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

by Jess Walter

  The Beast’s agents had crawled underneath the cabin during the night again, fastening their fucking listening devices to the floor. Randy pounded with his feet and the noises stopped, but all night Randy and Sara sat up with their weapons, waiting for the devils to try again.

  Kevin seemed to be more alert, but his wound was still infected and oozing, and he was in pain. Sara crawled past her mother’s body into the kitchen and brought back several bowls of cold green beans. When she gave a bowl to Kevin, he tried it, then asked if she could warm it up. At least he was feeling better.

  They listened to the news on the radio, took turns going to the bathroom in a portable toilet they had inside the house, kept themselves clean, and talked about how to get their story out, how to keep the government from covering up the murders of Sammy and Vicki. It seemed hopeless to Sara.

  Another sleepless night moved hazily toward dawn, and Sara resumed her prayers to Yahweh, wishing she’d listened better to her mother’s explanation of how to discern His will. She would give anything to have her mother’s guidance.

  And then—sometime before sunrise—the negotiators started in again. At least once every hour, day or night, they tried. It didn’t matter to them.

  “Is there anything we can do? Please let me know.”

  Clearly, Sara thought, the feds wanted them to get no sleep at all. She didn’t know how much longer she could hold out. Her eyes played tricks with her in the closed-up cabin, and her exhaustion was cut with rage until she wasn’t even sure what she would do next.

  The voice said, “Behind every strong man there is a good woman. Mrs. Weaver, please support your husband by coming out. I want to resolve this situation peacefully. I’m sure you want the same. Are the children all right? Can we get some milk for Elizabeth? Let me know if I can be of any help just by calling out.”

  Sara glared at the door through teary eyes and prayed that Yahweh just get it over with and allow the ZOG devils to firebomb the cabin.

  FRED LANCELEY LISTENED TO THE REPORT from the graveyard shift negotiator on Wednesday, who—at 4:30 a.m.—had appealed to Vicki again but had gotten no response. They were getting nowhere. Meanwhile, Rogers and the others were still working on assault plans, faxing them back to headquarters for approval. The pressure to assault the cabin was building, just as it had when it was Dave Hunt’s case. Lanceley figured that if he didn’t get some response from the Weavers soon, the HRT would have to go tactical, firing tear gas into the cabin or raiding it with agents. If he only knew what was going on inside the cabin. Agents had only gotten two microphones tentatively attached to the side and bottom of the cabin, because whenever they tried someone stomped on the floor. The listening devices didn’t seem to pick very much up—mostly muffled voices and the chirps and whistles of a couple of pet parakeets.

  The robot seemed like the best way to get close enough to the house to hear what Randy had to say. As he always did, Lanceley told the Weavers about the next move they were making, so they didn’t panic when the activity began again. “Randall, I can understand your concern about the telephone, and I can also understand why you might not want to step out on the front porch. So here is what they are going to do. The robot will go to the window on the right side of the porch. The grippers will try to punch the phone through the window and the glass will break. After the telephone is delivered, the robot will back off. You have nothing to worry about.”

  “Get the fuck out of here!”

  Lanceley sat up and smiled. In fourteen years as a negotiator, he’d never heard profanity that sounded so beautiful. “Randall, this is a good opportunity for a dialogue. Let’s you and I start talking?”

  Randy said something the negotiator couldn’t understand.

  “I can’t hear you, Randy.”

  The rest was like bad radio, breaking up on Lanceley. “Get out of here … this kike son of a bitch … you fucking pig … lying mother-fuckers.”

  “Randall, I still can’t hear you.”

  “Get the fuck out of here.”

  At least it was an opening. One hundred and twenty-four hours into the standoff, Fred Lanceley leaned forward and spoke clearly and slowly. “Randall, I can understand your anger, but you and I have got to try to resolve this. Let’s you and I—Let’s you and I see if we can resolve this. Let’s you and I—Let’s you and I see if we can start something anew right here.”

  “Get the fuck out of here.”

  FIFTEEN

  KAREN DEGAN GRIPPED TIGHTLY the hands of her two sons and walked into the slate-roofed Sacred Heart Church, where nineteen years earlier she’d married a strong, quiet football player. Now, on Wednesday, August 26, 1992, she was going to his funeral.

