The case of the century
Whitefish attorney Chad Wold had one
week left in law school at the University of Montana, three months
before the bar exam, and three and a half months before his wedding
when he found himself drawn into one of the most important trials
in U.S. history.
It was summer 1996 when Wold listened
to a phone message from Stephen Jones, an Oklahoma attorney he had
met earlier that year, asking Wold if he wanted to join the Timothy
McVeigh defense team in Denver.
McVeigh, who by then was called “the
most hated man in America,” was charged with bombing the Alfred P.
Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. The
explosion killed 168 people, including 19 children under six,
injured more than 680 people, and destroyed or damaged 324
buildings in a 16-block radius. It was the largest act of terrorism
in America until 9/11.
“In an instant, three years of law
school flashed before my eyes,” Wold recalled in one of the dozens
of lectures he gave after the McVeigh trial concluded. “I have no
idea what I’m doing, I told myself. Criminal law, death sentence
... what are the elements of murder? Then a gentle calm came over
me as I realized that a thousand others had come before me with the
same gut-wrenching feeling, and I found myself without even
thinking reaching for the phone, with my school bag around my
shoulder, calling Stephen Jones.”
Wold made the call and ended up
spending about four months working for Jones on the McVeigh trial.
The effort involved 16 attorneys, five law clerks and eight support
staff working 24/7 in law offices with attached apartments, guarded
by U.S. Marshals and federal security agents.
His personal story is now slated for
film production. Wold’s brother, Clay Wold, wrote the script for
what’s being billed as a political thriller called “OKC.”
Well-known Hollywood director Barry
Levinson has agreed to direct the film. Levinson, who began his
career with TV comedy, including “The Carol Burnett Show,” went on
to make hit films such as “Tin Men” with Richard Dreyfus and Danny
DeVito and “Rain Man” with Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise. Most
recently, he made “You don’t know Jack,” about Jack Kevorkian, for
HBO.
Wold, who grew up in Whitefish and
Polson, did his undergraduate work at UM and attended law school at
the University of Buckingham, in England. He was taking conversion
courses at UM’s law school when he got the call from Jones.
His brother also attended UM,
graduating with a degree in business finance. Wold said his
brother, who lives in Whitefish and Los Angeles, was always
involved in script-writing.
“Clay had long been interested in doing
an adaptation of my story,” Wold said. “It took about a year and is
just wrapping up.”
While the details of the script are not
public, as is often the case with new film projects, Wold wanted to
make one thing clear — he, his brother and the film’s producers are
not endorsing any particular opinion about the Oklahoma City
bombing. The incident is quite controversial and, as Wold
discovered during his trial work, has spawned numerous conspiracy
theories.
In the course of the government’s
investigation, FBI agents conducted 28,000 interviews and gathered
about 1 billion pieces of information weighing 3 1/2 tons. The
prosecution team presented 137 witnesses during the trial.
In turn, the defense team presented 25
trial witnesses over a one-week period. Wold and others in the team
read more than 30,000 witness statements, studied more than 15,000
FBI lab sheets and reports, examined more than 100,000 photographs,
and reviewed hundreds of video and audio tapes, as well as 156
million phone records and 1 million hotel registrations.
That doesn’t include the global travel
Jones undertook — Jones traveled to China, the Philippines, Macao,
Hong Kong, Germany, Scotland, England, Syria, Jordan, Israel and
South Korea, meeting in secret locations with members of Jewish
organizations and even the provisional Irish Republican Army.
“For me personally, the experience was
professionally challenging,” Wold said. “I cannot remember a day
when I was not tinged with some element of adventure, either of
hope or disappointment, or of failure or achievement.”
Immediately after Wold arrived in
Denver, he was given responsibility for all calls to a special red
phone in the office.
“It was the initiation, the
crazy-conspirators and death-threats phone,” he said. “For the next
18 hours, I would answer roughly 45 calls, ranging from witnesses
saying they knew who the real bomber was to the claim that the
military had placed chips in all of our heads and controlled our
every move.”
The next day, Wold was reassigned to
legal research, preparing demonstrative exhibits and helping care
for McVeigh’s family. At one point, he found himself shopping for
diesel fuel, fertilizer and a small film canister so a defense
witness “could build a mini-bomb in our coffee room.”
At the end of the trial, Wold was
charged with escorting McVeigh’s family to the court room to hear
the jury’s death sentence verdict. He recalled the unusually quiet
hallway outside the court room, usually teeming with media and
friends or family of the victims, following the jury’s verdict.
“The victims seemed as stunned as Tim’s
family,” he said.
Although the jury convicted McVeigh and
sentenced him to death — he was executed by lethal injection on
June 11, 2001 — Wold feels he received a zealous defense, proof
that the American justice system was working.
“If our forefathers could have seen
into the future when constructing the infrastructure of this great
country, they would have been saddened by the bombing,” Wold said,
“but they would have been walking proud to see how we handled such
a volatile situation.”
Wold said “OKC” will be the first movie
ever made about the Oklahoma City bombing, and it should be
thought-provoking.
“It will allow viewers a chance to
think about the case,” he said. “In most trials, the majority of
evidence never gets to a jury. The movie will let viewers see a lot
of that.”