Ruby Ridge

Background

In 1983, the Weaver family of Iowa, composed of ex-Green Beret and factory worker Randy Weaver, his wife Vicki, and their children, moved to a cabin in isolated Boundary County, Idaho in order to protect themselves from the corrupt world, to escape the apocalypse, and to homeschool their children. Here, Randy Weaver started getting into white supremacy, the sovereign citizen movement, and various tax protester ideas.

Weaver came to the attention of several US law enforcement agencies when he refused to pay his taxes. He and his family once visited a local meeting of the Aryan Nations. Weaver was later approached by an undercover Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) agent who bought a pair of illegally sawed off shotguns from him, then tried to enlist him in infiltrating the Aryan Nations in exchange for dropping the firearms charges. Weaver refused, and in 1991 Weaver got arrested and booked for the crime. He made bail, and a trial date was set for February 19 but moved to the 20th. Unfortunately, a clerical error resulted in Weaver getting a letter that said his trial was supposed to begin in March. As a result, Weaver got in trouble for accidentally skipping bail as a result of miscommunication, which only intensified his distrust of the government.

His wife Vicki had a habit of sending "apocalyptic" letters to government officials (she once called a U.S. attorney a "Servant of the Queen of Babylon"), the content of which caused law enforcement officials to view her as a "religious zealot prepared to kill her own children rather than surrender".[1]

US marshals spent over a year trying to get Weaver, who was now a federal fugitive, to turn himself in after he and his family fortified themselves in their cabin. Marshals installed surveillance cameras around the property to help them formulate a plan to arrest Weaver. On April 18, 1992, a black helicopter that was flying over the property for Geraldo Rivera's TV show Now It Can Be Told was allegedly fired on by the Weavers. On August 21, six marshals were sent to scout the area for places to ambush and arrest Weaver. Weaver's dogs were alerted, leading to a confrontation between the marshals and Weaver, one of his dogs, his 14-year-old son Samuel, and his friend Kevin Harris. The dog and Samuel were killed in the ensuing firefight, as well as one of the marshals. A 12-day siege by the FBI ensued, culminating with Randy being wounded and Vicki being killed. Eventually, after mediation from Bo Gritz and the promise of legal representation from Gerry Spence, Weaver surrendered, was found not guilty of all charges except failure to appear (for which he only ended up paying a fine), and later received a large settlement in exchange for dropping a suit against the government.

This incident, combined with the Waco siege a year later, led many on the far right militia movement to believe that the government was out to get them, and inspired Timothy McVeigh to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City.

You can go have a look if you like. It's somewhere near Bonners Ferry, Idaho. The locals probably grew sick of people asking for directions to the cabin site long ago, though.

During that period Randy Weaver said his religion was "Yahweh separatist", which is a nice way of saying "Christian Identity," but after the trial he renounced most of his former beliefs and now professes to be an agnostic.

gollark: Just use a deepfake of Donald Trump for all public sessions.
gollark: He would make a dictatorial dictator.
gollark: Er. No.
gollark: Um.
gollark: *cannot tell if meant ironically*
  • See the Wikipedia article on Ruby Ridge. for a much more detailed account of this man's problems.

References
  1. STANDOFF AT RUBY RIDGE Washington Post, 9-3-1995
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