334. The Amish Murder of Barbara Weaver

We will continue with the comparison here.

The biggest advantage of Shopify for me is that we don't need technical information for the company. We all know about the background and the front end. And as soon as we start, we will continue with the online shop. If you buy Shopify, then you will have the platform, which is actually cheap. You just have the money.

Our whole business has been bought by Shopify. Now there is a cost-in-losing test on Shopify. You're listening to an Ono Media Podcast. Hey everyone, welcome back to the podcast. This is Martin with my husband.

I'm Pete and Marlin. And I'm Gary Marlin. And he's the husband. Number husband. I love late people.

Thanks a lot. Welcome back. Thank you for being here. Thank you for watching. You're listening.

Thank you for showing up. Thank you for supporting us. What do you got, baby? You got anything?

It was just pouring right outside.

It was beautiful. It was pouring. It was pouring right outside. It was nice. I love it for the trees, the grass, the earth.

Daisy got a haircut. Daisy show everybody haircut. Daisy got a haircut.

“Honestly, I feel like I don't really have anything super interesting for my 10 seconds.”

Maybe. I don't know. Maybe I'll think of something controversial between now and before we start. We've been recording. We've been working in the bagel shop.

And we've been. What else? That's it. Nesting. Nesting.

We built a, um, not a crib. A bassinet last night. There you go. I know all the lingo. Yeah.

We put a bassinet last night. That's it. We're ready for baby to come. Oh yeah. Get out of here.

Let's go. How are you feeling? Mmm. You know, just pregnant. Just pregnant.

I'm just. I'm not trying to be the main character or anything. Like, I don't know how everyone on earth came from a woman. I truly, I truly don't go brand. Yeah.

No. Women have been carrying this on their shoulders.

“I mean, that's why I said it million times.”

Like, if guys had to have babies, there would be like 10 babies in the world. There'd be no babies. I don't care where anyone says there'd be no babies of guys that have babies. Like. So we want my disagree.

I don't want to really don't care. You know, I know everyone's pregnancy. Um, is different. But I'm just sense getting pregnant. I've been like, whoa.

Yeah. I thought I had heard like, oh, you know, the warnings. But I am just so shocked that so many women have so many kids. Yeah. And don't hit me with the, it'll be worth it.

Of course, it'll be worth it. But it just doesn't take away from the fact that like, this isn't sane. I would say probably. I don't know. I want to say probably 50% of women have really good pregnancies in the 50% don't.

You think? Think so. I was talking to women today that were in the. They was shop. One had six kids five kids.

They had eight kids. And I was just like, oh, my eight kids. I'm like, there's just no way that you have horrible pregnancies and you have a kids. Right. That's just.

You don't do that to yourself that many times. They're truly horrible. I was thinking I think even like quote unquote easy. I don't like the easy verse hard pregnancy. Yes.

But in in reality, there is like your pregnancy was filled with less complications than your pregnancy. Right. So the quote unquote easy pregnancies still got to be freaking hard. Yeah. Like your body still going through change.

No. Yeah. Yes. You have the, you know, there's others who have difficult pregnancies, complications. Yeah.

That abnormalities. But you know what? I think about eight kids. What? Like you have the baby.

And then it's just the rest of your like it's a full time job rest of your life after that. Eight times. Yeah. Oh. That's.

So we'll probably have like two kids. Good for us. You know. I don't care. I think it's impressive that you're booking out that many kids because couldn't be me.

And yeah, that's a lot of kids. Can you imagine having eight kids? I can't. Imagine. I couldn't see myself being a dad to eight kids.

Like that isn't. You know what? It's not my eight sets of reasons. Nothing.

Eight times of a first heart break.

Eight first cars. Oh, my. Well, I mean, you don't have to get a car. I know what. Like expensive.

Like like. I know what I'm saying.

“Every time I think about like a big thing for like eight kids that you have to go through their first heart break with them.”

Eight kids that you have to worry about the pain they're in and their life and their journey.

I feel like by the time you get close to the youngest one, you just over it.

“They're like, ah, they have their first heart break.”

Whatever. Oh. I know it sounds sad. But maybe that's what happens. And maybe not.

I don't know. You tell me. I don't have eight kids. I hope not. I hope not to.

I'm just saying. I hope Miss Kabus still gets emotional support. Yeah. Anyways. Enough of being parents.

We're just entering that stage of life, I guess. And here we are. About to be parents. Also. You know what?

I'm not going to dress it with you guys right now. What? I'll pick the bone another day. What? That's all.

How to just wait and see. I'll pick the bone another day. Okay. All right. And you guys ready?

Let's hop into. Thousands of my 10 seconds. By the way, it was. It was hour 10 seconds this week. Woohoo.

Let's hop into this week's episode.

“Our sources for this episode are ATV.com.”

The sun.com. New York Post.com. People.com. The daily record.com. Cleveland19.com.

Oxygen.com. All that's interesting.com. And Supreme Court. Ohio.gov. Imagine a world without technology.

