Barry Black — The FBI Bomb Technician at the Oklahoma City Bombing | Part 1
Barry Black spent thirty-one years in the FBI. He joined wanting white collar work, having changed his major and his university to get an accounting degree because that was what the Bureau was hiring. He retired a master bomb technician and a master instructor who trained NATO and allied special forces on every continent but Antarctica. On April 19, 1995, he was one of only two FBI bomb technicians in the state of Oklahoma, and he had held the certification for fifty-three weeks.
That morning he was seven miles from downtown, sitting in an unmarked Oldsmobile with another operator, waiting to arrest a fugitive on a white collar case that had taken him years to indict. He felt the detonation before he understood it — 3.2 on the Richter scale, felt sixty miles away in Stillwater. He drove toward the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building with a small kit bag in the trunk, not yet knowing whether he was looking at a plane crash, a gas main, or a bomb.
The response was never abstract for him. His wife was a federal officer who worked in the building; she walked out at nine o'clock, two minutes before the blast, and he would not learn she was alive for ninety minutes. The payroll clerks he handed his check to every other Thursday, women his own age, were all killed. Craig Floyd reads the names of the eight federal agents who died, each of them since added to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial.
Barry also explains the mechanics without ceremony: how he determined this was a vehicle-borne device rather than an accident, what ANFO is and why it needed a booster, and how an explosive theft report filed months earlier at a Kansas quarry would eventually tie Terry Nichols to the bomb through a cordless drill and a drilled-out padlock.
Part 1 ends where the case breaks open — a 300-pound truck axle in the street, and a reserve deputy who spits on his finger, wipes away the grease, and reveals a confidential vehicle identification number. Part 2 follows that number to Junction City, Kansas, through fifteen thousand leads and nearly nine hundred investigators, to a traffic stop ninety miles north of town for a missing license plate.
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Transcript
You guys will remember the
Speaker:days of paper paychecks, right?
Speaker:There was not direct deposit.
Speaker:So every other Thursday, I was in that building
Speaker:depositing my paycheck to these young ladies who were
Speaker:about my age, 20s, early 30s.
Speaker:They were all killed.
Speaker:(Upbeat Music)
Speaker:Barry, I'm sure as you started
Speaker:your day on April 19th of 1995,
Speaker:it probably did not cross your mind that by 9.30 that
Speaker:morning, you would be in front of the Murrah Federal
Speaker:Office Building in Oklahoma City.
Speaker:So Barry Black, welcome to Heroes Behind the Badge.
Speaker:Tell us, start off what you were doing that day.
Speaker:You probably weren't doing what you ended up doing.
Speaker:Hey, good morning, Dennis.
Speaker:Thanks, happy to be here with you guys.
Speaker:Yeah, that morning, April
Speaker:19th of 95 was just another day.
Speaker:I was still on the SWAT team at the time and I had an
Speaker:arrest warrant for a fugitive
Speaker:on one of my white collar cases.
Speaker:It was a pretty high dollar case and it had taken me
Speaker:several years to get indicted.
Speaker:And it was time to go arrest this one subject.
Speaker:I thought he was gonna be out at Tinker Air Force Base,
Speaker:which was about seven linear miles from downtown.
Speaker:Myself and another operator were
Speaker:sitting in my tactical Oldsmobile Calais.
Speaker:We didn't have the vehicle.
Speaker:But, you know, heard, felt the detonation.
Speaker:It registered 3.2 on the Richter scale.
Speaker:It was felt 60 miles away up in Stillwater.
Speaker:It's windy and flat here in Oklahoma.
Speaker:So I looked over to the west.
Speaker:There was already a huge cloud of
Speaker:dust and smoke blowing across downtown,
Speaker:just as our secure radio started to chatter.
Speaker:Back then, if you're on the SWAT
Speaker:team or a special unit, you had a pager.
Speaker:That was the height of technology then was the pager.
Speaker:I remember those, yeah.
Speaker:So the pager went off and basically, the news we got was
Speaker:something had happened downtown.
