August 10, 1995
From Correspondent Rusty Dornin
KINGMAN, Arizona (CNN) -- Over 30,000 people call Kingman, Arizona home. One man who sometimes called it home in the year leading up to the Oklahoma City bombing put the desert town under a harsh spotlight. Timothy Mcveigh went to Kingman because his Army buddy Michael Fortier lived there.
Some say the two talked of conspiracy in Fortier's trailer home. Outside flew a flag of defiance, a flag that warned, "Don't Tread on Me." A host of clues and suspects brought more than 100 FBI agents to Kingman: there were the motels where Timothy McVeigh stayed in the weeks before the bombing; the mail box through which he allegedly sold weapons; FBI searches of Fortier's trailer home; chases of Fortier across the Arizona desert; a gun pawned by Fortier's neighbor turns up. A gun believed to be from a burglary committed to help finance the bombing.
Thirty miles down route 66, there is a Wild West showdown on the streets of an old mining town. Again, it's a suspect thought to have ties to McVeigh. It later proves to be a dead end as the investigation twisted and turned. Kingman kept popping back into the limelight. People who live there say it was just a fluke.
A local priest, Father Falance, says, "There's no Kingman connection. These people happened to be passing through, stayed awhile and went on to do their thing".
Some joked about the FBI invasion. But few laughed about the media invasion. In the weeks following the bombing, there was talk of militias here, talk that angered many. Beverly Liles from the Kingman Chamber of Commerce says, "They're saying we're a hotbed of militants and people go around with guns strapped to them and that's just not Kingman".
Kingman resident Mac McCarty wears a gun. He taught a weapons class last year in which Fortier and McVeigh were students. McCarty claims there are no organized militias here, but the desert welcomes drifters like McVeigh. He says that the two men came to Kingman to become part of the scenery in a sense; to "get in just like all the other rattlesnakes and spiders and scorpions, come out here and get in and kind of blend in with part of the terrain."
Indictments have been handed down. The FBI and the media will soon be a thing of the past. Folks here just want the attention to go away and Michael Fortier, the hometown boy turned defendant, may not be coming home to Kingman for a long time.
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