McVeigh marks his final hours

By Rex W. Huppke
Associated Press

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. — As Timothy McVeigh's final hours slipped by, he occupied himself with simple indulgences: television, sleep and pints of ice cream.

Jamie Norfleet of Texas cries as she walks along the memorial chairs at the Oklahoma City National Memorial yesterday. She visited the site with her husband Randy, who was in the building and survived the blast but lost two friends that day. Associated Press

His attorneys said he is sorry for those who suffered, but doesn't regret blowing up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building — the worst act of terrorism on U.S. soil.

"He never, I think, has been the type of guy to tell people what he thinks that they want to hear," defense attorney Robert Nigh said yesterday. "I think that he tries to be honest about his true feeling of sympathy and empathy without being inaccurate about them."

McVeigh, 33, would be the first federal prisoner killed in 38 years.

Prison officials said the decorated Gulf War veteran spent yesterday writing letters, sleeping, watching TV and meeting with Nigh and attorney Nathan Chambers, both of whom will witness their client's lethal injection.

He was served his final requested meal at 1 p.m. EDT yesterday, eating two pints of mint-chocolate chip ice cream. He will be allowed standard prison fare before his execution, if he wishes.

Less than 24 hours from death at the hands of the government he despises, McVeigh's mood was upbeat, his attorneys said.

"He continues to be affable," Chambers said. "He continues to be rational in his discourse. He maintains his sense of humor."

In Oklahoma City, about 300 survivors and victims' relatives prepared to watch a closed-circuit feed of the execution, to be sent from Terre Haute in a feed encrypted to guard against interception.

On Sunday, some of them mingled with tourists in front of a memorial to the dead, which included 19 children.

"I think I'm ready," said Richard Williams, an assistant manager at the federal building who had to be dug out of debris. "I'm ready for this part of the journey to be over."

In Terre Haute early today, buses unloaded a small band of anti-death penalty protesters holding a vigil on the prison grounds. Yesterday afternoon, about 75 abolitionists paraded past the penitentiary carrying signs and two 14-foot-tall puppets, one of them an Uncle Sam holding a sign saying "Stop Me Before I Kill Again."

Behind the prison's razor-wire fence and brick walls, officials were following the 50-page protocol established by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons. The protocol outlines every detail, including the words the warden must say to the U.S. marshal before the injection begins: "We are ready." Before that, McVeigh will have four minutes to make a statement.

The entire process has been practiced repeatedly, said Dan Dunne, spokesman for the Bureau of Prisons. A prison employee was used to play the inmate during trial runs, strapped to the T-shaped gurney and covered from the neck down with a sheet, just as McVeigh will be, he said.

McVeigh was transferred from his 8- by 10-foot cell to a spartan isolation cell at 5:10 a.m. EDT yesterday.

"He was able to look up in the sky and see the moon for the first time in a number of years," Nigh said. McVeigh, he added, slept a few hours Saturday night and planned to do the same before his execution.

McVeigh was born in Pendleton, N.Y., near Buffalo, in 1968 and raised Catholic in a middle-class environment. At a young age, he developed a keen interest in guns from his grandfather.

As he grew up, he developed a distrust of the government, yet he joined the Army and went on to serve in the Gulf War. He also returned more disillusioned with the United States, viewing its treatment of the Iraqi people as that of a schoolyard bully.

Drifting across the country and taking on an increasingly survivalist mentality, he continued to stew over what he saw as government encroachment on the right to bear arms. The disastrous federal raids at the Branch Davidian compound at Waco, Texas, and the cabin of white separatist Randy Weaver at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, brought McVeigh's hatred to a head.

He decided it was time for actions, not words.

In the end, McVeigh set his sights on the Oklahoma City federal building. He packed a Ryder truck with explosives, lit the fuses, parked it outside the federal building and walked away, without looking back.

McVeigh's original execution date was May 16, but it was delayed after the FBI revealed it had withheld more than 4,500 documents from the defense during McVeigh's 1997 trial. The Justice Department said nothing in the documents brought the bomber's guilt into question.

Defense attorneys sought an additional delay, but were turned down. McVeigh then decided to halt all appeals.

After McVeigh's death, officials at the Terre Haute prison — which houses the remaining 19 federal death row inmates — must prepare for another execution. Drug kingpin and convicted murderer Juan Raul Garza is scheduled to die June 19.