May 22, 1997: McVeigh Defense Opens with Suggestion that ‘Real’ Bomber Killed in Blast

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) opens with the suggestion that the “real” bomber was killed in the explosion. The assertion hinges on a severed leg found in the debris of the Murrah Federal Building (see August 7, 1995 and February 21, 1996). The leg has been identified as belonging to Airman Lakesha Levy, who died in the explosion, but medical examiners had put a leg not belonging to Levy with the rest of her body; that leg remains unidentified. McVeigh’s lead lawyer, Stephen Jones, opens with testimony from Dr. Frederick Jordan, Oklahoma’s chief medical examiner, who tells the jury that the left leg originally assigned to Levy remains unidentified. It had already been embalmed, he testifies, rendering DNA identification impossible. “We have one left leg that we do not know where it belongs,” he says. Jones then places Dr. T.K. Marshall on the stand. Marshall, the former chief medical examiner in Northern Ireland who has extensive experience with autopsies of bombing victims, says he believes that the leg belongs to a victim not yet identified; that victim’s body had probably disintegrated except for the leg, he says. “This is an extra left leg,” he says “Until shown otherwise, this must be a 169th victim.” For such a victim to have been almost completely disintegrated, he says, “you have to be near the bomb.” He cites a case from Northern Ireland where a terrorist carrying a bomb into a shed was nearly vaporized when the bomb accidentally detonated. Marshall says his experience with unidentified victims “is that somebody misses them. When nobody misses them, it reinforces the suggestion that the deceased was involved in the bombing.” [New York Times, 5/23/1997]