New Book on McVeigh Makes Him a Martyr, Victim’s Mother Says

Kathleen Treanor said she felt sick to her stomach after reading excerpts from a new book about Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing.

“Thank you for making him a martyr,” she said Thursday, mockingly addressing its authors.

Treanor lost her 4-year-old daughter Ashley Eckles and her husband’s parents in the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, which killed 168 people including 19 children.

The book, “American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing,” represents the first time McVeigh has explicitly and publicly admitted the crime. In the book, McVeigh, who is awaiting execution May 16, says he had no sympathy for those affected by the bombing and dismisses the children who died as “collateral damage.”

“This book just negates the whole purpose behind executing him,” Treanor said. “It gave him the forum he was looking for.”

She also criticized the publisher and the authors, Buffalo News reporters Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck.

She said after she read some of the excerpts Wednesday night, she spent all night pacing and “figuring out how I could stop this” book. She urged people not to buy it.

“Every person who buys this book is an accomplice to murder and has validated what he stands for. The only reason to purchase that book is to take time out to burn it,” Treanor said.

In an episode of ABC’s “PrimeTime” airing Thursday night, Michel was asked if McVeigh was using the authors to advance his own agenda.

“If we hadn’t spoken with Timothy McVeigh,” Michel said, “if he had taken his secrets to the grave, it would have left a gaping hole in the American consciousness, you know, not unlike the Kennedy assassination.”

Michel and Herbeck were not available for interviews, said a spokeswoman at the book’s publisher, Regan Books, a division of HarperCollins Publishers.

In a statement Thursday, Regan Books said the book, which was based on 75 hours of prison interviews with McVeigh, was newsworthy and deserved to be published. The publisher said the book’s release date was set last fall, months before McVeigh’s execution date was scheduled in January.

Tom Kight, whose stepdaughter Frankie Merrell died in the bombing, said he is friends with its authors and believes they meant well.

“But the timing of this is terrible because the execution is coming up,” he said. “I think it opens a lot of old wounds.”

Kight said he would buy the book to educate himself about McVeigh.

“This is the first time I’ve heard McVeigh admit guilt, so it does remove that barrier,” he said.

Rashell Hammons has no plans to read the book, saying it is only bound to cause bombing victims more pain. Her sons, Ryan and Donquey, now 7, were wounded in the bombing.

“I think this is him really wanting to go out as ‘I hurt them six years ago and before I go, I get to hurt them again,’ ” she said.

Physical, Emotional Scars From Bombing

Hammons said her sons carry physical and emotional scars from the bombing. Ryan is being tested for a learning disability and still has pieces of glass and metal embedded in his head; Donquey began wetting the bed after a visit to the new museum at the bombing site last month.

Bud Welch, whose 23-year-old daughter Julie Welch was killed in the bombing, said he does not hold anything against the authors.

“I don’t fault them for telling the truth. We don’t like the truth, but no one else has been able to talk to him and find out what went on,” he said.

Welch, whose strong anti-death penalty views have put him at odds with many of the bombing survivors, said McVeigh’s statements in the book did nothing to change his opinion that McVeigh should not be put to death.

“Because somebody is saying something we don’t want to hear, is that any more reason to kill him?” Welch said.

Nonetheless, Welch said he hopes McVeigh will express remorse before he is executed: “It would do a lot of people a hell of a lot of good here in central Oklahoma if he did.”