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

by Jess Walter

  In October, prosecutors and defense attorneys in the Weaver case agreed to a fairly open discovery policy—the amount of material they would share with opposing lawyers—and FBI officials were angry again. Howen and Lindquist requested reams of reports and other information from the FBI, much of which they were required to share with the defense team. Prosecutors received most of the material, but there were some documents the FBI at first refused to give up:

  an incident report on Horiuchi’s shots, including interviews with other HRT members, diagrams, and photographs;

  the flawed review of the shooting incident report, supervised by Kahoe, in which FBI officials concluded the HRT acted lawfully and appropriately and that no administrative action was necessary;

  the operations plan;

  a critique of the U.S. Marshals Service done by the FBI, which concluded, among twelve critical findings, that it was too risky for deputy marshals to take twenty-four trips into the woods around the cabin in the six months prior to the shoot-out.

  When asked for that marshals’ critique, an FBI agent said that he’d rather see a mistrial than give the report to defense attorneys in discovery. Lindquist tried to explain there would be trouble if they didn’t turn it over at that time and it showed up later as part of some Freedom of Information Act request for documents. The agent said the document had come from someone’s desk and was not in any official file that would ever be made public. Lindquist was stunned. Was the FBI agent implying they were going to destroy the critique? He “strongly advised against that.”

  By early 1993, Howen and Lindquist were getting pressure from defense attorneys, who were asking for every shred of paper having anything to do with the case. But the FBI still held back. Howen wrote to the FBI and listed some of the documents they still hadn’t received. “In other words,” he wrote, “we want access to everything.”

  Under greater Justice Department pressure, the FBI finally agreed, as long as its officials could black out sensitive information. Prosecutors were never allowed to see the entire FBI files, and it was weeks still before the controversial documents arrived in Boise, the last one on April 12, 1993, one day before the trial started.

  Howen was pinched in the middle, buried by requests for documents from the defense—some of which he figured were designed just to keep him busy—and stalled by defensive FBI officials.

  There also were problems with the FBI laboratory, which neglected some of Howen’s requests for help and moved slowly on others. Blood samples were allowed to spoil, and some of Howen’s requests for technical assistance were refused or simply ignored. He asked for an expert to reconstruct the shooting at the Y and was told “there’s no such thing,” and so he had to find his own expert.

  If that weren’t enough, Howen was fighting the FBI over who would help prosecutors with their investigation. Upset by the FBI’s lack of cooperation, Howen and Lindquist asked the marshals service and the ATF to help with interviews and evidence gathering. FBI officials were outraged. They were the investigative agency. It was improper for the marshals service to investigate the death of one of its own.

  When a Boise FBI agent complained about the other agencies’ involvement, Lindquist told him, “You guys can’t work with anyone.” Howen and Lindquist got the entire team together, two people from each agency, for a series of chilly meetings, but the problems only got worse. Howen and Lindquist wanted interviews in Iowa and the local FBI agents volunteered to call agents in Iowa, to conduct the interviews. Howen wanted local agents to go, and so he sent deputy marshals, in part because they didn’t have to “produce paper.” FBI agents were required to make written 302 reports of every interview. If those interviews could be done without creating documents, it was one less thing the government would have to turn over to the defense. When FBI agents heard the deputy marshals were conducting interviews, they were furious again.

  Howen and the local FBI had been at odds for three years, since Howen refused to prosecute a local sheriff after an exhaustive FBI investigation of corruption. One agent called Howen “very pompous and condescending.” The U.S. Marshals Service and the FBI also had a relationship that was strained at times.

  On the Weaver case, those agencies could barely work together. In the spring, an FBI agent questioned the key prosecution theory that Degan hadn’t fired before he was shot. (After all, seven shells from his gun were spread over a twenty-two-foot span at the Y, showing Degan was probably moving for cover when he fired, almost impossible if he’d been shot in the chest.) One of the marshals said he didn’t need to hear that and stormed out of the room.

