The following podcast contains explicit language.

The first sign of trouble at Ruby Ridge was when the dog started barking.

The dog's name was Stryker, and he belonged to a man called Randy Weaver.

Weaver and his family lived on top of a rocky outcropping in a ramshackle cabin a few miles outside Naples, Idaho.

There was no electricity or phone service and no indoor plumbing.

Randy's wife, Vicky, retreated to a shed when she was menstruating.

They followed their own idiosyncratic religious belief system,

and their view of the world tended toward paranoia.

They thought America was secretly under the rule of a cabal they called

Zog, the Zionist-occupied government.

When Stryker started barking, the weavers followed.

Maybe he'd caught the scent of a game animal.

But they were wary because they lived in fear that their isolated mountain homestead would come under attack by armed agents of the federal government.

They were right.

Six U.S. Marshals, including several members of the agency's elite special operations group, had arrived at the Weaver's property, and Stryker had picked up their scent.

It was August 21st, 1992.

Weaver, a fugitive on a federal firearms charge, has been holed up in a cabin near Naples for more than a year.

They say Weaver is a white supremacist and claim he's heavily armed.

The U.S. Marshals on the scene had been tasked with getting Randy Weaver off the mountain peacefully.

That wasn't going to happen.

Good afternoon. A federal agent has been shot and killed in a confrontation with a fugitive in North Idaho.

Shots rang out near the home of Randy Weaver.

...