Homemade bomb causes FBI to ‘surrender’

Early in the morning of August 26, 1980, three men in blue work overalls dragged a photocopier-sized object through the side door of the Harveys Resort hotel in Stateline, Nevada.

They used a service elevator to move the machine to an unoccupied 2nd floor executive office. The machine covered by a cloth with the IBM logo crudely painted on the side, is actually a bomb stuffed with 500 kg of explosives attached to an intricate network of triggering mechanisms.

Next to the bomb, one of the men placed an envelope containing a three-page extortion letter, clearly written titled “Severe Warning to Bomb Management and Demolition Team”. The content demanded $3 million in cash, including $100 bills that were “unmarked, unsigned and chemically untreated”. They barricaded items at the entrance to prevent someone from walking past and accidentally detonating the bomb.

About 20 minutes later, a manager contacted casino security after noticing a broken second floor lock and a “suspicious oddity” inside the room, along with an anonymous letter demanding money.

“Do not move or tilt this bomb, because the mechanism that controls the fuses in it will activate when it encounters a movement less than 0.01 of the Ricter scale. Also do not try to detach it. The screws point to it. The bomb needs to be rotated a quarter of a turn for the bomb to explode. This bomb is so sensitive that the slightest movement inside or outside can cause it to explode. This bomb can never be defused or disarmed. disable it without causing an explosion. Even its creator doesn’t know how to disable it,” the letter reads.

The ransom note also said that if he was paid $3 million, he would give instructions on which combination of switches would allow the bomb to be moved and detonated remotely.

A dramatic and emergency force mobilization ensued, involving local, state and federal police who worked against the clock to defuse the bomb, as the countdown continued. run in seconds.

“We’ve never seen anything like the bomb,” one FBI agent later said.

“The device is a rather sophisticated piece of machinery unlike anything we’ve seen before, or anyone in the bomb disposal business, has ever seen before,” a group of dozens said. Experts surrounded this “weird thing” and discussed it. “It’s almost impossible to beat,” one reviewer.

The bomb was photographed, fingerprinted, X-rayed, and studied. It turns out that there are up to eight independently operating bomb trigger systems. After much deliberation, the casino owner reluctantly agreed to evacuate the guests to detonate the bomb at the building.

The “invincible” bomb of the loser made the FBI surrender

The device exploded 33 hours after it was discovered, at around 3:43 p.m. on August 27, 1980 in the presence of television cameras, journalists, casino employees and tourists, blowing up the building. 11 floors have been evacuated. No one was injured.

Meanwhile, the authorities rushed to hunt down the suspects. The FBI interviewed 500 suspects and hundreds of witnesses over the next few weeks. The big break for agents came from Nancy, owner of the Balahoe motel in South Lake Tahoe, providing police with the license plate number of a suspicious white van.

Three men had been staying at her motel the night before the incident, they were flirting rudely, so Nancy wrote down their license plates. Truck registration information led investigators to the man’s home 58. age named John Birges Jr. But when the agents arrived, John with the appearance of an old man was drinking with 5 old friends among empty beer cans and bags of marijuana. The police said that the old man did not appear to be a bomb plotter, so he left.

However, a girl called the police to provide unexpected information: John is the person behind the bombing plot. She is the girlfriend of one of his two sons John. She said her boyfriend told her many times about her father’s plan to rob a bank and the “invincible” bomb.

On August 15, 1981, nearly a year after the bombing, JohnBirges Sr. was arrested, calmly confessed to the crime and told the story of the incident.

John was born in Hungary in 1922, fought in World War II. He immigrated to the US in May 1957, he and his wife had 2 sons, settled in New Jersey. They worked in many fields and then built a restaurant, quickly getting rich. The couple divorced in 1973 because the woman could not bear his abusive behavior. Two years later, she committed suicide by drinking poison.

John began to neglect his work, diving into gambling. In 1978, the restaurant burned down. Having won $355,000 in insurance money from the fire, John baked it all into the blackjack tables, leading to bankruptcy after a few months.

In the winter of 1979, he informed his children that he was going to build a bomb to blackmail the casino. John accused the casinos of “stealing all his money”.

In June 1980, John asked his two children to steal nearly 500 kg of explosives from the Helms Power Plant in the mountains east of Lake Shaver in California. He spent two months building an “invincible” bomb.

He hired two more delivery men, paying them several hundred dollars to collaborate in the South Shore casino blackmail scheme. These accomplices were arrested one day after John.

On October 22, 1982, John Birges Sr. convicted of extortion and federal bombing, sentenced to life in prison without parole. Two accomplices were acquitted, while Mr. John’s sons, accused of being accomplices, were given suspended sentences for cooperating with authorities.

At the age of 74, John died of liver cancer at the Southern Nevada Correctional Center, exactly 16 years and one day after the shocking bombing.

A replica of this bomb is still used today by the FBI Laboratory for teaching and training purposes.

Hai Thu (According to FBI, Tahoe Quarterly, KCRA)