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

by Jess Walter

  The cabin itself was spooky, full of bad vibes even for someone who didn’t believe in such stuff. That night, with the October wind howling through the plywood walls, they slept on the cabin floor where Randy and Kevin had lain, where Sara had crawled to get food and take care of the baby. Nevin always liked to visit the scene of a case he was defending. It fueled his imagination and helped him explain what happened to a jury. But this felt different. It was tough staying in this place without being overwhelmed and saddened.

  The next morning, they walked down the same trail Sammy and Kevin had taken, through the fern field, down to the Y. They looked for the stump Degan had hidden behind and tried to imagine five or six people with guns in such dense woods and brush. If it was possible to be claustrophobic outside, it would happen there, in that thick forest. Several hundred yards down a steep hill, the government’s version of events began to seem less and less likely. For one thing, marshals claimed to have received fire from the cabin after Degan was shot, yet that seemed impossible—unless the Weavers had some sort of weapons that allowed their shots to bend over the lips of ridges and around trees.

  They went to the upper observation point where Hunt had photographed the family and down to the lower point where Roderick threw rocks at the dog. That was something Nevin could never figure out. He tried to picture these three guys crawling through the woods, carrying a machine gun with a silencer, suddenly deciding to throw some rocks. He knelt behind the boulder where Roderick had been and threw a couple of stones into the gully between himself and the cabin. It was too far away even to come close to hitting the cabin.

  The rock clattered down the hillside, and Nevin stood up. Of course. The silenced machine gun, the rocks, the undercover plan with agents hiding in the woods, even the shoot-out itself. This was a case about a dog.

  EIGHTEEN

  THE FACTS WILL SHOW that this ultimate confrontation occurred not because of a government perception of Randy Weaver’s beliefs, but because of Randy Weaver’s actions,” Kim Lindquist told the seven women and five men—all of them white—who stared at him from the jury box. They ranged in age from thirty-one to seventy-two, from a ninth-grade graduate to an MBA. Many had served on juries before, several had been crime victims. Most owned guns.

  All morning on April 14, 1993, the jury listened as Lindquist, and especially Howen, colorlessly and carefully built their case like legal bricklayers. “On or about” this date the Weavers said this; “To wit,” the Weavers purchased that; “In furtherance” of the conspiracy, Randy Weaver did something else. They painted Weaver—in blacks and grays—as a racist, religious zealot commanding an army that also happened to be his family, a man who sought and finally achieved an Apocalyptic holy war with federal agents who did everything they could to avoid confrontation. Finally, on August 21, 1992, the Weavers got their wish, chasing the deputy marshals into the woods and shooting Bill Degan in cold blood.

  It was a classic prosecutorial laying out of the facts. And the defense attorneys for Weaver and Kevin Harris couldn’t have asked for a better setup. At one-thirty that afternoon, David Nevin stood up to give his client’s side, looking for all the world like your favorite college professor, the one all the girls had a crush on and all the boys identified with.

  “Kevin dove into the bushes and tried as hard as he could to save his friend’s life,” Nevin said. “Kevin did the best he could in an almost impossible situation.” He told the jury they would hear later about Degan’s sad, painful death, and he described it for them himself, to get it out in the open and defuse its power later.

  And then, he just told Kevin’s story, from the moment he and Sammy Weaver saw the dog running off into the woods—”They think it’s probably an animal, deer, bear, elk, mountain lion.” Nevin’s voice was a revelation to the people who’d never heard him: quiet, honest, and authoritative, a hint of polite Southern lilt, stark contrast to the prosecutors’ industrial presentation of the evidence. “It’s ten-thirty in the morning on a Friday in late August. It’s quite pleasant in the woods.” Nevin described Sammy Weaver and Kevin walking through the woods, when suddenly, a camouflaged man steps out of the woods, points a rifle at the dog, and shoots it. And then Nevin’s voice gathered strength and authority until it didn’t seem possible it was coming from that spindle-thin guy. “The evidence will be there was no legitimate reason to shoot that dog. The dog was just doing what dogs do.” Sammy fired at the man, who dove back into the woods, Nevin said, his voice getting louder, his hands more animated.

