Bud Welch Interview about the Oklahoma City Bombing

My title and I know that you are owner of a I I used to be I closed it down the 31st of August Really I didn't sign another three or three year lease Why can't I saw are you what are you doing? I'm retiring and I'm retiring and I'm on the board of directors of murder victims families for reconciliation Now now did that happen after you lost your daughter in the Oklahoma City bombing? I mean that she became a part of that group Yes, in fact I I didn't even hear that group until about three years after her death And it's and it's been when I heard about it. It's been really very helpful for me in my in my healing Because I had reached the point to where that I no longer wanted to see a Tim McVeigh or Terry Nichols executed And was somehow made to feel that there was maybe something wrong with me that I felt that way And then I found out about the organization called murder victims families for reconciliation And their number one goal is to abolish the death belt in the United States

And we have about 3,000 members and I thought well there's lots of people that believe as I did Let's talk about that because of course Tim McVeigh was executed not too long ago. What are your thoughts? Well, I really had been saying for about the last five years that the day that we took Tim McVeigh from his cage to killing That it wasn't going to bring any peace or feel good to the people of Oklahoma City And I'm afraid that's really what happened because some of those that were really strongly supporting his execution Are actually angrier today than they were before his execution Why? I talked to a couple of mental health people in Oklahoma City that had worked with victims family members In fact, they still work with them some And I asked that question and the way they explained it to me was that prior to McVeigh's death when family members would have their moment of rage Which we all have I still get it at times When you have that moment of rage you're able to you're able to vent that against Tim McVeigh Even though you don't communicate directly with him, he's alive and you can somehow vent it

And after he was killed they can no longer vent toward him and then they became angry and under several of them are angry at me now And they weren't prior to his execution And well, that's the reason they're venting toward me now and the reason they're venting toward me is because I'm the victim's family member that has spoken out the most against the death penalty There are others who have done it as well but I've been doing it probably the longest and you might say a little bit bigger mouth on the issue than a lot of the others If you would Mr. Welch take us back to that day the Oklahoma City bombing in April if you could share with us what was happening that day and how you found out about your daughter Well, I was at home that that Wednesday morning on April the 19th 1995 and I live about eight miles northwest of downtown And when the bomb went off at 902 my house shook violently And we're in the approach to Will Rogers Airport not the final approach but the approach

And my youngest son was there with me and he asked me dad what was that and I of course didn't know I suggested to him that had must have been an airplane and crashed close to the house Well, I received a phone call about probably seven or eight minutes later from one of my younger brothers who was traveling on the east side of Oklahoma City over on I-35 And he could see a large plume of smoke coming from downtown and he turned to a news radio station and they first had announced that the There had been an explosion at the federal courthouse and he called me to ask me if my TV was on I told him no but I turned it on and one of the helicopters from one of the television stations was still in the air from the morning rush period And they focused in on the north side of the mirror building which was the side that the bomb was was set And from probably three or four miles away and I could see immediately that it was the mirror building not the federal courthouse And I really gave up all hope that Julie could have survived that at that time because I could see a three-story high pile of rubble and on the first floor and she worked on the first floor On known to me at the time had she been at her in her office she would have survived because everyone in her work area survived

She had left the back of the mirror building where she worked to walk forward in the Social Security waiting room to get a client A Mexican man that couldn't speak English and he had been brought by a friend of his and the three of them were walking back to her office and got about halfway through the building when the bomb went off at 902 And that was on Wednesday morning and all three bodies were found together on Saturday My goodness, it took that long And the only thing that separated the Social Security waiting room from the Ryder truck bomb was a sidewalk about about 18 feet. That morning there were 24 clients in Social Security and they were all killed Plus 16 Social Security employees and another 128 people throughout the building in Summacross the street So you knew immediately in your mind that there was no way she could have survived Right, but everyone her closest friend who worked right next to her received a small cut on her left arm And that was all that she had was a small cut

How'd you feel? Well, I anguished about that for quite a period of time about the fate I was told by rescue workers if she'd had another two or three seconds She had walked deep enough into the building that they would have been okay, but finally you have to sort all of this out and not let those things destroy you because you know fate You can always say that about an automobile accident or many things And I went through a period the first year about the first 10 months of heavy drinking The first month after McVeigh and Nichols had been arrested and charged I didn't even want trials for them I just wanted them fried and this was coming from a person that had always opposed the death penalty I'd never worked to oppose it didn't really know why I opposed it didn't give it a lot like most Americans didn't give it a lot of thought And I'd close my Texaco station in Oklahoma City and then go home when I would arrive at home the first thing I'd do is I'd make a drink And if I drank enough when I went to bed I could go to sleep and I was just paying for it the next day

