McVeigh's eyes rolled back, his lips turned slightly blue and his skin appeared jaundiced as he was pronounced dead at 8:14 a.m. EDT (5:14 a.m. local time) at the U.S. Penitentiary.

In his last moments, his face was as blank as it was that April day six years ago when America first saw him escorted out of an Oklahoma jail.

Instead of speaking, McVeigh released a handwritten copy of the 1875 poem "Invictus," which concludes with the lines: "I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul."

McVeigh was given Last Rites by prison chaplain Frank Roof, according to the Rev. Ron Ashmore of St. Margaret Mary Church, who had met with McVeigh over the last year. The sacrament usually requires an admission of sorrow for past sins.

"Tim was raised Catholic," Ashmore said. "He knows when you ask for that, it's like saying, 'I'm sorry for everything I've done Lord. Please love me."'

Nathan Chambers, one of McVeigh's attorneys, said that when he arrived at the prison early Monday, the warden said a priest was available if McVeigh wanted Last Rites. Chambers said that when he asked McVeigh, "He said, 'Sure, send him in."'

McVeigh, a 33-year-old decorated Gulf War veteran, was the first inmate executed by the U.S. government in 38 years. He was convicted of the April 19, 1995, bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people, 19 of them children, and injured hundreds.

To the nation, it was the worst act of terrorism on U.S. soil.

To Timothy McVeigh, planting a 7,000-pound truck bomb at a building filled with innocent people was a "legit tactic" for his one-man war against the government.

In Oklahoma City, 232 survivors and victims' relatives watched the execution on a closed-circuit TV broadcast, sent in a feed encrypted to guard against interception. McVeigh appeared to be looking into a small camera that had been installed overhead in his death chamber.

McVeigh "just gave us that same glare that makes me think he got what he wanted," said Karen Jones, whose 46-year-old husband, Larry, was killed in the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.

Frances Cummins, whose husband, Richard, died in the bombing, said McVeigh's head and shoulders took up the entire screen and he "never took his eyes off that camera."

She said she had made eye contact with McVeigh at his trial and "he's got a look of death in his eye. It just pierces you. He has no emotions."

"The one thing we fear," she added, "is having that image in our eyes for a long time."

There were 24 witnesses to the execution in Terre Haute, including two bombing survivors and eight others who lost family members. Paul Howell, whose daughter, Karan, was killed, was disappointed to see no sign of remorse in McVeigh.

"What I was hoping for, and I'm sure most of us were, we could see some kind of, maybe, 'I'm sorry,"' he said. "You know, something like that. We didn't get anything from his face."

But witnessing McVeigh's death "was just a big relief," Howell said. "Just a big sigh came over my body and it felt real good."

Sue Ashford, another Terre Haute witness, said McVeigh's death was too easy.

"He didn't suffer at all," said Ashford, a federal court employee in Oklahoma City who was uninjured in the bombing. "The man just went to sleep or, as I said, the monster did. I think they should have done the same thing to him as he did in Oklahoma."

McVeigh never wavered in his defiance, insisting in a letter to his hometown newspaper, The Buffalo News, that his deadly act was a "legit tactic" in response to the government's bullying behavior — especially FBI raids at Waco, Texas, and Ruby Ridge, Idaho.

He had four personal witnesses, including Cate McCauley, a former member of his defense team, who described the scene to Providence radio station WPRO-AM.

"All of us outstretched our hands and put our hands up on the glass," she said. "Tim lifted his head up fully and looked over at us and acknowledged each one of us, looked each one of us straight in the eye."

She said it appeared a tear formed in one of McVeigh's eyes, a view echoed by Buffalo News reporter Lou Michel, another personal witness and the author of a recent book about McVeigh. Michel said the tear could have been the result of the chemicals, however.

McVeigh's body was taken to a local funeral home, where he was cremated and his ashes given to one of his attorneys, Ashmore said. The cause of death was listed as lethal injection; at his request, no autopsy will be performed.

McVeigh originally was scheduled to die May 16, but the federal government postponed the execution after it was disclosed the FBI withheld nearly 4,500 pages of documents from his defense before his 1997 trial.

The Oklahoma City bombing was a turning point in the nation's consciousness: America learned that terrorism could be homegrown and committed by anybody — even the boy next door, back from the war with a Bronze Star and a cold rage.

Only in recent months did McVeigh publicly admit to the bombing, telling the authors of a book that it was necessary to teach the U.S. government a lesson. "I did it for the larger good," he said.

McVeigh portrayed himself as a soldier and the bombing as one more military mission. He called the 19 children "collateral damage," and said he wanted a body count. He was disappointed, he said, that the building had not been leveled.

But McVeigh's road from patriot to terrorist remains something of a mystery.

He was born in Pendleton, N.Y., near Buffalo. His parents divorced when he was a teen.

He was a mischievous kid who loved comic books, fast cars and guns — an interest he inherited from his grandfather. He enlisted in the Army at age 20 and became a model soldier, advancing to sergeant in 212 years and winning medals and commendations for his service in the Gulf War.

But he returned from the service disillusioned with the United States. His anti-government fury only grew, culminating with the day he drove across Oklahoma's flatlands in his rented Ryder truck, packed with 55 gallon drums of ammonium nitrate.

He lit the fuses as he neared the Murrah building, parked the truck and walked away, never looking back.

McVeigh never apologized, though in a recent letter to the Buffalo newspaper he said he was "sorry these people had to lose their lives. But that's the nature of the beast. It's understood going in what the human toll will be."

After the execution, Rob Nigh, a McVeigh attorney who witnessed his client's death, spoke of McVeigh's insistence that his actions were justified.

"To the victims of Oklahoma City, I say that I am sorry, that I could not successfully help Tim to express words of reconciliation that he did not perceive to be dishonest," Nigh said.

He also criticized the death penalty as a means of making amends for a horrific crime.

In Washington, President Bush declared that McVeigh "met the fate he chose for himself six years ago."

Attorney General John Ashcroft, who authorized the closed-circuit broadcast, was in Oklahoma City when McVeigh was put to death. He did not watch the broadcast but wanted to be with the families of the victims, officials said.

For the people of Oklahoma City, Monday's execution had an epilogue.

Within an hour of McVeigh's death, a plaque marking his execution was installed at the museum dedicated to his victims.

It reads: "McVeigh is executed by lethal injection on June 11, 2001, at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana."

— Arizona Daily Sun