THE JOHN DOE TIMES
Volume IV, No. 3
19 February 1997
IN THIS ISSUE:
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The John Doe Times is an on-line, electronic newsletter published by the 1st Alabama Cavalry Regiment, Constitutional Militia and friends. We are a proud and active member of the "Right Wing Media Cabal", Internet Division. We are working our way up the Clinton White House Enemies List as fast as we can. Letters to the editor may be addressed to: Mo10Cav@aol.com. Snail mail of various sorts, neoNazi letter bombs, proposals of hare-brained schemes, and resumes of ATF agents who expect to be unemployed in the near future when their agency is disbanded may be sent to: P.O. Box 926, Pinson, AL 35126.
Back issues of The John Doe Times are archived at a number of sites on the Web including:
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And always remember our motto: Sic Semper Rodentia! Thus be it always to Rats!
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"IT'S ALIVE!": JOHN DOE #2 RETURNS FROM GRAVE TO HAUNT FEDERAL PROSECUTORS
"He's baaack!" Like the shuffling, undead villain of a bad Fifties' science fiction movie, John Doe #2 returned from the grave today, haunting Federal prosecutors who only last week had proclaimed he had never existed.
At the press conference after the pre-trial hearing described in the articles below, one of the prosecution team blithely denied that they had ever ruled out John Doe #2's existence. Standing behind him was Beth Wilkerson, Gorelick's coverup queen on the prosecution team, looking quite green, as if she had just ingested a very large turd. Wilkerson, you see, had told Judge Matsch just that not too long ago, denying on the record that the federal government had any evidence that anyone other than McVeigh had planned and carried out the worst terrorist attack on American soil.
The meltdown of Mr. Kessinger's "John Doe #2 as Todd Bunting" story, the revelation that he had changed his original identification only after a meeting in which he was pressured to do so by two FBI agents and a federal prosecutor, and the continued and unshakeable testimony of Kessinger's boss, Eldon Elliott, all served to resurrect John Doe #2 from the grave the prosecution thought they had dug for him.
The Lazarusian rebound of John Doe #2 was featured as the lead on all three networks ("The Three Blind Mice, as someone has charitably called them). My favorite reaction was that of McVeigh's attorney Stephen Jones, who replied with a laugh and a smile to a question about the rebirth of John Doe #2, "That boy's got more lives than a cat."
It remains to be seen if the major media will now begin to follow the leads about John Doe #2 developed by the private investigation of Glenn and Kathy Wilburn, and written about by journalist J.D. Cash which have been detailed in previous issues of The John Doe Times. Should they wish, we would gladly provide the government or the media with Michael Brescia's prison address.
-- Mike Vanderboegh
Editor, The John Doe Times
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Witnesses testify they saw McVeigh, Nichols
DENVER (Reuter) - An auto mechanic said Tuesday he had identified Oklahoma bombing suspect Timothy McVeigh from among several photographs as the person who allegedly rented the Ryder truck used in the deadly explosion.
Tom Kessinger, 47, told a pre-trial hearing he picked McVeigh's picture out on April 30, 1995, 11 days after the bombing, from a sheet of paper containing six photographs. ``I said that's him, right there,'' he testified.
But Kessinger said he was mistaken about the mysterious ''John Doe No. 2,'' the person he thought had accompanied McVeigh to rent the truck. He said that person, later identified as Todd Bunting, came into the shop to rent a truck the following day.
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JDT Commentary: This paragraph does not accurately describe what Kessinger said on the stand about John Doe #2. Indeed, according to the news reports last night, Kessinger only changed his story about John Doe #2 after meeting with two FBI agents AND a prosecutor who pressured him to say Bunting was the guy. On the stand, he reversed again and said there was a second man (a John Doe #2) with McVeigh but exactly what he looked like, Kessinger could not say.
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The defense asked in the pre-trial hearing to have the testimony of certain witnesses suppressed at the upcoming trials because of faulty memory or pre-trial publicity.