No cell phones. No social media. No television. No cars. No refrigerators.

It's hard to conceive. But there are people out there right now right here in America that live without this stuff. Because of their religious beliefs. And I am talking about certain omish communities. They usually avoid these things because they want to preserve their values of simplicity, self-reliance,

modesty. And because they want to prevent their lives from sinful traits like pride, vanity, and worldly attachments. But at the end of the day, they are still human just like the rest of us. Temptation exists for everyone. Discipline is hard to maintain.

And the world gets more and more difficult to resist.

“I think for some, it's easy to follow the path that your ancestors have laid out before you but”

for others. It's just as easy to stray. So while many of these communities have upheld their values and morals for centuries, which I mean, that is extremely hard. Not everyone who is born in these communities, grow up and want to continue in these communities.

Sometimes, I think when someone is suppressed long enough, those consequences can become deadly. So today, we are going somewhere. We haven't really gone before to an area called Wayne County, Ohio. This is about 60 miles south of Cleveland. This is home to the largest omish community in the United States of America.

You know, I don't know too much about this omish culture. I mean, all of what I know is what I think talk to be honest on TLC.

No, it's like on TikTok, like there's always them making food or just there's always videos of them.

Like online, like always. Yeah, but they're not supposed to have technology. I think that's a misconception in some areas. Some subgroups. I don't know how it works.

I just think it's. Are you getting that confused with, like, trad-wise, definitely omish. Okay. I've seen some omish people on my free paid to the half cell phones. Maybe they're not supposed to.

Didn't we go to like this omish? Yes, they went to the, yes, and they made donuts and Wyoming. Yes. And they were good. Okay.

So among the residents here, there are four different subgroups of omish. The older order is one, the new order. The beachy omish. Okay. This is named after a man, not the love for the ocean.

And the omish men and night. So there in Wayne County in the little town of Apple Creek is where we meet Barbara Miller. Okay. She is a part of the old order omish. More specifically, a group of the old order known as Andy Weaver omish.

So just, there's a lot of branches. Okay. It's like a tree and there's a lot of different ways in groups you can follow. She's a part of the old order known as Andy Weaver omish. Barbara spent her entire life here living amongst this religious group.

This is very normal for people born into this religion. Meaning she'd also spent her entire life without a cell phone or internet. And she traveled mostly using horse and buggy in her specific sect.

She had never had a photo taken of herself.

But the other interesting thing about this community is they are very pacifist, which means there's little to no conflict or violence in this community.

At least that's what Barbara thought growing up.

“She seemed to have a happy childhood reading omish romance novels,”

going to sleepovers with her friends. People who knew her said she was pretty, she was soft-spoken, she was demure, and everyone seemed to love her. She had pretty simple goals for herself later in life. While she really wanted was to grow up, get married, and then have a family.

Which started to come to fruition when she eventually met Eli Weaver. Now Eli was the same age as Barbara and had grown up in the same area in the same omish community. The two started dating in the mid to late 90s when they were both still teenagers. And I mean, I guess they balanced each other out well. Unlike Barbara, Eli was very outgoing.

He was sociable, he was charming.

“Though there was a point during their relationship when apparently Barbara wasn't sure Eli was the right person for her.”

It was when they were around 16 years old, and Eli went on something called a "rump springa." It's a tradition in some omish cultures that before they get baptized, they go out on the weekend outside of their parents and churches authority. So it's like a little traditional sneak away. They sneak out. It's kind of like a bachelor party because they go out and they see what the real world is like.

But it's also a tradition that they all know about. And on this little outing, they can wear non-traditional clothing. They can drive a car, they can use technology. They can get to wherever their heart desires as long as they can get there.

And while this isn't for a fixed amount of time, it's basically just like, "Oh, go see what the real world is like before you get baptized."

For some people, they're almost like, go out and decide if you really want to make this decision.

“Like, do you really want to live practicing under the omish faith?”

Or do you want to leave the community? Do you want to escape and go out and see the outside world? Now, while Barbara seemed to know without going on this little exploration that she wanted to stay put, Eli, her boyfriend, was like, "I kind of want to go out and do this." But by the time they turned 20, I guess Eli had made his decision to stay.

He wanted to marry and spend his life with Barbara in the community that they grew up. So the two tied the knot on May 27, 1999, and they immediately get to work building their family, which is kind of ironic considering what we talked about. Over the next seven years, they have five kids in seven years, two girls and three boys. Eli managed a small sporting goods store right by their house,

which sold things like firearms for hunting and fishing supplies, and then Barbara stayed home and fulfilled her dream of being a mother, while she also took on a bigger role in their church. She also ended up being the one responsible for most of the things around the house. The cooking, the gardening, making clothes, because again, they don't have any technology, they don't really go shopping. They make their clothes, she mows the lawn, but in June of 2009, the weavers quiet, simple little life,

and what seemed to be this perfect utopia suddenly imploded. Around 3 a.m. on June 2, 2009, 30-year-old Eli wakes up to go meet his friends for a fishing trip on Lake Erie. He says goodbye to Barbara, she's still half asleep, and he sneaks quietly out the door, not wanting to wake their kids. But a few hours later, one of Barbara's children wakes up for the day and comes in her bedroom.

