It was the middle of the night—2:45 in the morning—and 3-year-old Bella Kok was crying hard. With dawn still hours away, she was surprised and frightened to see her mother, Aren, 29, in a black dress and her wedding pearls, 8 and her father, Stan, 30, in a dark suit. "It's okay," her mother told her reassuringly. "I'll be right back. You go to sleep." Aren wasn't ready to tell the little girl that she was going to watch the man Bella calls "that boy in the orange suit" be put to death. "Someone else will tell her," said Aren. "Or she'll learn about it when she's old enough."

It was six years ago that the bomb set by Timothy McVeigh outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City claimed the life of Aren's daughter Baylee, as well as 167 others, including 18 children. Of all the horrifying images that followed the April 19, 1995, blast, the most lasting and disturbing may have been that of 1-year-old Baylee's crumpled body cradled in the arms of a fireman. Now, on June 11, after trials both public and private, Kok was eager for the ordeal to end. "I'm ready to get it over with," she said—though not before making a stop at a pharmacy to pick up medication to calm her nerves, just in case her emotions got the best of her. "I don't think you can truly prepare for something like this," said Stan.

Like people all over the world, McVeigh's victims and their relatives hardly knew what to expect of the first federal execution since 1963. Having readied themselves for the original execution date, May 16, they had been dismayed by the sudden postponement when it was disclosed that thousands of documents compiled by the FBI during the bombing investigation had never been turned over to McVeigh's attorneys. But after the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver upheld a lower court's ruling that the documents had no bearing on McVeigh's guilt, he abandoned his appeals, and family plans were made final.

In the early hours of June 11, 232 of his victims and their family members gathered in Oklahoma City to watch the execution by closed-circuit TV, while 24 observers—including four of McVeigh's invited guests—looked on at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind. The prisoner was strapped to a gurney and, beginning at 7:10 a.m. CDT, injected with powerful chemicals that put him to sleep, then halted his breathing and, finally, his heart. At 7:14, McVeigh, 33, was pronounced dead. He uttered no last words, but released the text of a poem by the Victorian William Ernest Henley, "Invictus"—Latin for "unconquered."

Outside the prison there was little cheering. Thousands of demonstrators had once been anticipated, but only a fraction—perhaps 50 death-penalty advocates and a couple of hundred opponents—appeared. Six hundred miles to the southwest, in Oklahoma City, where a solemn memorial of 168 empty chairs, one for each victim, now stands at the site of the demolished Murrah Building, there were public expressions of grief, relief and lingering anger—sometimes all at once. "There's no such word as closure," said Gloria Taylor, 71, huddled with her husband, John, 70, at the chair dedicated to their daughter Teresa Lauderdale, 41. "Not until we're in our graves."

Such conflicting emotions had been vividly evident in the days leading up to the execution. In preparation, some survivors fed their rage by recalling the horrifying details of the blast. Others sought seclusion, or reflected on what it meant to take another life—even that of a mass killer. Since the explosion claimed the life of his daughter Julie, 23, a Spanish interpreter for the Social Security Administration, Bud Welch, 61, has changed remarkably. "She was little, my Julie. She was just 5 ft. tall and 103 lbs.," he says. She was also committed to overturning the death penalty, Welch says, and he has taken on that crusade as his own.

During a pause in a weekend conference at Boston College for the relatives of murder victims, Welch, who owns a Texaco station in Oklahoma City, told how, since the bombing, he has traveled the country to preach reconciliation and forgiveness. In September 1998 he even went to the bomber's hometown near Buffalo, where he befriended McVeigh's father, Bill, 61, and met the killer's sister, Jennifer, 27. "Jennifer and I cried," he recalls, "and I said, 'I'll do anything I can to make sure your brother won't die. We're in this thing together.' " Welch went on to speak out tirelessly against McVeigh's execution, arguing, "Those with anger and vengeance will still be in pain." But as the execution drew near, he realized that one man's best efforts could not stop the inevitable. "I failed," says Welch with tears in his eyes. "I tried."

The day before the execution, in a sweltering church in an Oklahoma City suburb, Constance Favorite wept too. Favorite, 45, whose daughter Lakesha Levy, 21, an Air Force Airman, First Class, who had been at the Murrah Building to pick up a Social Security card when the bomb went off, knew how she wanted to spend the day before McVeigh's execution: She wanted to go to church, even though the suitcase carrying her best clothes had failed to arrive with her at the Oklahoma City airport. "I was discouraged because I didn't have my own clothes," says Favorite, a receptionist who lives with her husband and daughter, 17, in New Orleans.

