3:00 p.m. April 17, 1995: Witnesses at Kansas Motel See Oklahoma City Bomber in Company with Unidentified Companion

Junction City, Kansas, resident Connie Hood, who with her husband is going to the Dreamland Motel to visit her friend David King, has to wait to pull into the motel parking lot to let a large Ryder truck pull into the lot ahead of her. Three days ago, Mrs. Hood saw a man at the motel whom she will later say resembles a sketch of an unidentified “person of interest” in the upcoming Oklahoma City bombings, “John Doe No. 2” (see April 13, 1995 and April 20, 1995), in Room 23, the room next to Room 25, occupied by Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see September 13, 1994, October 20, 1994, and 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). Mrs. Hood will say that today she sees both doors of the Ryder cab open, and watches the driver, whom she will say is not McVeigh, walk into the motel office. The driver has dark hair and resembles the man she saw on the previous occasion. Mrs. Hood says that minutes later she sees the same man leave the motel office and climb into the driver’s side of the truck. Around the same time, according to Mr. Hood, a man he will identify as McVeigh comes out of a motel room, gets into the passenger side of the truck, and the truck drives away. King, staying at the motel, will later tell authorities that he sees the Ryder truck with a trailer attached to it around 3:30 p.m. Inside the trailer is something large wrapped in dingy white canvas; King will say: “It was a squarish shape and it came to a point on top. It was about three or four feet high.” Later in the day, the trailer is gone, but the truck remains. King will also recall seeing a third party, someone resembling “John Doe No. 2,” in Room 23, next to McVeigh’s Room 25, a recollection bolstered by a similar statement from his friend Connie Hood, who will say she also saw the man both on April 15 and tonight. The motel manager will say that no one is registered for Room 23, but King will later say he hears the television going in 23, and also say he saw McVeigh and a man who resembles McVeigh’s accomplice Terry Nichols loitering around the room and getting sodas from a machine. Investigators will pore over Room 23 for clues. [New York Times, 4/30/1995; PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996]