OKLAHOMA CITY: AFTER THE BOMB : Suspect’s Cellmates Have Stories to Tell : Bombing: Three men who shared jail space with Timothy J. McVeigh aren’t being allowed to talk. But they’ll probably have tales to sell once they’re free.

For two days they watched the man who sat quietly in the corner of the town’s tiny 60-year-old jail. Who would have thought that, among this group of inmates, was possibly the most hated man in America?

He barely spoke, refusing to join in their card games or pranks. And he seemed to pay little attention to the squawk of news bulletins from the jail radio describing the national manhunt for the bombers of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building an hour away in Oklahoma City.

For two days in the Noble County Jail atop the four-story white stone courthouse in Perry, Herbert Dean Ferguson, John Henry Seward and Cecil Brown Jr. shared jail space with Timothy J. McVeigh--three small-time offenders locked up in an Oklahoma hoosegow with the man who would later be charged with the most deadly terrorist act in the nation’s history.

McVeigh landed in the jail just 1 1/2 hours after the bombing. Pulled over for not having a license plate on his car, he was found to be carrying a gun and a knife and was escorted to jail.

The jail is a throwback to the 1930s. No cable television, just radio. No air conditioning, just windows. No takeout meals, just jail kitchen service.

In a telephone interview from the jail, Ferguson said he and his two cellmates still are debating what to do with their story about McVeigh. “I don’t know how much we want to tell just yet,” he said. “Is there any monetary value in this?”

Authorities are not allowing interviews, and so it may be some time before McVeigh’s jail mates can tell their story.

Ferguson, however, who is in the Perry jail because of a parole violation, expressed his anger about McVeigh to his sister, Janet Crisswell.

“He said he would probably have stomped a mudhole in that guy,” she said.

Seward, who was arrested for allegedly breaking into Perry High School, wrote his wife, Brenda: “I talked to the FBI and he (the agent) wished me luck on my case. The agent’s from Tulsa. He said I could be a witness in that big case down there.”

Two days after McVeigh was arrested, the FBI realized that one of the men they wanted to question about the Oklahoma City bombing was inside the Perry jail. When they came here, they interviewed the other three inmates first. They brought them downstairs one at a time. But those were short discussions.

Sheriff Jerry Cook said the three inmates had nothing much to tell the federal agents.

Ferguson, 37, has spent nine months in the jail. He has worked his way up to the trustee level, which means that he gets to mow the courthouse lawn. His net worth, according to court records, is the $2 in his jail account. His last real job was as a roofer.

He is in jail because he failed to report to his parole officer. Earlier, he did time for transporting marijuana. His family hopes that he will be released by Memorial Day.

Crisswell, his sister, said that Ferguson has been in and out of jails five times. But despite the prison tattoos on his arms and chest, he is not a hardened criminal, she said.

“He loves children,” she said, noting the number of toddlers killed in the bomb blast. “He loves his nieces and nephews.”

Seward, 33, has been charged with a burglary at the local high school. Missing was a speaker from the school auditorium and cash taken from student lockers.

He last worked for a local tree-pruning company. But then “my station wagon broke down,” he told a judge, and he lost that job. Before he went to jail on April 12, he was receiving food stamps.

According to prosecutor Mark Gibson, Seward has piled up “18 or 19 felony convictions” in the past, mostly for stealing cars. “He’s an ex-con, and he’s going down for a minimum of 20 years this time,” Gibson vowed.

That would be a hard reality for wife Brenda, who said, “I’ll have to go get me a new husband, I guess.”

Brown is from out of town. He was convicted of driving under the influence when his 1983 Oldsmobile struck the back of another vehicle and the second driver was injured. He blew 0.27 on the Breathalyzer test, well over the 0.10 legal limit. “People start dying at 0.30,” Gibson said.

Brown, 48, came here from Enid, 40 miles to the northwest. This was the third time he has been arrested for drunk driving. He was held under $500 bond and sentenced to 45 days in the county jail. That may not seem like a lot, but it was enough to cost him a $10-an-hour job in Enid.

“I lost my job because of days missed,” he told the court. “I was unable to bond out of the county jail in time.”

But if he’s lucky, he may get something worth a lot more out of the experience. “These . . . guys, when they get out, will be bidding with ‘Current Affair’ and ‘Inside Edition’ for their stories,” Gibson said.