And yet, as she had in the past, Favorite knew she could count on Deloris Watson, a friend from Oklahoma City whose grandson P.J., then 20 months old, had been seriously injured when scalding air from the bombing scorched his lungs. (Although P.J.'s lungs are permanently scarred, Deloris hopes that one day he will no longer need the tracheotomy tube that allows him to breathe today.) Wearing a borrowed purple silk dress, Favorite sang hymns beside her friend at the African Methodist Episcopal Church at Avery Chapel, then collapsed weeping into Watson's arms after special prayers at the altar. Favorite knew the execution would bring a mix of strong emotions, but she searched for something positive. "We do not get bitter when God teaches us lessons, we get better!" cried the minister. "Amen!" responded Favorite and Watson.

On the morning of the execution Marsha Kight found solace in solitude. Dawn had just broken when Kight, 52, whose daughter Frankie Merrell, 23, died in the blast, left her home in Arlington, Va., and drove in silence to a nearby patch of woods. Hiking by a stream and sitting on a large rock, she jotted notes in a journal and snapped a few photographs. Just as McVeigh's sentence was being carried out in Indiana, she let the tears flow. "I feel a deep sorrow for this whole nation," says Kight, now a full-time victims' rights advocate whose loss has shaken, but not shattered, her belief that executions are wrong. "Killing him does not make my pain one ounce less."

There were no such tears for Kay Fulton and Peggy Broxterman, who witnessed the execution in Terre Haute with dry eyes and a sense of profound satisfaction. Chosen by lottery from 285 victims and relatives who had asked to attend, Broxterman, 70, a retired schoolteacher from Las Vegas, and Fulton, 41, a homemaker from Red Wing, Minn., had been escorted from their government-paid motel rooms to the prison before dawn. "It wasn't sad," says Broxterman, who held Fulton's hand while waiting for the execution to begin. "When they opened the curtain and I saw him, I just said, 'You son of a bitch.' "

Broxterman's son, Paul Broxterman, a father of four, was killed in Oklahoma City days before his 43rd birthday, while Fulton's brother, U.S. Customs Service agent Paul Ice, 42, left behind two daughters. "I had this picture of Paul giving a thumbs-up," says Fulton. "I held it up so he could watch his killer die." Afterward, both women felt as if a burden had finally been lifted. "I can't show any sadness or remorse," says Broxterman. "It went off very well."

At least one survivor of the Oklahoma City atrocity is already working to put the fatal day behind him. Tom Hall believes McVeigh got the punishment he deserved. "I just wanted to see him shut up," says Hall, 41, a government construction specialist who suffered a shattered femur, a broken hand, a slashed jugular vein and a severe head injury when the Murrah Building came down around him. Still, he says, "it doesn't do me any good [to dwell on the past]. If I let myself get mad, it's like letting the bastard win."

Two hours after McVeigh's death, Hall squinted through a cloud of red dust in a vacant lot one block north of the Murrah memorial, watching as a power shovel clawed at an old brick apartment block. Here, he explained, a new federal building will rise, a replacement for the one McVeigh destroyed and a symbol, for Hall, of a city's triumph over terrorism. "They're not going to run us out of this town," he says, adding proudly that nothing about the new building is designed to recall the old one. "It's not about that," says Hall. "It's about the future."

Patrick Rogers
Kate Klise in Terre Haute, Michael Haederle, Zelie Pollon, Bob Stewart and Debi Turley in Oklahoma City, Melody Simmons in Washington, D.C., and Phyllis Karas in Boston

More From This Article

Aren Almon Kok Oklahoma City "I never forget," says Kok (with daughter Bella, 3, at the Oklahoma City memorial on June 9). "I keep Baylee alive and functioning in my own memory. Every night I say good night to her, and I tell her I love her several times a day. I don't relive the blast and those days afterwards. My memories are of joy and happiness."

Bud Welch Boston Welch (at an anti-death-penalty conference June 9) helped daughter Julie (above) choose a place to take her boyfriend to dinner. "It was the last time I saw her," he says.

Peggy Broxterman Las Vegas "I felt very honored that I was chosen to come," says Peggy Broxterman (on June 9, packing the photo of her late son, Paul, 42, that she carried into the execution viewing room). "That cloud has been lifted, baby. It's over and done."

Constance Favorite Oklahoma City "Lakesha loved life. She loved living," says Favorite (left, on June 10, at church with Deloris Watson) of her slain daughter, Lakesha Levy (above, in '94). "Sometimes I have dreams about her and she's telling me, 'Mom, I'm okay. I'm all right.' "

Marsha Kight Arlington, Va. Kight, who lost her daughter Frankie Merrell (above right, with a friend in '88), wept at the moment of McVeigh's execution. "I want people to realize the importance of saying, 'I love you,' " she says. "You are not guaranteed the next day."

Tom Hall Oklahoma City "It's just a little unfair he got to go so easily," says Hall (above, injured in the blast), who watched coverage of the execution from his office.

Kay Fulton Terre Haute, Ind. "It's been six years of legal ups and downs," says Fulton (with fellow witness Peggy Broxterman). "Now my brother Paul can be foremost in my mind, not McVeigh."