In the next thing you know, this child is running to the next door neighbor's house, completely distraught. They tell the neighbor that they went in to check on their mom this morning and they had found her in her bed, covered in blood, and she wasn't breathing. Okay. So the neighbor runs over to the weaver house and sure enough, Barbara is in bed and not responding.

So this is when she goes over to like a community building in the area that has a phone, and she dials 911.

They send first responders to the house in the Amish community, and the neighbor who is waiting outside,

points them in the direction of Barbara's bedroom. It's pretty clear to them right away when they go in that Barbara was not alive. After checking her pulse, she is declared dead at the crime scene in her own bed.

But it doesn't take long for them to figure out what killed her.

“Underneath her night gown is a gunshot wound to her chest.”

They quickly rule out suicide. They realize Barbara doesn't even have any gunshot residue on her hands, and there's no gun at the crime scene. But this also doesn't seem like a break into them, either. There's no signs of forced entry, and there's cash sitting out in several parts of the house that like no one's taken. They also realized that whoever shot Barbara actually appeared to do so from pretty close range.

There was powder burn on the blankets that were over Barbara, which said the weapon was in close proximity when fired. So to the detectives, this looks like a very deliberate attack. It doesn't look like someone fired a gun in here by accident, which is why police decide we are definitely dealing with homicide. There's a murder case in this little Amish community.

Interesting. I mean, obviously, right, your first thoughts are husband, but apparently he left fishing.

So I guess we'll see. All right, you guys, we are getting into an ad. And Amazon Music is your one app for music, podcasts, and audio books. You can get access to audio books included with your Amazon Music Unlimited subscription. So in simple terms, your Amazon Music Unlimited subscription does more for you now.

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Yeah, like Garrett said, a lot of us now are multitasking, and that is what's so amazing about Amazon Music is audiobook, podcast, music, whatever it may be.

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Yeah. That'd be cool. Like bedtime stories or something? Yeah. Maybe so cool. All right. You guys music podcast audio books all in one app. We love Amazon music and you will to go check it out right now. Well, just like Garrett said, the police immediately are like, there's something missing from this scene.

And it is Barbara's husband Eli when police speak with the neighbors. They learn, oh, we don't really know where he is, but he owns the sporting good shop across the street.

Because remember, no one knows these fishing or is he possibly a victim himself?

“Like, do we have a little kidnapping going on here? After a little more digging, they do and talking to the community.”

They eventually find out about the fishing trip that he went on earlier that morning. And thankfully, one of his buddies he's with actually is an omniscient. Ah, okay. There's that cell phone. So he has a cell phone. So when they learn this, they get the number and the officers call that cell phone, ask to speak to Eli. And they're like, hey, you might want to cut your fishing trip short.

We just found your wife of 10 years dead inside your home. That's horrible. If he didn't do this, that's horrible.

Also, probably so confusing to get a call on a cell phone.

That's not even yours. And then it's the cops that you don't typically interact with. Yeah.

“So after hearing the news, Eli makes the hour and 20 minute drive back to Apple Creek.”

And that day, he meets with the Wayne County Sheriff's office who is investigating his wife's murder case. Now, to police, Eli seems genuinely distraught over the situation. And he also tells them he doesn't have the slightest clue on who the suspect may be. He also denies having any involvement in her murder. And he's like, I was with my friends. Like, I have an alibi.

He says he came home the night before around 11 p.m. from another fishing trip. He saw his son asleep on the couch, so he tucked him in and then he went to bed himself. He said he actually overslept for his fishing trip that morning. So when he woke up, he was in a rush. He did say goodbye to Barbara. She was like half asleep. He says, but he left the house around 3 a.m. to leave for this trip.

And how's the last time he saw her?

“So obviously, police are like, hey, we understand you say you have an alibi, but this could have happened any time”

between 11 p.m. when you say you came home and 3 a.m. when you left again. So we need to check your hands for gunshot residue. He agrees the results come back negative. And his alibi is confirmed that he did leave at 3 a.m. to go on the fishing trip.

So police are like, hey, maybe it happened within these hours, but there's still a chance it happened after he left. They don't cross them off the list yet, but they keep their options open. So it's a little confusing because a gunshots are loud. Like when none of the eight kids heard it, like, I don't know, okay. Well, I wish I could answer that question for you, but a lot of times if if they've asked questions like that,

and it's not applicable to the news, they journalists won't always include it because it's minors.

So I'm assuming if they had, we would know about it. Now, meanwhile, news about Barbara's death is obviously spreading fast in the Amish community. This was the kind of place where crime was virtually unheard of, especially a murder. So before long, Barbara's story is also making national news. However, there is one person who seems to know more about Barbara's life behind closed doors,

and this is her sister. So when news is spreading, police are talking to everyone, Barbara's sister decides to go to police with her information, her knowledge about her sister and her sister's life. She tells detectives, listen, things were not exactly smooth sailing with Barbara and Eli despite their commitment to their faith and how their life looked on the outside. Turns out, Eli had been doing things like withholding money from Barbara.