  By the spring of 1993—even before the trial—each government agency blamed the others for the Weaver fiasco. FBI agents faulted ATF for investigating the Aryan Nations, which was clearly FBI turf. They blamed the U.S. Marshals Service for the sloppy operations that preceded the gunfight and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for its broad indictment. But people in those agencies believed the biggest mistake had been made by the FBI, killing Vicki Weaver. In the middle of all that, Ron Howen was trying to prepare a case.

  By the time the trial arrived, some of the principal law officers involved in the Weaver case had already contacted private attorneys to protect themselves against prosecution or civil suits. And while two men stood trial for murder, the agencies continued to snipe at one another behind the scenes and to cover their own mistakes. A case that had soured because of impersonal bureaucracy, miscommunication, and competing agencies now stank beyond recognition. In Boise, there was so much mistrust, the FBI agents and deputy marshals kept their hotels secret from one another, afraid the other agents might find out where they were staying.

  DAVE HUNT FROWNED for two solid days as he went over everything he’d done to try to resolve this case peacefully. After the week break, Hunt’s sincere testimony about his efforts to settle the case provided exactly what the government’s case needed: someone with common sense and humanity.

  It was clear the case had worn on Hunt. He was the only member of the six-man team who hadn’t gotten any time off, and during his testimony he looked tired. While the other deputy marshals had returned to their home states, away from the Weaver case, Hunt had worked nonstop on it since the shoot-out, gathering evidence and compiling documents in a three-ring binder that quickly became two binders and then three.

  Hunt testified about the meetings with Bill Grider and Alan Jeppesen and the letters back and forth, the frustration painted on his face. Just like earlier in the trial, the letters were powerful reminders of the Weavers’ beliefs and Hunt’s tireless efforts showed that the marshals service had tried to resolve the case peacefully. The jury seemed genuinely sorry for the sad, loping deputy marshal.

  When his turn came, Spence handled the witness differently than he had others. He questioned him gently, asking if he’d been troubled since the case ended.

  “It’s been a difficult case. There’s been some problems, yes.”

  Spence asked if Hunt wanted “from the depths of your heart, to settle this without bloodshed?”

  “I had promised the people in North Idaho that there wouldn’t be a confrontation, and I wasn’t going to allow it.”

  Spence asked if he had spent nights lying awake.

  “That’s correct.”

  Wasn’t he torn up, wondering if he should have done something differently?

  “That’s correct.”

  And, Spence asked reassuringly, “you did everything to the best of your ability?”

  “That is correct. Even more than has been brought out.”

  “There’s only so much you can do, isn’t that right, Officer?”

  “Yes,” Hunt said.

  Then Spence got to the point. Hunt needed cooperation from both sides, so that when Ron Howen refused to allow Hunt to negotiate with Weaver, it didn’t help matters, did it?

  “It required flexibility from both sides.” Hunt said he got enough cooperation from the government but not from Randy Weaver.
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  By the end of Hunt’s second day on the stand, Spence’s gentleness was turning to sarcasm.

  “Well, it must have been quite a thing for you to see this man … a man of his principles, holed up on that mountain, wanting to be alone, while the streets of this country were crowded with dope dealers and thugs and murderers. Wasn’t that quite an interesting dilemma for you?”

  “Objection.”

  For the next few minutes, that was the answer to most of Spence’s questions, but he didn’t seem to mind and he just continued asking questions that, coincidentally, showed the jury his view of the case.

  Later, Hunt described a meeting in which Bill Grider threatened to kill Randy and another meeting where Grider and his son had shaved their heads.

  “You said you saw that Mr. Grider had short hair?” Spence asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And his son had short hair?”

  “I believe I said a shaved head or very close cropped.”

  Spence looked down at the prosecution table next to the podium where he stood. “So we can understand how close, would it be any shorter or closer than Mr. Lindquist’s?”

  Lindquist—who was bald—nearly smiled. “As long as the record can reflect my hereditary situation.”

