“You have to show in court it was a bomb,” Jonkey said.Ī few years after the bombing, in Tahoe Township Justice Court, Judge Steve McMorris presided over a preliminary hearing when he heard a remark by Birges Sr.Ī bomb expert with the FBI testified about the different ignition possibilities, including a toilet float used to trigger the bomb if it was dunked in water, McMorris said. The steel consisted of about 400 pounds, 125 of which was recovered after the explosion and used as evidence. It weighed a roughly 1,200 pounds, including the dynamite which weighed 850 pounds. The smaller box on top held eight switches, or triggers, to ignite the device, Jonkey said. The bottom box contained the bulk of the explosives. It was comprised of two steel boxes, one stacked on top of the other. Assigned to the Carson City office, Jonkey, a bomb specialist, was the agent in charge of the criminal portion of the case. “I mean you’re standing there looking at it hoping the damn thing doesn’t go off when you’re in there but we had to X-ray it and determine what it was.”Īlthough there are various descriptions of the bomb, it is probably safe to go with the details given by retired FBI Special Agent Bill Jonkey.

“It was a big, scary device,” said Kanoff, whose department’s bomb squad was charged to handle the bomb. “Our goal was not to get anybody hurt and there was not a Band-Aid issued or a lawsuit issued so we accomplished what we wanted to accomplish,” said Bruce Kanoff, chief of Tahoe-Douglas Fire District in 1980. Unlike that explosion, where six people were killed and more than 1,000 injured, no one died in the Harvey’s bombing. Many authorities later considered the subsequent explosion causing millions of dollars in damage to the Stateline casino owned by Harvey Gross the largest domestic terrorist act until the February 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. A extortion note demanding $3 million was also left behind. 26, 1980, the bomb with at least eight trigger mechanisms was rolled into the lobby of what was then called Harvey’s Resort Hotel by John Birges Sr., a disgruntled Hungarian gambler. In the early morning hours of Tuesday, Aug. If it was moved, bumped or jostled, 850 pounds of dynamite would have exploded inside a homemade bomb disguised as a large copy machine, injuring or killing an estimated 600 people inside Harvey’s Resort Hotel 25 years ago.

FBI photo provided by Webb Canepa / After the casino corridor was evacuated, technicians detonated a bomb left in Harveys along with an extortion note.

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