Speaker:And I touched base with my
Speaker:assistant special agent in charge.
Speaker:And he said, "Go do whatever it is you do."
Speaker:I'd been a bomb technician for 53 weeks.
Speaker:Our evidence response team was brand new.
Speaker:This was my first bombing investigation.
Speaker:So I got down to the scene right about
Speaker:9.30 and started doing my little part.
Speaker:So what did you, all right, you get on the scene.
Speaker:You didn't expect to be there.
Speaker:You got there.
Speaker:What did you feel?
Speaker:What did you see when you got there?
Speaker:What was your first impressions?
Speaker:The best route in that morning was from the West.
Speaker:And again, this type of event was
Speaker:not common, certainly not expected.
Speaker:So even though I was one of two FBI bomb techs in the
Speaker:state of Oklahoma, I was just driving a sedan.
Speaker:Had a small kit bag in the trunk, but I drove towards the
Speaker:building as close as I could get without getting into the
Speaker:debris field, jumped up on the sidewalk.
Speaker:So emergency vehicles could get through and started, you
Speaker:know, the, it was a little walkabout basically just to
Speaker:try to see if we could determine what happened.
Speaker:Because we'd been told it might've been
Speaker:a plane crash or a gas main explosion.
Speaker:And as I mentioned, our evidence response team was new.
Speaker:So I touched base with them, asked
Speaker:them to start photographing the scene.
Speaker:And of course it's just chaos.
Speaker:I'm sure each of you has been on a scene, but the
Speaker:magnitude of this was
Speaker:something like I'd never seen before.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:So when you got there, there was still fire, flames,
Speaker:debris and people being pulled out.
Speaker:What did that look like?
Speaker:Well, it's,
Speaker:until you've seen one of these large
Speaker:events, it's difficult to replicate.
Speaker:Seeing it as a training video,
Speaker:it's just not the same.
Speaker:Movies are just not the same.
Speaker:Cars had been burning.
Speaker:There were walking wounded,
Speaker:people trapped in the building.
Speaker:It was chaos.
Speaker:And, you know, I was at ground zero
Speaker:after 9-11 and some other major events.
Speaker:And those are the similarities.
Speaker:It's just the mayhem that ensues once those events occurred.
Speaker:Yeah, for sure.
Speaker:You know, I'm amazed at the numbers I saw when I did a
Speaker:little research on this. 167 people died during the
Speaker:bombing. 168 was the final total because one of the
Speaker:rescue workers was actually killed, struck by debris
Speaker:during the rescue work. 19 children killed in the
Speaker:bombing. 15 in the daycare center that was at the Murrah
Speaker:building. 684 people injured.
Speaker:324 buildings either damaged or destroyed.
Speaker:We think about the Murrah building being destroyed, but
Speaker:there were all these other buildings surrounding it. 324
Speaker:buildings, that was amazing.
Speaker:$652 million in damage as a result of this, the deadliest
Speaker:act of domestic terrorism in US history.
Speaker:And
Speaker:I am particularly
Speaker:involved with the eight federal
Speaker:agents who died in the attack.
Speaker:Obviously the Murrah building was targeted because it
Speaker:housed a number of federal law enforcement agencies and
Speaker:the death toll was just so tragic.
Speaker:We added eight of these federal law enforcement agents to
Speaker:the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial.
Speaker:And I just want to read their names.
Speaker:From the US Secret Service, four agents killed, Alan
Speaker:Whicher, Mickey Maroney, Cynthia
Speaker:Campbell Brown, Donald Leonard.
Speaker:From the US Customs Service, two federal agents killed,
Speaker:Paul Ice and Claude Medearis.
Speaker:From the US Department of Housing and Urban Development,
Speaker:from their Office of Inspector General,
Speaker:Paul Broxterman killed in the bombing.
Speaker:And the eighth federal agent killed was a DEA agent, Drug
Speaker:Enforcement Administration agent, Kenneth McCullough.
