Words Spray Painted On Building After OKC Bombing Still As Powerful 25 Years Later

Words spray-painted on an outside wall at the the old Journal Record Building have spoken to Oklahomans for 25 years.

"Team 5. 4-19-95. We Search for the Truth. We Seek Justice. The Courts Require It. The Victims Cry for It. And God Demands It!"

Rockie Yardley painted those words in the midst of destruction in the days following the Alfred P. Murrah Building bombing in Oklahoma City. A quarter of a century later, they're still just as powerful as the day Yardley wrote them.

"It feels like yesterday," Yardley said while standing on the Memorial grounds, just feet from where the Murrah Building once stood . "Being here definitely takes us back to that day."

Yardley, as a young Edmond crime scene investigator and bomb disposal technician, responded in the moments following the explosion on that Wednesday morning in April.

"We could see the smoke rising," Yardley said. "Years don't change the memories. I wish they did."

Not far behind Yardley was Rusty Pyle, an Oklahoma City Police Bomb Squad Lieutenant at the time.

"There were still papers and things floating down that had gone up during the bombing," Pyle said. "I can still see the building standing there. I can smell that smell. I can see those sights and I can hear those sounds."

On the first day, the sole mission was rescuing survivors.

"The building was creaking. We could hear screams, we could hear moans, we could hear people yelling for help. We were just trying to find them because they were under the rubble," Pyle said.

Pyle went in to help from the south side of the building, which he said appeared mostly intact.

"As soon as we got into the building, we realized the whole north side of the building was gone and most of the floors were actually gone. We could look straight up and see the sky," said Pyle.

The building was still crumbling, with debris falling all around the rescuers who were risking their lives to save others.

"I had gotten probably maybe 10 or 15 feet inside the building, and I was getting ready to take a step forward. One of the bomb techs behind me, and I don't remember which one it was, grabbed me from the back, pulled me back," said Pyle. "And about that time a large piece of concrete, huge piece, fell right in front of us. And if he hadn't of done that, I probably wouldn't be here today."

Within hours, thousands of emergency responders from across the state and country showed up to the scene ready to help. By Day 2, the FBI had organized all emergency responders into teams.

Pyle and Yardley were assigned to Team 5, a group of about 60 first-responders from all over Oklahoma and the United States. Team 5's job was to search through evidence.

"Everything had to be searched for a quarter of a mile for evidence," said Yardley. "Physical evidence from the Ryder truck, physical evidence from the device itself, the explosives that were used."

Yardley said everything was taken out of the building, sifted on-site for evidence, then taken to a secure facility and re-sifted again.

"When we first got out here, they said we've got to take everything out of this building and sift it on-site. I said, 'we're gonna be here for years.' And we did it in less than 30 days. It was absolutely incredible," said Yardley.

Team 5 had three goals, said Yardley: "To get everybody home, find out who did it and then make sure these people were prosecuted."

And while the mission was clear to everyone, Yardley captured it words.

"It just kind of came to me one night when I was laying on the floor at home," said Yardley.

He wrote it down and showed it to Pyle the next day.

"Rockie came up with a piece of paper in his hand and said, 'I wrote this last night. It just came to me.' And he said, 'I'm gonna go ask if I can paint this on the wall,'" Pyle said. "When he first showed me the paper it was like, 'Wow. That's powerful. It's really powerful.'"

Yardley got the approval he needed and on a cold, rainy day, he painted the message on a wall of the damaged Journal Record Building that overlooked the destruction.

"He went and got a can of spray paint, red paint that we had used to mark evidence and started painting it on the wall and we stood there next to him while he did it," said Pyle.

To this day, Rockie doesn't take full credit for the words he wrote.

"That's one of those God things. I'm merely the handwriter," said Yardley.

Tess Maune: "God spoke to you that night?"

"Yeah, yeah. Sometimes you have listen," Yardey said.

At the time, he thought the building would be torn down and his words would eventually be forgotten.

But the building stayed, it's now Oklahoma City National Memorial Museum, and so did the words that are still a symbol of strength for the state.

"That's the difference between God's words and man's words. His last a lot longer than ours," he said.

Together, Team 5 has repainted the words a few times, now written in black, a color that doesn't fade as much in the sun.

Thousands of people stop by the wall each year to take in the words that are a lasting tribute to the past and powerful reminder for the future.

"I want those kids to know what happened out here, and why it happened and how it can be prevented," said Yardley.

Yardly and Pyle are both retired now, enjoying life as granddads, and for forever honored that during Oklahoma's darkest days, they could make a difference.

"I'm proud to be part of Team 5," said Pyle.

Yardley looked over at his friend with a simple smile and responded, "That'll be in my obituary, 'Member of Team 5.'"