The "Real" Bomber? Get Real!

By Rick Horowitz

Now I get it: The Leg did it!

I've been wondering who did it -- the Oklahoma City bombing, I mean -- if Timothy McVeigh didn't do it. Not that there hasn't been all sorts of evidence suggesting -- screaming, actually -- that Timothy McVeigh did do it. But just in case I haven't been convinced by all that evidence, just in case I'm inclined to look somewhere else for my leading suspect, up pop Timothy McVeigh's lawyers with a brand-new theory and a brand-new face for the "Wanted" posters.

Well, not exactly a face. A leg. The Leg.

This particular leg is an extra leg, an unaccounted-for left leg. It was found in the rubble that once upon a time was the Murrah Federal Building. But it doesn't match up, McVeigh's lawyers insist, with any of the 168 known victims of the bomb; none of those bodies is missing this particular left leg.

And what conclusion do McVeigh's lawyers draw from this peculiar circumstance? Why, their client is innocent!

And you say, "Huh?" Good question. The logic (other words come to mind) of their argument goes something like this:

There's a leg that doesn't match any of the 168 known victims.

So there must have been another victim.

So this other victim had to have been blown to bits by the bomb -- except for the leg.

So this blown-to-bits victim must have been standing or sitting very close to the Ryder truck when it exploded.

So (hold on tight) this blown-to-bits victim must not have been a victim at all, but (hold on even tighter) must have been the bomber himself!

Or as McVeigh's lawyers like to put it, the "real bomber" -- a distant cousin, I assume, of those "real killers" O.J. Simpson has been tracking so single-mindedly across every golf course in the land.

The "real bomber," McVeigh's lawyers say -- he's the one who should be on trial here. If anyone could reassemble the parts, that is; putting just The Leg on trial might seem a little...unprofessional.

As theories go, you've got to admit it's pretty creative. After all, it's just as likely that the extremity in question simply belonged to some poor soul walking past the Ryder truck at precisely the wrong moment. Just his luck: First he's obliterated, then he's blamed for the whole thing.

Any day now, we should be hearing how The Leg recruited accomplices for its dastardly plot: The Arm, The Ear, The Hip Bone. (Obviously The Heart had nothing to do with it.) And any day now, we should be getting an answer to this one: Even if The Leg was somehow involved in the bombing, how does that get Timothy McVeigh off the hook? After all, if there were two guys in the truck, and McVeigh was one of them...

Darned clever, don't you think, The Leg using Timothy McVeigh's face and Timothy McVeigh's alias in Kansas to rent the very same vehicle that exploded just days later in Oklahoma City? Putting McVeigh's fingerprints on that receipt for 2,000 pounds of bomb-grade fertilizer? Using McVeigh to stack those soup cans for Lori Fortier, showing her how to get the most bang for the terrorist buck? Writing to McVeigh's own sister to tell her that "something big" was about to happen in the spring of '95? And on and on, according to the testimony. Darned clever for a leg.

I know, I know: Presumption of innocence. McVeigh's lawyers don't have to do a thing to prove their client didn't do it. Absolutely true. Besides, they might as well blame The Leg; all they need is reasonable doubt in one mind out of 12.

Still, if I were McVeigh's lawyers, and I were trying to prove that The Leg and my client weren't in cahoots, that The Leg acted alone, I'd certainly have offered up a decent alibi for my client right off the bat. I'd have tried, just for starters, to find a few credible someones willing to testify that at the time of the bombing, they were with Timothy McVeigh, miles and miles from Oklahoma City. Just for starters.

But that isn't the way they played it, which makes you wonder, doesn't it? Instead, they've been keeping their fingers crossed and pointing at stray body parts.

I'm going out on a limb here, but they may not have a leg to stand on.

5/27/97