Harveys Casino Lake Tahoe Bombing
Harveys Lake Tahoe Casino Harveys Lake Tahoe has over 88,000 square feet of gaming space that includes more than 1,200 of the most exicitng slot machines; nearly 100 live action table games, and a Race/Sports Book. The bomb was placed by John Birges, a heavily in-debt Fresno landscaper who had lost at least $1 million at casinos in Stateline and was hoping to extort $3 million from the bomb threat. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, where he died from liver cancer in 1996. The hotel is now Harvey's Lake Tahoe.
In the early morning hours of August 26, 1980—29 years ago today—men wearing white jumpsuits and pretending to deliver an IBM copy machine rolled a bomb into Harvey’s Resort Hotel and Casino in Stateline, Nevada, near Lake Tahoe. So began one of the most unusual cases in our history. Lake Tahoe police and El Dorado County sheriff’s deputies keep the crowd of onlookers off of Highway 50 after the detonation of the bomb at Harveys in August 1980. Photo: The Associated Press. ARREST AND REFLECTION. Nearly one year to the day of the bombing, authorities arrested John Birges Sr., the builder of the bomb.
| Harvey's Resort Hotel Bombing | |
|---|---|
| Location | Stateline, Nevada |
| Coordinates | 38°57′37″N119°56′31″W / 38.9602°N 119.9420°WCoordinates: 38°57′37″N119°56′31″W / 38.9602°N 119.9420°W |
| Date | August 26–27, 1980 |
| Target | Harvey's Resort Hotel |
Attack type | Bombing, attempted extortion |
| Weapons | |
| Deaths | 0 |
| Injured | 0 |
| Perpetrators | John Birges and three others |
| Motive | Extortion |
The Harvey's Resort Hotel bombing took place on August 26–27, 1980, when several men masquerading as photocopier deliverers planted an elaborately booby trappedbomb containing 1,000 pounds (450 kg) of dynamite at Harvey's Resort Hotel (now 'Harveys') in Stateline, Nevada, United States.[1] After an attempt to disarm the bomb, it exploded causing extensive damage to the hotel but no injuries or deaths. The total cost of the damage was estimated to be around $18 million.[2] John Birges Sr. was convicted of having made the bomb with a goal of extorting money from the casino after having lost $750,000 there. He died in prison in 1996, at the age of 74.
Background[edit]
John Birges Sr. was a Hungarian immigrant to Clovis, California. He flew for the German Luftwaffe during World War II. He was captured and sentenced to 25 years of hard labor in the Sovietgulag. Eight years into his sentence in the gulag, he was released during a period of mass repatriation of POWs held in the Soviet Union to their home countries, and returned to Hungary. From there, he immigrated to the U.S. and built a successful landscaping business, but his addiction to gambling led to his losing a large amount of money and prompted the bomb plot.[3] His gambling debt and experience with explosives were primary pieces of evidence linking him to the bombing.[4]
Bombing[edit]
As the mastermind behind the bomb, now-former millionaire Birges was attempting to extort $3 million ($9.3 million in 2019) from the casino, claiming he had lost $750,000 ($2.3 million in 2019) gambling there.
The FBI went to the spot that they believed to be the ransom drop, but due to vague directions, Birges was waiting at a different location. No money was paid to Birges.[5]
The bomb was cleverly built and virtually tamper-proof. The ransom note stated that the bomb could not be disarmed even by the bomb builder, but if paid $3 million he would give instructions on which combination of switches would allow the bomb to be moved and remotely detonated.[5] The FBI determined that it would take four men to move it and there was no way to know if the bomb was truly disarmed or safe to move. The FBI decided that the bomb would have to be disarmed in the hotel. All guests and staff were evacuated from the hotel and the gas main was shut off.[5]
After studying the bomb for more than a day through x-rays, bomb technicians decided that, although there were warnings from the bomb maker that a shock would trigger the device, the best hope of disarming it was by separating the detonators from the dynamite. The technicians thought this could be accomplished using a shaped charge of C-4. The attempt to disarm the bomb failed as the technicians did not know that dynamite had also been placed in the top box containing the detonation circuit; the shaped charge detonated the top box explosives, which caused the rest of the bomb to detonate. The bomb destroyed much of the hotel, although no one was injured. Harrah's Casino (which was connected to Harvey's Resort via a tunnel) was also damaged by the explosion, which broke many of the casino's windows.[6][7]
The bomb, one of the largest the FBI had ever seen, was loaded with an estimated 1,000 lb (450 kg) of dynamite stolen from a construction site in Fresno, California. According to FBI experts, the Harvey's bomb remains the most complex improvised explosive device they have examined, and a replica of 'the machine', as the extortionists called it, was still used in FBI training as of 2009.[1]
Investigation[edit]
Birges was investigated as a possible suspect due to his white van being identified as being in South Tahoe at the time of the bombing.[5] Birges was eventually arrested based on a tip.[8][9] One of his sons had revealed to his then-girlfriend that his father had placed a bomb in Harvey's. After the two broke up, she was on a date with another man when they heard about a reward for information, and she informed her new boyfriend about Birges. This man then called the FBI.[6]
Birges was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole.[10] In 1996, at the age of 74, he died of liver cancer at the Southern Nevada Correctional Center, 16 years and a day after the bombing.
