WE ANALYZE THE TIMOTHY MCVEIGH CASE

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Episode Transcript

(00:06):
Welcome to Inside the Criminal Mind podcast, where we analyze some of the most
notorious criminal cases with psychology and criminologycombined. Welcome back everyone. I'm here
with my co hosts Andrew Bringo,former FBI profiler. How are you doing,
Andy, I'm doing break fil Us. Another beautiful bay on the lake.

(00:29):
We lay in Central New York forour summers, and I try not
to waste one of these beautiful days. I try to get on the lake
every chance I can, so assoon as we're done here this afternoon,
I'll be jumping in my kayak andenjoying the beautiful weather. Sorry to take
you away from her, we're headingover to Timothy McVay today. Oh folks,
let's learn a little bit about TimothyMcVeagh. Actually before we get started.

(00:50):
If we want to support our podcast, make sure to share and subscribe.
We truly would appreciate it. SoTimothy McVay born nineteen sixty eight April
twenty three. I don't know whatthat is. What's sign is that it's
not a Virgo Hurst. I believeit's either yeah the tourists or ares.
I believe it's twenty third. Ithink best on the cusp of tourists.

(01:11):
Maybe we'll throw a little bit ofastrology in here too, folks, we'll
say, yeah, no, itassaway. At June eleventh of two thousand
and one, carried out the nineteenninety five of Oklahoma City bombing. They
killed one hundred and sixty eight peopleand injured more than six hundred and eighty
others, destroyed one third of theAlfred P. Murrah Federal Building. The

(01:32):
bombing was a deadly terrorism in theUnited States prior to the September eleventh attacks.
It is the deadly deadliest active domesticterrorism in the United States history.
So we're gonna win a little bitabout McVeigh. He was a Gulf War
veteran. McVeigh sought revenge against thefederal government for the nineteen ninety three Waco
siege that ended us of eighty sixpeople, many of whom were children,

(01:53):
as well as the nineteen ninety twoRuby Ridge incident an American foreign policy.
So let's look his childhood. Andy, we know you and I are gonna
have a big banter about this,because it's interesting. He's got a lot
of things. Some of the things, well, we'll get to PEPs in
a little bit. But first hischildhood. He was born because, as
I mentioned April twenty third, nineteensixty eight, Lockport, New York,
he's the only son and the secondof three children of Irish Americans. So

(02:20):
he is the middle child, whichis not always as common when it comes
to criminal behavior. And I'll getto that a little bit. McVeigh claimed
to have been a target of bullyingat school. Again, we're only seeing
a snapshot of mcveigh's life, andwe're only getting his perception of what happened.
Sometimes I don't know so, andhe took refuge in a fantasy world
where he imagined retaliating against the bullies. And here we see some similarities between

(02:45):
serial killers who really get lost intothis fantasy world, and a lot of
times it's retaliating against indivals, sometimestheir parents, sometimes women, sometimes they've
been abused by while their mom's boyfriends, males, whatever it is. And
they'll retaliate against these individuals and theirfantasies. And when they actually live out

(03:06):
their fantasies is when the truckle ends. Just a comparison, folks, not
saying he's a serial killer. Atthe end of his life, he stated
his belief with the United States governmentwas the ultimate bully. So you can
see now he's projecting whatever happened tohim, he might be projecting on it
to the United States as being asI mentioned here, the ultimate. Most
who knew McVeigh remember him as beingvery shy and withdrawn, while a few

(03:29):
described him as an outgoing and playfulchild who withdrew as an adolescent, which
makes sense because I think his parentsgot divorced a little bit later on and
that can have dramatic effects, andhe's only had one girlfriend as an adolescent.
He later told journalists that he didnot have any idea how to impress
girls, and this was going tolead us into our conversation Andy, I

(03:51):
think because I know you were talkingabout a psychiatrist and mentioned that he might
have had aspers whatnot. Yeah,I mean, I think you know there's
a there's a fairly well known psychiatrist. Her name is Lynn Maskell, who
was part of my research team backat the FBI Behavioral Science Unit, and

(04:11):
she had a fearing that a numberof these loan offenders and and some methink
they that have some associations. We'lltalk a little bit about that later,
but pretty much was radicalized as aloan offender, home grown violent extremists.
They're known within the FBI and uhShe had a theory that these individuals had

