What was in the mind of Timothy McVeigh?

Completely unrepentant and defiant to the end... Timothy McVeigh was executed in Terre Haute, Indiana, on June 11, 2001, for the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. On that fateful day in April 1995, McVeigh packed a truck with explosives... left it outside the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building, set the fuses and walked away. It was the worst case of domestic terrorism ever in the U.S.. McVeigh was convicted and given the death sentence in 1997. The bombing killed 168 innocent persons, including 19 children.

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Let's look at the samples...

Bart Baggett's Analysis of Tim McVeigh's Handwriting:

In a nutshell, Tim McVeigh is an antisocial introvert with arrogance and a lack of empathy. His printing and leftward slant indicates his lack of social and emotional expressiveness.

His low t-bars combined with tall t-stems indicates a dramatic gap between his true self-esteem (very low) and his egomaniacal pride and vanity (large.) Anytime the distant between our own delusions of self importance and our own internal lack of self-worth coexist in the same person, outrageous behavior usually occurs to compensate for the lack of balance.

The t-bars are quite long... indicating enthusiasm.
The writing in tiny and well formed: precision and perfectionist. I'm sure he would have a made a good soldier. Tim has admitted he was just a soldier against the American Government. And, quite frankly, the American Government has been an oppressive and unjust force in a few recent cases (Waco and Ruby Ridge.) However, McVeigh has lost touch with reality and because of his social and emotional withdrawal literally forgot he was not fighting a war against his own people.

He must have experienced some major "emotional trauma" in his past to become that withdrawn and emotionally cold and calculated.

Intelligent? Not particularly. He is methodical and focused. He is not overburdened with natural "smarts". However, because of his extra ordinary ability to focus on one thing and his excessive perfectionist tendencies and slow methodical thinking.... he can learn and memorize information.

His y's indicate a "loner" quality, as well as much physical frustration.
Notice in the yellow note many of his y's look more like V's ... making the upstroke from the bottom of the y. That indicates AGGRESSIVENESS, which has disappeared from the year 2000 white sample. I guess two years in prison mellowed the guy out.

Is Tim crazy? No... just a misguided soldier that the American Government trained and then let loose.

Power Traits:

Focus concentration, methodical cumulative thinking, patient, enthusiasm, pride (arrogance), eye for detail, self-reliance, diplomacy, honesty/ bluntness

Negative Traits

Social introversion, sexually and physically frustrated, aggression, irritation, low self-esteem, arrogance and vanity, anal retentive need for perfection (neurotic.)

I hope you've found this insight into to Tim McVeigh's mind intriguing.

None of his handwriting characteristics tell us anything NEW about him that we didn't already know... AFTER the fact. The sad truth is, that the traits were there all along... there was just no one paying attention.

I'll be providing analysis on other interesting people in the future. I think you'll find every one of them to be "right on the mark".

Till next time...