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

by Jess Walter

But in the right-wing survivalist movement, Bo Gritz had become a respected leader. He spoke at “Preparedness Expos,” and held paramilitary seminars called SPIKE—Specially Prepared Individuals for Key Events—all over the country.

  After the Weaver-Harris trial, Gritz moved from his home in Nevada to the hills near Kamiah, Idaho, a few hours south of Naples, where he bought two thousand acres with some partners—including Jack McLamb—and subdivided the land into thirty-acre parcels, selling them for as much as $3,000 an acre. He called it Almost Heaven, a covenant community for people sick of government and ready to prepare for the coming Apocalypse. For a few years, magazine and newspaper reporters, doing the requisite stories on the end of the millennium, scheduled stops at Almost Heaven and its sister community Doves of the Valley to check on the cabins and mobile homes and to hear Gritz’s increasingly bizarre theories.

  When 168 people died in the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, Gritz said it was a masterpiece, “a Rembrandt,” and therefore was more than likely the work of government agents trying to discredit white Christian patriots. He took a stab at mediating the Freemen standoff and in 1998 offered to help accused abortion-clinic bomber Eric Rudolph turn himself in. He claimed to have “inserted myself in the breech more than twenty-three times between embattled Americans and government … which has continued a swift descent into chaos and anarchy.”

  By the late 1990s, after an apparent slowdown in the “chaos and anarchy” business, Gritz found himself mired in marital and financial problems. In September 1998, Gritz’s wife of twenty-four years filed for divorce. A few days later a passing motorist near Orofino, Idaho, found Gritz sitting next to his pickup truck, shot in the chest with his own .45-caliber handgun.

  He wrote on his Web site that he’d almost joined “my comrades in arms who took their own lives because they thought their purpose was gone.” But Gritz recovered and worked hard to recapture his place in the downsized antigovernment movement. His latest vision was something he called FEW—the Fellowship of Eternal Warriors—a group he envisioned as “a dozen warrior-priests” who would join with him to “meet the increasing challenge of Satan’s globalism.”

  ITS FRONT PORCH SAGGING, Sara’s gardens grown over with weeds, Randy Weaver’s cabin and twenty acres were finally sold in the spring of 1995 to a lifelong friend of Kevin Harris. Except for law officers, defense attorneys, and a few Weaver friends, it had been vacant since Weaver and his daughters walked out the door—frightened and solemn—in August 1992.

  The Weavers’ friends Jackie and Tony Brown took care of the cabin for a while after Randy was arrested. They noticed every now and again a fresh set of car tracks on the old logging road or some other evidence that someone had been nosing around. They worried that people would break off parts of the cabin as souvenirs.

  For a few years, people stopped at the Naples General Store or the North Woods Tavern and asked how to get up to the cabin. Sometimes they were given directions, other times not. A sign near Ruby Ridge warned: “No trespassers. No sightseers.”

  But some people couldn’t resist. They wanted to stand on the rock outcropping and see just how defensible the knob was. They wanted to see the signs and cans used for target practice. They walked down to the Y in the logging road and tried to gauge the distances and the positions, tried to find proof that the marshals had been lying. Sometimes they hiked across the gully to where Lon Horiuchi had aimed at the house. They stared across that stretch of ground and looked for proof that he’d done it on purpose, although if they had come that far, they likely didn’t need much evidence to believe that Vicki Weaver had been murdered. Some of them stood on the porch and imagined it was them, that it was their wife holding their baby.

  The cabin deteriorated further and was remodeled at least once. In 1995, Weaver and his daughters returned to film a television news program and then quickly left. Randy didn’t like being up there, but his girls continued to visit and eventually bought the land back. Long grass covered the meadow where the initial shooting had taken place and new families moved into the creases between the Selkirk Mountains. Eventually, even the Deep Creek Inn opened under new management.

  IN AUGUST 1994, Chuck Peterson, Garry Gilman, David Nevin, and Ellison Matthews filed civil lawsuits on behalf of the Weavers and Kevin Harris, charging the government with wrongful death for killing Samuel and Vicki Weaver and with violating the rights and property of Kevin Harris and Randy Weaver. By the time they’d finished compiling all the damages they sought, the total claim was more than $300 million.

