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Blood on the Mountain: How Ruby Ridge Became a Siege
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Three people dead, a family besieged, and a government operating under unconstitutional rules — this is how eleven days on an Idaho mountain changed America. From the BATF sting to Vicki Weaver's killing to Randy Weaver's surrender, the full story of Ruby Ridge unfolds.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Late August, nineteen ninety-two. A man named Bo Gritz is driving toward a mountain in northern Idaho.
The story begins not on a mountain but in a church. Randy Weaver was a white separatist.
For eighteen months, federal marshals conducted surveillance on the property. They used cameras.
The FBI's Hostage Rescue Team arrived the next day. And with them came a document that would define the entire federal response, and haunt it for years afterward.
After Vicki's death, the standoff dragged on for eight more days. Vicki's body remained in the cabin.
That's when Bo Gritz arrived. Gritz was a significant figure in certain circles of the American far-right in the early nineteen nineties.
In nineteen ninety-three, Randy Weaver went to trial. Gerry Spence represented him.
The lasting consequence of Ruby Ridge wasn't legal. It was political, in the broadest sense.
The Ruby Ridge standoff wasn't inevitable. There were decision points, negotiations, orders, and choices that could have led somewhere different.
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