U.S. v. Timothy McVeigh

DENVER: Timothy McVeigh yearned to see "blood flow on the streets of America" in revenge for the acts of war he believed the government had committed against its citizens, U.S. prosecutor Joseph Hartzler said in opening arguments Thursday. Hartzler told jurors that that belief would lead the former soldier to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City. The blast killed 168 people, but Hartzler spent much of his time with the stories of children like 15-month-old Kevin Garrett, who cried as his mother dropped him off at the federal building's second-floor day care center. The mothers of the half-dozen kids who died in the bombing never held their children again. "McVeigh liked to consider himself a patriot, someone who could start the second American Revolution," Hartzler said. "Our forefathers did not fight innocent women and children. ... They didn't plant bombs and run away wearing earplugs." McVeigh sat stonefaced and pensive as Hartzler led the jury through the mounds of evidence he plans to present. "The prosecution's evidence looks really bad for McVeigh, and Hartzler was very compelling," reports TIME's Patrick Cole. "But Stephen Jones is meeting him head on. In his favor, he will have the last word to drive home his theory that it wasn't his guy." Jones began his counter with a simple anecdote of his own, the story of federal employee Daina Bradley, who lost a leg in the blast. Bradley said she saw the Rider truck parked outside the building moments before the bombing. She said a stocky, olive-skinned man got out of the passenger side and head toward the back of the truck. She did not believe that man was McVeigh. "That is not my client," Jones said simply.