The bomb that shook Lake Tahoe

A twisted chunk of metal, a file of yellowing newspapers and a million memories from 35 years ago are constant reminders of the Harvey’s Casino Resort bombing for retired FBI agent Bill Jonkey.

“It’s something you never forget,” said Jonkey, the FBI’s lead investigator on the $3 million extortion case, who lives in retirement in Carson Valley.

The twisted metal, about the size of a door knob, is a small piece of the stainless steel crate that surrounded the nearly 1,000 pounds of stolen dynamite that detonated in Stateline on Aug. 27, 1980, blowing out the side of the 11-story resort and starting a nearly yearlong manhunt for those behind it.

No one died and no one was injured during the more than 30 hours of drama on the south shore of Lake Tahoe. That, in itself, continues to offer a sense of relief to those who were there.

“It could have been a lot worse,” said Douglas County Sheriff Ron Pierini, who at the time of the explosion was a captain with the county’s Lake Tahoe substation. “It could have been a whole lot worse.”

To be sure, it is one of those “where were you, when” moments for longtime Nevadans.

The time from discovery of the bomb in the early morning hours of Aug. 26, 1980, until its detonation the following day, was a whirlwind of activity involving phone calls, helicopters, missed ransom drops, and evacuations.

Here’s what happened in that fateful 30-hour period.

John Birges Sr., a Hungarian immigrant and war veteran from Clovis, Calif., had lost a fortune gambling at Harvey’s. Intent on getting his money back, he devised an extortion plot to get it back.

At 5:30 a.m. on Aug. 26, 1980, two men in coveralls — later identified as Willis Brown and Terry Hall — wheeled what appeared to be a large piece of office equipment into a side entrance and the second floor offices of the 11-story Harvey’s Resort.

A third man, Birges, had ridden the service elevator to the second floor.

Not long after the men had left, Bob Vinson, the slot shift supervisor at Harvey’s, came out of his second-floor office and noticed a door that was never closed had been pulled shut. Then he noticed the box that had been left behind. It was actually two boxes – a large one about the size of a copy machine and a second, smaller box atop it with some switches. He saw a janitor down the hall and asked if it was part of his equipment. The janitor said no, so the men took a closer look.

They saw that the box had bubbled levels on each corner and that casters, the wheels it had been rolled in on probably, had been retracted and that the box had been leveled on blocks of wood. The switches on the top box, the smaller one, were all flipped in the same direction except one.

Then they noticed the envelope. It was addressed on the outside to “Harvey’s management.”

That set the wheels in motion. Security was alerted, as was the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office. Seconds after security supervisor Pete Caban and Douglas County deputy Wayne Watt opened the envelope and started reading the 3-page, typewritten letter, they knew it was a bomb.

Jonkey can still remember seeing it for the first time.

“My initial thought was, ‘My gosh, that’s a pretty big bomb,’” he said. “It was certainly the biggest I ever saw. It was sophisticated and well-built. It had these rollers on the bottom. You just knew it had to be very, very heavy.”

The small box had a large number of switches. The letter stated the bomb could never be rendered safe. The only thing authorities would be able to do is find out how to move it out of the casino to a safe place in the desert, where it could be detonated without destroying any buildings or killing any people.

But the only way to get that information, the bombers said, was to pay them $3 million in unmarked $100 bills. Harvey’s had 24 hours to act. “Any deviation from these conditions will leave your casino in shambles,” the letter warned.

“It was a really good thing that security didn’t start to move it,” Pierini said. “If they would have tried to move it, it would have exploded. It had mercury switches and it was set in such a way there were 37 switches. Most were up, but some were down. If it had gone off when they first found it, 600 people would have been dead.”

The bomb squad operated out of the Tahoe-Douglas Fire Protection District. Carl Paulson, the battalion chief and his two captains, Frank Danihel and Larry Chapman, carried their diagnostic equipment upstairs at Harvey’s and began examining the bomb.

After listening to the IED and not hearing anything, they set up their X-ray equipment and started taking pictures. They studied the bomb all day, and experts from around the country were either called in or consulted by phone. The Nuclear Energy Search Team from Lawrence Livermore Labs was summoned. An Army ordnance disposal unit from the Sierra Army Depot in Herlong, Calif., was called. The state fire marshal was there. The Department of Energy. Some experts from the Nuclear Test Site outside Las Vegas were said to be there. Of course, the FBI was on the scene, too.

The experts came to a conclusion: the bomb could not be moved.

So as the bomb squad worked on the device itself, the Sheriff’s Office began evacuating people within a half-mile radius of the hotel. The FBI, meanwhile, set about trying to find the extortionists. The letter said the $3 million was to be delivered at 10 minutes to a location off Highway 50 via helicopter at 10 minutes after midnight.

The helicopter took off from South Lake Tahoe Airport with an armed FBI agent snuggled behind the pilot’s seat. But the signal light the pilot was supposed to look for could not be seen. Unbeknownst to the authorities, the extortionists were having their own problems on the ground. The drop was a bust.

By the morning of Aug. 27, authorities had made a decision to place a shaped charge on the top box of the device in hopes of separating it from the main explosives. By 3:43 p.m., the surrounding area had been evacuated and the bomb experts remotely detonated the shaped charge.

With the extortion attempt public knowledge by this time, media was everywhere. Veteran RGJ photographer Marilyn Newton was in an aircraft circling above.

Both Pierini and Jonkey were among those who watched the explosion from across the street atop the Sahara Tahoe. The massive blast blew out five floors from the side of the hotel.

When that thing went off, the blast went clean through the whole hotel area,” Pierini said. “Fires started even though they shut off everything off. It was really sad. It was a sad day to see that casino get blown up.”

Within days, the investigation zeroed in on Birges. His son’s white van, which had been used to transport the bomb, had been identified. Even as they were building their case, Birges was plotting to build a second bomb, including another theft of nearly 1,000 pounds of explosives.

“Our major concern was that we knew he was going to do it again,” Jonkey said. “We knew he had the explosives already. Other than that, it was a case like all cases. You have to put all the pieces together.”

With the cooperation of Birges’ sons, the FBI was able to get the evidence together to arrest Birges and his girlfriend, Ella Williams on Aug. 15, 1981. Brown and Hall, the men who had wheeled the bomb into Harvey’s were arrested the next day.

Read Original Story ->

FBI Story on the bombing HERE