Unrepentant, McVeigh Is Put to Death for Bombing

At 7:14 a.m., watched by 10 victims here and hundreds more on closed-circuit television in Oklahoma, Timothy J. McVeigh was executed Monday by the government he hated.

The Oklahoma City bomber died silently and with his eyes wide open, leaving it to the prison warden to distribute an English poem McVeigh had copied in his small, neat hand-lettering.

“I am the master of my fate,” it read. “I am the captain of my soul.” He signed it, simply, “Tim.”

Strapped to a gurney and given a final religious blessing, McVeigh seemed to be lying at attention in the new federal execution facility here. The last words he heard came from the marshal, who announced: “Warden, we may proceed with the execution.”

Then, a series of three chemical injections coursed into his right leg, ending one man’s life but leaving unresolved nagging questions some still have about the April 19, 1995, bombing, and whether anyone who helped McVeigh blow apart the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building is still at large.

The death toll from the 9:02 a.m. explosion that day was 168, including 19 children. More than 500 others were wounded--some losing limbs, others their eyesight--when McVeigh, in a rented Ryder truck, detonated 4,800 pounds of fertilizer and fuel in front of the building.

Ten of the victims and relatives of the dead witnessed McVeigh’s turn to die. Several of them, who had hoped for some apology or sign of remorse, returned to Oklahoma feeling cleansed nonetheless.

Paul Howell, whose daughter died in the building’s credit union, said that the moment of McVeigh’s last breath “was a big relief for me.”

“Just a big sigh came over my body and it felt real good,” he said.

“I’m very happy,” said Anthony Scott, who survived the blast only to lose eight companions in the fourth-floor Army recruiting office.

“I’m elated,” said Sue Ashford, who was working across the street in the federal courthouse when the bomb went off.

McVeigh’s lawyers, who visited him almost until the end Monday morning, said they were gratified that their client leveled no parting shot at his many victims.

“To the victims in Oklahoma City, I say that I am sorry that I could not successfully help Tim to express words of reconciliation that he did not perceive to be dishonest,” attorney Rob Nigh said. “I do not fault them at all for looking forward to this day or for taking some sense of relief from it.”

But Nigh also suggested that McVeigh’s death was a barbaric step backward as the federal government returns to capital punishment after a nearly 40-year hiatus.

“We have made killing a part of the healing process,” he said. “In order to do that we use such terms as ‘reasoned moral response.’

“But I submit there’s nothing reasonable or moral about what we have done today.”

Bush Calls Execution a ‘Reckoning’

McVeigh was 33 years old, a decorated Army tank gunner during the Persian Gulf War, a bright but average kid from western New York state, a child who enjoyed the outdoors and who, at an early age, fell in love with guns.

But he grew up to become a coldhearted killer, the worst mass murderer in U.S. history, a schemer who laid in wait for months collecting and storing bomb ingredients, and then deliberately timed his attack to coincide with the two-year anniversary of the government’s debacle with the Branch Davidians near Waco, Texas, that left some 80 people dead.

President Bush, speaking at the White House, noted that the McVeigh execution was carried out in a somber manner, and that justice had prevailed.

He called it a “reckoning.”

“This morning the United States of America carried out the severest sentence for the gravest of crimes,” Bush said. “The victims of the Oklahoma City bombing have been given not vengeance, but justice. And one young man met the fate he chose for himself six years ago.”

The president added: “May God, in his mercy, grant peace to all--to the lives that were taken six years ago, to the lives that go on, and to the life that ended today.”

In Oklahoma City, dozens marked the execution at the memorial to McVeigh’s victims. As 7 a.m. approached, drivers on the street outside began to honk their horns. A helicopter buzzed overhead. Silence followed.

Some visitors clustered around a portable TV. Others stood in quiet reflection. A few dozen protesters kept a lonely vigil outside a nearby Roman Catholic church to show opposition to the death penalty.

Prison officials said McVeigh offered no resistance going into the execution chamber. “There really weren’t any problems with Mr. McVeigh,” chief prison spokesman Dan Dunne said.

“He slept off and on through the night; he was up and down. He slept a lot, actually. He got up once, took a shower, and laid back down.”

McVeigh spent some time finishing off letters to friends, bidding them farewell, and glancing at television, mostly watching the news from the 13-inch black-and-white set in his holding cell.

From 4 a.m. to 5 a.m., McVeigh visited with two of his lawyers, Nigh of Tulsa, Okla., and Nathan Chambers of Denver. When they left the prison, Warden Harley Lappin briefed the inmate on the final procedures.

He was strip-searched, and then dressed in khaki pants, a white T-shirt and slip-on shoes. He was shackled.

“Inmate McVeigh was calm throughout the entire process,” the warden said. “He cooperated entirely during the time he was restrained in the execution holding cell to the time he walked into the execution room.

“He stepped up onto a small step and sat down on the table where he then positioned himself for us to apply the restraints.”

A single intravenous tube was inserted in his right leg. A heart monitor was attached to his chest. A large white sheet covered him from his shoulders to his feet.

Change of Heart: Last Rites Requested

A minister entered the chamber and gave McVeigh last rites. Born a Catholic, though he long ago gave up his religion, McVeigh in his final hours suddenly asked to see a Catholic prison chaplain. Last rites usually encompass an act of contrition, but because it is a private sacrament, it was unclear whether McVeigh confessed his sins or asked for forgiveness.

