The Ruby Ridge Standoff

The Ruby Ridge standoff still lingers after more than 30 years. But who was at fault for the lives lost? Listen in today to learn all about this dark spot in American history. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:08Speaker 03

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:18Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here, too. And this is Stuff You Should Know, the podcast, the early 90s black helicopter edition.

• 1:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is Ruby Ridge, the incident, the standoff, the siege. What do you call this?

• 1:36Josh Clark?

  The beginning of the far-right militia movement being born in the United States, for sure. It was huge, huge. It was a huge example of government overreach. It was... This researching, this was really hard, man. This was a hard one for me. It was just, it's just such an awful story all around. It's just terrible.

• 1:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, so this is, this occurred when I was, I guess, like a... Third year in college or so.

• 2:05Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 2:06Speaker 02

  And that was, you know, I was, I've talked on the show before about like us not having TV or cable and stuff. And so I wasn't as newsy then as I am now.

• 2:17Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 2:17Speaker 02

  But this was a big deal. And I remember this and then Waco, literally right after happening, which we should do a Waco episode at some point, too.

• 2:26Josh Clark?

  Yeah, unfortunately, we should.

• 2:28Speaker 02

  Uh, I just remember at the time being like, wow, okay. I don't think I really agree with the, these people that are having this standoff. But at the same time, it looks from, as an outsider, like the government is just going in guns blazing and kind of murdering people. And it turns out both are kind of true for me.

• 2:50Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure. I mean, you don't have to sympathize with the Weavers or any of their supporters to still be like, this is just messed up.

• 2:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:59Josh Clark?

  That's what I'm saying. The whole situation's messed up. I don't agree with basically any of their views, but yeah, it's just, I say we get into it and everybody can make up their own minds because it's definitely one of those stories, you know?

• 3:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. So just in the broadest two sentence overview, Ruby Ridge was a standoff in the Ruby Ridge area of Idaho. And when did it finally go down? Ninety-two?

• 3:23Josh Clark?

  Uh, yes.

• 3:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, nineteen ninety-two, that was many, many, many months long in the making in which the US government had a standoff with a, a family of children, a couple of adults and the rest were basically kids.

• 3:40Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:41Speaker 02

  Um, and it ended in, uh, lost lives on both sides when there's absolutely no reason why it should have. And this is that story of the Weaver family.

• 3:52Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Um, I guess you can start back at the very beginning when the Weaver family itself began. Um, Vicky, uh, who would become Vicky Weaver, she was born Vicky Jordison, and her husband Randall Weaver got married in nineteen seventy-one. They lived in Iowa, I think Cedar Falls, right? And she was a secretary for Susan Roebuck. He had just been discharged as a Green Beret honorably from the Army and had gotten a job working at the tractor factory for John Deere. She can do a lot worse than that. So they were like a very normal, working class couple, just starting out in life.

• 4:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, so this was, like you said, 1971. They had a daughter named Sarah in 76, and then two more kids, a boy named Sammy, and then a daughter named Rachel, all over the next six years. And those were, you know, there was a kid that would come later that we'll get to. But around the latish 70s, kind of after the latest Arab-Israeli conflict came around, Vicky started, basically kind of thought that was a sign of the end times, biblical end times. She kept having these recurring dreams of these omens about a house on a hill where they could be safe and hide. And she thought the end times were coming,

• 5:15Speaker 02

  and she started sharing this stuff with Randy.

• 5:17Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and apparently it really jived with him because he got on board as well. I hadn't seen what exactly was the impetus that triggered all that, so thanks for clearing that up. But long story short, they ended up becoming religious extremists together, and also like apocalyptic religious extremists, not just garden variety religious extremists. Enough so that they moved. And not only did they move, they gave an interview to the local paper in Iowa, saying that they were moving, and in fact, they wanted to go find a place, build a place where they could have a 300-yard defensible kill zone.

• 5:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:56Josh Clark?

  And your local paper...

• 5:57Speaker 02

  It's not funny, but yeah.

• 5:58Josh Clark?

  No, but I mean, your local paper is probably like, this is hot, hot news.

• 6:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. Hot off the presses, local couple moving to set up defensible shelter, not here.

• 6:10Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 6:11Speaker 02

  They moved in 83. I saw 15 acres, I saw 20 acres, regardless, somewhere in that neighborhood of land, the freshwater spring.

• 6:20Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's a big one.

• 6:21Speaker 02

  This time, they were in Idaho, near Naples, in the Ruby Ridge area. And this area had become a... Just sort of a place where if you didn't trust the government, if you didn't like paying taxes, if you maybe were a member of a Christian identity group or a white supremacist group, you may end up in this sort of rural area of Idaho at the time.

• 6:42Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure. This is like a, it's just, I think it's still very much that way too, actually. I don't know what kicked it off, but I think it started in the 70s in earnest. So by the time they moved there, it was, it was in full swing. That's just kind of where you went. And they actually built their own home, from what I saw. And pictures of it are like, wow, they did a really good job. It's like a two-story, nice-looking cabin. They built a bunch of outbuildings. They basically built themselves a compound. And they did it largely using scraps and plywood and stuff like that. And they started living the survivalist life, like, living off the land, planting vegetables. They homeschooled the kids, of course.

• 7:24Speaker 02

  Which was illegal, by the way.

• 7:26Josh Clark?

  I didn't know that. In Idaho or in the US?

• 7:28Speaker 02

  In Idaho, at the time, at least, it was not legal to homeschool. So, not saying that that was part of their, you know, illegalities, but I guess technically it was.

