Okla City Bombing Trial(英)

hat afternoon, heading south down I-35 for Oklahoma. He parked the Ryder truck for the night near Ponca City, Oklahoma, sleeping in the cab.

　　(In his alleged prison revel

ations to inmates, on the other hand, McVeigh reportedly said that the fertilizer had previously been loaded into a second "decoy" truck, and that two trucks——not one——were driven to Oklahoma City that afternoon. Assembly of the bomb was said to have been completed that night at a warehouse in the Oklahoma capitol city with the help of Poindexter, McVeigh, and A.R.A. member Richard Guthrie. In this far more dramatic version of events, related in Secrets Worth Dying For, Poindexter was killed by a throat slashing administered by an A.R.A. member after bomb assembly was completed. The explanation given to McVeigh for the killing: "Soldier, he was only hired help, not one of us.")

　　FBI interviews provide some support for each of the conflicting stories. The couple who own the Santa Fe Trail Diner in Herington, the site of McVeigh's storage locker, told federal interviewers that they saw McVeigh, Nichols, and a third man who resembled John Doe #2 (Brescia?) having breakfast in their establishment around 8 a.m. on the morning before the bombing. Witnesses also reported seeing a Ryder truck and another pickup truck at Geary Lake an hour or two later. Owners of a steakhouse in Perry, Oklahoma told agents they saw McVeigh and "a stocky companion" eat dinner in their restaurant around 7 in the evening. What to make of these various sitings? We might never know exactly who assisted McVeigh in the 24 hours leading up to the dreadful events of April 19, but the McVeigh-and-McVeigh-alone theory, and the McVeigh-and-just-Nichols theory, both seem to stretch credulity.

　　April 19, 1995

　　For Timothy McVeigh, April 19 stood out as a date with multiple historical meanings. It was, probably foremost to the former visitor to Waco, the date in 1995 that the federal government launched its attack on the Branch Davidian compound in Texas, with the horrific loss of life that resulted. McVeigh also knew April 19 to be the date in 1775 that the Battle of Lexington occurred, marking the beginning of the armed uprising by colonialists against British control. In his getaway car, McVeigh included a bumper sticker that he expected——probably wanted——authorities to find. The bumper sticker carried the quote of Revolutionary War patriot Samuel Adams, "WHEN THE GOVERNMENT FEARS THE PEOPLE, THERE IS LIBERTY. WHEN THE PEOPLE FEAR THE GOVERNMENT, THERE IS TYRANNY." Below the slogan, McVeigh scribbled his own words: "Maybe now, there will be liberty!" April 19 of 1995, McVeigh also certainly knew, was to be the scheduled day of execution in Arkansas for a white supremacist Richard Snell, formerly of Elohim City, who had——years earlier——targeted the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City as the site for a potential bombing.

　　On the morning that he would become the greatest mass murderer in American history, McVeigh chose to wear a T-shirt with a drawing of Abraham Lincoln and the words shouted by John Wilkes Booth after his assassination of the president, "SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS" ("thus ever to tyrants"). In the version of events related by McVeigh in his authorized biography, American Terrorist, he began driving south in his Ryder truck from Ponca City about 7 a.m. on the morning of April 19, having made an "executive decision" to move up the scheduled timing of the bombing. In the more sensational version of events related in Secrets Worth Dying For, McVeigh, with Michael Brescia in the passenger seat of the Ryder truck, left an Oklahoma City warehouse around 8 a.m. A video camera at 8:55 a.m. captured the Ryder truck as it headed toward the center of downtown Oklahoma City at 8:55 a.m. The Ryder truck drove up NW 5th street shortly before 9:00. McVeigh lit two fuses. He parked the truck in the handicapped zone in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, locked the vehicle, and strode quickly away in the direction of a nearby YMCA building. At 9:02 a.m., shortly after many parents had dropped their toddlers off at the Murrah Build

ing's second-floor daycare center, the bomb exploded, taking with it much of the building, killing 167 people, injuring another 509, and changing forever the lives of thousands of Oklahomans.

