Netflix Documentary Explores the Oklahoma City Bombing and Its Horrific Details
On April 19, 1995, a truck bomb detonated at a federal building in Oklahoma City. The event resulted in 168 fatalities, including 19 children, marking it as the deadliest terrorist incident on U.S. soil.
Following the April 19, 1995, tragedy, TIME magazine described the local experience with natural disasters: “In Oklahoma, they’re used to twisters, those ugly storms that arrive across the prairie to savage the towns, tear them apart and leave, tossing houses behind them,” TIME wrote in a special issue. “To live there means understanding that nature is not evil, only whimsical. Human nature, on the other hand, proved incomprehensible at 9:02 Wednesday morning.”
Timothy McVeigh, a former Army soldier with anti-government sentiments and a veteran of the Persian Gulf War, was identified as the perpetrator. He received a death sentence and was executed via lethal injection on June 11, 2001.
Three decades later, the documentary Oklahoma City Bombing: American Terror revisits the events of that day. It includes interviews with law enforcement personnel involved in the investigation and with survivors of the attack. The documentary also incorporates excerpts from approximately 60 hours of interviews conducted by journalist Lou Michel with McVeigh while he was incarcerated in a federal prison in Colorado.
How Timothy McVeigh got caught
The documentary features accounts from individuals involved in McVeigh’s processing within the criminal justice system, such as the jailer who processed his fingerprints and the highway patrolman, Charlie Hanger, who stopped McVeigh for a traffic violation unrelated to the bombing, about an hour after the explosion. Hanger recalls McVeigh informing him about possessing a loaded weapon, to which Hanger responded in kind. McVeigh was taken into custody for having a loaded weapon and driving without license plates.
While McVeigh was detained, the FBI gathered evidence linking him to the bombing. This included a fragment from the truck used in the explosion, which had a number that enabled investigators to trace the vehicle back to Elliott’s auto body shop in Junction City, Kansas. Witnesses who had seen him at the shop collaborated with sketch artists to create composites that FBI agents distributed throughout the city. A hotel proprietor recognized the sketch as resembling a recent guest named Timothy McVeigh. Authorities then searched for the name in a database of recent arrestees and swiftly located McVeigh at the Noble County courthouse in Perry, Oklahoma, where he was appearing before a judge.
McVeigh belonged to a radical fringe movement of American extremists angered by a problematic FBI raid in Waco, Texas, which resulted in 76 deaths on April 19, 1993. Choosing the same date two years later for the Oklahoma City bombing was a retaliatory act against the federal government. “Waco started this war. Hopefully Oklahoma would end it,” McVeigh told Michel from prison.
McVeigh drew inspiration from The Turner Diaries, a novel where the protagonist destroys FBI headquarters using a truck laden with explosives similar to those employed in the Oklahoma City bombing. He collaborated with Terry Nichols and Michael Fortier, both Army veterans who had served with McVeigh, to execute the plan. Nichols, who assisted McVeigh in constructing the bomb, received a life sentence without parole. Fortier, aware of the plot, entered a plea agreement in exchange for testifying at McVeigh’s trial and was released in 2006.
In excerpts from Michel’s interviews with McVeigh, he appears to harbor resentment stemming from experiencing bullying during his childhood. “Because I was so short, nobody used to pick me for the teams,” McVeigh explains. “They started calling me Noodle McVeigh because I was thin as a noodle.” Michel says in the documentary, “Guns made him feel secure.”
McVeigh conveyed to Michel that he had no regrets regarding the bombing: “Am I remorseful? No.”
How the bombing continues to impact survivors
The documentary presents heartbreaking testimonies from survivors of the Oklahoma City bombing.
Amy Downs, an employee at the federal office building, was trapped beneath the debris. “I was still in my chair upside down buried in about 10 feet of rubble,” she recalls.
She remembers her right hand protruding from the rubble, and a rescuer attempting to verify if she was alive by asking her the color of her shirt, and when she answered green, a hand gripped hers.
Downs later advanced to the position of CEO at the credit union where she was employed during the bombing.
Antonio Cooper, a six-month-old infant, was among the 168 victims who perished in the daycare center situated at the bombing site. His mother, Renee Moore, who worked in downtown Oklahoma City, visited him daily during her lunch break. The day of the bombing marked the first time she missed seeing him. That night, as rescue operations persisted amid cold and rainy conditions, she remembers thinking, “Lord please don’t let my baby be in that building cold and hungry and hurt. It was the worst night ever.”
Moore remains a resident of Oklahoma City and has since had another son, Carlos Jr. She expresses in the documentary that McVeigh received an easy sentence by being executed in 2001 and deserved to endure prolonged suffering in prison. “He’s taking the easy road out,” she says. “We have to live with this; he doesn’t.”