Timothy McVeigh


Timothy James McVeigh (April 23, 1968 - June 11, 2001) was an American
domestic terrorist convicted and given the death penalty for his part in the
Oklahoma City bombing which killed 168 people.

The bombing was carried out on April 19, 1995 supposedly through the
detonation of a 7000-pound explosive device consisting of ANFO (ammonium
nitrate fertilizer and fuel oil), stored in a rented Ryder truck parked in
front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
(However, US Air Force's Wright Laboratory did full-scale tests of this
theory and wrote "It must be concluded that the damage at the Murrah Federal
Building is not the result of the truck bomb itself, but rather due to other
factors such as locally placed charges within the building itself")

McVeigh was a decorated veteran of the United States Army, having served in
the Gulf War. In interviews following the Oklahoma city bombing, McVeigh
said he began harboring anti-government feelings during the Gulf War, when
he felt guilt over the people he had killed. He also said he was further
influenced by the 1993 Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms raid on the
Waco, Texas compound of the Branch Davidians.

McVeigh was convicted of the murder of eight federal employees who died in
the explosion. The federal government could not, however, bring charges
against McVeigh for the majority of the other murders because those deaths
fell under the jurisdiction of the state of Oklahoma. One of his appeals
made it to the Supreme Court of the United States, which on March 8, 1999
upheld his murder convictions. McVeigh was executed on June 11, 2001, by
lethal injection, at the U.S. Federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. This
was the first execution held by the U.S. Federal Government in more than 38 years.