Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - He Killed Hundreds of People - The Timothy McVeigh Story

Episode Date: December 4, 2025

Timothy McVeigh was a Gulf War veteran whose growing hatred of the federal government- fueled by the Ruby Ridge standoff, the Waco siege, militia-movement ideology, and The Turner Diaries- led him to plan and execute the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

So this guy really, really hates the government. Now the guy's name is Tim, and Tim, he's about 23 when this story starts and he's living in Michigan. And as I said, Tim, he's the kind of guy who really loves guns, but he really hates the government. So one day in 1991, he gets out of the army and he becomes sort of a drifter and a regular on the gun show circuit, where he's traveling from state to state and from gun show to gun show. And there he sells military supplies and ammo and sometimes guns and stuff like that. But that's not the only thing he does there. He also rants and complains about the government to anyone who will listen.

He passes out far right extremist pamphlets and anti-government flyers, and he is die hard about this. In fact, this is all he does. He doesn't have a regular job or anything like that. He sleeps in his car or on friends' couches, and he travels to gun shows and sell things and preaches this extremism to people. And about a year goes by. And then in 1992, something crazy happens.

Some federal agents in Idaho get into a shootout with a guy and they kill some members of the guy's family in the standoff. And this pisses Tim off, and he thinks the government was in the wrong. The next year in 1993, the Fed sees a religious compound in Waco, Texas. And they get into a shootout with the people of the compound, and the place ends up burning down and a bunch of people unfortunately die. And this pisses Tim off even more, and he becomes convinced that both of these incidents prove that the government is willing to murder its own citizens, and he is not about to let this slide. So he decides to get revenge and blow up a federal building with a bunch of people in it. Because he believes that once he does that, this will start a political revolution. That all of these concerned citizens will see how right he is and they'll join his cause.

So in 1994, he gets to work on this plan and he starts building explosives. Now, during this time, he's sort of staying on and off with his friend in Kansas. This guy, Terry Nichols. And so Tim and Terry Nichols, they start experimenting with different types of explosives in remote fields and on backroads, blowing up buckets and barrels and just other types of containers. Then that same year, the federal government pisses Tim off again because Congress passes a ban on certain types of assault weapons and President Clinton signs it into law. And Tim loses his mind over this. He sees this as confirmation that the government is going to

come and take his guns away and he is not about to let that happen. And so this motivation, him to move on to the next phase of his plan. Choosing a target to bomb. So he starts traveling through the region, looking for the perfect building to blow up. He drives through Kansas City, Little Rock, Dallas, but at some point, on its journey, he lands in Oklahoma City.

And there he comes across the Alfred P. Murrah building. And he thinks that this is perfect. A bunch of government agencies work out of there, like the ATF and the Department of Transportation, and the Secret Service even has a field office out of there. So this place has a lot of federal workers in it. It's perfect for him. It's also around this time that he settles on the type of bomb he's going to use,

an anfo truck bomb, which is just fertilizer and some other stuff put into barrels and lined up in the back of a moving truck to create this big bomb. So he starts buying up a bunch of fertilizer and storing it in various locations until he's got enough. And as he's getting the supplies he needs, Terry Nichols is helping him steal dynamite and stuff. So now it's 1995, and Tim is finally ready to put his full plan into motion. And so he rents a moving truck, and he and Terry Nichols load all the stuff in it,

and then they mix a bunch of stuff together, and they make the bombs. Here's the thing, though, these two guys, they think they are revolutionaries. But Terry Nichols, he ends up backing out. I mean, he hates the federal government just like Tim. But at the end of it all, he just can't bring himself to murder that many people. Plus, you know, he doesn't want to get caught. Now, he doesn't try to stop Tim from pulling off this attack or anything. Like he doesn't report him to the police.

He just doesn't want to commit the crime himself. So then Tim gets in the moving truck and he drives from Kansas down to Oklahoma and he parks in Ponca City and he sleeps in the truck. Early the next morning, he drives this truck all the way to Oklahoma City to the Alfred Pimura Federal Building, and he parks it out front. Then he lights the fuse that's supposed to set off the bomb, and he calmly walks away. And he walks like seven to eight blocks toward a getaway car that he had parked. And then suddenly, kaboom, the moving truck explodes. And this explosion is so big that it can be felt for miles. I mean, it immediately shatters windows across a 20 block radius, and dark smoke fills the area, and everyone feels the ground. And everyone

feels the ground shake and they're like, what was that? And the Murrah building, Tim's Target, collapses almost instantly. Floors pancake downward on to one another and this leaves a large void where offices had once been. At about 600 people, mostly civilian federal workers, are working in the building that day and a lot of them are trapped under the rubble. And the worst part is that the building also has a daycare for the federal workers' kids. And it has a little over 20 kids in it and a lot of them are trapped too. So emergency service workers show up and there's a whole rescue mission and they're pulling people out of the rubble one by one and they rescue a lot of them but unfortunately this bomb ends up killing 168 people including 19 kids. Meanwhile Tim makes it to

his getaway car and he gets in real calm and he drives away and he merges onto the highway and he blends in with the rest of traffic, and no one suspects he did anything wrong. I mean, everyone is too focused on the chaos of the bombing right now. So he keeps driving north, and about an hour and 20 minutes pass. And suddenly, whoo, he sees flashing blue lights behind him. He's being pulled over. This dumb motherfucker is not only driving above the speed limit, but his getaway car doesn't have a license plate on it.

So this highway patrolman pulls him over and he makes it. get out of the car, and the two men they're standing in between both their cars, and the officer notices that he's got a bulge in his jacket. So he asks him if he's got a weapon. And Tim actually says he does. So the officer detains him, and he searches him and he finds that he has a gun on him. And so, bam, the officer arrests him. Here's his mugshot. Meanwhile, back in Oklahoma City, police and the feds, they're investigating the bomb site, and they find a blown-up axle of the moving truck Tim used. And it still got the vehicle identification number on it,

and this is a truck that Tim had rented. So they talked to the clerk at the rental agency, and they're able to get a composite sketch of the guy who rented the truck, aka Tim. And from this sketch, they're able to identify Tim, who, by sheer coincidence, police already had in their custody because he was driving a car without a license plate like a dumbass. And so Tim, he's at the courthouse, about to be released, but of course now they're not going to release him, and they throw him back in jail.

And eventually, he goes to trial over the bombing, and he's found guilty, and he's sentenced to death. While Terry Nichols actually turns himself in, and even though he had backed out of the plan, he still gets life in prison.