by Gregg Olsen
“On each one of the cell blocks.”
Captain Richards explained that every cell block was different. Some had phones in a dayroom area, some had phone booths with a door that closed. Maximum security had one phone booth and one in a dayroom.
Barb Raber’s cell block—3A—had two phones in the dayroom and one in a booth. Richards didn’t know which phone or phones Barb used for her calls.
Barb knew her calls were being recorded, but she thought she was safe speaking Pennsylvania Dutch. That’s what she told her sister during a call.
“We have them that way.”
The tapes wouldn’t be played in court because they were in a language the English jury didn’t know. So the prosecution called the man who had transcribed them, Holmes County Sheriff’s Office deputy Joe Mullet. Leonard objected, questioning Mullet’s competence to transcribe the language.
But Mullet’s expertise was as good as it gets—he had been raised Amish and most of his family was still Amish. Pennsylvania Dutch was his first language.
Mullet had been a deputy with Holmes County Sheriff’s Office for twelve years. He was a patrol officer and a school resource officer in Amish schools and English elementary schools.
Boyle asked him to explain the Dutch language.
“It’s the Amish language. It’s our primary language. It’s not German, it’s Dutch. German and Dutch are two different languages.” He said there are some English words mixed in.
“And so when you do go to visit relatives Amish or Dutch is spoken when you visit? Even today you still speak Dutch?”
“Right, even on my wife’s side, still Dutch.”
Deputy Mullet explained that Detective Maxwell had given him computer disks to translate the calls on them.
“I took them back to our office. In our office I’ve got a computer that has two speakers. Some of the tapes were hard to hear so I had to plug headsets into the speakers.”
He knew the calls were between the defendant and her husband. Most of the calls lasted six to ten or more minutes. He handwrote his notes, then turned them over to Maxwell to have a secretary type them up. Mullet had a chance after they were typed to compare them to his original notes.
John Leonard was not nearly as accepting of this translation business as Edna Boyle was.
“I want to ask you some questions because I want to make sure that there’s a full understanding of the amount of information you’re looking at here. On CD A, if I understand correctly, there are seven phone calls, is that correct?”
“That is correct.”
“And on the notes that I have here I don’t have anything listed for call number one? I could be mistaken about what I have.”
Mullet explained that there was no information pertinent to the case on that call.
The defense pointed out the inconsistencies—some calls were transcribed, some were not, some partially.
“I’m only trying to point out that the length of these calls and that there are a couple of comments. You know, this is a ten-minute conversation and there’s ten lines of dialogue that’s considered important to the State. And I’m trying to make sure that the jury understands that in a ten-minute conversation this is what came out of it.”
To the jury, it may have sounded as if the defense attorney didn’t know what had been translated. He did. He didn’t like the editing, and he made sure he mentioned more than once that Barb could be heard on the calls denying that she had been involved in the murder—even if those parts weren’t deemed most important.
Judge Brown was adamant that the defense attorney could not imply that the prosecution had held back some calls.
“My point is not that there’s something missing,” Leonard said, “not that they’re keeping something from us. My point is that in a ten-minute conversation, this gentleman who I’m not in any way disparaging, doesn’t think that there’s anything related to the case until two minutes and twenty-three seconds in.”
The prosecution explained that conversations about Barb and Ed’s children, for example, were not considered relevant and were not translated.
What the prosecution thought was relevant obviously painted Barb Raber in a bad light.
The state of the Raber marriage, for example.
Ed had asked Barb if it was true that she’d had sex with Eli.
“Did you ever do anything, you know, do anything with him?”
“A long time ago, Eddie,” she said.
“Before you married me?”
“Yeah.”
Her defiance about finding herself in jail.
“I am not going to sit here innocent,” she said, “if you know what I mean.”
“Stay by the truth,” Ed told her. “I know the Lord will get you out if you stay by the truth,” he said.
Her appearing cold and calculating in a call to her sister.
“I got to have all the alibis and good alibis so I can get out of here.”
And her not having a good answer when her husband asked why she hadn’t gone to the police when she heard Eli talking about killing his wife.
“But you should have gone right away to the authorities … you should have called the cops.”
“I know, I know.”
“Then this would have never happened.”
Her own husband wasn’t sure he could trust her.
“Now listen, if you both get out, just don’t go behind [my back] and have contact.”
“I won’t.”
John Leonard wanted the jury to understand that the transcriptions were missing context, the day-to-day things a husband and wife would discuss.
If that was missing, then statements that could prove her innocence might be missing, too.
Again, Judge Brown admonished him to not suggest that the prosecution was withholding something.
“You can’t just stand there and say, ‘We’re missing ten minutes of the conversation here.’”
“With all due respect, why can’t I? If they’re presenting evidence and they’re saying we only got transcribed what we thought was relevant, how can we then not argue that they only described what they thought was relevant?”
After a back-and-forth, Leonard muttered loudly enough to be heard, “Who the heck knows what else is on there.”
31
The Shot
I wish I could make it easier to not miss your kids so much. I just think that like I said, you got to go and visit them at least an afternoon a week. Staying away to me makes it worse. But that is up to you.
