Randall Claude Weaver (January 3, 1948 – May 11, 2022) was an American survivalist, former Iowa factory worker, and self-proclaimed white separatist. He was a central actor in the 1992 Ruby Ridge standoff at his cabin near Naples, Idaho, that resulted in the deaths of his wife and son. Weaver was charged with murder, conspiracy, and assault as well as other crimes. He was acquitted of most of the charges, but was convicted of failing to appear in court on a previous weapons charge and sentenced to 18 months in prison. His family eventually received a total of $3,100,000 in compensation for the killing of his wife and son by federal agents. Early life Randy Weaver was born on January 3, 1948, to Clarence and Wilma Weaver, a farming couple in Villisca, Iowa. He was one of four children. The Weavers were deeply religious and had difficulty finding a denomination that matched their views; they often moved around among Evangelical, Presbyterian, and Baptist churches. After graduating from Jefferson High School in 1966, he attended Iowa Central Community College before dropping out in 1968 after enlisting in the United States Army during the height of the Vietnam War and assigned to a Special Forces unit the Green Berets in a support role. He was stationed at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. In 1970, Weaver returned to his hometown for a visit while on leave. During this leave, he first met his future wife, Victoria "Vicki" Jordison, introducing himself as "Pete", rather than his "hated" given name Randall. By the time he was honorably discharged from the military, he had attained the rank of sergeant. Ruby Ridge siege Background A month after leaving the Army, Randy Weaver and Vicki Jordison married in a ceremony at the First Congregationalist Church in Fort Dodge, Iowa, in November 1971. After a semester at the University of Northern Iowa, Randy dropped out after finding well-paying work at a local John Deere factory. Vicki worked first as a secretary and then as a homemaker. Partially as a result of reading the 1978 book The Late Great Planet Earth, the couple began to harbor more fundamentalist beliefs, with Vicki believing that the apocalypse was imminent. To follow Vicki's vision of her family surviving the apocalypse away from what they saw as a corrupt civilization, the Weaver family moved to a property in remote Boundary County, Idaho, in 1983