April 5, 1995: Oklahoma City Bomber Calls White Militia Compound

Timothy McVeigh, preparing to blow up the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City (see September 13, 1994, October 20, 1994, March 31 - April 12, 1995, and 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), places a telephone call to white militia members in Elohim City, Oklahoma (see November 1994 and February 1995). [Douglas O. Linder, 2001] McVeigh has just finished a brief telephone conversation with someone at Elliott’s Body Shop in Junction City, Kansas, presumably in regards to renting a Ryder truck (see April 15, 1995). [Douglas O. Linder, 2006] According to later press reports, a law enforcement official will say that McVeigh receives no active response from the Elohim City inhabitants. Elohim City leader Robert Millar will later confirm that the compound did receive the call, in a common room where members often gather for coffee, though he does not know who spoke with McVeigh. Phone records indicate that the call comes from a number in Kingman, Arizona, where McVeigh often lives. That same Kingman telephone is recorded as having made another call to another number. Press reports will speculate that McVeigh may be calling to solicit assistance for the bombing, as his co-conspirator Terry Nichols has informed him he wants no further involvement in the plot (see March 31 - April 12, 1995) [New York Times, 8/6/1995; New York Times, 8/13/1995] , as has his friend and fellow conspirator Michael Fortier (see April 5, 1995). In 2005, The Oklahoman will report that McVeigh spoke for about two minutes with Joan Millar, Robert Millar’s daughter-in-law. Joan Millar will later testify that McVeigh asked if he could visit the compound in a few weeks. “He said that he had been at a gun show and he had met some of the young men from Elohim City and someone had given him a card with the phone number on it,” she will recall. “[H]e said, ‘I don’t remember his name, but he had a very broad foreign accent.’ I said, ‘Was it Andy?’ And he said, ‘That might have been his name.’” “Andy” is Andreas Strassmeir, Elohim City’s head of security (see 1973 and After). [The Oklahoman, 7/10/2005] Elohim City residents concocted a plot to blow up the Murrah Building years before (see 1983), though without McVeigh’s participation. It is not certain if McVeigh is familiar with the Elohim City bomb plot. McVeigh allegedly goes to a strip club in Oklahoma City three days later in the company of two Elohim City inhabitants (see April 8, 1995).