08:02-09:02 - 19 April 1995

On the morning of 19 April 1995, the Alfred P Murrah federal building in downtown Oklahoma City became the site for the most deadly peacetime attack on United States soil to date. As hundreds of employees prepared for the day ahead, a 4,800 lb truck bomb parked outside the front of the nine storey building was detonated. The ensuing blast was felt 40 miles away and left a crater 30ft wide and eight feet deep. The Murrah building was decimated and 168 people lost their lives - including 19 children.

The US was stunned as the bodies of 168 people, including 19 children, were pulled from the rubble for nearly two weeks. Just 90 minutes after the explosion, Timothy McVeigh was stopped by an Oklahoma state trooper for driving without a license plate. He was arrested for having an unlicensed firearm. Shortly before his release two days later, McVeigh was recognised and charged as the bombing suspect.

McVeigh had modeled the Oklahoma bombing on a similar event described in The Turner Diaries, a white supremacist novel that was found with him when he was arrested. He had timed the attack to avenge the second anniversary of the 1993 siege of the Branch Davidians near Waco, Texas.

The courts found McVeigh guilty on 11 counts of murder and conspiracy, and sentenced him to the death penalty. He was executed by lethal injection on 11 June 2001.

*Images from Zero Hour program.