McVeigh, martyr

Lying on a white sheet with another pulled up to his chest, he then stared, expressionless, at the ceiling. And, as the fatal drugs seeped into his system, he simply blinked and died with his eyes wide open.

Death was certified at 7.14am local time, 1.14pm UK time, justice had been dispensed and the deaths of 168 people caught up in the Oklahoma bombing had been avenged. There had been no final words, no dramatic speeches, no political diatribe, only the poem Invictus, by 19th century poet William Ernest Henley, which ended: "I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul".

Tall and thin, standing straight like the army sergeant he once was, McVeigh the all-American boy turned into a symbol of terror when he walked out of a courthouse two days after he was arrested.

The young man in an orange suit and shackles, his eyes assessing the crowd gathered to see him for the first time, became a shorthand for killing on a scale until then unimaginable in the US heartland.

It was a normal morning in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, when McVeigh parked a rented truck outside the Alfred P Murrah federal building. He walked away, leaving a huge fertiliser bomb primed to go off in the cargo area of the truck. As he reached his getaway car, the bomb exploded and McVeigh was lifted off his feet slightly.

But for 168 people, the bomb brought death. Nineteen of them were children in a day care centre in the building. It took rescue teams days to sort through the rubble to find the bodies of the missing.

What motivated McVeigh was his fanatical hatred of the federal government and, in particular, the FBI. Growing up in a small town near Buffalo, in the far north of New York state, fascinated by guns and scarred by his parents' divorce when he was a teenager, he left school and drifted into a job before signing up for the military.

He left the army a decorated Gulf War hero, but traumatised by the American destruction of the Iraqi army he witnessed as the conflict came to an end.

Returning to civvy street, the man who had been asked to apply to join the elite special forces could only get a job as a security guard in his home town. He drifted towards the Midwest and into the arms of the right-wing militias who objected to the power of the government and believed there was a conspiracy to strip Americans of their traditional rights - crucially, the right to bear arms.

Convinced the government was capable of doing terrible things to its citizens as well as foreigners, he did not have to wait long for two spectacular events to confirm his theory.

In 1992, the FBI laid siege to the compound of the Branch Davidians, a cult led by David Koresh, in Waco, Texas, claiming children were being abused and guns held illegally. More than 80 members were killed when the FBI raided the property using a tank, exploding tear-gas grenades and live bullets.

The blunder, which ended in a fire whose cause remains disputed, enraged the right-wing groups who saw it as an attack on their liberty.

The FBI did nothing to redeem itself with a series of lies, evasions and cover-ups which have resulted in inquiries and prosecutions which continue to this day.

McVeigh's misplaced sense of justice, combined with his fascination with guns and his disillusionment with America, fostered the idea of attacking the federal government in retaliation.

He enlisted an acquaintance, Terry Nicholls - now serving life - to help him, but drove the truck himself, sealing his own death sentence when he lit the fuse and parked it the vehicle outside the building.

It was only this year he admitted his part in the bombing. And, in chilling words, he refused to express remorse for any of the deaths, especially those of the children.

"Collateral damage," he said, a phrase which enraged even further the relatives waiting for him to die, many of whom punched the air in triumph on hearing the news that he had.

But his cold words are a contrast to the light-hearted correspondence he had with a series of people beyond his prison walls, wishing them happy Christmas in cards and sharing jokes with them in letters. What unites every part of him is a desire to control. He reportedly starved himself so he could go to his death "like a concentration camp victim".

McVeigh, 33, has created an image which will make him an evil symbol to most, an enigma for some and a martyr for others.

Condemned to die by lethal injection, he spent his last few hours in a holding cell measuring 9ft by 14ft, after being moved from death row to the room just a few steps away from the death chamber, on 24-hour suicide watch with guards studying his every move. The cell had a bed, a metal table and a toilet, with no television, nothing on the walls and no view to the outside world.

Then, as the time approached, he was led shackled by his arms and legs to the execution chamber, a green-tiled room in the middle of a windowless one-storey building in Terre Haute, Indiana. There, in the middle of the room, he was strapped down to the T-shaped brown, padded table and had a tube inserted into his arm which delivered the lethal chemicals.

A curtain was drawn back to reveal the officials and 25 witnesses who watched McVeigh's last minutes. The witnesses comprised ten members of the US media, ten relatives of his victims, who sat behind tinted glass, and five chosen by McVeigh himself. No members of his family were there.

In Oklahoma, 700 miles away, around 300 more survivors and victims' relatives watched on a television link to the death cell.

The Gulf War veteran was given the chance to say his final words and a special telephone was used to check for any last-minute stays of execution.

Finally, as the hands of the clock turned to 7am local time, the process began, though it was delayed slightly by technical problems with the video link. US Marshal Frank Anderson ordered the chemicals to be injected into McVeigh's veins. After being certified dead by a doctor, his body was removed and his lawyers will dispose of his ashes after he is cremated.

Survivors and the families of the victims hope they will no longer be haunted by McVeigh.

Survivor Paul Heath sums it up: "This will be one of the last chapters in the Timothy McVeigh saga. I hope, for this survivor from now on, it will not be Timothy McVeigh. It will be Timothy Who?"