Context of 'May 22, 1997: Defense in Oklahoma City Bomber Trial Casts Doubt on Identification of McVeigh as Truck Renter'

A 1977 Mercury Marquis similar to that owned by Timothy McVeigh. [Source: Classic Cars (.com)]Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see September 13, 1994, October 20, 1994, and 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995) visits Oklahoma City and finds a place to leave a car after he bombs the Murrah Federal Building. He has left Kingman, Arizona, and stayed overnight at a motel in Amarillo, Texas. McVeigh arrives in Oklahoma City around noon, and does not drive by the Murrah Building, but instead finds the drop site for his getaway car. [PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996]
Buys Getaway Car - He then drives to Kansas, inspects his explosives stored in a Herington storage unit (see September 22, 1994 and (February 20, 1995)), and notes that his Pontiac is blowing smoke and stalling out, most likely from a blown head gasket. After making a quick run to a storage shed in Council Grove, Kansas, taking some of the explosive materials from that shed and combining them with the materials in the Herington unit, he buys a 1977 Mercury Marquis as a getaway vehicle from Thomas Manning, who owns a Firestone dealership in Junction City, Kansas. (McVeigh is using a similar plan to those executed by the Aryan Republican Army, or ARA, which uses “junk” cars to make their getaways after robbing banks—see 1992 - 1995. McVeigh has some affiliations to the ARA—see December 1994.) McVeigh trades in his deteriorating 1983 Pontiac station wagon (see January 1 - January 8, 1995) and $250 cash for the Mercury, telling Manning that he needs a “cheap car” to “get me to Michigan.” Manning, who recognizes McVeigh from his days as a soldier at Fort Riley (see March 24, 1988 - Late 1990), has the Mercury, which he bought eight days ago for $150 and is planning to use for parts. Others at the dealership have used it for local errands, and they had worked on its transmission and other elements. McVeigh agrees to pay $300 cash, but when he tells Manning he will not have enough money to get back to Michigan, Manning knocks $50 off the price for McVeigh. McVeigh has Manning send the service form to the Nichols’s farm address in Decker, Michigan, and the bill of sale to his postal drop in Kingman, Arizona. “It doesn’t matter,” McVeigh tells Manning, “because I’m going to junk the Mercury out when I get to Michigan.” On the sale form, he lists his employer as the US Army, and claims he is still stationed at Fort Riley. Firestone mechanic Art Wells does some work on the Mercury to ensure it is road-ready, including swapping out a bald rear tire for a spare. McVeigh’s old Pontiac is later taken to a local junkyard and then confiscated by investigators. [New York Times, 4/22/1995; New York Times, 4/30/1995; New York Times, 12/3/1995; PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996; Serrano, 1998, pp. 127-130; Douglas O. Linder, 2001] McVeigh buys an oil filter from a WalMart in Arkansas City, Kansas, near the state line, around 6 p.m. on April 13, and on the 14th, swaps the damaged Pontiac and $250 for the Mercury. Nichols tries to return the filter to another WalMart on April 15. The receipt will later be found in Nichols’s wallet; it bears the fingerprints of both McVeigh and Nichols. [PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996; New York Times, 11/4/1997; Serrano, 1998, pp. 127]
Arranges Truck Rental - While Wells is prepping the Mercury, McVeigh goes to a pay phone in front of a nearby bus depot and makes two phone calls using a Spotlight telephone card (see August 1994). The first is to Nichols’s home in Herington, and lasts less than a minute. The second is to Elliott’s Body Shop in Junction City to inquire about the rental rates for a large Ryder truck capable of carrying 5,000 pounds of cargo (see April 15, 1995). He uses the alias “Bob Kling” (see Mid-March, 1995). Office clerk Vicki Beemer will later recall McVeigh asking how many pounds a 15-foot truck would hold; when she tells him around 3,400 pounds, he tells her, “I need a truck that will hold 5,000 pounds.” Beemer informs him he needs a 20-foot truck. She tells him he can reserve such a truck, but he will have to put down a deposit on April 15 or he cannot have the truck by April 17, as the shop is closed on Easter Sunday, April 16. McVeigh agrees, and walks back to the Firestone dealership, where he puts the Arizona license plate from the Pontiac onto the Mercury. He puts his belongings into the Mercury and drives away. [PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996; Serrano, 1998, pp. 130-131]
Rents Room - McVeigh then rents a room at a local motel, in which he will stay until he makes his final trip to Oklahoma City to deliver the bomb (see April 13-14, 1995).

