What was ruby ridge

Later that day, Harris, Weaver, and his daughter, Sarah, left the cabin, allegedly for the purpose of preparing Sammy's body for burial. FBI sharpshooter Lon Horiuchi, waiting yards away, opened fire, allegedly because he thought Harrison was armed and intending to fire on a helicopter in the vicinity. When they attempted to escape back into the cabin, Horiuchi fired again, wounding Harrison as he dove through the door and killing Vicki Weaver, who was holding the door open with one hand and cradling her infant daughter with the other.

The family surrendered after speaking with former Special Forces Lt. The building is where agents found the body of Samuel Weaver during the day standoff which ended with the surrender of Randy Weaver to federal authorities. Monday, Randall Weaver had decided to postpone his expected surrender until at least Sept.

Gritz said he asked Sarah and Rachel to take off the handguns they had belted around their waists. He said Sarah unbuckled her 9mm semiautomatic pistol, and Rachel dropped her snubnosed. In they filed federal civil rights cases against the FBI and U. In , Lon Horiuchi was charged with involuntary manslaughter but the charge was dismissed in Michael Kahoe, participated in a cover-up about Ruby Ridge.

A judge dismissed the case, however, claiming federal agents could not be charged for actions taken in the line of duty. In , the ruling was overturned, but no further criminal charges were filed against Horiuchi. Government paid a high financial price for its role at Ruby Ridge.

The New York Times. Ruby Ridge, Part One: Suspicion. PBS American Experience. Ruby Ridge, Part Two: Confirmation. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present.

During his adolescence in upstate New York, Timothy McVeigh developed an enthusiasm for guns and a suspicion of governmental authority. He drew inspiration from the novel The Turner Diaries, written by the white nationalist William Luther Pierce, which depicts a right-wing On November 24, , Jack Ruby , a year-old Dallas nightclub operator, stunned America when he shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald , the accused assassin of President John Kennedy Two days earlier, on November 22, Kennedy was fatally shot The Oklahoma City bombing occurred when a truck packed with explosives was detonated on April 19, , outside the Alfred P.

Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, killing people and leaving hundreds more injured. The blast was set off by anti-government The Waco Siege began in early , when a government raid on a compound in Axtell, Texas, led to a day standoff between federal agents and members of a millennial Christian sect called the Branch Davidians. The siege ended dramatically on April 19, , when fires consumed First established in , the FBI has often been criticized for violating the civil rights of As Randy reached for the shed door, a bullet tore through his arm.

After the shot, the three ran back to the cabin. Vicki through open the door as her husband and eldest daughter, followed by Harris, dove in. Then another shot rang out. From inside the cabin, screams could be heard. What the HRT did not know, and what they would not find out for days, is that the second bullet from Horiuchi's. Three hours after the shooting, Harris, coughing up blood and in agony, begged Randy to finish him off. Negotiation efforts for a surrender continued for days as angry right-wing protesters gathered near Ruby Ridge.

Skinheads, looking for action, flocked in from as far away as Las Vegas and Portland. Some of the negotiation efforts, inspired by the belief that Vicki was still alive and was the key to a peaceful resolution of the stand-off, backfired miserably. Notably, for example, there was the suggestion by a negotiator on the third day, "Good morning, Mrs.

We had pancakes this morning. And what did you have for breakfast? Why don't you send the children out for some pancakes, Mrs. Expecting to die at any time in a hail or bullets or a firestorm, Kevin and Randy composed a six-page letter offering their side of the confrontation. There was finally a breakthrough in the long stand-off on August 28, when Randy agreed to speak with Bo Gritz, a former Green Beret and proponent of right-wing views who was then running for president of the United States on the Populist Party ticket.

Gritz and two other friends of Randy succeeded on August 30 in convincing the injured Harris to surrender and receive medical treatment. The Weavers surrendered the next day following word from Gritz that famed defense attorney Gerry Spence had readily agreed to represent Weaver in his trial.