(04:31):
characteristics of Asperger syndrome and and andand maybe a you know, a machine
of Asperger types characteristics, along withborderline personality disorder and or avoiding personality disorder
characteristics. Some of the things yousee in Asperger's conclude aggressive behavior and depression,

(04:55):
but mostly difficulty in assassine dealings,human feelings and leading. There's emotional
state. They have a very lowemotional like que and they have trouble understanding
things like humor. Their social awkwardnessit makes it very difficult for someone like
Timmy d McVay with these types ofcharacteristics to have a lasting relationship with a
person of the opposite sex. They'resocially awkward, if you will. Interestingly,

(05:20):
another subject that we're going to talkabout in an episode down the road,
Ted Kazinski had similar characteristics. Thesewere quote unquote loaners, as they
were described by others, and theyhad a difficulty in social settings and oftentimes
felt as borderlines often do they feltvictimized by the system or by others.

(05:46):
It's sort of these external factors.It wasn't anything direct to them, but
it was people like them or whatthey considered part of their social circle,
whites or anti governments, reformists,and so they take on the emotions of
what they feel these other groups havebecause they have a very difficult time really

(06:10):
processing the accuracy of emotion, andthis can lead to aggression and anger and
frustration ultimately being to a mindset thatness that's necessary to commit violent behaviors.
So I think that's what we're seeingwith Tim timmcveay. We're seeing him kind
of projecting, as you mentioned,his angst, his frustration, his anger

(06:31):
towards the federal government as a bully, and he's going to take revenge personally.
And we're going to talk a bitabout PEPs when we talk about motive,
But that kind of gives our audiencea setting of where this guy is.
He feels victimized, he feels heneeds to avoid others because no one
understands him or other people are bullyinghim, and and he has this very

(06:55):
difficult time process and whether he hasaspergers or not, it's hard to tell
at this point. At points inDead A psychiatrist John Smith. He was
quote unquote a decent person who allowedraids to build up inside into the point
that he had lashed out on aone terrible act. Well, I think
they were building up to this oneterrible act. But this guy McVeigh was

(07:17):
not a dummy. Last known IQtest was assessed at one twenty six.
Yeah, it's pretty high, andI think Kazinski is up in the one
fifties. Yeah, exactly. Andyou know what's interesting and folks, again,
this is a debated issue, buta lot of people in the criminal
justice world and criminology will look atit is there's some studies that have showed
a little higher propensity for criminal behavioramong people who are called high functioning autistic

(07:42):
individuals or aspergers. Childhood psycho socialadversities and maladjustment have been linked to a
number of negative outcomes and externalizing behaviorsthat we've seen here, similarly performed by
a McVeigh, not saying that peoplewho have autism or aspergers have a higher
likelihood of becoming criminal. I haveno idea. They're finding out some kind
of correlations. Again, correlations,not causation, but there are some do

(08:05):
have some correlation there seemed overrepresented incertain types of crimes. Violent crime and
arson are some of the ones thatare showing some overrepresentation. But again it's
a debate right now going on inthe world of criminal justice of the collections
there. Yeah, because what's interestingtoo is that a number of people that

(08:26):
were interviewed after McVay was captured andincarcerated described him as early in his childhood
being playful and outgoing, but ashe you know, went through his puberty
and early adolescent became more withdrawn.And this is the time again when we're
starting to interact with the sex,we're trying to find out what our social
identity is, and that's the timethat he was described as withdrawn and more

(08:50):
of a loaner. He later toldthe journalists that he had no idea how
to quote unquote impressed girls. Sowhile in high school he changed his interests
from girls to computers. And infact, while in high school, he
was so capable, again this isan component of cognition diligence. He was

(09:11):
so capable with computers and he wasable to hack into government computer systems on
his Commodore sixty four under of thehandle name of Wanderer and his senior year
was named the most promising computer programmerin his high school. So here's a
guy who could have chosen a packand become Bill Gates instead became known as

(09:31):
the most deadly single domestic terrorists inthe United States history. And that's the
funny thing is you have two contradictorycomments. They're not you, but at
least his childhood. Now again,it's just a snapshot, folks, Right,
some people say he was outgoing.What does that really mean, Well,
he just friendly with Maybe he wasjust friendly to him to them on
that day, was an irregular pattern. In the world of psychology, they're

