Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media. On the morning of Saturday, February twenty first,
Speaker 1: two thousand and four, Patricia Norfleet found a box. No
Speaker 1: one can really say for certain how the box got there,
Speaker 1: but there it was, sitting on a little wooden desk
Speaker 1: in the library. As a part time library monitor at
Speaker 1: the public Library in Scottsdale, Arizona's Civic Center, she was
Speaker 1: making her regular rounds. It was her job to make
Speaker 1: sure people weren't eating or talking on their phones, and
Speaker 1: that's when she spot at the box. The librarian at
Speaker 1: the circulation desk that morning recognized the name on the box.
Speaker 1: It was addressed to a city employee, but he didn't
Speaker 1: work in the library. Don Logan was the director of
Speaker 1: the city's Office of Diversity and Dialogue. Librarians are busy people,
Speaker 1: and they aren't responsible for your lost mail, so the
Speaker 1: package was set aside. Maybe Don left it there and
Speaker 1: he'd come back for it. The package sat behind the
Speaker 1: circulation desk for a few days before another library employee
Speaker 1: thought to pop it into the city's inner office mail system. Finally,
Speaker 1: five days after the box appeared on a desk in
Speaker 1: the library, it found its way into the hands of
Speaker 1: the man whose name was on the box. Don Logan
Speaker 1: had just returned from a quick lunch at his favorite
Speaker 1: Mexican restaurant on February twenty six, two thousand and four.
Speaker 1: A colleague told him he had a package in the
Speaker 1: mail room. Someone joked that it was probably a bomb,
Speaker 1: and everyone had a good laugh, but he gave it
Speaker 1: a good shake anyway. It was oddly light for its size,
Speaker 1: and it was sealed with more tape than really seemed necessary.
Speaker 1: His administrative assistant, Ranita, was on the phone, but she
Speaker 1: didn't miss a beat. She passed her boss a pair
Speaker 1: of scissors without even looking up from her work. As
Speaker 1: he ran the blade of the scissors down the seam
Speaker 1: on one side of the box, he thought for a
Speaker 1: second about the laugh he'd just shared with his colleagues.
Speaker 1: But what a silly idea. Why are you being so paranoid?
Speaker 1: He asked himself. Who would send you a bomb? And
Speaker 1: then he heard a loud and the room went dark.
Speaker 1: It didn't take long for investigators to zero in on
Speaker 1: a suspect, but it would be eight years before an
Speaker 1: ATF informant took the stand to tell a jury about
Speaker 1: the years she'd spent getting close to that bomber. Dennis
Speaker 1: Mahon built that bomb, But this chapter of our bomber
Speaker 1: story starts with a bomb he probably didn't make. I'm
Speaker 1: Molly Coner, and this is weird, little guys. At eight
Speaker 1: fifty seven am on the morning of April nineteenth, nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety five, a rented Yellow Rider truck parked outside the
Speaker 1: Alpha Pi Mura Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City. The
Speaker 1: driver got out, locked the truck, and walked away. At
Speaker 1: nine oh two, the bomb went off. The truck contained
Speaker 1: nearly five thousand pounds of explosive material. Seismometers at a
Speaker 1: nearby science museum registered what looked like an earthquake, measuring
Speaker 1: three point zero on the Richter scale. In just seconds,
Speaker 1: the northern portion of the building collapsed completely. One hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty eight people were killed, nineteen of them were children.
Speaker 1: One was just three months old. The building housed regional
Speaker 1: offices for a number of federal government agencies, housing in
Speaker 1: Urban Development, Veterans Affairs, Social Security Administration, the DEA at ATF,
Speaker 1: and several military recruiting offices, but the truck had parked
Speaker 1: directly under the building stake care center. The man responsible
Speaker 1: was apprehended rather quickly and entirely by accident. Timothy McVeigh
Speaker 1: was on his way out of town and a getaway
Speaker 1: car he'd stashed nearby before the bombing when he was
Speaker 1: pulled over by a state trooper. The car he was
Speaker 1: driving didn't have a license plate. During the traffic stop,
Speaker 1: the trooper noticed a bulge in his jacket concealing a
Speaker 1: loaded firearm. He didn't have a valid permit. For the
Speaker 1: rest of his story, you probably already know. He was
Speaker 1: convicted and sentenced to death. He was executed by lethal
Speaker 1: injection on June eleventh, two thousand and one. But this
Speaker 1: isn't a story about Timothy McVeigh, not really, maybe another day.
Speaker 1: This is still a story about Dennis Mayhon, and it's
Speaker 1: a story that gets very murky for a year or
Speaker 1: two in the mid nineties. When we last left Dennis Mayhon,
Speaker 1: it was the summer of nineteen nine four. He had
Speaker 1: just struck up a relationship with Carol Howe, a woman
Speaker 1: twenty years his junior. She was the daughter of a
Speaker 1: wealthy business man and had once been a debutante in Tulsa.
Speaker 1: But now that she was sporting a giant swastika tattoo
Speaker 1: on her arm. She was more at home on paramilitary
Speaker 1: compounds than at ladies luncheons. In March of nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 1: she and her husband were getting drunk in Tulsa's Chandler
Speaker 1: Park when she broke bones in both of her feet
Speaker 1: jumping off a piece of scenery set up for a
Speaker 1: passion play that was put on every year by the
Speaker 1: local Catholic church. For years, Carol would tell people she'd
Speaker 1: been injured by a gang of black men. It was
Speaker 1: a better origin story, and the crowd she was hoping
Speaker 1: to impress was eager to believe a tale of a beautiful,
Speaker 1: young white woman coming to harm at the hands of
Speaker 1: vicious black men. And as she lay in bed convalescing,
Speaker 1: she started calling in to the dial E racist hotline
Speaker 1: run by Dennis Mayhon. Every day she listened to a
Speaker 1: new recording of Dennis ranting and raving about whatever was
Speaker 1: on his mind, scourge of immigration and Jewish influence on society,
Speaker 1: violent crime committed by black people, and the need for
Speaker 1: white men to stand up. Soon, she wasn't just listening
Speaker 1: to Dennis's recordings. They met at a restaurant later that
Speaker 1: spring and struck up a relationship. Everything that follows is
Speaker 1: a riddle. I won't tell you what's true because I can't.