• 7:37Josh Clark?

  But I think it does kind of like get a point across. It's a little subtle. Like, they couldn't have cared less if the state or the federal government told them that they couldn't homeschool their kids. That would just be one more reason that they hated the government. And in fact, one of the big movements in this area was essentially like local sovereignty, where the highest authority in the entire country for a specific area was the local sheriff. Anything beyond that was fraudulent. So, yeah, they wouldn't have listened to the state government saying they couldn't homeschool their kids at all.

• 8:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. Didn't have power, no, technically no, like, official running water. I think they were able to get water to the house via that spring. But, you know, they were living the rural lifestyle. They took in a young teenage boy who had what sounds like a really pretty awful home life. His name was Kevin Harris. And he kind of came and went for a little while, and then eventually, basically was kind of adopted by the family. And he ended up staying there pretty much full-time at a certain point.

• 8:44Josh Clark?

  Yes. So he wasn't like, they didn't adopt him because he was like, oh, I thought, I'm pretty sure it's the end times too.

• 8:51Speaker 02

  Right.

• 8:52Josh Clark?

  He was just like a kid that they helped out, which is pretty great. So he was, you know, he would come and go. He was just kind of living his life and he could, he just knew he had a place to stay and a place where he could eat when things got bad at home with the Weavers, which I think says a lot about them.

• 9:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. And while they did kind of chum up to some of the Aryan Nation groups around there, they were never like official members. They would go to a meeting sometimes. They were very much aligned with the Christian identity movement, which is, I mean, we can't get into the weeds too much here, but one of the main tenets is that Jews are literally the spawn of Satan, that Eve and the serpent bore, you know, Jews as babies and that non-white people are mud people from a different creation. They are, I mean, how deep do you want to go here?

• 9:50Josh Clark?

  Well, also that if you are of Celtic or Germanic, Germanic descent, you're the chosen people. You're the, you're the people who everyone else needs to cater to, basically. And that also they're the, the lost tribe of Israel, which legitimizes them all the way back to pre-Christian days.

• 10:08Speaker 02

  Right. Okay. That's deep enough.

• 10:10Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So Randy Weaver came on the Federalist's radar as far back as 1985 because the Secret Service showed up one time at the compound and said, hey, one of your neighbors told us that you've been threatening to shoot Ronald Reagan and somebody tried that before. So we take it pretty seriously. Are you going to shoot Ronald Reagan? Yes? No? Maybe?

• 10:38Speaker 02

  Which bubble did he fill out?

• 10:39Josh Clark?

  He said no. He adamantly said no. He said this neighbor that told you that is basically trying to pre-internet swap me because they want, we have, we're having a property dispute and they're just trying to bring the heat down on me. And I guess his explanation was persuasive because that's as far as it went, as far as I could tell.

• 10:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's as far as it went. It could have been a, I mean, it could have been that innocent because they, you know, some of their neighbors they were friendly with, some they didn't like very much. Some of their neighbors complained that kids were wearing Nazi armbands, that Randy had fired shots at houses before. It was, you know, it was pretty rough and tumble out there. In 1988, Randy ran for sheriff, like you're saying, sort of the highest calling that you could have in that crowd. And he was, it was basically a platform of like, I'm anti-government. In fact, I carry around these get out of jail free cards and if you don't, if you're not a non-violent criminal, then

• 11:38Speaker 02

  you're going to get a second chance with me and I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna be a government sheriff, basically.

• 11:45Josh Clark?

  Right. It's the Posse Comitatus movement, which is kind of basically what I was talking about, that based on this act from 1878, federal troops have to stay out of law enforcement. So those black helicopters and UN soldiers and all the stuff that everybody's worried about were just totally illegal. And I guess by that token, the FBI would be totally illegal or the ATF or the DEA, like there just isn't supposed to be such a thing as federal law enforcement. That was the platform he ran under the party.

• 12:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. I think that's a pretty good break time. What do you think?

• 12:19Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 12:20Speaker 02

  All right. We'll take a little early Blake, early Blake? Take an early break.

• 12:24Josh Clark?

  Blake just set up like, yes, I've been waiting for this for 16 years.

• 12:29Speaker 02

  And we'll be back after this.

• 12:43Josh Clark?

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• 15:38Speaker 02

  All right, so this is a time in the mid-'80s, sort of late-'80s, when militia groups were starting to sort of be a thing, be in the news a little bit more. And so, of course, the FBI is going to start to begin undercover ops to infiltrate these groups and see what the heck is going on. And that is exactly what happened at an Aryan Nation meeting when Randy met an undercover agent. His name was Kenneth Fattily, and he was going by the name Gus Magasono. Great undercover name, I guess.

• 16:10Josh Clark?

  Yeah, but not exactly Germanic or Celtic in origin, you know?

• 16:15Speaker 02

  He worked for the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, the ATF. And over the course, like, this whole operation was years and years long because it took like three years for him to get a few different meetings with Randy, and which culminated in, if you ask the FBI, Randy saying, "Hey, I want to sell you some illegal, sold-off shotguns." If you ask Randy, he'll say, "No, man, I wasn't trapped. I didn't want to sell the guns. The guy asked to buy guns." Several times with me saying, "No, I don't want to do that," until I eventually relented and sold him these illegal firearms.

• 16:54Josh Clark?

  Right, so however it happened, the feds now had Randy Weaver in their grips. So they thought. This is a very routine thing that federal law enforcement does, and I think local as well. Like they they will bust you on some charge that's fairly small.

