Timothy McVeigh Executed: Final Words and Last Meal of America’s Deadliest Terrorist | JIT

Timothy McVeigh Executed: Final Words and Last Meal of America’s Deadliest Terrorist | JIT

This is Timothy McVey and what he said about  his crime, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.   I thought it was it was a tragic event. And  that’s all I really want to say. And the children   I thought it was it was terrible that there  were children in the building. You deprived   them of life, liberty, and property. You didn’t  guarantee those rights. You deprived them of them.

Government is the teacher. Violence would  be an acceptable option. What do you mean?   Well, um, what did we do to Sudan? But was that  really all that was going through his head?   Was McVey truly the one responsible for this  horrific tragedy? And what was his ultimate fate?   All the answers will be revealed in today’s  [music] video.

On April 19th, 1995, at precisely   9:02 a.m., a rider rental truck stopped right  in front of the main entrance of the Alfred P.   Mura Federal Building, a ninestory structure of  ordinary federal offices stood in the heart of the   city. Inside were the usual government desks,  FBI, ATF, Secret Service, and daycare center.   Seconds later, the bomb inside Anfo, a mixture  of ammonium, nitrate fertilizer, nitromemethane,   and diesel fuel, detonated with the force of 3,000  to 6,000 lb of TNT.

The blast was instantaneous   and savage. Onethird of the building collapsed  straight down like a pancake, pancaking floors   onto one another. A crater 9 m wide and 2 and 1/2  m deep tore open the pavement of NW Fifth Street.   Shattered glass exploded outward for hundreds of  meters, slicing through people on the sidewalks   and in nearby [music] cars. More than 300  surrounding buildings suffered heavy damage.

Within 23 minutes, firefighters, police officers,  National Guard troops, and ordinary Oklahomaans   were clawing through the rubble with their  bare hands. It’s a very slow, tedious process   of removing the debris and extricating the  fatalities and searching for survivors.   You know, you hope and you pray that every  time you turn a stone, there’ll be a survivor   somewhere. Strangers formed human chains to lift  concrete slabs.

One survivor remembered hearing   a woman’s voice calling from deep inside  the debris, “Please, my baby is in there.”   President Bill Clinton appeared on national  television that afternoon, his voice tight   with anger. Oklahoma City was an attack on  innocent children and defenseless citizens.   It was an act of cowardice and it was evil.

The United States will not tolerate it   and I will not allow the people of this country  to be intimidated by evil cowards. The rescue   effort went on for days, turning the downtown  into a war zone of search lights and sirens.   Regarding the suspect inside the rider truck,  information available at the time was extremely   limited.

They said there was a man stepped out of  the passenger side of the rider truck just before   the explosion. He was wearing a jacket and blue  jeans, had short dark hair and a tan complexion.   He walked very fast, heading west toward Harvey  Street. No one stopped him. He simply disappeared   into the smoke and the panic, melting away  from the scene he had just helped create.   And with that, the first threads of a my

stery  began to unravel. At 10:20 a.m. on April 19th,   1995, Oklahoma Highway Patrol trooper Charlie  Hangar was cruising northbound on Interstate 35,   roughly 75 to 80 mi north of the city near Perry  in Noble County. [music] He was actually turning   around to head back and help with the rescue  effort. And he spotted a yellow 1977 Mercury   marquee rolling along without a license plate on  the back.

It was a routine traffic stop, the kind   any trooper makes a dozen times a week. No radio  dispatch, no witness tip, no description of a man   fleeing the bombing scene, just a missing plate  on a beat up sedan. Hangar pulled the car over.   He walked up to the driver’s window and asked the  man to step out.

The driver, a cleancut guy in his   20s, complied and reached inside his jacket for  what looked like a license. That’s when Hangar   noticed the unusual bulge under the left side  of the coat. “The man didn’t hesitate.” “It’s   loaded,” he said calmly. Hangar drew his own  weapon, ordered him to the ground, and cuffed   him on the spot. A quick pat down turned up a  fully loaded Glock model 2145 caliber pistol.

