The Oklahoma City Bombing happened on April 19th, 1995. It was a domestic terrorist 12,000 lb truck bomb that ripped through the 9 story Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States.
It was perpetrated by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. The catastrophic bombing injured more than 680 people and killed 168 others, including 19 children.
This alleged person's police composite sketch became known around the world as John Doe No. 2. This man was described as about 5 feet 9 inches tall, muscular, and dark-haired. Possibly, he drove an older model pickup truck and had a dragon tattoo on his left forearm.
He was driving a 1986 Chevy pickup when he was pulled over at the Mexican border on his way home to San Diego on June 10, 1995. He fit the description of John Doe No. 2. Officers ran his license and found that it had been suspended, and that he was wanted for parole violations.
Kenneth was shipped, on August 18, to a prison in Oklahoma City for a hearing on the parole violations. This put him into close proximity to Timothy McVeigh, who, four months earlier, had been stopped by a state trooper, some 80 miles north of Oklahoma City. Timothy was arrested for carrying a concealed weapon and driving without tags, and two days after, was identified as the John Doe No. 1 wanted in the bombing. Terry Nichols turned himself in.
A check of Kenneth's cell at 2:38 a.m. on August 21st, 1995, all was normal. However, at 3:02 a.m., Kenneth was found in his cell suspended from a noose made out of his bed sheets. The noose was hooked to a light fixture in a special cell that was supposed to be suicide proof. It isn't known why Kenneth was in protective custody away from other inmates.
Kenneth Michael Trentadue was born and raised in a coal mining family. He grew up in a coal mining camp in Virginia. In 1961, Kenneth and his family moved to California after the coal mining business fell on hard times. In high school, he was an accomplished track and field athlete, but despite this, he dropped out after and enlisted the army. He also developed a heroin addiction. He tried to get jobs doing factory and carpentry work, but eventually turned to robbing banks with a fake gun. He got caught and served 6 years of a 20 year sentence before being released on parole in 1988. After being released, he got married and became gainfully employed as a construction worker.
On June 19th, 1995, Kenneth's wife had their first baby, a boy named Vito.
Authorities said that that was it. Case closed. Timothy and Terry were indicted on August 10th, 1995. There were many people that didn't believe Timothy and Terry acted alone. Was it just wack job conspiracy theorists that thought something bigger was afoot? What about John Doe No. 2 and the police's frantic search for him?
On August 19th, 1995, was the last time Kenneth's brother Jesse, heard from Kenneth. Kenneth called at night, sounding chipper, and they talked about the parole hearing. At the end of the call, Kenneth promised to call again the next day.
The prison warden called Kenneth's mom and offered to cremate Kenneth at the expense of the government. Kenneth's mom refused, finding the offer suspicious.
On September 1st, the Bureau of Prisons issued a press release stating that Kenneth’s death had been “ruled a suicide by asphyxiation” and that the injuries on the body “would indicate persistent attempts…to cause himself serious injury or death.” Officials put forth an elaborate scenario in which Kenneth tried to hang himself but fell, bruising his head and body, and then tried to slit his throat with a toothpaste tube before succeeding in his second hanging attempt.
Later, in a lawsuit brought by Kenneth's family, FBI and state Bureau of Investigations officials testified that a second person’s blood had been found in Kenneth’s cell, and that there were no cut marks on the noose from which he was, according to prison officials, “cut down." Supposedly, an internal FBI memo states that a prison guard told his neighbor that Kenneth had been killed, and then hung in his cell as a cover-up. Another inmate who reported heard similar statements from a second guard said he was warned to keep silent and then sent to isolation. In a deposition in connection with a lawsuit brought by Jesse, another inmate, Alden Gillis Baker, said Kenneth got into an altercation with a guard. He claimed that additional officers entered the cell, there was “a lot of physical violence going on,” he heard “faint moaning,” and later the sound of bed sheets being torn. A judge ruled that Baker, a convicted robber and sex offender, was not a reliable witness. In 2000, Baker was found hanging in his cell in a California federal prison.
