Our episodes deal with serious and often distressing incidents.

If you feel at any time you need support, please contact your local crisis centre.

For suggested phone numbers for confidential support and for a more detailed list of content

warnings, please see the show notes for this episode on your app or on our website.

In the Wooded Hills of northern Idaho, just 30-odd miles south of the Canadian border,

lies a mountain ridge in the Canixu National Forest, known as Ruby Ridge.

This rugged and remote location was home to 20 acres of land that belonged to a former

U.S. Army Special Forces officer named Randy Weaver. Randy had bought the land in 1983,

after his wife, Vicky, who was deeply religious, began having recurring dreams about living

on a mountaintop.

Believing an apocalypse was imminent and that Vicky's dreams indicated where they needed to be,

Randy and Vicky sold their belongings, learned from an Amish community how to live without

electricity, and built a basic cabin on their newly purchased land.

It had no power or running water, but the weavers made it work.

Over the next decade, they turned it into a home for their four children, Sarah, Samuel, Rachel, and Aliciaba.

The family lived a survivalist self-sufficient lifestyle. Instead of buying food, they hunted and foraged and raised their own livestock. The children were homeschooled.

Despite their isolated setup, the weavers made friends with others in the area.

They even took in a troubled teenager named Kevin Harris.

Early on the morning of Friday, August 21, 1992, Kevin Harris and 14-year-old Samuel Weaver

were walking along a trail that led to the family's cabin, accompanied

by one of the Weaver's dogs, a Labrador retriever named Stryker. The trail was wide enough

to accommodate an SUV and flanked by heavy woods on either side. When a noise emanated

...