by Gregg Olsen
* * *
GAINING THE JURY’S sympathy for Barbara Weaver would not be hard. She was young and she was a mother. She had been betrayed by her husband and the woman front and center in the courtroom who stood accused of her murder.
To help the jury learn more about Barbara, Boyle wanted Fannie Troyer to testify. She agreed. Boyle met with Barbara’s sister to prepare her for court.
Fannie was soft-spoken and, of course, grieving. And she was busy, with her own children and caring for the five Weaver children.
Boyle told her she wanted to humanize Barbara to the jury, give them a sense of who she was and of the problems in her marriage, and establish that Barb Raber was known to Fannie as someone who often had contact with Eli.
Boyle walked Fannie through the days before and after the murder. She advised Fannie that she might or might not be cross-examined by Barb’s defense attorney.
Boyle also planned to question David Yoder, a member of the fishing party Eli was with both the day before the murder and the day of the murder. Barb Raber had driven the group on Monday. If she and Eli had had any time alone to discuss their plans for the next day, it would have been during a stop at McDonald’s. And Boyle would call Steve Chupp, who had taken Barb’s place as driver the morning of the murder.
Barb Raber may have thought the worst thing that could happen to her would be house arrest or community service. She was naïve.
29
Preparation
It seems we can’t communicate, so how is this all going to get better? He’s so on the defensive.
—BARBARA WEAVER, ON TRYING TO FIND COMMON GROUND TO SAVE HER MARRIAGE
Judge Robert J. Brown looked out on a virtual sea of blue, black, and white. So many wanted to attend Barb Raber’s trial that it had been moved to a larger courtroom in the historical Court of Common Pleas in Wooster. The men in the gallery removed their wide-brimmed hats and set them on their laps or under their seats.
It was the most unusual thing Judge Brown had seen in his more than twenty years on the bench. A momentary urge crossed his mind.
“I wanted so badly to take a photograph looking out,” he said years later. “But it would not have been appropriate.”
Although Amish men and women are segregated at worship services, couples may sit together at funerals and other public events, which is what they did in Judge Brown’s courtroom on September 17. The defendant’s husband, Ed Raber, attended every day. Sometimes his friend George from church sat with him. The wait for the trial had taken its toll on Ed. He looked a little lost. Tired. He tried to keep his expression stoic, but there were cracks in the veneer. He not only had to endure being the spouse of a potential murderer, he had to listen to revelations of the sexual exploits of his wife and her lover. Some might have felt he was foolish for sticking with her, considering what she’d done. But Ed Raber loved her. She’d had a lifetime of people abandoning her and he didn’t have the heart to be one of them. No matter what she had done.
Barb wore a simple skirt and striped blouse. Her shoulders slumped and when she wasn’t turning to look at her husband, she stared at the table where she sat.
After the jury, sheriff’s deputies, judge, and Edna Boyle returned from the visit to the scene of the crime, opening statements got under way.
Assistant Public Defender John Leonard’s plan was to put Eli Weaver on trial in absentia. With all the secrecy and collusion in the case, muddying the waters about who had done what wasn’t a terrible plan. He told the jury that the timing of Barbara Weaver’s death pointed to the fact that Eli had murdered his wife.
“It’s sad and it’s tragic, but these are the facts,” he said.
The defense lawyer said his client was scared and worried after her arrest. Her statements that she had shot Barbara Weaver accidentally were made in a state of fear and confusion.
“She’s able to put two and two together. She figures out Eli Weaver killed his wife,” Leonard said. “But she’s afraid. Because now she’s afraid of the trouble she can be in, the appearance that it looks like she may be involved.”
Leonard said Barb was the victim of Eli Weaver’s manipulation, and like all the others Eli had blabbed to, she’d believed that his pleas for help in ending his marriage were nothing but jokes.
“He’s the kind of person that is a charmer,” Leonard said. “He’s the kind of person, for whatever reason, he seemed to have an effect on people … for whatever reason he could make the ladies like him.”
And Barb Raber would do anything for Eli Weaver, supplying him with a cell phone and a computer.
“She pretty much did anything he wanted because he was a charming person,” her attorney said.
Leonard explained that he would prove that text messages between Barb Raber and Eli Weaver showed a timeline that didn’t match with Eli’s story of leaving for a fishing trip at 3:00 a.m. Eli had killed his wife earlier, at about 2:00 a.m., then left when his ride showed up.
Eli Weaver was making Barb Raber take the fall for what he’d done. There were two victims in the case—the two main women in Eli Weaver’s life.
For her part, Boyle portrayed Eli Weaver as a husband who was increasingly unhappy in his marriage. He was a man who talked about ways to get rid of his wife, Boyle said, and the defendant was the one who listened.
Barb Raber had researched poisons, gases, and other ways to “get rid of someone.” She was the one who called David Weaver asking for a favor, that he leave the warning on the answering machine of the shanty telephone outside Eli’s shop.
Eli Weaver might have wanted his wife dead, but it was Barb Raber who pulled the trigger.