The only slight glitch was getting a “good transmission” for the closed-circuit TV feed for the 232 people who were watching in Oklahoma City, Lappin said. The camera was placed just above McVeigh, to his left.

After a delay of several minutes, the curtains were mechanically opened, slowly, from McVeigh’s left to right. Witnesses in separate rooms leaned toward the glass. McVeigh looked thinner, paler than the images of him that have saturated the media. His hair was cropped shorter than even the military buzz cuts he wore for so long.

He craned his neck briefly, trying to scan the witness rooms. The tinted glass in the victims’ room prevented him from seeing inside.

At one point, he seemed to start to mouth the word “OK” to his lawyers. Then he lay his head back and stared at the white ceiling tiles. His eyes blinked once or twice; his head never moved again.

In the execution chamber stood Lappin and U.S. Marshal Frank Anderson, both dressed in dark suits and ties, both with their hands crossed at their waists.

The warden took out a small laminated card, and read:

“Timothy James McVeigh was found guilty of conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction, use of a weapon of mass destruction, destruction by explosive, and eight counts of first-degree murder.”

McVeigh did not turn his head.

“On Aug. 14, 1997, the United States District Court for the District of Colorado imposed a sentence of death, which is to be carried out today by lethal injection.”

McVeigh’s gaze did not leave the ceiling.

The warden asked him for any last words. McVeigh did not answer. The warden asked Anderson, “Marshal, may we proceed?”

The marshal picked up a red phone on a nearby stand. He was instantly connected to a U.S. Justice Department Command Center in Washington. “May we proceed with the execution?” Anderson asked into the phone.

After a moment, he returned the receiver to its cradle, turned to Lappin and said, “Warden, we may proceed with the execution.”

McVeigh did not flinch. He swallowed at the first of the three injections. The IV line jerked slightly.

Sodium Pentothal, an anesthetic, stopped his brain cells from reacting to nerve impulses. Soon he lost consciousness, even as his eyes, now glazed and unfocused, remained open.

Pancuronium, a chemical similar to one used on poisoned arrows in the Amazon, paralyzed his muscles. His diaphragm collapsed.

He seemed to take a deep breath, his cheeks filling with air. His gray prison pallor turned yellow, his lips went blue.

Potassium chloride, a chemical salt, blocked the electric signals inside his heart, causing his heartbeats to slow and then cease altogether.

Death occurred at 7:14 a.m., when his brain was deprived of oxygenated blood. The warden, with an earpiece connected to the room from which the drugs were administered, announced that McVeigh was dead. There was no struggle, no shaking, no death rattle. He just slipped away--peacefully, by comparison to those he murdered.

Lappin and Anderson closed the drapes.

“As you’ve heard me say before, I anticipated this to be a very difficult thing to do and it was,” the warden recalled later.

He handed out copies of the single sheet that McVeigh had used to copy the poem, a 19th century verse by William Ernest Henley titled “Invictus.” The word, in Latin, means, “undefeated.”

Death by ‘Homicide and Lethal Injection’

Susan Amos, the Vigo County coroner, stepped into the chamber.

Under an arrangement between McVeigh and authorities, there was to be no autopsy. She later completed the death certificate, and wrote that the “manner and means of death” were “homicide and lethal injection.”

The body was turned over to a friend of the McVeigh family. The remains were to be cremated.

Prison officials were clearly pleased with how smoothly “the event,” as they called it, went.

Authorities from more than a dozen law enforcement agencies had been gearing up for months to handle massive protests here, initially predicting a crowd in the tens of thousands.

But the fervor was not there. Even many death penalty opponents found McVeigh a difficult figure to rally around.

When the first bus of protesters arrived Monday at the prison grounds just after midnight--surrounded by police escorts and heavily armed federal agents--just 21 death penalty proponents stepped out.

A second bus carried just about the same number of opponents. The two camps were kept 500 yards apart--so far that they could not even see each other during the night. More busloads trickled in over the next several hours, but by daybreak, only about 50 pro-death penalty and 200 anti-death penalty demonstrators had assembled.

Peggy Harris, a boisterous nursing student, decried McVeigh’s impending death as too kind, lacking any of the suffering he inflicted on others. “He won’t feel anything,” she complained.

When asked her preferred method of execution, Harris replied: “Anything brutal.”

She helped lead a countdown 10 seconds before the clock struck 7 a.m., when the group erupted in cheers and raised their placards.

In the other well-guarded protest area, execution opponents sat together and, at 4:12 a.m., began a 168-minute silent vigil for the victims.

At 7 a.m. they rose in silence and clasped hands. A Unitarian minister, Bill Breedon from nearby Spencer, Ind., spoke: “My prayer is that, as Tim McVeigh’s spirit leaves, he’ll hear us.”

They began to sing. Loudly.

*

Times staff writer Stephanie Simon in Oklahoma City contributed to this story.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Poetry, but No Apology

Timothy McVeigh did not make a final statement at his execution Monday. Instead, he issued a hand-printed copy of the 1875 poem “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley.

*

“Invictus”

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the Pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

*

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

*

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

*

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul