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Howe has since secluded herself, reportedly at her grandfather's ranch near Austin, Texas (TIME's repeated attempts to speak to her, relayed to her lawyer, have gone unanswered). But in the interim she became an informant for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and is the purported source of contentious variants in the story of the Oklahoma bombing. Last week the McCurtain Daily Gazette, an Oklahoma newspaper, published what it said was an interview with Howe by J.D. Cash, whose work has also appeared in the antigovernment press. In Cash's interview, Howe says she learned that Mahon and Strassmeir (whom she claimed she "kinda had a relationship with") were casing the Murrah Building and two other federal buildings. In Cash's account, Howe insisted she had reported this to the ATF.
Sources in the Federal Government admit that Howe was a paid ATF informant in Elohim City from August 1994 until March 1995, but they say her 38 surreptitious tapes contained no evidence of a bombing conspiracy in the works. Only when she was debriefed two days after the bombing, government sources say, did she claim that Mahon and Strassmeir had discussed bombing government buildings. Agents familiar with the interview considered her answer speculative; in any case, she offered no additional details.
Government sources say that Howe's tapes didn't even provide evidence for busting Strassmeir or Mahon on weapons charges. In autumn 1994, Howe invited Strassmeir and other Elohim residents to her apartment in Tulsa. She asked them to paint three unarmed grenades orange and green like Halloween pumpkins. They obliged. But when she asked them to help her arm the grenades, they refused, as Mahon says he later did too. "I knew she was bent," he says. "She was the one always talking about killing and bombing," in an attempt, he contends, to entrap others at the compound.
Howe's charges, if they are substantiated, may bolster McVeigh's defense. But it is unclear if his lawyer Stephen Jones will risk calling her to the stand. Her testimony could be effectively attacked by prosecutors, citing ATF records that show she was fired as an informant because of erratic behavior and unreliability. Still, Jones believes the government has proof that Strassmeir and Mahon were involved in a bombing plot and was "obligated" to disclose it. At any rate, in the wake of recent reports about faulty FBI lab procedures, the government does not need Howe's tales to muddy the case.
In Elohim City "Grandpa" Millar deplores the entire episode, saying it is another opportunity for the media to besmirch Christian Identity. The settlement has been declared off limits to the press. But speaking from the front seat of the Lincoln parked in the rain-drenched gravel of a country-store parking lot near the settlement, Millar says he would welcome Howe back. "It was not unusual for unstable people to seek us out," he says. "The Church of Jesus Christ exists for such people." And so, apparently, does Elohim City. --With reporting by Patrick E. Cole/Tulsa and Elaine Shannon/Washington