The Imperfect Storm

Rulo sits in the far south-eastern corner of Nebraska, in Richardson County, on the Missouri River where the borders of Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri meet. James calls it the world's tiniest panhandle, 0.63 square miles with 165 people in the mid-1980s, a dying farm town in a depressed rural economy. Rick Stice and Sandra Buttrick were high school sweethearts there. Sandra was pregnant, so they married at sixteen in 1976 and took on an 80-acre hog farm owned by Rick's father, Ortho Stice. Their daughter Aura was born in 1976, Barry in 1978 and Luke in 1980. They borrowed from the bank to modernise the hog pens, buy a pickup and fix up the farmhouse, and for a while the hogs paid the bills.

The farm crisis of the early 1980s ended that. details of the account remain covered until revealed A month later Sandra was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease. Without insurance she could not get the treatment that might have given her twenty more years, and the doctors told her she had less than a year. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it

Desperate and grieving, Rick had been going to revival meetings in Kansas run by James Wickstrom, national director of counter-insurgency for the Posse Comitatus, a white supremacist group which taught that a Jewish conspiracy had rewritten the Constitution and that farmers should fire the government. this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed

the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it Among the followers was Cheryl Gibson, who left her husband and brought her six children after the arm test told her to. this part of the story is covered for now They stopped raising hogs because pork violated kosher law, which removed the farm's only income, and the bank foreclosed. details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it

Luke, five years old, said aloud that he doubted Yahweh. In March 1985 cult members painted 666 on his back, called him dog, mongrel, gook and dog shit, doused him in ice water and kicked him outside into the cold. this part of the story is covered for now Nobody called a doctor. details of the account remain covered until revealed Rick and Thim were forced to dig the grave and bury him. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it

James Thim was born in 1959. His mother was too ill to care for him and died when he was small, and he was raised by a Mennonite couple near Beatrice, Nebraska, attending the Beatrice Mennonite Church. He was a friendly, religious young man who did farm work, and John David Andreas drew him into the cult. Thim was one of the men demoted to slave in early 1985. this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed They stripped him, bent him over a crate and assaulted him with a greased shovel handle, then a pick handle, rupturing his rectum. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed The body went into a sleeping bag and a grave six feet long, three feet wide and six feet deep.

the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now On 17 and 18 August, in the year the episode gives as 1995, officers from the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the Nebraska State Patrol and the Richardson County sheriff's office searched the farm. They found Thim's body and Luke's shallow grave, and seized 150,000 rounds of ammunition, 30 semi-automatic rifles, 15 fully automatic machine guns, more than a dozen pistols and $250,000 of stolen farm machinery. details of the account remain covered until revealed

the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed

the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed The doctors called him delusional and grandiose, one called him a paranoid schizophrenic, but the judge found him competent and wrote that one can be both odd and evil but not crazy or incompetent. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now

details of the account remain covered until revealed James Thim was finally buried at the First Mennonite Church cemetery in Beatrice, in Gage County. Rick Stice, who was 26 when the case broke, lost his wife, his farm, his son and most of his family; the episode says the people of Rulo mostly shunned him.