Speaker:I just wanted to make sure we honored those fallen law
Speaker:enforcement heroes as we do so often on this show.
Speaker:Barry, it strikes me that there were so many questions to
Speaker:be asked, but, and we'll talk more about the
Speaker:investigation, but why was the Alfred Murrah building in
Speaker:Oklahoma City the target of this terrorist act?
Speaker:Well, Craig, that's a great question.
Speaker:And if I may go back just a minute,
Speaker:Dennis asked what these are like when you show up.
Speaker:Paul Ice, my wife and I knew
Speaker:him, Mickey, my wife and I knew him.
Speaker:I have been to a number of these, Lenny Hatton, the FBI
Speaker:bomb technician that died when
Speaker:the World Trade Center collapsed.
Speaker:I knew Lenny.
Speaker:So these events are personal a lot of times, even though
Speaker:they're major events, losing people that you knew kind of
Speaker:makes that response a little more difficult.
Speaker:But to your question, this is two years after Waco, the
Speaker:Branch Davidian standoff in Waco, Texas.
Speaker:I was a sniper down there for that event.
Speaker:McVeigh had a hatred for the federal government and Waco
Speaker:was sort of the final straw for
Speaker:him immediately after the fire.
Speaker:He was there during the standoff and then he went back
Speaker:after the events of April, 1993.
Speaker:And he began telling his friends, it's time for a call of
Speaker:action, time to basically strike against the government.
Speaker:He wanted to start a revolution,
Speaker:an overthrow of the government.
Speaker:Oklahoma City,
Speaker:the SAIC, the Special Agent in Charge, the public
Speaker:information officer for the Waco event.
Speaker:And McVeigh believed some of the ATF agents that had
Speaker:participated in that Waco situation were officed here.
Speaker:Additionally, just logistically, his bases of operation
Speaker:were out in Kingman, Arizona
Speaker:and up near Herington, Kansas.
Speaker:And so I-40 and I-35 intersect just
Speaker:almost directly on top of the Murrah Building.
Speaker:So it was easy access, easy in and out
Speaker:and had some tangential ties to Waco.
Speaker:As I recall in my research, he did consider other targets
Speaker:and this was interesting to me.
Speaker:He at one point seemed to indicate that he wanted to have
Speaker:as few non-government casualties as possible.
Speaker:And yet he targeted a federal
Speaker:building that housed a daycare center.
Speaker:And 15 of those children at the
Speaker:daycare center were killed in the bombing.
Speaker:How did you explain that?
Speaker:That seems very strange to me.
Speaker:Well, I really don't put a whole
Speaker:lot of credence in anything he said.
Speaker:You know, he wrote a book, which I've never read, but we
Speaker:know emphatically that he was aware of the kids.
Speaker:America's kids daycare was there.
Speaker:In December, prior to the bombing, he and Michael
Speaker:Fortier, an unindicted co-conspirator, took a recon trip,
Speaker:drove from Kingman to the building en route to Kansas.
Speaker:And Fortier asked him, well,
Speaker:you know, what about the kids?
Speaker:What about the innocent people that are inside?
Speaker:And basically,
Speaker:Timothy McVeigh likened them to
Speaker:people associated with Star Wars.
Speaker:They work for the evil empire, so they have to die.
Speaker:It was a very strange way to look at human life,
Speaker:particularly children, and he
Speaker:did know there was a daycare there.
Speaker:So Barry, I wanna jump in, and you said something earlier
Speaker:about it was very personal to you, and
Speaker:that relates, you and I can relate here.
Speaker:My first five years on the job as a cop, four of my
Speaker:personal friends were killed in line of duty.
Speaker:And there's nothing that makes going to work more
Speaker:personal than one of your fellow
Speaker:colleagues falling in the line of duty.
Speaker:And I can tell you, it changes everything.
Speaker:When you show up and when you're at work, you
Speaker:are so hyper-focused on hunting that
Speaker:person down like a fucking animal, right?
Speaker:The animal that they are, and
Speaker:it's like you got blinders on.
