Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too. And this is stuff you
Speaker 2: should know the podcast the early nineties Black Helicopter Edition.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is Ruby Ridge, the incident, the standoff, the siege,
Speaker 1: what do you call this?
Speaker 2: The beginning of the far right militia movement being born
Speaker 2: in the United States? For sure? It was huge, huge. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it was a huge example of government overreach. It was
Speaker 2: this researching this was really hard, man, This is a
Speaker 2: hard one for me. It was just it's just such
Speaker 2: an awful story all around. It's just terrible.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this is this occurred when I was I guess,
Speaker 1: like a third year in college or so, and.
Speaker 3: That you know, I was.
Speaker 1: I've talked on the show before about like us not
Speaker 1: having TV or cable and stuff, and so I wasn't
Speaker 1: as newsy then as I am now.
Speaker 3: But this was a big deal.
Speaker 1: And I remember this and then Waco literally right after happening,
Speaker 1: which we should do a Waco episode at some point too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, unfortunately we should.
Speaker 1: I just remember at the time being like, wow, okay,
Speaker 1: I don't think I really agree with these people that
Speaker 1: are having this standoff, but at the same time it
Speaker 1: looks from as an outsider, like the government is just
Speaker 1: going in guns blazing and kind of murdering people.
Speaker 3: And it turns out both are kind of true for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah for sure. I mean, you don't have to sympathize
Speaker 2: with the Weavers or any of their supporters to still
Speaker 2: be like this is just messed up. Like, yeah, that's
Speaker 2: what I was saying. The whole situation's messed up. I
Speaker 2: don't agree with basically any of their views, but yeah,
Speaker 2: it's just I say, we get into it, everybody to
Speaker 2: make up their own minds, because it's definitely one of
Speaker 2: those stories, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so just in the broadest two sentence overview, Ruby
Speaker 1: Ridge was a standoff in the Ruby Ridge area of
Speaker 1: Idaho in.
Speaker 3: When did it finally go down? Ninety two? Yes, yeah,
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 1: That was many, many, many months long in the making,
Speaker 1: in which the US government had a stand off with
Speaker 1: a family of children, a couple of adults, and the
Speaker 1: rest were basically kids. Oh yeah, and it ended in
Speaker 1: lost lives on both sides when there's absolutely no reason
Speaker 1: why it should have. And this is that story of
Speaker 1: the Weaver family.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess you can start back at the very
Speaker 2: beginning when the Weaver family itself began. Vicky who would
Speaker 2: become Vicky Weaver. She was born Vicky Jordison and her
Speaker 2: husband Randall Weaver, got married in nineteen seven. They lived
Speaker 2: in Iowa, I think Cedar Falls right, Yeah, and she
Speaker 2: was a secretary for Susan Roebuck. He had just been
Speaker 2: discharged as a Green Beret honorably from the army and
Speaker 2: had gotten a job working at the tractor factory for
Speaker 2: John Deere. She can do a lot worse than that.
Speaker 2: So they were like a very normal working class couple
Speaker 2: just starting out in life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this was, like you said, nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 1: They had a daughter named Sarah in seventy six, and
Speaker 1: then two more kids, a boy named Sammy and then
Speaker 1: a daughter named Rachel, all over the next six years.
Speaker 1: And those were you know, there was a kid that
Speaker 1: would come later that we'll get to. But around the
Speaker 1: latest seventies, kind of after the latest Arab Israeli conflict
Speaker 1: came around, Vicky started basically kind of thought that was
Speaker 1: a sign of the end times, the biblical biblical end times.
Speaker 1: She kept having these recurring dreams of these omens about
Speaker 1: a house on a hill where they could be safe
Speaker 1: and hide, and she thought the end times were coming.
Speaker 1: And she started sharing this stuff with Randy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and apparently it really jibed with him because he
Speaker 2: got on board as well. I hadn't seen what exactly
Speaker 2: was the impetus that triggered all that, so thanks for
Speaker 2: clearing that up. But long story short, they ended up
Speaker 2: becoming religious extremists together, and also like apocalyptic religious extremists,
Speaker 2: not just garden variety religious extremists. Ye. Enough so that
Speaker 2: they moved. And not only do they move, they gave
Speaker 2: an interview to the local paper in Iowa saying that
Speaker 2: they were moving and in fact, they wanted to go
Speaker 2: find a place, build a place where they could have
Speaker 2: a three hundred yard defensible kill zone. Yeah no, but
Speaker 2: I mean your local paper is probably like, this is hot,
Speaker 2: hot news.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, hot off the presses local couple moving
Speaker 1: to up depensible shelter. Not here they moved in eighty three.
Speaker 1: I saw fifteen acres. I saw twenty acres regardless, somewhere
Speaker 1: in that neighborhood of land with a freshwater spring.
Speaker 3: This time.
Speaker 1: They were in Idaho near Naples, in the Ruby Ridge area,
Speaker 1: and this area had become a just sort of a
Speaker 1: place where if you didn't trust the government, if you
Speaker 1: didn't like paying taxes, if you maybe were a member
Speaker 1: of a Christian identity group or a white supremacist group,
Speaker 1: you may end up in this sort of rural era
Speaker 1: area of Idaho.
Speaker 2: At the time, Yeah, for sure, this was like a
Speaker 2: it's just I think it's still very much that way too. Actually,
Speaker 2: I don't know what kicked it off, but I think
Speaker 2: it started in the seventies in Earnest, so by the
Speaker 2: time they moved there, it was it was in full swing.
Speaker 2: That's just kind of where you went. And they actually
Speaker 2: built their own home from what I saw, and pictures
Speaker 2: of it are like, well, they did a really good job.
Speaker 2: It's like a two story, nice looking cabin. To build
Speaker 2: a bunch of outbuildings. They basically built themselves a compound,
Speaker 2: and they did it largely using scraps in plywood and
Speaker 2: stuff like that. And they started living the survivalist life,
Speaker 2: like living off the land, planting vegetables. They homeschooled the kids,
Speaker 2: of course, and the way I didn't know that in
Speaker 2: Idaho or in the US.
Speaker 1: In Idaho at the time, at least it was not
Speaker 1: legal to homeschool. So not saying that that was part
Speaker 1: of their illegalities, but I guess technically it was.
Speaker 2: But I think it does kind of like get a
Speaker 2: point across. It's a little subtle, like they couldn't have
Speaker 2: cared less if the state or the federal government told
Speaker 2: them that they couldn't homeschool their kids. That would just
Speaker 2: be one more reason that they hated the government. And
Speaker 2: in fact, one of the big movements in this area
Speaker 2: was essentially like local sovereignty, where the highest authority in
Speaker 2: the entire country for a specific area was the local sheriff.
