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Thread: Ward Francis Weaver, Jr. - California Death Row

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    Ward Francis Weaver, Jr. - California Death Row


    Ward Francis Weaver, Jr.


    Facts of the Crime:

    Barbara Levoy, 23, and Robert Don Radford, 18, were engaged to be married before they were murdered by Ward Francis Weaver, Jr. on February 5 or 6, 1981. Radford, who was about to start Air Force basic training, was just beginning what might have become a long military career. Levoy's mother recalled Barbara had plans to start a family "with lots of children."

    Weaver was sentenced to death on April 4, 1985 in Kern County.

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    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    On August 20, 2001, the California Supreme Court affirmed Weaver's sentence on direct appeal.

    http://scocal.stanford.edu/opinion/p...v-weaver-30971

    On May 13, 2002, the US Supreme Court denied his certiorari petition.

    http://www.supremecourt.gov/Search.a...es/01-7939.htm

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    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    On February 12, 2010, Weaver filed a habeas petition in Federal District Court.

    http://dockets.justia.com/docket/cal...2cv05583/9950/

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    Francis Paul Weaver


    Ward Weaver III


    Ward Weaver, Jr.

    This story was originally published on Aug. 25, 2002, the year Ward Weaver II was arrested in the murders of Ashley Pond and Miranda Gaddis. On Tuesday, Weaver's son, Francis Paul Weaver, was arrested in the shooting death of a man in Canby.


    Murder suspect Francis Weaver's family history spans four generations of violence


    By Noelle Crombie

    As investigators closed in on Ward Weaver III, he told anyone who would listen that he was being badgered to confess to crimes he didn't commit.

    Then he called Rodney Weaver, his half-brother in Idaho, complaining that his phone was tapped, that he was being followed and that investigators were relentlessly pressing him to confess.

    Ward Weaver insisted it was all a mistake. The only reason police suspected he was capable of killing Ashley Pond and Miranda Gaddis, he told his brother, was because of the grisly crimes committed more than two decades ago by their father, a long-haul trucker who murdered a young couple and buried the woman in a backyard grave sealed with concrete.

    But on Saturday, just weeks later, authorities made a discovery that suggested chilling parallels to his father's crimes. What appear to be human remains were found in a shed and investigators were searching beneath a concrete slab for what is expected to be the body of the second missing teen-ager.

    Weaver publicly proclaimed his innocence, even as he drew attention to himself with claims he was a suspect. He highlighted his close ties to Ashley, portraying himself as a fatherly figure to a girl who, family members later said, had accused him of sexual abuse before she vanished.

    Two weeks ago, his son, Francis Weaver, told a Clackamas County dispatcher that his father had confessed to him that he had raped and killed the two girls.

    In an interview last week at his home in Shoshone, about 25 miles north of Twin Falls, Rodney Weaver said his brother tried to convince him that he was being pursued by police because of their father's past.

    "He kept blaming it on our dad," said Rodney Weaver, the youngest of Ward Weaver Jr.'s children.

    The Weaver family history is a deeply troubled and especially violent one. The family patriarch sits on California's Death Row for clubbing a stranded motorist to death in 1981, then raping and strangling the man's fiancee before dumping her body in a backyard grave he told his unwitting 10-year-old son, Rodney, to dig.

    Ward Weaver III spent time in prison in the mid-1980s for striking a baby sitter with a 12-pound chunk of cement, and his two former wives have accused him of abuse.

    Weaver's son, Francis, rattled the sleepy Idaho town of Shoshone in 1999, when he shot a rifle into a truckload of teens, injuring one.

    The roots of the Weaver family troubles stretch back at least four generations to Dorothy Weaver, Ward Weaver Jr.'s mother, who, according to a Kern County, Calif., prosecutor, harbored a deep hatred of men. Ron Shumaker, who prosecuted the death penalty case against Weaver Jr., cited court testimony from a witness who said Dorothy, wielding a butcher knife, once declared that she wanted to "cut off all their penises."

