In the spring of 1995, a catastrophe occurred in Oklahoma City.
What exactly happened that day?
Who was responsible?
At 9:02 AM, on April 19th, 1995, a tremendous explosion shook Oklahoma City.
Glass, granite, concrete, and steel rained from the sky around the Alfred P. Murrah federal building.
The blast was so powerful that street signs and parking meters had been ripped from the
ground.
Pedestrians were lifted off their feet and thrown across the sidewalk.
Glass had been shattered in windows several blocks away.
The Murrah Building was almost completely destroyed.
The devastation inside was horrific.
Survival was determined only by where an individual happened to be in the building at the time of the blast.
The upper floors had collapsed upon the lower floors, leaving little chance for those on
the ground level.
Rescue workers rushed to the scene and immediately began searching the rubble for survivors.
The work was dangerous, because there was a danger that the rest of the building might
collapse.
However, the rescue crews worked quickly to ensure that more lives would not be lost.
By the time the rescue teams had finished, 168 deaths, including 19 children, had been recorded.
More than 500 had been wounded.
While rescue workers searched for survivors, investigative teams were attempting to discover
the cause of the explosion.
Within minutes, the authorities realized that the source of the blast had been a 4,000 pound
ammonium-nitrate bomb which had been hidden inside a truck.
At first, the investigators suspected the work of Middle East terrorists.
Unfortunately, the eventual truth proved to be even more frightening.
It was soon announced that the primary culprit was an American veteran named Tim McVeigh.
He had been arrested in Perry, Oklahoma on an unrelated concealed weapons charge.
He was in jail, awaiting arraignment, when it was revealed that he was the primary
suspect in the bombing investigation.
McVeigh was an Army veteran who had been an outdoor enthusiast that enjoyed hunting.
While in the military, he had met Terry Nichols and Michael Fortier, the two men who became
his co-conspirators in the bombing.
In 1993, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms conducted a siege of the compound owned by
a religious group known as the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas.
McVeigh and Nichols saw this action as an infringement of civil liberties, so they devised
a plan to retaliate.
They chose the federal building in Oklahoma City as their target, because they mistakenly
believed that the ATF agents responsible for the raid in Waco were
stationed there.
McVeigh, Nichols, and Fortier were all arrested and placed on trial for their involvement in
the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building.
Michael Fortier received 12 years in prison for his limited involvement in the plan.
Terry Nichols was sentenced to life in prison, while Tim McVeigh was sentenced to death.
McVeigh's sentence was carried out on June 11, 2001.
He was the first prisoner to be executed by the federal government since 1963.