  The streets were filled with mourners—3,000 cops, federal agents and judges, Marines, football players and old friends—escorted by dozens of police cars and motorcycles. Billy Degan’s funeral gripped Quincy, a shipyard town just south of Boston that, for a couple of hundred years, produced more than its share of big boats and Irish cops. Somber officers walked past brick businesses and beer-and-shot taverns until they reached the church, where 200 deputy U.S. marshals stood ten deep in dark suits and sunglasses, their badges striped in black. Six Marines carried the casket into the church while a customs agent played “The Marine Corps Hymn” on bagpipes on the church steps.

  Dave Hunt was fogged in by a painful cold he’d gotten on the mountain, and he watched Degan’s wife through bleary, tired eyes, amazed by her poise and strength. The boys were slices of Billy, one eighteen, the other fourteen, both tall and earnest in their dark blazers and cop-kid haircuts. Hunt had never seen such a funeral. Degan was a lifelong Marine and deputy U.S. marshal—two outfits that knew how to send someone off with full honors. The Marines had to bury heroes all the time, thousands of them. The U.S. Marshals Service had lost its share, too, three hundred men in two hundred years, but rarely one with Billy Degan’s reputation and abilities. They shut down the Boston federal building, and among those at the funeral were the mayor of Boston and the governor of Massachusetts. In a cop town like Quincy, in the belly of three centuries of civilization, it was hard for Hunt to imagine the place they’d just come from, that damned twilight zone of a mountain, where people were threatening federal officers, cheering on neo-Nazis, and holding signs that celebrated Degan’s murder. It was such a shame. Hunt watched the pain in Larry Cooper’s face as he listened to a parade of people talk about Billy.

  “Bill Degan died in the company of his best friends,” said Henry Hudson, “performing the duties he enjoyed best in the job he loved most.”

  The mayor of Boston, Ray Flynn, said, “It is a sad day. This is a personal tragedy for all the people in the state. We lost a dedicated law enforcement officer and somebody who had devoted his whole life to defending and protecting others.”

  Outside, Quincy police patrolled the church in bulletproof vests, in case Weaver supporters tried to strike at the funeral. They jumped when a nearby transformer blew, popping like gunfire, then relaxed when they realized what it was.

  Inside the church, Degan rested in a steel-gray casket while the Reverend Cornelius James Heery, pastor of Sacred Heart, praised him as a family man and a good marshal. The pastor said it was okay to be troubled by the events in North Idaho and to wonder, “Why did Bill have to die on a hillside so far from home?”

  BUNKERED IN BEHIND THEIR FURNITURE, the Weavers girded themselves for what was coming; they must not be afraid to fight, and they must not be afraid to die. But first, they had to get their story out. Much of the time during the last five days, the family turned on the radio and tuned it to the end of the dial, where one of the Spokane television stations was simulcast on radio. The ZOG agents seemed to know when they were listening to the radio, and they spoke through the loudspeaker during those times, but the family was able to pick up some news. They were glad to hear that followers of Yahweh and those who saw through the shadow government had gathered to protest. But they couldn’t believe the
misinformation that was being spread by the Jewish-controlled media. The government was calling the family white supermacists and members of the Aryan Nations, when in fact, they were separatists or racialists who belonged to no group. They didn’t want supremacy over other races, just separation. Also, the marshals claimed Kevin shot Degan first and didn’t even mention that the dog had been killed. They even went so far as to say Kevin might have shot Sammy. And there was no mention at all of Vicki being killed or of Randy and Kevin being wounded. It proved the government had no intention of letting anyone in the family go and that they would kill everyone to cover up what had really happened.

  “We have to figure out a way to get our story out,” Randy said. Sara was taking on her mother’s role, and she didn’t hesitate to grab her mom’s yellow legal pad and take over the job of writing as Kevin and Randy dictated.

  Wednesday August 26, 1992

  Approximately 11:30 Friday morning, August 21, 1992, the dogs started barking like they always do….

