November 19, 1997: Ex-Wife of Accused Oklahoma City Bombing Conspirator Testifies about Finding Proceeds from Robbery Left for Her

The ex-wife of accused Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and November 3, 1997) testifies in Nichols’s trial. Lana Padilla, frequently breaking into tears during her stint in the witness stand, testifies that Nichols gave her a package that he told her not to open unless she heard that he had died; worried for his safety, she opened it anyway and found letters and evidence that prosecutors say tie Nichols to the Oklahoma City bombing. Nichols gave Padilla the package in the days before he left on a trip to the Philippines (see November 5, 1994 - Early January 1995). He told her to wait at least 60 days before opening the package, but she opened it the day after he left. “I was concerned that there was something awful, that he was not coming back,” she says. Inside were two envelopes, one addressed to her and one addressed to Jennifer McVeigh, the sister of his alleged co-conspirator Timothy McVeigh (see June 2, 1997 and June 11-13, 1997). The letter to Padilla explained how she could gain entry to a storage unit Nichols had rented in Las Vegas, Padilla’s home town, and how she could find a bag of valuables he had hidden in her kitchen. All of the items in storage, Nichols wrote, were for their teenaged son Joshua, while the items in the kitchen were for his daughter Nicole, whom he had with his second wife Marife, a Filipino native (see July - December 1990). A tearful Padilla reads from the letter: “There is no need to tell anyone about the items in storage and at home. Again only the three of us will know. I have the most trust in you here in the US to do as I’ve written.” Nichols, sitting at the defense table, puts his head down and weeps during the letter-reading. The envelope to Jennifer McVeigh contained a second envelope addressed to her brother that advised him to remove everything from a Council Grove, Kansas, locker and “liquidate” the contents of a second locker in that same town (see October 17, 1994), or failing that, to pay to keep it longer under the alias “Ted Parker” of Decker, Michigan. “Ted Parker” is an alias used by Nichols to rent one of the lockers (see November 7, 1994). The letter says Padilla “knows nothing” and concludes with the exhortation: “Your [sic] on your own. Go for it!! Terry.” Prosecutors believe that Nichols’s final exhortation referred to the Oklahoma City bombing. In December 1994, Padilla found the item Nichols had stashed in her kitchen: a WalMart bag filled with $20,000 in $100 bills. Padilla testifies: “My first reaction was surprise, because I didn’t really think—I mean, Terry was in between employment. His wife was away. I didn’t expect him to have any money.” Later that day, Padilla and her son Barry (from another marriage) went to the AAAABCO storage unit in Las Vegas that Nichols had indicated, and the two found a briefcase and a number of boxes. The boxes contained gold and silver coins, and a paper estimating their value at between $36,000 and $38,000; a bag containing a dark wig, panty hose, makeup, and a black ski mask; a cigar box containing jade stones; and other items. Many of those items will later be identified as proceeds from the robbery. When she saw the bag, she testifies: “I looked at the mask, and I thought that—I said: ‘What is he doing? You know, what is he doing? Robbing banks?’ And that was my reaction.” Prosecutors believe that the cash in the kitchen and the goods in the storage unit were obtained by a robbery Nichols had carried off days before (see November 5, 1994). Padilla also testifies that Nichols called her the day after the robbery, November 6, 1994, and spoke of the Branch Davidian debacle near Waco, Texas (see April 19, 1993 and April 19, 1993 and After), and the possibility that the government would be destabilized by civil unrest (see November 6, 1994). “When I hung up the phone,” she testifies, “I realized that it was a very odd conversation. And I’m sorry to say that Waco didn’t enter my mind before the call and Waco didn’t enter my mind after the call. It was just something that seemed to be on Terry’s mind.” Nichols came to Padilla’s home in Las Vegas a few days later, she says, in order to visit Joshua before leaving for the Philippines. When Nichols returned from the Philippines on January 16, 1995, he stayed for a few days with Padilla before leaving for Kansas. Padilla testifies that on January 17: “Terry was standing in the kitchen. He looked at me puzzled. I knew the look was because he had gone behind the drawer” and not found the cash he had left. Padilla had taken the cash to her office for safekeeping, she testifies, and asked Nichols to give her some of it. He refused, she says, and she turned over $17,000 of the money to him. They agreed that she would put the remaining $3,000 in a savings account for Joshua, but she admits to not doing so. “Things changed in my household,” she testifies. She left her current husband, and, she says, “the money was used for the household.” [Washington Post, 11/19/1997; New York Times, 11/20/1997]