Speaker 1: I can only tell you what was offered as truth
Speaker 1: and by whom. Sometimes it's possible to speculate as to
Speaker 1: why someone offered up a particular version of the truth.
Speaker 1: Are they protecting themselves or someone else? Are they wielding
Speaker 1: their words as a weapon hoping to incriminate an enemy?
Speaker 1: Are they covering up another darker truth? Are they misremembering
Speaker 1: or confused? Are they repeating a lie that they sincerely believe?
Speaker 1: Or have they simply lost their minds? The two competing
Speaker 1: truths I most often compare are those offered up in
Speaker 1: a federal court record. There is a prosecutor's presentation of
Speaker 1: evidence and a defense attorney's argument against it. In a
Speaker 1: court of law, the judge and jury make their findings,
Speaker 1: and at the end of a trial we have something
Speaker 1: that is legally true, whether it's the whole truth or
Speaker 1: even true at all in any other sense. We have
Speaker 1: the judicial systems stamp of approval on one version of
Speaker 1: the truth. And we kind of have that here because
Speaker 1: I'll spoil the end now in the interests of full transparency,
Speaker 1: as far as a court of law has weighed in
Speaker 1: on the matter, Dennis Mayhon had nothing to do with
Speaker 1: the Oklahoma City bombing. Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols alone
Speaker 1: were responsible. The Department of Justice wrote in a letter
Speaker 1: to Timothy mcvay's defense attorney that Dennis Mayhon was never
Speaker 1: a subject of their investigation into the bombing. When speaking
Speaker 1: to the press, Dennis himself has always denied any involvement,
Speaker 1: although when faced with a grand jury, he reportedly invoked
Speaker 1: his Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination. As I research
Speaker 1: my weird little guys, I often find myself navigating the
Speaker 1: stories of unreliable narrators. I do my best to take
Speaker 1: in every version of a story and do my own
Speaker 1: primary source research on the surrounding facts, and offer you
Speaker 1: these competing versions of the truth with some commentary. My
Speaker 1: goal on this show is not to give you something
Speaker 1: that I can guarantee to be an objective truth, to
Speaker 1: the extent that such a thing exists, but rather to
Speaker 1: present you a thoroughly researched synthesis of those mismatched truths
Speaker 1: for you to consider. But I'm not sure we can
Speaker 1: even get that far this time, too many researchers have
Speaker 1: gone mad trying to sift for truths in the rubble
Speaker 1: of the Alpha Pi Mura building. But with that said,
Speaker 1: let's rejoin Carol and Dennis in nineteen ninety four. There
Speaker 1: are some things every one can agree on. Carol and
Speaker 1: Dennis spent a lot of time together that summer, and
Speaker 1: by June of nineteen ninety four, she began accompanying him
Speaker 1: on trips out to Ellaheim City, a Christian identity compound
Speaker 1: in Oklahoma near the Arkansas border. The four hundred acre
Speaker 1: community was led by a Christian identity minister named Robert Miller,
Speaker 1: who settled there in nineteen seventy three. An article published
Speaker 1: in The Oklahoma in nineteen ninety three puts the population
Speaker 1: in Elleheim City around seventy five residents at the time.
Speaker 1: The Peace quotes Miller extensively, and he paints the small
Speaker 1: community as a quiet, peaceful group of religious separatists. He
Speaker 1: downplays his connections to the Covenant, the Sword and the
Speaker 1: Arm of the Lord, a Christian identity militia compound in
Speaker 1: Missouri that was rated by federal authorities in nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 1: Miller says there was quote not a long or profound
Speaker 1: connection between the two groups. He fails to mention that
Speaker 1: he had been CSA leader James Ellison's spiritual adviser, or
Speaker 1: that when Ellison declared himself King James of the Ozarks
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty two, it had been Miller who anointed
Speaker 1: Ellison's head with holy oils in a bizarre religious ceremony,
Speaker 1: or that it was Miller who was called in to
Speaker 1: negotiate Ellison's surrender and the ATF besieged his compound in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five, or that Allison was one of several
Speaker 1: residents of the CSA compound who would later settle in
Speaker 1: Elaheim City, or that Ellison married Miller's granddaughter, or that
Speaker 1: Miller had testified as a character witness for Richard Snell,
Speaker 1: a CSA member sentenced to death for the murder of
Speaker 1: a state trooper. So I'm not sure what he means
Speaker 1: when he says he has no connection to the Covenant
Speaker 1: the sword in the arm of the Lord, and I
Speaker 1: think you need to take his description of a quiet
Speaker 1: community of prayerful families with some skepticism. There were quite
Speaker 1: a few residents of Eloaheim City in the nineteen eighties
Speaker 1: and nineties whose stories would take us too far from
Speaker 1: the one we're following today, So suffice it to say
Speaker 1: for now that we'll be revisiting that place. But in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four, Dennis Mayhon kept an old airstream trailer
Speaker 1: on the property, and he would stay there from time
Speaker 1: to time while maintaining his full time residence in Tulsa.
Speaker 1: It wasn't long after Carol Howe got close to Dennis
Speaker 1: Mayhon that their relationship soured. By most accounts, Dennis raped her.
Speaker 1: She said that the experience left her terrified, and she
Speaker 1: fled to her parents' house to lay low for a
Speaker 1: few weeks, but Dennis wouldn't leave her alone. After repeated
Speaker 1: threatening phone calls and more than one unwanted visit, she
Speaker 1: realized he wasn't going to take no for an answer.