Speaker 2: Anything beyond that was fraudulent, right, So, yeah, they wouldn't
Speaker 2: have listened to the state government saying they couldn't homeschool
Speaker 2: their kids at all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure didn't have power, no technically no like
Speaker 1: official running water. I think they were able to get
Speaker 1: water to the house via that spring, but you know,
Speaker 1: they were living the rural lifestyle. They took in a
Speaker 1: young teenage boy who had what sounds like a really
Speaker 1: pretty awful home life. His name was Kevin Harris, and
Speaker 1: he kind of came and went for a little while,
Speaker 1: and then eventually basically was kind of adopted by the
Speaker 1: family and he ended up staying there pretty much full
Speaker 1: time at a certain point.
Speaker 2: Yes, so he wasn't like they didn't adopt him because
Speaker 2: he was like, oh, I thought, I'm pretty sure it's
Speaker 2: the end times too, right. He was just like a
Speaker 2: kid that they helped out, which is pretty great. So
Speaker 2: he was, you know, he would come and go. He
Speaker 2: was just kind of living his life and he could
Speaker 2: he just knew he had a place to stay in
Speaker 2: a place where he could eat when things got bad
Speaker 2: at home with the which I think says a lot about.
Speaker 3: Them, Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: And while they did kind of chum up to some
Speaker 1: of the Aryan nation groups around there, they were never
Speaker 1: like official members. They would go to a meeting sometimes.
Speaker 1: They were very much aligned with the Christian Identity movement,
Speaker 1: which is I mean, we can't get into the weeds
Speaker 1: too much here, but one of the main tenants is
Speaker 1: that Jews are literally the spawn of Satan, that Eve
Speaker 1: and the serpent bore you know, Jews as babies, and
Speaker 1: that non white people are mud people from a different creation.
Speaker 3: They are. I mean, how deep do you want to
Speaker 3: go here.
Speaker 2: Well, also that if you were of Celtic or Germanic
Speaker 2: Germanic descent, you're the chosen people. You're the You're the
Speaker 2: people who everyone else needs to cater to basically, And
Speaker 2: that also they're the lost tribe of Israel, which legitimizes
Speaker 2: them all the way back to pre Christian days.
Speaker 3: Right, Okay, that's deep enough.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So Randy Weaver came on the Federal alays radar
Speaker 2: as far back as nineteen eighty five because the Secret
Speaker 2: Service showed up one time at the compound and said, Hey,
Speaker 2: what have your neighbors told us that you've been threatening
Speaker 2: to shoot Ronald Reagan? And somebody tried that before, so
Speaker 2: we take it pretty seriously. Are you going to shoot
Speaker 2: Ronald Reagan? Yes? No, maybe?
Speaker 3: Right? Which bubble did he fill out?
Speaker 2: He said no. He adamantly said no. He said, this
Speaker 2: neighbor that told you that is basically trying to pre
Speaker 2: internet swap me because they want we have we're having
Speaker 2: a property dispute and they're just trying to bring the
Speaker 2: heat down on me. And I guess his explanation was persuasive,
Speaker 2: because that's as far as it went. As far as
Speaker 2: I could tell.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's as far as it went. It could have
Speaker 1: been a I mean, it could have been that innocent
Speaker 1: because they you know, some of their neighbors they were
Speaker 1: friendly with, some they didn't like very much. Some of
Speaker 1: their neighbors. Can plane that kids were wearing Nazi armbands,
Speaker 1: that Randy had fired shots at the houses before it was.
Speaker 1: You know, it's pretty rough and tumble out there. In
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty eight, Randy ran for sheriff, Like you're saying,
Speaker 1: sort of the highest calling that you could have in
Speaker 1: that crowd, and he was. It was basically a platform
Speaker 1: of like, I'm anti government. In fact, I carry around
Speaker 1: these get out of jail free cards and if you know,
Speaker 1: if you're not a non violent criminal, then you're going
Speaker 1: to get a second chance with me, and I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna I'm not gonna be a government sheriff basically, right.
Speaker 2: It's the posse comatadis movement, which is kind of basically
Speaker 2: what I was talking about. That based on this Act
Speaker 2: from eighteen seventy eight, federal troops have to stay out
Speaker 2: of law enforcement. So yeah, those black helicopters and un
Speaker 2: soldiers and all the stuff that everybody's worried about were
Speaker 2: just totally illegal, and I guess by that token, the
Speaker 2: FBI would be totally illegal, or the ATF for the
Speaker 2: DEA like there just isn't supposed to be such a
Speaker 2: thing as federal law enforcement. That right, platform, he ran
Speaker 2: under the party.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's a pretty good break time, What
Speaker 1: do you think?
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, we'll take a little early Blake early
Speaker 3: Blake took an early break.
Speaker 2: Blake set up like, Yes, I've been waiting for this
Speaker 2: for sixteen years.
Speaker 3: And we'll be back after this.
Speaker 2: Earning stuff, Joshi.
Speaker 3: Stuff, you shut all right.
Speaker 1: So this is a time in the mid eighties, sort
Speaker 1: of late eighties when militia groups were starting to sort
Speaker 1: of be a thing, be in the news a little
Speaker 1: bit more, and so of course the FBI is going
Speaker 1: to start to begin undercover ops to infiltrate these groups.
Speaker 3: And see what the heck is going on.
Speaker 1: And that is exactly what happened at an Aryan Nation
Speaker 1: meeting when Randy met an undercover agent. His name was
Speaker 1: Kenneth Fatally and he was going by the name Gus.
Speaker 1: Gus Magisono's great undercover name.
Speaker 2: I guess, yeah, but not exactly Germanic or Celtic in origin.
Speaker 1: You know, he was worked for the US Bureau of
Speaker 1: Alcohol to back owned firearms the ATF and over the course,
Speaker 1: like this whole operation was years and years long, because
Speaker 1: it took like three years for him to get a
Speaker 1: few different meetings with Randy.
Speaker 3: In which which culminated and if you ask.
Speaker 1: The FBI Randy saying, Hey, I want to sell you
Speaker 1: some illegal sought off shotguns. If you ask Randy, he'll
Speaker 1: say no, Man, I was entrapped. I didn't want to
Speaker 1: sell the guns. The guy asked to buy guns several
Speaker 1: times with me saying no, I don't want to do that,
Speaker 1: until I eventually relented and sold him these firearms.
