Prison rules stipulated that 10 witnesses from the media would be chosen to watch McVeigh injected with a fatal combination of sodium pentothal, pavulon (a muscle relaxer) and potassium chloride (which stops the heart).
The attitude of most of the journalists there was similar: It would be disturbing, but it was part of the job. All along I was eager to be a witness; now I wasn’t so sure.
The number on my yellow ticket read 082005. The prison spokeswoman reached into the bucket, pulled out a stub, and read: Zero. Eight. Two. Zero. Zero….
Inside the execution facility, a blue-green curtain rolled back across the window and revealed Timothy McVeigh strapped to a table. His body was about 18 inches from the window of the media room. Covered up to his shoulders with a white sheet, he looked pale and thin, like a mummy. As the curtains rolled open, they revealed several different groups of witnesses in separate chambers looking into the execution room. McVeigh strained to lift his head slightly, then glanced toward the first witness room, which contained the guests he had invited. He nodded slightly, as if to acknowledge their presence. Then he bent forward and made eye contact with each media witness through the window. Finally, he strained to get a look through the the final window-a sheet of tinted glass that shielded a few of the victims’ families from view.
At precicely 7:06 a.m., Warden Harley Lappin gave the order to begin the execution process. “We are ready,” he told a U.S. Marshall standing in the room with him. As the injection began, McVeigh tilted his head to look up at the ceiling. His eyes became glassy. As the second drug began to enter his system, McVeigh took several sharp breaths. After the third drug was injected his face and lips started to turn a light shade of yellow. At 7:14 a.m., he died with his eyes open.
When I arrived at Terre Haute on Sunday morning, C.J. Taylor was sitting on a red Yamaha four-wheeler in his front yard, about 20 feet outside the Federal Penitentiary. Taylor would have preferred that the government had chosen a different place to execute McVeigh, but as it happened, it was scheduled to happen in Taylor’s front yard-literally. The crimson ranch-style home that Taylor shares with his wife, Christy, and two young daughters is directly across the street from the prison; from the couple’s house they can clearly see the barbed-wire fences and guard towers that ring the penitentiary. But instead of worrying about the crowds that have swarmed their community for the last few days, the Taylors made the most of the situation. C.J. looked on as a steady stream of cars paid $25 apiece to park in his yard. The 29-year-old engineer estimates that over the last few days he’s taken in close to $6,000. He plans to donate most of the money to his church, and use the rest to fix potholes in his driveway. “Our girls are probably too young to remember this,” he says, talking about his daughters, who are six and 18 months. “But it will probably be in their history books one day. We don’t get a lot of big things here.”
In the days leading up to McVeigh’s execution, Terre Haute-an area of about 100,000 residents-reluctantly found itself at the center of attention. According to local officials, more than 2,500 reporters and protesters descended on the town over the weekend, which before this year was perhaps best known as the originator of the Coca-Cola bottle. (In a surreal twist, over 20 beauty queens arrived here at the Holiday Inn on Sunday for the Miss Indiana pageant.)
Inside the penitentiary fences, reporters from every national media outlet attended regular briefings from prison officials about the details of McVeigh’s last hours-from the clothes he would wear to the two pints of mint chocolate chip ice cream he ate as his last meal. And outside the penitentiary the rest of the town learned to live with its weekend visitors.
“We’re flying by the seat of our pants,” says the town’s mayor, Judy Anderson. “We’ve never experienced anything like this.”
By the time it came to draw lots for the media witnesses, I hadn’t slept at all. Prison guidelines said the journalists would have to decide among themselves who would be chosen as the 10 pool reporters. But by 4 a.m. everyone was as exhausted as I was and quickly agreed to the lottery system.
The spokeswoman reached into the bucket. She read: Zero. Eight. Two. Zero. Zero. Eight. The ticket I held in my hand read 082005. I had missed being chosen by one number.
I also lost the drawing for the other spot allocated for a national print journalist. After the execution I sat at the media pavilion and listened as the reporters who had witnessed the execution recounted the morning’s chilling details-the eerie nods, the sharp breaths, the yellow lips, the open eyes. And I never felt luckier to lose.