  “Shorter than Lindquist’s?” Spence asked again.

  “No.” Hunt said it was stubble, about a quarter of an inch.

  “Now you recognize that Michael Jordan for example and George Foreman and Telly Savalas all have shaved heads?”

  “I guess I can recognize that.”

  “You didn’t suggest that they open a risk-assessment file on Michael Jordan, did you?”

  Lindquist objected.

  Spence withdrew that question. “How about Mr. Lindquist?”

  Lindquist objected.

  “Has Mr. Weaver ever said anything to you?” Spence asked.

  From the witness chair, Dave Hunt looked at Randy Weaver sitting at the defense table, and he remembered that day in August, running down the hill toward Degan, with gunfire crashing all around him. “He shot at me,” Hunt said.

  “Well,” the attorney rumbled, leaning back at the podium and reveling in another Spence moment. “We’ll see about that later.”

  AS SOON AS THE GOVERNMENT had proved its conspiracy charge, prosecutors could begin to put on more evidence of the Weavers’ beliefs and their statements about starting an armed confrontation with federal officers. On May 3, nine days into the trial, prosecutors offered to the judge that many of the overt acts of the conspiracy had been proved. Lindquist made his argument in front of Lodge. “The record is now replete with overt acts at the hands of Vicki Weaver that mark her participation in the conspiracy as far as the failure to appear and the efforts of Vicki Weaver and Randy Weaver to oppose the marshals service and law enforcement generally, to bring him to justice.”

  “As you know,” Spence said, “prosecutors never file a case any more without including a count for conspiracy.” He argued that the letters were written by Vicki Weaver and not Randy, and that they were protected free speech. One was even a letter to her cousin.

  So far, except for Cooper’s testimony, Kevin Harris’s name had only come up a few times, and with so many letters floating around, Kevin was only named in one exhibit—a phone number in Randy’s wallet. Nevin had watched most of the first three weeks of trial, popping up every once in a while to remind the jury that they were seeing no evidence connected to Harris. Now he asked the judge to rule that the prosecution hadn’t proved conspiracy against Harris.

  The judge ruled that, so far, he saw no conspiracy by anyone.

  HUNT’S BOSS, RON EVANS, testified about the drive he and Deputy Marshal Jack Cluff took up Ruby Ridge, where they saw Sara with a pistol and Samuel with a knife and Randy yelled at them to leave.

  Spence asked if he remembered Sara’s gun, and Evans said he would “never forget it.” Then he asked Evans if he remembered saying in his grand jury testimony that he “did not see one with her.” Evans also had conflicting testimony about the dog, saying once he could see it nipping at his tires and the next time, that he couldn’t see its head. Which of these stories was the truth, Spence asked.

  “I believe I was telling the truth in both instances.”

  As the witnesses paraded through, the rancor increased between Spence and the prosecutors. At one point, Spence asked for a meeting away from the jury to complain about the government’s presentation of evidence, which he said was “kind of like a sideways lizard on about two legs.

  “I want to cry and moan and that sort of thing for a little while, Judge, but it would be better for me to do it outside the presence of the jury,” Spence said.

  “But probably not as effective,” Lodge shot back.

  The government’s case shifted to a string of people who’d come in contact with the Weavers during their eighteen-month holdout in the cabin, witnesses who testified that Vicki or the children would meet them at the base of the driveway with guns and that the family talked often about Jewish conspiracies and the evil federal government.

  “He said if they came to take him, he’d die fighting,” said George Torrence, one of Weaver’s neighbors.

  But on cross-examination by Spence, Torrence said he’d been invited in for cookies and water and that the family seemed very tight-knit, clean, and well fed. They never actually pointed any guns at him, Torrence said. They were polite, and Striker wasn’t vicious, just noisy. He said Randy told him he didn’t like the German kind of Nazis, but that they had some pretty good ideas.

