Nichols’ Wife Gives Anxious Testimony

Nervous and forgetful, but struggling to save her husband, Marife Nichols--the Filipina bride of Terry L. Nichols--took the witness stand Wednesday in the second Oklahoma City bombing trial and described life with a man who often seemed more enamored of convicted bomber Timothy J. McVeigh than her.

From the moment she entered the courtroom, her anxiety seemed to fill the large witness box. She misspelled her last name--”N-I-C-O-L-S,” she said--and she could not recall the exact date she and Terry Nichols were married (he chose her through a mail-order bride network). “It was in November 1994, I know that,” she said.

She also was unable to remember some of her husband’s key activities, particularly his whereabouts on the morning before the April 19, 1995, bombing at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, which he is accused of helping plan and execute. Terry Nichols is charged with murder, conspiracy and weapons counts and could be sentenced to death if convicted.

Terry Nichols has said he was at a Ft. Riley, Kan., military surplus auction on that morning; the government contends he was with McVeigh at a Kansas fishing lake making a bomb from ammonium nitrate and fuel oil.

Asked specifically by defense lawyer Ron Woods what time her husband left home on April 18 and where he went, Marife Nichols smiled, appearing embarrassed. “I forgot,” she said. “It’s been so many years now.”

The couple, who have two small children, did not have a working television at their home in Herington, Kan., and she testified that she did not learn of the bombing until the day afterward. She said her husband came home on April 20 and told her he had seen the news on a television elsewhere in town.

“He told me about the bombing,” she said. “That there was a bombing in Oklahoma.”

The couple then went to buy newspapers, she said.

The next day, her husband came home in the early afternoon.

“He told me that his name was in the news and [his brother] James Nichols was in the news and they are supposed to be armed and dangerous,” she said. “He was telling me that Tim McVeigh was on the news, too, and that he was a suspect in the bombing.

“I told him to calm down. I did not believe him.” She added: “He was pale. He was scared.”

They then drove to the local police station. “I asked him if he was involved in this and he said, ‘No.’ ”

Terry Nichols surrendered and was interviewed for nine hours by the FBI.

The bombing killed 168 people and injured more than 500. Transcripts of the lengthy FBI interview show that Nichols denied any involvement in the bombing, and said that McVeigh may have used him without his knowledge.

He said McVeigh borrowed his pickup truck on the morning the government said the bomb was made. He also said that he shared a number of storage lockers in central Kansas with McVeigh--a suggestion that McVeigh could have used those locations to stockpile bomb ingredients.

Earlier this year, McVeigh was convicted and sentenced to death. Nichols has pleaded not guilty and his defense is expected to wrap up its case today.

Marife Nichols testified that McVeigh and her husband were close friends from their days in the Army and then worked together in the gun show business. Once in 1994, she said, she returned to the Philippines and refused to come back unless her husband broke off his relationship with McVeigh.

“I was jealous,” she said. “Terry was spending all his time with Tim McVeigh and I didn’t have any friends in this country.”

She said that after she did return, her husband went into the gun show business by himself. In the weeks before the bombing, she said, she accompanied him to shows in Salina, Kan., and Grand Rapids, Mich.

Under cross-examination by U.S. Atty. Patrick M. Ryan, Marife Nichols said she could not think of anyone closer to her husband than McVeigh. “If Tim McVeigh was visiting at our home,” she said, “Terry would spend time with Tim instead of me.”

She said the two shared a telephone credit card and had interests in guns from their Army days. Both were angry at the government, she testified, especially after the FBI’s April 19, 1993, assault on the Branch Davidian religious cult near Waco, Texas.

“I did not see Terry so mad about Waco as McVeigh,” she said. “But yes, they were upset.”