• 17:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:12Josh Clark?

  Still enough that you could get prison time. They're going to take you away from your family. It's going to be bad news for you. But they'll totally forget about the whole thing if you start informing for them.

• 17:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, he was a small fish, right?

• 17:23Josh Clark?

  Sure, right. And then they use that that fish's bait to get bigger and bigger, bigger fish, right? So he was just going to have to do what he normally does, but every once in a while he'd meet secretly with some ATF handler and tell them everything he knew and who was who and who was leading the stuff. And Randy Weaver thought about it and he said, you know what? You can go straight to hell. I'm not going to be an informant and you can press the charges if you want to. The ATF did not like this at all. From what I saw, they essentially took that almost personally.

• 17:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:57Josh Clark?

  At the very least, they came at him like they took it personally.

• 18:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. Vicki was pretty upset as well. Apparently she wrote a warning letter, and this is in quotes, "to Aryan nations and all our brethren of the Anglo-Saxon race." She filed an affidavit, which you knew trouble was coming. She filed an affidavit with the county clerk saying, we might have to defend ourselves from, you know, with firearms because the federal government is going to come after us. And we want to file this affidavit right now.

• 18:27Josh Clark?

  I that wouldn't even cross my mind. That's pretty forward thinking, you know?

• 18:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure.

• 18:32Josh Clark?

  So that was actually very prescient, too, Vicki writing that because they and they would end up having to defend themselves by attacks from the federal government. And that will come a little bit later. First, in January of 1991, the ATF, I guess they didn't arrest him on the spot when they came and said that, you know, they wanted him to be an informant. So a few months later, they decided to take Randy Weaver into custody. But to do that, remember, he had a 300-yard kill zone.

• 19:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:05Josh Clark?

  He had a cabin up on a mountain. You know, just walk up and tell somebody like that, come on, you're coming with us to jail. So they actually, the ATF posed as, and by the way, ATF is the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and firearms, another ostensibly illegal agency. They posed as like their car had been broken down, I guess, on Ruby Creek Road, which is the main road that led up to the cabin. And they basically played on the Weaver's propensity to help strangers, I guess.

• 19:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, so they arrest him, they, he pleads not guilty. He's released on bond, a $10,000 bond on his own recognizance, which is a little surprising. Vicky, his wife, again, writes a letter to the US Attorney for the state of Idaho that she addressed as the servant of the Queen of Babylon, and saying that we refuse to bow to your evil commandments, whether we live or whether we die. So she, you know, she sent a clear message that like, we're not fooling around here. And I know we were on your radar, but you might as well really put us on your radar, because we're not coming with you and you can't make us.

• 20:19Josh Clark?

  Or take us off your radar. Don't even mess with us, you know?

• 20:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, ideally.

• 20:25Josh Clark?

  So Randy had a trial set. Remember, he's been out, he's out on bail, but he still has to go to court to face these firearms charges. And again, he sold firearms to an undercover federal agents of, it was a federal law that he broke. So these are federal charges and they can be pretty serious. But it was still, again, like you said, it was pretty small potatoes as far as firearms charges go, or just charges that you could face in general at the time, right? But it was enough that, you know, they had a trial set for him and it was set for February 19th, 1991. And for some reason or another, it was moved by one day to February 20th, 1991. Well, when the government does that, or the court system does that, they have to alert you.

• 21:09Josh Clark?

  So they sent Randy a letter saying, hey, we've moved your trial date to March 20th.

• 21:17Josh Clark?

  And of course, it wasn't March 20th, it was February 20th. And there was essentially a typo that the author of the letter, a probation officer, had written. And so, of course, Randy Weaver didn't show up on February 20th and a bench warrant was issued for his arrest for failure to appear.

• 21:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, so this is, has been sort of debated here and there about the mistake and the error that he didn't even have the right court date to begin with. But all indications point to the idea that he was not going to come anyway. So I'm not saying it like didn't matter at all, but they said, hey, we're not coming. I don't think he planned on coming, even if he had the right date. But the long and short of it is, he didn't go. And so, they, you know, they were really on their radar now. They're like, we've got a real situation here. And this is when this long, like, really long surveillance program started in the summer of 1991, when they, they kind of staked out around the property and around the house

• 22:17Speaker 02

  with, you know, binoculars and things and surveillance cameras that they'd set up in the woods. And they were just tracking what this family was doing. They, they had a couple of plans to go in non-violently. One of them was to cut the water supply, I guess, from the spring to the house to flush them out. Because at a certain point, they weren't even like leaving the house, you know? They were having food brought in and stuff because they knew what was going on.

• 22:41Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 22:42Speaker 02

  Another plan they had was, they were believers in the menstrual cycle, meaning you were unclean and filthy. So when you had your menstrual cycle in that family, you had to go stay in the birthing shed on the property, one of the outbuildings during the duration of your menstruation. So they were like, all right, when Sarah, the oldest teenager, has her next menstrual cycle, she's going to be sent to the shed. And when the kids bring in food and stuff out there, we'll grab them. And that, they'll immediately give up because we have the kids. But then, I guess someone said, well, wait a minute, that's kidnapping.

• 23:15Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 23:16Speaker 02

  You can't do that. We don't have a warrant for any of the children, so that's, we can't go with that plan.

• 23:20Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 23:21Speaker 02

  So they went with the worst plan.

• 23:23Josh Clark?