Prosecutors tried to play down the significance of Kessinger's error over John Doe No. 2. A sketch of the shadowy suspect, based on Kessinger's memory, was widely publicized after the blast.
``Well, you heard the testimony in court today. He made a mistake about John Doe No. 2, but he is absolutely certain about his identification of John Doe No. 1,'' government prosecutor Scott Mendeloff told reporters outside.
Kessinger has identified McVeigh as the man who came into Elliott's Body Shop in Junction City, Kansas, on April 17, two days before the bombing, to rent a Ryder truck.
The defense has argued that pictures on television of McVeigh after he was arrested were seen by so many people on numerous occasions as to taint any eyewitness testimony. But, asked by defense attorney Stephen Jones if he was ``rock bottom sure'' that he relied solely on his memory during the photo line up, Kessinger answered: ``Pretty damn sure.''
He said he had not seen news pictures of McVeigh before the photo lineup because he watched MTV, the music video channel, and Discovery, another cable channel.
McVeigh and former Army buddy Terry Nichols are charged in the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building that claimed the lives of 168 people. The two, who face the death penalty if convicted, will be tried separately, with McVeigh going first on March 31.
Eldon Elliott, the owner of Elliott's body shop, said he was ``confident'' of his identification of McVeigh.
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JDT Commentary: Elliott was also confident there was a John Doe #2 with McVeigh.
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Glynn Tipton, who sells drag car racing fuel, testified he was ``90 percent'' sure that a man who wanted to buy rocket fuel from him was McVeigh.
Timothy Donahue, whose family owns a livestock ranch in Kansas where Nichols worked in 1994, identified McVeigh as the man who visited Nichols at the ranch on two occasions.
A Kansas schoolteacher, Marion Ogden, testified that he bought a lamp for $2 from McVeigh at a garage sale held by Nichols and sold it after the bombing for $40, telling the buyer the owner had been McVeigh.
Fred Skrdla, a cashier at a truck stop 80 miles north of Oklahoma City, testified he positively identified McVeigh as the driver of a Ryder truck who bought gasoline in the early morning hours of the day of the bombing.
Prosecutors have pulled two other people from their potential witness list, including the only person believed to have been able to place McVeigh in front of the Murrah building just before the bombing.
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JDT Commentary: What a crock of crap!!! There are numerous witnesses who place McVeigh in front of the Murrah building, including the little old lady who he got into a small row with about moving her car so he could fit the Ryder truck into the handicapped parking spot in front of the building. The only problem with these witnesses for the government is that except for the now-dropped witness, ALL OF THEM WOULD PLACE McVEIGH WITH ONE OR MORE OTHER PARTICIPANTS!
Such witnesses are apparently more dangerous to the prosecution than the prospect of Timothy McVeigh walking out the courthouse door, a free man due to deliberate prosecutorial mismanagement and misconduct.
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Neither defendant was in the courtroom for the pre-trial hearing, having waived their right to attend.
``It's an uphill swim,'' McVeigh attorney Jones told reporters during a mid-day break. ``We have to convince him (the judge) that we've established that their testimony has been influenced by what they saw on television, or what they read in newspapers.''
The hearing is expected to continue on Wednesday.
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The New York Times
February 19, 1997
Truck Rented by Oklahoma Bomb Suspect, Witnesses Say
By JO THOMAS
DENVER -- Two important prosecution witnesses in the Oklahoma City bombing trial took the witness stand on Tuesday and swore that the man who rented the Ryder truck the government says carried the bomb was Timothy McVeigh.
Eldon Elliott, the owner of Elliott's Body Shop, the Ryder rental outlet in Junction City, Kan., and Tom Kessinger, a mechanic there, insisted that "Robert Kling," who paid $280 cash and said he did not need insurance because he was a careful driver, was, in fact, McVeigh.
In the first of two days of pretrial hearings before Judge Richard Matsch of Federal District Court, the credibility of both men was hammered by Stephen Jones, McVeigh's lawyer, who wants their testimony and that of seven others barred.