* * *
BARB RABER’S AFFECT could be peculiar. At times when people saw her—as she waited for her day in court—the woman who’d thought she’d be freed and sent on a tour to talk about the evils of texting seemed bewildered at the events that swirled around her. Her eyes, amplified by the lenses of her almost always smudged glasses, often appeared vacant, as though none of what was happening to her was really registering. Her stringy hair hung down in a way that suggested she didn’t have a clue about how she was perceived or what she might do to defend herself.
And while some might have looked at her with hate and disgust for what she’d been accused of doing, Barb Raber didn’t seem to notice any of that. It was as though she were a common garden snail, pulled into her shell, hiding from whatever it was that someone was trying to do for her or to her. She was intent on having a trial, and proving her innocence.
The Amish gossip hotline percolated with comments about her potential fate should she be found guilty. But wrapped around that story line was the tragic past that had brought her family into the pages of newspapers and magazines so many years ago. Everyone knew her parents, Katie and Menno Miller of Sugarcreek.
Four dead boys will do that kind of thing.
30
Trial
I told him, “Eli, I forgive you before you ask.”
—BARBARA WEAVER, ON FORGIVING HER HUSBAND—NO MATTER WHAT HE DID
Around the world, the murder made headlines. An Amish man and his girlfriend had killed his wife. In Ohio, it pushed news of county budget cuts, closed landfills, and low prices for dairy farmers off the front page.
The first person called to testify was Fannie Troyer. The jury easily sympathized with Barbara’s sister. They had heard Edna Boyle and John Leonard lay out their cases, but Fannie would be the first witness to describe for them how she arrived at the murder scene just minutes after her daughter Susie had found Barbara’s body. Fannie was seven months pregnant as she took the witness stand.
She described Barbara as her only sister and “a dear friend.” She spoke of the last time she’d seen her, two days before Barbara’s death, at the birthday party for Harley. Fannie explained how one of Barbara’s children had stayed at the Troyers’, and two of her own children had gone home with the Weavers.
Fannie told the story of pulling her bug
gy into a neighbor’s place the morning of the murder because there was an ambulance at the Weaver house.
“As I turned into the driveway a neighbor lady stopped me and said they had found Barbara dead in her bed that morning and they think someone shot her. And my first thought was where are the children, and where is Eli?”
Boyle didn’t ask her much about the day of the murder. Fannie was there to help the jury get to know Barbara and learn about her sister’s marriage.
Which wasn’t good.
“Her husband was unfaithful in many ways,” Fannie said.
She knew Barb Raber slightly because Eli had once worked with Barb’s husband, Ed. But she also knew her because Barb hung around Eli’s business.
Leonard chose not to cross-examine the victim’s sister. Pressing her on any details would only serve to antagonize the jury.
Next, Boyle called Linda Yoder, the Weavers’ neighbor, who recounted the story of Harley knocking on her door and saying his mother was dead. Linda was the first adult to see Barbara’s body. Her first words to another neighbor were that she wished she hadn’t seen her lovely friend dead.
* * *
KEY TO PROSECUTING Barb Raber was the forensics investigation of her and Eli’s cell phones and computers. Not only did Eli and Barb talk about ways to kill Eli’s wife, they left an electronic trail of their planning that led only to them.
It was the most damaging evidence of their conspiracy and Edna Boyle vowed to make the most of it.
Allan Buxton, a computer forensic specialist with the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, a part of the state Attorney General’s Office, spent months analyzing Barb and Eli’s computers and cell phones.
The Wayne County Sheriff’s Office had turned over to him three laptop computers, one desktop computer, and two cell phones.
One of the computers was Ed Raber’s. It had no unusual searches on it. But on Barb’s two laptops Buxton browsed forty thousand searches and found incriminating topics—not the usual ones a Conservative Mennonite, wife, and mother would Google. The searches had been conducted between April and July 2009.
After calling him to the stand, Boyle asked Buxton about how he went about searching the electronics, starting with one of Barb Raber’s laptops.
“Why don’t you explain to the jury what tests you run and how you conduct your testing?”
“Okay, unlike other testing, there’s no sampling or disassembly required except to remove the primary storage device from a computer. In this case a hard disk. I then create a duplicate copy of that hard disk to search for data.”
“And how do you do that?”
“With forensic tools. In the same way any user can search for a file through their desktop, I have tools that allow me to search entire hard disks for strings of information.”
“And so did you conduct that type of testing on State’s Exhibit No. 25?”
“I did.”
“And what did you find?”
“I recovered a series of Internet search history entries indicating searches conducted on the World Wide Web through the browser.”
Boyle asked him to summarize what types of searches had been done. A list he read made the jaws of everyone in the courtroom drop.
Where can I get strychnine poison?
Can the insecticide Tempo kill a human being?
What poisons kill humans?
How to kill yourself with poison
How much lye can kill a person?
Fastest poison to kill a person
Fastest way to kill someone
Kill yourself pills
Ten best ways to kill yourself
Effective methods poison
Rat poison suicide
How much rat poison will kill a person
“And so how did you recover these searches?”
