We did go down there, probably between 9:30 to 10:00 pm and he said that we were going to go look underneath where the day care had been. There was something he wanted to see under there and get a picture if possible. As we went down there, we were stopped, and I can't remember which personnel it was, but it was definitely either ATF or FBI, I just cannot recall what the name was on the back of his jacket, but it was one of the two. Terry had attempted to "badge" his way through and the guy told him 'no' and he said something more specific like 'you know you're not supposed to be back down here', or something along those lines that made me realize (that) the two of them recognized each other and the interaction was very antagonistic. I think had I not been with Terry he would have said a little more to the man and been a little more forceful about getting through, but it seemed like he thought better of it since I was with him and we left.
And he asked me as we got in the car that I not be seen at the site and mind you I worked a job that might require me to go down to the site. But I did not, because he was very adamant that I not be seen there at any point in time. The entire year after that was lots of strange incidents and lots of strange comments from him.
About 15 days after the bombing happened, I got a call from his supervisor, Lt. Joanne Randle. She was being pretty hostile, pretty aggressive, and she asked me where Terry was. I told here that he was not there and she said - 'You tell Terry that if he doesn't get that other report in, he will be reprimanded, if he does not get that in by the end of the night.'
(KR)- And who was this?
(TY)-Joanne Randle, and this was his supervisor, his direct supervisor at the time. Let me give you a little filler-in there.
In this time frame, Terry had written a 9 page report. I know that he wrote a 9 page report, I saw it. This is the only report however, that I‘ve ever asked him to read that he had not let me. I didn't understand the reason for that at the time... This time it was an absolute NO. He did not want me reading this 9 page report. And that is an awfully long report. I don't know too many police incident reports that are that long, but his was.
(KR)- As you look back on that, do you find that as his way of protecting you by making sure you didn't have that knowledge?
(TY)- That's what I believe. At the time, it was strange to me, but 2 years later, it comes into perspective really clear that he did not want me to know, or have any knowledge of what was going on down there.
(CR) OK, so now she wants a second report.
(TY)- This is not hearsay, I got the call. I know what she said to him. He had told me. And I want to say it was maybe, oh about the 11th or 12th day, he had came into the house and was really upset and just mad. (He) said that they suposedly lost his first report. It was just missing. He was furious. Another thing that was very unlike him was that he would not keep a copy of the report, but I think because he was injured and probably not expected to know that the report would come up missing that I think he would have made a copy under normal circumstances, but he seemed offended and he said she wanted him to write a much shorter report and it needed to be one page. It was being dictated what to write in his report and he was being told to take a lot of things out of his report.
(Ed. note- Craig Roberts then explains report routing and speculates that this 9 pager never made it past the supervisor's desk)
(TY) Right. I agree with that.(Craig's analysis) For certain reasons, of other things that had gone on. I know Terry was being threatened with disciplinary action all over the place for lots of things concerning the bombing. They won't confess to this, but this in fact was occurring. And the report was the first thing I know about that he was threatened with disciplinary action.
(KR)- Tonia, have you ever told this story before on radio?
(TY)- Yes, I have.
(KR)- Did you have any reaction from it?
(CR)- Threats? Telephone problems? Stake-outs, whatever?
(TY)- Oh yeah, well I've gotten used to it over 2 years. It's not new to me, anymore.
(KR)- Did you do this on an OKC station?
(TY)- No, I have not. This is the first time I've been able to do it on any OKC (Tulsa) radio station.
(CR)- It's always been on shortwave and national stuff, right?
(TY)- Right.
(CR)- In other words, very limited listenership.
(KR)- Did any stations turn you down, and not let you tell this story, or what?
(TY)- When Terry's death first happened, and I had to do a lot of digging, to find out what happened to Terry. OK? I was really kind of armed with some vague information at the time, mostly because of how the body was when it was actually found, with the location it was found, and just the whole story itself was unbelievable and I had not pinpointed it all to the bombing until about a year after. I was still kind of gathering and kind of blindly searching my way through it. So...
(KR)- Sounds like you had some of the same problems Karen Silkwood had.
