McVeigh had been so incensed by the government's actions that he traveled to Waco to promote his pro-gun, anti-government views. His reading included anti-Semitic and white supremacist newsletters.
McVeigh spent most of in the West, especially in Kingman, where he found minimum wage work as a security guard and in a lumberyard. His behavior moved more and more out of the mainstream. He turned his Arizona home into a bunker and began developing and testing homemade bombs. He set off on quixotic missions such as trespassing into "Area 51" near Roswell, New Mexico, top secret government land that he suspected might be critical to a U.
He bought ammonium nitrate, a key ingredient for his bomb, in Kansas, where he also rented a storage unit and stole blasting caps from a quarry McVeigh picked April 19, as the date for the bombing to coincide with the second anniversary of the federal government's assault on the Branch Davidians near Waco.
Around A. At , the truck exploded, bringing down much of the federal building and taking lives. As detailed elsewhere on this website, McVeigh was arrested later that day, tried and convicted in , executed on June 11, , and cremated. McVeigh Letter. A shy boy and an uninspired student, Nichols graduated in from Lapeer High School with a 2. After one year at Central Michigan University, Nichols returned to Lapeer to help his recently divorced father with the family farm.
Nichols married Lana Walsh in and the couple had a son the following year. Nichols paid the bills with a variety of jobs, ranging from managing a grain elevator, to doing carpentry work and selling life insurance. In May , at age 33, Nichols joined the Army. Nichols and McVeigh shared a common hostility to gun control and a common belief in the importance of survivalist training.
Nichols served in the Persian Gulf War, failed to make the grade in Special Forces, and then resigned from the military. In , two years after Lana filed for divorce, Nichols remarried, this time to seventeen-year-old Marife Torres, a women he met through a mail-order bride service based in the Philippines. Marife was six months pregnant with another man's son when she arrived in Michigan. The son died on Nov. The couple would have two more children after moving in to a farm owned by Terry's brother, James Nichols.
By the spring of , Nichols extremist political views led him to renounce his U. In a letter sent to a state agency, Nichols wrote: "I am no longer a citizen of the corrupt political corporate state of Michigan and the United States of America.
The two reinforced each other's anti-government hatred and traveled together to gun shows. At the Nichols farm on April 19, , the two men watched television together--in shared outrage--as the Branch Davidian compound near Waco went up in flames, killing nearly 80 people.
Together, they purchased or stole key ingredients for the bomb. To help pay for the project, Nichols carried out a robbery, planned by McVeigh, of a well-to-do Arkansas gundealer. Although Nichols apparently tried to keep most of the stolen cash for personal use, hiding it in a Las Vegas storage unit. At a. More than other buildings in the immediate area were damaged or destroyed. In the rubble were victims, including 19 young children, and another plus wounded.
Early reports suggested that a Middle Eastern terrorist group may have been responsible, but within days, McVeigh was considered the primary suspect.
He was already in jail, having been pulled over shortly after the bombing for a license plate violation, during which time he was found to be carrying an illegally concealed handgun.
Nichols soon surrendered to authorities, and the two were indicted for the bombing in August. Following a five-week-long trial that began in April , McVeigh was convicted after 23 hours of deliberation, and he was sentenced to death. The following year, Nichols was sentenced to life in prison.
He died within minutes, and his body was cremated. We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Subscribe to the Biography newsletter to receive stories about the people who shaped our world and the stories that shaped their lives. Julius Rosenberg became an infamous figure in American history when he was convicted, along with his wife, Ethel, of giving military secrets to the Soviet Union in the early s.
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The family soon is reunited, but the marital troubles continue and more separations follow. The McVeighs divorce. He enrolls in a two-year business college but soon drops out. McVeigh enlists in the U.
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