—ONE OF ELI WEAVER’S GIRLFRIENDS, ENCOURAGING ELI TO BE A BETTER FATHER
State firearms expert John Gardner explained to the jury that there were two pairs of holes in the comforter—meaning that it was folded over when Barbara was shot. Based on forensic evidence of shotgun pellets found in her body and the size of the holes through the comforter—four-tenths of an inch—Gardner said they were consistent with No. 6 shot, used in a variety of guns, including a .410 gauge shotgun. Because skin is elastic, the size of a hole in a blanket is a more accurate test of shell size than the size of a wound.
Unlike rifles that fire bullets, shotguns don’t leave markings on pellets. Even if the prosecution had found what they thought was the murder weapon, it would have been impossible to say if it had fired the deadly shot.
The quilted comforter with satin edging told a story that literally didn’t line up with Barb Raber’s account. It was scientifically impossible for her to have stood in the doorway in the darkness of an Amish home in the blackest hours of the morning and fire the lethal shot. She would had to have been either very lucky or the best sharpshooter since Annie Oakley. Those who knew her never thought she was either. But there, that night, the evidence suggested that she had to have walked across the room and pressed the barrel of her shotgun into Eli’s wife’s chest and fired. The examination of the comforter by the forensics team indicated as much.
Gardner concluded that the shot that killed Barbara Weaver had bee
n fired not only at close range but from a distance of contact. That meant the muzzle—the end of the shotgun’s barrel—touched the fabric. The gun was “right up against that bedspread,” Gardner testified.
Against Barbara’s chest.
She was not shot from the doorway.
Barb Raber was unsure about what had happened that night. She indicated once that her gun had discharged accidentally while she stood in the doorway. A lie? A fantasy? Or somewhere in between?
John Leonard’s cross-examination of Gardner implied that the expert only knew and tested what detectives Abel and Chuhi had given him. Which was true. Detectives had given Gardner only one rifle to test, Barb Raber’s. 22 Ruger. He test fired the semi-automatic, but there was no magazine so he borrowed one to use. The Ruger was deemed operable, but by then tests showed the holes in the comforter were most likely created by a .410. He had not been given Eli’s two .410 gauge shotguns to test.
Chief medical examiner Lisa Kohler and coroner Amy Jolliff testified about the cause of death and the difficulty in determining time of death. Barbara Weaver’s death certificate said time of death was 2:00 a.m., but it could have been any time from midnight to 7:00 a.m., they said.
Dr. Kohler described the autopsy and its findings. She explained how the shot had gone through the third right rib near the chest bone, damaging the right lung, the heart sac, and the upper chambers of the heart. The diaphragm, liver, and spine were also injured. Autopsy photos and X-rays of the wounds were shown.
Just as disturbing were the photos taken by Detective Maxwell at the murder scene. Both the defense and the prosecution wanted the time they were displayed in court to be brief. The jury would see them again during deliberations.
The photos showed a beautiful young woman lying on her right side who could have been asleep except that her porcelain skin was slightly blue. For those who had never seen the damage one shell from a shotgun could do, it looked minor—just a half-inch round hole through the blanket that covered Barbara. It had left a black ring and traces of gunpowder residue on the blanket and a small hole near her right breast. Most of the blood was on her nightgown, from the waist up, and on the bottom sheet.
Dr. Kohler mentioned “healing bruises” on Barbara’s leg which pre-dated the murder. She also stated that Barbara had fresh bruises on a palm, a scratch on an index finger, and “other minor injuries” but she was not questioned about those wounds, or the bruising on Barbara’s neck.
After the photos the focus turned to Barb Raber’s “confession” to detectives and exactly when she had invoked her right to an attorney. Detective Maxwell stayed on the stand and testified how the defendant was read her Miranda rights twice—as she was arrested and the next day—and how he asked her both times if she understood them. She said she did. She had vaguely mentioned talking to an attorney as she was driven to the Justice Center but did not make a clear statement. Maxwell believed they were on solid ground and continued to question her.
It was after her arrest, when they talked to her at the Justice Center, that they read her some of the texts she had exchanged with Eli. “She began crying and told myself and Detective Chuhi that it was an accident,” he said. This conversation with the detectives, as Barb told them details about taking a shotgun from her house, driving to the Weavers’, and entering through the basement door, and the gun going off, was not taped. The detectives asked if she wanted to make a written statement. She did not. The next day they met with her again, and asked specifically about the gun. Now she said she didn’t remember, and didn’t know if she had even fired it. That day she specifically asked for an attorney and the questioning stopped.
Leonard confronted Maxwell about the fact that the murder weapon had never been found. It was one more detail, he thought, that made the case against Barb Raber shaky.
If Eli had killed his wife even as he was texting Barb Raber—setting her up to take the fall for the crime—wasn’t it possible that he still had the shotgun or had disposed of it? Barb said she’d returned the gun to her husband’s gun cabinet, except it wasn’t there. Couldn’t Eli have the shotgun?
Maxwell tried any number of ways to say no, then finally conceded it was possible Eli had the shotgun.