    Her influence on her son, however, was profound, Shumaker said. "He did nothing without Mama," he said.

    Rodney Weaver, who met Ward only seven years ago, said he'd always wondered about his half-siblings, especially Ward. His father mentioned them, the products of his first marriage, in a matter-of-fact way one day. A single photograph of two girls and Ward hung on the family's living room wall.

    Ward Weaver Jr., a long-haul truck driver, spent a lot of time away from his family. His wife, Rodney's mother, was a cook in a local diner. On the days Weaver Jr. was home, he often took Rodney fishing.

    Rodney first sensed his father's troubles in 1978. He was only about 8 when his father was sentenced to prison for a year and a half, an absence that was at first explained as a business trip. Eventually he learned that his father was serving time for a rape conviction.

    Weaver Jr. would get into more trouble in 1981, when he was convicted and sentenced to 42 years in prison. Weaver Jr. picked up two runaways and arranged for a friend to shoot the 18-year-old man, and Weaver Jr. repeatedly raped the 15-year-old girl before letting her go.

    It turned out later that Weaver Jr.'s truck routes matched up with 26 unsolved hitchhiker homicides, said Shumaker. Weaver Jr. has never been charged in any of those cases.

    It was when Weaver Jr. was in prison for the attack on the runaways that he confided to a cellmate that he had killed another couple. Weaver Jr. beat 18-year-old Robert Radford to death with a pipe. He'd been hit so many times "you couldn't distinguish one (blow) from another," Shumaker said.

    Then Weaver Jr. kidnapped, raped and strangled the man's 23-year-old fiancee, Barbara Levoy.

    Weaver Jr.'s cellmate told authorities. And when police showed up at prison to ask Weaver Jr. about the crime, Shumaker said Weaver Jr. had only one request: "I need to talk to my mother," he said.

    "They let him make a phone call," Shumaker said, "and then he talked to them and he laid it all out."

    Rodney, now 31, remembers his father coming home "all freaked out" one night in 1981. He told his family he'd been in a bar fight and that a man had bitten off the tip of his thumb. Weaver Jr. was so unnerved by the incident that he didn't want his children attending school the following day, Rodney said.

    But, according to California court records, Levoy had bitten his thumb when he tried gagging her. Weaver Jr. then struck her twice and strangled her to death.

    According to court records, he buried her body in three places before moving her remains to a hole his son helped him dig behind his rented house in Oroville, Calif., where Weaver's second wife and their young children lived.

    He asked Rodney to help him finish filling the hole where he'd buried Levoy's body. Rodney remembers packing the dirt. Later, his father sealed the grave with concrete and built a deck on top of it.

    On the afternoon of July 26, 1982, two detectives showed up at the two-story house and wanted to speak to Rodney about the holes he'd helped dig.

    They brought in a backhoe and cracked the concrete into two chunks. From his bedroom on the second floor, he watched as they lifted one of the pieces. "And there she was," said Rodney.

    That's why he was stunned to learn his brother had installed a concrete pad in the back of his Oregon City home. Ward Weaver said the pad was for a hot tub, but Rodney thought the timing was odd, because it went in around the times the girls vanished.

    "That blew me away," he said. "I was thinking to myself, 'What are you doing?'
    "If he did it," Rodney said last week, "that's where they'd be."

    By then, the police in Oregon City had begun to intensify their focus on Ward Weaver. By his own account, he had taken and flunked a lie detector test. His work records were reviewed by investigators. His close ties to Ashley had been probed. Search dogs had scoured rural spots where he liked to camp.

    Weaver's long history of run-ins with the law, ranging from a felony assault to a troubled driving record, made him a plausible suspect. Weaver, who has been divorced twice and has five children, has been described by police and former relatives as a violent man with an explosive temper.

    According to Clackamas County law enforcement records, police have been dispatched to Weaver's home 10 times since November 2000. Many of the calls were domestic in nature.