Speaker 1: On August twenty third, she went to a courthouse in
Speaker 1: Tulsa to get a restraining order against him. The petition
Speaker 1: must have caught the eye of Angela Fine, an agent
Speaker 1: with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, because by
Speaker 1: the end of the week, Carol Howe was on the
Speaker 1: ATF payroll as a federal informant. The hearing to determine
Speaker 1: if Carol Howe's restraining order against Dennis Mahon would be granted,
Speaker 1: was held on September sixth, nineteen ninety four, but Carol
Speaker 1: wasn't there and the judge dismissed her petition. I can't
Speaker 1: tell you exactly where Carol was instead of the courthouse
Speaker 1: that day. It's possible that she was at Elheim City
Speaker 1: that week. Where she was exactly on any given day
Speaker 1: in particular wouldn't matter all too much if not for
Speaker 1: the fact that these sources that place her there in
Speaker 1: the first week of September put her on the compound's
Speaker 1: gun range with Dennis and Timothy McVeigh, and that would
Speaker 1: be an incredible revelation if we had a good source
Speaker 1: for it. I don't want to harp on the problem
Speaker 1: of the unreliable narrator, but I think this anecdote in
Speaker 1: particular highlights the problem with this story. Because I read
Speaker 1: an unhealthy number of books about the events leading up
Speaker 1: to the Oklahoma City bombing. I read books written by professors, lawyers, criminals, journalists,
Speaker 1: and conspiracy theorists. Some are well footnoted and others count
Speaker 1: on you to just trust the author's account. A claim
Speaker 1: that's repeated across multiple sources gives it the appearance of validity,
Speaker 1: but sometimes, if you look closely at those footnotes, it
Speaker 1: all leads back to the same bad source, and this
Speaker 1: story is one of those. Criminology professor Mark Hamm credits
Speaker 1: this anecdote to an unnamed source, and his claim is
Speaker 1: repeated in a later book by prolific true crime author
Speaker 1: Michael Newton, and the story also appears in a book
Speaker 1: written by David Paul Hammer. Hammer is a convicted murderer
Speaker 1: who befriended McVeigh when they were housed in neighboring cells
Speaker 1: on death Row, and Hammer claims McVeigh told him this
Speaker 1: story himself. The point I'm circling around here, I guess,
Speaker 1: is that extensive research doesn't always mean you've found something valuable.
Speaker 1: I found this claim in three separate books, and it's
Speaker 1: a very intriguing anecdote, and it would be very satisfying
Speaker 1: to believe, but I don't. Timothy McVay maintained until his
Speaker 1: death that he'd never met Dennis Mahon. Dennis has told
Speaker 1: a variety of stories, mostly he says they never met.
Speaker 1: He told mcvay's defense attorney that they'd never met, and
Speaker 1: court filings in mcvay's case show there was no evidence
Speaker 1: that they had. He did tell journalist John Ronson that
Speaker 1: they'd met once, a man he shared a cell with
Speaker 1: in two thousand and nine claims Dennis told him that
Speaker 1: he'd once sold Timothy mcveay some guns and a copy
Speaker 1: of the Anarchist Cookbook. He told several grand juries nothing
Speaker 1: at all. So I suppose we should stick with the
Speaker 1: pieces of this timeline that I am more inclined to believe.
Speaker 1: And from the end of August nineteen ninety four until
Speaker 1: March of nineteen ninety five, Carol Howe met regularly with
Speaker 1: her ATF handlers. She passed them information, they wrote reports,
Speaker 1: and she spent most weekends at Elheim City with Dennis.
Speaker 1: Something I think is important to remember here is that
Speaker 1: the ATF hired Carol Howe as part of their investigation
Speaker 1: into Dennis Mayhon and White Arian resistance. The copies of
Speaker 1: Agent Finley's reports that I've been able to see for
Speaker 1: myself show that quite clearly it's a standard piece of
Speaker 1: government paperwork, and there's boxes to fill out at the top.
Speaker 1: In the box labeled title of investigation. She's typed White
Speaker 1: Aryan Resistance and under monitored investigation information she entered firearms violations.
Speaker 1: So Agent Finley is looking into White Aryan Resistance and
Speaker 1: the possibility that its members have illegal guns. This wasn't
Speaker 1: an investigation into Elleheim City, and it wasn't an investigation
Speaker 1: into Andrea Strasmeier, that mysterious German who is head of
Speaker 1: security at the compound and sometimes stayed at Dennis's house.
Speaker 1: The AHF agents who met with Carol Howe weren't investigating
Speaker 1: Timothy McVeigh, and they certainly weren't investigating the Oklahoma City
Speaker 1: bombing because that hadn't happened yet. But Dennis had been
Speaker 1: bragging for years about making bombs. He claims to have
Speaker 1: carried out a string of bombing in Florida, Michigan, and
Speaker 1: Oklahoma during his underground years from nineteen eighty two to
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty seven. He always stops short of specifics, but
Speaker 1: he's told reporters and federal informants alike that he'd bombed
Speaker 1: abortion clinics, Jewish community centers, and government office buildings during
Speaker 1: those years. It's harder than you might think to find
Speaker 1: historical record of an unsolved bombing in an unspecified place
Speaker 1: at an unspecified time. But you know, I lost a
Speaker 1: few days of my life trying to figure it out anyway.