I guess at one point Barbara had to visit a doctor, but Eli wouldn't give her the money to pay the bill, even though they were apparently doing just fine financially, so it was more like a control thing or just him not, or him thinking it's a waste of money. There was another time when Barbara was asked to bake some pies for the church, but Eli was like, no, I'm not giving you money to go buy the ingredients to bake pies for other people. What?

This is a financially abusive, but this is also something that really embarrassed Barbara. But for Eli, like I said, it was more about control than money, and even worse than that, Eli thought that despite living in the Amish community and like taking on that identity and raising his kids and egg, and continuing to be a part of it. Who's not a fan?

Because he had had several affairs during their marriage. Okay.

“This was something that actually started back when he took his little rendezvous to the city when they were dating when he was 16.”

He had actually, you know, experienced a rendezvous out there. According to some sources, this is when he kind of started also experimenting with women outside of the Amish faith.

And he always had a bit of a wild streak, making the most of his partying days, if you will.

There are around 2,000 and we are in the Farad environment. The biggest advantage of shopping for me is that we don't need a technical advantage for ourselves. We can all talk about the back end and the front end. And as soon as we go to Dubai, the online shop. We're going shopping for Farad, then we're going to go to the platform that's actually Farad. It's just the reason. Our whole business is going to be over shopping.

We'll start now at a cost-in-law's test on shopping. Now, Barbara's sister said, even though he returned to the Amish community, that Pandora's box had already been opened for him a little bit.

“And if you're thinking, okay, these words, like the way this story is a little weird, you have to remember where this information is coming from.”

Someone going to the outside world to see what it's like, is very scary.

It feels like sin, it feels like temptation. So for her, she's like, once he got a taste of it, he couldn't stop. And she said, "Eli wanted the best of both worlds." So after he and Barbara got married, apparently Eli continued his ways. He had not won, but two affairs. Both times he apparently left the marriage and the Amish faith to let go do this. But then, obviously, it's temporary. He comes crawling back after both flings are over.

And this is something that's not very easy to do, by the way, when someone wants to return to the faith like this. They have to ask for permission from church elders to be let back in when they have like voluntarily left.

“This is a very shameful situation to be in, like the going and coming back and going and coming back.”

And the community doesn't always welcome you back with open arms. Takes a while to win over everyone's trust again.

But it wasn't just the affairs that made Barbara's sister suspicious of Eli. Apparently, she tells police, "Eli had also physically shoved and grabbed Barbara in front of their kids." But for Barbara, walking away wasn't an option. Of course, strongly went against their religion. She loved her children. She quietly suffered instead. I will say in the investigation, though, they do find a letter she wrote to her church counselor at one point asking,

"Where did my friend love trustworthy husband go to?" He hates me to his core. Gosh, okay. And apparently, in the weeks leading up to her death, Barbara had confided in her sister that she thought Eli was once again starting to stray from the community, going out, maybe even seeing other women, she sensed him repeating the same old patterns and behaviors. She knew he had been growing distant and was leaving the house a lot more than usual.

But Barbara also said something strange to a different friend at this time. She tells this friend, "Yes, I know he's been physically financially, he's cheating, but I'm not afraid of him." She said, "Instead, I'm actually more worried about the women that he sees on the side. That maybe one of them would want to be with Eli so badly, but know that he has this family and wife back home, that maybe they would try to do something to remove Barbara from Eli's life.

So this is like, you know, a friend comes towards and says, "Well, she said this." So police are digesting all of this, taking it all in, learning it, and then the morning after Barbara's death, police get a new lead. It's one that kind of throws him for a bit of a loop. Barbara's next door neighbor had called the police to say, "She went to check the messages on the community phone that morning and she had heard something terrifying." It was a man's voice saying something along the lines of, "Eli, you can run, but you can't hide."

Okay, she's a weed, what is it going on? We got the wrong person last night. Wait, what? As in, like, inferring maybe that it was supposed to be him instead.

She calls police, says this message was left on our community phone.

That's insane. So now the text is half to wonder. Okay, it was this a hit, and it was actually supposed to be Eli. Was there more going on outside of his marriage than just in fidelity to this, have nothing to even do with Barbara? So the police bring Eli back in for questioning later that day, they tell them, you know what they know, and they ask him.

And this time he admits, "Okay, yes, I have a history of cheating." But that is all in the past. Yes, I've come and gone, everything you've heard is true, but the police keep pressing to see if there's anything else Eli isn't telling him. There's got to be something else. And eventually he throws his hands up and says, "I don't want to talk anymore, I'm going to get an attorney."

The police don't need Eli's help in putting together the pieces. They had been receiving a lot of tips from people in the Omish community over the last 24 hours. And there was one name that just kept coming up over and over again in all of these tips.

