Terry Nichols
Terry Lynn Nichols is an American domestic terrorist who was convicted for conspiring with Timothy McVeigh in the Oklahoma City bombing plot.
Nichols was born in Lapeer, Michigan. He held a variety of short-term jobs, working as a farmer, grain elevator manager, real estate salesman, and ranch hand. He met Timothy McVeigh during a brief stint in the U.S. Army, which ended in 1989 when he requested a hardship discharge after less than one year of service. In 1994 and 1995, he conspired with McVeigh in the planning and preparation of the truck bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, on April 19, 1995. The bombing killed 168 people.
In a federal trial in 1997, Nichols was convicted of conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction and eight counts of involuntary manslaughter for killing federal law enforcement personnel. He was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole after the jury deadlocked on the death penalty. He was also tried in Oklahoma on state charges of murder in connection with the bombing. In 2004, he was convicted of 161 counts of first degree murder, including one count of fetal homicide, first-degree arson, and conspiracy.
As in the federal trial, the state jury deadlocked on imposing the death penalty. In the longest prison sentence ever given to an individual, Nichols was sentenced to 161 consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole, and is incarcerated at ADX Florence, a super maximum security prison near Florence, Colorado. He shared a cell block that is commonly referred to as "Bomber's Row" with Ramzi Yousef and Eric Rudolph, as well as Ted Kaczynski until his transfer in 2021.
Early life
Nichols was born in Lapeer, Michigan. He was raised on a farm, the third of four children of Joyce and Robert Nichols. Growing up, he helped his parents on the farm, learning to operate and maintain the equipment. According to the Denver Post, he also cared for injured birds and animals.Adulthood
Nichols attended Lapeer High School where he took elective classes in crafts and business law. Throughout school, friends characterized him as shy. While in high school he played junior varsity football, wrestled, and was a member of the ski club. His brother James, who self-published a 400-page book about the bombing, has stated that Terry was book smart and good at artwork. He graduated from high school in 1973 with a 3.6 grade point average, with ambitions of becoming a physician.Nichols enrolled at Central Michigan University. He completed one term of 13 credit hours with B grade average. He had Cs in biology, chemistry and trigonometry, a B in literature and an A in archery. In 1974, after another brother, Leslie, was badly burned in a fuel tank explosion on the farm, he offered to give him skin for grafts. He tried farming with his brother James for a while, but they did not get along; he felt his brother was too bossy. Later he moved to Colorado and obtained a license to sell real estate in 1976. Soon after he closed on his first big sale, his mother told him she needed his help on the farm, so he returned to Michigan.
In 1980, Nichols met real estate agent Lana Walsh, a twice-divorced mother of two who was five years his senior. They married and had a son in 1982. During the marriage, Nichols engaged in a succession of part-time and short-term jobs: carpentry work, managing a grain elevator, and selling life insurance and real estate. According to Lana, she was the one with a career; Nichols was a house husband, who spent most of his time at home with the children cooking and gardening.
Nichols had never liked farm life, and in 1988, at the age of 33, he tried to escape it by enlisting in the United States Army. He was sent to Fort Benning next to Columbus, Georgia for basic training. As the oldest man in his platoon, he had difficulty with the physical aspect of the training, and was sometimes called "grandpa" by the other men. However, he was soon made the platoon guide because of his age. Timothy McVeigh was in his platoon, and they quickly became close friends. They had a common background: both men grew up in white rural areas. Both had tried college for a while and had parents who were divorced. They shared political views and interests in gun collecting and the survivalist movement. The two were later stationed together at Fort Riley in Junction City, Kansas, where they met and became friends with their future accomplice, Michael Fortier.
Nichols's wife filed for divorce soon after he joined the Army. Due to a conflict over childcare, he requested and was given a hardship discharge in May 1989 to return home to take care of his son, who was seven years old at the time. As he departed, he told a fellow soldier that he would be starting his own military organization soon, and would have an unlimited supply of weapons.
In 1990, Nichols, 35, married 17-year-old Marife Torres from the Philippines, whom he met through a mail-order bride agency. When she arrived in Michigan several months later, she was pregnant with another man's child. The child died at age two when he suffocated after getting tangled up with a plastic bag from a banana box that was left overnight in his bedroom. Marife initially suspected foul play from either Nichols or McVeigh, but there were no bruises or signs of trauma to the child. The death was ruled accidental. Nichols and Marife had two more children during their marriage. Nichols and Torres frequently visited the Philippines, where she was attending a local college working on a degree in physical therapy. He sometimes traveled to the Philippines alone, while she remained in Kansas.
