Risk By Nichols Defense Backfires Wife Actually Perfect Prosecution Witness

In a startling turn of events, the young wife of Terry Lynn Nichols became the perfect prosecution witness Thursday in the second Oklahoma City bombing case.

Marife Nichols, 24, frail and frightened, had come to court Wednesday as the final witness for her husband, accused of murder, conspiracy and weapons counts in the bombing.

But Thursday morning, her appearance for the defense appeared to backfire. Prosecutors - who cannot force a husband or wife to take the stand against their spouse but can cross-examine one summoned for the defense - elicited from Marife Nichols the most incriminating testimony yet in her husband’s six-week trial.

She told of a letter that his one-time Army buddy - Timothy J. McVeigh, convicted earlier this year in the bombing - had left for her husband in the days before the deadly explosion at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. Though saying she could not recall most of the letter, she remembered that McVeigh used the words “shake and bake” - a catch-phrase used by Army ordnance experts dealing with explosives.

She said McVeigh often wrote letters to her husband in a “secret code” that she did not understand.

She also testified that just before her husband surrendered to authorities a few days after the April 19, 1995 bombing, he frantically noticed the large fuel meter the government says was used to mix the bomb lying on the floor in his garage. She said he suddenly blurted out, “I need to do something about that!”

And she shot down his alibi that he was at a Fort Riley, Kan., auction on the morning the government says he and McVeigh went to a Kansas fishing lake to mix ammonium nitrate and fuel oil into a bomb they then placed in the back of a Ryder rental truck.

Asked specifically about his whereabouts that morning - the day before a bomb in a Ryder rental truck blew up outside the federal building - Marife Nichols said he was already gone when she awoke. He came home around noon for lunch, and then went to the Fort Riley auction.

That scenario perfectly matches the government’s chain of events - even down to the time he signed in at the auction: 12:50 p.m.

She also was confronted with a television interview in which she admitted her husband not only knew how to make bombs, but even taught his son how to build explosives.

Asked about a black ski mask that her husband allegedly used in a robbery the prosecution says helped pay for the bombing, she said: “He might have had it in Michigan when we were riding the snowmobile.”

Marife Nichols was the 92nd and last defense witness, compared to 98 the government called. Once the defense rested late Thursday morning, the government brought in a few last-minute rebuttal witnesses.

U.S. District Judge Richard P. Matsch has advised the jury of seven women and five men that lawyers for both sides will make their closing arguments on Monday. The Oklahoma City bombing is the single worst act of terrorism in the United States, killing 168 people and injuring more than 500 others.

None of the information provided by Marife Nichols would have emerged if defense attorneys had not summoned her to appear. For those lawyers, it was a tough call.

With their client facing the same sentence that McVeigh received after his conviction - death - the defense thought it wise not to have Terry Nichols testify on his own behalf. But also wanting someone to speak directly on his behalf, they brought his wife into the courtroom, hoping that her testimony would achieve two goals.

They thought she would be able to depict him as a hard-working husband and father who, as lead defense attorney Michael Tigar likes to say, “was building a life, not a bomb.”

But Marife Nichols’ bid to aid her husband may have unraveled during Thursday’s cross-examination by Patrick Ryan, the U.S. attorney in Oklahoma City.

In one of his first questions, Ryan asked: “Can you think of anyone who was a closer friend to Terry Nichols than Timothy McVeigh?”

“No,” she answered.

Five days before the blast, when McVeigh first arrived in central Kansas to rent the truck, her husband suddenly disappeared.

“Did he tell you where he went?” Ryan asked.

“I forgot,” she said.