Tim McVeigh was murdered by the System on June 11, 2001.
Tim McVeigh, a decorated Gulf War veteran, was convicted in 1997 for the April 19, 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in which 168 people died. He was sentenced to death for the killing of eight federal agents in the blast.
Tim McVeigh maintained he planted the 7,000-pound bomb to teach the government a lesson for its out-of control behavior, particularly the disastrous federal raids at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and near Waco, Texas.
He told a newspaper and his lawyers the weekend of the execution that he was sorry about the people who died, but viewed the attack as a military operation against an oppressive government.
Tim McVeigh made no final remarks, but gave a hand-written statement to the press, in which he quoted in full the poem Invictus by William Ernest Henley:
Invictus
Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.