Killing McVeigh

The Death Penalty and the Myth of Closure

Jody Lyneé Madeira

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9781479856671
• eBook ISBN:
  9780814724552
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Law Theory & Practice
• Index: Law

On April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh detonated a two-ton truck bomb that felled the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people. On June 11, 2001, an unprecedented 242 witnesses watched him die by lethal injection.

In the aftermath of the bombings, American public commentary almost immediately turned to “closure” rhetoric. Reporters and audiences alike speculated about whether victim’s family members and survivors could get closure from memorial services, funerals, legislation, monuments, trials, and executions. But what does “closure” really mean for those who survive—or lose loved ones in—traumatic acts? In the wake of such terrifying events, is closure a realistic or appropriate expectation?

In Killing McVeigh, Jody Lyneé Madeira uses the Oklahoma City bombing as a case study to explore how family members and other survivors come to terms with mass murder. The book demonstrates the importance of understanding what closure really is before naively asserting it can or has been reached.

I
Blood Relations

 

McVeigh is introduced to the world as a suspect in the Oklahoma City bombing during his “perp walk” in Perry, Oklahoma, on April 21, 1995. Image reprinted with permission from the Associated Press.

First Steps: The Arrest of Timothy McVeigh

The FBI, knowing their suspect was in custody at a small county courthouse in Oklahoma, proceeded to orchestrate what is now commonly referred to as the “perp walk” in which a criminal suspect is led away from confinement in shackles by law enforcement personnel for the media and all to see. The FBI was not disappointed. Mr. McVeigh was detained in the courthouse while the world media gathered and his walkout was timed for the evening network news broadcast. With the nation, and indeed much of the civilized world watching, Timothy McVeigh, wearing a bright orange prison jumpsuit and no protective vest, shackled at the wrists and ankles, and wearing a military style haircut and a “thousand yard” stare, was paraded before a mob of angry citizens, many of whom shouted repeatedly, “baby killer, baby killer” at him. This was how the Petitioner was transferred to federal custody.

—From petition for writ of mandamus
of petitioner-defendant Timothy James McVeigh
and brief in support, March 25, 1997

1
“A Rude Awakening”

The Origins of the Victim-Offender Relationship

This is the famous perp walk—the perpetrator walk. If somebody hadn’t facilitated that walk, Tim McVeigh would be a much different character visually, and emotionally I think in people’s lives.

Peter Jennings, on Larry King Live, CNN, May 15, 2001¹

Well, I think the thing that stands out most for me is when they arrested him and he was being taken from the courthouse I think in Perry, when they were transporting him … but they would show that clip of him being led out of the courthouse in Perry, Oklahoma, over and over and over and you got this chance to watch his demeanor. Just, I mean, so much inundated with that one image of him stoically walking out… and that’s when you thought of him, that’s the impression you had of him was that stoic soldier demeanor and no hint of any real humanity I guess … we were all inundated with that image of him. And so it was kind of hard later to get that image out of your head.

Diane Dooley, survivor

First Impressions of McVeigh, April 21, 1995

On April 21, 1995, Timothy McVeigh and his law enforcement escort emerged from the dim confines of the Noble County Courthouse into the bright sunshine of a beautiful day in Perry, Oklahoma. A little more than six years later, he was executed in the early morning hours of June 12, 2001. But between these bookend dates, the worlds of Oklahoma City bombing victims’ families and survivors shifted dramatically. McVeigh morphed from a spare and mysterious young man to a very visible perpetrator who collaborated with biographers to ensure that he left little doubt as to why—at least in his mind—he had orchestrated a plot to bomb the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in the heart of Oklahoma City. Victims’ family members and survivors felt as if they were lashed to McVeigh (and, to a lesser extent, coconspirators Terry Nichols and Michael Fortier) for the duration of this terrible ride and beyond, and McVeigh, in his turn, perceived that he was inextricably entangled with them. Yoked together, the victims’ families and survivors on one side of the crossbar and the bombers on the other, the two groups were driven forward in a torturous tandem through a gauntlet of media attention and criminal justice proceedings.