Speaker 2: Right. So, however it happened the FEDS now had Randy
Speaker 2: Weaver in their grips. So they thought, this is a
Speaker 2: very routine thing that federal law enforcement does and I
Speaker 2: think local as well. Like they will bust you on
Speaker 2: some charge. It's fairly small, still enough that you could
Speaker 2: get prison time. They're going to take you away from
Speaker 2: your family. It's gonna be bad news for you, but
Speaker 2: they'll totally forget about the whole thing if you start
Speaker 2: informing for them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's a small fish right.
Speaker 2: Keep sure right, and then they use that fish's bait
Speaker 2: to get bigger and bigger, bigger fish right. So he
Speaker 2: was just going to have to do what he normally does.
Speaker 2: But every once in a while he'd meets secretly with
Speaker 2: some ATF handler and tell them everything he knew and
Speaker 2: who was who and who was leading the stuff. And
Speaker 2: Randy Weaver thought about it and he said, you know what,
Speaker 2: you can go straight to hell. I'm not going to
Speaker 2: be an informant, and you can press the charges if
Speaker 2: you want to. The ATF did not like this at all.
Speaker 2: From what I saw. They essentially took that almost personally. Yeah,
Speaker 2: at the very least they came at him like they
Speaker 2: took it personally.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. Vicky was pretty upset as well. Apparently
Speaker 1: she wrote a warning letter and this is in quotes
Speaker 1: to Aryan Nations and all our brethren of the Anglo
Speaker 1: Saxon race. She filed an affidavit which you knew trouble
Speaker 1: was coming. She filed an affidavit with a county clerk
Speaker 1: saying we might have to defend ourselves from you know,
Speaker 1: with firearms, because the federal government is going to come
Speaker 1: after us and we want to file this affidavit right now.
Speaker 2: That wouldn't even cross my mind. That's forward thinking, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Sure, so that was actually very precient too, VICKI writing
Speaker 2: that because they they would end up having to defend
Speaker 2: themselves by attacks from the federal government. And that will
Speaker 2: come a little bit later. First, in January of nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety one, the ATF, I guess they didn't arrest him
Speaker 2: on the spot when they came and said that, you know,
Speaker 2: they wanted him to be an informant. So a few
Speaker 2: months later they decided to take Randy Weaver into custody.
Speaker 2: But to do that, remember he had a three hundred
Speaker 2: yard kill zone. He had a cabin up on a mountain.
Speaker 2: You don't just walk up and tell somebody like that,
Speaker 2: come on, you're coming with us to jail. So they
Speaker 2: actually the ATF posed as and by the way, ATF
Speaker 2: is the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, another ostensibly
Speaker 2: illegal agency. They posed this like their car had been
Speaker 2: broken down, I guess on Ruby Creek Road, which is
Speaker 2: the main road that led up to the cabin, and
Speaker 2: they basically played on the Weaver's propensity to help strangers.
Speaker 2: I guess.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So they arrest him. He pleads not guilty.
Speaker 1: He's released on bond, a ten thousand dollars bond on
Speaker 1: his own recognisance, which is a little surprising. Vicky, his wife,
Speaker 1: again writes a letter to the US Attorney for the
Speaker 1: State of Idaho that she addressed as the servant of
Speaker 1: the Queen of Babylon and saying that we refused a
Speaker 1: bow to your evil commandments, whether we live or whether
Speaker 1: we die. So she, you know, she sent a clear
Speaker 1: message that like, we're not fooling around here. And I
Speaker 1: know we were on your radar, but you might as
Speaker 1: well really put us on your radar because we're not
Speaker 1: coming with you and you can't make us.
Speaker 2: Or take us off your radar. Don't even mess with us,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, ideally, So Randy.
Speaker 2: Had a trial set. He remember he's been out, he's
Speaker 2: out on bail, but he still has to go to
Speaker 2: court to face these firearms charges. And again he sold
Speaker 2: firearms to an undercover federal agents of it was a
Speaker 2: federal law that he broke. So these are federal charges
Speaker 2: and they can be pretty serious, but it was still, again,
Speaker 2: like you said, it was pretty small potatoes as far
Speaker 2: as firearms charges go. We're just charges that you could
Speaker 2: face in general at the time. Right, Ye's enough that
Speaker 2: you know. They had a trial set for him, and
Speaker 2: it was set for February nineteenth, nineteen ninety one, and
Speaker 2: for some reason or another, it was moved by one
Speaker 2: day to February twentieth, nineteen ninety one. Well, when the
Speaker 2: government does that or the court system does that, they
Speaker 2: have to alert you. So they sent Randy a letter saying, hey,
Speaker 2: we've moved your trial date to March twentieth, And of
Speaker 2: course it wasn't March twentieth, it was February twentieth, And
Speaker 2: there was essentially a typo that the author of the letter,
Speaker 2: a probation officer, had written. And so, of course Randy
Speaker 2: Weaver didn't show up on February twentieth, and a bench
Speaker 2: warrant was issued for his arrest for failure to appear.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this has been sort of debated here and
Speaker 1: there about the mistake and the error that he didn't
Speaker 1: even have the right court date to begin with. But
Speaker 1: all indications point to the idea that he was not
Speaker 1: going to come anyway. So I'm not saying it like
Speaker 1: didn't matter at all, But they said, hey, we're not coming.
Speaker 1: I don't think he'd planned on coming even if he
Speaker 1: had the right date. But the long and short of
Speaker 1: it is he didn't go. And so they you know,
Speaker 1: they were really on their radar. Now they're like, we've
Speaker 1: got a real situation here. And this is when this long,
Speaker 1: like really long surveillance program started in the summer of
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one, when they kind of staked out around
Speaker 1: the property and around the house with you know, binoculars
Speaker 1: and things and surveillance cameras that they'd set up in
Speaker 1: the woods, and they were just tracking what this family
Speaker 1: was doing. They had a couple of plans.
Speaker 3: To go in non violently.
Speaker 1: One of them was to cut the water supply I
Speaker 1: guess from the spring to the house to flush them
Speaker 1: out because at a certain point they weren't even like
Speaker 1: leaving the house. You know, they were having food brought
Speaker 1: in and stuff because they knew what was going on.
Speaker 1: Another plan they had was they were believers in the
Speaker 1: minstrual cycle meeting. You were unclean and filthy, So when
Speaker 1: you had your minstrual cycle in that family, you had
Speaker 1: to go stay in the birthing shed on the property,
Speaker 1: one of the outbuildings during the duration of your menstruation.
Speaker 1: So they were like, all right, when Sarah, the oldest
Speaker 1: teenager has her next mentro cycle, she's going to be
Speaker 1: sent to the shed, and when the kids bringing food
Speaker 1: and stuff out there will grab them and that they'll
Speaker 1: immediately give up because we have the kids. But then
Speaker 1: I guess someone said, well, wait a minute, that's kidnapping.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can't do that.
