Timothy McVeigh

In 1866, McVeigh's great-great-grandfather Edward McVeigh emigrated from Ireland and settled in Niagara County.

After McVeigh's parents divorced when he was ten years old, he was raised by his father in Pendleton, New York.

McVeigh claimed to have been a target of bullying at school, and he took refuge in a fantasy world where he imagined retaliating against the bullies.

At the end of his life, he stated his belief that the United States government is the ultimate bully.

Most who knew McVeigh remember him as being very shy and withdrawn while a few described him as an outgoing and playful child who withdrew as an adolescent.

He is said to have had only one girlfriend as an adolescent; he later told journalists that he did not have any idea how to impress girls.

While in high school McVeigh became interested in computers, and hacked into government computer systems on his Commodore 64 under the handle The Wanderer, taken from the song by Dion DiMucci.

McVeigh was a top-scoring gunner with the 25mm cannon of the Bradley Fighting Vehicles used by the 1st Infantry Division and was promoted to sergeant.

After being promoted, McVeigh earned a reputation for assigning undesirable work to black servicemen and using racial slurs.

He was stationed at Fort Riley before being deployed on Operation Desert Storm.

In an interview before his execution, McVeigh said that he hit an Iraqi tank more than 500 yards away on his first day in the war and then the Iraqis surrendered.

He also decapitated an Iraqi soldier with cannon fire from 1,100 yards away.

He said he was later shocked to see carnage on the road while leaving Kuwait City after U.S. troops routed the Iraqi Army.

McVeigh received several service awards, including the Bronze Star Medal National Defense Service Medal, Southwest Asia Service Medal, Army Service Ribbon, and the Kuwaiti Liberation Medal.

McVeigh aspired to join the United States Army Special Forces (SF).

Timothy James McVeigh (April 23, 1968 – June 11, 2001) was an American domestic terrorist who perpetrated the Oklahoma City bombing on April 19, 1995.

The bombing killed 168 people, 19 of whom were children, injured 680, and destroyed one-third of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.

It remains the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history.

A Gulf War veteran, McVeigh became radicalized by anti-government beliefs.

McVeigh was born on April 23, 1968, in Lockport, New York, the only son and the second of three children of his Irish American parents, Noreen Mildred "Mickey" Hill (1945–2007) and William McVeigh.

In his senior year he was named "most promising computer programmer" of Starpoint Central High School (as well as "Most Talkative" by his classmates as a joke as he did not speak much) but had relatively poor grades until his 1986 graduation.

He was introduced to firearms by his grandfather.

McVeigh told people of his wish to become a gun shop owner and sometimes took firearms to school to impress his classmates.

He became intensely interested in gun rights as well as the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution after he graduated from high school and read magazines such as Soldier of Fortune.

He briefly attended Bryant & Stratton College before dropping out.

After dropping out of college, McVeigh worked as an armored car guard and was noted by co-workers as being obsessed with guns.

One co-worker recalled an instance when McVeigh came to work "looking like Pancho Villa" as he was wearing bandoliers.

In May 1988, at the age of 20, McVeigh enlisted in the United States Army and attended Basic Training and Advanced Individual Training at the U.S. Army Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia.

While in the military, McVeigh used much of his spare time to read about firearms, sniper tactics, and explosives.

McVeigh was reprimanded by the military for purchasing a "White Power" T-shirt at a Ku Klux Klan rally where they were objecting to black servicemen who wore "Black Power" T-shirts around a military installation (primarily Army).

His future co-conspirator Terry Nichols was his platoon guide.

He and Nichols quickly got along with their similar backgrounds as well as their views in gun collecting and survivalism.

The two were later stationed together at Fort Riley in Junction City, Kansas, where they met and became friends with their future accomplice, Michael Fortier.

He sought revenge against the United States federal government for the 1993 Waco siege, as well as the 1992 Ruby Ridge incident.

McVeigh expressed particular disapproval of federal agencies such as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF), as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for their handling of issues regarding private citizens.

He hoped to inspire a revolution against the federal government, and defended the bombing as a legitimate tactic against what he saw as a tyrannical government.

He was arrested shortly after the bombing and indicted on 160 state offenses and 11 federal offenses, including the use of a weapon of mass destruction.

He was found guilty on all counts in 1997 and sentenced to death.

McVeigh was executed by lethal injection on June 11, 2001, at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana.

His execution, which took place just over six years after the offense, was carried out in a considerably shorter time than for most inmates awaiting execution.