Nichols Jury Hears Closing Arguments

Prosecutors in the second Oklahoma City bombing case said Monday that an “avalanche of evidence” points to Terry L. Nichols as the chief collaborator in America’s worst terrorist attack, while the defense countered that the wrong man may be on trial.

“There’s only one question in this case,” prosecutor Beth Wilkinson said in closing arguments to the jury. “Did Terry Nichols intentionally help Timothy McVeigh bomb the Alfred P. Murrah building and kill people inside?

“The answer is obvious,” she said. “There is no mistake, no coincidence. The answer is yes.”

But lead defense attorney Michael Tigar, in his arguments, said Nichols “was not there” when the homemade bomb exploded outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on the morning of the April 19, 1995.

He also pointed to others as potential conspirators with McVeigh, particularly the government’s key witness, Michael Fortier.

Tigar reminded the jury that Fortier was close to McVeigh and stored many similar bomb ingredients in his home. He also mocked Fortier as a liar who cut a deal with the government to save himself by fingering Nichols as McVeigh’s key collaborator.

“And this is the man whom the government says you are supposed to believe,” Tigar said.

The jury will begin weighing the case after hearing rebuttal arguments from the government today and receiving legal instructions from U.S. District Judge Richard P. Matsch.

The Oklahoma City blast killed 168 people and injured more than 500; McVeigh was convicted and sentenced to death earlier this year.

Nichols is charged with murder and conspiracy; he faces the death penalty if convicted.

On Monday, Wilkinson displayed a large chart titled “Terry Nichols and Timothy McVeigh: On the Road to Destruction.” The illustration, depicting green road signs against a night sky of stars, eerily resembled the opening montage from the television show “The Twilight Zone.”

Each guidepost marked one of the events that the government contends was a major step by Nichols in the six months before the bombing that furthered the conspiracy--from the acquisition of bomb ingredients to the mixing of the bomb.

“There is so much evidence in this case, it can best be described as an avalanche of evidence,” she said.

She said Nichols embraced McVeigh’s anger over the 1993 FBI assault on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, in which more than 80 people died. The Oklahoma City bombing occurred exactly two years after the Waco raid.

Wilkinson recalled testimony about a discussion that Nichols’ ex-wife, Lana Padilla, said she tried to have with the defendant about Waco.

“He was excited about the potential for civil unrest,” Wilkinson said. “He predicted that people were going to be killing each other in the streets. In his tortured mind, he thought that the actions by the government at Waco justified violence.”

Wilkinson suggested that during much of the 10-week trial, both sides may have made equal headway in presenting their case. But that changed, she said, when as its last witness the defense called Nichols’ second wife, Marife Nichols.

Answering prosecutors’ questions under cross-examination, Marife Nichols described her husband’s desire to hide from authorities a fuel meter allegedly used in concocting the Oklahoma City bomb.

She also cast doubt on his alibi that he was at an auction on the morning the government says he and McVeigh went to a Kansas lake to mix the bomb that was then placed in the back of a Ryder rental truck. Her husband, she said, was already gone when she awoke that morning. He came home about noon for lunch and then went to the auction, she testified.

“It was a race until Marife Nichols,” Wilkinson said.

Tigar followed Wilkinson, saying he would not rely on charts or maps but instead focus on pieces of the actual evidence introduced into the trial.

He attacked the credibility of Fortier, a fellow Army friend of Nichols and McVeigh who pleaded guilty two years ago to failing to alert authorities about McVeigh’s bombing plans.

But, Tigar stressed, “Michael Fortier never heard Terry Nichols say he was going to blow up a building.”

Tigar suggested that Fortier was intricately involved in the bombing plans by recalling that the FBI found ammonium nitrate, barrels and blasting caps in his Kingman, Ariz., home. And yet Fortier was allowed a special deal with prosecutors, Tigar said.

“His testimony was bought and paid for,” he said. “It was bargained for. Not with money, but with immunity from punishment. He expects to be out [of prison] in under three years.”

Another defense lawyer, Ron Woods, challenged the government’s suggestion that Nichols helped McVeigh mix the bomb at the lake, pointing out that no prosecution witnesses could put them there.

“You don’t convict somebody on proof like that,” he said. “You certainly don’t execute someone on proof like that.”