Speaker 1: We don't have a warrant for any of the children,
Speaker 1: So that's we can't go with that plan.
Speaker 3: So they went with the worst plan.
Speaker 2: They did go with the worst plan, but they it
Speaker 2: was in very very It was a terrible plan in
Speaker 2: really slow motion that played out over a really long time,
Speaker 2: throughout which so many people had so many chances to
Speaker 2: be like, guys, wait a minute, what are we doing.
Speaker 2: This is like a fairly small federal firearms charge. The
Speaker 2: guys sold two salt off shotguns and then didn't appear
Speaker 2: in court, Like, we're spending millions of dollars on this,
Speaker 2: bringing huge resources to bear and it doesn't really make
Speaker 2: sense until you find that the eight which was originally
Speaker 2: the people with this case, they brought in the federal marshals.
Speaker 2: The marshals eventually brought in the FBI, and the ATF
Speaker 2: told everybody else that number one, Randy Weaver was among
Speaker 2: the biggest firearms suppliers in the United States.
Speaker 3: Yeah, not true at all, with.
Speaker 2: No evidence whatsoever. The only thing that they had him
Speaker 2: on record doing was selling two saud off shotguns. And
Speaker 2: the other thing that they told the ATF told everybody
Speaker 2: was that it was responsible for a string of bank
Speaker 2: robberies in Montana. There's no evidence whatsoever that he ever
Speaker 2: robbed a banker, had anything to do with these bank robberies.
Speaker 2: And yet those two pieces of information transformed this from
Speaker 2: there's some weirdo family up in the mountains with guns
Speaker 2: who and the dad has a couple of he sold
Speaker 2: a couple of sawed off shotguns, and then come to
Speaker 2: court to we need to literally bring the FBI, the
Speaker 2: Secret Service, the Marshals Service, everybody to camp out for
Speaker 2: almost a year observing this house to figure out how
Speaker 2: to get that guy out of there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was an extreme reaction. I don't think there
Speaker 1: are a lot of people that would disagree with that. No,
Speaker 1: so they're watching this house. The house, like we mentioned,
Speaker 1: is very depensable. This is the house on the hill
Speaker 1: where they were to be safe from the dreams. When
Speaker 1: they did go out, they would send usually they would
Speaker 1: send the kids out ahead, supposedly with guns, to kind
Speaker 1: of investigate and see what was going on. They had
Speaker 1: neighbors recording license plates of people who came and went.
Speaker 1: They didn't The Weavers didn't have a telephone, but they
Speaker 1: tapped phones at the general store. Helicopters were taking aerial photographs,
Speaker 1: they claim. The Feds claim that in March ninety two
Speaker 1: they actually visited and said on the loud speaker and
Speaker 1: via some sort of phone call, that hey, you got
Speaker 1: a surrender, although Randy would contend that no, until it
Speaker 1: all went down, no one said anything to me about surrendering.
Speaker 2: Big deal, because that's the first step in a situation
Speaker 2: like that, is telling the person just go ahead and surrender,
Speaker 2: where we just want to take you to jail basically,
Speaker 2: and that them not doing that is huge. That's a
Speaker 2: big deal. Again, they were watching this place for basically
Speaker 2: a year and had plenty of opportunity to do that.
Speaker 2: Of somebody I did not see coming into the story
Speaker 2: as Heraldo Rivera, and yet he has he was everywhere.
Speaker 2: He has a minor role in it in nineteen ninety two,
Speaker 2: he hired April of ninety two, he hired a helicopter
Speaker 2: to fly over the cabin because by this time the
Speaker 2: word was out that there was this family in Idaho
Speaker 2: that was essentially in this long standoff with the Feds.
Speaker 2: And he said, or the helicopter pilot's sad or somebody
Speaker 2: said that they shot at the helicopter when it flew
Speaker 2: over their compound. But apparently that was untrue. And I
Speaker 2: think even the surveillance team that was watching the place
Speaker 2: at the time said, didn't shoot at the helicopter. But
Speaker 2: you know her, although he's like, it's gonna be we
Speaker 2: won't get any ratings if they don't shoot at the helicopter,
Speaker 2: so just say they shot at the helicopter.
Speaker 1: So that was surprising. The most surprising thing to me
Speaker 1: was an appearance by another human because somewhere in this
Speaker 1: you know, stand off, while they were being surveilled. I
Speaker 1: guess Vicky and Randy got a little randy and had
Speaker 1: another baby. It's in my opinion, it wouldn't lead me
Speaker 1: to feel amorous and in the baby making way, but
Speaker 1: I guess things happened. They had a daughter in late
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one, Elishaba or Elishaba, I'm not sure they
Speaker 1: pronounced it.
Speaker 3: I'm going with Elisheba Elishiba. Okay. Right there in that
Speaker 3: birthing shed is where they had Elisheba, and you know,
Speaker 3: so that happened.
Speaker 1: Just to know that there's a now a month's old
Speaker 1: baby on the scene as well.
Speaker 2: For some reason, that just made me really uncomfortable the
Speaker 2: way you put.
Speaker 3: That that happened.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that happened. I think let's go with Elishiba.
Speaker 2: I think you're right the first time. That makes way
Speaker 2: more sense.
Speaker 3: No, I think that's what you said.
Speaker 2: No, I said Elishaba. Oh Elishaba, Oh, no, I said Elishiba.
Speaker 2: I don't know. It's one of.
Speaker 3: Those Hey, how about this, we're both right.
Speaker 2: Okay, so this is that was nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 3: Just so yeah, late ninety one is when she's born.
Speaker 2: In the birthing shed on the property, right.
Speaker 3: That's right, or the you know minstrel shame shed.
Speaker 2: Right, Well, it depends on the situation, I would guess. Right,
Speaker 2: So everything is about to go down, chuck, and it's
Speaker 2: going to go down really hard and really publicly, and
Speaker 2: the whole thing starts in earnest. The standoff that everybody
Speaker 2: talks about when they mentioned Ruby Ridge is it started
Speaker 2: on August twenty first, nineteen ninety two. It was a Friday,
Speaker 2: and that morning a few I think they were Federal
Speaker 2: marshals right, showed up on the scene and they were
Speaker 2: going to just do some more standard surveillance and some
Speaker 2: stayed at an observation post and some others drove up
Speaker 2: toward the road on the way to the cabin. They
Speaker 2: showed up at like four thirty. This is not new
Speaker 2: or weird or different, but I am four thirty am.
