McVeigh's captive audience

Bomber enjoyed celebrity status in prison, observers say

Authorities didn't realize Timothy McVeigh was behind the Oklahoma City bombing when he was arrested on misdemeanor charges.

By Carol Clark
CNN

(CNN) -- Timothy McVeigh entered the prison system anonymously, charged with a few misdemeanor violations. He is leaving it as a household name, one of the most notorious inmates in the history of the United States, whose pending execution is a national media event.

"He really has enjoyed this soapbox he never had when he was just an ex-Army guy living on the gun circuit," said Phil Bacharach, who interviewed McVeigh as a reporter for the Oklahoma Gazette and is now a deputy press secretary for Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating.

"It's a fascinating topic, his time in prison," Bacharach said. "He did, to some degree, come into his own. He was the one in prison, but it gave him a captive audience."

During the six years he spent in tight security, McVeigh's writings were published in national magazines, including letters he sent to Bacharach that appeared in Esquire magazine. Barbara Walters visited him, and hundreds of other journalists from around the world vied to get in to see him. He made the cover of Time and Newsweek and appeared on national television in a "60 Minutes" interview.

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High-powered lawyers were at his beck and call. He received stacks of letters, many from overseas. Some women who wrote to him enclosed nude photographs of themselves, said Larry Homenick, who as chief deputy U.S. marshal in Denver, Colorado, spent 18 months guarding McVeigh.

Ironically, it was the federal government -- McVeigh's archenemy -- that made it possible for him to expand his reach from behind bars. His right to freedom of expression was protected, and the high security of his confinement as a federal inmate meant he did not have to deal with the hazards of day-to-day life among the general prison population. Instead, McVeigh passed the time reading, writing letters and surfing 52 channels of cable television.

His favorite programs were "The Simpsons" and any news reports about himself, said Homenick, who has since retired from the U.S. Marshals Service. "He certainly enjoyed the celebrity. He really did."

From anonymous to notorious

An Oklahoma state trooper stopped McVeigh's getaway car after noticing the license plate was missing.

McVeigh had no criminal record when an Oklahoma state trooper pulled him over for driving without a license plate April 19, 1995. An additional charge of carrying a weapon illegally landed him in the Noble County Jail.

No one paid much attention to the low-key guy with a brush cut -- not even his fellow inmates. They were too wrapped up in watching news about the horrific bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

But a few days later, the FBI linked McVeigh to the bombings, and he was taken into federal custody. His notoriety earned him an entire wing to himself in a prison in El Reno, Oklahoma, where his former Army buddy, Terry Nichols, was also being held on charges related to the bombing.

Homenick traveled to El Reno with U.S. Marshal Tina Rowe in 1996 to escort McVeigh to Colorado, where he would stand trial the following year.

"He had a long corridor of the prison to himself," Homenick said. "The first time we saw him he was standing in the corridor bouncing a handball against the wall. He was very relaxed. It reminded me of a scene in 'The Great Escape' when Steve McQueen was bouncing a baseball against the wall in his cell."

The warden introduced Homenick, and McVeigh responded politely. "He said, 'Chief, it's a pleasure to make your acquaintance,'" Homenick recalled. "He was not angry, not dismissive, nothing like one would expect being a federal law enforcement officer representing the federal government. He was very warm and engaging. He responded to us as if he were one of us."

'Boot camp' revisited

After a jury sentenced McVeigh to death, authorities took him to the federal prison in Florence, Colorado, known as Supermax.

McVeigh, who served in the Persian Gulf War with the Army, viewed his confinement as a military exercise, Homenick said. "A boot camp is a very restrictive existence. Your every move is dictated to you. That's not terribly different from being a prisoner. He fit in very comfortably with the structured environment."

But he would not have survived more than a day in a general prison population, Homenick added. "Tim's lucky that he's in a solitary environment. He's not tough, physically. You put him out in the yard, he'd get shanked. He would suffer a horrendous death."

During his trial in Denver, McVeigh was kept in a customized cell in a federal building next to the courthouse.

"McVeigh kept his living space immaculate," Homenick said. "All of his rubbish was put in the corner in a bag. He would get up every morning and fold his blanket, his sheets and the sweats that he slept in. Everything was folded neatly and put in a corner."

Cameras were fixed on his cell, and marshals monitored his movements around the clock. One night, a deputy marshal called Homenick at his home to report something unusual.

"He said, 'I don't know what McVeigh's doing, but he's messing around with his bunk," Homenick said.

The chief marshal drove to the facility and asked McVeigh if he would mind telling him what he had been doing. "He said, 'Oh, sure, Chief,'" Homenick recalled. "'I've got this Styrofoam cup that I had my beverage in, and I've cut it up. The bottom of the (bunk's) legs are scratching this newly painted floor so I put a little piece of Styrofoam under them.'"

Homenick said he was astonished. "Here is a guy who blew up a federal building, but he was trying to prevent scratches on the floor of his federal cell."

