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| Timothy McVeigh, Terry Nichols and Ramzi Yousef (Part 2) |
| 2004-02-21 |
| I wrote this. Part 1 Terry Nichols met Timothy McVeigh met in May 1988 at Fort Benning, Georgia, where they were both stationed in the same Army unit as new recruits. Nichols, who was 33 years old, had enlisted after suffering a series of business failures. After basic training, both were transfered to Fort Riley, Kansas, where they were they served with Michael Fortier. Nichols was discharged from the Army in May 1989 at his own request, but he stayed in touch with McVeigh. Nichols traveled to the Philippines in November 1989 in order to meet Filipino women through a marriage broker. On a subsequent, one-week trip in November 1990, he married Marife Torres, a resident of Cebu City, Philippines. and she moved to Decker, Michigan, in mid-1991. They lived on a farm owned by Terry’s brother, James Nichols. McVeigh left the Army in December 1991. He became increasingly involved in gun shows. By the summer of 1992 he was helping sellers man their tables, using such opportunities to sell his own merchandise without having to rent a table. During that period he sold small blast simulators (basically home-made firecrackers) and smoke grenades. When one such seller, Gregory Pfaff, asked McVeigh to supply him more such items, McVeigh answered that his remaining stocks were "buried in the woods." In November, McVeigh phoned Pfaff and told him he could now provide more blast simulators. Pfaff bought them and also bought some atropine (an antidote to chemical-weapons) that McVeigh brought along (Serrano, One of Ours, pages 55-56). At about that same time, Terry and Marife Nichols visited McVeigh at his home in Lockport, New York (Michel and Herbeck, American Terrorist, pages 113-114). The coincidence of these events indicates that by November 1992 Nichols might have been supplying merchandise to McVeigh to sell at gun shows. Although the blast simulators might have been handcrafted by Nichols and his associates, the atropine certainly came from an expert producer or from stolen military stocks – perhaps in the Philippines. In early 1993 McVeigh visited a gun show in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and met Roger Moore, who had become wealthy building boats and had subsequently run a company called American Assault Company, which sold weapons. By the time of that show, McVeigh rented his own table, displaying t-shirts, camouflage pants, canteens, duffle bags, sleeping bags, etc. Moore later said that he was interested in buying only some camouflage pants for his girlfriend, Karen Anderson. In early April 1993, McVeigh visited a gun show in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he met Karen Anderson at Moore’s table. On that occasion McVeigh did not rent his own table, but rather displayed his merchandise on the Moores’ table. After that show, visited Moore’s and Anderson’s home in Royal, Arkansas, for ten days. Immediately after that visit, McVeigh drove to Decker, Michigan, and moved in with Terry and Marife Nichols on James Nichols’ farm. (American Terrorist, pages 123-128). On his farm, James Nichols employed some workers who spent some of their time experimenting with small, home-made bombs. They would combine household chemicals in plastic jugs and experiment with various detonators. It was during this period, April 19, 1993, that the Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, was destroyed. In May, 1993, McVeigh moved from the Nichols’ farm to Kingman, Arizona, where Michael and Lori Fortier lived. McVeigh based himself there for the next five months. He worked as a security guard and continued to sell merchandise at gun shows every week or two. By now he was selling flare launchers that he said could be used as rockets. The flares and launchers were manufactured at the Nichols’ farm. When prospects asked where they could buy replacement flares, McVeigh gave them business cards of the American Assault Company On one such occasion McVeigh told a government undercover agent that the rockets could be used to shoot down, for example, helicopters used by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). His financial situation improved enough that he considered buying a house and so asked his father for a loan to begin the transaction. (American Terrorist, pages 136-138). Also at about that same time, Terry and Marife Nichols drove from Decker, Michigan, to Pendleton, New York, gathered all of McVeigh’s belongings from his family home and took them back to Decker. At about the beginning of July, 1993, McVeigh traveled from Kingman to Las Vegas, Nevada. McVeigh later said that the only reason for this trip was to use a Kinko’s computer to design and print some leaflets to distribute at a Fourth of July celebration in Kingman. He did not distribute the leaflets at that celebration, however. In September 1993 McVeigh returned to Las Vegas to help Moore and Anderson run their table at a Soldier of Fortune convention there. McVeigh later explained that he was voluntarily helping Moore as a personal favor, but they got into a very angry argument because McVeigh told Moore he was going to eat lunch at a buffet and then didn’t return for two hours (American Terrorist, pages 141-144). That night, Moore told McVeigh to leave and not come back. Within a few weeks McVeigh moved back to the Nichols’ farm. In about December 1993, Terry and Marife Nichols moved away from the farm, visited the Fortiers in Kingman, and then moved to Las Vegas to establish a household there. McVeigh stayed at the farm until February, 1994, and returned to Kingman. By that time, Marife had left the Las Vegas home and moved back to the Philippines in order to attend college in Cebu City. Terry therefore left the Las Vegas home too and spent two weeks with McVeigh and Fortier in Kingman. (American Terrorist, pages 150-151). The Nichols’ move from the Decker farm to Las Vegas has been explained as a result of the accidental death of their son by suffocation at the farm on November 22, 1993. The plans for that move had already begun before then, however, and merely resumed after that death. I suggest that the original plans were related to business conducted between McVeigh and Moore in Las Vegas earlier that year. McVeigh’s request for a loan from his father, the Nichols’ trip to New York to gather McVeigh’s belongings, McVeigh’s trips to Las Vegas, and the Nichols’ purchase of a house in Las Vegas all, together, indicate that they expected to set up a business with Moore’s help in the area of Las Vegas. Those plans apparently collapsed when McVeigh and Moore argued at the convention in September 1993. The collapse of these plans might have then led to a financial collapse for Nichols and McVeigh, setting them all adrift from each other. In the spring of 1994, McVeigh traveled back to Royal, Arkansas, to try to reconcile with Moore. On that occasion, Anderson later said, Moore angrily blamed McVeigh for stealing the design for the flare launcher from Moore. After that rebuke, McVeigh left and never returned. He returned to Kingman and continued the bomb experiments that he had begun in Decker. (American Terrorist, page 151-152). In August 1994, McVeigh left Kingman and moved in with Terry Nichols’ at the latter’s new home in Durham, Kansas, where Nichols was working as a farm hand. There, the two decided to start a business together, selling merchandise at gun shows. Their major product, McVeigh later said, would be bags of ammonium nitrate for use in the manufacture of home-made bombs (American Terrorist, pages 154-158). During that summer Marife returned to the United States to visit Terry in Durham, since her college in Cebu City was having summer vacation. During that visit, she began a sexual affair with McVeigh. Then Marife returned to Cebu City to begin the fall semester. Shortly after she left, McVeigh and Nichols stole an enormous amount of explosive material from a quarry business in Marion, Kansas. On November 5, Nichols robbed Moore. McVeigh and Nichols subsequently distributed their loot to rented storerooms in various locations – including Kingman, Las Vegas, Council Grove, Kansas. On November 22, Terry Nichols few to Cebu City to visit Marife. During the second week of December, at McVeigh’s request, Lori Fortier gift-wrapped two boxes of the stolen blasting caps to look like Christmas presents. The destination of those presents is unknown, but his best friend Terry and his lover Marife spent that entire Christmas holiday in Cebu City. |
| Posted by:Mike Sylwester |