Four days after the Oklahoma City blast, federal agents arrived at Sally Paulsen’s Leyden Township home.
Her 21-year-old nephew, David Paulsen, who lives with her, was being held in a government car outside, where agents peppered him with questions about his relationship with bombing suspect Timothy McVeigh.
As Sally Paulsen stood sobbing in the kitchen, agents searched her garbage and her underwear drawer, read her letters and her 11-year-old daughter’s diary, and ran their fingers gently along the edges of her bedroom door, testing for secret hiding places.
At her kitchen table, they carefully sealed household utensils in plastic evidence bags. They confiscated her TV remote control and an automatic garage door opener.
One agent showed Sally Paulsen a diagram of a bomb, she said, and told her “this part here is what my nephew sold to McVeigh. They think Dave sold him something electronic.”
For the past 10 weeks, federal investigators have continued to probe the links between David Paulsen and McVeigh, seeking to determine whether Paulsen supplied explosives parts that were used to set off the April 19 Oklahoma City blast, or perhaps used by the bombers in practice runs.
David Paulsen and his father, Edward Paulsen, were licensed gun dealers until May of this year, federal records show, and they sold firearms at weekend gun shows as well as at Edward Paulsen’s military surplus shop in north-central Wisconsin.
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Authorities believe that McVeigh met David Paulsen at a Midwestern gun show last year. Telephone records indicate that, starting in the late summer of 1994, McVeigh made several calls to Sally Paulsen’s Leyden Township home and to his father’s shop, an official said.
There was “substantive communication” between them, another official said.
David Paulsen is not suspected of having prior knowledge of the bomb or direct involvement in the plot, one federal official said, but under questioning, he has given deceptive and contradictory accounts of his relationship with McVeigh, and he failed at least one lie-detector test.
David Paulsen has refused to comment, and many details of his relationship with McVeigh remain murky, an official said. Paulsen’s father and stepmother have testified before the grand jury investigating the blast, but authorities said they have not called David because they feel he has not been truthful about his relationship with McVeigh.
Whatever transpired between the two young men, it has thrown the Paulsen family into limbo: Though not officially classified as a suspect in the case, neither is David Paulsen cleared of wrongdoing. Nor has his family been released from intense scrutiny. Federal agents have tailed their cars, searched their belongings and interviewed their friends and casual acquaintances.
The story of how this suburban family was dragged into the vortex of the Oklahoma City bomb is one with a beginning and middle but, as yet, no end.
Said Sally Paulsen: “All this resulted from one little card.”
When McVeigh was arrested for speeding and weapons violations in Perry, Okla., about 70 minutes after the explosion, he dropped a crumpled Paulsen’s Military Supply business card into a trooper’s squad car. On the back of the card was written, “Dave,” and David Paulsen’s telephone number.
In another hand was written, “Need more 5 pound sticks of TNT by May 1,” according to a government official.
Paulsen family members say McVeigh dropped the card deliberately, in an effort to throw investigators off track.
“I think McVeigh planted the card,” Sally Paulsen said. “He’s already mad at David because David won’t sell him explosives, so he said, `Let’s get him involved.’ “
She said her nephew refused to have anything to do with the man now suspected of the worst terrorist attack on American soil. “He told me McVeigh scared the hell out of him,” she said.
Under questioning by federal agents, she explained, David “failed one polygraph, the reason being he was extremely scared and nervous. For hours and hours they grilled him. He was so worked up.”
During an initial round of questions, she said, “They showed him a blurry photo of McVeigh and Dave said he didn’t recognize him. Then they came back with a clear picture and Dave said he did. Is that lying? Or is it just the picture they showed?”
In Antigo, Wis., a vacation town about 200 miles north of Milwaukee, FBI agents have parked outside Edward Paulsen’s military supply shop. Inside, Army survival manuals and explosives handbooks are displayed next to racks of insulated socks, and bullet tie-clips sit on a glass case that holds clips of real bullets.
Behind the counter, Edward Paulsen, a tall, blunt-talking 47-year-old, nurses a sense of wounded pride. He is willing to talk at length, but refuses to be quoted. When the questions get too personal, he hollers at the reporter.