I was doing that for about 10 months and the drinking and yeah I went through a period of very heavy drinking and after about 10 months I went to the bomb site one day as I did each day after her death I felt a special closeness there, the bank that I banked had only about a half mile from the Murrow Building And I remember this one particular day I went at the end of January And I had a terrible headache it was about three in the afternoon It was because of abusing alcohol the night before I realized that I was stuck on April the 19th 1995 And needed somehow to move forward and I went to asking myself a bunch of questions what did I need What did Bud Welch need to be able to move forward And there's three of those questions stuck in my mind for probably the next 20 to 25 days And that was do you need trials to begin now? Because neither trial started for 26 months and this is about the 10 month period Do you need convictions and do you need executions?

And I realized after about three weeks that constantly on my mind that the day that we would take temic by your tyrannicals from their cage to kill them That it wasn't going to bring me any peace And there would be an act of retribution and rage And rage and retribution is exactly why Julie and 167 others are dead in that great city today It was the rage that McVeigh and Nichols had against the US government for what happened at Waco, Texas April the 19th 1993 And after being able to understand why this bombing happened Certainly not justifying it but understanding why the cause of it Then I was able to start reconciling things and I got a handle on my alcohol abuse I actually quit smoking I was smoking three packs of cigarettes a day And I started remembering things that I had suppressed The people in New York and Washington and Pennsylvania are doing the same thing I know right now They're seeing a lot of things on television that they will suppress They may not even remember it until six months or a year or two years from now And this was what's happening to me

I had seen Bill McVeigh on television As Tim's father, about two weeks after the bombing There was a reporter standing in front of his house in a rural area not far from Buffalo, New York And Bill was men over a flower bed like he was pulling weeds from it And the reporter would ask a question, he'd hold the microphone down or we'll build an answer The television camera is off to his right shoulder And he would keep his right shoulder turned away from the television camera And I don't remember any questions asked or any of the answers that were given But one of the final answers that Bill gave, he stood almost straight up and looked to his right Right directly into the lens of the television camera for about two seconds And when he did I could see quite a large man that was physically stooped in grief And I could see a deep pain that he had in his eye because I recognized it I was living the same pain And I knew that someday I needed to go tell that man that I really cared how he felt And didn't blame him or his family for what his son had done And I had the chance to do that three and a half years later And as a most healing thing that I, that yeah

What made you, what was the impetus for you to take the trip? I mean, what was the deciding factor after you saw him on television you thought I've got to do this? Well, you know, I didn't give it a lot of thought there for quite a few months And it was more than three years after that after seeing him That I received a phone call from a nun from Attica Prison who does minister work there And that phone call was in June of 1998, 38 months after the bombing And the purpose of her call was to ask me if I would come to the Buffalo Niagara Falls area of Western New York to speak out against the death penalty I'd been doing that for about a year and a half at that point And so I agreed to go and she thought it'd be good to, I told her the story about seeing him on television And she thought it would be good to try to put a meeting together between the two of us And she went to work on it and then got to get the arrangements made to where we could meet And I spent a couple of hours with him Got to describe going up to his house Well, you know, that's really quite a story in itself

And there was no media involved whatsoever Media, nothing about it In fact, the media didn't find out about the meeting for a month after it happened So this was one father to another? Yes, and Sister Roslyn, this nun took me out to his house And I won't tell you about the whole journey to his house, but it's about 20 some miles out there All I will say about it is that most people have heard of the flying nun She's alive and well and she lives in Western New York I know because I've ridden with her But when I arrived at his house, I had found out the night before in a speech at Kinesha's College I met two people that said there were acquaintances of his and they had... I went to ask him questions about what his personality was like Because I was apprehensive about this meeting coming up the next morning It was Saturday morning September of the 5th of 1998 I found out that he was shy, that he didn't talk much And that he had a large garden in his backyard That he grew each year and gave vegetables to neighbors And so when I knocked on his door after I introduced myself to him

The first thing I said to him, I said, Bill, I understand you have a nice garden in your backyard And he didn't look, he's a bit shy to me at that moment He kind of got this big smile on his face and he said, yeah, I said, would you like to see it? I said, I'd love to I knew when I was following him through his garage out in his backyard that we'd find common ground We spent the first half hour out there getting to know one another I found out that he was the 5th generation of McVase in Western New York Irish Catholic I'm the 3rd generation of Welches in Central Oklahoma Irish Catholic So that was common ground for us And we invited me into the house where his youngest daughter, Jennifer, was there Introduced me to Jennifer, she'd dropped by because she knew I was coming And the 3 of us sat around the kitchen table And Jennifer sat at one end and I sat at the other, Bill was sitting to my left That table was pushed up against a wall And up on that wall were some family snapshots of his 2 grandchildren that lived down in Florida And his oldest daughter, Patty And the biggest picture on the wall was an 8 by 10 of 10 So during his hour and a half of conversation quite frequently, I'm glancing up that picture Tam on the wall