Speaker 2: You're right? Sorry, Yeah. A few hours later they were
Speaker 2: getting closer and closer to the compound, and apparently they
Speaker 2: attracted the attention of the dogs, the weavers dogs, and
Speaker 2: the compound was in a state where if the dogs
Speaker 2: are suddenly going nuts, you get your gun and go
Speaker 2: see what the dogs are barking at. And that's exactly
Speaker 2: what they did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, you know, I know I mentioned that these
Speaker 1: were kids, but I just want to drive home the
Speaker 1: point that you had Vicky and Randy, the parents that
Speaker 1: were there. You had a ten year old girl, a
Speaker 1: fourteen year old boy, a sixteen year old girl and
Speaker 1: the Kevin Harris kid that was living who was in
Speaker 1: his mid twenties by now, and then this.
Speaker 3: Ten month old baby.
Speaker 1: So teenagers and a baby, one guy in his twenties,
Speaker 1: and then the two parents, Sammy the teenage boy, Randy
Speaker 1: is the dad, and then Kevin is the mid twenties
Speaker 1: guy that was living with him. They go out with
Speaker 1: their dog, Striker, a yellow lab, looking to see what's
Speaker 1: going on. They come to a y fork in the road.
Speaker 1: As the story goes, Randy took it one way, Kevin
Speaker 1: and Sammy and Striker went the other way.
Speaker 3: And this is where another.
Speaker 1: Record of dispute comes in, because the US government says
Speaker 1: they were fired upon when they announced their presence as
Speaker 1: federal agents. What Kevin says is no, no, no, they
Speaker 1: didn't announce their presence as federal agents at all. All
Speaker 1: we saw was guys in Camo and they're like eyeballs
Speaker 1: peering through the bushes and my dog barking, and one
Speaker 1: of the guys shot it and killed it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's no dispute that the dog, Striker was shot
Speaker 2: and killed. When it happened is a disputant who started
Speaker 2: shooting first. So let's say According to Kevin's account, they
Speaker 2: come up on these guys who didn't, like you said,
Speaker 2: did not identify themselves as federal agents. They're wearing camo,
Speaker 2: they're holding guns, and they shoot the dog. Sammy the
Speaker 2: teenage son says, you shot my dog, you son of
Speaker 2: a bitch, and like lifts his gun and I guess
Speaker 2: starts shooting. So a shootout ensues. Sammy's shot, he turns
Speaker 2: to run. According to Kevin's account, he turns to run,
Speaker 2: is shot in the back and killed. Now, Kevin gets away,
Speaker 2: Randy gets away, but a Deputy Marshal named Bill Deagan
Speaker 2: is killed. Two So Striker the Dog, Deputy Marshall, Bill Degan,
Speaker 2: and Sammy the son, the teenage son are all dead
Speaker 2: from this sudden surprise gun battle that took place outside
Speaker 2: of the compound.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Kevin is the one to be clear who
Speaker 1: shot and killed deputy the deputy Marshall.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's that's one hundred percent verified.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, because Randy was not a part of that shootout.
Speaker 2: I got you, so, yeah, I know that he took
Speaker 2: a different road, so he wasn't there when it happened.
Speaker 1: I don't think so, I mean everything I saw was
Speaker 1: that the shootout was between the teenage boy and the
Speaker 1: twenty something year old and that you know, he shot
Speaker 1: Deputy Building in the chest and killed him.
Speaker 2: Gotcha. So either way, there's a firefight going on, a
Speaker 2: shootout going on, and Randy and Kevin retreat back to
Speaker 2: the compound, but they leave Sammy's body there temporarily and
Speaker 2: they're just completely fixated, according to Kevin, throughout that time
Speaker 2: on retrieving his body. This is a pretty tight family.
Speaker 2: So you don't want to leave the dead body of
Speaker 2: your fourteen year old son just laying in the road.
Speaker 2: You want to go get him. And this actually runs
Speaker 2: a foul of what the marshals were saying. Two of them,
Speaker 2: They said that two of them were pinned down by
Speaker 2: sniper fire for twelve hours, and Kevin and the rest
Speaker 2: of the Weavers are like, that's not true at all.
Speaker 2: We were scared out of our mind and totally grieving
Speaker 2: already from Sammy's death. We weren't spending twelve hours pinning
Speaker 2: down the marshals with sniper fire.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they said.
Speaker 1: They claimed at least that the only gunfire that came
Speaker 1: from them at that point was Randy firing his gun
Speaker 1: into the air because he was so upset about losing
Speaker 1: his teenage son. Right, all right, so now we're at Saturday,
Speaker 1: August twenty second, a hostage rescue team is dispatched by
Speaker 1: the FBI, and this is when things get really hinky,
Speaker 1: because the rules of engagement in the United States in
Speaker 1: a situation like this are well known and generally ascribed
Speaker 1: to when things are on the up and up, which is,
Speaker 1: you do not engage unless you're under direct threat from
Speaker 1: a violence or like somebody firing at you. Basically, they
Speaker 1: amended this rules of engagement and it was approved by
Speaker 1: the Bureau's Assistant Director for Criminal Investigation Division, Larry Potts.
Speaker 1: That basically said, any armed adult man that you see
Speaker 1: you can shoot and kill as long as you're not
Speaker 1: endangering a child.
Speaker 2: Yeah, unprovoked. Just see him walking through the compound, that
Speaker 2: he's holding the gun at his side, you can kill him.
Speaker 2: That is, yeah, completely outside of the boundaries of the norm.
Speaker 2: Like you were saying, yes, so that's a huge escalation, chuck, right, that,
Speaker 2: I mean, they were already, like like you said, overreacting.