Speaker:It's just balls to the wall, going
Speaker:after any lead, trying to find that guy.
Speaker:And maybe we can get into the psychology
Speaker:of that a little bit, because here you are.
Speaker:You're an FBI agent, you're working in that building.
Speaker:You and your wife knew those people personally.
Speaker:It was personal for you.
Speaker:How did you react, and how did you and your colleagues
Speaker:gather yourselves, pull those
Speaker:emotions together, and try to stay focused?
Speaker:Which is one of the most difficult things that I could
Speaker:ever remember and experience, just trying to stay
Speaker:professional and find this guy, even though you are
Speaker:literally hunting this person at that point.
Speaker:Right, well, it's a great point,
Speaker:and I'll add another layer to that.
Speaker:So just before
Speaker:the ATF raid in Waco, my wife and I got married.
Speaker:So we were unpacked for my honeymoon.
Speaker:I left for 51 days to go be a sniper
Speaker:at the Branch Davidian standoff.
Speaker:I came back, was gone to Hazardous
Speaker:Devices School to become a bomb tech.
Speaker:That was in 94, 95 the bombing occurred.
Speaker:She was a federal officer as well.
Speaker:She was in the building.
Speaker:She left it at nine o'clock, two minutes before
Speaker:detonation, but I didn't know that.
Speaker:So it was about 90 minutes
Speaker:until I knew that she was okay.
Speaker:So not only did we know, we didn't know who had died, but
Speaker:it was obviously gonna be a high fatality event.
Speaker:So this was, yeah, it was
Speaker:personal on a pretty broad scale.
Speaker:And to answer your question directly,
Speaker:I think, as you all know,
Speaker:training tends to tamp down that chaos.
Speaker:My job was limited.
Speaker:You know, my job was bomb technician and part of the evidence
Speaker:response team, there were walking wounded.
Speaker:There were people I really couldn't help.
Speaker:My job was to determine early
Speaker:on, was this even a bomb or not?
Speaker:So I think,
Speaker:not that I had any special discipline, but
Speaker:the quality of training comes
Speaker:through in these crisis events.
Speaker:You can keep your head straight, do your job, count on
Speaker:everybody else to do their job.
Speaker:And that's how things tend to work best.
Speaker:So how did you determine, Barry, that this was a bomb?
Speaker:It could have been a number of other things.
Speaker:What techniques did you use to figure that out?
Speaker:Well, as I became a bomb technician and through the
Speaker:evidence response team training, we had done some
Speaker:post-blast training, nothing of this magnitude.
Speaker:But when I first showed up, there
Speaker:was this 32 foot crater in the street.
Speaker:The front of the building was gone.
Speaker:Generally, the airplane crash,
Speaker:you're gonna see some airplane parts.
Speaker:Just nothing like that existed.
Speaker:It was evident very early on that this was gonna be not
Speaker:only a bomb, but a very
Speaker:large, probably vehicle-borne IED.
Speaker:And early in the morning, a reserve deputy sheriff called me
Speaker:over and my partner, who was the FBI bomb technician,
Speaker:kind of my mentor, and he showed us this 300 pound
Speaker:twisted piece of metal, which looked to
Speaker:be the axle of a vehicle, a large truck.
Speaker:It was twisted, it exhibited blast damage, and this
Speaker:deputy spit on his finger, wiped some grease away, and
Speaker:revealed a confidential vehicle identification number.
Speaker:So that CVIN was a very early and critical piece of
Speaker:evidence that led us to Junction City,
Speaker:Kansas, where that rider truck was rented.
Speaker:What kind of bomb was this, to do that kind of damage
Speaker:that we described earlier in the interview?
Speaker:It's just incredible to think any kind
Speaker:of bomb could do that kind of damage.
Speaker:Well, sadly, it's very easily made.
Speaker:It's called ANFO.
Speaker:It's just an acronym for ammonium nitrate and fuel oil.
Speaker:It's commercially available for blasters and miners.
Speaker:It tends to be a heaving explosive.
