what had happened so far, how they’d been under attack since the initial shoot-out. “Kevin saw Sam get hit in the right arm, and he just wanted to stop ‘em from shootin’ at him. What the hell would anybody else do?” Bloody sheets and towels were piled in a corner of the room.