(09:52):
going to look for patterns. Washe happy throughout most of his time?
Did he have a pleasant mood ordemeanor. It's kind of hard to determine
it. But if you did havea happier childhood, then you kind of
lose the idea of Asperger's and autismwhen he withdraws later somewhat because that usually
doesn't work. Okay, schizophrenia doesbecause it's usually starts hitting later on in

(10:16):
adolescence. And I'm even looking atschizoid and I mean schizoid. They have
reduced affects, lack of close friends, they don't want connect with other people,
They have autistic type thinking. Yeah, and it develops again later childhood
and adolescents, so it could evenbe schizoid. Again, a lot of

(10:37):
a lot of guessing here. Yeah, and you know better than I the
number of these categories of mental illnesshave a range. It's not it's not
a binary You're not you know,you don't have all of the symptoms of
but schizophrenic. Just because you're schizophrenic, you may have some some maladaptive characteristics

(10:58):
in your personality. Interesting again,you know, it seems that he became
he moved or shifted more towards anindividualistic and more isolated mindset as he grew
older, became becoming more more isolated. But in the contrast to that,
he decides that a college, hedrops out and decides to go into the

(11:18):
military sort of try to find himselfin his identity. I mean, he
always had an interest in guns.His grandfather instilled that interest at a young
age, and so when he droppedout of college, he enlists into the
Hit States military. But it wasn'twasn't long after being in the military that
he was reprimanded for purchasing a whitepowered T shirt, and maybe this perhaps

(11:39):
is an indicator of future things tocome. He bought a white powered T
shirt because he objected to black serviceat the military base who were wearing black
powered T shirts, and so inresponse to these soldiers wearing black power T
shirts, he went and bought awhite power T shirt and the military reprimanded,
which further may plants it in hismind that the government was against him

(12:05):
and his quote unquote people, youknow, the white people, the white
race. And in spite of allthat, he was successful in the military.
He had a he had a prettygood military career, as short as
it was. He was incurred atthe twenty five cannon and the Bradley Finding
vehicle and was promoted to sergeants.But here he had another indicator of his

(12:26):
maladaptive personality. Once he's in aposition of authority, he's going after the
people he thinks are hurting him andknown as a sergeant to be giving the
less glamborous jobs he's put at thatthe more the worst jobs to black soldiers,
uh, black servicemen, and heoften used racial slurs towards those uh,

(12:48):
those black soldiers. So here's aguy that, you know, he's
given opportunity, smart enough guy thatto be successful, but his personality creates
these environments where he's then reprimanded andtherefore he's a victim of the system,
and that that then is the basisof his personal revenge. You know,

(13:09):
quite of all that. Yeah,I'll just I'll just wrap this up.
It this part of it. Youknow, he was still sighted positively in
his military service. He you know, he earned the Bronze Star, the
National Best Service Medal, the SouthWest Asia Service Medal. He was in
a desert storm in Kuwait City.He got the Army Service Ribbon. One

(13:31):
of the things that he mentioned laterin an interview was that, yeah,
he was washed out as he triedto join the Special Special Forces the second
day of the assessment. He waswashed out. He blamed that on his
being selected for Special Forces shortly afterreturning from being overseas. But one of
the things that he described later inan interview is that when in Kuwait and

(13:52):
they were you know, fighting backson Hussein's Iraqi Army, that he was
ordered to kill soldiers, surrendering Iraqisoldiers, and that he in fact decapitated
one of the soldiers with his twentyfive caliber or twenty five millimeter canon.

(14:13):
So some of the you know,later on, he may have you know,
tried to blame some of the behaviorsthat he had on his experiences in
Kuwait, But I get to seeany real evidence of that being the case.
That's the part that makes it hard. You get so many little fragments
of a person's life and then wetry to compile a profile or personality out

(14:35):
of it, and not a senseof a profile or a criminal profile,
but in the sense of a personalityprofile. I understand who the person is,
and there's just so many experiences thatcan change that from an individual especially,
he definitely was there, no questionhe was. When he left the
military in ninety one, he upsetat the government and that continued to be

