Emily McKinney:
Most of the time when I tell people this story, they tell me that they don't believe me and that I'm making it up or that it's not true. When I was younger, he was amazing. He was just always there for me when I needed someone. You always hear about mass murders and how terrifying they are, but you can never really imagine that hurtful and harmful person to be in the same house as you.
Bibi Bahrami:
I like an American country music. I mean just the quietness and the soothing. I mean, I don't know how many kind they are. There is just one that I listen. It's just a background country music. I listen to that. It kind of relaxes me.
Dr. Saber Bahrami:
The country music, it seems to me it's coming from the heart. How you feel about the society or the community, wherever you live, and to express those feelings in a very simple and straightforward way.
Bibi Bahrami:
I felt I became American I think after maybe five years after I learned that language. I was in school. I had a second child born. I became very comfortable in my life.
Dr. Saber Bahrami:
I felt as an American propbably early on and the community also embraced me without any hesitation.
Bibi Bahrami:
I came to Muncie in 1986 as a refugee. I was living in the refugee camp in Pakistan due to the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan. Lived there for six years and I got engaged with my husband there and then he brought me five years later to the United States and we got married in 86.
Dr. Saber Bahrami:
I am a family physician here in Muncie, Indiana. The pictures of my children are in each room. I treat my patient as my family, so I tell my patient that I came by choice and I appreciate the refugee status, that I came as a refugee and then I tell them they are my family because if something happening to me, my family is far away. They will be coming to my rescue.
Dana McKinney:
How would people describe me? I would probably say that they would describe me as strong and stubborn. They would describe me as a mom because my main goal is to raise my daughter to be a strong young woman. When I first met Mac, there was no doubt that he was a jarhead. One of the things I loved about him was his commitment to, ironically enough to his country.
Mac and I had a long distance relationship for just over a year. I decided to introduce him to Emily. I said, this is gonna be the deciding factor because if she's not good, mom's not good.
Emily McKinney:
She wanted to make sure that I was gonna have a good father figure in my life for later on, and so we moved to Muncie altogether when I was five, and he just was my dad from there on.
Dana McKinney:
Their relationship was very close. They like to go a lot of different places together. Go fishing. He let her drive his car.
Emily McKinney:
We both called each other our road dogs because we would just go everywhere together and just hang out all the time when I was really young. He was amazing.
Interviewer:
How did killing people change you?
Richard (Mac) McKinney:
Never really told the... Hold on a second, man. I was a fairly happy kid. I had friends. I liked to run the streets. In high school, I'd gotten in a lot of trouble. My biggest downfall is I was involved in drugs, both using and selling. It made life harder on me, made school almost, well, it did make school impossible. I joined the Marines at 18. I saw it as a respect thing. My dad came from nothing, big family, poor. He had quit school, joined the military, and he did four years in the Marine Corps. By me joining the military, not only the military but the Marine Corps, and going through some of the same stuff he went through, I figured I'd get his respect. I didn't have it, but I knew it would get me away from what I was doing. I was in the military for a long time, around 25 years. Towards the end of my military career, I was a totally different person. The fact of being involved in so many deaths over years, it was a crazy time, man. I don't even know. I probably would've been committed if they would've actually known the way I was acting.
One time I had a discussion to a higher ranking person about coping. Looked at me straight in the eye says, Mack, you're on the range, you're shooting at a paper target. As long as you can look at them as anything but human, you won't have any problems. I said, oh, okay, that makes sense. Yeah, and that's what I did.
Jomo Williams:
I'm a very family orientated person. I love family. I'm a Williams, so the Williams family go way back here in Muncie. My great great grandfather was lynched and was castrated, so I grew a dislike towards white people. It was so bad. I was 21 years young, long time ago, when I first came into the religion. The community was beautiful. I never experienced anything like that, you know the closeness of anything until I came to this community.
