The Harvey's Resort Hotel bombing took place on August 26–27, 1980, when three men planted an elaborately booby trapped bomb containing of dynamite at Harvey's Resort Hotel in Stateline, Nevada, United States. After an attempt to disarm the bomb, it exploded causing extensive damage to the hotel but no injuries or deaths. John Birges Sr. was convicted of having made the bomb, and wanted to extort money from the casino after having lost $750,000 there. He later died in prison in 1996, at the age of 74.
Background
John Birges, Sr., was a Hungarian immigrant from Clovis, California. He flew for the German Luftwaffe during World War II. He was captured and sentenced to 25 years of hard labor in a Sovietgulag. Eight years into his sentence in the gulag, he was released during a period of mass repatriation of Soviet Union POWs to their home countries, and returned to Hungary. From there, he emigrated 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. His gambling debt and experience with explosives were primary pieces of evidence linking him to the bombing.
Bombing
The mastermind behind the bomb, former millionaire John Birges, was attempting to extort $3 million from the casino, claiming he had lost $750,000 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. 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. 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 their belongings were evacuated from the hotel and the gas main was shut off. 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 casino, although no one was injured. Harrah's Casino was also damaged by the explosion, which broke many of the casino's windows. The bomb, one of the largest the FBI had ever seen, was loaded with an estimated 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.
Investigation
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. Birges was eventually arrested based on a tip. 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. Birges was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole. In 1996, at the age of 74, he died of liver cancer at the Southern Nevada Correctional Center, sixteen years and a day after the bombing.