Nichols left a cryptic note and a package of documents with his ex-wife, Lana Padilla, prior to one of his many visits to the Philippines. Upon returning from the visit to learn that she had prematurely opened a letter instructing her what to do in the event of his death, he made a series of telephone calls to a Cebu City boarding house.
Nichols and Torres divorced after his arrest. Marife returned to the Philippines with the children.
Anti-government views
Nichols' anti-government views developed and grew over the years. Nichols spent most of his adult life in the Lapeer and Sanilac County areas of Michigan where mistrust and resentment of the federal government was common, especially after bank foreclosures of many farms during the 1980s farm crisis. Torres, his ex wife, also helped foster his anti-government views as some Filipinos, especially Filipino Americans, held anti-government views due to their history with colonialism. Neighbors said he attended meetings of anti-government groups, experimented with explosives and got more radical as time went on.Nichols began to adhere to sovereign citizen ideology. In February 1992, he attempted to renounce his US citizenship by writing to the local county clerk in Michigan, stating that the political system was corrupt, and declaring himself a "non resident alien". Several months later, he appeared in court and tried to avoid responsibility for some of his credit card bills, refusing to come before the bench, and shouting at the judge that the government had no jurisdiction over him. On October 19, 1992, he signed another document renouncing his US citizenship. In May 1993, Nichols appeared before a county judge regarding an $8,421 unpaid credit card debt. He also renounced his driver’s license.
McVeigh and Nichols grew closer after McVeigh's discharge from the Army. In December 1991, Nichols invited McVeigh to join him in Michigan and help him out selling military surplus at gun shows. For the next three years, McVeigh stayed with Nichols off and on. On April 19, 1993, Nichols was watching TV with McVeigh at the Nichols' farmhouse in Michigan during the siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. When the compound went up in flames, McVeigh and Nichols were enraged and began to plot revenge on the federal government. In the fall of 1993, Nichols and McVeigh, who were living at the farm, became business partners, selling weapons and military surplus at gun shows. For a while, they lived an itinerant life, following the gun shows from town to town.
Nichols then went to Las Vegas to try working in construction but failed. Next, he went to central Kansas and was hired in March 1994 as a ranch hand in Marion, Kansas. In March 1994, he sent a letter to the clerk of Marion County, Kansas, saying he was not subject to the laws of the U.S. government and asked his employer not to withhold any federal taxes from his check. His employer said Nichols was hard-working but had unusual political views. In the fall of 1994, Nichols quit his job, telling his employer he was going into business with McVeigh.
The bombing
On September 22, 1994, Nichols and McVeigh rented a storage shed and began gathering supplies for the truck bomb. In late September or early October, Nichols and McVeigh stole dynamite and blasting caps from a nearby quarry. Nichols began purchasing large quantities of ammonium nitrate fertilizer and storing it in three rental storage units. Nichols also robbed an Arkansas gun dealer who had befriended him and McVeigh at various gun shows. The men were heavily influenced by the techniques used in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing which involved similar bombs.In February 1995 Nichols bought a small house in Herington, Kansas, with a cash down payment. In March 1995, he bought diesel fuel. On April 14, Nichols gave McVeigh some cash, according to McVeigh. On April 16, Easter Sunday, Nichols and McVeigh drove to Oklahoma City to drop off the getaway car. On April 18, the day before the bombing, Nichols helped McVeigh prepare the truck bomb at a lake near Herington. McVeigh remarked about Nichols's and Fortier's partial withdrawal from the plot, saying they "were men who liked to talk tough, but in the end their bitches and kids ruled." Nichols was at home in Kansas with his family when the bomb went off.
On April 21, 1995, Nichols learned he was wanted for questioning, turned himself in, and consented to a search of his home. The search turned up blasting caps, detonating cords, ground ammonium nitrate, barrels made of plastic similar to fragments found at the bombing site, 33 firearms, anti-government warfare literature, a receipt for ammonium nitrate fertilizer with McVeigh's fingerprints on it, a telephone credit card that McVeigh had used when he was shopping for bomb-making equipment, and a hand-drawn map of downtown Oklahoma City. Nichols was held as a material witness to the bombing until he was charged on May 10.
Investigators also combed the Decker, Michigan, farm of James Nichols where Terry Nichols and McVeigh had stayed intermittently in the months preceding the bombing. James was held in custody on charges that he made small bombs on the farm but was released without charges on May 24, with the judge saying there was no evidence he was a danger to others.