Black Talon hollowpoint rounds, the kind  designed to tear through body armor,   spare magazines, a combat knife, and a suicide  halter rigged [music] for a lightning fast draw.   The car had no registration, no proof of  insurance, and the driver offered no explanation.   He was booked on the spot for driving without a  plate.

no vehicle registration, failure to show   insurance, and carrying a concealed weapon.  By 11:30 a.m., he was sitting quietly in a   cell at the Noble County [music] Jail in Perry,  listed under his real name, Timothy James McVey,   last known address in Michigan. At that moment,  nobody in the jail had any idea they were holding   the man responsible for the worst act of  domestic terrorism in American history.

While McVey cooled his heels on minor charges,  investigators at the bomb site were making a   discovery that would crack the case open. Back  to the ruins after the bombing, rescue workers   and FBI agents sifting through the rubble found  the rear axle of the rider rental truck lying   one block away, mangled by the blast, but still  bearing a partial vehicle identification number.

FBI technicians ran it through the  National Insurance Crime Bureau database   and traced the truck straight to Elliot’s body  shop in Junction City, Kansas. nearly 300 m north.   The shop owner and employees remembered the render  clearly, a man using the alias Robert Clling.   They gave a detailed description and within  hours the FBI had a composite sketch of John   Doe One circulating everywhere.

By the morning  of April 21, that sketch was on every television   screen in the country. A clerk at the Dreamland  Motel in Junction City recognized it immediately.   The man had stayed there just days earlier and  signed the register as Timothy McVey. FBI agents   pulled his military records, matched fingerprints  and photos, and confirmed it. John Doe 1 was   Timothy James McVey, the same man sitting in that  small town jail on weapons charges.

[music] He was   scheduled for release later that day. Instead,  federal agents arrived in force that afternoon,   took custody, and moved him to Tinker Air Force  Base near Oklahoma City for initial questioning.   By evening, he was formally arraigned in  federal court. The net kept tightening.   On the morning of April 26, Terry Nichols,  McVeyy’s closest associate, walked into the   Harrington Police Station in Kansas with his wife  and young son.

He had seen the news and turned   himself in voluntarily. At first, he was held  only as a material witness. Later that same day,   he was reclassified as a suspect. A few days  later, Michael Fortier, another friend who   had known about the plot, was taken into custody.  Fortier would eventually cut a deal, plead guilty   to lesser charges, and become the government’s  star witness in exchange for a 12-year sentence.

PART2

If you were paying close attention, Timothy McVey  was immediately identified as John Doe number one,   suggesting from the very beginning  that he had at least one accomplice.   Multiple eyewitnesses reported seeing two men in  or exiting the rider truck right before the blast.   Survivor Diana Bradley, standing  near a first floor window,   watched two men step out of the truck.

One  man described [music] as having olive skin   wearing a jacket and ball cap. El Morham  walked away very quickly toward Harvey Street.   Truck driver Rodney Johnson nearly collided  with two men walking closely together.   In step, one behind the other, directly in front  of the rider truck moments before the explosion.   Seismographs also recorded two distinct tremors,  fueling early speculation of a second device.

The FBI quickly issued a nationwide alert  for the mysterious John Doe number two,   only to suddenly withdraw it days later, claiming  it was a case of mistaken identity involving a   soldier named Todd Bunting, who had rented  a truck at the same shop the very next day.   This shadowy figure has inspired numerous  conspiracy theories involving Elohim City,   Andreas Strame, and the Aryan Republican Army  Eto or even possible government concealment.

While some have asked if John Doe number  two could have been Terry Nichols,   the answer is no. But the descriptions were  completely different. John Doe number two was   dark-skinned, muscular, and around 5’9, while  Nicholls was pale, thin, and wore glasses.   Curiously, both McVey and Nicholls  denied his existence.

Some believe   they were protecting someone or that the FBI  had strategic reasons for dropping the lid.   Either way, these remain unproven theories  and should be taken strictly as speculation.   McVeyy’s confessions delivered some of the  most shocking details of the [music] case,   especially his calm insistence that if he  hadn’t targeted any single person, [music] he   had declared war on the government of the  United States itself.