Bo Gritz, meanwhile, had a new campaign issue. He told supporters at Ruby Ridge: "There's a bureaucrat up here that's guilty. Somebody is going to be brought to justice. I believe we're gonna find some fat bureaucrat who authorized this to go down. There are no winners in a situation with all this sadness. Following their surrender, a grand jury indicted Kevin Harris for the murder of Deputy Marshal Degan and indicted Randy Weaver for aiding and abetting in Degan's death.

Both defendants pleaded not guilty to the charges. They waited in the Ada County Jail for eight months as attorneys on both sides prepared for what promised to be a lengthy trial.

Joining Spence on the defense team was his son, Kent, a young local attorney named Chuck Peterson, and David Nevin, Kevin Harris's court appointed attorney. Nevin accepted the case despite the low pay, the career risks associated with representing a cop killer, and the near certainty that U. Attorney Ron Howe would "throw the book" at his client. He took the case for one reason: it afforded to work along side the man who had become the most famous defense attorney in America. Jess Walter, in his fine book on the Ruby Ridge case, describes Spence as a lawyer who had succeeded in crafting himself "as the Lone Ranger of the law, not just a good guy, but something more, a mythical figure, a hero.

Ron Howen wanted to make the jury see Weaver as a man whose racist and anti-government beliefs, combined with an almost unbelievable stubbornness, was responsible not just for the death of Billy Degan, but also his son and wife. In Howe's mind, Randy and Vicki, had formed a criminal enterprise in dealing illegal firearms and all but forced the shootout.

To Spence, the case was about freedom of religion and self-defense. The government's decision to pursue a conspiracy theory played right into Spence's hands by turning the case into one about Weaver's beliefs. What defense attorneys had most feared was a narrow indictment that would have excluded testimony about Weaver's out-of-the-mainstream philosophy.

Meanwhile, David Nevin had his own insight about the case. The whole case, he concluded, really turned on the dog. Opening arguments were heard in Boise in the sixth-floor courtroom of U.

District Judge Edward J. Lodge on April 12, Prosecutors described the shooting of Bill Degan as a cold-blooded murder. Nevin, in his opening, told of young Sammy yelling, "I'm coming, Dad" and then moments later being "shot in the back, running away, running home.

Spence insisted that the evidence would show Randy Weaver "had the right to be free. The first prosecution witness was U. Cooper responded, he said, by firing at Harris. He then heard two other shots, presumably Arthur Roderick shooting Striker, and Sammy yell out, "You son of a bitch. Nevin suggested the marshals were toting heavy guns with a silencer on a so-called observation mission because they intended all along to kill Weaver's dog. Spence followed up with more questions about Striker's shooting.

To another objection from prosecutors, Spence asked Cooper the question that raised the most troubling problem with the government's timeline: "Does it make sense to you that Officer Roderick would be shooting the dog after Mr. Degan is dead, after Mr.

Degan is shot? Howen thought Vicki Weaver's threatening letters to government officials showed as clearly as anything the Weavers' responsibility for what happened on the mountain the previous August. He called the U. Attorney for Idaho, Maurice Ellsworth, to testify about Vicki's confrontational rants. On cross-examination, Spence attempted to portray the letters as simply the exercise of free speech and irrelevant to the standoff. Spence asked: "I, as a citizen of the United States, have a right to call you the Queen of Babylon if I want to, true?

Prosecutors also put a family friend of the Weavers, Rodney Willey, on the stand to testify concerning the Weavers' determination to fight the government and never to voluntarily surrender. Willey confirmed the government's key points, but on cross-examination proved to be an even more effective witness for the defense. Willey told of Vicki's fear that the government would remove her children and place them in the welfare system, an unbearable prospect for the loving mother.

Willey also described Randy and Vicki as a loving couple, always "holding hands" and never arguing or fighting. Services Full metadata XML. Title Ruby Ridge. Authors Andregg, Michael M. Issue Date Publisher Combating Terrorism.

Type Book chapter. Weaver claimed never to have received the notice to appear at his mountain cabin where he lived with his wife, Vicki, a friend, Kevin Harris, four children and a dog.