Editorial: Displaying evil until last breath

Tuesday, June 12, 2001 | 9:27 a.m.

Timothy McVeigh expressed no sorrow just before his execution on Monday. For that matter, witnesses in Oklahoma City, who were able to see the execution in Indiana via a closed-circuit television broadcast, believed that McVeigh acted defiantly. The camera that fixed on McVeigh in the execution chamber was suspended from the ceiling, and witnesses said McVeigh deliberately gazed into the camera with an icy stare. Some said it reminded them of McVeigh's stony, stern expression that was televised worldwide after he was first arrested six years ago. One witness, Gloria Buck, who lost her uncle to the explosion, described McVeigh's demeanor on Monday this way: "It was almost like the devil was inside of him looking through us."

Not only was McVeigh a monster, he also was a coward. Without any warning, McVeigh set off an explosion in 1995 at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City that took the lives of 168 innocent people, including 19 children. Regarding the children, two months ago McVeigh would only say that they were "collateral damage." McVeigh had been angered by the federal government's actions at Waco and Ruby Ridge. But only a deluded or an evil man would kill innocent people in response.

McVeigh's bombing was the worst act of domestic terrorism that this nation has ever seen, but by no stretch was it isolated. Here in Nevada, where anti-government feelings have run high, twice during the 1990s federal buildings were bombed. Fortunately, the Bureau of Land Management office in Reno, and the U.S. Forest Service office in Carson City, both were unoccupied when the bombs exploded. In addition, in 1995 two men were unsuccessful in their attempt to bomb the Internal Revenue Service Building in Reno; they were convicted in 1996 for their botched effort. That deep-seated hostility didn't result in any deaths in this state, but they are chilling reminders that the kind of hatred felt by McVeigh can manifest itself anywhere.

The horror of April 19, 1995, and the grisly pictures of the injured, the maimed and the dead, will stay with us for a long time. What also will stay with us is the haunting image of a cold-blooded killer who showed no remorse. McVeigh may have thought he would die a martyr in a war against the United States, but he was wrong. McVeigh was a mass murderer -- no more, no less.