  They did go with the worst plan, but it was in very, very, it was a terrible plan in really slow motion that played out over a really long time, throughout which so many people had so many chances to be like, guys, wait a minute, what are we doing? This is like a fairly small federal firearms charge. The guy sold two sawed-off shotguns and then didn't appear in court. Like, we're spending millions of dollars on this, bringing huge resources to bear. And it doesn't really make sense until you find that the ATF, which was originally the people with this case, they brought in the federal marshals, the marshals eventually brought in the FBI, and the ATF told everybody else that, number

• 24:05Josh Clark?

  one, Randy Weaver was among the biggest firearm suppliers in the United States.

• 24:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, not true at all.

• 24:13Josh Clark?

  With no evidence whatsoever. The only thing that they had him on record doing was selling two sawed-off shotguns. And the other thing that they told, the ATF told everybody, was that he was responsible for a string of bank robberies in Montana. There's no evidence whatsoever that he ever robbed a bank or had anything to do with these bank robberies. And yet, those two pieces of information transformed this from, there's some weirdo family up in the mountains with guns, who, and the dad has a couple of, he sold a couple of sawed-off shotguns and then come to court, to, we need to literally bring the FBI, the Secret Service, the Marshal Service, everybody, to camp out for almost a year, observing this house to figure out how to get that guy out of there.

• 24:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was an extreme reaction. I don't think there are a lot of people that would disagree with that.

• 25:02Josh Clark?

  No.

• 25:03Speaker 02

  So, they're watching this house. The house, like we mentioned, is very defensible. This is the house on the hill, where they were to be safe from the dreams. When they did go out, they would send, usually they would send the kids out ahead, supposedly, with guns to kind of investigate and see what was going on. They had neighbors recording license plates of people who came and went. They didn't, the Weavers didn't have a telephone, but they tapped phones at the general store. Helicopters were taking aerial photographs.

• 25:35Speaker 02

  They claim, the feds claim that in March 92, they actually visited and said on the loudspeaker and via some sort of phone call that, hey, you gotta surrender. Although Randy would contend that, no, until it all went down, no one said anything to me about surrendering.

• 25:53Josh Clark?

  It's a big deal because that's, that's the first step in a situation like that is telling the person, just go ahead and surrender. We're, we just want to take you to jail, basically. And them not doing that is huge. That's a big deal. Again, they were watching this place for basically a year and had plenty of opportunity to do that. Somebody I did not see coming into the story is Geraldo Rivera.

• 26:20Speaker 02

  Right.

• 26:21Josh Clark?

  And yet he has-

• 26:23Speaker 02

  He was everywhere.

• 26:24Josh Clark?

  He has a minor role in it. In 1992, he hired, April of 92, he hired a helicopter to fly over the cabin. Because by this time, word was out that there was this family in Idaho that was essentially in this long standoff with the feds. And he said, or the helicopter pilot said, or somebody said, that they shot at the helicopter when it flew over their compound. But apparently that was untrue. And I think even the surveillance team that was watching the place at the time said they didn't shoot at the helicopter. But you know Geraldo, he's like, it's gonna be, we won't get any ratings if they don't shoot at the helicopter. So just say they shot at the helicopter.

• 27:03Speaker 02

  So that is, that was surprising. The most surprising thing to me was an appearance by another human. Because somewhere in this, in this, you know, standoff while they were being surveilled, I guess Vicky and Randy got a little randy and had another baby. It's, in my opinion, it wouldn't lead me to feel amorous and in the baby making way. But I guess things happened. They had a daughter in late 1991, Elishiba or Elishiba? I'm not sure they pronounced it.

• 27:38Josh Clark?

  I'm going with Elashiba.

• 27:40Speaker 02

  Elashiba? Okay. Right there in that birthing shed is where they had Elashiba. And, you know, so that happened. Just know that there's a, now a month's old baby on the scene as well.

• 27:56Josh Clark?

  For some reason, that just made me really uncomfortable, the way you put that.

• 28:00Speaker 02

  That happened?

• 28:01Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so that happened. I think, let's go with El Shiba. I think you were right the first time. That makes way more sense.

• 28:07Speaker 02

  No, I think that's what you said.

• 28:09Josh Clark?

  No, I said El Shiba.

• 28:11Speaker 02

  Oh, El Shiba.

• 28:12Josh Clark?

  Oh, no. I said El Shiba. I don't know. It's one of those.

• 28:16Speaker 02

  Hey, how about this? We're both right.

• 28:17Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 28:19Josh Clark?

  So, this is, that was 1991?

• 28:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, late 91 is when she's born.

• 28:23Josh Clark?

  In the birthing shed, on the property, right?

• 28:26Speaker 02

  That's right. Or the, you know, menstrual shame shed.

• 28:28Josh Clark?

  Right. It depends on the situation, I would guess, right? So, everything is about to go down, Chuck, and it's going to go down really hard and really publicly. The whole thing starts in earnest. The standoff that everybody talks about when they mention Ruby Ridge is, it started on August 21st, 1992. It was a Friday. And that morning, a few, I think they were federal marshals, right, showed up on the scene, and they were gonna just do some more standard surveillance. And some stayed at an observation post, and some others drove up toward the road on the way to the cabin.

• 29:10Josh Clark?

  They showed up at like 4:30. This is not new, or weird, or different, but on this-

• 29:15Speaker 02

  4:30 a.m.

• 29:16Josh Clark?

  4:30 a.m. You're right. Sorry.

• 29:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:18Josh Clark?

  A few hours later, they were getting closer and closer to the compound, and apparently they attracted the attention of the dogs, the weavers' dogs. And the compound was in a state where if the dogs are suddenly going nuts, you get your gun and go see what the dogs are barking at. And that's exactly what they did.