And I start feeling self-conscious because I know I've looked too many times Well finally, I don't know how stupid it may have sounded but I looked up and I just said, God, what a good looking kid You could hear a pen drop in the kitchen I looked across the table at Jennifer And she just dropped her eyes, didn't say word Bill was staring straight across the table at the base of the wall And he had told me while we were in his garden that all of his adult life that he couldn't cry as a man And he asked me if I could cry and I told him how that I could, that I actually could cry quite easily And he said, I've had a lot to cry about the last 3 and a half years and I just can't do it Well after this long silence, Bill looked up at the wall and he just simply said that's Tam's high school graduation picture But when he did, this great big tear rolled out of his right eye And I could see right then a love that a father had first son that was incredible I think what was going on in Bill McVase's mind right then was this Those that have children will understand this You're going to love your children more the more they need you

That's just the way God made moms and dads And I think that what was going on in his mind is he still loved Tam and spite of what he had done And he knew the Tam needed him but he also knew there was nothing he could do for him And I think that's probably the hurt that was going on with him right then But it was the most fulfilling meeting for me I really what I found that Saturday morning in Western New York was a bigger victim of the Oklahoma City bombing myself Because I travel all over the country speaking and when I speak I tell stories about Julie and I brag on her And about all the wonderful things that she did how she graduated from high school with honors And won a scholarship to market university in Milwaukee and graduated there with honors And had actually learned to speak five languages and was Spanish translator at Social Security And I can tell all those wonderful stories And I don't have to tell people the ugly things that she did and she did her share those two But when Bill McVase meets a stranger, he probably doesn't even tell him that he had a son And every morning for the rest of his life he must wake up with that noose around his neck

That his son was convicted of killing 168 people And that's why I say that he's really a bigger victim of the Oklahoma City bombing myself Would you say that you're in the minority when you talk to other victims who have lost loved ones I should say in Oklahoma City bombing do you find that you have a lot of people in support of you going and visiting Tim's dad or what have you found? Well there have been a couple of other people also that have visited him There's quite a number of family members in Oklahoma City that have written him cards and sent him letters Because they've called me to get his address And I know several people that have since changed their mind about what we gained by killing his son And I would say at this point right now that I'm probably not no longer in the minority That we're split about 50-50 on those that think that what we did on June 11th of this year was the proper thing to do Have you talked to him since Timothy was executed? Oh several times, several times

In fact the execution was on Monday morning June 11th And I didn't call Bill until Friday night and when I called him we had quite a long telephone conversation And at the end of that conversation he said something to me that really touched me He said, but I want to thank you for being my friend And he said, will you continue to be my friend? And I started crying, he didn't know that I was doing that But I think that Bill thought that well since Tim had been executed that that would be the end of our friendship And it certainly is not Because I talked to him at least Therefore a while it was once a week and now it's probably a couple of weeks And I'm in contact with his younger daughter Jennifer as well Well we did on the morning of June 11th and Tarot in Indiana as we ended up with a We took him out of that cage to kill him, we ended up with a staged political event, a huge event That's all we did, it did nothing more or less for our society than that So obviously you're totally, you do not agree at all with the death penalty I'm curious now with this terrorist attacks on New York and Washington of course and what happened in Pennsylvania

What was going on in your mind when you first heard about this? Well you know when I first heard about it I was sitting on an airplane on the ground in St. Louis I had left Oklahoma City about four minutes after the first building was hit We didn't know anything about it in the air, we landed in St. Louis and Aaron 25 minutes later at 9 and 15 central time And we were stuck on the ground for about five minutes before We were told that we could use our cell phones and I turned my cell phone on and there was 14 new messages on it And I immediately started trying to call I knew something was up, I didn't know what Because the only thing that the captain had told us was that the air traffic control for the entire country was had been shut down Well my wife works at the Aeronautical Center for the Federal Aviation Administration in Oklahoma City And so finally when I was able to get through the first message from her was that World Trade Center building an airplane had crashed into it And then the second message was about 20 minutes later that the second building had been hit Well I knew that there was a terrorist attack going on And that's how I found out