Someone that Eli was supposedly spending a lot of his free time with recently.

“A woman referred to mostly as, quote, "The Taxi Lady." And again, you have to remember it's cause in the community.”

Yeah, I got it. So they've created a nickname for this girl that they've seen. I will say her real name was also Barbara. Okay, so he's married to Barbara. Do no way.

But the Taxi Lady is Barbara. So that Barbara, oh my God. Her name is Barbara Rayber. Okay. And I will just use both names when talking about her as not to confuse anyone.

Okay. A little bit about 39-year-old Barbara Rayber. She was born and raised in a stricter part of the Omish community. But after she met her husband Ed, they left for a looser subdivision of the faith called the Menonite Omish.

Basically, menonites are kind of what Garrett was describing.

Oh, they can use...

“They can use cell phones, cars, computers.”

It's just like a way more relaxed version and modern version of... But that's what I've been seeing. They're religion. Yeah, you're probably seeing the menonites. I'm seeing all the menonites.

And I know... So guys. Also, I know at least the Omish communities primarily like in the areas we've been our menonite Omish communities. Yeah, I'd probably say so as well. And Barbara Rayber had found a way to use this to her advantage financially.

Horner husband runaway. They leave the stricter one and they go to the looser one. And she begins a taxi service that offered rides to others in the Omish community. I'm smart though. Because while other subgroups weren't allowed to own or operate a vehicle, they are allowed to be a passenger in one.

So she was like, "Oh my gosh, I can kind of take advantage of one of the ways they live."

“I'm going to take advantage of like a good business.”

Okay, she's like, "I'm an entrepreneur." Yeah, she's an entrepreneur. Barbara Rayber is like, "I'm an entrepreneur." And I'm going to give all my friends in the stricter parts of the Omish community rides. And now they got a taxi lady.

Now they got a taxi lady. Okay. So whenever someone needed a ride outside of your typical horse and buggy jurisdiction, they would call their taxi lady, Barbara Rayber. She was pretty well known around those parts.

And Eli apparently had been using her services a lot. Okay. She'd take him all around town on fishing trips out of state. And whenever the locals saw them together, they sensed there was something more between taxi lady and Eli.

So the police look Barbara Rayber up. And they find she'd been living 20 miles away from Apple Creek in a town called Miller's Bergo, Hio with her husband and three children. They give her a call to say, "Hey, would you be willing to come down to the station and answer a few questions about Barbara Weaver's murder?"

And she immediately goes, "Am I a suspect?" And so the police are like, "Well, maybe with that response, we really want to talk to you now." Look, I would say the same thing. You would immediately think you were suspecting.

Yes, if the police called me for something random, I'd be like, "Why are you calling me? Are you blaming me for something?" Yeah, I get that. So they get her in a room and she admits, "Okay, you guys caught me.

Me and Eli Weaver are having an affair." Okay. The taxi lady and Eli have been messing around. And she tells them, "No." But this affair ended six months ago.

We don't want to jeopardize our marriages anymore, our faith. She said, "We are still in touch, but we've kept it platonic.

So the police are like, "Sounds great, where were you at the time of the murder?"

“Can you account for the 24 hours around Barbara Weaver's death?”

She says, "Well, actually, I drove Eli and his friends to and from his fishing trip the day before the murder. I was the one who dropped Eli off at home at around 11pm, which lines up with his story. But she said, "After that, I just want straight home,

and I was actually in bed with my husband Ed for the rest of the night." And he could vouch for that too. The officers are about to make arrangements to speak with Ed when something else comes across their desk. Another woman, this time named "Dandy Heesley."

She walks into the station with information about Barbara's murder. Okay, let's hear this information. She's like, "I too had an affair with Eli Weaver, and I have some dirt on him." So they're like, "Hey, Barbara, Ray Bird."

Barbara, Ray Bird, taxi lady, and her husband Ed, we're putting it on pause because now we have a woman, "Dandy," walking in saying she's also had an affair, so 25-year-old "Dandy." So she actually met Eli on a dating site a few years ago. Okay.

“Apparently, he had a secret laptop and cell phone,”

and he had been using it. She said his profile advertised him as "an omish stud." With the tagline of quote, "Who wants to do an omish guy?" "You're lying." Nope, that's his style.

It's crazy, you know? I don't know. Not kind of smart, but absolutely horrible. I'm all I'm saying is the omish side of Eli's feeling a little performative at this point.

Very, but also, I mean, it must have worked. There's gotta be people out there who want to help a lot of people. Good for you guys. Maybe. Bad for Eli.

It feels like not in Eli's case, but maybe in other cases where people are wanting to do that. That feels like a little predatory because... Yeah. You know?

Anyways, I don't think that it was predatory in Eli's case, though, clearly. I also share in Maldonato, and I'm the founder of Yaui, a member of Constverco, and the director of the socialist group.

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I've always thought about everything.