• 29:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, you know, I know I mentioned that these were kids, but I just want to drive home the point that you had Vicky and Randy, the parents that were there, you had a 10-year-old girl, a 14-year-old boy, a 16-year-old girl, and the Kevin Harris kid that was living, who was in his mid-20s by now, and then this 10-month-old baby. So teenagers and a baby, one guy in his twenties and then the two parents. Sammy, the teenage boy, Randy is the dad, and then Kevin is the mid twenties guy that was living with them. They go out with their dog, Stryker, a yellow lab, looking to see what's going on. They come to a Y fork in the road. As the story goes, Randy took it one way,

• 30:15Speaker 02

  Kevin and Sammy, and Stryker went the other way. And this is where another record of dispute comes in, because the US government says they were fired upon when they announced their presence as federal agents. What Kevin says is, no, no, no, they didn't announce their presence as federal agents at all. All we saw was guys in camo and their like eyeballs peering through the bushes, and my dog barking, and one of the guys shot it and killed it.

• 30:45Josh Clark?

  Yeah, there's no dispute that the dog, Stryker, was shot and killed. When it happened is that dispute and who started shooting first. So let's say, according to Kevin's account, they come up on these guys who didn't, like you said, did not identify themselves as federal agents. They're wearing camo, they're holding guns, and they shoot the dog. Sammy, the teenage son, says, you shot my dog, you son of a bitch, and like lifts his gun and I guess starts shooting. So a shootout ensues. Sammy is shot, he turns to run, according to Kevin's account. He turns to run, is shot in the back and killed now. Kevin is, gets away, Randy gets away, but a deputy marshal named Bill Deegan is

• 31:28Josh Clark?

  killed too. So Stryker, the dog, deputy marshal Bill Deegan, and Sammy, the son, the teenage son, are all dead from this sudden surprise gun battle that took place outside of the compound.

• 31:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, and Kevin is the one, to be clear, who shot and killed deputy, the deputy marshal.

• 31:47Josh Clark?

  Okay, that's, that's 100% verified.

• 31:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:51Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 31:52Speaker 02

  Because Randy was not a part of that shootout.

• 31:54Josh Clark?

  I got you. So, yeah, I know that he took a different road. So he wasn't there when it happened?

• 31:58Speaker 02

  I don't think so. I mean, everything I saw was that the shootout was between the teenage boy and the 20 something year old. And that, you know, he, he shot Deputy Bill Deegan in the chest and killed him.

• 32:09Josh Clark?

  Gotcha. So, um, either way, there's a firefight going on, a shootout going on, and Randy and Kevin retreat back to the compound, but they, they leave Sammy's body there temporarily. And they're just completely fixated, according to Kevin, throughout that time on retrieving his body. And this is a pretty tight family. You don't want to leave the dead body of your 14 year old son just laying in the road. You want to go get him. And this actually runs afoul of what the marshals were saying. The two of them, they said that two of them were pinned down by sniper fire for 12 hours. And Kevin and the rest of the Weavers are like, that's not true at all. We were scared out of our minds and,

• 32:54Josh Clark?

  and totally grieving already from, from Sammy's death. We weren't spending 12 hours pinning down the, the marshals with sniper fire.

• 33:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, they said, they claimed at least that the only gunfire that came from them at, at that point was, Randy firing his gun into the air because he was so upset about losing his teenage son.

• 33:14Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 33:16Speaker 02

  All right. So now we're at Saturday, August 22nd. A hostage rescue team is dispatched by the FBI. And this is when things get really hinky because the, the rules of engagement in the United States in a situation like this are well known and generally ascribed to when things are on the up and up, which is, you do not engage unless you're under direct threat from, of violence or like somebody firing at you, basically.

• 33:46Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 33:47Speaker 02

  They amended this rules of engagement and it was approved by the Bureau's Assistant Director for Criminal Investigation Division, Larry Potts, that basically said, Any armed adult man that you see, you can shoot and kill as long as you're not endangering a child.

• 34:04Josh Clark?

  Yeah, unprovoked. To see him walking through the compound, he's holding a gun at his side, you can kill him. That is completely outside of the boundaries of the norm, like you were saying.

• 34:16Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 34:17Josh Clark?

  So that's a huge escalation, Chuck, right? I mean, they were already, like you said, overreacting. You could say now this is, I mean, this is just out of control escalating. And of course, when you have something like that and you have a bunch of snipers and you have a bunch of law enforcement people staking out a compound, the chances of somebody being killed just have increased dramatically. And that's actually what happens. I say we take a break and we come back and talk about a huge turning point in this standoff. How about that?

• 34:50Speaker 02

  Let's do it.

• 35:04Josh Clark?

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• 35:27Josh Clark?

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• 35:43Speaker 02

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• 36:07Speaker 02

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• 36:21Josh Clark?

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• 36:39Speaker 02

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• 36:50Josh Clark?

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• 37:07Speaker 02

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• 37:22Josh Clark?

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• 37:35Speaker 02

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• 38:06Josh Clark?

  So Chuck, by this time, this is Saturday, August 22nd, blood's been shed from the shootout. And now the hostage rescue team and their snipers from the FBI have the authority to shoot to kill unprovoked the people in the compound as long as it's an adult male holding a gun. And there was a guy, one of those snipers, an FBI sniper named Lan Horiuchi. He was about 200 yards away from the compound. And he'd been briefed on this revised altered rules of engagement that the FBI had authorized. And he saw Randy, Sarah, and Kevin all leaving the cabin, the main building.

