Wife Delivers Startling Blow to Nichols’ Defense

In a startling turn of events, the wife of Terry L. Nichols became the perfect prosecution witness on Thursday in his Oklahoma City bombing trial.

Marife Nichols, 24, frail and frightened, had come to court Wednesday afternoon as the final witness for her husband, accused of murder and conspiracy in the bombing.

But Thursday morning, her appearance for the defense appeared to backfire. Prosecutors--who cannot force a husband or wife to take the stand against their spouse but can cross-examine one summoned for the defense--elicited from Marife Nichols the most incriminating testimony yet in her husband’s six-week trial.

She told of a letter that his onetime Army buddy--Timothy J. McVeigh, convicted earlier this year in the bombing--had left for her husband in the days before the deadly explosion at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. Although she said she could not recall most of the letter, she remembered that McVeigh used the words “shake and bake”--a catch-phrase used by Army ordnance experts dealing with explosives.

She said McVeigh often wrote letters to her husband in a “secret code” that she did not understand.

She also testified that just before surrendering to authorities a few days after the April 19, 1995, bombing, a frantic Terry Nichols noticed the large fuel meter lying on the floor in his garage that the government says was used to mix the bomb. She said he suddenly blurted out, “I need to do something about that!”

And she shot down his alibi that he was at a Ft. Riley, Kan., auction on the morning the government says he and McVeigh went to a Kansas fishing lake to mix ammonium nitrate and fuel oil into a bomb that they then placed in the back of a Ryder rental truck.

Asked specifically about his whereabouts that morning--the day before a bomb exploded outside the federal building--Marife Nichols said he was already gone when she awoke. He came home around noon for lunch and then went to the Ft. Riley auction, she said.

That scenario perfectly matches the government’s chain of events--even down to the time he signed in at the auction: 12:50 p.m.

She also was confronted with a television interview in which she admitted her husband not only knew how to make bombs but even taught his young son how to build explosives.

Asked on the stand about a black ski mask that her husband allegedly used in a robbery that the prosecution says helped pay for the bombing, she said: “He might have had it in Michigan when we were riding the snowmobile.”

Summarizing her testimony’s effect on the defense, Andrew Cohen, a Denver lawyer and legal analyst who has monitored both the McVeigh and Nichols trials, said: “It was a complete disaster.”

Marife Nichols was the 92nd and last defense witness. The government called 98. Once the defense rested late Thursday morning, the government brought in a few last-minute rebuttal witnesses.

U.S. District Judge Richard P. Matsch has advised the seven-woman, five-man jury that lawyers for both sides will make their closing arguments Monday. The jury will then begin deliberations late that afternoon or Tuesday morning.

The Oklahoma City bombing is the single worst act of terrorism in the United States. It left 168 people dead and more than 500 injured.

None of the information provided by Marife Nichols would have emerged if defense attorneys had not summoned her to appear. For those lawyers, it was a tough call.

With their client facing the same sentence that McVeigh received after his conviction--death--the defense thought it wise not to have Terry Nichols testify on his own behalf. But also wanting someone to speak directly on his behalf, they brought his Filipina wife into the courtroom, hoping that her testimony would achieve two goals:

They thought she would be able to depict him to the jury as a hard-working husband and father who, as lead defense attorney Michael Tigar likes to say, “was building a life, not a bomb.”

They also wanted her to explain away his activities in the days before the bombing and support the defense contention that, at best, Terry Nichols was an unwitting accomplice with McVeigh and was used by him to prepare for the explosion at the federal building.

Said Cohen, the legal analyst: “If you want to prove that he was building a life, you have to show that he had a wife. But as it turned out, she was by far the best prosecution witness.”

Terry Nichols married Marife in 1990; he was 35, she 17. He found her through a mail-order bride agency.

They set up house in various locations, moving from Nevada to Michigan to Kansas, finally settling together in March 1995 in a two-bedroom home in Herington, Kan.

In testifying for the defense on Wednesday, she said she confronted her husband after the bombing.

“I asked him right then, ‘Are you involved in this?’ and he said no,” she testified.

She also said her husband was trying to distance himself from McVeigh in the months before the blast, in part because she was jealous of all the attention Terry Nichols was paying his old friend.

“I’m the one who said I don’t want Tim McVeigh in our life anymore,” she said.

But Marife Nichols’ bid to aid her husband may have unraveled during Thursday’s cross-examination by Patrick Ryan, the U.S. attorney in Oklahoma City.

In one of his first questions, Ryan asked: “Can you think of anyone who was a closer friend to Terry Nichols than Timothy McVeigh?”

“No,” she answered.

Patiently taking Marife Nichols through a series of questions, Ryan asked her about a quilt stolen in the robbery that was found on their bed on the day her husband surrendered in the bombing.

“Do you have any recollection of ever purchasing this quilt?” he asked.

“No,” she said.

She said she did not recall that her husband used aliases--except for one crucial phony name, Ted Parker, that he used at gun shows and that the government found on his rental agreement for a Council Grove, Kan., storage locker. The locker allegedly was used to house bomb ingredients.

She recalled that he sold small bottles of ammonium nitrate at gun shows and labeled the product “Ground Zero Impact.”

Five days before the blast, on April 14, 1995, when McVeigh first arrived in central Kansas to rent the truck, her husband suddenly disappeared.

“Did he tell you where he went?” Ryan asked.

“I forgot,” she said.