Did the Oklahoma City bomber have another accomplice? One man's mystery death in a jail cell and his brother's 19-YEAR quest for justice that could reopen case of attack that killed 168
- Jesse Trentadue believes his brother Kenneth was arrested by the FBI after the 1995 bombing in the belief he was Timothy McVeigh's accomplice
- Trentadue fit the description of the mysterious John Doe No. 2 and his brother believes he was killed by overzealous interrogators
- Kenneth Trentadue was found dead in a federal holding cell after authorities say he hanged himself
- Trentadue is suing the FBI to try to get them to reveal information he believes they've withheld from the public for nearly 20 years
- The FBI now maintains McVeigh acted alone on the day of the bombing, but had an accomplice in Terry Nichols and confidante in Michael Fortier
- Fortier was jailed for his role in the crime, which authorities say was failing to tell authorities what he knew
One man's
quest to explain his brother's mysterious jail cell death 19 years ago
has rekindled long-dormant questions about whether others were involved
in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
What
some consider a far-flung conspiracy theory will be at the forefront
during a trial set to begin Monday in Salt Lake City. The Freedom of
Information Act lawsuit was brought by Salt Lake City attorney Jesse
Trentadue against the FBI.
He
says the agency won't release security camera videos that show a second
person was with Timothy McVeigh when he parked a truck outside the
Oklahoma City federal building and detonated a bomb, killing 168 people.
The government claims McVeigh was alone.
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On a mission: Jesse Trentadue is on a quest to
explain his brother's mysterious jail cell death that has rekindled
long-dormant questions about whether others were involved in the 1995
Oklahoma City bombing
Looking for answers: Kenneth Trentadue was found bruised and stabbed by his family after the FBI said he hanged himself
Unsatisfied
by the FBI's previous explanations, U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups
has ordered the agency to explain why it can't find videos from the
bombing that are mentioned in evidence logs, citing the public
importance of the tapes.
Trentadue
believes the presence of a second suspect in the truck explains why his
brother, Kenneth Trentadue, was flown to Oklahoma several months after
the bombing, where he died in a federal holding cell in what was labeled
a suicide.
What do they know? The FBI claims Timothy
McVeigh was alone when he planted the car bomb that killed 168 in 1995,
but some conspiracy theorists believe Trentadue died as part of the
agency's investigation into a second man who was on the scene with
McVeigh
His
brother bore a striking resemblance to the police sketch that officials
sent out after the bombing based on witness descriptions of the
enigmatic suspect 'John Doe No. 2,' who was the same height, build and
complexion. The suspect was never identified.
'I
did not start out to solve the Oklahoma City bombing, I started out for
justice for my brother's murder,' Jesse Trentadue said. 'But along the
way, every path I took, every lead I got, took me to the bombing.'
The
FBI says it can't find anything to suggest the videos exist, and says
it would be 'unreasonably burdensome' to do a search that would take a
single staff person more than 18 months to conduct.
Jesse
Trentadue's belief that the tapes exists stems from a Secret Service
document written shortly after the bombing that describes security video
footage of the attack that shows suspects - in plural - exiting the
truck three minutes before it went off.
A Secret Service agent testified in 2004
that the log does, in fact, exist but that the government knows of no
videotape. The log that the information was pulled from contained
reports that were never verified, said Stacy A. Bauerschmidt,
then-assistant to the special agent in charge of the agency's
intelligence division.
Several
investigators and prosecutors who worked the case told The Associated
Press in 2004 they had never seen video footage like that described in
the Secret Service log.
The
FBI has released 30 video recordings to Trentadue from downtown
Oklahoma City, but those recordings don't show the explosion or
McVeigh's arrival in a rental truck.
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If he wins
at trial, Trentadue hopes to be able to search for the tapes himself
rather than having to accept the FBI's answer that they don't exist.
Kathy
Sanders and Jannie Coverdale, who both lost grandchildren in the
bombing, are grateful for Trentadue's pursuit of the case. Sanders said
she's been waiting 19 years to see the tapes.
The wreckage of the Alfred P Murrah building
burned itself into the national psyche in 19956 but did McVeigh have
company when he planted the bomb that did it?
Was another man involved? Terry Nichols (left)
was sentenced to life in prison for helping McVeigh plot his terrorist
act. Michael Fortier, the star witness in the Oklahoma City bombing
trials, was released from federal prison in 2006 after serving a
sentence for failing to inform authorities of what he knew about the
bombing plot
'It is worth pursuing,' Coverdale said. 'I know there was somebody else. I have never stopped asking questions.'
But
former Oklahoma Rep. Susan Winchester, whose sister, Dr. Margaret
'Peggy' Clark, was killed in the bombing, said she is satisfied that
officials have identified everyone responsible for the bombing.
'I
was very comfortable with the decisions that came out of the federal
and state trials,' Winchester said. 'I have reached that point in my
life where I can continue.'
Jesse
Trentadue's mission began four months after the bombing when his brother
died at the U.S. Bureau of Prisons' Federal Transfer Center in Oklahoma
City. Kenneth Trentadue, 44, a convicted bank robber and construction
worker, was brought there after being picked up for probation violations
while coming back to the U.S. at the Mexican border, Jesse Trentadue
said.
His
death was officially labeled a suicide. But his body had 41 wounds and
bruises that his brother believes were the result of a beating. In 2008,
a federal judge awarded the family $1.1 million in damages for extreme
emotional distress in the government's handling of the death, but the
amount was reduced to $900,000 after an appeal.
Jesse
Trentadue's best guess about the motive is that his brother died in an
interrogation gone wrong by investigators demanding information Kenneth
Trentadue didn't have.
Jesse Trentadue filed the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in 2008.
Taking the feds to court: Now Trentadue is on a
mission to reveal the truth about his brother's death and his suing the
FBI to get answers
Going
toe-to-toe with the federal government has come at a personal price for
Jesse Trentadue, 67, who says he's lost time with his children and wife
that he can't recover.
But
he has no regrets, fueled by his love for his brother. Just three years
apart, the two shared a bed, hunted coons together and played on the
same sports teams growing up in a coal camp in West Virginia.
Their
paths diverged as adults - Jesse becoming an attorney while Kenneth
fell into drugs and crime - but the brotherly bond never broke. Before
his death, Kenneth Trentadue had overcome his heroin addiction and had a
newborn baby at home in San Diego, Jesse Trentadue said. The brothers
spoke by phone from jail the night before his death, with the two
discussing how he would soon be out.
'What
I learned growing up in the coal fields is that you fight even when you
know you can't win,' he said. 'Because you have to make a stand on some
things. Justice for my brother is certainly one of them.'
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