PENDLETON, N.Y. (AP) Bill McVeigh says he has no hard feelings
toward the government that executed his son.
A day after Timothy McVeigh's death by injection at a federal
prison in Indiana, the man's father was back at the rural home
north of Buffalo where he raised his son.
He'd spent Monday with out-of-town relatives, saying earlier his
son did not ask him to witness the execution, nor did he want to.
"They may not have handled it perfectly," the retired auto
worker said Tuesday of the FBI, "but the bomb shouldn't have been
set. That's the bottom line."
"You've got to have government, there's no two ways about it,"
he added.
Timothy McVeigh cited his hatred for the government, which he
viewed as a bully, in setting off the truck bomb that killed 168
men, women and children at the federal building in Oklahoma City
six years ago.
McVeigh, 33, called one of his two sister, Jennifer, for a final
time Saturday, Bill McVeigh said. He spoke with his son for the
final time a month ago.
After preparing for the possibility of execution for six years,
in the end he had relatively little time to think about it, the
father said. Everyone had thought a federal judge would grant a
delay late last week, he said.
"When (the bombing) first happened, the FBI said this will
probably mean the death penalty," he said, "but I really didn't
think about it until after (Judge Richard Matsch's) decision
Wednesday."
He said life would go on and turned to everyday chores, tending
his sprawling backyard garden and large well-kept lawn.
"I knew when I got home the strawberries would have to be
picked," he said, "and the grass would be long."
The American flag that normally flies over the ranch house
remained down Tuesday McVeigh did not want it flying during his
son's execution. He said he would raise it again soon.
McVeigh's mother, Mildred Frazer, and Bill McVeigh were divorced
while their son was in high school.
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