Ruby Ridge

Ruby Ridge siege, 25 years later, a 'rallying cry' for today's white nationalists.

Public protests by self-declared white supremacists. Criticism of how police handled a violent standoff. Three deaths.

These events recall last week’s outbursts in Charlottesville, Virginia, but actually describe a 25-year-old incident in a forested region of northern Idaho, about 40 miles south of the Canadian border.

That 11-day standoff starting Aug. 21, 1992, between federal agents and a heavily armed family at Ruby Ridge laid the groundwork for today’s anti-government sentiment and white supremacy movement displayed for all to see in Charlottesville, according to one expert.

“I think of it [Ruby Ridge] as the precursor for the last couple, three decades of extremism because it combined two things: white supremacy and rage against the government, and that is exactly the same two movements on the far right that has animated extremism on the far right up until today,” said Heidi Beirich, the director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a legal advocacy organization that monitors such extremist groups.

“Ruby Ridge is the beginning of all this. The right-wing media starts in the era after this ... all of this builds out of the rage that was symbolized with this event,” she told ABC News.

Despite Beirich’s tracing the movement from Ruby Ridge to the present, the 1992 standoff is unique in many ways, as this look back shows:

The making of a suspect

The cabin at the top of Ruby Ridge was home to the Weaver family, built by Randy and Vicki Weaver when they relocated their family from Iowa to Idaho.

"[Randy Weaver] really was an apocalyptic living on a mountain top with his family,” said Jess Walter, a reporter who covered the standoff at the time and went on to write a book about it.

His book became a made-for-TV movie four years after the event, with Laura Dern starring as Vicki Weaver and a young Kirsten Dunst as daughter Sara Weaver.

In the years before the legal troubles that led to the fatal standoff, the Weaver family spent time on a nearby compound that belonged to the Aryan Nations, a white supremacist group.

The family said their time spent at the Aryan Nations compound was “for social reasons, they were looking for people to hang out with,” Walter explained. No one from the Weaver family formally became a member of the group, he added, “even though they espoused similar belief systems.”

White supremacist ideologies espouse what they call the inferiority of nonwhite races, according to the SPLC.

Randy Weaver was known to wear shirts that said, “Just Say No to ZOG,” referencing a hate slogan for Zionist Organized Government, and his son, Samuel, reportedly wore a swastika armband.

“They had all the trappings; they just didn’t join the group,” Walter said.

While there, at some point in 1989, a confidential informant for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms struck up a relationship with Weaver and, in a move that was later dismissed as entrapment, advised and persuaded Weaver to saw off the tops of shotguns, breaking federal law.

ATF agents used the charges to approach Weaver about becoming an informant himself, but he refused.

Weaver was arrested for sawing off the shotguns in January 1991 after ATF agents pretended they were having car trouble and Weaver and his wife stopped to help. Weaver later failed to appear in court and a bench warrant was issued.

Months of attempts by the U.S. Marshals Service to get Weaver to surrender peacefully went by, leading the government to install surveillance cameras on his property. On Aug. 21, 1992, a crew of six marshals went to surveil the property in person.

What happened on a hilltop in Idaho

The Weaver’s dog alerted the family of the marshals’ presence and Randy Weaver, son Sammy, 14, and their family friend Kevin Harris went to investigate, bringing weapons with them. A firefight ensued after one of the marshals fatally shot the dog.

The two sides exchanged gunfire and, afterwards, Sammy and Deputy U.S. Marshal Bill Degan lay dead.

In a subsequent report from the Ruby Ridge Task Force created by the Department of Justice, officials noted that they were "unable to determine conclusively who fired the first shot during the exchange of gunfire."

The next day, as Randy Weaver, his daughter Sara and Harris were going to visit the body of Sammy Weaver, which family members had moved to a nearby shed, an FBI sniper shot Randy Weaver in the armpit. As the three ran back into the house, the sniper fired a second shot that hit Harris in the chest and went through the door and fatally struck Vicki Weaver, who was standing behind the door while holding the family’s infant daughter.

As the fatal drama played out for days up at the cabin, all public updates came through FBI officials who kept reporters and the public at a checkpoint about a mile and a half from the scene.