While this complicated set of relationships began on the morning of the bombing, it crystallized on April 21, 1995, when family members and survivors caught their first glimpse ever of McVeigh during the bombing suspect’s perp walk. As he emerged into the sunlight of that spring morning, McVeigh was not so much led by his surrounding officers as he moved with them, pushing slowly through the throngs that had gathered to see the Oklahoma City bombing suspect. McVeigh was outfitted in a fluorescent orange jumpsuit but wore no bulletproof vest. The privilege of escorting the shackled but defiant McVeigh had been granted to a dozen FBI agents as a reward for their roles in capturing him. Immortalized by news cameras, these images of McVeigh’s arrest were broadcast continuously in the following days, months, and years, becoming iconic representations of the boyish yet hardened man who had murdered 168 people, injured over 800 more, and threatened or terrorized countless others.

As penal rituals, “perp walks” allow law enforcement officials to showcase the faces of those who ostensibly deserve to be publicly shamed for their alleged crimes. Law enforcement officials and suspects participating in perp walks are expected to follow certain behavioral norms. Although paraded individuals are merely suspects, it is easy to believe them guilty. It is anticipated that the parties involved—excluding jeering crowds—will conduct themselves more or less soberly, with suspects appearing suitably chastened.

But sometimes perp walks serve not as public shaming rituals but as opportunities for private vengeance or brazen suspect behavior. Take presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, who was fatally shot by Jack Ruby as he was being walked to the county jail through the basement corridors of Dallas’s city hall. Or consider pop star Michael Jackson’s unorthodox behavior after his arraignment for multiple child molestation charges on January 17, 2004; after pleading not guilty to the charges, Jackson departed the courtroom and, cheered on by thousands of adoring fans, clambered on top of his SUV and danced and waved to supporters. Perp walks that somehow go awry trivialize crimes and their victims, turn law enforcement and criminal justice processes into spectacles, and push the importance of legal accountability into the shadows. McVeigh’s perp walk failed as a shaming ritual in that he scarcely appeared to be humbled, scared, nervous, or even concerned for his ultimate fate. His defiant gaze merely heightened the horror and trauma of the act of which he stood accused and made him a toxic presence in family members’ and survivors’ lives.

Picturing Perpetrators

After you get through the shock … what lingers are the images of the perpetrators, and not of the corpses.²

Viewing perp walk footage begs an important question: How do we regard photographs of perpetrators, from those on television to images on display in memorial spaces? On whom should our gaze linger—those who committed a heinous act, or those victimized by it?

In encountering visual footage of traumatic events, viewers struggle with how to regard (or disregard) perpetrators’ pictures, particularly in memorial spaces commemorating victims. Looking at perpetrators’ likenesses may feel like a breach of moral propriety; it somehow seems more correct to look beyond them, devoting our attention primarily to representations of victims and perhaps rescuers. Hand in hand with a natural reticence to look at perpetrators comes the uncomfortable awareness that we should know more, not less, about the perpetrators, however much one wishes to ignore and exile them from consideration. We learn the names of murder victims in order to protest the anonymity of their heinous deaths and to reclaim their humanity from bystanders’ and perpetrators’ malice, indifference, or detachment. When we learn about the personalities and life histories of the perpetrators, it is often because we hope to identify the origins of their antisocial acts, both to understand them and to prevent such actions in the future.

Pictures of the Murrah building site taken shortly after the bombing explicitly document the traumatic event. But can one say the same of McVeigh’s perp walk footage? It is immediately apparent that the perp walk images focus upon a perpetrator and not victims, survivors, or rescue workers—on a villain, not on the helpless or heroic caught up in the maelstrom of the bombing and its aftermath. Rather than the devastation wrought by the perpetrator’s acts, perp walk images portray the perpetrator’s inhumanity; their counterparts to broken landscapes and dying victims are an offender’s interior ruin and impaired morality. Yet, in their connotative dimensions, perpetrator images imply victims’ presence, if only as the individuals who have given the perpetrator his identity.