  “The woods just light up. Kevin sees smoke puffs … shells fly. Randy sees these guys, and at some point he starts to holler. Sam yells back, ‘I’m comin’, Dad, I’m comin’, Dad.’ They cut loose on him.” And then Nevin’s voice leveled off. “I want you to know, Sam Weaver was shot in the back, running away. Running home.”

  At the defense table, Randy Weaver stared at his shoes. Kevin Harris began to cry.

  Nevin was quiet again. The last thing Kevin Harris wanted was to shoot anyone. But when they started shooting at Sammy, he turned and fired at the marshals. “I don’t have any doubt that it’s a slug from his thirty-ought-six that kills Mr. Degan.” Nevin paused. “I’m sorry about that, but he did that in self-defense.” The lawyer described the next twenty-four hours, the family preparing for an attack, the grief over Sammy’s death, and the snipers moving into place around the cabin, shooting Randy and Kevin, killing Vicki. “On a jet from Washington, D.C., they have decided they will alter the FBI rules of engagement. Instead of the situation that pertains under Idaho law, they have decided they will shoot to kill whenever they see an adult male with a gun.”

  Along the way, Nevin planted several seeds for later, like the seven shots Bill Degan fired before he died and the first shot Deputy Marshal Frank Norris heard during the shoot-out, “the distinctive sound of a two-twenty-three”—one of the marshals’ guns.

  “The evidence will be that they handled this situation terribly,” Nevin said. “They botched it. They blew it. I’m here because I didn’t want Kevin to be the fall guy for them.”

  PASSING LAWYERS TRIED to look nonchalant as they walked by Judge Edward Lodge’s courtroom on the sixth floor of Boise’s glass federal building. Like little boys strolling past a porn shop, gray men in navy blue suits and tweed jackets peeked into the plain courtroom, and lawyers from all over the city timed their business at the federal court building with the hope of witnessing some major league bombast. By mid-afternoon, David Nevin was finished with his straightforward, reasoned opening, and everyone knew it was time for the big gun. It was Gerry Spence’s turn.

  Howen and Lindquist anticipated the worst, a grandstanding mockery of the law. They had fought Gerry Spence’s appointment to the Weaver case and had tried to get him tossed off the case for talking to the media. Now they stared straight ahead while Gerry Spence pushed his cowboy hat aside, straightened his Western-yoked suede jacket, gathered his notes, and stood.

  Outside, on the strip in front of the courthouse, the protesters were gone. A handful had shown up the day before, carrying signs much more professional looking than the felt-pen-on-beer-box rantings at Ruby Ridge. An angular man in a suit paced with a sign that read: “The Most Despicable Criminals Are Those Who Wear a Badge. FREE Weaver & Harris.” A woman marched behind him with another sign: “Hide the Women and Kids. Here Comes the FBI.”

  But Kent Spence had gathered the protesters, patriots, and white separatists together and asked them to not create a stir. “We really appreciate your support, but we would be better off without it.”

  Bo Gritz was gone, too. He’d come the day before as well, pacing in a dark leather bomber jacket and chatting with reporters—”Any more questions from the commie-pinko faggots?” Bo had gotten the message from defense attorneys; they didn’t want any reminders in the gallery of Randy’s beliefs, and so Gritz had personally called Randy’s skinhead friends and told them that if they had to come, “be respectful, like you’re going to chur
ch.” A couple of them showed up, sheepish in jeans and T-shirts, their hair grown out into awkward fuzz with no discernible part. The skinheads were nice, misunderstood kids who just weren’t needed at this point of the case, Bo said. “There’s nothing wrong with a good haircut, but we don’t need people thinking this trial is about their beliefs.” As for himself, Bo wasn’t allowed in the courtroom because he was on the witness list.