All the tools for the development of Verkaufst, which are important, for example, from Lager. Find it on the right in the dashboard. Start a new podcast on Shopify.com. So the two started chatting.

She learned here and the little sporting goods store. So she would go there to hang out and have coffee with him. Dandy said he was different from the other Ambe Nuts she knew. He was outgoing, he was opinionated, he was charming. She said the sexual part of their relationship was brief.

They'd never actually spent a night together, and eventually she said they just decided to be friends. But even she knew there were issues in his marriage,

“and that's why she'd come in when she found out his wife was murdered.”

I see. She said Eli would complain about his wife a lot. But at one point, the conversation between him and Dandy took a dark turn. He apparently asked her if she knew of any clever ways to kill something. No way.

She says he would pretend to joke like to joke about it, saying if you drove by and saw Barbara walking outside, what would you just hit her with your car? And he said it as a joke, but obviously that's a weird thing to say. No, it's not.

There was another time when he asked Dandy if she knew which mushrooms were poisonous. I mean, this was someone who was really talking a lot about or joking a lot about murder and poison and ways to kill, but then also inserting his wife into these conversations. So they try to think like, like, I guess if one of my friends sits and being joking about, there's the ficken other maybe I wouldn't notice it until it got really weird.

Well, and here's the thing, this is exactly what Dandy tells police.

She's like, no, listen, this wasn't like a one-off mad at my wife situation. She's annoying. I'm going to kill her. Okay. This was pretty consistent.

Conversations happening consistently at different times throughout our relationship. Okay. I'm also asking, there's a difference between being like, oh my gosh, my wife is pissing me off. I'm going to kill her and oh my gosh, my wife is pissing me off. Do you know of any ways to kill someone and then the next day be like, do you know if mushrooms are poisonous

Yeah. That is very different. I know what to say.

Again, I'm not condoning one or the other.

I'm just saying, Dandy explains this to police. This isn't your just typical. I'm so annoyed with my spouse type conversation. Which is why she'd gone to police after she heard about Barbara Weaver's death to her. This was no coincidence.

She's like something happened here.

“So the police are like, would you be willing to help us?”

Maybe you can talk to Eli and Dandy comes up with an idea. She says, listen, I haven't spoken to Eli for some time. I've actually since deactivated my dating profile, but she thinks if I create a new one, Eli will respond. So kind of working with the police. This is what she does.

She gets back on this site.

She messages Eli on her new profile saying, what's going on?

I'm worried. Call me and she leaves her number. Sure enough, minutes later. She gets a phone call and it's Eli. He tells her, yep, my life crazy right now.

Yep, she's dead. I've been staying at my parents house ever since his home became a crime scene. Not, I've been staying at my parents house because my wife was murdered. Sure. But the way he tells the story to her is just weird.

Again, little to no emotion in his voice. Every single thing is phrased as like an inconvenience to his life and not that like his wife has been murdered. The conversation is brief. Eli's like, I can't really talk about it much. Like, it's an ongoing investigation. And after they hang up, Danny doesn't hear from Eli again.

“However, this gives police one very big thread to follow because they now have the number to his secret cell phone because that's what he called.”

Okay. So they file a subpoena to get the cell phones records because remember when they go to him, he's like, I don't have a cell phone, I'm honest. So now they have proof of it. Meanwhile, the police are hearing from more women. Eli met through the stating app.

Okay, and a lot of these women that come forward are telling very similar stories about Eli. Turns out he was kind of talking like this with a bunch of the women about ideas on how to kill his wife. Just doing the like run over like if you see her with her car, will you run over a lot of the time he said he was joking. They hoped he was joking, but there's now been multiple women who have come forward and said like this was a pretty common theme in our conversation. So the police know it's not true.

But when the data on his cell phone comes back, it shows something interesting. Eli might have actually gotten one person to really help him with his plan. Because that cell phone was not paid for by Eli Weaver. He was on a family plan. And the family plan belonged to Taxi Lady Barbara Rayberg.

Turns out she was the one who had gotten him his secret cell phone and computer. And when they start looking through his text messaging records, they see that most of them are to Barbara Rayberg. And a lot of them are complaining about his wife, talking about ways to get rid of his wife on both ends. Like he's actively saying this to Barbara Rayberg, our Taxi Lady. And she's not like, oh my gosh, stop kidding around.

She's engaging in the conversation about ways to also kill Barbara the wife. Okay. They spoke about crushing up sleeping pills. Oh my gosh. Gah, flipping it in her drink, putting rap poison in a cupcake, maybe carbon monoxide.

Maybe he could just blow up his house when he wasn't home. You know what's coming? Scary. There's a lot of ways you can kill someone. Like without like a gun or stabbing someone, there's like a lot of ways you can kill someone.

Also, I just need to tell you. Kind of creepy. Such an insane part of this conversation. Okay. When he's like, maybe I'll blow up my home when I'm not home.

“So it's like looks like every, like he said, what about the kids?”