And I ended up stuck in a hotel and downtown St. Louis for two days and two nights Because I couldn't get a bus back to Oklahoma City, couldn't get any rental cars or anything And I really just felt re-victimized And that was on the 11th and the next day on Wednesday September the 12th was Julie's 30th birthday And I sat in that hotel room alone that day and was pretty pretty low Well that was my question, the whole idea of being re-victimized Do you think that obviously a lot of folks had the same sentiments that went through what you did in Oklahoma I think so, I think that through a lot of people that felt re-victimized It certainly people were angry again, it made me angry And of course I'm still angry about it And it's such a horrible thing, I've already been contacted by several families in the New York area I talked with one family last night What do you tell them when you talk to them? Well you know the thing that I've told them is that And of course these are people that have reached out to ask me It's people that had heard my name

And the thing that I have said to them is Give yourself time And if a media person asks you something about Did you receive closure at a certain stage? Be honest with them and go ahead and tell them that there is no such thing as closure When you bury a loved one or when you have a loved one kill like that in that manner That it's the rest of your life Allow yourself to grieve, allow yourself to be angry Allow yourself to be angry at yourself, angry at God And maybe even angry at your level Because I went through all of those phases And if you go through those phases Don't think that there's anything wrong with you It's only a normal human reaction And we must and we as people non-connected to To those terrible attacks We must make sure that we give them time to be angry Give them time to feel they want retribution Most people will be able to go beyond that

And there's some that already have Some have already written some articles There was one in the Chicago Tribune the other day Her husband was killed in the Pentagon He was enlisted in the military And she has two small children And she what she was calling out for is for there not to be retribution And more innocent people killed And a lady in the San Jose Mercury That was in the paper there at yesterday It did the same thing Her daughter was a student at Santa Clara 19 years old And she was killed on flight 11 That was headed for California And here she's calling for For no retribution And I think we have to try to find the perpetrators And I think that they need to be brought to justice And I think that if we do know, for example, that Ben Laden is involved And if it becomes necessary to kill him or assassinate him Then I say we must do it to stop him And where I draw the line is going over And arresting Ben Laden bringing him to this country and trying him Giving him the death penalty And putting him on death row for 8 or 10 years

And then taking him out of that cage to kill him That's where I draw the line I think if you would explain that a little more Because this sounds like I just want to make sure I understand what you're saying Do you not have a problem with him being killed? No, I don't have a problem with him being killed If we have to kill him in the process Of trying to make an arrest If we know that he's isolated in some place Where we're not bombing a bunch innocent people Then I say You must kill him because he must be stopped And I'm afraid that killing he will probably never be taken alive But to me that's okay I was speaking at Quincy University The other night in Illinois And a student said to me Well, that's the death penalty without a trial No, that's stopping All the carnage is going on And we must stop it If someone, I'll use this example If someone had known what Tim McVeigh was going to do Two blocks from the murder building And they would have had a gun And they didn't know what he was going to do It would have been their obligation to shoot And kill him to stop him So yeah

Okay, okay But the fact is that you don't believe that they should If it is If they find out that it is been law Then do you believe that he should be executed? No, I see no sense in trying him And if you have to kill him in the process of arrest And you're fine killing I don't have any problem with that But if he's a protagent But once you made a peaceful arrest of him And you brought him to trial Then I see no point in putting him in a cage And then taking him out of the cage And of course most of the cases And we're talking about in this country I have nothing to do with the McVeigh case Or these huge cases like this Basically in the United States With the exception of the McVeigh case The only ones that we kill in this country Are the easy ones And by the easy ones, I mean the poor ones We used to kill a very very high percentage of blacks And people of color We'll kill a poor white guy now I think we've become colorblind But we're still only killed the poor ones And also mentally there's a problem

I mean obviously people that have mental problems Are also being executed And the 211 people that are currently on death row at McVeigh Not a single one had the money to pay for their own defense And their own appeals Not one We have a case, a big case, no cluma city right now Of a well-known doctor that's a millionaire And the district attorney just announced two weeks ago He wasn't going to seek the death penalty That's fine with me, I'm glad he's not But if that would have been some poor person They would be seeking the death penalty And they'd end up on death row on McVeigh You know, we're not supposed to have an opinion When we're not sitting on a jury But I have an opinion You have the O.J. Simpson case Had they found him guilty He was not going on a row at San Quentin They didn't even seek the death penalty But my view is that O.J. Simpson is walking free today Only because he's a multi-millionaire If that would have been some poor black from South Central You better believe that they'd be on death row at San Quentin right now And you had the DuPont case in Pennsylvania Where several years ago he killed the former University of Oklahoma wrestler That had worked for him in number of years