Two prosecution witnesses in the Oklahoma City bombing trial (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and August 10, 1995) testify under oath that the person who rented the Ryder truck used to carry the bomb was accused bomber Timothy McVeigh. Eldon Elliott, the owner of Elliott’s Body Shop, the Ryder rental outlet in Junction City, Kansas, and body shop employee Tom Kessinger both say that “Robert Kling,” who paid $280 cash and said he did not need insurance because he was a careful driver, was, in fact, McVeigh (see Mid-March, 1995 and April 15, 1995). Defense lawyer Stephen Jones questions their credibility, saying that because of Kessinger’s misidentification of another person as having accompanied McVeigh to the store to rent the truck (see January 29, 1997), both Elliott’s and Kessinger’s identifications must be thrown out. The defense is expected to argue that “Kling” was someone else and not McVeigh. Kessinger admits that he misidentified Army Private Todd Bunting as “John Doe No. 2,” whom federal investigators have considered a likely accomplice until recently. Kessinger stands by his identification of McVeigh. In court, Kessinger says he was sitting in the back of the truck rental office, taking a break at about 4:15 p.m. on Monday, April 17, 1995, when he saw two men come into the shop. They stood at the counter and began speaking with Vicki Beemer, who handled the paperwork that day. Kessinger remembers McVeigh because of something McVeigh said, which is not disclosed in court. He watched McVeigh and the second man—not Bunting—for about 10 minutes. He met with FBI agent Scott Crabtree at 4:45 p.m. on April 19, the day of the bombing, and met with an FBI sketch artist at 3:30 the next morning, he says, to start work on the composite sketches of the bombing suspects. He was then asked not to watch television news accounts of the bombing or to read the press coverage. “They told me to rely only on my own memory,” he says. Jones elicits that Kessinger watches “a lot of MTV, a lot of Discovery Channel,” but does not watch network television news or local news. He says he never saw a photograph of McVeigh until FBI agents showed him a group of photographs on April 30, 1995. Kessinger identified McVeigh as the man he saw in the body shop. Asked by Jones if McVeigh was accompanied by someone else, Kessinger responds: “I don’t know. I want to say yes, but I don’t know who that individual was.” The transaction with McVeigh was short and businesslike, Kessinger recalls, noting that McVeigh turned down the offer to purchase insurance because, Kessinger recalls, “he said ‘I’m not going very far, I’m used to driving trucks out of Fort Riley [an Army base near Junction City], and I’m a careful driver.’” [New York Times, 2/19/1997]

Eyewitness Eric McGown tells the jury in the Timothy McVeigh Oklahoma City bombing trial (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995, August 10, 1995, and April 24, 1997) that he saw McVeigh in the parking lot of the Dreamland Motel in Junction City, Kansas, three times during the weekend before the bombing (see April 13, 1995). McGown’s mother Lea owns and manages the motel. McGown says he first saw McVeigh in a 1977 Mercury Marquis (see April 13, 1995), then backing up a Ryder rental truck, and finally closing the tailgate of the truck. McGown becomes flustered under cross-examination by McVeigh’s lawyer Stephen Jones, and admits that he is not sure whether he saw the truck on April 16 or April 17, the day prosecutors say McVeigh rented the Ryder truck that carried the bomb. [New York Times, 5/9/1997]

The defense for accused Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995, August 10, 1995, and April 24, 1997) attempts to cast doubt on the identification of the Ryder truck used in the bombing with one rented by McVeigh under the alias “Robert Kling” (see Mid-March, 1995 and April 15, 1995). The jury hears testimony from Herta King, a friend of Lea McGown, the owner and manager of the Dreamland Motel in Junction City, Kansas, where McVeigh stayed in the days before the bombing (see April 13, 1995). Prosecutors say McVeigh checked into Room 25 of the Dreamland on Good Friday, April 14, 1995. King testifies that her son, David King, was then living at the motel and she took him an Easter basket on Easter Sunday, April 16. She saw a large Ryder truck in the Dreamland parking lot on that day. “Kling” did not rent the Ryder truck used in the bombing until April 17 (see 3:00 - 5:00 p.m. April 17, 1995). Renda Truong, a high school student who had Easter dinner with the McGown family, testifies that she, too, saw a Ryder truck in the parking lot on April 16. McGown has testified that she saw McVeigh bring a truck to the motel on April 16 (see May 9, 1997). The New York Times’s Jo Thomas writes, “[T]he testimony elicited by [McVeigh’s lead lawyer Stephen] Jones today may be the start of an effort to establish that Mr. McVeigh had a truck for some innocent purpose, one day before someone else rented the truck that would carry the bomb.” The last witness for the day is Vicki Beemer, who handled the paperwork for Elliott’s Body Shop in Junction City, where McVeigh rented the Ryder truck. Beemer says two men came in on April 17 to rent the Ryder truck (see January 29, 1997) but she cannot remember what either man looked like. Asked by Jones, “Are you able to tell us that Mr. McVeigh is Robert Kling?” she replies, “No, I can’t.” Prosecutor Scott Mendeloff, on cross-examination, asks, “Can you say Mr. McVeigh is not Mr. Kling?” She again replies, “No, I can’t.” [New York Times, 5/23/1997]