Then he would abruptly take off. "One day he was packing his car and just decided it was time to go," Moore said. "He didn't like long goodbyes."
A large man, with curly, receding hair and a booming voice, Moore had put together a large collection of firearms and precious metals. Many of the weapons were family heirlooms.
On the morning of Nov. 5, 1994, while Anderson was away, he said, someone accosted him outside his door when he stepped out to feed the animals. He said the hooded assailant carried a pistol-grip shotgun with garrote wire, bound him with duct tape and then stole more than 60 firearms, gold bullion and silver bars.
Also taken was Moore's van. Although the vehicle was later found, missing was Moore's list of serial numbers for the guns that he said he kept in the glove compartment.
Authorities never solved the crime. Garland County Sheriff Larry Selig still has questions about it. But federal sources, who asked to remain anonymous, said they believe Moore.
The FBI has reported discovering Moore's safe deposit box key at Nichols' home. They also found one of his guns at a pawnshop in Kingman, Ariz., where McVeigh lived after leaving Arkansas.
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McVeigh's attorneys have produced gun-show records and motel receipts that indicate he was in Akron, Ohio, on the morning Moore was being held up.
But Moore and Anderson think McVeigh had some involvement because he knew about the large gun collection from his visits there.
Anderson wrote McVeigh three letters in Kingman, offering to pay for his help in finding the robber. She said he wrote back, advising her to "put up surveillance cameras" and "military sensors you could set on the property."
Finally, Moore wrote his letter to McVeigh. But it arrived after McVeigh left Kingman. The FBI found it inside McVeigh's mail drop there after his arrest.
For Moore, the robbery was not his first encounter with authorities.
In 1986, he reported that a housekeeper had stolen $11,000 in cash that was bundled in bank packets. The woman was not apprehended. Officials said she later killed herself in Arizona.
That same year, a ranch hand asphyxiated himself in the farm garage while Moore and Anderson were away, according to police.
Ed Smith, a Garland County sheriff's deputy who investigated these earlier incidents, said there also was a flurry of complaints from his neighbors about Moore shooting guns on his property, including automatic rifle fire and bullet tracers that lit up the night.
In 1993, he was arrested in Wagoner County, Okla., for shooting out the back window of a car carrying four people on the state turnpike.
Moore was returning from a Tulsa gun show. He was carrying nearly $3,850 in cash. Inside his car were two firearms and 23 different kinds of medications for everything from ulcers to infections to sleep disorders.
Learning of Moore's arrest, Anderson chartered a plane in Arkansas and flew to Oklahoma with $50,000 in cash to post bail. Local authorities were astonished.
"We looked at all that money, and it would have taken us all day and all night to count it," said Sheriff Elmer Shepherd.
So Moore posted bail through a local bondswoman, Dianna Sanders Burk. His local attorney, Richard McLaughlin, was besieged by letters of commendation for Moore.
The letters, written by people around the country, attested to Moore's good reputation, saying that he held a master's degree in business administration, had worked as a city manager in Iowa and had made a fortune building boats for the U.S. military during the Vietnam War.
He ultimately pleaded no contest to a reduced charge of transporting a loaded firearm and was fined $300 and court costs.
Last fall, Moore turned up again in Wagoner. He visited his lawyer's office, the local prosecutor, even his bonds-woman, boasting about his role in the bombing case.
McLaughlin said Moore boasted that the FBI is "not going to do anything to me. I'm a protected witness."
