Oklahoma City Bomb Trial, Part 2: Terry Nichols

Terry Nichols appeared flustered as he strode into the police station in Herington, Kan.

The neatly dressed, new resident of the quiet little town told a dispatcher he'd heard his name mentioned on TV in connection with the horrible bombing two days earlier in Oklahoma City, more than 200 miles south.

What was going on? he asked.

Herington Public Safety Director Dale Kuhn invited Nichols to sit down and offered him a cup of coffee.

Nichols might have been surprised when the FBI rolled up not a half-hour later. He probably didn't know agents already were in town, watching him.

Nichols spent the next nine hours talking before the FBI took him away from Herington. That was more than two years ago. He hasn't been back.

The next day, April 22, in a federal courtroom in Wichita, Kan., Nichols appeared before a magistrate and was called a "material witness" to the bombing that killed 168 people at the federal building in Oklahoma City. Later would come the charge he participated in a bombing plot.

That day in Wichita, Nichols made one of his few public statements, stammering that he really didn't understand what was happening.

"I don't know if I ever will," Nichols said. "It's all a jumble in my brain right now."

Terry Lynn Nichols' 42 years are a study in frustration, his resume a checklist of bright promises stymied by dead ends, false starts and failures. While not quite a drifter, the Michigan native never seemed to get his feet, or his dreams, planted.

This week, - whether by his own design or cruel chance - Nichols will be the second man to face a jury on charges of carrying out what the government says is the most heinous act of terrorism ever committed in the U.S.

Raised outside Lapeer, Mich., Terry is the third son of Joyce and Robert Nichols. Farming was his heritage, but he seemed eager to find a calling away from the land.

"Everybody thought he'd become a doctor, a lawyer or a cop," said Kathy Smith, a schoolmate. "He just wasn't into farming."

Others remember him as a bright student in the Lapeer High Class of 1973, but quiet and shy. His brother James, a year older, was much more outgoing.

Both brothers were liked. They hosted hayrides on their farm during summertime.

The year Terry Nichols graduated, his parents divorced. Terry, James and a younger sister, Suzanne, stayed with their mother, who bought a 160-acre farm for $48,000 just outside Decker, Mich.

Terry had dreams of medicine or the law; he tried college, but only for about a year. He sold insurance for a while, but that, too, failed to hold him.

In the late '70s, he settled in as manager of a co-op grain elevator in Cass City, Mich.

"He was sharp, business-wise, communicated with people very well," said Bob Biebel, a Cass City farmer. "He was one of the most calm people you'd ever want to meet."

Marriage

Nichols attracted Lana Ostentowski, an outgoing, twice-divorced woman with a flourishing real-estate business and two growing sons.

They were married in 1981. Later, James Nichols would marry Lana's sister, Kelly.

Terry and Lana set up housekeeping in Snover, Mich., not far from his mother's farm, which James was now running.

Terry and Lana had a son, Joshua.

At his 10th high-school reunion, Nichols cast himself as a homegrown capitalist and listed his higher education in the reunion program as "the School of Hard Knocks." His declared goal was financial independence within five years.

But a friend, Bob Papovich, said Lana was the more hard-charging, career-oriented spouse, and she left Terry most homemaking duties.

Divorce and the Army

Their life at home grew rocky.

James and Kelly were splitting in a bitter divorce with allegations of child abuse. Terry and Lana followed suit, divorcing on May 23, 1988.

She moved away. He entered the Army the next day.

On May 30, 1988, Nichols assembled with other recruits at Fort Benning, Ga., for basic training. At 33, his age set him apart.

"He was more mature, knew more of the world, so he was given more responsibility," said one of his former sergeants. "He was a platoon guide, which is a top leadership position for a trainee."

Nichols struck up a fast friendship with a lanky recruit from upstate New York, Timothy McVeigh. They had a common interest in weapons. McVeigh also leaned way right politically and kept a copy of "The Turner Diaries," a novel about white supremacists triggering a second American revolution - in part by truck-bombing a federal building.

After basic training, Nichols and McVeigh were assigned to the 1st Infantry Division at Fort Riley, Kan.

There, spit-and-polish McVeigh shot through the ranks to become a sergeant.

Nichols remained a private first class. Like his other pursuits, his military career ended quickly.

A bitter turn

Back in Michigan, Lana Nichols had decided to move to Las Vegas. She wanted to leave behind her three sons: Joshua, and Troy and Barry from her previous marriage. They would need a parent.

