Countdown to 4/19: The Bombers Convoy at Sav-A-Trip | Part One in a Series
Witness Talked To McVeigh and John Doe #2
PART I: The Bombers Convoy at Sav-A-Trip
Welcome to part one in a series (that I anticipate will be five to six parts) which focuses on key witness sightings and events that occurred on April 18 and April 19, 1995, in the lead up to the April 19, 1995, OKC bombing.
I plan to produce a few installments highlighting important but lesser-known witness accounts, each of which shows that Tim McVeigh was not alone on April 18th and 19th.
We begin our installment with a witness I consider to be one of the most important in this case: Richard Sinnett, in Kingman, Kansas. (Yes, Kansas—not Kingman, Arizona!)
Part I: Sav-A-Trip & Richard Sinnett
April 19th, 1995
Kingman, Kansas
Approximately 1:30-2:30 A.M.
On the day of the Oklahoma City bombing, Richard Sinnett was assistant manager at a Save-A-Trip convenience store in Kingman, Kansas. It was there that Sinnett had an encounter with McVeigh — and at least three other men — in the early morning hours of April 19th. Sinnett’s observations serve as one of the most compelling accounts indicating that others were involved in the bombing that day.
A little after midnight, between 1:30 and 2:30 AM on April 19th, 1995, a three-car convoy consisting of a Ryder truck, a four-door sedan, and a brown truck pulled into the Sav-A-Trip parking lot.
Sinnett's encounter started when a man began pumping gas into a Ryder truck, causing the fuel-control console behind the store counter to emit a tone indicating a customer activated the pump.
When Sinnett looked up and out into the lot, he noticed a man (with his back to him) pumping gas into a Ryder truck, which at that moment was pulling behind it a trailer that had a very large liquid fuel tank mounted on it.
Sinnett paid close attention to the Ryder truck because the trailer attached to it had a large cylindrical or barrel-shaped fuel tank mounted on it that looked unlike anything he had ever seen before.
It is important to note that the observation of a trailer attached to the Ryder truck closely matches what was observed at the Dreamland Motel by witnesses Shane Boyd and David King, among others, who all saw a large steel-framed trailer attached to a Ryder truck (without the fuel tank) parked there between April 14th and 16th. Boyd and King are among a group of about five witnesses who observed the Ryder truck at the Dreamland, with a trailer, that was one day surrounded by a group of men with Tim McVeigh.
Richard Sinnett said that the tank mounted on the trailer was about 6 feet wide and so large that it would have "barely fit into the back of the Ryder truck, so it could easily hold over a thousand gallons of liquid." The cylindrical container was opaque/clear in color, as if it were plastic, and Sinnett said he could see a clear-colored liquid sloshing around in the tank as the convoy later left the parking lot.
Sinnett would describe this encounter in detail to the OKC grand jury investigating the bombing. He testified that a man he called John Doe #2 pumped gas into the Ryder truck, while the truck's driver came into the Sav-A-Trip and asked where the restroom was.
Sinnett directed the Ryder truck's driver—McVeigh—to the back of the store and described him as about 6 feet tall with light-colored hair and a military-style haircut.
While the McVeigh was using the restroom, John Doe #2 finished pumping gas and entered the store where he picked out a sandwich from the deli counter. Sinnett heated the sandwich for John Doe #2 in the microwave, and just as it finished heating, McVeigh came out of the restroom and approached the counter.
John Doe #2 paid for his sandwich, while McVeigh paid for the gas. Clearly, the two were together.
Sinnett said that the man who pumped the gas and bought a sandwich, paying with cash, had features that closely matched details of the sketches and descriptions of John Doe #2 later provided by others. He said the man was about 5'7 or 5'8, very muscular "like a football player", about 180-200 lbs, with dark hair that was parted on one side and brushed back.