“Again, anyone who has used Google or Yahoo knows they punch in a term and hit search. Well, there’s a string of data returned to your browser. And what I did is I searched for those strings of data.”
“And so there could be other terms on the computer that were searched. You were just searching for at this point poisons and those were the certain ones you were searching for?”
“No, I searched for the return entries. Instead of searching for—guessing what terms may have been searched for, I would have reviewed them all, approximately 40,000 search returns.” Boyle asked if he’d reviewed the search history on another computer, Ed Raber’s. Buxton said he had but there was nothing unusual on it. There was also nothing on the desktop computer.
The user names of the two laptops with the interesting stuff were “Barb” and “Barbs.”
Boyle asked Buxton specifically what he had found.
Of the forty thousand searches he investigated, more than eight hundred were about poisons.
Eight hundred and forty-one, to be exact.
Boyle turned on a projecter that displayed the 841 search terms on a screen. She asked Buxton to read some of them off.
“‘Pest control, strong fly killer, weed killer, Tempo, pesticide, Tempo pesticide kill people, poison that can kill a person, poisons kill humans, kill yourself poison.’”
It was devastating to the defense. Barbara Weaver had not been poisoned—she had been shot at close range—but Barb and Eli had made at least one try at poisoning her. And here was evidence they had been planning something.
John Leonard tried to interrupt what was now the second long discussion of search terms, but Judge Brown overruled him.
Boyle asked Buxton to read a few more.
“‘How much lye can kill a person, fastest way to kill a person, fastest poison to kill a person, methods of suicide.’”
“Thank you. And so there are 840 some entries to that effect?”
“Correct. 841.”
The jury wasn’t likely to forget the number.
Leonard took the only tack he could—to try to throw doubt on the investigation conducted by the sheriff’s department. They had focused on Barbara Raber and no one else. Just because his client had researched poisons didn’t mean she had fired the shot that killed Barbara Weaver. Like they had with the cell phone texts, the sheriff’s department had known what it was looking for, and they’d told Buxton to find it.
“In any event, what you’re doing is you’re not giving a thorough and complete recitation of what’s on the disk. You will basically come in and testify to this is what has evidentiary value. This is what fits the parameters of what I’m looking for?”
“Correct, we’d be here years if we—”
“That’s exactly my point. Thank you. That’s exactly what I’m trying to say. You narrowed your focus when you viewed all this computer research and evidence to what you were told to look for, what the topic was you were looking for? Because as you said we’d be here for years if it was something else?”
“Correct.”
After a lengthy back-and-forth about what Buxton had and hadn’t found on the four computers, Leonard got him to zero in on what he had been told to look for. In other words, what the prosecutor and detectives wanted.
“I was told to look for signs of premeditation, possible research into poisoning, possible research into shooting, any signs of contact between the suspect and the victim.”
The defense attorney argued the same point he’d made about the recorded jailhouse telephone calls—who decided what was relevant?
The answer always came back to a handful of people.
The sheriff’s department.
* * *
BARB RABER’S PHONE calls to her husband and her sister looked bad, just as her texts to Eli did.
The prosecution planned to introduce the worst of them. The jury would have an opportunity to read the full transcripts when they deliberated, but what they heard in court would be a tease they would have trouble forgetting.
John Leonard argued that the transcripts of the calls were inadmissible, but Judge Brown allowed them.
Edna Boyle questi
oned Captain James Richards, who was in charge of the jail.
“Why don’t you explain for the jury if someone’s incarcerated in the jail if they have access to telephones?”
“Yes. Once a person is incarcerated there’s a telephone in each cell block that the prisoners have access to that they’re able to make collect phone calls to friends or relatives.”
“And how do they set up the ability to make collect phone calls?”
“Like I said, the phones are in each of the cell blocks and we go through a company called Securus Communications and [inmates] are able to utilize the phones from about 8:00 in the morning until about 10:00 at night to make phone calls.”
“And when phone calls are made from the jail is there any recording at the beginning of each of those phone calls?”
“Yes, there is.”
“And what is that recording?”
“At the beginning of each phone call, after the individual dials the number, the called party picks up and they have the option to either accept the phone call or not accept the phone call. If the person accepts the phone call then at that point there’s a recording that says that these phone conversations are monitored and recorded.”
Captain Richards had been asked by Detective Maxwell to retrieve every phone call Barb Raber made while she was a guest of the Wayne County jail.
When Detective Maxwell provided him with a phone number that had either placed or received a call from Barb Raber, Richards could search and retrieve audio of the calls from a computer. He then put the audio on CDs.
Leonard asked Captain Richards to clarify that inmates knew they were being recorded. If Barb Raber knew she was being recorded, naturally she wouldn’t say anything incriminating. It might sound incriminating, but it wouldn’t be. Would it?
“And you’ve testified that there’s a message at the beginning of the phone call saying that your phone calls are going to be recorded?”
“That is correct.”
“Right, it’s only on these particular cell block phones. And where are these phones located specifically?”