Speaker 2: You could say, now this is I mean, this is
Speaker 2: just out of control escalating, And of course when you
Speaker 2: have something like that, and you have a bunch of
Speaker 2: snipers and you have a bunch of law enforcement people
Speaker 2: sticking out a compound, the chances of somebody being killed
Speaker 2: just have increased dramatically. And that's actually what happens. I
Speaker 2: say we take a break and we come back and
Speaker 2: talk about a huge turning point in the standoff. How
Speaker 2: about that, let's do it stuff from Joshimes, stuff you
Speaker 2: sho so chuck. By this time, this is Saturday, August
Speaker 2: twenty second, blood's been shed from the shootout, and now
Speaker 2: the hostage rescue team and their snipers from the FBI
Speaker 2: have the authority to shoot to kill, unprovoked the people
Speaker 2: in the compound as long as it's an adult male
Speaker 2: holding a gun. And there was a guy one of
Speaker 2: those snipers, an FBI sniper named Len Horiucci. He was
Speaker 2: about two hundred yards away from the compound and he'd
Speaker 2: been briefed on this revised altered rules of engagement that
Speaker 2: the FBI had authorized, and he saw Randy, Sarah, and
Speaker 2: Kevin all leaving the cabin the main building and they
Speaker 2: started to make their way toward the berthing shed. They
Speaker 2: later said that they were heading to the berthing shed
Speaker 2: to start preparing Sammy's body for burial. They'd retrieved it
Speaker 2: by this time, and Horryucci, following these altered rules of engagement,
Speaker 2: took a shot and he shot Kevin. No, he shot
Speaker 2: Randy in the arm. So of course, from that point
Speaker 2: on they immediately scattered because all of a sudden, somebody's
Speaker 2: shooting at them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they are headed back to the cabin. They
Speaker 1: get to the door. Vicky, the mom, is holding her
Speaker 1: ten month old daughter in her arms and kind of
Speaker 1: holding the door upen getting people in. And this is
Speaker 1: when lan Horiuchi takes a second shot. He said he
Speaker 1: was going for Harris, but it went squarely through the
Speaker 1: head of VICKI threw her head and hitting Kevin then
Speaker 1: in the chest, and she apparently was still holding her
Speaker 1: in daughter when she hit the floor dead immediately.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that was, like I said, an enormous turning point.
Speaker 2: Now the son has just been killed by the FEDS.
Speaker 2: Now the mom has just been killed by the FEDS.
Speaker 2: But at this time, the FBI doesn't realize that they've
Speaker 2: killed her. I don't know if len Horiyucci like went
Speaker 2: home and didn't tell anybody what had happened. I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: I don't know how you could shoot someone in the
Speaker 2: head and not realize that you've done that. But apparently
Speaker 2: it was not immediately understood by the FBI running this
Speaker 2: negotiation that Vicky Weaver was dead. And also by this time,
Speaker 2: we should say there is a ton ton of cops.
Speaker 2: A lot of estimates put it in the hundreds. Yeah, federal, county, state,
Speaker 2: local law enforcement all showing up to basically help out
Speaker 2: or contain or do whatever. And one of the things
Speaker 2: they did almost immediately was block the roads. And those
Speaker 2: roadblocks became a site of protests for people who showed
Speaker 2: up and were like, this is messed up, man, these
Speaker 2: these this family needs to be let free.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And these are you know, these are people from the
Speaker 1: Aryan Nation groups and some other militia groups that it's
Speaker 1: basically they're saying, hey, this is going down exactly how
Speaker 1: we say this kind of stuff goes down.
Speaker 3: So that that's going on. They've blocked off the roads.
Speaker 1: Like you said, Mom's dead body now is under the
Speaker 1: kitchen table where it remains. Kevin is in pretty bad
Speaker 1: shape because he was shot in the chest, so he's
Speaker 1: in and out of consciousness. They're not quite sure you know,
Speaker 1: what's going to happen to him at this point. And
Speaker 1: we should also mention that lan Hori Yucci is a
Speaker 1: sniper that also had a lot of controversial was also
Speaker 1: controversial in the Waco siege, like very soon after this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this same guy was at both of these sieges
Speaker 1: and both times was a part of a pretty controversial
Speaker 1: shooting incident.
Speaker 2: I okay, Well I didn't know that about Waco. I
Speaker 2: had heard that he had not fired or shot at Waco,
Speaker 2: but I guess that's not correct.
Speaker 3: Well I didn't.
Speaker 1: I looked into it a little bit, but then I
Speaker 1: started going down the rabbit hole and thought we should
Speaker 1: just cover Waco. But I think he was one of
Speaker 1: the guys that was charged with firing like the incendiary
Speaker 1: rounds into the building. But I might be wrong in.
Speaker 2: That, but we'll save it for the Waco up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and let's put it this way, like you can't
Speaker 1: find anything about Lawn Horuci now, like, yeah, we know
Speaker 1: he's still alive, but I'm sure he's not available for
Speaker 1: you know, interviews, if you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: For sure. Yeah, So, like I said, they the FEDS
Speaker 2: apparently didn't know that Sammy was dead, and they also
Speaker 2: didn't know that Vicky Weaver was dead. They started destroying
Speaker 2: buildings around the cabin. So now they're closing in this perimeter.
Speaker 2: It's not just any longer like in this three hundred
Speaker 2: yard Kills one. They're starting to move in and they're
Speaker 2: destroying buildings as they go. And I guess when they
Speaker 2: destroyed the birthing shed, they discovered Sammy's body and were like, oh,
Speaker 2: one of the family members is dead, and he happened
Speaker 2: to be a teenager. Again, they still didn't know that
Speaker 2: Vicky was dead. And I guess because she had been
Speaker 2: the ones writing the emphatic letters to the Servant of
Speaker 2: the Queen of Babylon, et cetera, and filing the affidavits,
Speaker 2: the hostage rescue team presumed that she was the one
Speaker 2: who made the decisions in the family, so they continued
Speaker 2: to address her even after she had been killed by
Speaker 2: the FBI sniper. And so they would speak directly to
Speaker 2: missus Weaver through their loud speakers, and the family was
Speaker 2: just the They didn't realize that the FBI didn't realize
Speaker 2: that they had killed VICKI, so they thought that they
Speaker 2: were just adding like horrible torment onto the injury of
Speaker 2: losing their mom and wife.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, depending on who you too, there
Speaker 1: are also people that say, no, they knew that she
Speaker 1: was dead, and the things that they were saying were deliberate,
Speaker 1: trying to provoke them and cause further upset by you know,
Speaker 1: speaking to missus Weaver, who they knew well was dead.
Speaker 3: But again, it's just.
Speaker 1: It's one of those you know, you're never going to
Speaker 1: get the truth out of a matter like this because
Speaker 1: there are two sides. But they're trying to lure them out, saying, hey,
Speaker 1: we had pancakes for breakfast. Once you bring the kids out,
Speaker 1: I bet they'd love some pancakes. They send down a robot,
Speaker 1: a remote control robot with a telephone, so they could
Speaker 1: you know, this is one of the hugest ways they
Speaker 1: broke protocol is that in a situation like this, you've
Speaker 1: got to be in contact and negotiate with someone in
Speaker 1: a standoff, and they didn't do that until well into it,
Speaker 1: when they tried to get them a phone on this
Speaker 1: remote countrol robot that had a gun mounted to the
Speaker 1: front of it, which wasn't a good idea because of
Speaker 1: course they saw that.
Speaker 3: They're like, I'm not going near that thing.
Speaker 2: Right, Why would you even do that to defend the robot?
Speaker 2: I mean, doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1: I tried to find out, but I couldn't find anything
Speaker 1: that was rational, So I don't know.