'Grinning from ear to ear'

While at Supermax, McVeigh spent 23 hours a day in an 8-by-10 cell similar to this one.

The day that a jury sentenced McVeigh to death, Homenick transported him by helicopter from Denver to the federal prison in Florence, Colorado, known as Supermax.

It was a gorgeous August day, and they flew over some of the most breathtaking scenery in the country, including Pikes Peak. McVeigh wore leg irons and waist chains.

"He was sitting across from me, and he was absolutely enjoying this helicopter ride," Homenick said. "He was very animated, looking out the window. He motioned toward me with his manacled hands. He said, 'Hey, Chief, you think you could put the chopper down and just give me an hour's head start?' He was grinning from ear to ear. He's headed for death row, and he's making jokes. This just didn't seem to bother him."

The next year, Homenick took the same helicopter ride across the Colorado mountains -- this time with Nichols, who had been sentenced to life in prison without parole.

"It was a very different trip," Homenick said. "For McVeigh, it had just been like another day, but Terry Nichols was almost like a mouse that's been cornered by the cat. He was very quiet."

'He seemed very much at home'

McVeigh told his biographers he considered the Terre Haute, Indiana, penitentiary a step down from the Supermax's steely environment.

After turning Nichols over to the Supermax guards, Homenick went to the warden's office to sign some papers. "I said to (the warden), 'How is Mr. McVeigh doing?'" Homenick recalled. "We hear that much of his mail has dried up, and he's having a difficult time since he's not so notorious. He said, 'Actually, Larry, his adjustment seems to be just fine. Would you like to say hello to him?'"

The guards led Homenick into the "special disciplinary unit" of the nation's most secure prison.

"We went through a solid steel door and arrived in this corridor," he said. "There were six cells on the right-hand side with Plexiglas fronts that you could stare into. It was like window shopping at a mall, except instead of mannequins I was looking at the most notorious criminals in the country."

In the first cell, Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, was sitting at a desk writing, Homenick recalled. "He was in his own world, not paying attention to anything around him. The next cell holds Ramzi Yousef, the World Trade Center bomber. He was sitting there glaring out at us. In the next cell was Luis Felipe (founder of the Latin Kings street gang in New York). He is so notorious that a judge ordered him not to have any human contact, one of the most unique custody orders ever. He was sitting on his bunk, reading a piece of mail.

"I look in the last cell, and there's Tim McVeigh standing in boxer shorts and a T-shirt, folding the linens from his bed, just like he did every day that we had him. He was going about his daily routine, making his bed. He seemed very much at home, for want of a better phrase, in that cell."

A second steel door led into a small alcove to one side of McVeigh's cell. Homenick entered the alcove with the guards and was now separated from McVeigh by bars instead of Plexiglas.

"McVeigh walks to the front of the cell and says, 'It's great to see you,'" Homenick said. "He told me, 'This isn't a bad place, and everything's going fine.' McVeigh liked being the top dog on the block."

In the special confinement unit, dubbed "Bomber Row," the prisoners spent 23 hours a day in 8-by-10 cells. When the steel doors swung open for meal deliveries, they could have brief, shouted conversations with one another. They could also interact during the one-hour recreation periods.

An excerpt from "American Terrorist," a recently published biography of the Oklahoma City bomber, sums up McVeigh's feelings about confinement:

"McVeigh ... contended that the experience of prison, while it lasted, wasn't that difficult to bear: 'These guys do my laundry. I lay in bed all day and watch cable television. I don't even pay the electric or cable bills. Is that torture?' McVeigh even found himself reminded of his old dream of becoming a survivalist. Looking at the concrete and steel-reinforced walls of the ultra-modern Supermax, McVeigh thought, 'I've always wanted to live in a bunker, and now here I am.'"

The final stop

On July 18, 1999, the federal Bureau of Prisons opened its execution facility at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. McVeigh was moved for a final time.

He considered the renovated 1940s prison at Terre Haute a step down from the steely slickness of the Supermax, according to "American Terrorist." But the routine is much the same: Confinement 23 hours a day in an 8-by-10 cell with the option of up to five hours each week of outdoor exercise in a 12-by-12 wire-mesh cage. Visitors are taken to a restricted area, where the inmates can talk into an electronic speaker from behind a quarter-inch-thick wall of Plexiglas.

Even while appealing his conviction, McVeigh gave a detailed confession of how he carried off the bombing to Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck, authors of "American Terrorist."

"McVeigh is very much unlike any prisoner I've ever interviewed," said Herbeck, a longtime journalist. "He's not crawling the walls. He seems to be at peace with where he's at right now. There's no sense racking your brains over how to punish Timothy McVeigh. He just doesn't care."

"He's not suffering," agreed Homenick. "None of us know what he's feeling in his gut, but I would say he's feeling just what he exhibits. He welcomed the death penalty. I never saw him depressed. He's getting what he wants."

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