Speaker 1: Mainly I was looking for any evidence that a five
Speaker 1: hundred pound ammonium nitrate bomb ever exploded under a truck
Speaker 1: in Michigan, because that's something Carol Howe told her handlers
Speaker 1: Dennis claimed to have done, and that's a big enough
Speaker 1: bomb that it would have been in the news. I
Speaker 1: tried pretty hard, and I couldn't find anything matching that description,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't mean it didn't happen. There was what
Speaker 1: seemed at first to be a pretty promising lead when
Speaker 1: I found some news stories about a string of pipe
Speaker 1: bombs left in public places throughout the Midwest in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty four, but the man responsible was caught when he
Speaker 1: accidentally detonated one in his own car. His motivations were inscrutable,
Speaker 1: and he was ultimately diagnosed with schizophrenia and confined to
Speaker 1: a state mental hospital. So those bombs weren't Denisis. I
Speaker 1: did find some stories from the mid eighties in Michigan
Speaker 1: about a pipe bomb left at a Jewish community center
Speaker 1: in West Bloomfield and a bomb in a Detroit abortion
Speaker 1: clinic that didn't detonate, and both of those appear to
Speaker 1: have gone unsolved, but who knows, we probably never will.
Speaker 1: Andrew Gumbel and Roger C. Charles's twenty twelve book on
Speaker 1: the Oklahoma City bombing is the only source I found
Speaker 1: that highlights the fact that the the ATF had been
Speaker 1: actively investigating Dennis Mayhon for a decade by the time
Speaker 1: Carol Howe fell into their lap, and they must have
Speaker 1: been keeping a pretty close eye on him, because within
Speaker 1: a day of Carol Howe filing that petition for a
Speaker 1: restraining order against him, there they were with an offer,
Speaker 1: help us take him down. ATF Agent ANGELA. Finley's first
Speaker 1: report summarizing information provided by Carol Howe is dated August thirtieth,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four, just a few days after Carol signed
Speaker 1: on as an informant. Finley wrote in that report, War
Speaker 1: has approximately twenty to twenty five active, fifty non active,
Speaker 1: and two hundred underground members. Locally, the primary training location
Speaker 1: is called Eloheim City. Mayhan has made numerous statements regarding
Speaker 1: the conversion of firearms into fully automatic weapons, the manufacturer
Speaker 1: and use of silencers, and the manufacturer and use of
Speaker 1: explosive devices. Mayhan and his organization are preparing for a
Speaker 1: race war and war with the govern in the near future,
Speaker 1: and it is believed that they are rapidly stockpiling weapons.
Speaker 1: Over the next few months, Carol and Dennis spent more
Speaker 1: and more time together at Eloheim City, with weekend trips
Speaker 1: stretching into weeks long stays on the compound. They detonated
Speaker 1: his home made grenades together in the woods, and she
Speaker 1: pocketed the fragments, handing them over to the ATF as evidence.
Speaker 1: In one report that fall, agent Finlay wrote that Carol
Speaker 1: had reported Mayhan has talked with Carol about targeting federal
Speaker 1: installations for destruction through bombings, such as the IRS Building,
Speaker 1: the Tulsa Federal Building, and the Oklahoma City Federal Building.
Speaker 1: Mayhan has also discussed a plan for destroying power lines
Speaker 1: from Oklahoma City to Catoosa, Oklahoma, during the hottest time
Speaker 1: of summer. Mayhon reasons this will create a panic and
Speaker 1: without air conditioning, mass race riots would begin. I guess
Speaker 1: accelerationist thinking really hasn't evolved much in thirty years, because
Speaker 1: that's Dennis in nineteen ninety four thinking. He can start
Speaker 1: the race war by turning out the lights, and today's
Speaker 1: neo Nazis are still trying to do it. Carol also
Speaker 1: told the agents that a man named Andy often spoke
Speaker 1: with Dennis about the need for real violence. He was
Speaker 1: talking about assassinations, mass shootings, and bombings. Carol said this
Speaker 1: Andy guy was saying things like it's time to stop
Speaker 1: talking and start blowing things up. When she met with
Speaker 1: Agent Finley again in January of nineteen ninety five, after
Speaker 1: spending most of December on the compound, Carol had more
Speaker 1: information about Andy. He was Andrea Strossmeyer, Eloheim City's head
Speaker 1: of security. Strassmeyer was a German national who was in
Speaker 1: the United States illegally, which you might think would make
Speaker 1: it difficult for him to purchase large quantities of firearms,
Speaker 1: but he seemed to manage to find no one was
Speaker 1: thinking anything at all about Timothy McVay in January of
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety five, but Strasmeyer would later admit that he
Speaker 1: had met McVeagh at a gun show in Tulsa in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety three. When Strasmeyer finally spoke to the FBI
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety six, he couldn't recall exactly what the
Speaker 1: date had been, but he said it must have been
Speaker 1: after February twenty eighth and before April nineteenth, because he
Speaker 1: remembered that they'd discussed the ongoing siege at the Branch
Speaker 1: Davidian Compound at Waco, Texas. It might refresh Strasmeyer's recollection
Speaker 1: to know that the Wannamaker Gun and Knife show was
Speaker 1: held on April third and fourth in nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 1: which means McVeigh would have just come from Waco. He'd
Speaker 1: been interviewed by a journalism student from Southern Methodist University
Speaker 1: just outside a police checkpoint at the Branch Davidian Compound
Speaker 1: on March thirtieth. And here again we have mismatched and
Speaker 1: poorly remembered facts. Strasmeyer can't recall who he'd gone to
Speaker 1: Tulsa with that weekend, and he told the FBI he
Speaker 1: didn't remember giving McVay his busy card, But this is
Speaker 1: one of those things I can tell you for sure
Speaker 1: he did. Strasmeyer's Eloheim City business card was in mcvay's
Speaker 1: possession when he was arrested. He'd called the number on
Speaker 1: the card a few minutes before the bomb went off.