  In the meantime, Nevin and Peterson, who’d become close friends during the trial, returned to what they jokingly called their “ham ‘n’ egg” law practices. If it was tough to go from getting an acquittal on murder and conspiracy charges with Gerry Spence to arguing a case in traffic court, they didn’t let on. Both men continued to work on the Ruby Ridge case and their law practices thrived.

  In the Boise Yellow Pages, Chuck Peterson’s ad read: “Co-counsel with Gerry Spence, U.S. v. Weaver.” He was even hired by the National Rifle Association to help prepare for congressional hearings on the Branch Davidian standoff in Waco.

  Occasionally, Peterson felt twinges of something else, the feeling that his biggest case might be behind him. It was a new kind of pressure, he thought, a lighter version of what Spence must feel whenever he came into some backwater like Boise and was expected to make magic. Suddenly Peterson was the well-known attorney, the guy who’d won U.S. v. Weaver. He’d never be allowed to lose gracefully again. In Great Falls, Montana, Peterson gave a case the Spence treatment and was promptly growled back into place by a judge who said he didn’t allow such theatrics in his courtroom.

  David Nevin didn’t feel as changed by the case. Already one of the best criminal lawyers in Idaho, Nevin was haunted by the second-guessing temperament of a perfectionist. He had always believed in himself, that he was a great lawyer. His experiences with Spence only reaffirmed his own theories of defense law, and he never doubted that big cases would continue to come his way. He and Spence worked together on an environmental case, and after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, Nevin was approached about being the lead attorney for Timothy McVeigh. He considered it, but didn’t want to move to Oklahoma and leave his wife and two sons behind.

  He and his firm continued to represent Kevin Harris, who moved to Republic, Washington, got a job as a welder, and did his best to stay out of the spotlight.

  A few months after the verdict, Nevin was invited to speak to law students at the University of Idaho, where he’d gotten his degree. These law students were more conservative than the recovering hippies he’d gone to school with, and Nevin wondered if they’d grasp the themes of religious freedom and government accountability that he found so inspiring in the case.

  Nevin told the law students about his difficult decision to rest without calling any witnesses. He told them about the verdicts and how a deputy marshal had leaned over and told him that Kevin would have to go back to jail before being released. Nevin told the law students how he’d convinced the judge to set Kevin free right then and there.

  “Someday,” he said, “I hope that all of you will get the opportunity to walk out the front door with somebody who’s been charged with murder but isn’t guilty.” The law students leaped up and began clapping. David Nevin started crying.

  A MAN IN FLORIDA—one of Randy Weaver’s many supporters—paid Randy’s entire $10,000 fine. Weaver received money and letters of support from as far away as Europe and Korea, and more than a few letters from sympathetic, single women.

  On December 17, 1993, Randy got out of jail. He spent a couple of days in Boise and then flew home to Iowa to be with his daughters. Delayed by a snowstorm, his plane landed two hours late on the night of Sunday, December 19. The concourse was dark when Randy came striding toward his daughters, and they squealed when they saw him. He hugged the girls and they stood around the Des Moines Airport, crying and smilin
g. Rachel, who was twelve, patted her dad’s jailhouse potbelly, and he rubbed her head. Sara wiped her eyes with one hand and kept the other around her dad’s waist. After a few moments, Elisheba went to her daddy.

  They drove back to Keith and Julie Brown’s house, where Randy told stories about jail in between visits to the garage to smoke cigarettes. He stayed up until 3:00 a.m., talking about the government and about his heroes: Jesse James and Robin Hood. He said it was ironic that people called him a hero. “I just wanted to be left alone.” But, he added, “I believe in sticking up for your rights. If people learn that, well, that’s okay.”

  He was awake the next morning by six o’clock, scanning the news on television and watching his daughters get ready for their last day of school before Christmas break. Then he borrowed a Cocoa Beach T-shirt from Keith and went to see his probation officer, who said Randy wasn’t allowed to have any firearms or to leave southern Iowa. After school, Randy packed up his daughters and drove to a house he’d rented from relatives in Grand Junction, a town of 880 near his family’s home in Jefferson.

