Executed bomber's story to become TV series
The story of executed bomber Timothy McVeigh is to become a television mini-series after a broadcaster bought the rights to his biography.
American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing, has been bought by American television network CBS.
The book was written after 75 hours of interviews with McVeigh, who killed 168 people, 19 of them children, when he bombed the Alfred P Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City in April 1995.
Today Gerry Abrams, the producer of the new mini-series, said it would not focus on the mass murderer but the ordeal of his victims and the heroism of the rescuers in the aftermath of the bombing.
Mr Abrams said: ‘‘When I read the book, I was left feeling that because so much attention had been devoted to McVeigh, that the public was unaware of so many individual acts of heroism from people involved in the Oklahoma City incident.’’
And he said it would be similar to the hit film Traffic, which starred Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas.
‘‘The mini-series we want to make will follow the template of Traffic, where seemingly unrelated people are involved in a common crisis,’’ said Mr Abrams.
The heroes include the policeman who arrested McVeigh an hour after the bombing for the minor offence of not having a registration plate on his car, and was 20 minutes from releasing him when he made the connection to the Oklahoma atrocity.
But Mr Abrams said McVeigh would feature in the television series, with a dramatisation of how an all-American boy became a reviled killer.
McVeigh was executed by lethal injection on Monday at Terre Haute prison, in Indiana, more than six years after his home-made truck bomb destroyed the Oklahoma City building, injuring more than 800 as well as killing 168.
