Timothy McVeigh

Timothy James McVeigh was born April 23, 1968. A Gulf War veteran, he became radicalized by antigovernment beliefs and sought revenge against the federal government for the 1993 Waco siege and the 1992 Ruby Ridge incident, particularly targeting agencies like the ATF and FBI for their treatment of private citizens. On April 19, 1995, he masterminded and carried out the Oklahoma City bombing, destroying one-third of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, killing 167 in the blast and one rescue worker afterward, and injuring 684. He defended the attack as a legitimate tactic against tyranny and hoped it would spark a revolution. Arrested shortly after, he was indicted on 160 state offenses and 11 federal offenses including use of a weapon of mass destruction, found guilty on all counts in 1997, and sentenced to death. McVeigh refused appeals and was executed by lethal injection on June 11, 2001, at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana - just over six years after the bombing and the first federal execution since 1963.