She says, okay, well, what about your kids? Yeah. He says quote again, tax message quote. Well, the kids will go to heaven because they're innocent. He, I mean, honestly, to be honest, this guy just sounds like a very stellar guy.

Can I just say again the omniscient being performative in my opinion? That was just him taking the responsibility off himself and being like, well, come on, we're omniscient.

We know the kids will go to heaven when in reality he should have basically said,

I don't care about my kids. I don't care about my wife. I mean, I think it's pretty obvious this point. He doesn't really care. Now, from reading those messages, police found that the two landed on like the end of the plan was a shooting.

And they did start to devise a plan together on the secret cell phone. And then the night before the murder, Eli gave Barbara Rayberg directions on where to park. And he told her take a flashlight, leave your car behind. How do you convince somebody?

How do you, how, how does that happen? Love triangles. That's how. Just crazy to me. He says, I, I, I don't think I can be convinced to do anything.

“But here's the thing. And this is like kind of the wild part.”

And I think it's what you're insinuating. It's not like he said, come over and we'll do this together. He said, I need an alibi. So you have to do this for me. Yes, I'm saying it's crazy. So he said, park your car, leave it somewhere.

It won't be seen. I will leave the door unlocked when I leave it 3 a.m. for my fishing trip. And then you can come in. Mm-hmm. The final text between them was sent 24 hours later.

When Barbara Rayberg texted him and said, Do not give this cell phone to the police. I will get you a new one. What's crazy is he probably wouldn't have been caught. If what's your name didn't come forward and his number got leaked.

Cause I think. Also, he does, she just told you to destroy the phone. Yeah, he's obviously dead. No. I'm glad he didn't.

Yeah, no, of course. Now, these messages are obviously more than enough to get an arrest warrant for Eli and Barbara Rayberg because they literally have proof of them planning this entire murder out. And on June 10th, eight days after the murder, both are taken. Into custody.

So this whole entire case, from time of murder to them, arresting these two was only eight days long. Detectives also sees Barbara's devices including her computer, which shows even more evidence of her guilt.

Basically her being the accomplice.

Because, you know, this can go to trial and she can be like, He was abusing me. He was manipulating me. I was groomed. You know what I mean, but they find on her computer over 840 different searches

on how to poison someone. Clearly. Yeah, that's, you're doing your research on your own. So after Eli's arrest, he still refuses to speak without a lawyer, but he insists he's innocent.

Meanwhile, Barbara Rayberg is a little more willing to defend herself. She tells police, I fell in love with Eli.

“He said the only way for us to be together”

was if his wife was out of the picture completely. She's like, I agreed to help him. I helped him figure out an ally by setting him up on that fishing trip for the day of the attack. And on the morning of June 2nd, she said she left her house with her husband

shotgun. She went over to the weavers and through the unlocked door that Eli had left open for her. She goes inside, but then she tells police once I got inside, I got cold feet.

She said suddenly did not want to kill. Barbara weaver. So she's like, I decided instead of killing her, I'm just going to scare her. Then she said I was standing in the doorway of Barbara's bedroom,

getting ready to scare her. And the gun went off accidentally. The phrase she cried to the police was, it was an accident. It was all a horrible accident.

800 searches on how to poison someone. By the way, no, she's not. This person's not. They're like, okay, if you were just kind of like again, groomed into this, you were scared.

You showed up with the shotgun and you got too scared to do it. And the gun accidentally went off. Why were you planning this whole thing? Why were you searching on other ways to kill her? She said, oh, it's just a joke.

Like we were just joking around.

It always just been a joke.

Police obviously are not buying any of this. Forensics and the pathologist said the blast was fired at close range.

“Remember, she doesn't know that they know this,”

there was no accidental shot that happened from the doorway of the bedroom. This gun was pointed directly into the bedding. The tricky part was unless, like, okay, she's admitted she was there. But there's no evidence tying her to the scene.

There's no eyewitnesses. There's no fingerprints. There's no DNA. I mean, it's not that hard because of her story. But maybe if she goes to try on her story changes,

they're just like we wish we had some physical evidence as well. But we do have the text messages. We do have her somewhat confession. Later that month, both Eli and Barbara Raber were indicted for aggravated murder.

Barbara was also charged for using a firearm. So the two are to be tried separately. But as Eli gets ready for his day in court, the big question being asked is,

as always, why not just divorce your wife?

And leave, get out of the omnisch community, just leave, run away and be done. But the answer is rooted in his faith. Eli had stepped out on his marriage publicly at least twice.

Divorce was frowned upon and his ego impried.

It was just a little too big.

“That ego meant that ego will get you every single time.”

So instead of having to leave the omnisch faith, he really doesn't even want to be a part of. He's like, maybe I can just get widowed. Well, that would come with hugs and tears and condolences. His kids would likely be sent to live with other family members,

so they would be out of his hair. And Eli would then get to go off and live his life without judgment. Or responsibilities because people would be like, he's just a grieving widow. Now apparently Eli saw this as his way out.

Obviously, this doesn't explain why he was so dumb. Like about this whole thing. How he thought he would get off.