  They celebrated Christmas—although they called it “X-mas” because they believed it was a pagan holiday—and Randy set about raising his daughters. He was glad they were doing well in school, but he didn’t think school was that important. “The girls will meet men,” he said, “get married, and become wonderful homemakers like their mother…. I’m a chauvinist, I guess. But that’s their calling and that’s what’s best for them.”

  Randy lived off donations from his supporters and Social Security benefits from Vicki’s death while he waited for money from his lawsuit against the government. He found a girlfriend and mostly kept his beliefs to himself. Still, his attorneys thought he talked too much and some people in Grand Junction accused him of spouting hatred in a bar one night. Randy consented to a few interviews. A photo ran in the New York Times showing him in a leather coat, thumbs hooked in his back pockets, a steely, James Dean look in his eyes. An Iowa television station called him “the man who fought off hundreds of federal agents”; Time magazine called him “the Rebel of Ruby Ridge.”

  Friends said that in the first years after he got out of jail he seemed bitter some days, aimless others. He railed against the opinion that he’d put his children in danger, saying that everything he did was to protect his family. After his release from jail, Weaver said he didn’t fear the government anymore, but he hoped that someday the Justice Department would come clean about what had happened on Ruby Ridge. “It has to, so Vicki and Samuel didn’t die in vain,” Randy said. “I want them to bring the truth out. They know the truth, and I want it to be made public…. Everybody’s watching this case, and they’ve got to do what’s right.”

  DURING THE TRIAL, Des Moines television stations occasionally showed old videotape of Sara and Rachel. One day toward the end of the trial, Julie Brown walked into the living room and found Sara curled up in the fetal position, sobbing and refusing to go to school. She said everyone would see her on television and would talk about her. It crushed Julie to see Sara like that, so she and Keith called the TV stations and brought them the girls’ report cards to show them just whom they were hurting. They asked the stations to please stop showing videos of Sara and Rachel. They just wanted to be normal kids, Julie Brown said.

  A few months later, Gerry Spence called the Browns and said that Tom Brokaw wanted to do a piece on the Weaver case for his newsmagazine show Now. Spence said it was a great chance to show what the government had done and he said the girls needed to be interviewed for the show. Keith Brown explained how traumatic that could be for them, especially Sara.

  Spence pleaded, “Keith, you’ve gotta put the babies on.”

  But the Browns were still the girls’ legal guardians and Keith said no. So Spence went on without the girls, strolling along the logging road on Ruby Ridge with Tom Brokaw, talking about government and people’s rights. He pointed to an imaginary rabbit, and while Brokaw looked for the animal, Spence said Randy Weaver was sort of like that rabbit. As long as you left it alone, it was a peaceful animal. But if you stuck your finger in its home, it would fight back.

  For the next two years, Spence continued to talk about the case and to decry the government’s actions. He was a regular on Larry King’s television program and on others, and his fame continued to grow. After O. J. Simpson was arrested and charged with killing his ex-wife, Spence seemed to be on every television talk show, doing play-by-play about the Simpson trial. “Larry,” he’d say, “it’s like this …” and then he’d toss out some endearing analogy about geese as a way to explain the complicated rules of discovery.

  He took fewer cases himself, though he stayed involved with his Trial Lawyers College and his nonprofit public advocacy firm—Lawyers and Advocates for Wyoming.

  But most of his time was spent being Gerry Spence.

  He got his own cable TV show for a while, broadcast from his Jackson Hole log mansion, in which he spun O. J. trial strategy with his country-lawyer friends. But he seemed uncomfortable in front of the camera, as if he needed to see the jury to know how he was doing. His show didn’t last long.

  He fared better as an author. His sixth book, How to Argue and Win Every Time, was a bestseller, and more books followed in every conceivable genre. But he only wrote directly about the Weavers once—in a couple of slender chapters added to the paperback version of his 1993 book From Freedom to’ Slavery. In the book, he repeated misgivings about Randy Weaver’s beliefs—”Ideas can be as criminal as criminals”—and described fourteen-year-old Sam Weaver as a “child without an adult hair on his skinny white body.” Striker was, of course, “Old Yeller.”

