December 18, 1994: Future Oklahoma City Bomber Stores Blasting Caps in Friend’s Shed

Kevin Nicholas, a farmhand in Vassar, Michigan, receives a phone call from his friend Timothy McVeigh (see September 13, 1994, October 20, 1994, and 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). McVeigh is en route to Nicholas’s home to stay with him. From a truck stop in Saginaw, Michigan, McVeigh calls Nicholas and asks him to drive out to a Speedway service station near I-75. He needs a ride to Nicholas’s house because he has had an accident with his car; on his way back from Kansas (see December 16, 1994 and After), he was rear-ended, and just managed to get his damaged car to the truck stop. When Nicholas arrives, he helps McVeigh load belongings into his car, including two Christmas packages. McVeigh tells Nicholas to leave the packages alone. According to later statements by Nicholas: “I was just grabbing stuff, and just throwing it in the back of my truck, and Tim said: ‘Don’t handle them. I’ll take care of them two Christmas-wrapped packages there,’ because I was just tossing his other stuff in, you know, was in a hurry, wanted to get home.” Nicholas asks McVeigh what is in the packages and, according to Nicholas, McVeigh replies, “I’ll tell you later.” The two manage to pry the bumper of McVeigh’s car far enough to allow McVeigh to follow Nicholas to his home. McVeigh stores the packages in a shed near Nicholas’s house, and later takes them to Chicago, on a trip to visit David Paulsen, a gun and military surplus dealer. After the Chicago trip, according to Nicholas, McVeigh will tell him that the packages contained blasting caps that he had gotten “dirt cheap” (see October 3, 1994), though author Richard A. Serrano will later write that McVeigh told Nicholas about the “caps” later that same evening. Multiple sources agree that McVeigh never tells Nicholas that he is planning on using the caps to detonate a bomb in Oklahoma City. [PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996; New York Times, 5/9/1997; Serrano, 1998, pp. 107-109] The blasting caps in the packages were wrapped by McVeigh’s friend Lori Fortier (see December 16, 1994 and After). McVeigh is thankful that the blasting caps did not explode when his car was hit. He later buys an old blue Pontiac station wagon from James Nichols, the brother of his co-conspirator Terry Nichols (see December 22 or 23, 1988 and January 1 - January 8, 1995). [Serrano, 1998, pp. 107-109]