• 38:48Josh Clark?

  And they started to make their way toward the birthing shed. They later said that they were heading to the birthing shed to start preparing Sammy's body for burial. They'd retrieved it by this time. And Horiuchi, following these altered rules of engagement, took a shot. And he shot Kevin, no, he shot Randy in the arm. So of course, from that point on, they immediately scattered because all of a sudden, somebody's shooting at them.

• 39:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, so they are headed back to the cabin. They get to the door. Vicky, the mom, is holding her 10-month-old daughter in her arms and kind of holding the door open, getting people in. And this is when Lan Horiuchi takes a second shot. He said he was going for Harris, but it went squarely through the head of Vicky,

• 39:41Speaker 02

  through her head, and hitting Kevin then in the chest. And she apparently was still holding her infant daughter when she hit the floor dead immediately.

• 39:52Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So that was, like I said, an enormous turning point. Now, the son has just been killed by the feds. Now, the mom has just been killed by the feds. But at this time, the FBI doesn't realize that they've killed her. I don't know if Lan Horiuchi went home and didn't tell anybody what had happened. I'm not sure. I don't know how you could shoot someone in the head and not realize that you'd done that. But apparently, it was not immediately understood by the FBI running this negotiation that Vicki Weaver was dead. And also, by this time, we should say, there is a ton, ton of cops. A lot of estimates put it in the hundreds.

• 40:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:36Josh Clark?

  Federal, county, state, local law enforcement, all showing up to basically help out or contain or do whatever. And one of the things they did almost immediately was block the roads. And those roadblocks became a site of protest for people who showed up and were like, this is messed up, man. This family needs to be let free.

• 40:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. And these are, you know, these are people from the Aryan Nation groups and some other militia groups. It's basically, they're saying, hey, this is going down exactly how we say this kind of stuff goes down. So that's going on. They blocked off the roads, like you said. Mom's dead body now is under the kitchen table, where it remains. Kevin is in pretty bad shape because he was shot in the chest. So he's in and out of consciousness. They're not quite sure, you know, what's going to happen to him at this point. And we should also mention that Lan Horiuchi is a sniper that also had a lot of controversial, was also controversial in the Waco Siege, like, very soon after this.

• 41:43Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 41:43Speaker 02

  So this same guy was at both of these sieges and both times was a part of a pretty controversial shooting incident.

• 41:51Josh Clark?

  Okay. Well, I didn't know that about Waco. I had heard that he had not fired a shot at Waco, but I guess that's not correct.

• 41:59Speaker 02

  Well, I didn't, I looked into it a little bit, but then I started going down the rabbit hole and thought we should just cover Waco.

• 42:05Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 42:05Speaker 02

  But I think he was one of the guys that was charged with firing, um, like the, the incendiary rounds into the building.

• 42:13Josh Clark?

  Oh, wow.

• 42:13Speaker 02

  But, uh, I might be wrong in that, but, um.

• 42:16Josh Clark?

  We'll save it for the Waco app.

• 42:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, and let's put it this way, like, you can't find anything about Lon Horiuchi now.

• 42:22Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 42:24Speaker 02

  We know he's still alive, but I'm sure he's not available for, you know, interviews, if you know what I mean.

• 42:29Josh Clark?

  For sure, yeah. So like I said, they, um, the feds apparently didn't know that Sammy was dead, and they also didn't know that Vicky Weaver was dead. They started destroying buildings around the cabin, so now they're closing in this perimeter. It's not just any longer like in this 300 yard kill zone, they're starting to move in and they're destroying buildings as they go. And I guess when they destroyed the birthing shed, they discovered Sammy's body and were like, oh, uh, one of the family members is dead and he happened to be a teenager.

• 43:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:01Josh Clark?

  Again, they still didn't know that Vicky was dead, and I guess because she had been the ones writing the emphatic letters, um, to the servant of the Queen of Babylon, et cetera, and filing the affidavits, the hostage rescue team presumed that she was the one who made the decisions in the family. So they continued to address her even after she had been killed by the FBI sniper. And so they would speak directly to Mrs. Weaver through their loudspeakers, and the family was just, they, they didn't realize that the FBI didn't realize that they had killed Vicky, so they thought that they were just adding like horrible torment onto the injury of losing their mom and wife.

• 43:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, and you know, depending on who you listen to, there are also people that say, no, they knew that she was dead and the things that they were saying were deliberate, uh, trying to provoke them and cause further upset. By, you know, speaking to Mrs. Weaver, who they they knew well was dead. But again, it's just, it's one of those, you know, you're never going to get the truth out of a matter like this because there there are two sides. But they're trying to lure them out, saying, hey, we had pancakes for breakfast. Why don't you bring the kids out? They bet they'd love some pancakes. They send down a robot, a remote control robot with a telephone so they could, you know, this is one of the hugest ways they broke protocol is that in a situation like

• 44:28Speaker 02

  this, you've got to be in contact and negotiate with someone in a standoff. And they didn't do that until well into it, when they tried to get them a phone on this remote control robot that had a gun mounted to the front of it, which wasn't a good idea because, of course, they saw that. They were like, I'm not going near that thing.

• 44:44Josh Clark?

  Right. Why would you even do that? To defend the robot? I mean, that doesn't make any sense.

• 44:49Speaker 02

  I tried to find out, but I couldn't find anything that that was rational. So I don't know.

• 44:54Josh Clark?

