March 31 - April 12, 1995: Future Oklahoma City Bomber Finishes Plans to Bomb Federal Building

The Imperial Motel in Kingman, Arizona. [Source: Cardcow (.com)]Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see September 13, 1994, October 20, 1994, and 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995) puts the final touches on his bombing plan from Room 212 at the Imperial Motel on Route 66 in Kingman, Arizona, having left the Sunset Motel in Junction City, Kansas, two nights before. McVeigh’s co-conspirator, Terry Nichols, tells McVeigh he does not want to be involved on the day of the bombing (see March 1995). [New York Times, 4/29/1995; PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996; Serrano, 1998, pp. 125; Douglas O. Linder, 2001] During this time, McVeigh calls a white supremacist compound on the Arkansas-Oklahoma border, apparently to solicit someone to help him carry out the bombing in Nichols’s stead (see April 5, 1995). He also rents a movie, Blown Away, about an IRA terrorist who sets a number of deadly bombs, and watches it twice. The owner of the Imperial Motel, Helmut Hofer, gives him a discount because of his military service. Hofer will later recall McVeigh as a quiet man who wears camouflage fatigues and drives a green “rust bucket” Pontiac with Arizona license plates (see January 1 - January 8, 1995 and 9:03 a.m. -- 10:17 a.m. April 19, 1995). “He didn’t go out, he didn’t make phone calls, he didn’t do anything,” Hofer will recall. “He just sat up there and brooded.” His only luggage, Hofer will recall, is a green duffel bag. McVeigh lists his address as a post office box in Fort Riley, Kansas, though he has not lived on the Army base there since his discharge from the Army in 1991 (see November 1991 - Summer 1992). Hofer will recall, “I thought he was in the reserves because of the way he came in here all dressed up in his camouflage and black boots.” [New York Times, 4/29/1995; New York Times, 5/4/1995; Stickney, 1996, pp. 172; PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996; Serrano, 1998, pp. 125] McVeigh checks out of the Imperial Motel on April 11. [Serrano, 1998, pp. 125] In 2004, according to a book written by two inmates who will come to know McVeigh after his conviction (see June 2, 1997), McVeigh meets with a bomb expert named “Poindexter” during his stay at the Imperial Motel. [Douglas O. Linder, 2006]