Speaker:It makes big craters.
Speaker:The military uses ANFO to destroy enemy
Speaker:runways because it'll leave a giant hole,
Speaker:but it's very easy to make.
Speaker:There's a very forgiving recipe where you take
Speaker:fertilizer, mix in a wide variety of fuels, in pretty
Speaker:close to the right ratio, and you
Speaker:have this material known as ANFO.
Speaker:Oddly enough, ANFO is very insensitive.
Speaker:ANFO doesn't want to explode, so
Speaker:you need something called a booster.
Speaker:And that was one of my jobs as the bomb
Speaker:tech was where did the booster come from?
Speaker:It's another type of high explosive.
Speaker:Well, explosives are tools.
Speaker:They're dangerous tools, but they're tools.
Speaker:And if your tools get stolen, you have to report that to
Speaker:another agency, what's called an explosive theft report.
Speaker:So we had already traced the area of interest up to
Speaker:Kansas, and I found an explosive theft report from a
Speaker:quarry that happened to have reported nearly 500 pounds
Speaker:of high explosives stolen with some detonators.
Speaker:The same time when some of the
Speaker:purchases of the ammonium nitrate were made,
Speaker:we sent agents and officers there.
Speaker:The responding agency, the local agency that had
Speaker:responded to that theft, months and months before, said,
Speaker:"Well, we were able to recover one of the padlocks.
Speaker:"There are usually multiple
Speaker:locks on these explosive magazines."
Speaker:He said, "Four were gone.
Speaker:"We found one left.
Speaker:"It had been drilled out from the bottom."
Speaker:"Okay, good to know.
Speaker:"Do you still have that lock in your evidence locker?"
Speaker:And they said, "Sure."
Speaker:"Well, can we have that?"
Speaker:"Yes."
Speaker:So after we made the arrests of McVeigh
Speaker:and Nichols, we executed search warrants.
Speaker:One of the warrants was at Terry Nichols' home.
Speaker:In that home, we found a
Speaker:cordless drill and some drill bits.
Speaker:Our lab was able to match through metallurgy some
Speaker:microscopic bits of metal in the chuck of the drill.
Speaker:And then our tool mark analysis unit was able to show one
Speaker:of those drill bits had drilled out the lock.
Speaker:So that's how we were able to tie Nichols to the theft of
Speaker:the explosives that were used in
Speaker:the booster to make this giant bomb.
Speaker:Now McVeigh drives the truck, this rider truck as we
Speaker:later learned, up right next to the building, I guess,
Speaker:very close to it, and gets out.
Speaker:And I don't understand how he detonates all that
Speaker:explosive material and gets away.
Speaker:Well, there are a number of ways
Speaker:to detonate an IED or any explosive.
Speaker:In this instance, we believe he used burning time fuse.
Speaker:Basically, if you've used a firecracker as a kid, kind of
Speaker:the same theory, you light the fuse and the fuse burns
Speaker:down and cause the firecracker to pop.
Speaker:In this instance, we believe he had altered that rider
Speaker:truck where the burning time fuse
Speaker:could be initiated from inside the cab.
Speaker:So he pulled a fuse igniter.
Speaker:The fuse is burning
Speaker:through the cab of the truck into the detonators in the
Speaker:rear, and that's what causes the detonation.
Speaker:It's called time fuse because you can cut a certain
Speaker:length to give you X amount of time.
Speaker:So we believe he lit those fuses.
Speaker:We have a video from about a block away where the truck
Speaker:stops for just a few seconds.
Speaker:We believe that's where he lit the fuses.
Speaker:Knew how long the fuse would take to burn.
Speaker:So he drove that device hot
Speaker:through the next intersection.
Speaker:As you said, Craig parked in front of the building,
Speaker:exited, walked across the street, but he got behind
Speaker:another big building that they had
Speaker:delivered the getaway vehicle on Easter Sunday.
Speaker:And he had told Fortier his getaway route was gonna be behind
Speaker:the YMCA, which was a multi-story
Speaker:building in case the bomb went off early.