  That's crazy. So that didn't happen. They weren't able to establish contact, aside from shouting at them through loudspeakers, right? But it wasn't a back and forth or anything like that. And the Weavers just dug in. They stayed in their cabin for days. Remember, this started on Friday, August 21st. The following Friday, August 28th, this thing was still going on. Mom was still dead under the table. And they agreed to speak with a guy named Beau Gritz. He was also a Green Beret, a lieutenant colonel. So essentially, what's happening now is Colonel Troutman from Rambo is showing up to tell the authorities that Randy Weaver will eat stuff that will make a billy goat puke.

• 45:37Josh Clark?

  Like, it's it's uncanny how closely this resembled that part of of Rambo, right? And Beau Gritz was able to get in and make contact, along with an ex-cop from Phoenix named Jack McLam. Both of them are were huge, and I believe still are, in the conspiracy theorist circles that Randy Weaver ran in. So it's not like they were just some average people. Like, they could, they could communicate with him and talk his language. And he he knew enough about them. I don't know if he knew them personally or not, but their reputation was enough that he let them come inside to the to the cabin and talk.

• 46:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, so they brought some food for the baby and milk for the baby, which is great. And kind of talked to, talked to Randy and ultimately coming out, but initially just kind of got him in a better state of mind. They are the ones when they came back out that told the feds, hey, Vicky's dead and they're under the table. Randy's wounded. Kevin is wounded, like big time wounded. And they were like, what? That's news to us. So on Sunday, the 30th, Kevin finally surrendered. Randy said, it's okay. You need to go get medical help. He was helicoptered out to Spokane and I believe he's in serious condition, but he recovered.

• 47:00Speaker 02

  And then they also allowed Gritz and a friend named Jackie Brown, strangely enough, to take his wife's body away and the pets. They had a couple of pet parakeets that they took away as well.

• 47:13Josh Clark?

  Right. So Kevin's out. It's now just Randy and his three daughters, Sarah, Elashiba, and Rachel.

• 47:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:22Josh Clark?

  And they were alone in this cabin, still under siege. And so there were a lot of supporters who were like, well, I mean, we know how this is gonna end. Randy's gonna come out with guns blazing and take out as many of these feds as he can before he gets taken down. And very reasonably and wisely, Randy did not do that. He made sure that he and his three daughters were able to come down safely ostensibly under the care of an attorney named Jerry Spence. He represented the estate of Karen Silkwood, who also deserves an episode two. But essentially, she was a whistleblower who was mysteriously, who mysteriously died

• 48:05Josh Clark?

  in a mysterious car crash. So he was pretty famous as far as defense attorneys, and he had said, I'll represent this guy if he'll come out. I don't know if he did, did he?

• 48:17Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 48:18Josh Clark?

  Okay, well, let's presume that he did and didn't go back on his word. But regardless, some people think that that public announcement by Jerry Spence may have had at least some role in getting Randy Weaver to come out peaceably.

• 48:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, and he had to talk his daughters into it. You know, they were, they were ready to go. They were both brandishing guns. So he said, you know, 14-year-old Sarah, put down your 9mm. And 10-year-old Rachel, put down that 38. We're gonna get out of here alive. And they did that. Randy and Kevin were ultimately charged with murder, conspiracy, assault. And the girls went to live with their in-laws, I believe Vicky's parents in Iowa.

• 49:02Josh Clark?

  Right. And so, of course, they're, like you said, they're charged. So their trial begins in April of 1993. And I don't know if ironic is the term, but the trial started just before Waco ending.

• 49:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:17Josh Clark?

  And if you don't know how Waco ended, and you can't wait till our episode on Waco, it ended really badly. A lot of women and children died. It was just a bad jam. So this is happening as this trial for the Ruby Ridge standoff is starting. And the whole thing lasted for months. I think finally, on July 9th, not only were there months of testimony, the jury deliberated for 20 days. That is a really long time to deliberate. And when they came back, they acquitted Kevin Harris of all charges. And you had said he definitely killed the deputy marshal, right? So he was acquitted of that and everything else.

• 50:02Josh Clark?

  And Randy Weaver was acquitted on everything except for his failure to appear in the original firearms case. That was it.

• 50:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:12Josh Clark?

  So clearly, this Idaho jury was like, yes, the feds very much overstepped their bounds and overreacted. And this is like so much so that like, we don't think these people should be, should go to jail for anything they did in response.

• 50:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it was sort of the facts of the case, too. Like, everything I saw, it didn't seem like it was just some uneven jury where they were just sympathetic to the locals.

• 50:38Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 50:39Speaker 02

  Once the facts of the case came out, it was pretty clear. They changed rules of engagement when they shouldn't have. They didn't follow protocol, setting up, you know, communications. They went in guns blazing and just basically murdered people. They, in 94, the family filed wrongful death lawsuits against the FBI and the US Marshals. They settled it, the JOD settled these suits. They paid about a million bucks to each of the girls, 100 grand to Weaver. Harris, many years later, in 2001, won another settlement for $380,000. And Lon Horiuchi, the sniper who, you know, where things really took a turn, when he got involved,

• 51:20Speaker 02

  he, it kind of went back and forth in different appeals and different cases over the years of pursuing criminal charges against him. So involuntary manslaughter was the initial charge. I think they moved it to a federal district court who dismissed it, saying that he was acting in his, you know, official capacity. So you can't convict a guy for that. And there were a bunch of appeals and ended up in him escaping any justice by having the charges dropped.

• 51:51Josh Clark?

