Some want vengeance for his act of terrorism on April 19, 1995. Some don’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing they care about his fate. Others simply want him to be silenced. Jeannine Gist, whose 32-year-old daughter, Karen Gist Carr, died in the blast, has been in the middle of much of the debate. She represents victims’ family members on the Oklahoma City National Memorial, which is scheduled to open its museum center on Monday. NEWSWEEK’s Flynn McRoberts spoke with Gist about the death penalty, her own struggle over whether to view McVeigh’s execution and how she and others created a museum to honor the city’s loss.
NEWSWEEK: Have you asked to view McVeigh’s execution?
Jeannine Gist: I am for the death penalty and especially in his case. I don’t plan to view the execution, but that doesn’t mean I won’t change my mind. The only reason I might is because I have a daughter who wants to view it, and I don’t want her to go alone.
Has this case affected your position on the death penalty?
No. When I was a young person, I was against the death penalty, but I started changing my mind around the time of Jeffrey Dahmer…. To me, when someone plans to murder as many people as they can, I don’t think there’s any hope for them. Of course, in McVeigh’s case it was premeditated for weeks and months. And he wanted to kill as many people as he could, simply because they worked for the government.
Why was your daughter Karen in the Murrah building that day?
Karen worked for the U.S. Army as an advertising assistant. She was a civilian employee.
How will this execution affect your ability to cope with her death?
It may not be too popular a thing to say, but when McVeigh is gone, it will be a relief. He’s granted interviews. He’s written stuff to people for them to put up on the Internet. He’s still trying to have a voice on things and make people understand what he did or why he did it-without ever admitting it…. He will just never let it go. I will just be glad to have him out of the picture so we don’t have to hear about him.
Should his execution be televised? [McVeigh told an Oklahoma City newspaper last week that he wanted it shown to a general TV audience-something the U.S. Bureau of Prisons rejected. A closed-circuit broadcast for survivors and victims’ families remains a possibility.]
Only for the victims’ families and survivors. And maybe the rescue workers also, because they were so grossly affected. We have always tried to include them in everything because they had to go through so much. But not for the general public. I just don’t think executions should be public fodder. I don’t think we should make a public spectacle of it. It should be done in the rarest occasions-the death penalty-[because of] the chance that someone could be wrongfully convicted. But there’s no doubt in my mind that [McVeigh] should get the death penalty. I think he wants people to know he did it … I think he’s proud of it. He’s just really got an antigovernment attitude. I think he’s just an angry man.
Do you have concerns that a public execution would make McVeigh a martyr to the antigovernment cause?
I guess that’s possible, but that’s not one of my fears. I just think it doesn’t seem like a very moral thing to do.
You helped plan the new museum center. Talk about that.
It was a very rewarding process because I felt like I was there to make sure the victims were treated in a respectful way, to make sure there are no sensational photographs shown in the museum. And that we always keep in mind what the museum is all about: remembering those 168 people who were killed, and of course the survivors, some of whom had to go through an awful lot.
What are you most proud of in the museum?
The museum is done in nine chapters. The room that means the most to me is Chapter 7. It’s what we call the “Gallery of Honor.” That’s where all of the victims’ pictures are portrayed. And it includes an artifact chosen by a family member to depict that individual’s life, what they stood for.
What did you select for Karen?
To choose one thing to show what my daughter’s life was all about, to show who she was, was very difficult. What I chose was a photograph that she had taken, where she had taken a piece of butcher-block paper and taped it on the back end of her [Volkswagen] Scirocco. She had written on it, ‘Please Honk, It’s My Birthday.’ She took her little Chihuahua dog and set it on her bumper. She loved Chihuahuas. Then I chose a 3-by-5 business card that she had printed up. She taught aerobics to the federal workers. She called it ‘Fit Feds.’ Some of the nicest letters we got after she died were from her aerobics students, telling us how much they loved her.
What are some of the other chapters in the museum?
When you walk into Chapter 3, that’s when you’ll hear an actual recording of the bomb blast-and then 168 black-and-white photographs will be lit up, and then recede back. We have the recording because the Water Resources Board was meeting across from the Murrah building at the time, and they had the tape recorder on. The meeting started at 9 o’clock (exactly two minutes before the blast).
What do you hope visitors will come away with after visiting the museum?
Our hope is that after they leave, they will do their part to make sure this doesn’t happen again. To speak out against negative attitudes. If they’re hearing negative talk from somebody, maybe they’ll speak up…. Of course it starts in the home, with just being aware what other people are thinking and what’s going on in their lives. That’s one thing with Timothy McVeigh: his father really didn’t know what was going on with his son-what he was doing, what he thought…. He just really didn’t know his son. Same with the kids at Columbine. I don’t want to put parents to blame. But everyone should be a little bit more attentive to what’s going on around them.