　　Two news stories that followed the bombing reported raised interesting questions concerning a wider conspiracy. In Arkansas, prison officials reported that in the days preceding April 19, Richard Snell repeatedly told them to expect a big bombing or explosion on the day of his execution. Execution came for Snell exactly twelve hours after the Oklahoma City bombing. Meanwhile, in Spokane, Washington, the local paper reported that Chevie Kehoe, a former Elohim City resident staying at a motel in the city, woke early on April 19 to demand that the motel owner turn the lobby television to CNN, telling him that "something is going to happen and it's going to wake people up." The motel owner said that Kehoe became ecstatic when news of the Oklahoma City bombing was announced. "It's about time!" Kehoe is reported to have exclaimed.

　　About 80 minutes after the bombing, Charles Hanger, an Oklahoma Highway Patrol officer, noticed a McVeigh's Mercury driving north on I-35, about twenty miles from the Kansas border. The car carried no license plate, so the officer pulled the driver over. When McVeigh turned out to be carrying a concealed weapon without a permit, in addition to driving without a license or a vehicle registration, he was arrested, booked, and placed in the county jail in Perry, Oklahoma.

　　Later that day, amidst the gruesome rubble of downtown Oklahoma City, federal agents found the vehicle identification number for the Ryder truck. Within hours, investigators were in a car headed for Junction City, Kansas, to see who might have rented it.

　　The Investigation and Trial Preliminaries

　　By April 21, investigatory trails had led to Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. Initial speculation that the bombing was the work of Arab extremists faded away. The lead FBI investigator at Waco, Clinton Van Zandt of the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit, recognized the importance of April 19 and told other agents to look for a "white male……with military experience and ……a member of some militia group……angry for what happened at Ruby Ridge and Waco." Agents visiting Elliot's Body Shop in Junction City, the shop that rented the Ryder truck, came away with a description of renter "Robert Kling," a/k/a "John Doe No. 1," a white male with a brush cut and a strong nose. The manager of the Dreamland Motel told them that "John Doe No. 1" looked very much like Timothy McVeigh, who had rented a room at her motel in the days before the bombing. A former co-worker in New York also told authorities that "John Doe No. 1" might be the man he knew as Timothy McVeigh.

　　A computer check in Washington came up with information that surprised and delighted investigators: Timothy McVeigh was, at present, sitting in a Noble County, Oklahoma jail on unrelated misdemeanor charges. Federal agents traveled to Perry, where they picked up McVeigh——who had been wondering all the while what was taking authorities so long——and transported him by helicopter to Tinker Air Force Base, near Oklahoma City. Before his arraignment that evening, McVeigh met briefly with two court-appointed attorneys. "Yes," he told them, "I did the bombing."

　　Once authorities had the name of a suspect, it wasn't difficult to identify McVeigh's army buddy, Terry Nichols, as an additional target of suspicion. McVeigh had listed the Nichols farm in Michigan as his home address. Nichols turned himself into authorities in Herington, Kansas, and consented to a search of his home. Searchers found guns, stolen goods, anti-government books, ammonium nitrate, a receipt for the purchase of the ammonium nitrate, Primadet explosive, a hand-drawn map of downtown Oklahoma City, and a telephone card used by McVeigh to make calls in his hunt for bomb-making materials.

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　　Ultimately, the federal government would bring charges against three men: McVeigh and Nichols for conspiracy to bomb a federal building and for the murder of federal agents, and Michael Fortier for not informing authorities about the bombing and lying to federal agents about his knowledge of the bombing. Prosecutors never fully explained the decision not to bring charges against others suspected of playing significant roles in the bombing conspiracy, but apparently they simply believed they lacked the compelling evidence necessary to meet the Constitution's high "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard of guilt.

　　Fortier agreed to assist government prosecutors in return for not facing conspiracy charges, a promise of leniency for his admitted crimes, and the promise that his wife would not be charged. Grand jury indictments of McVeigh and Nichols came on August 11, 1995, three days after Michael and Lori Fortier presented their testimony in the case.

　　Fearing a fair trial was not possible in Oklahoma, U. S. District Judge Richard Matsch moved the trial to Denver. Judge Matsch also ordered that McVeigh and Nichols be tried separately, with McVeigh's trial to begin first. After receiving authorization from Attorney General Janet Reno to do so, prosecutors announced that they would seek the death penalty in both cases.

　　The Trial of Timothy McVeigh

　　Timothy McVeigh never got the trial he wanted. He tried to convince his attorneys to present a "necessity defense" that might allow him to present evidence of the "crimes" of the federal government that his bombing was meant to prevent. McVeigh believed that at least s

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