The ghosts of past and future

摘要

In the days after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the authorities began hunting for a suspect they named John Doe 2. A mechanic had vividly recalled seeing this man with the bomber, Timothy McVeigh, at a body shop where they rented the van used to carry out the crime. But John Doe 2 was never found. Further investigations revealed that the mechanic had mistakenly recalled that an innocent man he saw the next day at the body shop — with someone who looked like McVeigh — had accompanied McVeigh the day before. The mechanic had combined accurate bits of memory from two separate episodes into a single, inaccurate recollection.