(14:58):
that can It became central theme thatled him ultimately to see the necessity.
And I keep using the term necessitybecause as we have our conversation today,
that is critical not only seen inTimothy McVeigh. When we studied other firsts
and their motivation for their behavior,the common law of necessity was often brought
up, and it's the idea thatthey're going to commit an evil act,

(15:22):
but they're trying to prevent an evengreater evil act, and they blamed that
the government or whoever their target isas committing of the greater evil. So
their use of violence, their useof force, their murdering of others,
is less evil than the evil thatthey're trying to prevent. An example would
be Paul Hill, an anti abortionactivists who killed an abortion doctor. He

(15:46):
believed that killing the abortion doctor wassaving thousands of innocent babies lives. So,
yes, killing the abortion doctor wasevil, but it was necessary because
it prevented the the loss of itsthousands of innocent children. Mcvay's case,
ultimately, his motivation, or ashe articulated, was yes, I killed
these people, but in order tocreate a second revolution against the tyrannical government

(16:11):
which is committing greater evils than Iever did. And he really tightened held
to that idea. But his angstagainst the government after being discharged included letters
to local newspapers complaining about his taxes. He said, taxes are a joke,
regardless of the political candidate things andmore taxes always mean more government and

(16:33):
mismanagement. So here's a guy whowas really upset about taxes and it added
to his personal grievances as government.Yeah, it's a classic example of what
they call the neutralization drift theory,where he has a denial of the victim,
right, it occurs when he actuallybelieves that the victim had it coming,

(16:55):
or the victim caused the offense tooccur in some way, and then
you know, it's ball effect,right, So then he's got you know,
he feels jilted by the government.You know, he served the government
in the military, yet he getsout and he's got paying these adorbitent taxes
and so forth. He complained aboutthe government being over impressive. He complained

(17:17):
to representative in New York about awoman's arrest for carrying mace. He said,
it's a lie that we tell ourselvesthat the police can protect us everywhere,
that firearms restrictions are bad enough.Now you're going to go after women
who are carrying mats in their purse, right, And so he's blaming the
system for a number of things.Later on, when he sought romance and
the dancers were rejected by a coworker, he said he felt nervous around women,

(17:41):
and he grew angry and frustrated athis difficulties in finding a girlfriend,
so he took up gambling his obsession, and then he's gambling debts grew so
much he had to take the cashadvance and then he defaulted on the repayment
of his cash vans. So youcan see his life as kind of tumbling
failure after face failure. And whenhe became enraged at the government. He

(18:03):
was he was pissed off government becausethey told him in the military he'd been
overpaid one thousand dollars and fifty eightI'm sorry, one thousand and fifty eight
dollars, and he had to paythe money back. So he wrote a
letter back to the army saying,go ahead and take everything I own,
take my dignity. Feel good abouthow you grow fat and rich at my
expense, sucking my tax dollars andmy property. So here's the guy.

(18:27):
You can see, he's his rageis burning, simmering. This doesn't happen
overnight. This, this is alot of this happened early nineties. And
then, of course then you have, as I mentioned, these external factors
Waco in nineteen ninety three, andthat that greatly influenced the way Timothy Bay

(18:48):
viewed the federal government protackly the FBI'sresponse and specifically Lauren who Haruchi's use of
violence against UH against Weaver and hiswife. McVeigh went so far as the
hand out cars with Lauren Harucci wasthe sniper, the FBIHRT sniper who shot

(19:11):
unfortunately killed Weaver's wife, and thesecars had Harucci's name and address on them.
And so then he joined the movementand basically trying to vow vengeance for
Randy Weaver and his wife, sayingthat the Harucci, the sniper should be

(19:32):
killed, and the date later saidat one point, instead of blowing up
the Murrhor building, he was thinkingabout going out and finding Ferrucci or his
family and killing them as a revengefor wake THO, let's go ahead and
move on now, So tell usatleit about how they caught McVay well as
as leluding in these UH. Inthese points nineteen ninety three, UH McVeigh

(19:56):
was becoming more and more radical used. So I think it's important that we
understand the radicalizational process. And we'vetalked about this, I think in a
in an earlier podcast. But youknow, when you when you have this
uh, this produce have recruitment asthe first end, right, so you
have self recruitment, assertive recruitment,or forced recruitment. And in mcvay's case,