Speaker 2: That's crazy. So that didn't happen. They weren't able to
Speaker 2: establish contact aside from shouting at them through loudspeakers, right,
Speaker 2: but it wasn't a back and forth or anything like that,
Speaker 2: and the Weavers just dug in. They stayed in their
Speaker 2: cabin for days. Remember the started on Friday, August twenty first.
Speaker 2: The following Friday, August twenty eighth, this thing was still
Speaker 2: going on. Mom was still dead under the table, and
Speaker 2: they agreed to speak with a guy named bo Gritz.
Speaker 2: He was also a Green Beret, a lieutenant colonel. So essentially,
Speaker 2: what's happening now is Colonel Troutman for Rambo is showing
Speaker 2: up to tell the authorities that Randy Weaver will eat
Speaker 2: stuff that will make a billy goat puke like it's
Speaker 2: it's uncanny how closely this resembled that part of Rambo, right,
Speaker 2: and bo Gritz was able to get in and make
Speaker 2: contact along with an ex cop from Phoenix named Jack mcclam.
Speaker 2: Now both of them are We're huge, and I believe
Speaker 2: still are in the conspiracy theorist circles that Randy Weaver
Speaker 2: ran in. So it's not like they were just some
Speaker 2: average people like they could. They could communicate with him
Speaker 2: and talk his language, and he knew enough about them.
Speaker 2: I don't know if he knew them personally or not,
Speaker 2: but their reputation was enough that he let them come
Speaker 2: inside to the to the cabin and talk.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So they brought some food for the baby and milk
Speaker 1: for the baby, which is great, and UH kind of
Speaker 1: talked to uh talked Randy into ultimately coming out, but
Speaker 1: initially just kind of got him in a better state
Speaker 1: of mind.
Speaker 3: They are the ones when they came.
Speaker 1: Back out that told the Feds, hey, Vicky's dead and
Speaker 1: they're under the table. Randy's wounded. Kevin is wounded, like
Speaker 1: big time wounded, and they were like, what that's news
Speaker 1: to us. So on Sunday the thirtieth, Kevin finally surrendered.
Speaker 1: Randy said it's okay, you need to go get medical help.
Speaker 1: He was helicoptered out to spoke Anne and I believe
Speaker 1: he's in serious condition, but he recovered. And then they
Speaker 1: also allowed Gritz and a friend named Jackie Brown, strangely
Speaker 1: enough to take his wife's body away and the pets.
Speaker 1: They had a couple of pet parakeets that they took
Speaker 1: away as well.
Speaker 2: Right, so Kevin's out, it's now just Randy and his
Speaker 2: three daughters, Sarah, Elisheba and Rachel. Yeah, and they were
Speaker 2: alone in this cabin, still under siege. And so there
Speaker 2: were a lot of supporters who are like, well, I mean,
Speaker 2: we know how this is gonna and Randy's going to
Speaker 2: come out with guns blazing and take out as many
Speaker 2: of these Feds as he can before he gets taken down,
Speaker 2: And very reasonably and wisely, Randy did not do that.
Speaker 2: He made sure that he and his three daughters were
Speaker 2: able to come down safely. Ostensibly under the care of
Speaker 2: an attorney named Jerry Spence. He represented the estate of
Speaker 2: Karen Silkwood, who also deserves an episode two. But essentially
Speaker 2: she was a whistleblower who was mysteriously who mysteriously died
Speaker 2: in a mysterious car crash. So he was pretty famous
Speaker 2: as far as defense attorneys, and he had said I'll
Speaker 2: represent this guy, if he'll come out, I don't know
Speaker 2: if he did. Did he.
Speaker 3: I don't know?
Speaker 2: Okay, well, let's presume that he did and didn't go
Speaker 2: back on his word. But regardless, they some people think
Speaker 2: that that public announcement by Jerry Spence may have had
Speaker 2: at least some role in getting Randy Weaver to come
Speaker 2: out peaceably.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he had to talk his daughters into it.
Speaker 1: You know, they were ready to go. They were both
Speaker 1: brandishing guns. So he said, you know, fourteen year old
Speaker 1: Sarah put down your nine millimeter and ten year old
Speaker 1: Rachel put down that thirty eight.
Speaker 3: We're gonna get out of here alive. And they did that.
Speaker 1: Randy and Kevin were ultimately charged with murder, conspiracy, assault,
Speaker 1: and the girls went to live with their in laws.
Speaker 1: I believe Vicky's parents in Iowa.
Speaker 2: Right, And so of course they're, like you said, they're charged.
Speaker 2: So their trial begins in April of nineteen ninety three.
Speaker 2: And I don't know if ironic is the term, but
Speaker 2: the trial started just before Waco ended. And if you
Speaker 2: don't know how Waco ended, and you can't wait till
Speaker 2: our episode on Waco ended really badly. A lot of
Speaker 2: women and children died. It was just a bad jam.
Speaker 2: So this is happening as this trial for the Ruby
Speaker 2: Ridge standoff is starting, and the whole thing lasted for months,
Speaker 2: I think finally on July ninth. Not only were there
Speaker 2: months of testimony, the jury deliberated for twenty days. That
Speaker 2: is a really long time to deliberate. And when they
Speaker 2: came back, they acquitted Kevin Harris of all charges. And
Speaker 2: you had said he definitely killed the deputy marshall, right,
Speaker 2: so he was acquitted of that and everything else. And
Speaker 2: Randy Weaver was acquitted on everything except for his failure
Speaker 2: to appear in the original firearms case. That was it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So clearly this Idaho jury was like, yes, the Feds
Speaker 2: very much overstepped their bounds and overreacted, and this is
Speaker 2: like so much so that like we don't think these
Speaker 2: people should be should go to jail for anything they
Speaker 2: did in response.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it was sort of the facts of
Speaker 1: the case too, Like everything I saw, it didn't seem
Speaker 1: like it was just some uneven jury where they were
Speaker 1: just sympathetic to the locals. Once the facts of the
Speaker 1: case came out, it was pretty clear they changed rules
Speaker 1: of engagement when they shouldn't have. They didn't follow protocol
Speaker 1: setting up you know, communications, they and the guns blazing
Speaker 1: and just basically murdered people. They in ninety four of
Speaker 1: the family filed wrongful death lawsuits against the FBI and
Speaker 1: the US marshals. They settled it. The JOD settled these suits.
Speaker 1: They paid about a million bucks to each of the girls,
Speaker 1: one hundred grand to Weaver.
Speaker 3: Harris many years later, in.
Speaker 1: Two thousand won another settlement for three hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. And Lan Horiyucci, the sniper who you know
Speaker 1: where things really took a turn when he got involved.
