Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 2, 1995 TAG: 9505020148
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: From The Washington Post, The New York Times and Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
One of the men, identified as Gary Allen Land, was said by law enforcement officials to bear a resemblance to John Doe No. 2, the unidentified suspect sought as a possible co-conspirator in the bombing, although officials emphasized they had drawn no conclusion that the two were the same man. The FBI on Monday issued a new composite sketch of the suspect, a stocky man in a baseball cap, and described him as ``very tan'' and muscular.
``It's a John Doe 2 hunt,'' said a senior law enforcement official. ``We'd like very much to talk to these people.''
On April 19, the day of the bombing, investigators believe Land and a man identified as Robert Jacks checked into a motel in Perry, Okla., the same town where McVeigh was arrested on a motor vehicle violation 90 minutes after the blast. That same day, the two men checked into another motel in Vinita, a northeastern Oklahoma town. ``We want to know why they checked into two motels the same day,'' said an investigator.
With almost no hope left of finding more survivors in the rubble of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building 12 days after the blast, officials in Oklahoma City said they will use heavy machinery to drag debris from deep inside the shaky structure rather than risk the safety of rescue workers. The death toll rose to 139, including 15 children, with 50 people listed as missing, most of them believed buried in the deepest part of the rubble.
In Washington, President Clinton denounced far right paramilitary groups and called for a broad national discussion on ``what is causing the United States to commit the whole range of violence we see.''
``I don't know that there's another country in the world that would by law protect the right of a lot of these groups to say what they want to say, ... to assemble over the weekend and do whatever they want to do, and to bear arms, which today means more than the right to keep and bear arms; it may mean the right to keep and bear an arsenal of artillery,'' Clinton said in his strongest language to date.
Besides seeking Land and Jacks, agents also searched Geary State Fishing Lake, a state park about 16 miles north of Herington, Kan., where witnesses have told police they saw the Ryder rental truck used in the car bombing parked two days before the blast.
Terry Nichols, who has been charged with McVeigh in a conspiracy in Michigan, lives in Herington. At Nichols' house, investigators found an anti-tank rocket, guns, detonators, empty bags of ammonium nitrate fertilizer and blue plastic barrels like the ones believed to have held the ingredients used in the Oklahoma City bomb.
Federal officials confirmed that investigators had found a receipt for the purchase in September 1994 of 2,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate by Nichols. The Dallas Morning News had reported that McVeigh's fingerprints were on the receipt.
Combing the woods and dispatching divers into the lake, investigators were searching for evidence that materials for the massive bomb were gathered and assembled on the site, then driven to Oklahoma City.
Officials involved in the investigation said they found signs of the two primary ingredients of the bomb: traces of fuel oil on the ground and ammonium nitrate on the tufts of grass.
Investigators say they have linked Land and Jacks to McVeigh based on accounts of witnesses in Kingman, Ariz., where all three men stayed in cheap motels in the weeks before the bombing.
In another development, FBI agents raided a trailer home Monday evening in Kingman belonging to McVeigh's Army buddy Michael Fortier, and began collecting evidence. A neighbor said Fortier drove off shortly before the raid and his whereabouts were not immediately known.
by CNB