  Gritz’s appearance was a bonus for a scraggly band of mostly older gentlemen who had come to Boise to watch the trial. They carried right-wing newspapers under their arms and wore wrinkled suits that had never been in style, not even twenty-five years before, when that particular strain of polyester was engineered. They sold hastily-pulled-together books and pamphlets about the case (Chapter 14—”Jews Dominate Federal Government”) and $6 tapes of Carl Klang’s epic “The Ballad of Randy Weaver” (“the army of your enemy/slayed your bride and only son/and nearly killed your close companion/when the shrapnel pierced his lung”). A classical music composer asked for advice on a fifteenth-century funeral piece he was composing (“Which instrument do you think would best represent Striker?”), and at least three radical right poets were inspired to write about the case, including one that rhymed “baby in diapers” with “infidel’s own snipers.”

  Largely ignored by the mainstream media at first, the Weaver case reverberated among the far right, among neo-Nazis, tax protesters, Birchers, and the conspiracy-fed old men who rode the elevator to the sixth floor of the federal building in Boise, went through a second metal detector, and waited in line for seats in the back of the courtroom.

  Reporters were there, too, regional mostly, but also from Seattle and Los Angeles. They filled a notebook page or two with the prosecutors’ technical opening statements and a few more with Nevin’s strong opening. They waited eagerly for Gerry Spence to begin.

  There were marshals in blue blazers everywhere, a handful in the parking lot, five in the courthouse lobby, several more walking throughout the building, five on the sixth floor, and at least six in the plain federal courtroom. Three uniformed security people stood watch at all four corners of the building and—two years before the bombing in Oklahoma City—the Boise federal courthouse had its first metal detectors, manned by deputy marshals. One day before the tax deadline, Boise citizens walked through a demilitarized zone of federal officers just to pick up a new 1040. Others rode the elevator to the sixth floor and waited outside the packed courtroom, hoping just to hear the famous Wyoming attorney.

  “WE REPRESENT A MAN we’re proud to represent.” Gerry Spence looked over his shoulder at Randy Weaver, who wore a striped tie and dark suit coat, his skinhead stubble grown into a gray-flecked pompadour, his once-skeletal cheeks filled out from jailhouse food. Spence had to make sure the jury liked Randy Weaver, and to do that, he had to show that he liked Randy Weaver, because Spence was damn sure that by the end of the trial, the jury was gonna like him. Earlier, he’d sat close to Randy and even put his arm around the smaller man.

  Goal number two was to show he was in the same boat as the jury, as a sort of tour guide, leading them all through the complexity and fear to the truth and eventually, to freedom. By the end of the trial, the jury would feel like prisoners themselves, and in that, at least, they could empathize with his client. And Spence would be there to feel their pain. “My proposition here today is that when we walk out of this courtroom together, all of us, that we all walk out, every one of us. The facts and the evidence in this case are going to establish that we all have the right to be free.”

  And then, the payoff, the quick, dark summation, the refrain they would hear for three months—”This is a case, simply put, that charges Randy and Kevin with crimes they didn’t commit in order to cover up crimes the government did commit.”

  Over the next two hours, he stuttered and misspoke a little, lost his place and overacted as he laid out his case, not quite the smooth delivery of David Nevin. Spence neophytes were confused. Where was the master orator? But those who’d read his books or attended his seminars knew the defense attorney didn’t mind stumbling now and again, for the same reason he didn’t mind writing about his flaws: his drinking and carousing. Heroes were great for selling books and attracting clients, but in the guts of case building and plot telling, juries and readers alike respond to real human beings.

  “Mr. Howen knows the evidence will be they didn’t belong to the Aryan Nations,” Spence grumbled, looking down at the prosecutor several times and shaking his head. “Yes, they called God Yahweh. They worshiped the same God, the same Jesus, but they were independent thinkers. And they wanted the truth.

  “They’d heard [Idaho] was a place where people were independent thinkers. They taught the kids themselves. Taught ‘em out of the McGuffey Reader. These children were bright and well read.”

  He was rolling through his rose-colored view of history by the time he got to Striker, the golden Labrador whose barking had started the shoot-out. “He was so dangerous that he could beat you to death with his tail. He and Sammy were close. Striker was his closest friend.” Of course, all of the kids had cute, cuddly animals—Rachel’s chicken, Rocky, and Sara’s mutt, Buddy.