  And then Sara laid out Kevin’s version of the shoot-out with the marshals:

  The men were still shooting at Sam, so I shot one of the sons of bitches….

  and described the shots that killed Vicki and wounded Kevin and Randy.

  “Needless to say, we understand snipers are everywhere,” she wrote.

  They killed Sam, wounded Randy, killed Vicki, and wounded Kevin. The feds totally covered up the murder of Gordon Kahl … amongst numerous other cover ups [sic], especially against white rascialists [sic] and/or Tax Protesters. If they think we are going to trust them, (We didn’t trust them before they shot us) they’re crazy! Yahweh is starting to heal Kevin. We constantly pray he’ll be okay. Since Vicki, Kevin and I (R.) have been shot we haven’t left the house, and do not plan to unless we are starved out. Then we will most certainly take the offensive. It appears as though the feds are attempting to draw fire from the house as an excuse to finish us all off. If they even so much as crack a window pane on this house with a robot, telephone, gas, grenades, ect … ect … [sic] it’s all over with.

  Our heart felt thanks goes out to all our sympathizers. Our faith is in our creator Yahweh Yahshua the Messiah. We do not fear the One World Beast government. They can only take our lives. Only Yahweh can destroy our souls. Samuel Hanson Weaver and Vicki Jean Weaver are martyrs for Yah-Yahshua and the White Race. Even if the rest of us die, we win. Hallelu-Yah! Keep the faith. To all our families and brethren, We love you.

  Hallelu-Yah!

  And then they all signed it, yet another pronouncement of defiance from a family that was being bled to death. Sara wrote Elisheba’s name in capital letters and then tried to figure out where to hide a six-page letter so it might survive a firebomb.

  ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-SIX HOURS. The FBI agents continued working on their plans for a tactical raid, while the negotiator Fred Lanceley tried to build on the momentum from Randy’s profanity-strewn ravings about the robot. There had to be some way they could get a telephone to Randy that wouldn’t frighten him, Lanceley said.

  “I ain’t taking no goddam telephone,” Randy yelled. He said something else, but it tailed off in a stream of words Lanceley couldn’t pick up, until the last one—sister.

  Lanceley pounced. “I heard sister, was there something else?” He said that some FBI agents had reached Weaver’s dad.

  “Is my father here?” Randy called.

  “I don’t know if he is here.” Lanceley looked around the upper command post and an FBI agent shook his head. “No, none of your folks are here. I just checked.”

  “I want to talk to my sister!” Randy yelled. His sister, Marnis Joy, had visited him that summer and now he called out her name and where she lived.

  All afternoon, Lanceley told Weaver about their attempts to find Marnis, until, a little after 6:00 p.m. on Wednesday, the negotiator said they’d found her. “Your sister will be here in the morning.”

  But Lanceley wasn’t sure about bringing Marnis in. “There is some concern out here that if you speak to your sister, you will tell your story to her and then commit suicide. Randall, is that your intent? Are you going to commit suicide? You are going to have to promise me that you will not harm your family or harm yourself.”

  “I promise you no one will be hurt! I promise you no one will be hurt! I want my sister at the back door!”

  “Randall, I don’t know if we can do that. I’m not sure we can bring her just walking up to the house.” Lanceley didn’t know Weaver’s sister at all. What if she was as paranoid and zealous as Randy? How could Lanceley be sure she wouldn’t yell out to the house, “Brother, why don’t you just kill your family and kill yourself like we talked about.”

  Finally, on Thursday, Marnis and her boyfriend were driven up the driveway to the base of the knob, 144 hours after the standoff began.

  “PAGE TWO,” PAUL HARVEY SAID. And then he talked about the standoff in North Idaho, and he pleaded with Randy Weaver to give up. “You can negotiate an end to this standoff right now, and believe me, Randy, you’ll have a much better chance with a jury of understanding home folks than you could ever have in any kind of shoot-out with two hundred frustrated lawmen.”

  Vicki’s family had remembered that Randy listened to Paul Harvey every day on the radio, and so they sent word through a television reporter, who contacted her radio affiliate, who called Paul Harvey’s producer and passed along the message. For most of the three-minute plea on his national show, Harvey criticized the federal government. “I wonder, too, with all the crass criminals we have running around in this country, this focus on you certainly constitutes grotesque overkill and frankly, from an objective distance, it looks pretty silly.”