  Next, prosecutors called Randy’s friend from the Aryan Nations, Rodney Willey, to testify about the family’s resolve to fight the government and the long vigil in which they’d all agreed not to surrender.

  But Willey—the big, furry electronics worker—was a boon to the defense. He described Vicki in such warm terms, his nose turned red, and he started crying. She was sweet and lovable, he said, a woman in charge of day-to-day life. “She had the respect of the entire family; they never doubted her authority.

  “Her fear was that the government would remove her children from her presence and distribute them in the welfare system and she would never see her family again. She said she couldn’t live with that.”

  Spence drew Willey’s testimony out slowly and tenderly. Willey described Sam as a history buff who had memorized the Constitution and the names of all the presidents. He and Striker were like the boy and dog from the Disney movie Old Yeller, Willey said. And Sara! She was like a carbon copy of Vicki. “In the absence of Randy and Vicki, she could handle any situation.”

  But his most compelling description was of Vicki and Randy together. “A love story,” Willey called it. “Every time I seen ‘em together, they were holding hands. They often embraced each other, and they never argued or fought.”

  At the defense table, Kevin Harris wiped at his tears.

  Howen tried to take back the momentum, asking about some of Sara’s poetry, which he implied was racist. And he reminded the jury that there was someone whose name hadn’t been mentioned for weeks. “You talked about a number of the family members here,” Howen said to Willey. “What can you say about William Degan?” Nothing, Willey said.

  Bill Grider was next—one of the strangest and most hostile prosecution witnesses ever called in any trial. When the bailiff asked if he solemnly swore to tell the truth, Grider answered, “My yeas will be yeas and my nays will be nays.”

  Howen started in on Grider, hoping to get him to confirm that Randy and Vicki were set on having a gun battle with federal officers. But he also hoped that by having Grider testify, the jury could understand what kind of people these separatists were, what kind of man Randy was. Grider glared at the prosecutor and seemed so unwilling to cooperate, he was nearly worthless as a witness. He said he loved Randy and never threatened to kill him. Most of his answers were so cockeyed, the jury didn’t know what to make of them.

  Trying to establish Grider’s t
ies to the Aryan Nations, Howen asked if he had become associated with any groups in northern Idaho.

  “Well, I played softball for Green’s Cleaners.”

  Next were witnesses from Iowa—the old Bible Study members Shannon Brasher and Vaughn Trueman and the newspaper reporter who’d written the story about the “300-yard kill zone.” Brasher and Trueman seemed embarrassed to have to testify against their old friend, and they spoke warmly about Randy and Vicki. Yeah, they said, the Weavers believed the world was going to end.

  Then came former Idaho friends Terry Kinnison and Sam Wohali. Along with Ruth Rau, their testimony was more damaging—describing Weaver’s racist views and wild, confrontational behavior—but defense attorneys attacked their stories, too. The government had set up the Raus’ remote phone line for free. Kinnison, they pointed out, tried to get the FBI to investigate Weaver way back in 1985 and had a land dispute with him.

  Another government witness was Mike Weland, the weekly newspaper reporter who’d interviewed the Weaver family. He described a spotless house and a friendly family. He said they weren’t really threatening, and that he was impressed by their closeness. Also a part-time police officer, Weland said he talked to the FBI after the standoff began and told them that Vicki Weaver was the strength of the family and that they needed to separate her and Randy to end the standoff. The next day, Vicki was killed.

  Even with the trial going so well, Spence complained to Judge Lodge that the jury was being unfairly prejudiced by repetitive testimony about Weaver’s beliefs.

  On May 18, after twenty days of testimony and constant bickering between the lawyers, the weary judge told Spence he was wrong: “To date, about seventy-five percent of the witnesses called by the government have been favorable to the defense.”

  IT WASN’T RIGHT to hang all the Weaver’s guns on a Peg-Board, Spence argued. “It’s a trophy board: ‘Look at all the weapons we got from this poor jerk’s house, he must be an evil man.’”