After the sketch of John Doe #2 was aired in the media on April 20th, Sinnett says he recognized it immediately as depicting the man he had encountered the night before. Sinnett told the Associated Press, then covering a Grand Jury investigation, in 1997, that "The eyes were perfect. I recognized him right away."
Sinnett told the Associated Press, then covering a Grand Jury investigation, in 1997, that
"The eyes were perfect. I recognized him right away."
McVeigh and John Doe #2 Argue, then Sinnett Spots The Convoy
After both men exited the Sav-A-Trip together, Sinnett watched as they spoke animatedly just outside the entrance. Sinnett was left with the distinct impression that the two were arguing, with the taller of the two men, McVeigh, waving his arms around and "kind of getting in the face of" the man he later said was John Doe #2.
After that, the pair got into the Ryder truck, with John Doe #2 entering through the passenger side. As the Ryder truck started to leave the parking lot, Sinnett saw a four-door sedan and a brown pickup truck pull up alongside and behind the Ryder, and watched as all three vehicles exited the lot and moved down Highway 54 together: it was a convoy! The group had to have consisted of at least four people: McVeigh and John Doe #2 in the Ryder truck, at least one driving the sedan and at least one driving the pickup.
The sighting of the convoy caught Sinnett by surprise – he wasn’t aware that the brown pickup and four-door sedan had been in the parking lot until that moment, testifying that "the car and the truck [pulling up alongside the Ryder] was just almost immediate, one after the other, and that caught me by surprise, because I didn't even know they were back behind the building."
Sinnett didn’t get a good look inside the sedan or the brown truck and couldn't determine how many people might have been in either vehicle, or what they might have looked like. The only thing he could discern is that there had to have been at least four people.
The passenger in the Ryder truck matched the description of John Doe #2, the driver matched that of Timothy McVeigh, with the light colored sedan matching the description of McVeigh's Mercury Marquis. Meanwhile, the brown pickup truck without a camper shell matches the description of a vehicle that pulled off to the side of the road ahead of McVeigh when he was pulled over after the bombing. Likewise, the brown pickup truck also matched the description of a brown pickup truck sought by law enforcemen in an A.P.B. broadcast the morning of the bombing, based on descriptions given by Manuel Acosta, Ann Domin, Margaret Hohhman, Rodney Johnson, and others.
Where Was the Convoy?
The Sav-A-Trip in Kingman, Kansas is located just 35 miles west of Wichita, about a half hour's drive on the highway. It's 175 miles almost directly due north of Oklahoma City—about three hours away.
This puts the convenience store at a location where the convoy could reach Oklahoma City between 4 and 6 AM, depending on how fast the convoy was traveling and how many stops they would make.
Sinnett would relate that "they had plenty of time to get down there" in an interview with the Daily Oklahoman.
The Media Gets Kingman All Wrong
News reports that covered this encounter incorrectly and problematically described the Sav-A-Trip as being located in Kingman, Arizona, which is 1,010 miles away from Oklahoma and a 12-hour drive.
If the convoy had actually been in Kingman, Arizona, between 1:30 and 2:30 AM, it would have been impossible for it to reach Oklahoma City and carry out the bombing just 7 hours later. This fact was indeed highlighted by mainstream media reports, with a fervor to debunk that didn’t quite match up with the facts: Kingman, Kansas, and Kingman, Arizona, are two separate cities in different states, but that didn’t stop the media from incorrectly reporting the sighting as in Arizona.
For the record, Richard Sinnett's Sav-A-Trip was located in Kingman, Kansas, not in Arizona as repeatedly reported in media accounts. Equally problematic is the fact that the Oklahoma City grand jury investigating the bombing was misinformed from the very beginning: jurors were told that Richard Sinnett was from Kingman, Arizona before he took to the witness box. This was a fact that Sinnett quickly corrected in his testimony, and related with disgust to reporter J.D. Cash in a 1999 interview.
The erroneous identification of Sav-A-Trip as having been in Arizona, as printed in the paper and told to the grand jury, served to seemingly discredit what is a very important and highly credible witness account in this case.
