Harvey Casino Lake Tahoe Bombing
Tahoe's Big Bang In the summer of 1980, Harvey's Resort Hotel and Casino, along the California border in Stateline, Nevada, became the site of the largest domestic bombing in U.S. It would continue to hold that distinction for more than a decade, until the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. At 3:46 p.m., a firing lead was touched against a car battery by bomb squad leader Danny Danihel, and the explosion rang out across South Lake Tahoe amidst cheers from the spectators. The bomb, which the authorities said contained about 1,000 pounds of explosives, blew up last Aug. 27 as experts attempted to defuse it using a remote-controlled device. No one was injured, but the. SOUTH LAKE TAHOE -Thursday marks the 35th anniversary of the Harvey's Resort Casino bombing in South Lake Tahoe in 1980. Before the explosion, many in South Lake Tahoe recall the evacuations.
Harvey Lake Tahoe 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.
By Kathryn Reed
When I first saw the title of the book I thought there should be an S at the end Harvey. After reading “Bombing Harvey” I understood more fully how the man responsible for the explosive device going off at the Stateline casino in 1980 had a vendetta against casino owner Harvey Gross, so the title was appropriate.
While I had already read much that is included in the book by John Birges Jr. and Nina J. Arnold, I chose to read it because of the author. Birges was part of the bombing. It was his father John Birges Sr. – or Big John – who came up with the plan.
I was in high school in the Bay Area when the bombing took place. Honestly, I don’t have any memory of the news coverage from then. I can only imagine it was extensive.
However, I have read plenty about it in the years since then, especially at various significant anniversary dates.
“Bombing Harvey” is an easy to read 205-page paperback that came out in 2010. For anyone who lived through the incident, it’s doubtful anything new would be gleaned from reading the book. But for those who weren’t here or aren’t old enough to remember the event, it would probably be worth reading.
It delves into the family life of the Birges. Big John had his two sons and girlfriend working on various aspects of the plot.
Some of the names of people in the book will be familiar to locals. For instance, Ron Pierini who is now sheriff of Douglas County was the captain of the Lake Tahoe substation at the time.
While Harvey Gross is no longer alive, plenty of his descendants reside on the South Shore. A bit of the book talks about his anxiety in knowing a 1,000-pound bomb was sitting inside his hotel-casino. One can only wonder with a corporation now owning the casino, if the same concerns for human life would be exhibited.
| 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]
Harveys Resort Casino Lake Tahoe Bomb
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.