Pre-trial publicity, Jones argued, has irretrievably tainted their ability to make an honest identification of McVeigh, who is charged with the bombing along with Terry Nichols, who will be tried separately and whose lawyers also asked that the testimony of some witnesses be excluded. The defense is expected to argue that Kling was someone else.
Kessinger has already conceded that he had made a mistake when he said the square-jawed man who came to be known as John Doe No. 2 had accompanied McVeigh. The man he described was actually Pvt. Todd Bunting of the Army, who rented a truck a day later and had no connection with the bombing.
On Tuesday, under an onslaught of questions from Jones, Kessinger said he was absolutely certain that the man he described as John Doe No. 1 was McVeigh.
Speaking publicly for the first time, Kessinger said he was sitting in the back of the truck rental office, taking a break at about 4:15 p.m. on Monday, April 17, 1995, when he saw two men come into the shop. They stood at the counter and began speaking with Vicki Beemer, who handled the paperwork that day.
Kessinger noticed McVeigh, he said, because of something McVeigh said, which was not disclosed in court, and he watched the two men for about 10 minutes.
His first conversation with Scott Crabtree, an agent with the FBI, was at 4:45 p.m. on April 19, the day the Federal Building in Oklahoma City was bombed, Kessinger said. He met with an FBI sketch artist at 3:30 the next morning to start work on the composite sketches of the bombing suspects.
At that time, he said, he was warned not to watch television news accounts of the bombing or to read the coverage of newspapers. "They told me to rely only on my own memory," he said.
Under questioning from Jones, he said he watches "a lot of MTV, a lot of Discovery Channel," but does not watch network television news or local news.
In fact, he testified, he never saw a picture of McVeigh until the FBI showed him a group of photographs on April 30, 1995.
"I said, 'That's him,"' Kessinger said.
He told the court that it was not until Nov. 16, 1996, that he was convinced that John Doe 2, whom he had described in great detail, was in fact Bunting, because his blue and white hat, black T-shirt, muscular build and tattoo all fit the description he had given.
"Was John Doe One, the person you say is Timothy McVeigh, accompanied by anyone else when he came to the Ryder truck rental office?" Jones demanded.
"I don't know," Kessinger responded. "I want to say yes, but I don't know who that individual was."
Elliott, who has granted no interviews since the bombing, conceded at the outset, under questioning from Jones, that after the bombing, his shop printed up about 50 T-shirts saying "Elliott's Body Shop -- We Remember Our Customers."
They'd always had promotional T-shirts, he explained, but he discontinued these "because I felt it wasn't right."
On Tuesday, Elliott said he was alone in the rental office on Saturday, April 15, when a man who called himself Robert Kling came in, at about 9 a.m. to reserve a large Ryder truck he said he wanted to drive to Nebraska and then on to Iowa.
"I asked him if he needed more miles," Elliott said. "He said no, but he wanted more days." He didn't want insurance, Elliott said, because he said "I'm not going very far, I'm used to driving trucks out of Fort Riley, and I'm a careful driver."
The rental, for which McVeigh paid cash in advance took "5 to 10 minutes at most," Elliott said. The customer wanted the truck ready at 4 o'clock on Monday afternoon, and "I said the truck will be ready."
On April 17, Elliott said, he walked into the rental office and "saw Mr. Kling five feet away. I walked up to him and asked him again about insurance. Another person was standing there. I glanced at him."
"I walked between the two of them," Elliott recalled, when he went out to inspect the truck. The second man was shorter than McVeigh, Elliott said, but he can remember nothing else about the second man except his "white hat with blue lightning bolts on the side."
Elliott also said an FBI agent had warned him not to read or watch news accounts of the bombing. "I don't read newspapers," he said, and he tried not to watch television.
But he was sitting 10 feet from the television set in the Elks Lodge when McVeigh, in prison garb, was led from the Noble County Courthouse in Perry, Okla., on Friday, April 21, and "I said, 'That's him."'