(20:18):
he was self recruited into a whitesupremacist movement and there were a number
of different groups. He went tothe militia, he tried to join.
They basically threw him out. Buthis anti government rhetoric led into a number
of different gun shows where he basicallysold the Turner Diary, uh and and
and and vented against the government.And in the process he he kind of

(20:41):
indoctrinated himself into the white supremacist movementand then through that process became more educated
in the in the the initiation ofthis radicalization process to the point where he
did a cognitively closed mindset. Hewas is gonna take revenge for both Waco

(21:03):
and then later Ruby I'm sorry RubyRidge Ridge and then later Waco. So
not only the stuff that happened toRuby Ridge with Randy Weaver, Catay went
to Waco and Corressions group and hevocally opposed the government and said that revenge
should be taken. So all ofthis anti government rhetoric led to the bombs

(21:25):
that he later built and set offin the Murror Building in Oklahoma City.
So you asked the question, howdid he get He got caught. So
here's the interesting part about this casefrom an investigative standpoint. He goes with
Nichols, they build these bombs together, the rider truck. McVeigh drives a

(21:45):
truck with five pounds of ammonia nitrateand parks it outside the Alpha PI Murror
Building on April nineteenth, nineteen ninetyfive. The date is significant because that
was the date that WACO had occurredwith the fire in Wacom. He was
really a set of the use ofgas against the women at Wacom so in

(22:11):
nineteen ninety that was in nineteen ninetythree, So in nineteen ninety five,
they took about two years. Bythe way, as an aside domestic chariss
acts, Fort Brent Smith and hispartner Kelly Damphouse said it takes about three
hundred and eighty days about a yeara little over a year from the beginning
to the end of developing a domesticterrorists act. So if get this when

(22:32):
he meets with his old army bodyNichols and they start building these bombs.
It took about a year a yearand a half to actually execute what they
planned. On April nineteenth ninety five, so he drives the car of the
van to the building and it killsone hundred and eighty six people injuring six

(22:55):
hundred and eighty four others. Hestates later he had no clue that was
a day care center on the secondfloor. Then later he says it made
no difference. He has said thathe was looking to create a large body
count because he wanted good TV coverage, and that he thought in his mind
that he was beginning the Second AmericanRevolution. So there's his motive. As

(23:15):
he was driving away, he waswearing a T shirt and the and he
and the card that he was drivingaway from did not have a license plate.
So when when he was driving,he was stopped, he was stopped
by a local officer and the policeofficer noticed he didn't have plates. And

(23:37):
the police officer noticed that that hewas in fact was driving without plates and
had this T shirt. It hadwon't and I'm forgetting the quote now apologize,
but he had to quote, ohsix temper Tyrannus, that's always too
tired, which was supposedly shouted byJohn Wills Food when he shot Lincoln,

(24:03):
So he was wearing the shirt.Importantly, he was carrying a concealed weapon
that was not permitted in Oklahoma.So the police officer, whose name he
was a state trooper, actually hisname was Charles Hanger, stops him and
arrests in this nineteen seventy seven marqueeand he's taken back to the prison,

(24:26):
and three days later, while he'ssitting in jail, he was identified as
the subject of the manhunt for theOklahoma City bombs. Sody answer your question
was a little bit of luck,but most importantly it was a local police
officer who was vigilant and was awareof his environment, kind of tracking back
that this guy had the license plate, was wearing this T shirt. And

(24:48):
I think for the audience, what'sinteresting, at least to me as an
investigator steing if we contrast this casewith the way Eric Robert Rudolph was caught,
who was an abortion clinic bomber backin nineteen ninety nineteen ninety eight,
he blew up on a clinic inBirmingham, Alabama. Later on, as

(25:10):
police officer stopped Eric Robert Rudolf who'srummaging through a garbage camp, and that
local police officer solved that investigation.It's interesting that these two cases are connected
by local police officers whose job doesn'tdeal day to day was looking for terrorists.
But yet both of these very goodpolice officers were able to solve these

(25:36):
these horrendous cases. Fascinating stuff.Good thing they caught him, that's for
sure. Yeah, they caught him. I'll pay The other interesting part of
this case as it relates to theinvestigative processes. This is a bombing,
obviously, and the largest one thatthe United States seen until later we saw,

