Louis Beam, the far right’s devastatingly eloquent propagandist and advocate of “leaderless resistance” against the government, being apprehended at Waco in 1993 after asking the “forbidden question” at a news briefing about America turning into a police state. AP Images
A typical early 1990s anti-government propaganda image, from Tom Metzger’s group White Aryan Resistance.
Robert Millar, the patriarch of Elohim City, who excused the regular presence of fearsome violent criminals by saying they came from Jesus. From the collection of J.D. Cash
Carol Howe, the ATF’s secret informant at Elohim City, sported a large inky swastika tattoo on her left shoulder (partially visible) and loved to take provocative pictures. Andreas Strassmeir dismissed her many years later as a “dress Nazi.”
A rare photo of Roger Moore, an irascible ammunition dealer who knew Tim McVeigh from the gun-show circuit. Many senior law enforcement officials were disappointed Moore was not pursued more aggressively as a bombing suspect. (He’s seen here outside the Oklahoma courthouse where Terry Nichols was tried on state murder charges.) AP Images
McVeigh in what he described as his biker disguise. Courtesy of the Oklahoma National Memorial & Museum
The white-supremacist bank robber Pete Langan had a secret life as a preoperative transsexual.
A fake driver’s license made by Langan’s volatile sidekick, Richard Guthrie, who thought the Oklahoma bombing would trigger a civil war. Evidence entered into trial
A bag of ammonium nitrate prills similar to those used to build the bomb. Courtesy of the Oklahoma National Memorial & Museum
A locker at the Marion Marietta quarry, which McVeigh and Nichols robbed in October 1994 to obtain blasting caps and Tovex detonators. Courtesy of the Oklahoma National Memorial & Museum
Hell on earth: the immediate aftermath of the bombing, when the streets of downtown Oklahoma City were choking in smoke and debris and the cars parked for blocks around were reduced to mangled wrecks. Courtesy of the Oklahoma National Memorial & Museum
ATF Agent Luke Franey holds up a sign in the window of the ATF’s top-floor offices; his account of that morning raises a lot of unanswered questions. J. Pat Carter
McVeigh’s mug shot following his arrest on gun and traffic charges shortly after the bombing. Courtesy of the Oklahoma National Memorial & Museum
The T-shirt worn by McVeigh when he was arrested; the line about refreshing the tree of liberty with blood echoed a line in an incendiary speech of Louis Beam’s two and a half years earlier. Courtesy of the Oklahoma National Memorial & Museum
A sketch developed from the memory of Jeff Davis, a Chinese-food-delivery boy who insisted the man who opened the door of Room 25 at the Dreamland Motel was someone other than McVeigh. Courtesy of the Oklahoma National Memorial & Museum
Weldon Kennedy, the FBI’s first on-scene commander, brandishes an amended sketch of the mysterious John Doe Two at a news conference. AP Images
A triptych of images presented in court of McVeigh, the John Doe One sketch and Sergeant Michael Hertig. The government argued that McVeigh was John Doe One, and that any inconsistency was due to witnesses at Eldon Elliott’s body shop confusing him with Hertig, who rented a Ryder truck almost exactly twenty-four hours later. There are grounds to doubt both of these assertions. Courtesy of the Oklahoma National Memorial & Museum
The Ward brothers, Pete (top left), Tony (top right), and Sonny (bottom), after their arrest in Oregon in 1996. Carol Howe told the FBI Pete and Tony were a match for John Does One and Two. The FBI spoke to Pete Ward, but none of the brothers was considered a suspect in the Oklahoma City bombing. Oregon police files
McVeigh, captured on video at the Junction City McDonald’s on the day the Ryder truck was rented. He left McDonald’s no sooner than 3:57 P.M. but managed, according to the government, to walk more than a mile uphill to Eldon Elliott’s in time for the rental agreement to be printed at 4:19. It was raining at the time, but the man who rented the truck was dry. Trial exhibit
Diagrams drawn by Terry Nichols showing Lori Fortier’s description of how the bomb was built (supposedly based on what McVeigh told her), his own memory of the construction of the bomb, and McVeigh’s version as described in American Terrorist. Explosives experts put most credence in Nichols’s version, raising questions of who was the true bombing mastermind. From Nichols correspondence
McVeigh with his lawyers Stephen Jones (right) and Rob Nigh (left). AP Images
The message Michael Fortier scrawled on the back of a Kit Kat candy wrapper to tell the FBI he was now willing to cooperate. Courtesy of the Oklahoma National Memorial & Museum
Andreas Strassmeir in Civil War costume in 1994. Courtesy of Kirk Lyons and Andreas Strassmeir
Andreas Strassmeir, Berlin, 2010. Photograph by Andrew Gumbel
Oklahoma Ku Klux Klan leader Dennis Mahon doing a Nazi salute in front of a Ryder truck, some time after the bombing. Mahon’s very public statements that associated him with McVey ended his career as an aircraft mechanic, but did not attract more than token investigative interest.
The ATF authorized Carol Howe to return to Elohim City after the bombing to look for co-conspirators, hurriedly reversing their previous determination that she was mentally unstable. The text, in Angie Finley’s handwriting, says: “It is suspected that members of Elohim City are involved either directly or indirectly through conspiracy. It is suspected that suspect #2 may be at the location.”
The beginning of Terry Nichols’s detailed description of building the bomb, written in 2007; he had not previously confessed it.
Nichols’s federal trial lawyers, Ron Woods (left) and Michael Tigar, on their way into court. Every day Woods would turn to Tigar and say: “Time to go throw up.” AP Images
Joe Hartzler, the government’s chief prosecutor in the McVeigh trial, in the wheelchair he utilized due to multiple sclerosis. AP images
Larry Mackey, Hartzler’s number two who went on to run Terry Nichols’s federal trial. AP Images
Niki Deutchman, the jury foreman in the Nichols federal trial, gives an impromptu news conference after finding Nichols not guilty of first-degree murder in January 1998. She formed a special courtroom bond with Nichols’s lawyer Michael Tigar and described him as “one heck of an attorney.” Soon after, she was receiving death threats. AP Images