Man Convicted of Trying to Blow Up Oklahoma City Bank Gets 25 Years in Prison

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/us/oklahoma-city-bomb-sentenced.html

Version 0 of 1.

A man who was arrested in 2017 after a thwarted attempt to blow up a bank in downtown Oklahoma City — a plot that echoed the deadly bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building there in 1995 — was sentenced Monday to 25 years in prison, the authorities said.

The man, Jerry Drake Varnell, 26, of Sayre, Okla., will be on supervised release for the rest of his life once he completes his prison term, federal and local authorities said in a statement on Monday.

Mr. Varnell was arrested in August 2017 after he tried to detonate a van full of what he believed to be explosives in an alley beside the downtown branch of BancFirst, Oklahoma’s largest state-chartered bank, the authorities said.

The site of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, which was destroyed in the 1995 bombing that killed 168 people, was a few blocks away.

“This case is extremely poignant considering we are approaching the 25th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing,” Chief Wade Gourley of the Oklahoma City Police Department said in the statement. “This event not only scarred the community of Oklahoma City, but had a profound effect on the nation.”

Mr. Varnell’s lawyer, Vicki Behenna, said in an interview on Monday that the sentence was “a little bit higher than what we wanted” but that “we’re very grateful it wasn’t life, which is what the government was asking for.”

Ms. Behenna said that she planned to appeal Mr. Varnell’s 2019 conviction on counts of attempting to use an explosive device to damage and destroy BancFirst’s corporate offices, and of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction against property used in interstate commerce.

Mr. Varnell’s arrest was the culmination of a domestic terrorism investigation involving an undercover operation, during which Mr. Varnell had been monitored closely for months as the bomb plot developed.

“This case required thorough investigation and careful coordination among agents and prosecutors in a matter that is our highest priority — terrorism,” said Timothy J. Downing, the United States attorney for the Western District of Oklahoma.

According to court documents, Mr. Varnell had espoused an anti-government ideology. He had told federal agents working undercover that he wanted to form a small militia group, inspired in part by the movie “Fight Club,” the authorities said.

“I’m out for blood,” Mr. Varnell wrote in one text message to a confidential informant who cooperated with the authorities, according to an affidavit written by an F.B.I. special agent. “When militias start getting formed I’m going after government officials when I have a team,” he wrote.

In another text message, Mr. Varnell wrote: “I think I’m going to go with what the okc bomber used. Diesel and anhydrous ammonia.” He was referring to Timothy J. McVeigh, who was executed for his role in the Oklahoma City bombing. Mr. McVeigh and a co-conspirator, Terry L. Nichols, built a giant fertilizer bomb using ammonium nitrate and racing fuel as their primary ingredients.

Around 1 a.m. on Aug. 12, 2017, Mr. Varnell parked a van loaded with what he believed to be a working explosive device next to the bank, and then dialed a number on a cellphone that he thought would set it off, federal officials said. But the device was inert and would not explode, and he was subsequently arrested.

In October 2017, a federal grand jury indicted Mr. Varnell, and an additional charge against him was added in April 2018.

Lawyers representing Mr. Varnell said that he was mentally ill and that he had been coaxed and entrapped by the authorities. His mother and a clinical psychologist testified that he was schizophrenic, Ms. Behenna, his lawyer, said. But the court found him mentally competent to stand trial.

In February 2019, a federal jury convicted him on both counts.

Manny Fernandez contributed reporting.