On May, 15, 1989, just shy of a year from his enlistment, Nichols was granted a hardship discharge to look after the boys.

From fall 1990 through spring 1991, Nichols was a carpenter for contractor Danny Ulfig, remodeling kitchens and baths.

"He wasn't fast, but he was very meticulous," Ulfig said.

Meanwhile, James Nichols was undergoing a profound transformation. His divorce and child custody fight seemed to embitter him about courts and government.

In the early 1990s, James tried to renounce his citizenship. Terry would follow suit in 1992, telling the clerk in Evergreen Township, Mich., he was surrendering his right to vote because "there is total corruption in the entire political system."

In 1990, Nichols registered with a mail-order-bride service in Cebu City, Philippines, and traveled there to marry Marife Torres in November. She was 17.

Another man's baby

There were legal hassles in bringing her to the United States. When Marife arrived in 1991, she was pregnant with another man's baby.

The marriage, however, seemed to brighten Nichols' life amid his legal tangles over debts, small-time jobs and increasing disaffection with the world around him.

Nichols was sued several times in 1992 over debts of about $40,000. He returned some bills with "dishonored with due cause" written across them and tried to submit his own "certified fractional reserve check" for the debts and jousted with lawyers, maintaining his credit was as good as any government currency.

Reunited with McVeigh

In 1993, Nichols was joined in Michigan by McVeigh, who had left the service after performing heroically in the Persian Gulf War.

They all lived at James Nichols' farm and pitched in with the chores. Marife, however, was unhappy. She would later complain she was practically a servant to the men.

According to federal investigators, the Nichols brothers and McVeigh were honing their anti-government views during this time and fiddling with homemade bombs.

Lana says her former husband taught Joshua how to make bombs on the farm. But James Nichols insists nothing more powerful than an M80 firecracker was ever set off.

By November 1993, Terry and Marife and her 2-year-old child, Jason - Nichols had accepted the boy and given him the family name - were ready to pull up stakes and go west.

On the night of Nov. 22, they put Jason to bed in a room cluttered with half-packed boxes and plastic bags. As the couple slept, the little boy apparently got out of bed, became entangled in a plastic bag and suffocated. Sanilac County, Mich., authorities said it was an accident.

Pulling up stakes

A distraught Nichols and Marife left Michigan a short time later and headed to Las Vegas, where Lana was a real-estate agent. In December 1993, she helped them rent a $550-a-month condominium.

But by February 1994, the couple had moved out.

"He told us he was having trouble finding employment," said real-estate agent Howard Solomon.

A month later, Nichols hired on as a ranch hand in Marion County, Kan., not far from Fort Riley.

When Terry Nichols quit the ranch job in early 1995, he said he was going to sell guns with a friend and make twice as much. The same day, the government contends, Nichols and McVeigh bought a ton of ammonium nitrate fertilizer from a Kansas co-op.

In February, Nichols bought a small, blue two-bedroom house in Herington, not far from Fort Riley. At Nichols' insistence, the house was bought on contract with the seller - no mortgage, no banks.

Twice in early 1995, Nichols came into Pat's Pawn Shop near the fort and slapped down $600 for a Glock .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol.

McVeigh was another Glock buyer. Both men also had access to a storage shed Nichols rented under a false name. Nichols now had a toddler daughter, Nicole, and Marife was pregnant again.

He told people his business was in selling surplus merchandise at weekend gun shows.

"Something big"

On Easter Sunday 1995, Nichols got a call from McVeigh, a sometime partner in surplus trading. He was in Oklahoma City and needed a ride to Kansas.

Nichols told federal authorities he left the dinner table and hit the road. On the return trip, he said, McVeigh told him "something big is going to happen" but was no more specific.

They arrived in Junction City, Kan., where McVeigh was staying, about 1:30 a.m. and parted company. On April 18, the pair met for a 6 a.m. breakfast and, Nichols said, he loaned McVeigh his pickup, which McVeigh returned that night.

The following morning, a Ryder truck rented in Junction City erupted at the Oklahoma City federal building. McVeigh was arrested less than an hour later. After he was linked to the bombing, an all-out search began for any known associates.

A day after the explosion, Terry Nichols visited the rental shed near his home and then the local cable company. He asked for an immediate hookup to watch CNN's coverage of the bombing.

The next day he went to the police.