Zaki Bahrami:
The story I was told for starting the Islamic Center was that it was my dad and two other Muslim brothers that were kind of the kickstarters of the mosque. And so an Afghan, a Syrian, and a Bangladeshi brother you know, that kind of unity to start a mosque from these different walks of life, different countries, different refugee stories, and to come together and create a mosque. So that's the beautiful thing. My parents are mountain movers. I would describe them as both come from very, very humble beginnings in Afghanistan. It was really always an open door at our house.
Bibi Bahrami:
Just anyone who needed a place to stay, I welcome them to stay with me from all walks of life. They'll come to our house. I will wash their clothes and clean their clothes and cook for them.
Zaki Bahrami:
My dad calls my mom the mother Teresa of the Muslim community, and it's definitely true. She really, it's in her DNA to just be that self sacrificer, to really put her everything on the line to make even one person's life better.
Oh my God.
Dr. Saber Bahrami:
I think 911 changed me and a lot of community members in a big way.
Jomo Williams:
It was shocking. I couldn't believe it. We were just as devastated as anybody else, as any other American.
Bibi Bahrami:
For me personally, it was very difficult to see that in the United States. As I say, we have come from those country where there was killing, there were bombing and just like you come here as if you live in a peace. Seeing that was very difficult for me personally.
Jomo Williams:
I had some discrimination. You can tell when we went out, people looked at us a little bit differently. People saw us a little bit differently.
Bibi Bahrami:
Go back to your country, that you have towel on your head, or just making these remarks. It really hurts you.
Dana McKinney:
When I moved to Muncie, I started to notice some things with his behavior that I hadn't earlier. Usually when he would talk about the things that happened, it was when he would drink or he would be really sad.
Richard (Mac) McKinney:
Military career ended with me getting injured, and it started a cycle of events. Living in Muncie, now I was being forced to see people that I considered an enemy every time I went out the door.
Dana McKinney:
We would go to Walmart and you walk down the aisle and start to go down an aisle, and I would see a woman in hijab and would intentionally divert our path.
Richard (Mac) McKinney:
This is my story. This is my country. My city. Got to the point to where I just wanted to do harm to them.
Dana McKinney:
I guess I just held on to the hope you know that being in a loving relationship would help him move away from the anger and the hatred that he had. I never thought in a million years that he would consider doing anything to anyone.
Richard (Mac) McKinney:
I started to think between being drunk and sober. I was brainstorming, how can I make this right? My country's done with me, but I'm not done with it. I would die for that cause gladly. So I came up with a plan. I said, okay, not an explosive expert by no means, but I knew enough to make a bomb. Let me find a good place where I think I can get the most "bang" from my buck. My plan was to detonate an IED right outside the Muncie Islamic Center on a Friday afternoon when they were all gathered and I was hoping for at least 200 or more dead, injured. At least. That was my goal, 200 more. I knew I'd get caught. My DNA's on a national data bank. I was good with that. I wanted to be in court. I wanted to make my statements. I wanted to tell people, yes, I did this.
Emily McKinney:
There was this boy at my school and his mom came to pick him up and she was in this long dress with long sleeves and a full head covering that only showed her eyes, and I was really confused by that. Because I had never seen that before and I was wondering why I couldn't see anything of her, and I went home that day and told my dad about it and he flipped out.
Richard (Mac) McKinney:
This little Muslim kid, future terrorist, sat across from my daughter. I blew up. At the end, I actually went into my room and just broke down and cried. I let these people get close to my family.
Emily McKinney:
I was just very confused and probably scared of why he was just freaking out over what this woman was wearing, and it just seemed so weird to me and strange and I looked at him like, what are you going on about? You crazy, crazy man.
Richard (Mac) McKinney:
When I have a little girl sitting in front of me, looking at me like I'm crazy, questioning, man, I really love this guy or not. This little girl is my world man, and I can't have that happen. I need her love. So I said, okay, I know I'm right. These people were killers, and I knew that in order to be able to stand and face my daughter about this, about what I have planned, I need to be able to show her proof. I need to be able to show the rest of the world proof. So I went to the Islamic Center to get the proof. I didn't wanna... I didn't wanna be with these people because if I walk inside this building, I might not come back.
