With the Weaver family of Oregon, murder seems to run in the blood and is hardwired into their DNA.
Homicide seems to happen.
Latest in this illustrious line is Francis Weaver, 31, of Canby, about 30 kilometres south of Portland.
Cops say with Francis, it was a drug deal that came off the rails that spurred him to murder. The plan was to steal drugs from a man whose vehicle had a 15-pound payload of reefer.
Authorities allege that Francis and his cohorts, Michael A. Orren, 27, and Shannon Bettencourt, 32, were determined to separate Edward Spengler, 43, from the drugs. So they shot him in the face and shoulder.
The trio have yet to enter pleas but this isn’t Francis’ or the Weaver’s first rodeo when it comes to homicidal violence. It goes back decades with this hyper-violent clan. Francis himself was caged for manslaughter in 2016.
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His father, Ward Weaver III, had the kind of screwed-up childhood that is frequently the hallmark of monsters and 1,000 Netflix docu-dramas.
Born in 1963 in Humboldt County along California’s rugged, northern Pacific Coast, his father Ward Weaver Jr. eventually ditched the family and his mother married a degenerate boozehound who was violent.
The family eventually moved to Portland where Weaver began exhibiting antisocial behaviour. There were allegations he sexually and physically abused family members by the time he was 12. Another relative claimed he raped her.
Charges were dropped because Weaver was joining the U.S. Navy. A year later he was booted for dereliction of duty and boozing. He married a Filipina woman but the marriage was toxic and the birth of Francis did not temper the situation.
In 1986, Weaver was arrested for a double-sex attack on the teen daughters of a friend. He did three years in the joint but tragically, there was more to come.
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The Weaver family’s peculiarities stretch back to great grandma Dorothy Weaver in Kern County, California. Prosecutors later revealed that granny hated men with every fibre of her being.
Regularly wielding a butcher knife, she would screech at boys that she wanted to “cut off all their penises.”
In spite of this, one district attorney noted: “Ward Jr. did nothing without mama.”
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Grandfather Ward Weaver Jr. is a suspected serial killer. Some law enforcement agencies believe he could be responsible for more than 20 murders.
Driving up and down the Pacific Coast as a long-haul trucker, the Vietnam War veteran was finally nailed in 1982 for the murder of a young couple after spilling the sick details to a cellmate.
Cops said that in 1981, 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”. He also kidnapped, raped and strangled the man’s fiancee, Barbara Levoy, 23.
He planted Levoy in the backyard of his house. His son Rodney, then 10, helped.
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When he was arrested, he had just one request: “I want to talk to my mother.”
But prosecutors wanted to book Junior on the night train to Nowheresville in the green room at San Quentin. Detectives also discovered a pattern of 26 unsolved homicides along his truck route.
“He offered to confess to the murders through his defence attorney to escape the death penalty. But the district attorney turned him down because he did not want to reward him for killing more people,” writer Janine O’Neill said.
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Meanwhile, Ward Weaver III began an affair with a woman and moved in with her and her 12-year-old daughter in Oregon City. The girl became friends with Ashley Pond, 12, and Miranda Gaddis, 13.
On Jan. 9, 2002, Pond disappeared while waiting for her school bus. Two months later, Gaddis also vanished.
“There is a growing belief that the cases are related, and while there’s a slight hope that they have run away, there is a growing belief that there was some kind of criminal activity involved,” FBI special agent Beth Anne Steele said at the time.
The two missing girls were soon on the national news and the cover of People. A little digging into his sordid background and soon Ward Weaver III was the primary suspect.
But the clock was ticking. On Aug. 13, 2002, Francis Weaver, then 19, went to the cops claiming his father had raped his girlfriend. And there was more: Francis thought his father was involved in the two disappearances.
Investigators searched Ward Weaver’s property and found the remains of Miranda Gaddis in a shed behind his home. Amy Pond’s remains were discovered underneath a concrete slab.
He eventually pleaded guilty, avoiding joining his father on death row.
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Francis Weaver’s mother insists that her son had no role in the slaying of Edward Spengler. She insisted that Ward Weaver III wasn’t even her boy’s biological father.
It might have been a U.S. Marine or maybe a sailor. Maria Shaw wasn’t sure.
“I don’t know which one of those two is the real dad,” she said. “At the time, I was raped by Ward and I wanted revenge. I didn’t want to be with Ward. I just wanted to get away from him.”
She added: “They want to arrest him [Francis] so bad because they think he’s Ward Weaver’s son.”