In the hours following   his transfer [music] to federal custody on the  evening of April 2020, 1995, Timothy James McVey   sat stonefaced [music] in the interview room at  Tinker Air Force Base. Agents fired questions   at him for hours. He gave them nothing. No  admissions, no explanations, [music] barely   a word beyond his name and military serial  number.

[music] He was polite, almost detached,   as if the deadliest domestic terror [music] talk  in American history had nothing to do with him.   For days, he maintained that silence [music]  while the FBI built its case around him.   Only years later, long after the jury had spoken,  did the full picture emerge. In prison interviews   for the book American Terrorist, [music]  and in letters he wrote from Death Row,   McVey opened up completely. There was no remorse,  [music] no second thoughts.

He described the   bombing as a legitimate act of war, a calculated  strike against a [music] tyrannical federal   government that he believed had declared war on  its own citizens first. You ended that letter with   the words, “Do we have to shed blood to reform the  current system?” I hope it doesn’t come to that,   but it might.

In a domestic non-warime situation,  federal agents taking on the role of judge, jury,   and executioner. And then to further add insult  to injury, you have these people, these federal   agents not held accountable. Government is the  teacher. Violence would be an acceptable option.   What do you mean? Well, um, what did we do to  Sudan? This wasn’t the rant of a madman. It was   the measured reasoning of the man who had come to  see the United States itself as [music] the enemy.

The transformation had begun years earlier during  and after his Gulf [music] War service in 1991.   McVey had been an outstanding soldier, expert  marksman, Bradley fighting vehicle gunner,   recipient of the Bronze Star. Yet, the same  man who earned those [music] honors came home   convinced the government he had served now  used violence as [music] policy both abroad   and at home. I [snorts] went over there hyped up  just like everyone else.

Not only is Saddam evil,   all Iraqis are evil, uh what I experienced though  was an entirely different ballgame. And being   face to face close with these people in personal  contact, you realize they’re just people like you.   The right I thought, well, it was self-defense.  The reason I fired is because I saw a muzzle   muzzle flash and I instinctively fired out in that  direction.

But then I thought, well, at the same   time, I’m in this person’s country. What right did  I have to come over to his country and kill him?   Two events sealed [music] his path. The first  was Ruby Ridge in 1992 where federal agents   killed a family in a standoff that McVey followed  obsessively. The second and far more decisive   was Waco.

On April 19th, [music] 1993, McVey  drove to the scene himself and watched the   Branch Devidian compound [music] burn, killing 76  people, including children. This was as close as   members of the public could get to the standoff.  You’re next. You’re next. Wake up and understand.   you’re next. All sorts of folks that felt  moved to come down. Just uh just arrived today.   I guess somebody told me a lot of people  are would be scared to put something on,   you know, like this.

Timothy  McVey had already apparently been   very concerned about what had happened  at Ruby Ridge. He marked the day on his   calendar as the day the government murdered  innocents. [music] Exactly two years later,   he struck back on the anniversary, timing the  explosion to send an unmistakable message.   Books shaped him as much as events.

McVey carried  photocopied [music] pages of the Turner Diaries in   the Mercury Marquee the day he was stopped. The  novel’s plot, a white separatist [music] group   that blows up an FBI building with a truck bomb  loaded with fertilizer, read like a blueprint.   He also raged against the 1994 federal assault  weapons ban, [music] convinced the government   was coming for every gun owner’s rights.

In  his mind, [music] the Mura building wasn’t   just a target. It housed the very agencies  he blamed for Waco [music] and Ruby Ridge.   The plan itself had taken shape with cold  precision. Starting in [music] September 1994,   McVey and his army buddy Terry Nichols  bought two tons of ammonium nitrate   fertilizer [music] from the Mid Kansas cooperative  in McFersonson under the fake name Mike Havens.

They made two purchases, September 30 [music] and  October 18. Then added nitromemethane racing fuel,   blasting caps, [music] and plastic barrels. In  December, McVey and another friend, Michael Forge,   drove to Oklahoma City and scouted [music] the  Alfred P. Mura Federal Building. They timed   traffic patterns, picked the perfect parking spot  directly [music] in front of the daycare center,   and measured escape routes.

