30 лет спустя: аргументы против версии «одиночки» в деле о теракте в Оклахома-Сити

31 years ago now, Elizabeth, one of America's darkest days, which was April 19, later this week, 1995, and that is when the devastating bomb exploded in Oklahoma City. The middle of the week, nine o'clock in the morning, in the middle of America, people were taking their kids to school and daycare, going to work, and the unthinkable happened. This intersected with my professional past in an interesting way, because I had been the news director, really the founding news director of America's Most Wanted. Some of your audience will remember that show. It was on for a long while, and we partnered with the FBI. It was actually experimental television when we launched the show. And in my role as news director, I worked hand-in-hand with the FBI. We partnered with them, pursuing the most dangerous and high-profile fugitives in America. So I had lived and breathed manhunts, 168 dead, and hundreds more injured. So I watched this, the first responding to this, unfold. And from my background as America's Most Wanted news director, I was looking at the biggest manhunt ever. And it was a manhunt for two suspects. This becomes very significant to my investigation and to the unfolding narrative about this case, which is, if people remember it, it was prosecuted and then codified in our history books as a case of lone wolf terror by Timothy McVeigh, this 20-something disgruntled former soldier, decorated soldier. But the fact was, it was two men in the bomb truck that delivered that bomb and set off that devastating explosion. And it's a crazy story because Timothy McVeigh escaped Oklahoma City in his yellow mercury and was headed north, presumably to Kansas, where this bomb had been allegedly constructed. But certainly that was the staging ground, Kansas, which is north of Oklahoma. But he didn't have a license plate on his car, which is pretty crazy when you think about a getaway vehicle. And he was pulled over by a highway patrolman an hour and a half after the bombing and arrested for driving without the license plate. And then the the the the trooper discovered that he was carrying a concealed weapon. So that added another charge and he was in custody. But the feds who were again back to the manhunt looking for these two suspects. And let's clarify something very important here. Terry Nichols was not John Doe to the other man in the truck. Terry Nichols looked nothing like this mystery man of the bombing. So there are multiple people involved then because Terry Nichols was also involved. So what happens next? So he idiotically goes with this car, like drives this car without license and has a weapon on instead of get rid of it. I mean, it doesn't sound like a military person to me. I mean, military person knows how to cover up a crime. You know, it's basics and he just does everything the opposite, almost like he wants to get caught. I don't know.

So tell me more. Well, and you point Elizabeth just to what is one of the most confounding questions of the entire case in this moment of the arrest, because he is armed and he has just killed 168 people. And yet when approached by the highway patrolman, he and he has every opportunity to open fire and he doesn't. He just goes very politely and passively into custody. But bear in mind that the the manhunt that is now unfolding in Oklahoma City, they those federal agents have no idea that he has been taken in to local custody. So it takes them another two days. And that's a little bit of a long story to tell. But essentially, if they are investigating the debris at the bombing and they find the VIN number and they trace the rented rider truck up to Kansas. And then they trace they they they in the they question the the staff that rented the truck and they come up with a composite sketch and they fan out in Junction City, Kansas. And they get a match with the hotel, the Dreamland Motel, where he had been staying, where the proprietor recognizes him. And he registered weirdly under his own name. I mean, either this guy is the dumbest criminal ever or something's up with this story. Well, there were more red flags, a grand juror, and this is extraordinary, who was on the grand jury that indicted Timothy McVeigh. Eventually, he was so upset by what was going on behind those closed doors that he wrote a letter to the judge and said, you know what? The federal prosecutors are have rigged this jury. They are concealing the identity of John Doe, too. So to your point, Elizabeth, about this longstanding habit of resolving these cases, these high profile political cases as lone wolf perpetrators. Here you had in the early going of this very conclusive evidence that this was not a case of lone wolf terror. And one more piece of evidence, which was a total shocker and led to the Timothy McVeigh's lawyer's probably strongest moment in court is that recovery workers at the Muir building eventually removed a severed human leg that to this day has never been identified. It didn't match any of the known victims. And they went through all of the remains. And so, in fact, and at the trial, a world-renowned medical expert pursued the likelihood that this was one of the bombers who, you know, had been blown to bits, except for the severed human leg and the FBI, despite incredible advances, as you know, in DNA and genealogical research has never run those tests. Thank you.