Today is Monday, June 1st, 2020.

On this day in 2004, Terry Nichols arrived at an Oklahoma State courthouse for the first day of the penalty phase of his trial.

He'd already been sentenced to life in prison without parole by a federal jury,

but state prosecutors believed he deserved worse for his role in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

They hoped that this time they could pin him with the death penalty.

Welcome to today in True Crime, a parcast original. Today we're

covering the Oklahoma State trial against Terry Nichols, the man who helped Timothy

McVeigh build the explosives that were used in the

Oklahoma City bombing. Let's go back to the morning of June 1st 2004 to a

McAllister, Oklahoma courtroom.

It was one of the biggest domestic terrorism cases in US history.

Three former US military personnel conspired to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building

in Oklahoma City on April 19th, 1995, killing 168 people inside.

The most famous of those three men was Timothy McVeigh, who was sentenced to death in 1997,

but Terry Nichols, investigators believed, was part of the plot too.

Nichols' 1997 federal trial confirmed that.

Perhaps because that federal trial had already found him guilty

and sentenced him to life in prison without parole, Nichols state-level

trial moved along quickly once it got started. During preliminary proceedings, Nichols confessed.

He admitted that he had assisted Timothy McVeigh in acquiring bomb materials and constructing explosives.

Then, the Oklahoma jury convicted Nichols on 161 counts of murder.

One for each civilian life lost in the attack.

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