Agent Identifies McVeigh as Man Who Rented Truck

DENVER — “That man. Over there. In the blue shirt.”

With those eight words, the owner of a Kansas truck-rental agency identified Timothy J. McVeigh on Friday as the man who rented the Ryder truck that carried the bomb that killed 168 people when it exploded near an Oklahoma City federal building.

Eldon Elliott, who runs Elliott’s Body Shop in Junction City, Kan., provided the testimony most damaging to McVeigh as several witnesses appeared on the stand in his trial here in the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.

Several other witnesses testified, as federal prosecutors sought to paint a picture of the days immediately proceeding the bombing.

Eric McGown, testified that McVeigh, using his real name, checked into Room 25 at the Dreamland Motel in Junction City on Friday, April 14.

Yuhua Bai, owner of the Hunan Palace restaurant in Junction City, said that McVeigh, identifying himself as “Mr. Kling,” ordered a dinner of moo goo gai pan and egg roll on the evening of Saturday, April 15.

And Marife Nichols, the wife of co-defendant Terry L. Nichols, described how her husband abruptly left their home in nearby Herington, Kan., on Easter Sunday, April 16--and, according to the government, accompanied McVeigh to Oklahoma City so he could hide a getaway car there.

“He got out of the house, talked to [his son] Josh a little bit and then got into his pickup truck, and he left,” she said of her husband.

Prosecutors showed the jury photographs taken by a surveillance camera at a McDonald’s restaurant in Junction City on Monday, April 17, that showed McVeigh buying a fruit pie before allegedly taking a 15-minute walk to the Ryder agency.

And then Elliott took the stand Friday afternoon, testifying that the man he saw in the courtroom--McVeigh, in the blue shirt--was the same man who rented the yellow Ryder truck using the alias of “Robert Kling.”

The truck rented for $280.32, including an $80 deposit. The customer said he wanted the 20-foot van to drive to Nebraska. Elliott asked him if he wanted insurance.

“I won’t need it,” the man said. “I am a good driver.”

And as the man pulled away in the truck, Elliott said he told him: “Have a safe trip.”

McVeigh is standing trial in the worst terrorist incident on U.S. soil. If convicted, he could be sentenced to death.

He has pleaded not guilty. And despite the prosecution’s smoothly orchestrated testimony about the days before the bombing, McVeigh’s defense attorney still managed to raise some doubts about the government’s case.

Stephen Jones, his lead attorney, was able to get McGown to acknowledge that he was not sure whether McVeigh showed up at the motel with the Ryder truck on Sunday or Monday. That could be a critical discrepancy because McVeigh could not have had possession of the truck on Sunday if Elliott did not rent it to him until Monday.

Jones also noted for the jury that Elliott remembers McVeigh renting the truck with a second man. For two years, that mystery individual was known only as John Doe No. 2. He has never been found and only recently did the government say that it now believes there was no such person.

Under cross-examination by Jones, Elliott stuck to his story that there was a second man with McVeigh that day. And when Jones asked him if he had tailored his testimony in the hopes of qualifying for the $2-million reward for McVeigh’s arrest, Elliott was blunt and plain-spoken:

“No. I don’t want no reward.”