That same day convicted murderer Richard Wayne Snell, who had ties to one of the bombers, Timothy McVeigh, is executed in Arkansas.

McVeigh, an American militia movement sympathizer who was a Gulf War veteran, had detonated an explosive-filled Ryder truck parked in front of the building.

McVeigh had previously visited Moore's ranch, but doubts have been raised about Nichols and McVeigh's involvement in the robbery for several reasons.

McVeigh wrote a letter to Moore in which he claimed that the robbery had been committed by government agents.

In October 1994, McVeigh showed Michael Fortier and his wife, Lori, a diagram he had drawn of the bomb he wanted to build.

McVeigh rented a storage space, in which he stockpiled seven crates of 18-inch-long Tovex sausages, 80 spools of shock tube, and 500 electric blasting caps, which he and Nichols had stolen from a Martin Marietta Aggregates quarry in Marion, Kansas.

" Underneath, McVeigh had scrawled, " Maybe now, there will be liberty!

After booking McVeigh, Hanger searched his police car and found a business card McVeigh had hidden while he was handcuffed.

McVeigh was also identified by Lea McGown of the Dreamland Motel, who remembered him parking a large yellow Ryder truck in the lot ; McVeigh had signed in under his real name at the motel, using an address that matched the one on his forged license and the charge sheet at the Perry Police Station.

Before signing his real name at the motel, McVeigh had used false names for his transactions.

FBI investigators used the resulting information gained, along with the fake address McVeigh had been using, to begin their search for the Nichols brothers, Terry and James.

McVeigh later stated that he was unaware of the day-care center when choosing the building as a target, and if he had known "... it might have given me pause to switch targets.

McVeigh, he said, had developed a hatred of the government during his time in the army, after reading The Turner Diaries.

Both Fortiers testified that McVeigh had told them of his plans to bomb the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.

Michael revealed that McVeigh had chosen the date, and Lori testified that she created the false identification card McVeigh used to rent the Ryder truck.

In addition to arguing that the bombing could not have been carried out by two men alone, Jones also attempted to create reasonable doubt by arguing that no one had seen McVeigh near the scene of the crime, and that the investigation into the bombing had lasted only two weeks.

In addition to Michael assisting McVeigh in scouting the federal building, Lori had helped McVeigh laminate a fake driver's license which was later used to rent the Ryder truck.

Even many who agreed with some of McVeigh's politics viewed his act as counterproductive, with much of the criticism focused on the deaths of innocent children ; critics expressed chagrin that McVeigh had not assassinated specific government leaders.

McVeigh had indeed contemplated the assassinations of Attorney General Janet Reno, Lon Horiuchi, and others in preference to attacking a building, and after the bombing he said that he sometimes wished he had carried out a series of assassinations instead.

McVeigh initially intended only to destroy a federal building, but he later decided that his message would be better received if many people were killed in the bombing.

According to law professor Douglas O. Linder, McVeigh wanted Jones to present a " necessity defense "— which would argue that he was in " imminent danger " from the government ( that his bombing was intended to prevent future crimes by the government, such as the Waco and Ruby Ridge incidents ).

The government's use of CS gas on women and children angered McVeigh ; he had been exposed to the gas as part of his military training and thus was familiar with its effects.

On August 10, 1995, McVeigh was indicted on 11 federal counts, including conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction, use of a weapon of mass destruction, destruction by explosives and eight counts of first-degree murder.

McVeigh instructed his lawyers to use a necessity defense, but they ended up not doing so, because they would have had to prove that McVeigh was in " imminent danger " from the government.

The jury deliberated for 41 hours over a period of six days, acquitting Nichols on December 24, 1997, of actually detonating the bomb, but convicting him of conspiring with McVeigh to use a weapon of mass destruction, a capital offense.

In October 1994, posing as a motorcycle racer, McVeigh obtained three drums of nitromethane on the pretense that he and some fellow bikers needed the fuel for racing.

* In 1995, Timothy McVeigh detonated a Ryder box truck filled with an explosive mixture ( fuel oil and fertilizer ) in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City ( see Oklahoma City bombing )

McVeigh wore a printed T-shirt with the motto of the Commonwealth of Virginia, Sic semper tyrannis (" Thus always to tyrants ", which was shouted by John Wilkes Booth immediately after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln ) and " The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants " ( from Thomas Jefferson ).

McVeigh stated, " Once you bloody the bully's nose, and he knows he's going to be punched again, he's not coming back around.

McVeigh hoped to inspire a revolt against what he considered to be a tyrannical federal government.

McVeigh was introduced to firearms by his grandfather, and told people he wanted to be a gun shop owner and sometimes took firearms to school to impress his classmates.

McVeigh had a road atlas with hand-drawn designations of the most likely places for nuclear attacks and considered buying property in Seligman, Arizona, which he determined to be in a " nuclear-free zone.

McVeigh defended the practice of owning multiple guns, saying it was like the common practice of keeping an assortment of screwdrivers in one's toolbox ; one needed to be sure of having the right tool for the job.

Timothy McVeigh about to be led out of a Perry, Oklahoma courthouse two days after the Oklahoma City bombing

McVeigh had earlier written that he considered having his ashes dropped at the site of the memorial where the Murrah building once stood, but decided that would be " too vengeful, too raw, cold.

In 2001, he traveled to Terre Haute, Indiana, to be one of the media witnesses to the execution of Timothy McVeigh.

The defense argued that Nichols had been controlled by a " dominant, manipulative " McVeigh and urged jurors not to be persuaded by the " flood of tears " of the victims who testified.

In an interview on PBS, Lee Kuan Yew pointed out that each bomb would be twice the size of the one detonated by Timothy McVeigh at the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City.

After Feguer's death, it would be nearly 40 years until the next federal execution – that of Timothy McVeigh, carried out on June 11, 2001, in Terre Haute, Indiana.

On May 9, 2001, The Stars and Stripes reported that the Exchange would not stock American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh & The Oklahoma City Bombing on its shelves, nor would they allow it to be special ordered by customers at their stores.

An episode of American TV series The West Wing's first season, Take This Sabbath Day, deals with the imminent execution of drug lord and murderer Simon Cruz, likewise sentenced under the " Drug Kingpin " Act and to be executed by injection at Terre Haute ( for killing two individuals in Michigan ), who is described as the first individual to be executed by federal authorities since 1963 ( probably alluding to the case of Victor Feguer, who would have been the last before Garza, had not Timothy McVeigh been executed eight days earlier ).

McVeigh was said to be pleased overall with the book, but disappointed with the way he was portrayed and the explanation of his motive.