Brother Seeks OKC Justice

• Brother of man tortured to death after 1995 bombing of Alfred P. Murrah Building demanding to see FBI videotapes in court.

By Dave Gahary —

A Salt Lake City, Utah attorney is having his day in court this week, determined to prove the U.S. government’s account of what happened on April 19, 1995 in Oklahoma is not what really happened.

Jesse Trentadue, an attorney and brother of Kenneth M. Trentadue, is out to show in a trial that began Monday, July 28, that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has a video of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, which proves that another person was involved. The truck bomb that detonated that day at 9:02 a.m. killed 168 people, including 19 children, all under the age of six. The bomb “destroyed or damaged 324 buildings within a 16-block radius, destroyed or burned 86 cars, and shattered glass in 258 nearby buildings.”

Trentadue’s brother Kenneth was 44-years-old when he was found hanged in his cell in Oklahoma during the investigation of the bombing. Although his death was ruled a suicide, Oklahoma City’s chief medical examiner said Trentadue was “very likely…murdered.” His body was so badly beaten and bruised from the top of his head to the soles of his feet, 41 wounds and bruises in total, that it would be quite clear to the unbiased observer that he was horrifically tortured and spent the last seconds of his life in excruciating pain.

Perhaps predictably, Trentadue’s cell was washed out before any investigation could be performed. Many OKC Bombing researchers believe Trentadue’s murder was due to the fact that he bore a striking resemblance to Richard Lee Guthrie, Jr., a suspected co-conspirator in the bombing. Guthrie, too, died in federal custody, allegedly from suicide by hanging, or what many now refer to as “government-assisted suicide.”

Jesse Trentadue believes Kenneth was murdered in an “interrogation gone wrong” by investigators demanding information he didn’t have., and he has been digging for the truth for nearly 20 years, including the filing of multiple Freedom of Information Act requests implicating the Central Intelligence Agency’s involvement in the bombing. “I did not start out to solve the Oklahoma City bombing, I started out for justice for my brother’s murder,” he said. “But along the way, every path I took, every lead I got, took me to the bombing.”

Trentadue points to a U.S. Secret Service document “that describes security video footage of the attack that shows suspects—in plural—exiting the truck three minutes before it went off.” In 2004 a Secret Service agent testified that the log exists “but that the government knows of no videotape.” Trentadue has received 30 videos from the FBI, but none show the explosion or the arrival of the truck containing the bomb.

Several researchers believe that Kenneth Trentadue’s obvious torture and murder was covered up by current U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr., who was then serving as President Clinton’s Administration Deputy Attorney General, to ensure the FBI’s role in the bombing would never be brought to light.

An email to Jesse Trentadue sent by this reporter has remained unanswered as of this writing.

Dave Gahary, a former submariner in the U.S. Navy, is the host of AFP’s ‘Underground Interview’ series.

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