Randy Weaver began to express racist religious views after he moved to his northern Idaho cabin where a deputy U.S. marshal and two members of Weaver's family eventually died, a close friend has testified.
Weaver believed the end of the world was coming but did not mention any bigoted beliefs until he moved West, Vaughn Trueman, a gunsmith from Evansville, Iowa, testified on Friday."To put it plain and simple, he had become a racist, which is against my beliefs and the Bible," said Trueman.
Weaver, 45, and Kevin Harris, 25, are charged with the murder of Deputy Marshal William Degan in the Aug. 21 shootout that also left Weaver's teenage son dead.
The firefight launched an 11-day siege of the cabin. Weaver's wife Vicki, 42, was killed by a federal sniper on the second day. The marshals had been trying to arrest Weaver on a fugitive warrant for 18 months before the standoff.
The government claims the Weavers loathed the federal government and conspired for 10 years to provoke the kind of violent confrontation that occurred near Naples, Idaho.
But the defense claims aggressive federal agents bungled their surveillance and left the Weavers and Harris no choice but to defend themselves.
Trueman and Howard Shannon Brasher, another Iowa friend, testified the white separatist talked about having to defend himself in a violent confrontation with government agents.
Truman said the Weavers learned to dehydrate food for long-term storage and planned to set up a "protective zone" around their Idaho cabin as a defensive action.
Brasher, who worked with Weaver in Iowa before he moved to Idaho in 1983, said he helped Weaver purchase large quantities of ammunition that Weaver said was necessary "to protect or defend ourselves against federal, state or local authorities."
And Dan Dundon, now metro editor for the Gazette in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, said Weaver told him during a 1983 interview when a reporter for the Courier in Waterloo, Iowa, that Weaver expected to be involved in a confrontation.
During his testimony, Dundon said the machinist at a John Deere tractor factory was planning to build a mountaintop house surrounded by a 300-yard kill zone.
"He wanted to be in an area where he could defend himself," Dundon testified. "He felt sure he was going to, at some point, be involved in a confrontation."
And Dundon refused to back down when defense attorney Gerry Spence suggested Weaver may never have used the term "kill zone."
"Those were absolutely his words," Dundon said. But he also underscored that Weaver wanted the cleared-out area for defensive - not offensive - purposes.
A third government witness turned on prosecutors during questioning by the defense. Buster Kittel, who owned land that could be accessed only through Weaver's property, said the Weavers never made him feel threatened.
"The marshals were much more aggressive than the Weavers," Kittel said.