Timothy James McVeigh executed by lethal injection
'One life for 168'
McVeigh silent as he goes to his death
Karin Grunden and John D. Wright
Tribune-Star
In the end, the Oklahoma City bomber offered no remorse -- only silence as he prepared to die.
Six years, one month and 23 days since he blew up a building and killed 168 people in the worst act of terrorism on American soil, Timothy McVeigh met his own death, a seemingly painless ending after a drug-induced sleep.
McVeigh, 33, remained quiet and expressionless as three drugs moved through his body and ended his life within four minutes of the first injection shortly after 7 a.m. Monday, marking the first federal execution since 1963.
McVeigh wore a white T-shirt, khaki pants and slip-on sneakers into the death chamber on the west grounds of the U.S.. Penitentiary, Terre Haute. His hair appeared short and many who witnessed the death said he appeared thinner than at his trial. A sheet was pulled up tightly to his chest as he lay strapped on the gurney. He died with his eyes open.
In Oklahoma City, 232 survivors and victims' relatives watched a closed-circuit television broadcast of the execution, sent from Terre Haute in a feed encrypted to guard against interception.
Witnesses from the government, media and victims also watched from within the death chamber through viewing glass.
McVeigh did not respond when U.S. Penitentiary, Terre Haute, Warden Harley Lappin told him he could make a final statement.
Instead, McVeigh had earlier handed Lappin a poem he had printed legibly with words slightly slanted to the left. The four stanzas of the 19th century British poem "Invictus" end with "I am the master of my fate, "I am the captain of my soul." The scribbled signature underneath appeared to be McVeigh's.
After the execution, an unmarked vehicle moved McVeigh's body from the penitentiary to a funeral home. McVeigh's father has said his son's wish was to be cremated.
Before his execution, McVeigh asked for last rites of the church -- one of the sacraments of the Catholic church that asks for forgiveness from God in the event of death. Those rites were administered by the prison chaplain, said the Rev. Ron Ashmore, a Terre Haute priest who had visited McVeigh in past months. Ashmore did not visit McVeigh on Monday.
Kevin Mayes, Vigo County chief deputy coroner visited McVeigh about an hour before the execution for a pre-arranged examination.
Mayes asked him if he had been mistreated at prison, and McVeigh's responded by saying no.
McVeigh disrobed and Mays inspected him and found no signs of abuse. Mayes asked McVeigh about his weight loss, and McVeigh replied that he had not been able to retain his former weight while in custody because of the prison food.
Mayes did not remain in the chamber for the execution, instead returning to a trailer on the prison grounds.
After the execution and departure of the witnesses, Mayes and County Coroner Dr. Susan S. Amos were escorted back inside to McVeigh's body for post-mortem examination.
"We were looking for anything out of the ordinary," Amos said, meaning anything that showed McVeigh may have been physically abused in prison. They found nothing.
"The I.V. had gone in with the first stick, I didn't see any other pokes in him," she said. Amos noted that McVeigh appeared thin, but not extraordinarily so.
"He did not look emaciated," she said.
Amos signed McVeigh's death certificate after she returned to the trailer.
Reaction to the killer's death reached worldwide.
President Bush said the execution was an act of justice, not vengeance. "Final punishment of the guilty cannot alone bring peace to the innocent," he said. "It cannot recover the loss or balance the scales, and it is not meant to do so.
"Today every living person who was hurt by the evil done in Oklahoma City can rest in the knowledge that there has been a reckoning."
The execution closed a sad chapter in America's history. Nineteen children were among those killed in the bombing of the Murrah federal building on April 19, 1995. Hundreds of others suffered permanent injury.
U.S. Rep. Brian Kerns, R-Terre Haute, issued a statement from Washington, D.C., commending the professionalism of prison officials and Terre Haute-area police in the days leading up to, and the day of, the execution.
He also wrote of the effect of the execution on Terre Haute.
"We are glad to see this attention come to an end and life here return to a sense of normalcy," Kerns wrote.
"While we will never forget the victims of McVeigh's senseless crime, may God grace our nation with the strength to heal and go forward," Kerns stated.
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