Star witness testifies at Nichols trial
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) – Michael Fortier, the government’s star witness in the Oklahoma City bombing case, returned to the witness stand Monday to testify for state prosecutors who want Terry Nichols sent to the death chamber for his role in the attack. Speaking softly in a courtroom crowded with bombing survivors and federal marshals, Fortier described several incidents prosecutors say link Nichols to the April 19, 1995, bombing that killed 168 people.
Fortier said convicted bomber Timothy McVeigh revealed to him in October 1994 that he and Nichols planned to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. He also said McVeigh talked about how the bomb would be made.
“He discussed how he would take ammonium nitrate and fuel and mix it up and put it in 55-gallon drums,” Fortier said.
The testimony came at a preliminary hearing to determine whether there is enough evidence to try Nichols on 160 state counts of first-degree murder. Prosecutors have said they will seek the death penalty at such a trial.
Nichols is already serving a life sentence on federal conspiracy and involuntary manslaughter convictions for the deaths of eight law enforcement officers in the bombing. McVeigh, convicted of murder, was executed in 2001.
McVeigh was a guest at Fortier’s home outside Kingman, Ariz., on and off for two years after the deadly April 19, 1993, fire at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. The Oklahoma City blast came exactly two years later.
Fortier said he and McVeigh traveled to Kansas on a trip in which they stopped in Oklahoma City and drove around the federal building. Fortier said McVeigh targeted the building because he believed “that’s the building where the orders came out of for Waco.”
According to Fortier, McVeigh knew people would be hurt or killed but compared it with the loss of storm troopers in the movie “Star Wars.”
“All of the people may not be individually guilty,” McVeigh said, according to Fortier. “But because they work for the evil empire, their deaths would be justified.”
Fortier said McVeigh asked for help in assembling the bomb because Nichols had decided not to go through with it.
“He asked me to help him. I said no,” Fortier said. McVeigh then replied that Nichols would have to help him make the bomb because Nichols was already too deeply involved, he said.
Fortier said McVeigh and Nichols at one point took him to a storage shed in Kingman where he saw boxes marked with explosives labels. McVeigh told him the explosives had been stolen from a rock quarry in Kansas.
Fortier also said McVeigh told him in a telephone conversation that Nichols had tied up an Arkansas ammunition dealer, Roger E. Moore, and robbed him at gunpoint. He said McVeigh gave him some of the stolen weapons, which he sold at gun shows. Authorities said the stolen weapons helped finance the bomb plot.
Moore lost $60,000 worth of guns and other items, including coins, jewels and cash, in the 1994 robbery.
McVeigh and Nichols detonated explosives in the Arizona desert and experimented with the ingredients that would later be used in the bombing, Fortier said.
Fortier, who met McVeigh in the Army and became a close friend, pleaded guilty to bombing-related charges in 1995 and was given a 12-year sentence. He admitted knowing about the plot to bomb the federal building, but doing nothing to stop it.
Nichols was at home in Kansas the day the bomb exploded. But prosecutors said he helped McVeigh deliver a getaway car to Oklahoma City and worked with McVeigh to pack the 4,000-pound bomb inside a Ryder truck the day before the bombing.