Just in case you can't go through a year in Oklahoma without hearing, reading or smelling something else about Oklahoma City federal building bomber Timothy McVeigh, there is yet more.
According to a recent story in The Oklahoman, McVeigh was quite the joker, laughing loudly during discussions with his attorneys and chortling about a marriage proposal he received during his brief prison stay on the way to the gallows.
During one interview with his attorneys, an investigator asked if he was single.
"Yes," the murderer quipped. "Any bachelorettes out there?"
In that vein, McVeigh was apparently ticked off when prison officials refused to pass on a copy of Playboy magazine, an issue that featured an article based on defense documents about him that had been leaked.
The 1997 article described in icy detail the steps he told his attorneys he took to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah building and the people in it at 9:02 a.m. on April 19, 1995. It explained, based on the leaked documents, how McVeigh built the bomb out of racing fuel, fertilizer and stolen explosives, and how he and cohorts took the steps that led to the explosion.
According to The Oklahoman, officials held the magazine "for two days straight," frustrating the bomber.
"Tim was especially anxious to see it because it contains a story about him," an attorney wrote, according to the story.
Finally, the officials relented and gave him the magazine.
An attorney relayed that "Tim said that the "¦ story in Playboy 'made me look manly.'"
Manly? This would be occasion for laughter at Chicken-Fried News, but it dampens the punch line that McVeigh lit off a truck bomb that morning in downtown Oklahoma City, killing 168 people, including 19 kids.
McVeigh was executed in 2001.