References[edit]
- ^ ab'A Byte Out of History: The Case of the Harvey's Casino Bomb FBI'. U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. August 26, 2009. Archived from the original on August 9, 2016. Retrieved July 27, 2016.
- ^Hoffman, Ryan (August 21, 2020). '40 years ago, Tahoe casino bombing was biggest in U.S. history'. The Record Courier.
- ^'Federal Grand Jury Indicts 6 in Bombing of Casino at Tahoe'. The New York Times. Associated Press. August 19, 1981. Archived from the original on September 14, 2017. Retrieved December 19, 2017.
- ^Esposito, Richard; Gerstein, Ted (March 6, 2007). Bomb Squad: a year inside the nation's most exclusive police unit. Hyperion. p. 178. ISBN978-1-4013-0152-1. Archived from the original on June 26, 2014. Retrieved August 25, 2011.
- ^ abcdHigginbotham, Adam (2014). 'A Thousand Pounds of Dynamite'. The Atavist Magazine. Archived from the original on October 9, 2015. Retrieved May 26, 2015.
- ^ abVogel, Ed (August 27, 2005). 'Casino explosion nearly forgotten'. Las Vegas Review-Journal. Archived from the original on October 28, 2012. Retrieved August 25, 2011.
- ^Fabio, Adam. 'This is What A Real Bomb Looks Like'. Archived from the original on February 19, 2016. Retrieved February 8, 2016.
- ^King, Wayne (August 18, 1981). 'F.B.I. Says Casino Bombing Figure Considered Coast Bank Extortion'. The New York Times. Archived from the original on May 24, 2015. Retrieved December 19, 2017.
- ^Special to the New York Times (August 17, 1981). 'Arrests Reported in Casino Bombing'. The New York Times. Archived from the original on September 14, 2017. Retrieved December 19, 2017.
- ^'Conviction in Casino Bombing'. The New York Times. October 23, 1982. Archived from the original on September 14, 2017. Retrieved December 19, 2017.
Further reading[edit]
- Birges, John, Jr.; Arnold, Nina J. (2010). Bombing Harvey. New York: Vantage Press. ISBN978-0533163809. Archived from the original on 2016-03-05. Retrieved 2020-01-10.
- Sloan, Jim (2011). Render Safe: The Untold Story of the Harvey's Bombing.
1980 Nevada Casino Bombing
In August 1980, an extortionist planted a thousand-pound bomb in Harvey’s Wagon Wheel Casino in western Nevada. Unless the owners paid him $3 million within 24 hours, he said, the bomb would go off and destroy the casino. In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll describe the tense drama that followed and the FBI’s efforts to catch the criminal behind it.
Harveys Casino Lake Tahoe Bombing 2019
We’ll also consider some dubious lawn care shortcuts and puzzle over why a man would tear up a winning ticket.
Please consider becoming a patron of Futility Closet — on our Patreon page you can pledge any amount per episode, and all contributions are greatly appreciated. You can change or cancel your pledge at any time, and we’ve set up some rewards to help thank you for your support.
You can also make a one-time donation via the Donate button in the sidebar of the Futility Closet website.
Sources for our feature on the Harvey’s bombing:
Jim Sloan, Render Safe: The Untold Story of the Harvey’s Bombing, 2011.
Adam Higginbotham, “1,000 Pounds of Dynamite,”The Atavist 39.
“5 Charged in Harveys Bombing,” Associated Press, Aug. 17, 1981.
“Five Suspects Arrested in Harvey’s Extortion Bombing,” Associated Press, Aug. 17, 1981.
Harveys Explosion
“Son Pitted Against Father in Harvey’s Bombing Trial,” Associated Press, Oct. 17, 1982.
Robert Macy, “Ex-Freedom Fighter Found Guilty of Bombing Hotel,” Telegraph, Oct. 23, 1982.
Melinda Beck, “A Real Harvey’s Wallbanger,” Newsweek, Sept. 8, 1980.
Phillip L. Sublett, “30 Years Later: Trail of Clues Led Authorities to Harvey’s Casino Bombers,”Tahoe Daily Tribune, Aug. 28, 2010.
Guy Clifton, “35 Years Ago Today: The Bomb That Shook Lake Tahoe,”Reno Gazette-Journal, Aug. 26, 2015.
Video discussion of the case by retired FBI special agent Chris Ronay (transcript):
Listener mail:
The imgur gallery with the German saboteur cache is here — click the link “Load remaining 44 images” just above the comments to see the photo we mentioned.
The book quoted by Stephanie Guertin is Weapons of the Navy SEALs, by Kevin Dockery, 2004.
Malcolm Moore, “China Officials Caught Spray-Painting Grass Green in Chengdu,”Telegraph, March 4, 2013.
This week’s lateral thinking puzzle was contributed by listener Matt Sargent.
You can listen using the player above, download this episode directly, or subscribe on iTunes or Google Play Music or via the RSS feed at http://feedpress.me/futilitycloset.
Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode.
If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at podcast@futilitycloset.com. Thanks for listening!