Word: mcveigh
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...other key testimony, Eldon Elliott, the owner of Elliott's Body Shop in Junction City, Kans., pointed out McVeigh as the man who rented the Ryder truck from him. Dealers in fertilizer, racing fuel and other possible ingredients in the bomb testified that McVeigh had approached them trying to buy these products in very large quantities. Finally, Eric McGown, who worked at the Dreamland Motel in Junction City, the place McVeigh stayed in the days before the bombing, testified that he had seen McVeigh in a Ryder truck in the motel's parking...
...best moments cross-examining McGown. The truck was picked up on April 17, 1995, but McGown could not remember whether he had seen it that day or the day before, Easter Sunday. Obviously, if McGown saw the truck on April 16, it could not have been the same truck McVeigh is said to have rented. Nineteen years old, McGown became incoherent and stammered as Jones bore...
This was not the only weak moment for the prosecution. Testimony about a phone card supposedly used by McVeigh was inconclusive. On April 16 a security camera near the Murrah building recorded a 1984 GMC truck driving by, and since Nichols owned a GMC truck of the same year, the government tried to use the video to corroborate its theory that he picked up McVeigh that night, after he parked his getaway car. But the defense easily popped this balloon, pointing out that dozens of people in the area might own such trucks. The FBI did not find McVeigh...
Still, the hole Jones and McVeigh must climb out of is very deep. Prosecutors will call a scientist from the lab who was praised in the report and so limit the damage on that score, while presenting evidence that the clothing McVeigh wore on the day of his arrest carried the residue of explosives. If the jury is convinced of this, the hole will seem bottomless...
...prosecutor Joseph Hartzler raised one amid the Oklahoma-bombing proceedings. At mid-sentence, Matsch cut him off: "There is no basis in that! Overruled!" Hartzler offered no challenge. Says Bob Miller, a Denver lawyer: "He doesn't allow the government to wear the white hat." While Matsch has allowed McVeigh's defense a number of procedural victories, the judge remains tough with Jones and his associates. During jury selection, he berated a defense lawyer, calling his questioning "incomprehensible." The judge, who lost a daughter in a freak accident in 1992, has not gone out of his way to accommodate...