In recent years the Paulsens have been licensed to sell guns only at Wisconsin shows, but a November 1994 inspection of the business by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms showed that the Paulsens sold guns at several out-of-state shows and repeatedly failed to keep proper records of transactions.
ATF officials warned Edward Paulsen that the family’s gun-dealing license could be revoked for these types of infractions, but Paulsen let the license expire in May, and he tells visitors that he will not sell guns again because it isn’t worth the hassle.
As a student at Glenbard East High School in Lombard, where he graduated in 1991, David was enrolled in a work-training program in which he got academic credit for working in his father’s Army surplus business. At the time, Edward Paulsen worked days managing the service counter at a Chicago auto dealership and nights and weekends selling military supplies from the family’s cottage on Prairie Avenue in Lombard.
One of his businesses, called Command Post, sold Army surplus supplies and lost $36,493 in 1987, according to a tax return Paulsen later filed in DuPage County court. The other, a mail-order weapons service called Ed’s Gun Sales, reported a $14,447 profit after selling $31,575 worth of merchandise in 1987.
“They kept their inventory in the garage, like people do in any type of flea-market situation,” said Glenbard East instructor Greg Koeller, who inspected the Paulsens’ home before approving David’s work-study program.
David didn’t sell guns at the time, Koeller said. “He was strictly doing things like tents, canteens-the camping type of things.”
In April 1988, David’s mother, Linda Paulsen, filed for divorce after 21 years of marriage. In 1989, Edward Paulsen made Linda Monticello a partner in his gun business, federal records show, and they were married later.
In June of 1991 Edward Paulsen declared bankruptcy. By then he was working full time as a self-employed gun trader and earning about $36,000 a year, federal court papers show.
By August 1991, court papers show, Edward Paulsen and his current wife had opened the Antigo gun and Army surplus store, and David was working with them.
Edward Paulsen had been amassing relatively inexpensive land near Antigo since the 1970s, and he currently owns about 56 acres, according to property tax records filed with the Langlade County treasurer.
In a wooded area north of Antigo, a ranch-style gate bears the Paulsen name, and a playful totem pole stands guard over a decorative wishing well, statues of gulls and ducks, and a satellite TV dish.
“They’re the nicest people you could meet. I really feel bad about what they’re going through right now,” said Beth Smith, 20, manager of Pisces Pets, where Linda Paulsen shops for her iguana, several dogs, canary and parakeet.
“The FBI just kind of pounced on them. I think they’re getting punished unfairly,” said Linda Falkowski, president of White Water-North Realty Ltd., who sold the Paulsens land.
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Though still helping his father some weekends, David Paulsen now works as a parts counter trainee at a Dodge dealership in Glen Ellyn, then returns to his aunt Sally’s home in Leyden Township, near Melrose Park, where he has lived for the past year, according to family members.
After searching Sally Paulsen’s home until about 4 a.m. on that Sunday night after the blast, federal agents gave her a two-page inventory of items seized, then took snapshots showing the house almost exactly as they’d found it.
Federal agents did their jobs professionally, family members said, but media pressure has been nearly unbearable.
“My kid didn’t go to school the next day, and the day after that I couldn’t get out the door because the media was so thick,” she said.
“I sit on my couch and the doorbell won’t stop ringing, the phone won’t stop ringing. How long can you sit there and hear a phone ring and not answer it?”
“When this is all over,” Sally Paulsen said, “we’re going to go on camera and give them all raspberries and say, `You’ve ruined our lives.’ “
But sometimes she thinks it may never be over.
“Every time I open the door there’s a camera staring me in the face,” she said. “I went out to move my car one day and they followed with the cameras and showed me on the news that night. I felt like a big dork. Here I am, on the news, walking to my car.”
“It’s like hanging in mid-air,” she said, “not knowing what’s going to happen tomorrow or what happened yesterday, not knowing where to turn or who to turn to, what to say and what not to say.
“I lie on my couch and go, `Oh my God, when’s it going to end?’ “