Speaker 1: On the morning of April nineteenth at Elloheim City, a
Speaker 1: woman answered the phone. She says the man was looking
Speaker 1: for Andy, that he'd met him at a gun show
Speaker 1: and wanted to come visit. The woman told him only
Speaker 1: that Andy was out at the moment and he'd have
Speaker 1: to call back. Whether Dennis Mayhun was present when Strasmeyer
Speaker 1: met mcphay two years before the bombing is another one
Speaker 1: of those things we'll never know. We do know that
Speaker 1: Strasmeyer stayed at Dennis's house when he was in the
Speaker 1: city buying guns, but there aren't any clear, credible claims
Speaker 1: that Dennis was standing there with Strasmeyer when he handed
Speaker 1: McVay that Eloheim City business card and told him he
Speaker 1: could stop any time. It's very likely that Dennis was
Speaker 1: somewhere at the gun show. We know he and his
Speaker 1: brother were regulars at the Tulsa Gun Show as both
Speaker 1: shoppers and vendors. But even in nineteen ninety three, the
Speaker 1: Wannamaker Gun and Knife Show was billed as the world's
Speaker 1: largest gun show right up in the Tulsa Sentinel that
Speaker 1: year boasts over twenty seven hundred vendors spread out over
Speaker 1: a seven acre show floor. David Paul Hammer, mcveig's friend
Speaker 1: from death Row, claims in his book that McVeigh actually
Speaker 1: went back to Dennis's house with Strasmeyer that night, and
Speaker 1: that the three men talked about bombs, but that probably
Speaker 1: didn't happen. But when Carol Howe was talking to Agent
Speaker 1: Finley in January of nineteen ninety five, she didn't know
Speaker 1: anything about Timothy mcveay or that he'd already met Andrea Strossmeyer.
Speaker 1: They only knew that this heavily armed German was talking
Speaker 1: about bombs. He was talking up blowing up federal buildings.
Speaker 1: Carol also reported during that meeting that Robert Miller, the
Speaker 1: leader at the compound, had been giving increasingly violent sermons,
Speaker 1: urging his congregants to begin preparing for war against the government.
Speaker 1: And I read that report, but I have not read
Speaker 1: for myself the ATF report from the meeting. When Carol
Speaker 1: Howe told her handlers that she had accompanied Mahon and
Speaker 1: Strasmeier on one of their visits to Oklahoma City, she
Speaker 1: believed they were scouting targets for the bombings they were
Speaker 1: always talking about. Investigative journalist James Ridgway wrote in two
Speaker 1: thousand and one that Carol Howe's own handwritten notes about
Speaker 1: the information she collected for the ATF included what looks
Speaker 1: to be an ominous misspelling. She had written down Morrow
Speaker 1: building spelled Morrow. Perhaps she'd heard Murrah m u r
Speaker 1: r ah and misunders stood. Stephen Jones, the attorney appointed
Speaker 1: to represent McVeigh, wrote in his book that Agent Finley's
Speaker 1: monthly report for December, which is when Carol reportedly told
Speaker 1: Finley that Mayhon Strassmeyer had discussed the Murrah Building, was
Speaker 1: missing from the ATF archives. I do want to take
Speaker 1: a moment here to reorient us, to sort of ground
Speaker 1: us a little bit, because it's easy to go off
Speaker 1: the deep end and end up a raving conspiracy theorist.
Speaker 1: There's so many versions of the truth that you can
Speaker 1: find enough proof to convince yourself of anything you want,
Speaker 1: and it's easy to see connections that aren't quite there.
Speaker 1: Because it's worthwhile to note here that the Murror Building
Speaker 1: had been a target before, it's not actually surprising that
Speaker 1: it would have been a topic of idle chatter on
Speaker 1: the compound a decade earlier. Members of the Covenant the
Speaker 1: Sword of the Arm of the Lord had planned to
Speaker 1: detonate a bomb at the Murrah Building, but the plan
Speaker 1: fell apart before they could carry it out, and the
Speaker 1: group itself fell apart not long after when the compound
Speaker 1: was rated. But there were former members of the Covenant,
Speaker 1: the Sword and the Arm of the Lord living in
Speaker 1: Ellawhein City, and there's a lot of cross pollination of
Speaker 1: ideas and relationships. So as tempting as it is to
Speaker 1: see the possibility of that name being mentioned as some
Speaker 1: kind of proof that How had reported specific prior knowledge
Speaker 1: of what was to come, it may be more smoke
Speaker 1: than substance. It sounds like a perfect one to one connection,
Speaker 1: But in reality, a lot of people were talking about
Speaker 1: blowing up a lot of things, and it's not that
Speaker 1: surprising that more than one of them thought of that
Speaker 1: building in particular. I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I'm not
Speaker 1: making any claims here about alternative versions of the truth.
Speaker 1: But we only have these competing truths. In March of
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety five, just a month before the bombing, the
Speaker 1: ATF deactivated Carol Howe as an informant. In later testimony,
Speaker 1: Agent Finley would say that how had become mentally unstable
Speaker 1: and had been associating with skinheads in her personal life
Speaker 1: outside of her work for the government. Testimony from Finley supervisor, though,
Speaker 1: indicates that how was seen as an effective, sincere, and
Speaker 1: honest informant. A former ATF deputy director reviewed her file
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety seven and saw no evidence of deception, exaggeration,
Speaker 1: or fabrication. Findley herself signed her name to a memo
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety six saying that she'd known how for
Speaker 1: two years and never found her to be overly paranoid,
Speaker 1: and they couldn't have been all that concerned that Carol
Speaker 1: was unreliable in nineteen ninety five because when Carol Howe
Speaker 1: called Agent Finley the day after the bombing, a month
Speaker 1: after they'd cut her loose, they called her into the
Speaker 1: office and reactivated her. They wanted her to get Dennis
Speaker 1: on the phone in the presence of agents from the
Speaker 1: FBI and the ATF. She tried to reach him, but
Speaker 1: he didn't pick up. Years after the bombing, Bob Rix,
Speaker 1: the agent in charge of the FBI's Oklahoma City Field office,
Speaker 1: was asked why Dennis Mahon was never questioned about his
Speaker 1: threats to blow up a federal building in Oklahoma City.
