without pretending i m not, pretending to be worried about being arrested. that s when he caught his first glimpse of the murrah building, and his first reaction was, damn, i didn t take the building completely down. so he s got that in his memory when he goes up to the holding cell. mcveigh was just wondering, do they know i m involved with the bombing? i don t think they know. he sits in that jail waiting to see if they re going to figure it out or not, but, you know, he s not going to help them. in a way i think what s really going on is mcveigh does essentially plan on being caught. he wants the credit for this. he wants to be the oklahoma city bomber, but he s not going to help them at all. it s some kind of weird game he s playing with law enforcement. he waits that first day to be identified, but nothing happens. meanwhile, the hunt for the bomber is on.
he also shared tim s anti-government views and mcveigh has an edge over him intellectually and can manipulate him as well. in mid-december of 1994, mcveigh and fortier are traveling from the nichols farm in michigan to fortier s trailer in arizona. they make a detour to get an up-close look at their target. mcveigh and fortier took a drive through oklahoma city and looked over the murrah building and mcveigh said, that s the one. he liked it because it was uncluttered. mcveigh s focus and belief in the mission is becoming laser sharp. but by late winter 1995, nichols and fortier are having doubts. you ve got to remember, fortier and nichols are more family oriented. they have wives, they have kids. mcveigh, in my opinion, had nothing to live for.
guilt to the court, mcveigh claims that ending up on death row is exactly how he planned it. death is not a penalty, it s an escape. i recognized that well before i was driving away from oklahoma city without a license plate. i in fact maybe in a sense am a groundbreaker in a new suicide by cop. if you re going to commit suicide, fine, go ahead, put a gun to your head, jump in a lake, but to take all these people with you, that it makes a point? that it illustrates something? for me it s the height of vanity and selfishness. it s beyond words. the reason i m different and call myself make a groundbreaker is that i knew a lot of this before it happened. i knew my objective was state-assisted suicide, and when
explosives, ready to ignite. he had initially intended to bomb the building at about 11:00 in the morning, but he finally decides at the very last minute, despite all his talk about how he had ever detail of the plan worked out, he decides he has to go right away, there s too much of a chance of being caught. he actually leaves at about 7:00 in the morning. mcveigh carefully pulls the truck on the highway, heading south on i-35 toward oklahoma city. i believe he was getting antsy and didn t want to take any chances. he was probably worried that somebody might blow the whistle on him. he had the whole route mapped out from previous trips to oklahoma city.
sometimes i get angry then, too. they were little boys, and you just don t murder little kids. aaron would be 20 years old now, elijah would be 17. sometimes during the day you re going to cry. or there s going to be something that s going to remind you of the bombing, and you re right back where you were on april 19th, 1995. we don t ever get too far from there. there were reports of up to 50,000 people in the oklahoma city area suffering symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. i looked at all the photographs from the crime scene. i looked at all the photographs from the coroner s office.