Perp walk footage situates criminal suspects as moral subjects by positioning them as agents. The perpetrator is assigned primary responsibility for the nefarious deed. Law enforcement personnel surrounding the perpetrator appear to be in control, can claim credit for capture and maintaining custody, and are ever alert to possibilities of escape and threats of harm. These forms of agency are different than those depicted within images of the traumatic event for which he is accused. The passive victim and heroic rescue worker initially exhibit only a responsive agency, in reaction to the perpetrator’s crimes; they are not actors but individuals acted upon.³ Such images also confer moral agency upon viewers, who scrutinize the perpetrator and make inferences as to his character, motivations, and state of mind—judgments integral to the experience of understanding and coping with the traumatic event.

For Oklahoma City bombing survivors and victims’ family members, the interpretive act of engaging with McVeigh’s perp walk image may have helped to alter their status as victims with respect to the bombing and that of McVeigh as perpetrator. Empowered with interpretive authority, victims became not only survivors but accusers seeking justice, forcing McVeigh into the more reactive position of defender. Interpreting and adjudicating McVeigh’s emotions were as much acts of accusation as of suffering.⁴

McVeigh’s perp walk images allowed viewers to simultaneously determine his physical attributes and gauge his personality and his attitude toward the bombing and toward victims. These pictures appeared to offer a genuine window into his soul—or lack thereof—and so their authenticity both provided a personal impression and “the experience of a personal encounter.”⁵ Viewers interrogated McVeigh, rendering his body the site where traumatic history materialized. His presence not only implied a host of other absences but also constituted a traumatic spark, igniting anger, indignation, and memories of the bombing, loved ones murdered and selves changed forever.

Those intimately affected by a crime—and members of the general public—have long relied upon images of perpetrators to answer the (sometimes unanswerable) question “Why?” and to make inferences regarding offenders’ motivations and mental and emotional states. It is as if the perpetrator’s appearance itself could reveal culpability. Thus, it is especially upsetting when particularly notorious offenders appear handsome or nonthreatening. Serial killer Ted Bundy was known for his good looks, in contrast with Charles Manson, who appeared a bit more crazed and “helter-skelter.”

Perpetrators, their personalities, and their motives will always be key components of how we understand traumatic events. Negotiating representations of perpetrators through vehicles such as perp walk footage is an important part of this process. Until his trial, McVeigh’s perp walk photos offered family members and survivors the first and often the best opportunity to scrutinize the face of the Oklahoma City bombing suspect, and then make inferences about McVeigh’s character. Susan Urbach, the director of the Oklahoma City Small Business Council, was in the doorway of her office in the Journal Record Building across the street from the Murrah Building when the bomb detonated; she suffered extensive injuries and spent more than four hours in surgery. She noted, “The visual impression also is important because even if it’s on the mass media, you get an idea of how does that person—how do they look, how do they move, … what’s their body language? And how does that all fit?” “That image from the jail was an extremely powerful image,” she added.

Looking back upon these perp walk images from our distant contemporary vantage point, McVeigh appears cold, unemotional, and defiant. The law enforcement personnel that crowd the image’s border set off McVeigh’s aloof manner: he appears to be alone despite the bodies pressed closely in on one another. To survivors and family members, McVeigh’s apparent unconcern magnified his victims’ invisibility, inflicting additional injury on those who remained.

These perp walk images force a series of confrontations between the viewer and McVeigh. The first confrontation comes when viewers seek to understand him by drawing inferences from these photographic representations. McVeigh’s apparent defiance necessitates a second, more thorough confrontation—a need to demand accountability from him, to ensure that he takes responsibility not only for his role in the bombing but also for its human costs. But while McVeigh appears confrontational, his gaze is directed past the media cameras, denying the viewer the satisfaction of a face-to-face encounter. Justice for the victims is nowhere to be found; arrest alone cannot force accountability, and McVeigh walks tall, apparently unburdened by shame. The image’s violence comes from an awareness not only of what McVeigh has done but also of who he is—an American and, shockingly, a decorated veteran, among those trusted to defend, not attack, his fellow citizens. McVeigh appears young yet hardened. His everyday, boyish appearance is negated by his stoicism and his narrow, closed countenance. His physical features are not monstrous; it is his gaze that sets him apart.