David Paul Hammer, a convicted murderer, had struck up a friendship with Timothy McVeigh when both were imprisoned at the same Federal Correctional Complex. Hammer made sworn statements alleging that McVeigh told him information about other conspirators in the Oklahoma City Bombing, including Guthrie.
In 1994 and 1995, Guthrie and the Aryan Republican Army carried 22 bank robberies across the Midwest, netting some $250,000 that they used to support the white-supremacist movement. Guthrie would also be found dead in his prison cell, the day before he was scheduled to give a television interview. His death was ruled a suicide by hanging.
After being shown a picture of Kenneth, Timothy McVeigh is reported to have said,
The federal government did pay a civil settlement, but that still will not help with the obvious injustice that has happened.
On August 26th, Kenneth’s body arrived at a mortuary in California. There were bruises on his knuckles bruises on his arms where it looked like he was held down and all over, even on the soles of his feet, clumsily disguised with heavy makeup. There were also slashes on his throat, ligature marks, and ruptures on his scalp. He had shackle marks on his legs as well burn marks on his face and shoulders.
No official ruling in his death had been made yet. In fact, although the exact cause of death could not been determined, the claim that Kenneth had committed suicide was not consistent with medical examiner Fred Jordan's findings, and Kenneth appeared to have been tortured.
The chief investigator of the Oklahoma state medical examiner filed a complaint with the FBI reporting irregularities in the investigation of Kenneth's death. The coroner was at first not permitted into Kenneth's cell. Even though the medical examiner gave instructions on not to touch the cell, it was washed out by the afternoon before the legally-required investigation could be performed. The FBI paperwork from the agent who received the medical examiner's call reads "murder" and "believes that foul play is suspected in this matter."
Evidence in the case disappeared. There was no video of the scene taken or it was lost, depending on who you talk to. There were photos taken of Kenneth's body, but when the family asked for them, they were told that they were lost. The photos did reappear later though, in FBI files years later. His clothes vanished before his body was turned over to the medical examiner. And his bed sheets, boxers, and fingernail clippings, disappeared for several weeks. After the cell was washed, what prison officials called Kenneth’s “suicide note”,a pencil scrawl that read ”My Minds No Longer It’s Friend” and “Love Ya Familia!”, was painted over, leaving only photos whose “lack of detail,” according to the FBI crime lab, rendered it “doubtful if this hand printing will ever be identified with hand printing of a known individual." For some reason, the investigator who took the pictures shortly after Kenneth’s death wrote in a caption that the scrawl read, “Love Paul.”
In 1996, Jesse got an anonymous phone call talking about his brother and bank robbers.
“Look, your brother was murdered by the FBI.
There was an interrogation that went wrong….
He fit a profile.”
In spring of 2003, a small-town newspaper reporter in Oklahoma named J.D. Cash, contacted Jesse and he wanted to talk about Kenneth. He explained that some photos of Kenneth's bore a clear resemblance to the police sketch of the alleged John Doe No.2 And both Kenneth and John Doe No. 2 looked quite a bit like another man, a bank robber named Richard Lee Guthrie. They were the same height, weight, and muscular build, both had dark hair and thick mustaches, and both had dragon tattoos on their left arm.
After being shown a picture of Kenneth, Timothy McVeigh is reported to have said,
"Now I know why Trentadue was killed, because they thought he was Richard Guthrie."
Was Guthrie really John Doe No. 2? Or was it someone else?
Andreas Carl Strassmeir is a German national and the former head-of-security for the white separatist community, Elohim City, Oklahoma. His Grandfather was also a co-founder of the Nazi Party. Andreas' father allegedly had connections to the CIA. A confidential informant for the ATF, claims that Andreas would frequently talk about blowing up federal buildings and using direct action against the U.S. Government. McVeigh admitted to being in contact with Andreas two weeks before the bombing but he was never questioned. Andreas fled the United States and hasn't been seen since.
Is Andreas John Joe No 2?
No comments:
Post a Comment