Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 23, 1995 TAG: 9504250030
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Some know his younger brother, Terry, as the rebel. He tinkered with bombs, wrote letters renouncing his voting rights and objected to driver's licenses and license plates.
But no one in Decker, Mich., was prepared Friday when the brothers came under investigation in the bombing of the federal office building in Oklahoma City.
``It's just scary when you see something like that happening in Oklahoma and all of a sudden, they are a half-mile from your house,'' said one friend and neighbor, Ray Hull.
Agents and local authorities began searching the farm of 41-year-old James Nichols on Friday, the same day Terry Nichols, 40, surrendered to authorities in Herington, Kan., where he lives.
On Saturday, federal authorities said the brothers were being held as material witnesses.
Timothy McVeigh, 27, was charged Friday in the bombing, and listed James Nichols as his next of kin during booking, according to an FBI affidavit.
Neighbors said McVeigh lived part of last year in James Nichols' large, white farmhouse, often driving his car around town loaded with guns and ammunition for sale. One friend said he believed Terry Nichols and McVeigh served together in the military.
Some said they knew the Nichols brothers attended meetings of the citizens group For The People and of the Michigan Militia - a paramilitary group that believes the government has outgrown its limits and violated the Constitution.
``[James] is concerned about people losing their rights. He's really concerned with property tax issues,'' said neighbor Frank Kieltyka. ``When he filled out a loan from the bank he didn't give his Social Security number. His privacy is his business.''
He marks his money with a stamp that states he isn't responsible for backing up its value, Bill Brown, a fertilizer dealer in Cass City, told the Detroit Free Press.
Neighbor John Gillig, 26, said James Nichols tried to get him to join a right-wing group called the Patriots about a year ago.
``He told me I should go to the meetings and that they were going to set the federal government straight,'' said Gillig.
He and other neighbors said James Nichols sent back his Social Security card, renounced his U.S. citizenship and refused to carry a driver's license, more than once ending up in court for driving without one.
``I always tried to avoid him,'' Gillig said.
But others paint a different portrait.
Joe Scrimger, head of an association of regional organic farmers, said James Nichols was the treasurer of the organization and was trying with some difficulty to grow corn without chemicals.
``People who do organic farming are not the kind of people who hate people,'' he said.
He said Nichols wouldn't have had a use for ammonium nitrate, one of the ingredients in the Oklahoma bomb. The chemical is used routinely by farmers to clear stumps and create drainage ditches.
Both Nichols brothers had divorced; Terry was remarried and living in Kansas. James continued to live in their mother's house.
But while some neighbors described both men as tax protesters who tried to avoid government bureaucracy and income taxes, others said James Nichols lived quietly.
``All I see when I look at him is a farmer,'' said Cathleen Hayes, 58, who lives around the corner from Nichols' farm. ``You see him on the tractor and that's it.''
Hull said, though, that Terry Nichols was ``the type of guy who could do anything.''
``I have seen him make a bomb in the past. He could make a bomb in five minutes,'' Hull said.
He said about five or six years ago, he saw Terry Nichols make and detonate a bomb in a field, making a hole in the ground about 5 feet wide.
In 1992, Terry wrote to the clerk of Sanilac County's Evergreen Township, renouncing his right to vote.
``There is total corruption in the entire political system from the local government on up through and including the President of the United States of America, George Bush,'' Nichols said in the letter, dated Aug. 4, 1992.
``I didn't know he was off the deep end like this until I got this letter,'' said the clerk, Arthur Severance.
by CNB