So easily he clearly underestimated the system,

which was something his lawyer advised he not do again. So in August 2009, just a few weeks before his trial kicks off, he takes the advice of his attorneys and he accepts a plea deal. His attorneys like, "Do your screwed." Works the plea deal.

“His charges were conspiracy to commit suicide.”

Or conspiracy to commit murder. The plea deal gave him 15 years behind bars. I mean, he deserves that. 100% deserves more. But sometimes I feel like when you're not the one that does it,

it's like five years or something. See, I'm kind of like, we've seen cases that the husband gets someone else to kill. And he still gets life in prison. Yeah, true. So for me, 15 years I granted it was a plea deal.

15 years just seems incredibly life. He obviously got life. Well, and it's, yes. Like 100% there's no way. She doesn't get life in prison without the possibility of a girl.

But she does get years to life. And my thing is, is like, I understand she's the one who killed her. But it's so very clearly he was involved. And was the motive. I don't know.

He's, he also in his plea deal has to testify. Ooh. Against taxy lady. So he has to get up and say, yep, she did this. Meanwhile, Barbara is also offered a plea deal.

But she turns it down. Ooh, not a good idea. So on September 16th, 2009, her trial begins. Prosecutors tell the story of a desperate, love sick woman who was willing to do anything to be with Eli Weaver.

Which is not a bad idea. They also call a witness to the stand who says on the morning after the murder, Barbara Rayberg came to him asking for a favor. You wanted her to call a number and say, Eli, you can run. But you can't hide.

We got the wrong person last night. She was hoping that this would like deflect blame off of her. And then Eli takes the stand. He tries to downplay the entire thing while also still like testifying for the state. He's like, yeah, we talked about it.

I never thought she was actually going to do with though.

I thought we were kind of just like casually chatting about murdering my wife. Obviously, the defense tries to pin the entire thing on Eli. They speak about how there's actually no evidence at all that Barbara Rayberg was alone in the house or that she was even in the house. There's no shoe prints, fingerprints or weapon left behind.

“The only thing that puts her there was her own words,”

which she confessed to trying to protect the love of her life. I mean, from a defense standpoint, like, not a bad idea. They're like, how can you guys even say for sure? It was not her taking the blame for him because she was so love-struck and under his spell. Like, I always say disagree, but they're doing a good job.

No, I will say they say this, but the defense had a little bit of something. They say the shotgun pellets found at the scene work consistent with the weapon. They're like in her in her confession. She said she brought her husband's gun. The bullets at the scene work consistent with those.

And so that is more likely means she probably was there. So despite the fact that your guys are saying you're putting doubt, maybe she wasn't even there. Maybe it was him and she took the fall. They're like, well, the bullets work consistent.

So after three days of testimony, the jury... Yeah, I think they're saying that like, well, he could have had the gun. Yeah, and I'm sure that, you know, that they pointed that as well. The jury finds Barbara guilty of aggravated murder. She's sentenced to 23 years.

She... To life in prison. I mean, deserved. Barbara Raver is still serving her time in prison at Ohio Reformatory for women. Okay.

She'll be eligible for parole in June of 2032. As for Eli, he's been moved around a few times over the years.

Wow.

So his next hearing is set for 2032.

Okay. So they could be getting out this same time. Yeah. Now, since his incarceration, at least two of his children have publicly said they've gone to visit him in prison.

“This is the hard thing that I think of as the children.”

It's like you would... Yeah.

Like, it's the mom's dead because of your actions.

And now, they don't have a dad as well because of your actions. You'll just let one of your kids find their mom dead. Like, what are you doing? Like, what are you... The trauma...

Are you doing? I'm not...

“I will never go into detail unless, like, they've publicly said it.”

But they have gone to see him in prison.

The homage community, however, would not be as forgiving. Chances are, Eli will definitely not be welcome back after he's released. After he's released. But his late wife, Barbara Weaver, seemed to forgive him before the damage was even done. And one of the last letters she wrote to her church counselor just before her murder.

She wrote this of Eli, quote, "I often think of Christ's words in reference to Eli. Forgive him, or he knows not what he does. How sad is that? That is so incredibly devastating that she had such a forgiving and empathetic heart. Her husband has treated her absolutely...

He's been cruel to her, their entire marriage, cheating on her, doing horrible things. And she's seeking guidance and her church counselor saying, "I miss my husband. I'm so sad." And in the last letter she wrote, "She says, "I will take Christ's stance and just forgive him." And then she dies because of a girl that he convinced.

He planned out to kill her. That's disgusting.

“Honestly, they both should rot in prison the rest of their lives.”

And there's no way you let them out. That's horrible. I mean, he got his parole denied, which low key. Good. If I had heard this voice and was on that parole, I would be like, "You got off easy." Yep.

We're absolutely not letting you out on parole. But that's just me. That's crazy. Alright, you guys. Thank you for listening to or watching today's episode. And we will see you next time with another one. I love it.

I hate it. Goodbye.