Speaker:So he was, it was kind of risky move.
Speaker:I mean, he was lighting fuses
Speaker:while he was still in the truck, right?
Speaker:Yes, I mean, we do that on the range.
Speaker:You know how long that fuse takes to burn.
Speaker:So you know how much time you have to walk away.
Speaker:Yeah, you lose the control in burning time fuse that you
Speaker:have with what we call an electrical detonation where you
Speaker:push the button and there's instantaneous result.
Speaker:But
Speaker:yeah, time fuse is called
Speaker:time fuse because you can time it
Speaker:down really pretty precisely.
Speaker:Now Barry, because of this incident at the Oklahoma City
Speaker:bombing site and the materials that were used, didn't
Speaker:laws change after that in regards
Speaker:to obtaining that kind of material?
Speaker:There were some attempts to change laws.
Speaker:For instance, putting what's
Speaker:called taggants in ammonium nitrate.
Speaker:Oklahoma is an agrarian state.
Speaker:Kansas where they were is an agrarian state.
Speaker:It's not unusual for huge farms and ranches to buy
Speaker:enormous amounts of ammonium nitrate.
Speaker:Now, what we learned in this case, Terry Nichols, who
Speaker:bought 4,000 pounds of ammonium
Speaker:nitrate, didn't have a ranch or a farm.
Speaker:He had a small home with a very small yard.
Speaker:And so the question was asked, to the place where the
Speaker:ammonium nitrate was acquired, is this an unusual amount?
Speaker:And I said, well, it is really the only people that buy
Speaker:4,000 pounds of fertilizer from us,
Speaker:our golf courses or the public utilities.
Speaker:So yeah, it was an unusual event, but it wasn't illegal.
Speaker:And this theory of taggants, the jury's out on it.
Speaker:It does allow traceable materials to be left over, but
Speaker:just it's a matter of volume, how much
Speaker:fertilizer is stolen in that example.
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:So as we're talking about this,
Speaker:let's talk about you for just a sec.
Speaker:And then I know Craig's jumping at the bit there to ask
Speaker:you a few more detailed questions, but
Speaker:here's something that's really interesting.
Speaker:So I'm guessing that you were hired by the FBI back in
Speaker:the day where almost every FBI agent was either an
Speaker:accounting major or a law major.
Speaker:And you, in fact, if I'm
Speaker:correct, were an accounting major.
Speaker:And so you come out of college as an accountant, you get
Speaker:hired by the FBI, that was kind of their protocol or
Speaker:their requirements at the time, because mostly it was
Speaker:white collar crime, but certainly
Speaker:the FBI has evolved over the years.
Speaker:But how do you go from being an accountant to being a
Speaker:SWAT operator, and then of all things, a bomb tech?
Speaker:I mean, you went from one extreme,
Speaker:being a pencil pusher to a tactical dude.
Speaker:Yeah, it was a strange sort of
Speaker:path I had through my career.
Speaker:To answer your question, I wanted
Speaker:to be an FBI agent since I was a kid.
Speaker:So I was like 10 years old, and my
Speaker:little league coach was an agent.
Speaker:So I hounded him, what do I need to do?
Speaker:And he was stay out of trouble,
Speaker:the whole good advice thing for kids.
Speaker:But by the time I got into college, he sort of realized I
Speaker:was serious and wanted to pursue a career in the Bureau.
Speaker:So he put me in touch with a
Speaker:recruiter, and she asked what I was studying.
Speaker:I told her I was in engineering,
Speaker:and she just said, "Well, we're not hiring engineers, "so
Speaker:we're looking for accountants and lawyers."
Speaker:So I changed majors, literally changed schools.
Speaker:I went down to Tuscaloosa where the better business
Speaker:school was, got an accounting degree, solely to enhance
Speaker:my chances of getting in the FBI.
Speaker:When I ended up with a degree, I was still too young, so
Speaker:I actually had to go into the
Speaker:public sector, which was not my favorite.
