Murder In The House

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Weston had been with his parents in Illinois for about a month when he got into a fight with his father, Russell Sr., 66, last Thursday. Apparently he had shot more than a dozen family cats with his .20-gauge, single-barrel shotgun, the Miami Herald reported. "I made him get out," Russell Sr. told the Herald just hours after the Capitol shooting. "I got mad, told him, 'You gonna have to leave.'" By Friday, Russell Jr. was gone, as was his father's Smith & Wesson .38 Special, which he kept beside his bed under a heating pad. A law-enforcement source told CNN that Rusty may have driven his red pickup directly from Illinois to Washington. The same source said that investigators found writings in the truck in which Weston referred to himself as a "brigadier general" and made allusions to space science-fiction TV shows. Asked by the Herald whether Weston bore some special grudge against the government, his father said, "No more than anybody else, I guess."

In fact, Weston seems to have aspired to join it. He had visited Washington in recent years, stopping in at the CIA to see if there might be any openings. On the other hand, he wrote to complain that government officials had planted land mines on his Montana property; he received a letter back saying he was mistaken. "He was an odd fellow," says Rimini's unofficial mayor, K.D. Moore. "He was convinced that the government was watching everything he did, and you couldn't convince him otherwise." Weston worried about Moore's large satellite-dish TV antenna, swearing that it was a government listening device pointed at his house. "I never saw him with a gun," Moore says. "I knew he was off his rocker, but I never suspected that he was violent."

The Secret Service did, though. Weston was already known to local police because of his minor record on drug charges, but in 1996 his antigovernment ramblings--some of which focused on a conspiracy against him directed by the President of the U.S.--became menacing. At one moment he would say he was working for the President on a secret spy mission; the next he would say that the President was having him followed and had ordered him killed. It was strange enough that local officials tipped the Secret Service.

Such calls are routine for the Secret Service, whose duty it is to investigate potential threats to the President or any other of their so-called "protectees," including the Vice President, the First Family, some Cabinet members, and former Presidents and First Ladies (see box, following page). The Service dispatched agents twice to interview Weston. At some point, Weston mentioned Chelsea Clinton. Both times the Service referred Weston to a local medical facility for psychological evaluation. Both times Weston was deemed delusional but not an immediate threat to any of the Service's protectees. The agents kept a file, but he never made it onto their watch list of dangerous suspects. Meantime, shortly after the verbal threats against the President in October 1996, Weston was committed to the Montana State Hospital for two months. Upon release, he was to be given access to treatment at a mental-health center in Waterloo, Ill.