Speaker 1: He it kind of went back and forth in different
Speaker 1: appeals in different cases over the years of pursuing criminal
Speaker 1: charges against him. So involuntary manslaughter was the initial charge.
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 1: They moved it to a federal district court who dismissed
Speaker 1: it saying that he was acting in his official capacity,
Speaker 1: so you can't convict a guy for that. And there
Speaker 1: were a bunch of appeals and ended up in him
Speaker 1: escaping any justice by having the charges dropped.
Speaker 2: So the Justice Department had their own inquiry and they
Speaker 2: found out that this whole thing was pretty much a
Speaker 2: cluster from beginning to end. The Senate held hearings in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety five featuring Fred Thompton, who would go on
Speaker 2: to play the DA in Law and Order for a
Speaker 2: couple of seasons back when he was a Senator for Tennessee.
Speaker 2: And they also found that the whole thing was basically
Speaker 2: a cluster from beginning to end. And one person who
Speaker 2: did actually do time for this is actually an FBI agent.
Speaker 2: The guy who was one of the people running the
Speaker 2: operation e Michael Cahoe. He was sentenced to eighteen months
Speaker 2: in federal prison because he destroyed an after action report
Speaker 2: about the operation. He said he was acting in what
Speaker 2: he thought was the Bureau's best interests, in that he
Speaker 2: didn't want the local Idaho prosecutor getting a hold of
Speaker 2: the thing and using it. I would guess against Lawn Horiucci,
Speaker 2: I don't know, but he was the only person to
Speaker 2: actually do time from this thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Randy just died a couple of years ago at
Speaker 1: the age of seventy four. He kind of abandoned a
Speaker 1: lot of the just sort of further out there religious
Speaker 1: ideas that is was in his marriage, seemingly because of Vicky,
Speaker 1: and he was still like a you know, sort of
Speaker 1: cause to eleb in the anti government world. And Sarah,
Speaker 1: the oldest daughter, has it is very easy to find
Speaker 1: interviews with her. She wrote a book at it about it,
Speaker 1: called From Ruby Ridge to Freedom, and in that book
Speaker 1: she forgave those federal agents.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretty amazing. I was reading an interview with her,
Speaker 2: and she's a big commentator on that part of America
Speaker 2: and its response to the federal government and how each
Speaker 2: one needs to kind of interact with another. She's very
Speaker 2: peaceful now.
Speaker 3: It seems like, yeah, seems like it.
Speaker 2: And like you said, Ruby Ridge was like a huge
Speaker 2: impetus that was that gave like all of these far
Speaker 2: right movements a shot in the arm. And this is
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety three. Within two years, all of that momentum
Speaker 2: would just be completely scuttled when Timothy McVeigh came along
Speaker 2: and said, Hey, I'm going to blow up a federal
Speaker 2: building in Oklahoma City, kill one hundred and sixty eight people,
Speaker 2: including nineteen children in the daycare, and it's in retaliation
Speaker 2: for Ruby Ridge and Waco. And it was so abhorrent
Speaker 2: that all of those people who are like, yeah, Ruby
Speaker 2: Ridge were suddenly like WHOA. I don't want to have
Speaker 2: anything to do with militias anymore because this is what
Speaker 2: people do. I don't want to have anything to do
Speaker 2: with it. It wasn't until the early two thousands that it
Speaker 2: started to come back again, where it is slowly developed
Speaker 2: over time until we are where we are now, where
Speaker 2: they're essentially public public office holders in some cases.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is a tough one.
Speaker 1: So maybe let's see Waco in one year and then
Speaker 1: we can do the Oklahoma City bombing in two years.
Speaker 2: Have you ever been to Oklahoma City in that site?
Speaker 3: I have not.
Speaker 2: It's insane to stand there. It's just nuts. So yeah,
Speaker 2: we should do one on that too, for sure.
Speaker 3: But we got a space. He's out.
Speaker 2: Oh I agree.
Speaker 3: You're saying every December like a Christmas episode.
Speaker 4: You go, good idea American tragedy by Boy episode and
Speaker 4: then our holiday episode. Yeah okay, Well, Chuck apologized just
Speaker 4: a second ago, so that means it's time for listener now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, here's a correction about Porcupines that I don't think
Speaker 1: we got when that initially came out.
Speaker 3: But it must have been released as a Saturday.
Speaker 2: Edition, right, you're sweet, Bippy, It was okay.
Speaker 3: Hi, guys. My name is.
Speaker 1: Geta Oh and I'm an undergraduate at UC Irvine setting Biology.
Speaker 1: I want to write about a correction in your porcupines up.
Speaker 3: Chuck was discussing the.
Speaker 1: Fact of how New World and Old World porcupines evolve
Speaker 1: independently of each other. The phrase for that would actually
Speaker 1: be convergent evolution, not co evolution. Oh, I think I misspoke,
Speaker 1: and that actually we could probably clear that up in
Speaker 1: our Peacocks episode coming up.
Speaker 2: Oh good idea, Chuck.
Speaker 1: Convergent evolution is what we need to remember. Co evolution
Speaker 1: is a term where interactions between two species have a
Speaker 1: reciprocal effect on each other's evolution, which is completely different.
Speaker 1: Convergent evolution is when two separate population populations in distinct
Speaker 1: geographic locations undergo similar phenotypic changes due.
Speaker 3: To selective pressures.
Speaker 1: I want to finish by thanking you both for always
Speaker 1: peeking my interest.
Speaker 2: It's peaking.
Speaker 4: I Oh, you got me again.
Speaker 3: That really I thought you were just messing with me
Speaker 3: a couple of months.
Speaker 1: Wow, okay, And then later on it to only I
Speaker 1: was like, I mispronounced peaking peaking, and Josh totally called
Speaker 1: me on it, But I tricked him peaking my interest
Speaker 1: in a variety of random topics I didn't I.
Speaker 3: Needed until I did. Looking forward to learning more. And
Speaker 3: that once again is from gta Oh.
Speaker 2: Thanks Gita gita O is oh. Their last name.
Speaker 1: It is ji dash Tao Oh. They put a handy
Speaker 1: pronunciation next to it.
Speaker 3: That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: Well, thanks a lot, gta Oh. That was a great name,
Speaker 2: great email, and best of luck to you with your
Speaker 2: biology degree. We need more biologists running around out there,
Speaker 2: so bless you for that. And if you want to
Speaker 2: be blessed by Pope Josh or Pope Chuck, you can
Speaker 2: send us an email as well. Send it off to
Speaker 2: stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should Know
Speaker 2: is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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