From January through  early April 1995, [music] the material sat hidden   in a rented storage shed behind Nicholas’s  house in Harrington, Kansas. McVey bounced   between gun shows and cheap motel, [music] always  moving, always watching his back. On April 14, he   checked into the Dreamland Motel and Junction City  under his own name. 3 days later, on April 17, he   rented the 20ft rider truck at Elliot’s Body Shop  using the alias Robert Clling.

The next morning,   April 18, McDeay and Nicholls hauled every  bag and barrel to Gary [music] Lake Sto Park.   There, in broad daylight, they mixed the Anfoblom,  roughly 2,300 to 4,800 [music] lb of ammonium   nitrate soaked in diesel and nitromemethane  inside the truck’s cargo box. Early on April 19,   McVey drove the loaded rider south toward Oklahoma  City. [music] Around 8:50, he lit two long fuses.

At 9:02, [music] he parked the truck directly  in front of the Mura building’s glass facade,   stepped out, and walked away.  Minutes later, the city shook.   He escaped [music] north on Interstate 35 in the  yellow Mercury he had parked nearby days earlier.   Just another driver on the highway  until trooper hanger pulled him over.

McVey was the mastermind and trigger man. Nicholls  provided the heavy lifting, storage, purchases,   mixing help. For Terry knew the outline  of the plot, but stayed on the sidelines.   Later, he would trade testimony [music] for a  lighter sentence. Every step had been rehearsed,   every risk calculated.

What I found when I read  the court transcripts and McVeyy’s own words was   a man who had turned personal rage into a national  tragedy with the same discipline he once showed on   the battlefield. He never denied any of it. In  fact, he wore the conviction like a medal. Yet,   even as those confessions closed one chapter, they  opened another.

Because the more McVey talked, the   more questions lingered about the man who stepped  out of the passenger side of that rider truck   and vanished into the smoke. And those questions  would follow the case straight into the courtroom.   McVeyy’s confessions delivered some of  the most shocking details of the case,   especially his calm insistence that  he hadn’t targeted any single person.

He had declared war on the government of  the United States itself. In February 1996,   federal judge Richard Paul Match made one of  the most significant rulings of the entire case.   He ordered the entire trial moved from Oklahoma  City to Denver, Colorado. The reason was simple   and constitutional. The relentless local  coverage had poisoned the jury pool.

McVey   and Nichols had been demonized in Oklahoma long  before a single witness [music] took the stand.   Match also ordered separate trials with McVeyy’s  case going first. It was a quiet but ironclad   decision meant to protect the right to a fair  trial in a nation still raw [music] with grief.   The federal courthouse in Denver opened its doors  on April 24th, 1997.

This was one of the most   closely watched trials in American history. Closed  circuit cameras fed live images back to Oklahoma   City so victims families could watch without  traveling. Security was tighter than anything   the city had ever seen. When the grainy footage of  McVey in handcuffs first hit national television   right after his arrest.

His father, William  McVey, was sitting in the living room of the   family home in Pendleton, New York. The older man  stared at the screen, then broke down completely.   “This can’t be my boy,” he kept repeating  between sobs. “This can’t be Tim.”   He later told reporters he had no idea his  son was capable of anything like this and had   tried to reach him in those first chaotic days,  only to be turned away.

Leading the prosecution   was Joseph Hartsler, a veteran federal prosecutor  from Illinois who suffered from multiple scerosis   and conducted much of the case from a motorized  scooter. His voice stayed measured, but the facts   he laid out were devastating. Opposite him sat  Steven Jones, McVeyy’s lead defense attorney,   along with Robert Nye Jr. jury selection  had dragged on for weeks.

But once the 12   men and women were seated, the trial moved with  military precision under Match’s strict control.   It would last roughly 2 months and feature  hundreds of witnesses and thousands of pages   of documents. The government’s case was built  like a steel trap. First came the rear axle of   the rider truck blasted more than a block from the  crater, yet still carrying allegible partial VIN.