  Randy, Kevin, and the kids heard the show, but people on the outside just didn’t understand. If they gave up, they’d be gunned down, one by one. Nobody below the mountain knew that Vicki was dead and that the snipers had tried to kill Randy and Kevin, too, without any warning. No, the family was already martyred. It was only a matter of time before the feds finished them. What was left of the Weaver family was never leaving that cabin.

  But that’s why it was so important that they get their story out. That’s why Randy wanted to talk to Marnis. But he worried the feds were going to wait until Marnis got to the back door and then shoot her and blame it on Randy. The negotiator had talked about suicide, which Randy took to be a suggestion that he kill himself and his family. Clearly that was their plan, to try to talk him into it, or maybe to paint him as some lunatic killer, and then gun everyone down and claim Randy did it. When the negotiator asked Randy if he was going to kill his family, no doubt they were taping the exchange to somehow justify their murderous attack.

  The negotiator made a big production of the fact that they’d gotten Randy’s sister for him, and then when he asked that she come to the back door, the one with the porch overlooking the valley below, he played a game like they didn’t know which door was the back door.

  “Randall, is it the one with the robot or without the robot?”

  Finally, the family heard Marnis call out Randy’s name over the loudspeaker.

  “Marnis!” Randy yelled from inside the cabin. “Vicki is dead!”

  But Marnis droned on about Randy surrendering, and it was apparent to the family that she hadn’t heard, that the feds were blocking Randy’s voice somehow.

  “What happened?” Marnis yelled. “Is everything all right?”

  As loud as he could, Randy yelled. “No, it’s not! Can you hear me? They are playing games! Don’t believe a goddam thing they are saying. They are afraid to let the truth out.”

  “Brother, I just can’t hear you,” Marnis said. “In our visit last summer, I didn’t tell you that I’ve got a hearing loss. I’ve got a hearing loss from the factory where I work and I just can’t hear you.”

  The girls couldn’t stand it anymore, and they called out, “Aunt Marnis! Aunt Marnis!”

  But Randy was pissed. If they weren’t going to le
t her hear that Vicki was dead, then Randy was done talking.

  LANCELEY COULD FEEL the trust disintegrate after Marnis said she couldn’t hear very well. Randy, he figured, probably believed that his sister had gone over to the FBI’s side. Marnis had talked nonstop since then, with no answer from the cabin.

  Lanceley got back on the loudspeaker. “Randall, Marnis and I are going to come forward with the APC so we can get closer to the house so both of us can hear what you are saying. This is not working, and we have to establish some communication.”

  No answer.

  “Randall, since you are not answering me, what I’m going to do here is I’m going to take it as an affirmative answer from you. Marnis and I are going to come forward in the APC unless you tell me I can’t.

  “Back off, Fred!” Weaver yelled. “Back off.”

  Lanceley looked over at Marnis, a pleasant, middle-aged woman, weeping and drained from hours of negotiations. They were finished for the day.

  The next morning, Thursday, 168 hours into the standoff, Marnis went to another hillside with an FBI agent who brought a parabolic microphone—the kind of big dish used to pick up the sound of tackles and snap counts at football games.

  Marnis made impassioned, emotional pleas for Randy to give up and let the courts handle his case, and for the children to come out of the cabin.

  No answer.

  Lanceley could hear the parakeets chirping inside the cabin. Across the hillside, Marnis was sobbing, and Lanceley lost his temper.

  “Randall, you asked me to bring your sister here. I brought your sister to you, and then you treat her like this. You can hear in her voice how brokenhearted she is. You owe her an explanation for what you are doing here. I think you owe her an apology.”

  Nothing.

  Marnis tried again but it was clear Randy wasn’t talking anymore.

  “Randall,” Lanceley said, “you know, the word around town … is that you are a family man, that you see the family as a unit. Isn’t your sister part of your unit, Randall? Don’t you owe your sister an explanation for what is going on here? I mean, you asked her to come out here. You have broken her heart here, and you won’t even tell her what’s happening.”