  He wrote that the case would not be over until federal agents were held accountable for their role in the tragedy of Ruby Ridge. “The lesson of the Weaver case must never be the vindication of Weaver’s beliefs,” Spence wrote, “but, instead, the need of all Americans to believe as they will, without risk of persecution …”

  THE WASHING MACHINE—the one David Jordison had painstakingly rebuilt and was waiting to bring to Vicki—was still in his garage three years later. In a way, the Jordisons were like that, too, constantly waiting for the visit they never got to have with Vicki, like clocks frozen on the hour and minute of an earthquake.

  For almost seventy years, David Jordison had a farmer’s practical understanding of the world. Now it made no sense at all. David, Jeane, and Lanny had all come to believe that Vicki was killed intentionally, that the FBI instructed its agent to kill her, that he aimed at her face and pulled the trigger.

  Julie thought her parents would never heal as long as they believed the FBI had killed Vicki on purpose. Julie herself went back and forth. Once she began to realize some of the awful things the government did in the case, intentionally shooting a woman with her baby no longer seemed implausible.

  But she thought her parents could live with what had happened if someone could just convince them that the deaths of Sam and Vicki were essentially accidents, the end result of a series of misjudgments and blunders.

  For a while, Julie held out hope that someone in the FBI or the Justice Department would simply call her parents and explain how it happened and what they were doing to fix it. It would be easier for them all if they felt the truth was being told. She thought Gene Glenn—the FBI agent in charge of the standoff—could help her parents understand. But they didn’t hear from him and they came to believe that he’d known all along that Sammy had been shot in the back and that Vicki had been shot in the face. They figured he was only acting when he choked back tears and told them that Vicki was dead.

  Julie hoped that the long-delayed Justice Department investigation would bring out the truth, or at least acknowledge that the FBI had made a horrible mistake by giving its agents the power to kill without provocation. Even if they hadn’t killed Vicki on purpose, agents had drafted rules that gave the snipers permission to kill the family. The Justice Department investigation had at least to
punish the people responsible. By 1994, that seemed like the only thing that could help the family move on.

  “NOBODY, THANK GOD, was following the rules of engagement,” FBI director Louis Freeh said in January 1994. He said the rules were “poorly drafted, confusing, and can be read to direct agents to act contrary to the law and FBI policy.” Fortunately, he said, the sniper Lon Horiuchi wasn’t following those rules when he shot at the Weaver family. He was protecting a helicopter, which fell under normal FBI rules of engagement, Freeh insisted.

  Freeh said that no FBI agents committed crimes or engaged in any intentional misconduct. He doled out minor punishment to fourteen agents, half for poor evidence gathering and for failing to cooperate with the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

  Danny Coulson, who had been in charge at FBI headquarters when the rules of engagement were faxed back to Washington, D.C., was given a letter of censure.

  E. Michael Kahoe, involved in researching the rules of engagement and who later oversaw the flawed FBI review that found no wrongdoing, was reassigned to an FBI office in Florida. He was censured and suspended for fifteen days. Another agent involved in the review was suspended for five days.

  Richard Rogers, the head of the Hostage Rescue Team during the Weaver and Waco standoffs, voluntarily accepted reassignment. He was censured and suspended for ten days. In a carefully worded release, the FBI said, “his drafting and recommending of rules of engagement that arguably directed agents to act contrary to FBI shooting policy and law, though not causally related to the shooting death of Vicki Weaver, demonstrated performance below the level expected of a person in his position of responsibility.”

  Larry Potts, who had been in charge of the FBI’s Criminal Investigation Division and had approved—at least—drafting new rules before Rogers ever left Washington, was given a letter of censure, the same punishment Freeh gave himself once for losing an FBI cell phone. Potts had been promoted to acting deputy director, and at the same time that he censured his old friend, Freeh recommended he be made permanent deputy director, the number-two position in the FBI.