Jomo Williams:
When I first saw him, I was driving down the street and then I was actually coming to the Masjid and when I saw him, he was walking kind of fast. His head was kind of down, kind of lower you know. It was kind of red in the face a little bit. Alright I knew something was wrong,
Richard (Mac) McKinney:
So I walk in the building and all of a sudden it's like I felt my stomach tighten up, chest tighten up. I tried to keep my senses about me. I got very anxious. I didn't trust him. I considered myself somebody as a future news story on Al Jazeera. By the end of the night, I figured they would have me in the basement with a sword to my throat.
Jomo Williams:
He just, like this guy who had a lot on his mind, pacing back and forth. I remember saying that there's something not right with this guy.
Richard (Mac) McKinney:
He looks at me and I look at him. He smiles and he said, can I help you?
Bibi Bahrami:
My first impression of seeing him, I don't want to say like, it was a little scary.
Richard (Mac) McKinney:
I looked around thinking about my plan and I actually looked at individuals like, yep, he's gone, he's gone.
Dr. Saber Bahrami:
My first impression of McKinney was he seemed to be like a redneck. So it was somewhat scary in the beginning, but he came to the Masjid and he's like a guest also, so I couldn't help it except to hug him and make him feel, not artificially, from my heart that he's welcome and he is part of us.
Richard (Mac) McKinney:
To this day, that still doesn't make any sense to me. To this day. These people kill non-believers for sport. It's what they do. It's in their book. He sat at my feet. He hugged my leg. This guy doesn't know me, hugged my leg. That was pretty heavy. They don't even know the truth.
Dr. Saber Bahrami:
That is one of my duty. When you say Salam to somebody, "Salam." What that means, to tell this other person that you are safe from me. There will be no danger for me.
Richard (Mac) McKinney:
I just wanted to die. That's all I wanted. I wanted the peace, man. I needed to stop the voices. I needed to stop the noise and I just wanted the peace.
Dr. Saber Bahrami:
Somehow. I believe that he was genuine and he has issue. All of us have issue. In the military, post-traumatic stress syndrome, whatever that might be or some other thing, and maybe he's looking for a solution. He's looking for a solution. And if you can be a solution for him, for some of his stresses, why not? Why not to be extra kind to him?
Bibi Bahrami:
I comforted him. I gave him the attention. I think that's the basic memory that I have. Not only just with Mac, I would do this with any guest.
Richard (Mac) McKinney:
These people were just plain old pleasant, happy to be alive, happy to be in America. Just happy. And more than happy to talk to me.
Bibi Bahrami:
I personally believe that we need to be kind to those people even more. The people like, you know, sometime they might have some difficulty, some concerns, some stress. I personally believe that we should be more kind to those than people who are successful or who already know what they're doing.
Dana McKinney:
He can't completely forgive himself for the things that he did.
Interviewer:
What are you thinking about?
Dana McKinney:
Just how he, you know, he thought he was doing the right thing, and doing it for the right reasons, and how much he sacrificed, and how much he suffered for the things that he was asked to do.
Jomo Williams:
Actually, when he came back, I was surprised to see him come back. Yes, he came not that same day, but he came back like the next day and so forth. Started hanging around to Masjid more, coming to prayer, you know, coming to the dinners.
Zaki Bahrami:
I think it was probably one of the first times in a while where he felt like he was just a part of something like that was bigger. He probably had been missing that part of his life for a while.
Jomo Williams:
He talked about his wife. He talked about his daughter. He talked about his tours he had in other countries. I thought they were very interesting. Because he came from an environment. He came from an environment where he was killing Muslims. He was at war with Muslims, right? In his mind, right? So I was able to understand.
