Bombings Oklahoma

A close associate of two of the men implicated in the Oklahoma City bombing said after a short appearance before a federal grand jury Thursday that he believes he has become a target of the government investigation. Jim Rosencrans, a 29-year-old gun enthusiast from Kingman, Ariz., said that he testified for less than five minutes before the grand jury investigating the April 19 blast that killed 168 people at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.

Ending months of speculation over whether he would drop the case, the new district attorney in Oklahoma City said Wednesday that he will prosecute bombing conspirator Terry L. Nichols on state murder charges that could bring the death penalty. Dist. Atty. Wes Lane said he will pursue the 160 first-degree murder counts brought by his predecessor two years ago.

Indicating that authorities are moving toward charging Michael Fortier in the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, a close associate of Fortier and of suspect Timothy J. McVeigh has been called to testify today before a grand jury about how the bombing may have been financed. James Rosencrans, a next-door neighbor of Fortier's in Kingman, Ariz., allegedly sold a rare rifle that had been stolen from an Arkansas gun collector on Nov. 5. The collector, Roger E. Moore of Royal, Ark.

A state appellate court ruled that trying Terry L. Nichols on state murder charges for the Oklahoma City bombing does not violate his right against being tried twice for the same offense. It ruled that Nichols, convicted of federal bombing charges and sentenced to life in prison, can also be tried in state court on 160 counts of first-degree murder for the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building.

"That man. Over there. In the blue shirt." With those eight words, the owner of a Kansas truck-rental agency identified Timothy J. McVeigh on Friday as the man who rented the Ryder truck that carried the bomb that killed 168 people when it exploded near an Oklahoma City federal building. Eldon Elliott, who runs Elliott's Body Shop in Junction City, Kan.

After 16 days of waning hope and gnawing doubt, a time that had seemed both instantaneous and interminable, one of the nation's most agonizing rescue missions on Friday finally, mercifully, came to an end. Like a skeleton picked clean of flesh, the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building had given up all of the bodies it was going to relinquish. There were no more search teams combing the rubble. There were no more hydraulic shovels removing slabs of concrete.

Prosecutors in the trial of Timothy J. McVeigh presented evidence and testimony Friday that suggested McVeigh and Terry L. Nichols made two large purchases of highly explosive ammonium nitrate fertilizer in the months before the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City.

Edye Smith Stowe was in the kitchen with her husband and her parents when the call came from the doctor's office. She was pregnant. In seconds, the entire family was weeping, and a new chapter had begun in one of the most poignant stories to come out of the Oklahoma City bombing. Stowe was just 23 when the destruction of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building took the lives of her two sons, Chase, 3, and Colton, 2. Now, she has a new husband and the baby is due this winter.

One of the eager conservative Republicans who swept into Washington on an anti-government tide last fall has been caught up in the far-reaching fallout surrounding the Oklahoma City bombing. Freshman Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Tex.) has been thrust into the limelight to explain how he received an anonymous fax about the bombing and his own links to anti-government militia groups.

Government investigators have put together a reconstruction of the moments before the Oklahoma City bombing, which indicates that the fuse attached to the bomb was lit inside the rental truck even before the Ryder vehicle came to a stop in front of the federal building. According to sources close to the case, the re-creation was done with the help of at least two video cameras located near the Alfred P.

At 7:14 a.m., watched by 10 victims here and hundreds more on closed-circuit television in Oklahoma, Timothy J. McVeigh was executed Monday by the government he hated. The Oklahoma City bomber died silently and with his eyes wide open, leaving it to the prison warden to distribute an English poem McVeigh had copied in his small, neat hand-lettering. "I am the master of my fate," it read. "I am the captain of my soul." He signed it, simply, "Tim."

In a nation famous for vicious criminals, there has never been anyone quite like Timothy J. McVeigh. Al Capone was a thug and Richard Speck was a sadist, but the remorseless, crew-cut man who blew up a federal building in Oklahoma City, killing so many innocent people, was an ideologue, a terrorist without precedent in the American experience. As the media reported his execution in painstaking detail, America's intellectuals, historians and philosophers struggled to explain what it all meant.

With rare exceptions, the world watched with horror and disbelief Monday as U.S. authorities inflicted the ultimate penalty on America's most notorious terrorist. The execution of Timothy J. McVeigh was widely viewed from abroad as a vengeful throwback to a less civilized era. Even in Eastern Europe, where death penalty proponents are a majority, the manner of McVeigh's demise drew reproach for the ghoulish media attention and public curiosity surrounding it.

From big-shots and small-shots, an obit of Timothy J. McVeigh. Would the media--which haven't paused this long for the ending of life since John F. Kennedy Jr. crashed into the sea--say they were noting not only McVeigh's execution, but the human wreckage he caused at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building? And did they ever talk: Was he sorry? If not, why not? How well did he sleep his last night? What about that last meal? Did he request a sedative when he was strapped down?

It was over. Church bells pealed. The moon still hung in the blue prairie sky. There were tears, prayers and long, shuddering hugs. Mostly, there was quiet. Timothy J. McVeigh was dead. At the memorial to his victims--built on the site of the building he blasted--mothers with babies, couples in love, survivors, mourners, tourists and police officers all stared straight ahead and let the moment tick past. One man had a portable TV.

Excerpts from the transcript of U.S. District Judge Richard P. Matsch's ruling Wednesday rejecting Timothy J. McVeigh's request for a stay of execution in the Oklahoma City bombing case: The prescribed punishment for Timothy McVeigh's crimes includes death if 12 jurors believe it is justified under all the circumstances and exercise their moral judgment as the conscience of the community.

Timothy J. McVeigh was found guilty Monday of the worst act of domestic terrorism in American history and jurors now will decide whether the 29-year-old former soldier should die for bombing the Oklahoma City federal building two years ago. At 1:34 p.m., U.S. District Judge Richard P. Matsch read the verdict to a hushed and crowded second-floor courtroom in downtown Denver: guilty on each of the 11 counts of the indictment.

Anti-government activist James D. Nichols received a low-key welcome home to Michigan's "thumb" region Tuesday from a small group of friends, neighbors and fellow farmers who tended his crops while he was in custody on federal explosives charges and as a possible material witness in the Oklahoma City bombing. Nichols tearfully told reporters earlier in the day that he wanted "to try to get my life back together" by returning to his farm chores.

U.S. District Judge Richard P. Matsch refused Wednesday to further postpone the execution of Timothy J. McVeigh, saying he found no proof in newly discovered FBI files that anyone other than McVeigh "was the instrument of death and destruction" in the Oklahoma City bombing. Though clearly disturbed by the FBI's handling of the case, Matsch said there appeared to be nothing in documents turned over by the agency to indicate that McVeigh was innocent.

On their face, many of the more than 4,000 pages of FBI files recently given to defense attorneys in the Oklahoma City bombing case seem clearly worthless. But also buried in these dozens of boxes are personal letters from convicted mass killer Timothy J. McVeigh, an interview with his father and other witness statements--nuggets that McVeigh's attorneys might have found useful in preparing his defense. The value of the new material lies at the heart of McVeigh's fate.