Death chamber awaits Oklahoma bomber

The worst mass murderer in US history is due to die on Monday morning barring a last minute stay of execution.

Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people, 19 of them children, when he detonated a huge truck bomb outside the Alfred P Murrah federal government building in Oklahoma City on April 19 1995.

But on Monday, he is expected to die for his crimes when he is strapped to a table and given a lethal cocktail of chemicals, bringing to an end the life of a man whose terror attack horrified the nation.

His last day will be spent in a bare cell measuring nine feet by 14, just 500 yards from the execution chamber.

The cell has a bed, a metal table and a toilet, with no television, nothing on the walls and no view to the outside world.

Instead, a large window allows guards to conduct a 24 hour suicide watch watch over their prisoner.

At noon on Sunday, he will eat a last meal, worth up to 20 dollars (£14.38), but with no alcohol, although McVeigh does not drink anyway. His choice is being kept secret until after his death.

With the clock ticking towards 7am local time (1pm Irish time) on Monday, McVeigh will be allowed to see no one except his lawyers and will only be allowed a small book and five unframed photographs in his cell.

He will be woken by guards at dawn, given white underpants, khaki trousers, a white T-shirt, socks and shoes to wear and then, shackled by his arms and legs, led to the execution chamber, a green-tiled room in the middle of a windowless one-story building.

In the middle of the room is a T-shaped brown, padded table, on which McVeigh will be strapped down and have a tube inserted into his arm to deliver the lethal chemicals which will kill him.

A curtain will be drawn back to reveal the officials and 25 witnesses who will watch McVeigh’s last minutes.

The witnesses will comprise 10 members of the US media, 10 relatives of his victims and five chosen by McVeigh himself.

No members of his family will be there, but novelist Gore Vidal will be there at the condemned man’s invitation.

The victims’ families will sit behind tinted glass, but McVeigh will be able to look into the eyes of the other people who will see him die.

In Oklahoma, 700 miles away, about 300 more survivors and victims’ relatives will watch on a television link to the death cell.

McVeigh will be given the chance to say his final words and a special telephone will be used to check for any last-minute stays of execution.

Finally, as the clock reaches 7am, US Marshal Frank Anderson, the official overseeing the execution, will order the lethal chemicals to be injected into McVeigh’s veins.

After about seven minutes a doctor will certify him dead and his body will be removed. No autopsy will take place and McVeigh’s lawyers will dispose of his ashes after it is cremated.

McVeigh’s hatred of the federal government drove him to carry out the bombing attack which created death and mayhem on a scale never seen on US soil.

He finally confessed to the bombing this year, expressing no remorse and calling the dead children ‘‘collateral damage’’.

But whether it brings ‘‘closure’’ to the survivors and families of those who died is another question.

The emergence of thousands of pages of FBI evidence just days before his death has raised once again the question of whether he acted alone, as he claims, or as part of a wider conspiracy.

And security at courts and federal buildings across the country has been stepped up in case his death becomes an opportunity for fresh terrorist attacks.

McVeigh’s bombing was an act of vengeance for the FBI’s disastrous attack on the compound of the Branch Davidian cult at Waco, near Dallas, Texas, which he committed on its anniversary, prompting fears his death could prompt similar attacks to extremist right-wingers who will see him as a martyr.

Grayson Jones, 73, who lost his son in the bombing, said the last month had brought back their grief.

He said: ‘‘It brings up memories and hurt that maybe would go away if it didn’t have all this attention.’’

But for many there is the hope that they can stop being haunted by the name of the man who caused their loss.

Survivor Paul Heath said: ‘‘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?’’