Speaker 1: His answer was only I don't know. That question was
Speaker 1: posed to him by Andrew Gumble, whose book Oklahoma City,
Speaker 1: What the Investigation Missed and Why It Still Matters focuses
Speaker 1: primarily on the failures of various government agencies in the
Speaker 1: aftermath and investigation of the bombing, and the book explores
Speaker 1: the idea that there was an interagency turf war when
Speaker 1: it came to Elohim City. The ATF was still suffering
Speaker 1: the damage to their reputation after the way things went
Speaker 1: down at Ruby Ridge in nineteen ninety and Waco in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety three, and more than a few of the
Speaker 1: FBI agents Gumbel spoke to believed that the ATF had
Speaker 1: been holding back when it came to sharing information with them,
Speaker 1: particularly about Elaheim City. But even if you take Oklahoma
Speaker 1: City out of this, even if you eliminate all the
Speaker 1: complication of these theories about a wider conspiracy leading up
Speaker 1: to the bombing, even if imagine for a moment that
Speaker 1: bombing had never happened at all, the ATF still had
Speaker 1: credible information that a prominent militant white supremacist leader was
Speaker 1: making and detonating explosive devices. They had physical evidence, They
Speaker 1: had hours of tape from their informant about this man
Speaker 1: illegally modifying guns and stockpiling weapons. They had reason to
Speaker 1: believe he might be plotting a bombing of some kind,
Speaker 1: and every reason to believe he knew how to do
Speaker 1: it because they'd been investigating him for years, but they
Speaker 1: never brought him in. Tommy Whitman, who is the Assistant
Speaker 1: Special Agent in charge of the ATFS Dallas Field office
Speaker 1: who oversaw this investigation, later told Gumbel quote, the thinking was,
Speaker 1: we don't want to talk to Mahon because if we did,
Speaker 1: he'd know we were super interested in him, and he
Speaker 1: might change his activities. But of course he already knew
Speaker 1: we were interested. The thinking was, also, we don't know
Speaker 1: if the FBI or another agency may be looking at him,
Speaker 1: so we won't If we make an inquiry, they'll want
Speaker 1: to know what we know, and we don't want others
Speaker 1: to know because they'll know we're interested and won't share
Speaker 1: information with us. End quote. So in the end, the
Speaker 1: explanation that fits the facts best, based on later revelations
Speaker 1: from the FBI and ATF, is that the ATF was
Speaker 1: just gun shy about another confrontation with armed separatists. They
Speaker 1: didn't want another Waco, they didn't want another Ruby Ridge,
Speaker 1: and they didn't want to move on Elaheim City. And
Speaker 1: more than anything else, they didn't want to share what
Speaker 1: they had with the FBI. The ATF was negligent. I'm
Speaker 1: confident in that I can say that with unshakable certainty.
Speaker 1: This was negligent. It was incompetent, It was irresponsible, it
Speaker 1: was unforgivable. They had credible information that Dennis Mahon had
Speaker 1: grenades and automatic weapons. They knew of absolute certainty that
Speaker 1: Andrea Strossmeier was in the country illegally and was illegally
Speaker 1: purchasing guns by the crate full. Both of those men
Speaker 1: could have been and should have been arrested. Could that
Speaker 1: have been accomplished without a Waco style siege at Eloheem City.
Speaker 1: That's hard to say. I think so, but I guess
Speaker 1: they didn't. But would that have prevented the Oklahoma City bombing?
Speaker 1: That's the more important question, and I think the answer
Speaker 1: is no. Because for as many unanswered questions as there
Speaker 1: still are as many maddening possibilities, there are of these
Speaker 1: connections that no one can quite prove. I don't think
Speaker 1: it would have. The information Carol Howe provided to the
Speaker 1: government can be divided into two categories, things she said
Speaker 1: before April nineteen ninety five and things she said after
Speaker 1: April nineteen ninety five. Because the majority of what she
Speaker 1: said prior to the bombing is credible and consistent and
Speaker 1: should have led to action being taken. Everything that comes
Speaker 1: after that is a little squishier. One of those later
Speaker 1: statements was her testimony at the trial of Terry Nichols
Speaker 1: mcvay's accomplice in nineteen ninety seven. She said under oath
Speaker 1: that in the fall of nineteen ninety four, she was
Speaker 1: with Dennis when he took a phone call. She says
Speaker 1: she heard Dennis say tim tuttle, tuttle, tuttle, tuttle and laugh. Now,
Speaker 1: in fairness to Carol, she may not have reported that
Speaker 1: conversation to the ATF at the time, because why would
Speaker 1: she think it was significant. Tim Tuttle was an alias
Speaker 1: used at that time by Timothy McVeigh. But in fairness
Speaker 1: to those who think Carol would lie under oath, she
Speaker 1: did also testify that day that she'd been injured in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four by three young black men, not her
Speaker 1: own drunken lack of judgment in a public park, So
Speaker 1: hard to say. As for Tim Tuttle, if you remember
Speaker 1: a few episodes ago, I said, the only issue that
Speaker 1: I ever found of Dennis Mayhon's White Beret newsletter from
Speaker 1: the nineties was one that his twin brother Daniel had
Speaker 1: provided to a neo Nazi group who is trying to
Speaker 1: archive right wing extremist history. So in twenty twenty two
Speaker 1: he hands over a single issue of the White Beret
Speaker 1: and this neo Nazi group posts it on their website.
Speaker 1: And I don't know how to make a website, but
Speaker 1: this is pretty common on a word Press type site.
Speaker 1: The page indicates the site author who posted that particular
Speaker 1: piece of content. It's not his real name, obviously, he's
Speaker 1: a neo Nazi trying to memorialize the history of a terrorist.