(25:56):
you know, nine to eleven US. But I mentioned Eric Robert Rudok
case, which was in nineteen ninetyeight. A lot of the response they
came out of the Oklahoma City bombingwas utilized in other eighties later on.
Some of the things like the joiningof the Incident Command System and the FBI's

(26:17):
Joined Operations Center under what they callthe Unified Command which later became the National
Incident Command System or NIMS, allcame from City. The use of what
they call cows cellular on wheels,or these transmitters that can be mobilized came
from Oklahoma City because at the timeall of the towers, the cell towers

(26:41):
became full police and the firefighters,the mts, the consequence managers, and
the crisis managers couldn't communicate. Communicationbecame critical in Oklahoma City, and so
in later cases, the lessons learnedfrom Oklahoma City were used by local,
state, and federal agencies. Thebird National Domestic Preparedness Office where I was
assigned, and a lot of thework we did out of the NDPO came

(27:04):
from the experience and lessons learned inOklahoma City. The whole idea of a
task force attacking proactively terrors came fromthe actions in Oklahoma City. A lot
of the evidence Response team techniques forsifting down to the very tiniest particles of

(27:26):
evidence at a crisis for bomb sitefrom Oklahoma City. They literally use.
The Evidents Response Team used sifters wherethey would take pieces of degree and like
a minor, would sift them downto the smallest grain, if you will.
And in two thousand and one,as a first responder to the Pentagon,

(27:48):
I used some of those same techniquesas we used these sifters to find
the evidence in the classified materials andthen separating evidence in class slide material so
it could be consistable or retained forevidentiary purposes. So a lot of lessons
learned from this tragedy understanding the mindsetof the terroriffs, but also in the

(28:12):
very practical applications of investigating these typesof crimes. Andy, we wrapped up
another one. It's a great it'sa great study, uh Simpson. A
base case has been studied by anumber of people's sense Uh you know it
occurred, and and and one thingthat of course we we I didn't mention

(28:33):
earlier, but one of the thingsthat came out of this was much stronger
anti terrorism laws. They could notcharge McVeigh with terrorism because there were no
federal statutes for that. Uh Sothey they ended up charging him with a
number of one hundred and sixty offenses, but only eleven federal charges, and
later on they sentenced him to afederal charge that did have a weapons of

(28:56):
mass destruction charge which allowed the federalgovernment to charge him and sentence and the
death you mentioned his data that wasJune eleven, two thousand and one,
in a federal correctional complex and teroHotes, Indiana, where he was given
the last shot, so to speak. He was given a lethal injection,
and he paid the ultimate price withthe death penalty for his crimes against the

(29:18):
state and those innocent, innocent victims. Absolutely fastening a go ahead. Yeah,
I just want to finish, youknow, I want to finish this
point because it just came to myhead. One of the things that I
about this case that still disturbs mewas when he did die, when he
was put to debt and he wasRoman Catholic. I happened to be a

(29:38):
Roman Catholic. They allowed him tohave last rites. I understand that,
but he never accepted responsibility. Hebasically said that he was a soldier and
this is the effected and was willingto accept his debt. Witnesses said that
he was stoic, unapologetic, andand that still disturbs me to this day

(30:03):
that we would have uh, youknow, the un uh criminal. And
so I feel no remorse, eventhough I do not support on moral brunds,
I don't support the death penalty.I have no feelings at all.
And I'm ambivalent about mcveigh's quite andand and was the way his life ended
but yeah, as I mentioned,is an important investigation for learning a lot

(30:30):
of things, but it certainly wasn'tworth the lives of the innocent children and
and people in that building. Absolutelynot. But we have to learn from
these so we can keep them happeningand keep them from happening in the future.
And UH now lots to digest onthat one, lots to digest on
McVeigh folks, hopefully again, ifyou want to support our podcast, make

(30:52):
sure to subscribe and share andything again. Yeah, I'll just make a shameless
plug. Anybody interested in UH inmy services at the Behavioral Science Unit,
LLC. They can go to mywebsite at Behavioral Science Unit dot com.
They can contacte there's a phone numberthere in an email, do training,
do a number of things that arealigned on on that website. So thank

(31:17):
you for allowing me to join youtoday, Carlos, absolutely, thank you
for being here. Thank you everyonefor listening, and we'll catch you all
the next time around.