That single piece of metal led straight to  Elliot’s body shop in Junction City, Kansas,   and the man who had rented it  under the alias Robert Clling.   Next, forensic experts described the chemical  signatures on the clothes McVey wore when trooper   hanger pulled him over.

Traces of patin from the  detonator cord on his t-shirt, jeans, and even the   earplugs stuffed in his pocket. The shirt itself  became a silent witness front emlazed with Abraham   Lincoln and the Latin phrase six seer tyrannis  back printed with Thomas Jefferson’s line about   refreshing the tree of liberty with the blood of  patriots and tyrants. Inside the yellow Mercury,   agents had found photocopied pages from the  Turner diaries, handwritten revolutionary notes,   and a bumper sticker that read,  “Maybe now there will be litery.

”   The most damaging testimony came from Michael  Fortier. He described how McVey had used soup cans   on a coffee table to demonstrate exactly how the  barrels of Anfo would be stacked inside the truck.   Fortier recounted the scouting trip to Oklahoma  City, the careful timing of traffic patterns,   and the deliberate choice to park directly in  front of the daycare center.

Every piece fit,   every loose end was tied. After 23 hours of  deliberation, on June 2nd, 1997, the jury returned   with its verdict. Guilty on all 11 federal counts,  conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction,   actual use of that weapon, and eight counts of  first-degree murder for the federal agents who   died inside the building. The courtroom remained  utterly still. McVey showed no visible reaction.

Guilty. Guilty on all 11 counts. The jury finds  Tim McVey guilty on all 11 counts. There are   people applauding here in downtown Denver across  the street. Sentencing came 11 days later on June   13. The same jury heard heartbreaking victim  impact statements from parents who had lost   children in the daycare and from survivors who  would never walk the same again.

They deliberated   once more and unanimously recommended death. Judge  Match, formerly imposed the sentence on August   14th, 1997. Terry Nichols tried separately later  that year, was convicted of conspiracy [music] and   eight counts of involuntary manslaughter. He  received life without parole. [music] Michael   Fortier, who had cooperated and testified against  his friend, received 12 years and a $200,000 fine   under his plea deal.

Yet, even as the gavvel  fell and the death sentence was pronounced,   the same questions that had lingered since the  smoke cleared over Oklahoma City refused to fade.   In 1999, he was transferred from the  Supermax AAX Florence in Colorado   to the United States Penitentiary at Carot,  Indiana. He was placed in an [music] 8×10   ft cell inside the special housing unit,  completely isolated from every other prisoner.

The daily rhythm never changed. One hour of  solitary exercise in a small fence [music] yard   under constant watch. Then back inside for  23 hours of unbroken solitude, [music] McVey   filled the emptiness with books, writing hundreds  of letters to journalists, supporters, and what   remained of his family.

[music] He worked closely  with reporters Lou Michelle and Dan Herbeck,   shaping the manuscript that would become American  Terrorist, published just months before his death.   He ate only a vegetarian diet and even  exchanged letters with [music] PETA,   calmly discussing animal rights as if the  168 lives he had ended [music] were somehow   separate from the conversation.

Throughout  it all, he called himself a prisoner of war,   not a criminal. There was never a flicker  of remorse. I did what I had to [music] do,   he wrote. The government had started the  war, he insisted. He had simply answered.   In 2000, McVey made a choice that stunned even  some of his supporters. He voluntarily dropped   every [music] remaining appeal. He wanted it  finished. “I’m done,” he told his lawyers.

The machinery of death row, already slow, suddenly  accelerated toward its [music] final date.   The last days arrived with clinical precision.  On June 10th, 2001, [music] he was moved to   the death watch cell. Guards later recalled how  he joked during his final shower that the cold   water amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.

He accepted the anointing of the sick from a   [music] Catholic priest, even though he described  himself as agnostic. He watched television until   9 that evening, [music] then slept fitfully before  waking at 3:00 in the morning on June 11. He spent   those final hours staring at the screen again,  calm,

[music] almost detached. At 7:14 a.m. on   June 11th, 2001, Timothy James McVey was [music]  executed by lethal injection, the first federal   prisoner put to death since Victor Figer in 1963.  The three drug protocol was simple and merciless.   Sodium thopentil to render him unconscious.  Pancarium bromide to paralyze every muscle and   potassium chloride to stop his heart. [snorts] The  entire process lasted [music] less than 4 minutes.

