Evening, April 21, 1995 and After: FBI Searches Suspected Oklahoma City Bombing Conspirator’s Home and Property

The home, pickup truck, and property of suspected Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995, 2:00 p.m. and After, April 21, 1995, and 3:15 p.m. and After, April 21-22, 1995) are searched by federal authorities while FBI agents are grilling Nichols and his wife Marife, both of whom are in police custody in Herington, Kansas. Agents are also involved in searching the Decker, Michigan, home and property of Nichols’s brother James, as bomber Timothy McVeigh listed James Nichols’s residence as his home address (see 9:03 a.m. -- 10:17 a.m. April 19, 1995). Initial searches of both sites turn up bomb materials, including five 60-foot safety fuses with blasting caps, Primadet explosive, five gasoline cans, a fuel meter, several containers of ground ammonium nitrate fertilizer, three empty bags of ammonium nitrate, a receipt for the purchase of the ammonium nitrate, four white barrels with blue lids made from material resembling the blue plastic fragments found in the bomb debris, and weapons that may be illegal to possess, including an anti-tank weapon. In searching Terry Nichols’s home and property, agents also find a cache of documents, many concerning the Branch Davidian debacle (see April 19, 1993 and April 19, 1993 and After) and espousing sometimes-violent anti-government sentiments, and a hand-drawn map of the Murrah Federal Building and its environs (see September 7-8, 1996). They find a spiral notebook that seems to be a combination phone book and diary, including dates and amounts for storage locker rentals, notations of the aliases used to rent the lockers (including the aliases “Ted Parker” and “Joe Kyle”), notes about “Tim” and “places to camp,” and some notations by Nichols’s wife Marife that describe quarrels she has had with her husband. And they find a telephone card whose number was used by McVeigh to make calls in his hunt for bomb-making materials (see August 1994). The weapons, map, and materials found may tie either or both Nichols brothers to the bomb plot. [New York Times, 4/22/1995; New York Times, 4/23/1995; New York Times, 4/26/1995; New York Times, 5/12/1995; Serrano, 1998, pp. 229; Indianapolis Star, 2003; Douglas O. Linder, 2006] Nine of the guns found in Nichols’s home—a Savage .30-06 rifle, a Remington .30-06 rifle, a Ruger carbine, a Ruger Mini-30 rifle using 7.62-millimeter ammunition, two Ruger Mini-14 rifles, a Winchester 12-gauge Defender shotgun, a Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun with a pistol grip, and a Smith & Wesson 9-millimeter pistol—are similar to those stolen from an Arkansas gun dealer some six months ago (see November 5, 1994). Prosecutors believe Nichols, or perhaps Nichols and bombing suspect McVeigh, carried out that robbery to help fund the bomb plot. Of 33 weapons listed as found in Nichols’s house on the FBI’s Evidence Recovery Log, six rifles, two shotguns, and a pistol appear to be the same models as stolen weapons on the Garland County Sheriff’s office record of the robbery. They also find a safe-deposit key they believe was taken during the robbery (see November 5, 1994 - Early January 1995). [New York Times, 6/17/1995] Nichols is told during the interrogation that agents have found a number of large plastic drums or barrels in his garage. He says he bought these at a dump in Marion, Kansas, and used them to haul trash. Agents also found a large fuel meter in the garage; Nichols says he bought this from a sale in Fort Riley, and says it is broken. [Serrano, 1998, pp. 212-213] A relative of the Nichols brothers tells the FBI that “James Nichols had been involved in constructing bombs in approximately November, 1994, and that he possessed large quantities of fuel oil and fertilizer,” according to an affidavit filed with the court. “Terry Nichols was in Decker, Mich., on or about April 7, 1995, visiting his brother, James Nichols, and may possibly have been accompanied by Tim McVeigh.” James Nichols (see December 22 or 23, 1988) is currently held in the Sedgwick County jail in Wichita, Kansas, as a material witness to the bombing (see April 21, 1995 and After). [New York Times, 4/23/1995]