May 19, 1995
From CNN Correspondent Robert Vito
OKLAHOMA CITY, Oklahoma (CNN) -- Bomb Squad Sergeant Mike Mcpherson was at his desk in police headquarters when the blast hit. "It shook the building so bad, (it) knocked me out of my chair," he recalls.
When he reached the federal building, he was met with panic and devastation. "...chaos... people running everywhere. There was people trying to get out of the building."
One look at the crater in the street and he knew it was a truck bomb. "You almost had to have been brought up here in a truck. It had to be a pretty good size truck to do that much damage."
And with that, one unsung policeman's quick work would turn up the critical clue to track down the bombers behind the worst terrorist attack ever on America's home ground.
Detective McPherson went looking for a vehicle serial number on the rear axle of the truck and found the axle lying in the street next to a wrecked car a block away.
The rear axle was sitting down here, it had hit a car, and I had seen it earlier. McPherson had to brush away the grime, dirt, and paint but beneath it all, a tell-tale number. One phone call, and the detective was able to trace the number to a Ryder rental truck; all within the first two hours of the attack.
"That's what we needed to get, to find out the trail it took; who rented the truck or whose truck it was. We needed a starting point to go from, and that was the starting point.
Within a day, the FBI had a sketch of the man who rented the truck in Kansas. That man turned out to be Timothy Mcveigh. In another day, Timothy Mcveigh would be sitting in a rural jail after a traffic arrest and then was charged with the bombing.
McPherson refuses to take pride in a case where so many died. "I'm mad. I'm sorry. I wish something could have been done to prevent the loss of that many lives and this much destruction."
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