Speaker:Public accounting was not what I wanted to do.
Speaker:Stayed focused, made the
Speaker:application, got in when I was 24.
Speaker:I was the youngest agent in my class and was prepared to
Speaker:do white collar crime for the rest of my career.
Speaker:But my training agent was the head of the sniper team,
Speaker:and we spent a lot of time together.
Speaker:And if you've been in the military or in your agency, you
Speaker:do what your training agent says, you're FTO.
Speaker:So every Wednesday, he would shoot.
Speaker:So every Wednesday, I would shoot.
Speaker:And we became very close friends.
Speaker:He suggested I try out for
Speaker:the SWAT team and sniper school.
Speaker:So I did.
Speaker:I made the team.
Speaker:First major deployment was the Branch Davidians in Waco.
Speaker:While that compound was burning, my team was there, and a
Speaker:couple of guys I knew came down
Speaker:and my job was to stop people.
Speaker:So I stopped these two men, asked them who they were.
Speaker:Well, they were FBI bomb techs.
Speaker:I didn't know we had FBI bomb techs.
Speaker:So I asked, "What do you guys do?"
Speaker:And I was still pretty young.
Speaker:And I said, "Well, basically we
Speaker:travel around the world, blow stuff up."
Speaker:I said, "Okay, I want to do that.
Speaker:How can I get that job?"
Speaker:And again, another mentor, he helped me, somehow made my
Speaker:way into the FBI's bomb school, the
Speaker:hazardous devices school the next year.
Speaker:And then I did all three.
Speaker:I was a sniper and white collar and bomb tech, juggling
Speaker:all those balls until terrorism kind of took off and then
Speaker:spent the rest of my career
Speaker:exclusively in the counter-terrorism realm.
Speaker:You have literally touched every major
Speaker:incident that most people can remember.
Speaker:You're talking about Waco, you're talking about Oklahoma
Speaker:City bombing, 9-11.
Speaker:And I know there's others as well.
Speaker:Pretty incredible stuff.
Speaker:It was nothing I could have anticipated.
Speaker:I was happy working white collar.
Speaker:If you're an accountant, putting
Speaker:those cases together are puzzles.
Speaker:They're international, they're big money.
Speaker:I did have a case that was on Unsolved Mysteries, which I
Speaker:thought was gonna be the peak of my career.
Speaker:But yeah, I had no way to know the twists and turns that
Speaker:both my job trajectory and the
Speaker:world would take in those 31 years.
Speaker:And one last thing before Craig grabs it is at the very
Speaker:beginning of this interview, you are on your way to go
Speaker:and arrest a white collar criminal that took you two
Speaker:years to get that indictment.
Speaker:And then the bombing happened.
Speaker:So I'm guessing he was a pretty lucky
Speaker:bastard that day and he didn't get arrested.
Speaker:Did he ever get arrested?
Speaker:Yes, so as I mentioned, I had
Speaker:a couple of pokers in the fire.
Speaker:Once the immediacy of the bombing had kind of quelled, we
Speaker:had grand jury ongoing because there
Speaker:were other people in the case to indict.
Speaker:But yes, he did get arrested.
Speaker:And in an odd twist, the morning we picked the jury, his
Speaker:son burst into the courtroom and said,
Speaker:he died of a heart attack that morning.
Speaker:Barry Black had been a bomb technician for 53 weeks when
Speaker:the Murrah Building came down.
Speaker:Before the day was out, he had a
Speaker:serial number off a truck axle.
Speaker:What he did not have was a case.
Speaker:Proving it would take nearly 900 investigators, more than
Speaker:15,000 leads and a million man hours, it would begin with
Speaker:a traffic stop 90 miles north of
Speaker:town for a missing license plate.
Speaker:That's part two.
Speaker:Heroes Behind the Badge is sponsored by Citizens Behind
Speaker:the Badge, the leading organization in support of the men
Speaker:and women of law enforcement.
Speaker:Get involved at citizensbehindthebadge.org.
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