One of the most haunting qualities of McVeigh’s perp walk image was its endless repetition. It was ubiquitous, as was the more recent 9/11 footage of the commercial airliners’ impact with the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers and the buildings’ subsequent collapse. Television coverage compulsively repeats certain images as it struggles with how to tell the story of an event.⁶ The continuous recirculation of McVeigh’s perp walk footage ensured that McVeigh was a key focus in narrating the Oklahoma City bombing story line. And the import of this footage changed according to the context and medium in which it appeared; in the words of Barbie Zelizer, these images “assert[ed] themselves” in fresh ways, evolving new meanings beyond “reasoned information relay” such as “community building, recovering from trauma and grief, arousing empathy and indignation, concretizing complex events, … facilitating catharsis, [and] enabling analysis and comparisons.”⁷

These images helped to establish involuntary ties between McVeigh and family members and survivors that some experienced for years (often until his execution), and that others always will feel. They strengthened bonds of solidarity between family members and survivors; even if these individuals would always remain strangers to one another, they were united in their common pursuit of accountability for this man at the center of the law enforcement escort. Finally, it linked those family members and survivors to other Americans—individuals who had no other connection to the bombing than tuning in to news coverage of the event, but who nonetheless became important sources of emotional and financial support. Thus, the perp walk images created a sense that Americans, hand in hand with family members and survivors, were united in a common cause against those responsible for the bombing, beginning with McVeigh.

Putting a Face to the Deed: Family Members
and Survivors React to McVeigh

For those intimately affected by the blast, McVeigh’s perp walk embodied the bombing; his demeanor elicited a visceral impact. Many participants candidly acknowledged that media images influenced their impressions of McVeigh. Survivor Charlie Younger worked for the Oklahoma Department of Transportation and had entered the Murrah Building to attend a meeting on the morning of April 19, 1995; he was on the southeast corner of the building on the fourth floor when the bomb went off. “You develop opinions prior to the trial based on just what you read and see in the media,” he explained, “and I saw [McVeigh] in the media when they arrested him up at Perry and some of his reactions to the crowd and stuff, he was a stone cold person then … that was very influential.” Survivor Richard Williams, who worked for the General Services Administration (GSA) as the assistant manager of the Murrah Building, was in his office on the first floor at the time of the bombing and required immediate surgery for his injuries. Williams related, “Always etched in our minds will be that picture of him coming out of the courthouse in Perry.” These images could elicit anger and hatred; for Younger, “the visual pictures of the bombing and … of him, that tends to intensify your hatred, and your anger and your perception of someone, no doubt.” The power of these images came in part from their repetition. Bud Welch’s daughter, Julie Marie Welch, a Spanish interpreter for the Soc...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• The Oklahoma City Bombing: A Time Line
• Preface
• Part I: Blood Relations
• 1 “A Rude Awakening”: The Origins of the Victim-Offender Relationship
• 2 “He Broke into My Life”: Experiencing the Victim-Offender Relationship
• 3 Opening Up “Closure”: Redefining a Controversial Term
• Part II: Traumas and Trials
• 4 “We Come Here to Remember”: Joining Advocacy Groups
• 5 “God Bless the Media”: Negotiating News Coverage
• 6 “Making Sure Justice Was Served”: Pursuing Accountability
• Part III: The Road to Execution
• 7 Emotion on Trial: Prosecuting Timothy McVeigh
• 8 Reaching Law’s Limits: Trying Terry Nichols and Welcoming the McVeigh Jury to Oklahoma City
• 9 The Storm before the Calm: Awaiting McVeigh’s Execution
• 10 The Weight of an Impossible World: McVeigh Confronts His Public Image
• 11 Done to Death: The Execution and the End of the Victim-Offender Relationship
• Conclusion: McVeigh Memorialized
• Appendix: Methodology
• Notes
• Index
• About the Author