(CR)- Getting on, you mentioned to me that Terry had come to you on more than one occasion and said ‘We need to get re-married so you'll be covered by insurance and have a pension for the kids'.
(TY)- Yes, we had been divorced at that time, and it was about 2 weeks before his death, that he suddenly became very afraid, very anxious, very nervous, not suicidal. Just afraid. He would come to my house at strange times of the night, unannounced. And if you knew Terry Yeakey, you would know how out of character this would be. Terry was a polite sort, very respectful. And would not even come over unless you knew he was coming in advance.
But, here he was coming up to my door at 2 in the morning, 3:30 in the morning. He was telling me he was going to get his insurance papers all put together, and make sure that I had them. He wanted me to leave with him in the middle of the night, right then. He said ‘We need to get remarried, don't ask me questions. This is the only way I can make sure you and the girls can be taken care of, in the event that something happens to me.'
(TY)- That never happened.
(CR)- You never got the paperwork, or it was never done?
(TY)- No, because as I said, it had started 2 weeks before hand, and he was very vague in what he said, and I spent several hours trying to get him to tell me what was going on. It was very frustrating, but it was obvious that there was something going on.
I don't believe he was suicidal, but 2 days before it, he showed up again and did something very strange. He tossed a VCR in my car. He didn't explain why. He said he needed to get these insurance papers to me, and left. He said he would be back.
(He was) very upset. 48 hours later, he was dead. It was the last time I ever saw him.
(CR)- Now, you saw a VCR. You mean as in a machine, or a VHS tape?
(TY)- No, a VCR machine. An entire machine. If it were you, you would think "What in the world? What is he doing?'
(KR)- It wasn't a camcorder, it was a VCR?
(TY)- It was a VCR and there had been a tape in it, but I had not watched it. The VCR came up missing within 24 hours. It disappeared out of my house. I was more concerned at the time about what he was talking about. The VCR was kind of incidental and didn't mean anything to me at the time. When I went back to look for it, it had turned up missing.
(KR)- Had you agreed to his wishes to re-marry for those reasons?
(TY)- I had not agreed or disagreed. I was still trying to get information out of him.
(KR)- Was he still hopeful that you were going to do this?
(TY)- Oh, yeah.
(KR)- Then, it's likely that if he's still hopeful that you're going to do this, so you and the kids would be taken care of, it isn't likely that he would go out and commit suicide?
(TY)- No. No, and people don't realize this, but there had been several incidences where we had attempted to re-establish the marriage and, in fact, I had been with him just 3 weeks prior to this at an Awards Assembly and he introduced me as his wife. (laughingly) Which I obviously didn't dispute too much. Nobody saw a scene or anything there and said ‘Oh no, we're divorced'. No, we were on good terms. The reasons for the divorce were a little different than people expected them to be.
(CR)- Somebody wouldn't commit suicide if they hadn't done their paperwork in advance . Especially a police officer who is very meticulous.
(TY)- Yeah, and here was another thing, especially if he was intent on committing suicide, there were lots of things that could have been taken care of easily without the aid of life-insurance policies and such. Nothing was taken care of. I lost my home. Went bankrupt. You name it. He knew something was coming fast. OK? Faster than he could deal with it.
(CR)- OK. Do the children get any of his pension benefits? (TY)- No.
(CR)- Well, that's unusual.
(CR)- Now, during this time, we're talking about a 12 month span here, Terry was being called into headquarters, he was being told to get off the case, he was being threatened by his own people...
(TY)- Yes.
(CR)- Elaborate on that a little bit. What was really going on there?
(TY)- Well, there were some very other obvious statements. Terry had said, if it were not for the fact that he was pictured in many pictures world-wide, running from the building saving people, that they would have said he was not even there on the site. I think (that) was (what) initially got him started into it was-Yes, he did see some people who shouldn't have been there too quickly. Terry was there within 30 seconds to a minute after the bomb blasted. Initially, they were trying to discredit people who were down there.
(CR)-...What I was told about a year afterwards, when I had a private investigator look into it, that Terry had had film footage, pictures ,which I do support that belief, because Terry carried a camcorder, cameras, you name it, in the back of his vehicle. Most likely that he did take pictures, and did document what he saw, and probably was following up on it.
