Timothy James McVeigh (April 23, 1968 – June 11, 2001) was an American domestic terrorist who perpetrated the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people, 19 of whom were children, injured 680, and destroyed one-third of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. It is one of the deadliest acts of domestic terrorism in U.S. history.
A Gulf War veteran, McVeigh sought revenge against the federal government for the 1993 Waco siege as well as the 1992 Ruby Ridge incident and American foreign policy. He hoped to inspire a revolution against the federal government, and defended the bombing as a legitimate tactic against what he saw as a tyrannical government. He was arrested shortly after the bombing and indicted on 160 state offenses and 11 federal offenses, including the use of a weapon of mass destruction. He was found guilty on all counts in 1997 and sentenced to death.
McVeigh was executed by lethal injection on June 11, 2001, at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana. His execution, which took place just over six years after the offense, was carried out in a considerably shorter time than for most inmates awaiting execution.
McVeigh was born on April 23, 1968, in Lockport, New York, the only son and the second of three children of his Irish American parents, Noreen Mildred "Mickey" Hill (1945–2007) and William McVeigh. In 1866, McVeigh's great-great-grandfather Edward McVeigh emigrated from Ireland and settled in Niagara County. After McVeigh's parents divorced when he was ten years old, he was raised by his father in Pendleton, New York.
McVeigh claimed to have been a target of bullying at school, and he took refuge in a fantasy world where he imagined retaliating against the bullies. At the end of his life, he stated his belief that the United States government is the ultimate bully.
Most who knew McVeigh remember him as being very shy and withdrawn, while a few described him as an outgoing and playful child who withdrew as an adolescent.