  So the Justice Department had their own inquiry and they found out that this whole thing was pretty much a cluster from beginning to end. The Senate held hearings in 1995, featuring Fred Tompkins, who would go on to play the DEA in Law and Order for a couple of seasons.

• 52:07Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 52:07Josh Clark?

  Back when he was a senator for Tennessee. And they also found that the whole thing was basically a cluster from beginning to end. And one person who did actually do time for this is actually an FBI agent, the guy who, one of- Was one of the people running the operation, E. Michael Cahill, he was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison because he destroyed an after-action report about the operation. He said he was acting in what he thought was the bureau's best interests and that he didn't want the local Idaho prosecutor getting a hold of the thing and using it, I would guess, against Lon Horiuchi. I don't know. But he was the only person to actually do time from this whole thing.

• 52:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. Randy just died a couple of years ago at the age of 74. He kind of abandoned a lot of the, just sort of further out there religious ideas that is, was in his marriage, seemingly because of Vicky. And he was still like a, you know, sort of callous celeb in the anti-government world. And Sarah, the oldest daughter, has, it is very easy to find interviews with her. She wrote a book about it called From Ruby Ridge to Freedom. And in that book, she forgave those federal agents.

• 53:24Josh Clark?

  Yeah. It's pretty amazing. I was reading an interview with her. She's a big commentator on that part of America and its response to the federal government and how each one needs to kind of interact with one another. She's very peaceful now, it seems like.

• 53:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, seems like it.

• 53:44Josh Clark?

  And like you said, Ruby Ridge was like a huge impetus that was, that gave like all of these far-right movements a shot in the arm. And this is 1993. Within two years, all of that momentum would just be completely scuttled when Timothy McVeigh came along and said, hey, I'm going to blow up a federal building in Oklahoma City, kill 168 people, including 19 children in daycare, and it's in retaliation for Ruby Ridge and Waco. And it was so abhorrent that all of those people who were like, yeah, Ruby Ridge, were suddenly like, whoa, I don't want to have anything to do with militias anymore because this is what people do. I'm not, I don't want to have anything to do with it. It wasn't until the early 2000s that it started to come back again, which has slowly developed

• 54:28Josh Clark?

  over time until we are where we are now, where they're essentially public, public office holders in some cases.

• 54:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. This is a tough one. So maybe let's do Waco in one year. And then we can do the Oklahoma City bombing in two years.

• 54:44Josh Clark?

  Have you ever been to Oklahoma City in that site?

• 54:47Speaker 02

  I have not.

• 54:47Josh Clark?

  It's insane to stand there. It's just nuts. So yeah, we should do one on that, too, for sure.

• 54:54Speaker 02

  But we gotta space these out.

• 54:56Josh Clark?

  Oh, I agree. You're saying one year.

• 54:58Speaker 02

  Like a Christmas episode.

• 54:59Josh Clark?

  There you go. Good idea. American tragedy, toy episode, and then our holiday episode.

• 55:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:08Josh Clark?

  Okay, well Chuck apologized just a second ago, so that means it's time for listener mail.

• 55:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, here's a correction about porcupines that I don't think we got when that initially came out, but it must have been released as a Saturday edition, right?

• 55:25Josh Clark?

  You bet your sweet bippy it was.

• 55:27Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 55:29Speaker 02

  Hi, guys. My name is Jita O, and I'm an undergraduate at UC Irvine studying biology. I wanted to write about a correction in your porcupines app. Chuck was discussing the fact of how new world and old world porcupines evolved independently of each other. The phrase for that would actually be convergent evolution, not co-evolution.

• 55:51Josh Clark?

  Oh.

• 55:52Speaker 02

  I think I misspoke, and that actually, we could probably clear that up in our Peacocks episode coming up.

• 55:58Josh Clark?

  Oh, good idea, Chuck.

• 55:59Speaker 02

  Convergent evolution is what we need to remember. Co-evolution is a term where interactions between two species have a reciprocal effect on each other's evolution, which is completely different. Convergent evolution is when two separate populations in distinct geographic locations undergo similar phenotypic changes due to selective pressures. I want to finish by thanking you both for always piquing my interest.

• 56:28Josh Clark?

  It's piquing.

• 56:29Speaker 02

  I know.

• 56:30Josh Clark?

  Oh.

• 56:32Josh Clark?

  You got me again. That's like-

• 56:33Speaker 02

  Really? I thought you were just messing with me.

• 56:35Josh Clark?

  Couple of months, Chuck.

• 56:36Speaker 02

  Wow, okay.

• 56:39Speaker 02

  And then later on, it's only, I was like, I mispronounced piquing. Piquing, and Josh totally called me on it, but I tricked him. Peaking my interest in a variety of random topics I didn't know I needed until I did. Looking forward to learning more. And that, once again, is from Jita O.

• 56:55Josh Clark?

  Thanks, Jita. Jita O. Is O their last name?

• 56:58Speaker 02

  Uh, it is J I dash T A O.

• 57:02Josh Clark?

  Oh, okay.

• 57:03Speaker 02

  They put a handy pronunciation next to it. That's why I'm saying it.

• 57:05Josh Clark?

  Well, thanks a lot, Jita O. That was a great name, great email, and best of luck to you with your biology degree. We need more biologists running around out there, so bless you for that. And if you want to be blessed by Pope Josh or Pope Chuck, you can send us an email as well. Send it off to [email protected].

• 57:28Speaker 03

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 57:43Josh Clark?

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• 58:27Josh Clark?

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• 59:11Josh Clark?

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• 59:14Speaker 00

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