Denver – The mother of convicted Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols said today he has been threatened with death by other inmates at the “Supermax” federal prison in Colorado after he went before a grand jury.
“The inmates have got him tagged as a snitch and he’s up to be murdered” because an FBI agent escorted her son past other prisoners, Joyce Wilt said in a telephone interview from her Michigan home.
Nichols, serving a life sentence without parole for his role in the 1995 bombing of a federal building that killed 168 people, was taken before a federal grand jury in Denver last week, his family said.
Wilt would not discuss the subject of the investigation, and federal prosecutors have declined to comment. Wilt said Nichols refused to testify.
Nichols is held at the government’s most secure prison, formally known as Administrative Maximum, in Florence, about 90 miles southeast of Denver. Supermax houses some of the nation’s most notorious criminals, including Ramzi Yousef, who was involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
A Supermax inmate was beaten to death by other prisoners two months ago, federal officials said. It was the first violent death of an inmate at Supermax since it was built in 1995.
FBI spokesman Carl Schlaff in Denver declined to comment specifically on Wilts’ accusations, but he said it was impossible to get an inmate out of his cell unnoticed by other prisoners.
FBI agents never identify themselves inside a penitentiary, he said.
“We want them to remain as anonymous as possible,” Schlaff said. “For the inmates to determine if someone else is cooperating is pure speculation.”