Speaker 1: But the name the author used was Tim Turtle, which
Speaker 1: is perhaps a typo, but perhaps just a cheeky little
Speaker 1: nod to McVeigh and his possible connections to Dennis. Many
Speaker 1: little anecdotes, bits of testimony and one off claims, unsourced
Speaker 1: allegations and mysteries. To go through them all, and a
Speaker 1: lot of them don't warrant a second hearing anyway, But
Speaker 1: one I can't let go of is a conversation Dennis
Speaker 1: Mayhon had in January of nineteen ninety six with a
Speaker 1: man named J. D. Cash. Now, if you're familiar with
Speaker 1: this particular conspiracy landscape, you might already have an opinion
Speaker 1: about JD. Cash. He was a reporter at the McCurtain
Speaker 1: County Gazette, a tiny paper in a small town in
Speaker 1: southeast Oklahoma, who devoted the last twelve years of his
Speaker 1: life to the story of the Oklahoma City bombing. Saw
Speaker 1: Mark quick to dismiss him outright as a conspiracy theorist,
Speaker 1: And I'll tell you straight up, he did stray from
Speaker 1: the straight and narrow path of facts and proof, There's
Speaker 1: no doubt about that. But he also spent twelve years
Speaker 1: investigating this story, and he was quite close to Mcbay'sttorneysan
Speaker 1: Jones and the defense's private investigator, Richard Reyna. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: take Cash's stories as a gospel truth necessarily, which is
Speaker 1: why I wasn't so sure that this conversation ever happened
Speaker 1: until I found a little external corroboration. Cash claims he
Speaker 1: and Dennis spoke for five hours that day. Now, Cash
Speaker 1: had a bit of an unconventional interviewing style, it seems,
Speaker 1: because at some point during their conversation he offered up
Speaker 1: his own opinion that Andrea Strasmeyer may have been working
Speaker 1: for the German government. For what it's worth, I'm not
Speaker 1: really even going to explore that. I'm not saying it
Speaker 1: has any legs, but it's what JD. Cash said, and
Speaker 1: Dennis's reaction to the idea was extreme. In a later deposition,
Speaker 1: Cash said Denis became extremely agitated. He went pale and said,
Speaker 1: sweet Jesus, I'm fucked. He got up and placed a
Speaker 1: phone call to his friend Marked Thomas, an Area Nation's
Speaker 1: member and clansman who spent a lot of time at
Speaker 1: Ellaheim City. Dennis had just a few months earlier been
Speaker 1: a speaker at a cross burning Thomas hosted on his
Speaker 1: farm in Burke's County, Pennsylvania. Dennis was particularly eager to
Speaker 1: reach Mark Thomas at that moment because he knew Michael
Speaker 1: Brescia was staying with him. Russia had been Strasmeyer's roommate
Speaker 1: at Allaheim City, and as Strasmeyer might be a snitch,
Speaker 1: Russia needed to hear about it. The two men in
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania were not thrilled to be put on the phone
Speaker 1: with a reporter, and they refused to agree to allow
Speaker 1: Cash to visit them on the farm. After he got
Speaker 1: off the phone with Mark Thomas, Dennis made a second
Speaker 1: phone call, this time to someone in Germany. Dennis doesn't
Speaker 1: speak German, but his twin brother Daniel apparently does. He
Speaker 1: passed the phone to his brother, who translated Dennis's instructions
Speaker 1: for whoever was on the other end of the line
Speaker 1: he wanted Strasmeyer found he wanted him interrogated, shoot him
Speaker 1: in both knee caps if you have to, but get
Speaker 1: him to confess, and then kill him. Just a few
Speaker 1: weeks later, Dennis would deny that he ever said this.
Speaker 1: For his part, Strasmeyer has laughed it off his fiction.
Speaker 1: But Cash turned his notes over to mcvay's lawyers, and
Speaker 1: those lawyers gave them to the FBI, and the FBI
Speaker 1: notified the German federal authorities, who in turn briefed Strassmeyer
Speaker 1: on this threat to his life in the presence of
Speaker 1: his attorney. Whether it all went down the way J. D.
Speaker 1: Cash described it or not, a lot of people took
Speaker 1: it seriously, but again just to bring us back to
Speaker 1: a space of reality, right, so we're not reaching escape
Speaker 1: velocity on conspiracy theories, It's easy to see this as
Speaker 1: evidence that Dennis Mahon, Mark Thomas, and Michael Brescia must
Speaker 1: have known something about the Oklahoma City bombing? Right? Why
Speaker 1: else would he panic at the news that there might
Speaker 1: have been a snitch? But I would offer up this
Speaker 1: alternative explanation for Dennis's reaction. He panicked because he knew
Speaker 1: Mark Thomas and Michael Brescia had just robbed twenty two banks. J. D.
Speaker 1: Cash didn't know it at the time, but Thomas and
Speaker 1: Brescia were both members of the Aryan Republican Army, a
Speaker 1: Nazi bank robbery gang responsible for twenty two bank robberies
Speaker 1: over the prior two years. Richard Lee Guthrie had been
Speaker 1: arrested just a few days before this conversation took place,
Speaker 1: and Guthrie quickly gave up the group's ringleader, Donna Langon.
Speaker 1: She wasn't known as Donna back then, though she wouldn't
Speaker 1: transition until after her arrest. A story for another day.
Speaker 1: My point is when Dennis called Mark Thomas and Michael
Speaker 1: Brescia to ask them if they knew anything about Strasmeyer
Speaker 1: being an informant. They didn't know yet. If Guthrie and
Speaker 1: Langen had given up their names to the Feds, they
Speaker 1: wouldn't be indicted until the following year. Dennis Mayhon was
Speaker 1: called before multiple grand juries in nineteen ninety seven, in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety eight in ongoing proceedings related to the Oklahoma
Speaker 1: City bombing, and every time he pled the Fifth invoking
Speaker 1: his Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination. In nineteen ninety seven,
Speaker 1: Denis Tolal reporter, it is my greatest desire to answer
Speaker 1: all their questions, even if it takes days. But I
Speaker 1: have to have immunity. I have to protect myself. In
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety eight, he tried again for immunity ahead of
Speaker 1: another trip to sit in front of another grand jury.
