| Scientust details oklahoma city bomb residue { April 30 2004 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active) http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/30/national/30NICH.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/30/national/30NICH.html
April 30, 2004 Scientist Details Oklahoma City Bomb Residue By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS McALESTER, Okla., April 29 — An F.B.I. scientist testified Thursday at the state murder trial of Terry L. Nichols, the Oklahoma City bombing conspirator, that he had found explosive fertilizer residue embedded in a single piece of the truck that carried the bomb.
The scientist, Steven G. Burmeister, head of the scientific analysis unit at the Federal Bureau of Investigation laboratory, said ammonium nitrate fertilizer was also found in a search of Mr. Nichols's house in Herington, Kan., three days after the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995. Mr. Nichols was at home that day.
Prosecutors say the finding is central to proving that Mr. Nichols helped Timothy J. McVeigh, who was convicted of the bombing, build the giant fertilizer bomb, which killed 168 people. Ammonium nitrate is crucial in making such a bomb. Mr. McVeigh, convicted of federal murder charges, was executed in 2001.
Mr. Nichols, 49, is serving a life sentence after a federal jury convicted him of conspiracy and the involuntary manslaughter of eight federal agents. In Oklahoma, he is charged with 161 counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of the other victims and a victim's fetus. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.
A photograph of the wood debris with the microscopic crystals was shown to the jury on television monitors. The plywood came from the cargo container of the Ryder truck that delivered the bomb and is the only direct evidence of the explosive.
Mr. Burmeister said he concluded a month after the bombing that a fertilizer bomb caused the explosion. The microscopic crystals that helped him reach that finding had disappeared when the plywood was examined again in November 1996.
"I went to the area where I knew it to be present, and it wasn't there," he said. "They dispersed. They went away. They dissipated."
Defense lawyers say that the truck fragment may have been contaminated in the testing and that it is impossible to identify the handlers. On cross-examination, Mr. Burmeister speculated that the crystals might have fallen or been knocked off or that they might have had contact with moisture and been absorbed into the atmosphere.
The prosecution expects to end its case on Friday. The defense is to begin Thursday.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
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