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CNN Live At Daybreak
The Execution of Timothy McVeigh: Remembering the Initial Investigation
Aired June 11, 2001 - 07:16 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to Terre Haute, Indiana. Again, we're coming up on the 30-minute mark here for the execution of Timothy McVeigh.
For six years, investigators were led on an exhaustive search for clues in the largest terrorist attack ever on U.S. soil. It was committed by a 33-year-old American born and raised in Upstate New York. But for investigators, the biggest clue came in Oklahoma City shortly after the bombing took place.
For a look at that clue, here once again is CNN's Susan Candiotti.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): On the morning of the bombing, Bertha Nichols drove downtown to meet her husband at the apartment house where he worked. That's her car pulling up, caught on the building camera.
As she waited, a Ryder truck stopped across the street.
BERTHA NICHOLS, WITNESS: I do somehow remember thinking, oh, somebody must be moving.
CANDIOTTI: It was Timothy McVeigh, pausing to light the fuse that would snuff out 168 lives.
B. NICHOLS: Little did I know, I was parked right across the street from him.
CANDIOTTI: The truck moved on. Mrs. Nichols came inside to get her husband, Richard, to drive their nephew to the doctor.
As they reached their car, the bomb went off.
RICHARD NICHOLS: I seen this big object coming through the air and it was huge. And it was just spinning like a top.
CANDIOTTI: The blast sent the truck's back axle flying a full block away.
R. NICHOLS: Woosh, woosh, woosh, coming through the air. CANDIOTTI: The FBI gave them this photo.
R. NICHOLS: The axle hit from the passenger side door, across the windshield and dash, across the hood, and up to the left front headlight. You can still see the impression of the axle, the heavy part, the center of the axle, hitting here.
CANDIOTTI: Richard Nichols pulled his wife to safety and looked back at the axle.
R. NICHOLS: And I turned around and I told her there was a -- somebody -- it was a car bomb.
CANDIOTTI: He looked up the street.
R. NICHOLS: The wind or what had just moved the smoke and debris and it was just clear, you could -- the whole front of the Murrah Federal Building was gone.
CANDIOTTI: That 250-pound axle became the clue that cracked the case. Within a day, it would lead to McVeigh. An Oklahoma City bomb detective brushed away the grime on the axle to find a serial number.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's what we needed to get to find out the trail that it took, who rented the truck or whose truck it was.
CANDIOTTI: The detective traced the truck to this Ryder outlet in Junction City, Kansas. But the driver left a fake name behind.
(on camera): He didn't use his own name.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No.
CANDIOTTI: He used the name...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Bob Klain (ph).
CANDIOTTI (voice-over): Across town at the Green Light Motel, the owner identified an FBI sketch as the man who had registered there under his own name, Timothy McVeigh.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: As I looked at the back of the car, there was no tag.
CANDIOTTI: Oklahoma trooper Charles Hanger stopped a driver with that name an hour after the bombing because his car had no license tag. He took McVeigh to jail, where the FBI would find him two days later.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And come to find out, he was in the process of being released, probably 15, 20 minutes away.
CANDIOTTI: From McVeigh's father, the FBI heard about ex-Army buddies Terry Nichols and Michael Fortier. In Terry Nichols house, agents found bomb-making ingredients and receipts. Fortier and his wife became key witnesses, telling how McVeigh planned the attack for half a year.
Terry Nichols went to prison for life for helping build the bomb.
R. NICHOLS: When I heard that axle turning and coming down...
CANDIOTTI: Richard Nichols, no relation, still hears the woosh of that flying axle that led to McVeigh.
R. NICHOLS: I'll always see that axle. I'll always hear that axle. Him dying is not going to change it. Quite honestly, I'll probably forget the day that he dies. I'll remember his name. I won't remember the day he died.
Susan Candiotti, CNN, Oklahoma City.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HEMMER: We are now at the 30-minute mark, counting down to the execution of Timothy McVeigh. It is at this time where we anticipate, in the prison, that Timothy McVeigh will be led from his holding cell into the execution room.
More details, again, on what we anticipate coming up shortly from Terre Haute.
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