It could be anywhere, hidden in a field near Apple Creek, or at the bottom of Lake Erie.
* * *
THE MOST DAMAGING evidence were the texts between the lovers. John Leonard strenuously objected to the messages being introduced as evidence, but Judge Brown allowed them.
Edna Boyle had Detective Maxwell read some of the text messages to the stunned courtroom. It was the first time Ed Raber, Mark Weaver, Steve Chupp, the Amish community, and the jury had heard them.
Most were from May 30 to June 2, the weekend leading up to the day of the murder. As their spouses went about their usual weekend chores, carrying the load of parenting and everything necessary to keep a family together, Eli and Barb were preoccupied with researching how to kill a person. Detective Maxwell read:
If we could get something in her to make her sleep hard then get a can or two of nitrogen or CO2 gas, let it leak out under the bed it would look like carbon monoxide poisoning, Barb had suggested to Eli on May 30.
Later the same day, Eli texted Barb about how much insecticide might be lethal:
Do you think three CC’s of that Tempo would do it?
Her response was:
Don’t know, it should.
That evening Barb texted Eli:
How would that ant stuff work?
The next two days the texts showed they still hadn’t settled on a manner of death.
Eli messaged Barb:
I was just curious what you were thinking of for Tuesday.
Nothing, really was just having diff ideas?
From Barb to Eli:
I thought if we could get that fly stuff in a spice cupcake she might not detect it.
Eli was beginning to lose patience:
Just blow up the house or something Tuesday morning! Or come do her tonight.
I don’t care at all how it’s done, just do it.
But Barb was reluctant, and asked what to do about the children—Eli’s children—who would likely be in the house. Eli answered that the children would go straight to heaven if it happened that way.
Later on May 31, Eli texted Barb: She’s going to wash again at 5 in the morn and I want you to do something in the morn, Barb, plz.
All John Leonard could do in his cross was look for holes. The texts, after all, did not prove that his client had killed Barbara Weaver. It was clear that Eli had intimidated Barb. She became scared. She didn’t think she could go through with it.
“She didn’t think he was serious. She’s playing, going along with him,” Leonard asked Maxwell, “and then she became scared?”
“Oh yeah, that’s what she said.”
“And you agree with me when you were interpreting these messages that certainly gives the impression that Eli Weaver really, really, really wants something done right away doesn’t he?”
“Sure, it sounds—”
“Shows impatience, desperation, whatever term you want to use. He wants it done?”
“It appears that way, yes.”
Even on the morning of the murder, Barb’s messages showed that she was not convinced she could go through with it: It’s too scary, Eli. Damn, Eli, I don’t know if I can do it. It’s too scary, she texted.
Detective Maxwell read texts that showed Eli was instructing Barb. He may have already killed his wife, he may have been on his way to Lake Erie, but he had Barb quaking in her tennies.
* * *
IT WAS A question that didn’t surprise the Amish in the courtroom. Their names were a reflection of a closed society.
“For clarification, you’re not related to Eli Weaver?” John Leonard asked the witness.
“No, not that I’m aware of.”
David Weaver had agreed to testify in exchange for immunity. He could have been charged wit
h obstruction of justice, for making the fake phone call, the one warning Eli that someone was out to get him. But Weaver wouldn’t be charged. He was too important to the prosecution’s case against Barb.
He said he’d never second-guessed her request to make the call. They were friends, and isn’t that what friends do for each other? Do favors and not ask questions?
Edna Boyle asked him what his relationship was with Barb Raber. She had been a driver for him when he was still living as Amish. But did they have any other relationship?
“Not really. Basically we’re just friends.”
Neither Boyle nor Leonard pressed him to explain in court what it meant to be a “friend” of Barb Raber. Like Eli, David Weaver had a sexual history with her. He had admitted that to detectives. Once a friend of Barb, always a friend of Barb.
“After the death of Barbara Weaver did you have contact with Barbara Raber?”
“Yes. I got a phone call about 9:00 in the morning the next day or something like that telling me that Barbara Weaver was killed.”
It was Barb asking him for one of those favors old lovers can ask of each other.
“She asked me to make a phone call to the phone booth and leave a message for whoever, you know, saying something about ‘Eli, you can run but not hide.’”
Two days after he made the call to the shanty, Weaver heard directly from Eli. He had a new scheme. “He told me he wanted guys to come up to his door, whoever done it. For what reason he called me I don’t know.”
This was the plot Eli mentioned to Barb—to have some people pound on the walls. That way Eli could tell sheriff’s deputies that “they” were still out there.
Another favor David had performed was loaning Barb his .410 gauge shotgun four or five years before. He didn’t seem curious about where his gun was or what use it had been put to.
John Leonard got David Weaver to admit that although he said he hardly knew Eli, David had been one of the people Eli had confided in. In the weeks prior to the murder, Eli had told or texted David a couple of times that he wanted to get rid of his wife.
And, muddying the waters, Cora Anderson had contacted David before the murder saying she could probably find a hit man Eli could hire. When Eli heard this, David said, he dismissed it as too risky, involving too many people in his plot.