    In late June, two detectives even made a trip to Idaho to interview Rodney Weaver about his brother. Rodney hadn't seen his brother in a year. And he'd never met Ashley or Miranda. But he did tell investigators about the time he went camping with Ward in rural Molalla -- an area later searched by cadaver dogs.

    Rodney Weaver said he last spoke with his brother on the Monday before his Aug. 13 rape arrest. Ward Weaver was almost finished packing his things, he told his brother. He planned to move to Idaho, Washington or maybe even Mexico.

    Rodney, a construction worker, doesn't believe crime is in the Weaver family genes. If anything, seeing his father on Death Row has motivated him to lead a straight life.
    Still, he said, it wouldn't surprise him to learn his older brother had something to do with the disappearances of Ashley and Miranda.

    "I would like to believe" that he is not responsible, Rodney Weaver said. "It's not going to shock me if he did, not because of his past history, but because I've dealt with it before."

    http://www.oregonlive.com/oregon-cit...2/post_54.html

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    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    The apple doesn't fall far from the tree
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

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    Ward Weaver’s ex-wife wanted for selling meth

    Canby police investigating a drug case are searching for the ex-wife of convicted murderer Ward Weaver.

    Maria Weaver, 53, allegedly sold methamphetamine from her apartment at 292 S. Locust Street.

    Over the past year, officials have been investigating reports of meth being sold from the house and Maria Weaver, also known as Maria Shaw and Maria Stout, was named as the main person of interest, according to Canby police.

    Officials issued a search warrant at the location on Wednesday around 6 a.m. Evidence, including drug paraphernalia and drug records, were taken from the apartment, police said.

    Maria Weaver was not home when the search warrant was served and Canby police are now searching for her.

    She is the ex-wife of Ward Weaver III, who is serving two life sentences for raping and killing two young girls, and the mother of Francis Weaver, who is currently in jail on a murder charge.

    Ward Weaver’s father, Ward Weaver, Jr., was also a convicted rapist and murderer. He was sentenced to death in 1984 but continues to appeal the sentence from a California prison.
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

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    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Another reason why conjugal visits are a bad idea
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

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    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Weaver's son's case is featured tonight at 9:00 p.m. EDT on Investigation Discovery's Evil Kin episode Lost Highway.

    Murderer Ward Weaver III commits a gruesome crime eerily similar to one committed by his father.
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

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    Stepson of infamous child killer Ward Weaver, pleads guilty to murder

    Francis Weaver, stepson of infamous child killer Ward Weaver, will be sentenced Friday morning in the 2014 killing of a Grants Pass man.

    Weaver pleaded guilty Thursday in the death of Edward Spangler, making him a part of three generations of murder.

    His stepfather Ward Weaver was responsible for the 2002 deaths of 12-year-old Ashley Pond and 13-year-old Miranda Gaddis, both of Oregon City. He pleaded guilty to multiple counts of murder in the deaths, along with attempted aggravated murder and rape in several other cases. He was spared the death penalty as part of a plea deal.

    In 1984, his father Ward F. Pete Weaver Jr. was found guilty and sentenced to death for killing two people. He buried one of the victims under a slab of concrete, a crime almost identical to the one his son would commit 18 years later.

    The irony in the case is that Francis Weaver turned in his stepfather for the Oregon City murders. Francis Weaver was hailed as a hero and spoke openly about his role in the arrest of his stepfather.

    "The whole thing just disgusts me," he said in a 2002 interview with Good Morning America. "I'd hate to even think that I was brought to this world from a man like that."

    Police named two other suspects in the death of 43-year-old Edward Spangler in a reported drug deal gone bad. And they said Francis Weaver would also be charged with murder in the case, even though he wasn't the gunman.

    Court documents show that the suspects stalked and later shot Spangler in the face while trying to steal 15 lbs. of marijuana.

    Weaver already had an extensive criminal history including drug possession and several assault charges.

    http://www.kgw.com/news/crime/franci...urder/77722504
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

  10. #10
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
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    On October 18, 2021, Weaver filed an appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

    https://dockets.justia.com/docket/ci...s/ca9/21-99010
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