Killed him in cold blood DuPont didn't go to trial His case was pled and he's doing his time in a Pennsylvania mental institution If that would have been some poor person out of Philadelphia District attorney Abrinson would have them on death row at SCI green right now There's no doubt in my mind What do you think about, hmm What do you think I'm sorry It just came to me You were just talking about the whole idea of the death penalty Skate to me Well What can we do? And you know again with you saying you're being re-victimized by the situation The tears of text recently What can the public, if you will, do to help in with the healing process In your mind? I think the public I think the public, the best thing that they can do is understand And give the people time Don't approach those victims' family members and say well I know how you feel My grandmother died five years ago I had a lot of that

People don't mean harm by that But it doesn't help victims' family members Any to hear that When I've talked to those out of New York In the last week Those and I have talked with I tell them right up front I don't know how you feel I only know how I felt And how I feel today And you'll have to deal with your own feelings and emotions yourself And I've suggested to some of them that they seek Mental health experts Because there's going to be They're going to need thousands of them At the four-year mark After the Oklahoma City bombing That had been 121,000 Free hours of mental health Work done there And I think it was so important to the people of central Oklahoma That they were able to get that And this is monumental in New York 30 to 35 times Greater in terms of death than Oklahoma City was And there's a lot of healing to go on with an entire You might say the entire East Coast

How many calls have you had? Would you say? I've had cerebral calls from I've had about three From mental health people Wanting me to come there And I've told them that it's too soon Now if a family member wants to contact me direct That's different But for me to go there and try to To talk to someone I can only look back on Where I was Two and a half weeks after the Oklahoma City bombing For example from Pan Am 103 And what it would have been Trying to help me out with with our tragedy I don't think that they would have gotten Anyplace I probably would have rejected Anything that they had to say We all have to be Be permitted to have our own time Some people will begin the healing process almost immediately Others will It'll take a year, two years There was an article in the New York Times magazine A few months ago About a man from Oklahoma City that has wife

Has killed in the bombing And he finally came around to the point Where I am today But it took him till last year to do it And so we're all on a different time table Unfortunately some of those people Some of the people in Oklahoma City That are still very angry There's a few of them that will die with it There's some of the people there That I have seen I've literally seen them age In the last six years And there's probably Half a dozen that probably won't be alive Five years from today Unless they find some kind of healing And they were looking for relief on June the 11th And it didn't happen Because there isn't anything about watching a human Take their last breath That's going to make somebody feel better What will you be sharing tonight Mr. Welch When you speak I'll be telling stories about Julie I'll be bragging on her I try sometimes Not to brag on her too much because I When I get to bragging on her quite a lot It's on occasion It's almost like I feel a pounding on top of my head

And it's Julie just saying Dad just shut up Because I think that's what she would tell me She hated for her father to brag on her She was my only daughter and Julie and I hung together all the time When she was home When she wasn't away at way to school And we You know We loved together and boy did we fight together And that's obviously I'm sure the folks in New York are experiencing those things You know that whole idea of mourning That's right This one lady I talked to last night Her son Has been working for I think it's Cameron Fitzgerald I believe is the name of the company that has 700 employees missing And He worked on 104th floor of building number one And she has now resolved to the fact that she does not think that her son's body will ever be found And I'm afraid that's going to be what's going to happen with probably over half of the bodies That they just simply won't be found Will that be even harder to have closure Because you don't have a body there that you can

That's right and that's one big advantage that I had Is Julie's body was found And not only was her body found But we were able to view her body And That was important for me to be able to do that And some of the people who come to the city were unable to do that because some bodies were not found for four until 47 days And There will probably be some bodies found in New York They'll probably find bodies six months from now And finally as you look back over your life Are you at the place where you want to be right now? Are you at a good place? I think I'm at a good place I don't want to I don't want to ever go through what I went through The first year after the bombing I had so much rage and so much vengeance in me That it was absolutely destroying me That's what rage and vengeance will do for you It will destroy you I know I've been there and I'm so glad that I'm on that point Julie's death grips me every single day But I no longer live with that horrible rage that I had And I'm just so pleased to be beyond that

And your message is simply that killing Well you tell me what is your message I really want people to walk away with after they come and hear you I want people to understand that it's very normal for people to be angry and full of vengeance And all of those things Those are very normal But it's also very normal in my view to be able to move beyond that And go if you will from rage to reconciliation Thank you so much I really appreciate your time today Thanks for having me