His eyes remained open the whole time,  staring straight ahead as the monitors   flatlined. [music] At 7:14 a.m. Central time,  he was pronounced dead. His last meal had been   almost comically ordinary. two pints of mint  chocolate chip ice cream, [music] nothing else.   When the warden asked if he wanted to make a final  statement, McVey said nothing.

Instead, he left   behind a handwritten copy of the poem Invictus  by William [music] Ernest Henley. The last   lines were underlined in his own hand. I am the  master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul.   Many family members of the victims later said the  silence itself felt like one last defiant message.   Outside the prison gates in Terra Halt, the  reaction was quiet but fractured.

Hundreds   had gathered peacefully, some holding candles for  each of the 168 dead, singing, “We shall overcome”   for a full 168 minutes, 1 minute per life lost. A  smaller group stood with signs that simply read,   “Remember the victims.

” Inside a federal building  in Oklahoma City, 232 survivors and relatives   watched the closed circuit feed in absolute  silence. For the families, the emotions split   cleanly down the middle. Some wept with relief.  “It’s finally over,” one mother said. Others,   like Bud Welch, whose 23-year-old daughter Julie  had died in the daycare center, spoke out against   the execution. [music] “Another death won’t  bring my daughter back,” he told reporters.

“It only adds to the violence.” Later that  morning, President George W. Bush stepped   to the podium at the White House. This morning,  he said, “The United States carried out the most   serious punishment for the most serious crime. The  victims of the Oklahoma City bombing have received   not revenge, but justice. [music] His voice  was steady. The country had closed one chapter.

Yet, even as the news cameras packed  up and the crowds drifted away,   I kept coming back to the same unsettled feeling  that [music] had shadowed the entire case.   McBay was gone, but the questions he left  behind refused [music] to die with him.   Was there really a John Doe unto who stepped out  of that rider truck and vanished into the smoke?   How deep did the connections run between McVey,  the white separatist compound in Elohim City,   Andreas Strasmare, and the Aryan Republican  Army bank robbers? [music] Had the government

held back anything to close the case quickly?  6 years after the worst act of [music] domestic   terrorism in American history, before 9/11  changed the meaning of that phrase forever,   those shadows still stretched across the  Oklahoma City skyline. [music] In the end,   as Timothy McVey drew his last breath on that June  morning in 2001, [music] the federal government   closed its books on the worst act of domestic  terrorism America had ever seen.

[music] But   some stories refused to be buried with the man who  created them. What remains is a chilling lesson   about how ordinary people can be transformed when  they spend too much time swimming in darkness.   Prolonged exposure to rage, conspiracy, and  extremist ideology can quietly erode a man’s sense   of right and wrong until he convinces himself that  mass murder is not only acceptable but necessary.

In our current age, that warning carries even  heavier weight. The kind of literature and   ideas that radicalize McVey [music] can now  be accessed instantly by anyone with a phone.   Hatred travels faster, [music] finds vulnerable  minds more easily, and spreads without the   natural breaks that once existed.

[music] The  case of Oklahoma City forces us to confront   an uncomfortable reality. We must be far more  vigilant about the information we allow into   our lives and [music] most importantly into the  lives of our young people. Thoughtful education,   open conversations, [music] and careful guidance  are essential if we hope to prevent the next quiet   radicalization before [music] it turns deadly. And  with that, this episode comes to a close.

If this   story affected you or gave [music] you something  to think about, I’d appreciate it if you liked   the video and shared it with others. Drop your  thoughts and reflections in the comment section   below. I read everyone. If you want to continue  this journey through America’s most haunting   true crime cases, please subscribe and turn on  notifications so you never miss a new release.

Thank you for watching. Stay curious, stay safe,  and I’ll see you in the next investigation.