The Infamous "letter" of Terrance Yeakey
In the Terrance Yeakey story there is the “letter” that he wrote to a friend and Oklahoma city bombing victim Ramona McDonald. This document didn’t come to light through Ramona but by Yeakey’s mother in an interview with William Wagner. During the interview the document is presented to Wagner to explain why Yeakey was so passionate about investigating what really happened at the Murrah Building and why he was later killed. Yeakey’s Mother goes on to read the document and skips two pages of it in order to present other information she thought was more important to point out. Afterwards Wagner looks over the pages and notices they are printed. He asks “did this come from Terry’s computer?” She responds that it was from Ramona’s computer and Terry had sent it to her through email.
This video has been used two times that I know of as a source for other papers. First is an article often referred to as the Hoffman piece. It is clear now that Hoffman never had his hands on the document itself and instead used a source that was available to him, the filmed interview. In his article, Hoffman quotes Yeakey’s letter word for word until the point that Yeakey’s mother skips over pages, then continues on. Hoffman notes this in his article by stating “two pages missing.”
It wasn’t that the pages in his hands weren’t there is was that his mother had never read them to the camera.
The second case of this document being mentioned was in The Medusa Files 2 by Craig Roberts. He also goes on to quote the same text, refers to the document as a “letter” leaving out how it came into the possession of the woman that was reading the text. The only difference was that Roberts went on to take a guess as to what was on those two pages. Roberts believed that Yeakey discussed the threats officers who were at the scene of the bombing received from federal agents if they didn’t keep their mouths shut about what they had seen. Roberts says this is based on interviews he did with other officers but unless we see the actual pages there is no way to know.
So what can we conclude from here. Neither man who covered the content of this document ever held it in their hands. Roberts, who as a member of the Baker Street Irregulars didn’t have a copy or he would have published the entire thing. Hoffman didn’t have a copy either. They both used the William Wagner interview as their source. Out of everyone who covered this document Wagner was the only one to hold a copy in his hands. It is unfortunate that the entire thing wasn’t released and who knows where all the printed copies ended up. At this point the document is reaching its mythological phase. People learn about the Yeakey letter and details about its existence start to change. It starts with being a letter, to a handwritten letter, to something that had pages removed from it. In the beginning it was an email Terrance Yeakey sent to Ramona McDonald and after his death she printed a copy of it to give to Yeakey’s mother. That’s the story. Things like this can send people on wild quest, I know, I have been there. I kept searching for this hand written letter thinking someone had to have taken a picture of it at some point. Hell, I have photos of McVeigh’s manifesto but nothing for Yeakey’s letter. It wasn’t until I started to research Yeakey for an ill-fated book, that I came across old footage of interviews that I found the “letter”. Nothing other than what Yeakey’s mother read that day has been released. No expanded versions, or the full versions have come out. That interview is the only visual confirmation of actual proof a physical copy exists. The articles and books that feature the document are just transcripts of that interview. Two pages were never read so it is unknown what their context are.
Sources:
https://libertarianinstitute.org/okc/?search=hoffman+yeakey
The Medusa Files 2 by Craig Roberts