(TY)-There was lots of strange things happening...Our cars were coming up vandalized, the house was coming up vandalized, he and I both were coming up on 4 sets of flats, several times. I mean, we had people put nails in our tires, break in our back windows. I mean, just, strange, bizarre little things that I wouldn't have put in place with the bombing as any type of retaliatory activity, but after his death, it continued. OK? Terry kept saying that during the year that we had been monitored by the police department. I didn't understand why anybody would be monitoring him. You have to bear in mind that what I know at this point, I did not know at the time it was occurring.
(CR) OK. Now, obviously, both of your phones were tapped because you had some messages on your answering machine that shouldn't have been there.
(TY)- Right. That happened after his death...
(KR)- Messages like what?
(TY)- Well, (laughingly) this is really quite odd, it would be recorded messages of me either having a phone conversation or me having a conversation with another individual in person. Someone would have taped it and would play it back to me.
(KR)- In other words, if you were standing on the corner in front of Wal-Mart talking to someone, you might have a first-hand tape of that played back on to your machine?
(TY)- Exactly. Yes, and I...
(KR)- That's scary.
(TY)- It is. It's an invasion on you. You realize that you're not so...(laughingly) safe?
(KR)- And that's what they were trying to tell you...'Look, at what we can do without you even knowing it.' So, you'd better watch out.
(Ed. note- I'm going to skip a number of pages for the sake of the time-line. I'll deal with the "skips" later. The conversation is now about the day of Terry's "suicide"):
(TY)- Yes...on the 8th.
(CR)- Now, I understand what he did was he talked to some friend and said ‘I have to take all these records and stuff and I'm going to hide them out of town. I'll be leaving town. I'll see you later. But, I have to stop by the Police Department first, because they want to chew me out, again.'
Basically, cutting to the chase here. Then, he called you again and said he was being followed and he had to shake the people following him and did he describe them as, what did he say? Feds?
(TY)- Yes.
(CR)- Feds are following me. I gotta shake ‘em and I'll see you later. And he never came back. And that was on what day?
(TY)- That was on the morning of the 8th.
(CR)-That was the morning of the 8th, and in the afternoon, they found him?
(TY)- Early afternoon.
(CR)- Of that day?
(TY)- Of that day. Pretty quick finding considering the location being out near Fort Reno in a field (abrupt laughter) I thought they did some impressive investigative work there (snide tone).
(CR)- In police work, we would assume that came from an anonymous informant calling a dispatcher and saying ‘There's a dead guy in a field.'
(TY)- Yeah. And I heard that was what occurred, but nobody is ‘fessing up. The car itself was filled with so much blood that apparently when they did open the doors, it just spilled out all over the place. It was on the driver's side, on the passenger side, in the back of the car, had even filtered down into the cracks of the window. It was an enormous amount of blood.
(CR)- So, somebody was trying to put up a struggle.
(TY)- Yes.
(CR)- Now, that can't be because I'm looking at the Medical Examiner's drawings here, Tonia, and it says ‘superficial cuts on the wrists'. Superficial means very shallow.
(TY)- Right.
(CR)- Now, we'll get into that. Right? This gets more bizarre, folks. This really gets bizarre. Ok, so take it from there, the car had the blood in it and then what happened?
(TY)- Right. There was so much blood in the car, but at the scene where his body was found, there was very little blood. Ok? I don't know if everybody knows, but his wrists were slit, his upper arms at the bend of the elbow were slit, and then of course his jugular was slit, in 2 different places. In addition to the angle shot of the gun-shot wound to the head.
(CR)- Ok. Now what kind of gun did they find at the scene?
(TY)- They will not state what type of gun. Because it was not his gun.
(CR)- Now, the way I get the story here recently is, I won't say the source, but you know who it is,
(TY)- Yes.
(CR)- was that, and I didn't know this until the last couple of days, was that there was no gun found at the scene for at least an hour as the deputies and El Reno police were searching the area. And obviously they are very incompetent because when the FBI showed up a little later, they found one with a couple of minutes.
(TY)- Uh-Yes. (laughs).
(CR)- It sounds like a ‘Vince Foster' deal to me.