  “They lived like ideal people,” Spence said. “It was an idyllic life. If the government had left them alone, they’d still be living it today.”

  But the government “underestimated the moral fiber of this man. Here’s what they did,” Spence said, speaking for federal agents: “‘If we can get a peson involved in a crime, then we got ‘em and they can either go to jail or the penitentiary for years and years, or they can snitch for us.’ That’s what they did to Randy Weaver and it’s called entrapment because he had never committed a felony in his life…. One day, those ATF men came to him and said, ‘We’ve got ya!’”

  Spence boomed out each bit of government deceit: the informant, the trick with the broken-down pickup truck, the magistrate telling Randy he could be required to reimburse the government for his attorney’s fees if he was found guilty, the probation officer giving him the wrong court date. Was it any wonder, he asked, that the Weavers distrusted the government? And how did the government respond to his fear? By demonizing the Weavers, by telling reporters they were dangerous white supremacists.

  “We always demonize our enemies in every war,” he said. “Japs, Russians, Germans. For the purposes of the war, we demonize them so we can kill them.”

  He went over all the events again with that Spence touch. “They threw rocks—these people who will tell you they didn’t want to be discovered—big boulders, to see if they could get something stirred up.”

  The judge had warned Spence about keeping his emotions in check, but the big Wyoming attorney became more animated as he described the shoot-out and, finally, the shot that killed Vicki Weaver.

  “It was a perfect shot on her head by a perfectly skilled sniper,” he said. He bent over, a make-believe baby in his huge paws, a frown on his suede face. Spence rocked the baby back and forth, his fingers clutched around it. “She bled to death in a matter of seconds. They couldn’t get the baby out of her arms.” And then his voice caught, and Gerry Spence choked up.

  It was just what prosecutors had been expecting. Kim Lindquist objected. “That better not be emotion, Your Honor.”

  It was a fastball, big and fat, right over the plate, and Spence turned on it quickly, throwing his most disbelieving look toward the prosecutors. “What we have here is something that is sad, and I’m sorry counsel can’t feel it.”

  CYNICS ARE WELL FED in a courtroom. When Gerry Spence finished his opening statements and sat down next to Randy Weaver, the scoring began. Howen was too stiff, too unemotional, even for a prosecutor. A former Marine, Lindquist was effective, but in the battle of number-two hitters, Nevin had shone. Spence’s marks were mixed—the expectations were always so high—but everyone appreciated his moral indignation and his emotion near the end.

  Of course Spence would argue his emotion was real
. In essence, it probably was. Spence often lectured young attorneys to “just tell the truth.” Juries, he said, will know if an attorney is being disingenuous. Unspoken was the idea that most important was that an attorney believe he was telling the truth, telling and retelling and rethinking his side of the truth until the attorney convinced himself that it was the whole truth. In that way, your clients could always be innocent, and their civil claims could always be just. Gerry Spence tried to teach young attorneys the ability to believe themselves. How else could he describe the Weavers as “ideal people … living an idyllic life,” when even their own relatives saw them as racist and paranoid, or claim the marshals threw “boulders” to stir up trouble?

  Of course, it’s an attorney’s job to tell one side of the story, and Spence didn’t hold the patent on shading the truth. After all, prosecutors had spent part of the morning explaining the Weavers sold their house in Iowa as part of a plan to get into a gunfight nine years later.

  It was ironic that in a case that began because of conspiracy theories, that’s what good lawyering resembled more than anything else. Both require careful selection of certain facts, rejection of anything that doesn’t fit, and the formation of a cohesive explanation of everything that—by its nature—is only part of the truth.

  But most juries know their job is to decide whose story contains less bullshit. By the end of that first day of U.S. v. Randy Weaver and Kevin Harris, this jury already was sifting through the rhetoric and mulling the basic questions it would use to decide the case: Was Randy Weaver set up? What started the gunfight? Why was Vicki Weaver killed? And the larger questions: Who was responsible for what happened? How do we expect our government to treat those in society with antisocial beliefs?