Speaker 1: The judge denied his request, and when he was subpoena
Speaker 1: to appear before that grand jury in March of nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety eight, he told reporters it was pure harassment, whose
Speaker 1: retaliation against him for his recent attempt to run for
Speaker 1: mayor of Tulsa again. He'd lost in nineteen ninety two,
Speaker 1: and he'd just lost again in February of nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 1: By nineteen ninety nine, though mcphay's appeal to the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court was he was going to die. Terry Nichols had
Speaker 1: been convicted in nineteen ninety seven. The investigation was more
Speaker 1: or less over the official one. Anyway, Dennis was nearly
Speaker 1: fifty and this one time rising star of right wing
Speaker 1: extremism was fading from relevance. His brother got fired for
Speaker 1: handing out white power pamphlets at work, a side story
Speaker 1: we covered last week, and the brothers left Oklahoma in
Speaker 1: two thousand and one. Dennis settled in Arizona, which is
Speaker 1: where the next chapter of his life starts. On the
Speaker 1: last weekend of January two thousand and four, two hundred
Speaker 1: extremists from all over the country gathered in Phoenix, Arizona
Speaker 1: for arian Fest, that white power woodstock that Tom Metzger
Speaker 1: first held on a farm in Oklahoma in nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 1: Along with the musical performances from Nazi metal bands, there
Speaker 1: were speeches from Metzger himself, Health Aran Nation's leader Richard Butler,
Speaker 1: and a Nazi named Billy Roper. He is the subject
Speaker 1: of several listener requests for his own episode, and I'm
Speaker 1: getting there. The Phoenix New Times describes Billy Roper's failed
Speaker 1: attempt to whip the crowd into a frenzy, noting rather
Speaker 1: derisively that he looks more like a history teacher than
Speaker 1: the skinheads in the audience, which is probably because he
Speaker 1: had been a high school history teacher until his move
Speaker 1: to full time white power activism a few years earlier.
Speaker 1: Tom Metzger delivered his remarks while wearing a T shirt
Speaker 1: that read some people are still alive simply because it
Speaker 1: is illegal to kill them. But I don't think he
Speaker 1: put it on with any sense of self awareness. He
Speaker 1: warns the crowd that they shouldn't be stockpiling guns, and
Speaker 1: he seems instead to be advising them to make bombs, saying, quote,
Speaker 1: how many guns can you shoot at once? Guys? Besides,
Speaker 1: I could brew up bigger way weapons then guns in
Speaker 1: my kitchen. Arian Nation's leader Richard Butler, just a few
Speaker 1: months before his death at age eighty six, arrived at
Speaker 1: arion Fest without his Bucksom young traveling companion. They were
Speaker 1: boarding a flight to Phoenix a few months earlier, when
Speaker 1: his companion, Wyndy Ivanov, was arrested for check forgery. The
Speaker 1: neo Nazi community was shocked to discover that Ivanov had
Speaker 1: been living a double life as an adult film actress
Speaker 1: called Bianca Trump. She'd starred in films like Barely Legal
Speaker 1: Latinas and Big White Tits, Big Black Dicks. She'd bonded
Speaker 1: out by the time the party started, but it seems
Speaker 1: the revelations about her career had gotten her disinvited. Dennis
Speaker 1: Mayhunt didn't give a speech at Arianfest two thousand and four,
Speaker 1: but the Phoenix New Times Reporter noted that he was
Speaker 1: quite the social butterfly all weekend, chatting up movement leaders
Speaker 1: and young skinh heads alike. He was overheard bragging about
Speaker 1: having known Timothy McVeigh, something he'd been denying for nine years, saying, quote,
Speaker 1: I knew Timothy McVay quite well. In fact, I knew
Speaker 1: him back when he was named Timothy Tuttle, and he
Speaker 1: and I were involved in quite a few And then
Speaker 1: he paused very dramatically and said, let's just say he
Speaker 1: and I did some serious business together. And after Oklahoma City,
Speaker 1: the Feds came after me big time boy, but they
Speaker 1: never proved a thing, and that was probably a lie,
Speaker 1: he said. It. I'm telling you what he said. He
Speaker 1: said that he and McVeigh made moms together, but I
Speaker 1: think he was lying. He was in his fifties by then,
Speaker 1: his time had passed. I think he wanted to impress
Speaker 1: these twenty something kids, or at least impress upon them
Speaker 1: the value of terrorism, because that same weekend over beers,
Speaker 1: he told some young Nazi skinheads terrorism works. We did
Speaker 1: a lot of terrorism in Tulsa in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1: We put heads in the road and people paid attention.
Speaker 1: Two weeks later, Dennis Mahon wrote up his last will
Speaker 1: and testament and sent it to his father by certified mail,
Speaker 1: and then he got to work on the only bomb
Speaker 1: the government ever proved. He built we Del guised as
Speaker 1: a production of Cool Zone Media and iHeartRadio. Its researched,
Speaker 1: written and recorded by me Molly Conger. Our executive producers
Speaker 1: are Sophie Lichttermant and Robert Evans. The show is edited
Speaker 1: by the wildly talented Rory Gagan. The theme music was
Speaker 1: composed by Brad Dickert. You can email me at Weird
Speaker 1: Little Podcast at gmail dot com. I will definitely read it,
Speaker 1: but I probably will not answer it. It's nothing personal.
Speaker 1: You can exchange conspiracy theories about the show with other
Speaker 1: listeners on the Weird Little Guys Subreddy, just don't post
Speaker 1: anything that's going to make you one of my Weird
Speaker 1: Little Guys.