Timothy+McVeigh

 At the age of 10 (in 1978), Tim McVeigh’s parents had divorced and McVeigh lived with his father until he graduated school. He generally was an easy target for bullies and did not get along with other people. By the time he was 14 he was into survivoring and spent much of his time firing his grandfathers’ weapons; he believed that weapons were an equalizer.  Two years after McVeigh graduated high school; he went to a computer school shortly then went to serve in the U.S army, there meeting Terry Nichols and Micheal Fortier in May of 1988. He got an Honorable discharge, to leave the army, in December 1991.  After McVeigh got back from military work and moved back in with his father, his life started spiraling down, as he was depressed and seriously considered suicide. At this time, his views of government policies were increasingly getting worse.  But what got McVeigh to plot bombs against his own country was the hold-off against the Branch Dravidian's, a religious cult that was holding illegal weapons. There, government agents broke in and in the end 84 were dead, including children. This happened on April 19th, 1993 and that's the day that McVeigh wanted to get revenge.  McVeigh told his friends about his idea of the bombing. When asked why by Fortier, McVeigh said that the American citizens were like Storm Troopers from Star Wars “Though they may each individually be innocent, they are guilty because they work for the evil empire.” They together began the project by breaking into “Area 51” in July of 1994 (Secert government area in Mexico for testing weapons), stealing from the Arizona National Guard armory and stealing about $8,500 from banks from gun point; to which all was spent on about 4,800 pounds of material for the bomb.(They bought about $3,000 worth of fertilizer in October 1994) The three of them stayed at Nichols brothers, James, house in Dexter, Michigan. Here they kept their bomb-making materials. (Which they bought in two different times using fake I.Ds. Also, James was a suspect for the bombing but there was not enough evidence that he had anything to do with the actual making of the bombs.) In September, 1994 all of the materials were moved in a storage shed in Kansas. As April 1995 got closer, Fortier tried to back out of the plan in March. He said that he wanted nothing to do with the actual bombing. He eventually was replaced with “John Doe 2”. The night before the bombing, McVeigh drove to Oklahoma in a separate car; the truck would soon follow, and spent the night sleeping in the truck with the bomb.