If convicted, Nichols could also face the death penalty. The trial–which, like Mc-Veigh’s, will be run by Judge Richard Matsch in Denver-probably won’t get underway for two or three months. But prosecutors say they already have enough evidence to win. Nichols’s defense team won’t make it easy for them. Led by Michael Tigar, one of the country’s top attorneys, they’ll attempt to plant a nagging doubt in the minds of the jurors: is McVeigh’s real accomplice still at large?
Among the strongest evidence against Nichols are blasting caps FBI agents found in his basement. A drill bit discovered in his home matches marks left on a broken padlock at a nearby quarry; explosives had been stolen from the quarry months before the bombing. Agents also found a receipt for 2,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate-with McVeigh’s fingerprint. A phone card traced to Nichols was used to call chemical companies, barrel manufacturers, racing-fuel suppliers and McVeigh’s New York home in the months leading up to the bombing. And Nichols A M says that three days before the blast he drove McVeigh to Junction City, Kans., where McVeigh rented the Ryder truck. McVeigh told him something “big” would happen.
But the case against Nichols is not foolproof. Despite the antigovernment literature andvideos found in Nichols’s house, his lawyers stress there isn’t any evidence he had a motive for the crime. He once denounced his citizenship in a letter to a state agency, but that’s not nearly as powerful as McVeigh’s letter calling federal agents “motherf—ers” who will “swing in the wind.” Nichols bought house insurance and picked up his license plates just before the explo-sion-unusual for a man planning to lay low after an act of: terrorism.
Instead, Nichols’s lawyers will finger another “suspect”: John Doe II. At least: three people remember seeing a stocky, tattooed man with McVeigh when he rented the Ryder truck. Prosecutors say the witnesses are mistaken: that man is actually a soldier who rented a truck the next day. But Tigar will claim John Doe II is still out there- and that he, not Nichols, was the real accomplice. Why didn’t McVeigh’s lawyers emphasize the Doe II defense? They didn’t want to remind jurors that witnesses said McVeigh was with him. But Nichols’s lawyers will emphasize he was far away at the time of the bombing and that he turned himself in to police after hearing his name on television. Still, Nichols will have a hard time convincing a jury that on the day the federal building exploded, he was just another guy fertilizing his lawn.