Dana McKinney:
He definitely wanted to be a part of the community, and he felt welcome and he you know. It was really kind of bizarre because he was hugging the people that he wanted to choke.
Richard (Mac) McKinney:
The more time I spent around them, the more I started to change. It's been so long in the military, man, you know? I had this band of brothers, if you want to call it. It was gone. We'd been disbanded. There was no more. It's funny, I had a dream that I was on the range, and I had shot a paper target. And instead of just a hole being put in that target, the target started bleeding. And I went down and I wiped off the blood, wouldn't stop. That target would not stop bleeding. Blood was just flowing from the target. That's when I really felt things were about to change. It took eight weeks to change my mind. It took eight weeks to remove all of that hatred, all of that planning, all of everything out of my heart. They said, I need to be a Muslim.
Emily McKinney:
I got off the bus one day from school, and I see all these people standing outside my house in like, FBI, like, coats and jackets and stuff like that. They were looking for something and I didn't know what that something was.
Captain Kent Kurtz:
We went to the apartment where Mr. McKinney was residing at that point in time. Went up to Mr. McKinney's door, knocked on his door, and Mr. McKinney answered.
Richard (Mac) McKinney:
They came and they questioned me. They asked if I mind if they would bring a bomb dog to the house. Absolutely. You come right ahead. It had been disposed of, it doesn't exist anymore.
Captain Kent Kurtz:
We talked to him for a little bit longer. The FBI agent did felt like Mr. McKinney wasn't really a credible threat at that point in time, that he wasn't going to put anything into action at that point in time.
Dana McKinney:
I never thought in a million years, I felt kind of foolish because I didn't recognize that that was even a potential that he had.
Emily McKinney:
It's still kind of hard for me to even wrap around my head that my dad would've been known as a mass murderer.
Bibi Bahrami:
One of the members came to me and asked me, do you know that Richard was planning to do this? I cannot believe that this is what I heard. That was the time I invited him over for dinner. And I asked him, I say, "What in the world were you thinking, Richard?"
Jomo Williams:
Remember like being amazed like what? He wanted to do what? I remember asking, what was the deal, man? What was going on through your head? What was your problem, man?
Bibi Bahrami:
He didn't know anything better. That's exactly what he said. "Sister Bibi, if I have met you, meeting somebody like you, if I had that much understanding, I would have never thought about this."
Richard (Mac) McKinney:
You showed me the right way. You showed me what true humanity's about. Just put Islam aside for a second. You showed me what true humanity was about.
(off camera): Go get 'em.
Dana McKinney:
When Mac went to the Mosque and the way he was treated, the way he was embraced, it did save his life. It saved the lives of the community. Had they turned him away, had they treated him differently, it would be a whole different story than what he has to tell now.
Jomo Williams:
Oh, I love the man. Mac is a great man. Mac is a good person. Now I have someone here who can, who will definitely protect us if something happened to us.
Photographer:
Here we go. You look great.
Bibi Bahrami:
I do see Richard as my little brother and who came to the center and then he needed that support.
Richard (Mac) McKinney:
So anyway, I appreciate everyone. I just want you to know that each and every one of you, even the ones that are not here, will always be in my heart. Thank you.
I could never in a million years, could never repay this community what they've given me. I see a lot of my actions now as a making of amends. 05:32 verse in the Quran: "To kill one human being is as if you killed all of humanity, but to save one human being is as if you saved all of humanity." I hope the day comes when I can forgive myself. Maybe.
Dana McKinney:
Islam was definitely a positive change for Mac. And I supported, ultimately supported that change, but it wasn't you know, it wasn't the right choice for me. Even though we're not married anymore, I still, I mean I still care about him. I hope that he finds forgiveness for himself and that he can be happy.
Emily McKinney:
I love my dad. He's still an amazing dad. He always likes to tell me Dad jokes, which I absolutely despise yet I love at the same time, but I won't tell him that.