People reading the paper would have been misinformed and caused to believe that Sinnett could not possibly have seen the bombing conspirators, and had the grand jury not interviewed him, this might have laid his account to rest. However, the OKC grand jury was interested enough in Sinnett's account that their investigators visited the Sav-A-Trip in Kingman, Kansas.
Investigators then considered Sinnett to be an important and credible witness and subpoenaed him to appear before the grand jury. On September 11th, 1997, Sinnett testified before the grand jury. Before testifying, an affidavit of Sinnett's account was entered into evidence, and he went on to testify for 3 1/2 hours before the panel, during which the facts of his account were recorded.
Sinnett was later given a polygraph examination concerning what he saw. On June 5th, 2001, Joseph R. Boucher, a forensic psychophysiologist with J.B. Investigations, conducted the polygraph test, where the key facts of Sinnett's account were evaluated. No signs of deception were detected in the test, and Sinnett confirmed the truth of his claim to have witnessed Timothy McVeigh with others at approximately 2:00 a.m. on April 19th, 1995.
Sinnett is positive that he saw at minimum three other men with McVeigh, telling J.D. Cash in 1999 that "As I look back over the bombing, I still don't understand why there are only two people charged because there had to be at least four people involved. There are other people involved in the bombing, not just Terry Nichols and Tim McVeigh and the FBI doesn't seem to want to track those other people down."
“As I look back over the bombing, I still don't understand why there are only two people charged because there had to be at least four people involved.“
Reluctantly, Sinnett contacted the FBI about two weeks after the bombing to tell them about what he had seen. Sinnett was initially hesitant to contact them, because at the time, the FBI was only looking for two men, and Sinnett feared possible violent reprisals from one of the other men who visited his store that night.
Tellingly, the FBI waited almost two years to interview Sinnett, and at the time of their interview, the FBI expressed interest only in the four-door sedan Sinnett had seen. Sinnett related in interviews with J.D. Cash that the FBI appeared to have no interest at all in John Doe #2, whom he had a good look at, or in the very unusual large fuel tank and trailer attached to the back of the Ryder truck.
It's seems likely that the reason the FBI showed no interest in these details was because they didn’t fit the official narrative the FBI was pushing at the time. The FBI claimed, contrary to all evidence, that John Doe #2 didn't exist, and that the truck bomb was assembled at Geary Lake the day before the bombing.
A fuel tank filled with liquid not yet mixed into the bomb, along with the presence of multiple accomplices, is an inconsistency that doesn't align with the false story that became the official version.
For that reason, Richard Sinnett’s account had to disappear, and as the years have moved forward little has been said about it.
This series aims to bring these stories to life, so the reader can see that what really happened on April 19th, 1995, isn’t quite the ‘simple truth’ that some make it out to be.
TO BE CONTINUED…
UP NEXT: McVeigh and John Doe #2 stop to buy just $1.71 in gas, read Part II here!
Endnotes
The primary source for Sinnett’s account is his Grand Jury testimony, which was reviewed with former 60 Minutes II associate producer and investigator Roger Charles.
Other details come from Associated Press, Tulsa World, Dallas Morning News, a transcript of an interview that Sinnett did with a film crew in 1999, and Sinnett’s FBI 302 report.
FBI 302 Report D-18180, 4/2/1998, interview with Richard A. Sinnett
“Witness Claims He Saw Others with McVeigh.” Associated Press, 30 Jul. 2014.
Brian Ford. “McVeigh Placed at Kansas Store.” Tulsa World, 12 Sep. 1997.
“Mystery of John Doe No. 2 Pervades Conspiracy Investigation.” Dallas Morning News, 14 Sep. 1997.
Transcript of March 11, 1999 interview with Richard Sinnett by MGA Films
The fact that there was a tanker seen on the trailer, obviously to keep the ingredients separate while in transit, makes Mr. Sinnets account all the more credible.