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Meanwhile, federal investigators are now focusing their attention on Kingman, Arizona, where McVeigh lived in a trailer park for five months last year with a pregnant girlfriend. During that period, officials say, a small bomb exploded in a residential area, damaging the windows of some houses but causing no injuries. Government agents are examining soil samples and fragments from the area for clues that may link the Arizona explosion to McVeigh. According to the New York Times, authorities were alerted to the Arizona connection when they tracked the paperwork on his 9-mm Glock handgun. McVeigh had filed a complaint against the manufacturer and documents there provided a Kingman listing as his return address. Areas around the Arizona town have been used for explosives training by the Arizona Patriots, a right-wing group that produces radio shows and tapes denouncing the Federal Government.
A sense of guilty introspection swept the country when the FBI released sketches of the suspects, distinctly Caucasian John Does 1 and 2. Immediately after the Oklahoma blast, some politicians and commentators had fingered Islamic terrorists as the most likely culprits, fueling anti-Muslim sentiment and triggering calls for tougher anti-immigration measures. The feds suggested that the Does, as McVeigh seems to bear out, were members of a right-wing citizen militia targeting government agencies housed in the Alfred P. Murrah Building. Although Oklahoma police authorities were schooled in the hate groups blooming like some deadly nightshade on the fringes of society, they had always had a hard time seeing these loose organizations as a danger. "People just weren't willing to listen," admits a senior official. "We would attend training seminars with East and West Coast departments and come back trying to convince our own powers that be of a potential catastrophe. But it just fell on deaf ears."
Nevertheless, the manhunt moved swiftly and efficiently for the team of federal and local investigators dealing in twisted truck parts, traces of ammonium nitrate in the wreckage, and forged car-rental documents. Luck played a role as well: in spite of the composite sketch resembling him that was broadcast nationally as early as Thursday afternoon, John Doe No. 1 almost got away.
McVeigh checked into the Dreamland Motel in Junction City, Kansas, on Friday, April 14, signing his own name in the register and giving the Decker, Michigan, address of James Nichols. During his stay, McVeigh rented a Ryder truck and parked it in the Dreamland lot far from his room, No. 25. He checked out on Tuesday, the day before the bombing.
His whereabouts and activities during the next 24 hours are still unknown, but at least three witnesses say they saw him on Wednesday morning outside the federal building in Oklahoma City.
An hour and 20 minutes after the bombing, McVeigh was pulled over for driving without license plates outside Perry, Oklahoma, 60 miles from Oklahoma City. When Oklahoma state trooper Charles Hanger noticed that McVeigh was wearing a shoulder harness bearing a Glock semiautomatic pistol, which turned out to be loaded with hollow-point bullets, the trooper arrested him on state charges of carrying a concealed weapon, driving without tags and driving without insurance. McVeigh was taken to the jail at the courthouse.