The most definitive claim of a John Doe No. 2 sighting came from Tim Kessinger, an employee of Elliott's Body Shop, where McVeigh rented the Ryder truck used in the bombing. Kessinger's description provided the basis for the sketch that the FBI circulated of the suspect, and he later testified that he had probably mixed up his recollections of McVeigh with Todd Bunting's rental the next day.

There were four employees present when McVeigh rented the truck, however, and all four continue to insist that a second man arrived and left with McVeigh. The shop's owner, Eldon Elliott, and a clerk testified in court to this effect during the Denver trials.

Likewise, nearly all of the 12 reasonably credible witnesses who saw McVeigh in Kansas, and whose accounts have been made public, say he was in the company of other men, sometimes two or more, and only a few of these identified Nichols as one of them. A Herington convenience-store clerk said McVeigh came in two days before the bombing with a second man who was not Nichols. The manager of the McDonald's across the street from Joann Van Buren's Subway shop said McVeigh and "his associates" frequented the restaurant.

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It is similarly telling that the prosecution in McVeigh's trial never called a single witness who could place McVeigh in Oklahoma City the morning of the bombing -- largely because they too saw McVeigh with other people. A substantial number of these sightings include a man who fit the description of John Doe No. 2.

The most striking of these accounts come from a pair of highly credible witnesses who contacted the FBI early in the investigation and provided a description of the muscular, dark-haired man with McVeigh well before the FBI released the sketch of John Doe No. 2. One of them told an Oklahoma City grand jury that he saw Timothy McVeigh fleeing the scene of the bombing with such a man -- and reported it to the FBI the night of the bombing.

"I saw two individuals, Timothy McVeigh and John Doe No. 2, cross Fifth Street just minutes before the blast," said Rodney Johnson, 34, in his testimony. Moments later, the bomb blew out the windows of Johnson's truck.

Johnson said McVeigh and John Doe No. 2 "were in step, one behind the other. They were definitely together."

A similar account turned up in the withheld "lead sheets" turned over last month to defense attorneys. Morris John Kuper Jr. called the FBI two days after the bombing to urge the bureau to look into activities he witnessed in a parking lot a block away from the Murrah Federal Building an hour before the bombing. Kuper testified at Nichols' trial that he saw McVeigh with a man fitting John Doe No. 2's description getting into a light-colored car similar to the battered Mercury in which McVeigh was later caught. Kuper also said he called the FBI to suggest they check cameras at a nearby library and phone-company offices on the chance they might have caught something on video, "but they took my name and phone number and never contacted me again."

Almost as striking was the testimony, in McVeigh's trial, of a woman who lost her leg and her family in the bombing. Daina Bradley, who was standing in line at the Murrah Building's Social Security office that morning with her mother, sister and two children, saw the Ryder truck pull up to the front of the building. And she said she saw two men, not one, get out of the truck's cab. She got a clear view of only one of them, describing him as an "olive-complexion man with short hair, curly, clean-cut. He had on a blue Starter jacket, blue jeans, and tennis shoes and a white hat with purple flames."

However, Bradley's testimony was severely undermined when the 21-year-old admitted she had previously told investigators she had seen only the olive-skinned man get out of the truck. When prosecutors pointed out that she had self-admitted mental problems that affected her memory, some of them related to the trauma she suffered during the bombing -- all of her family members with her were killed, and Bradley herself had to be cut out from the rubble, by a doctor who amputated her leg with a knife -- she broke down on the stand.

The problem with all these accounts, as any criminologist can attest, is that eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable. Nonetheless, the breadth of the 20 or so people who saw the man fitting the description of John Doe No. 2 -- including those whose accounts preceded the wide distribution of the police sketch -- is striking .

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