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The bombing of Harvey's Casino in Lake Tahoe, Nevada is one of the great overlooked capers.
It's kind of nuts how anything like the Harvey's bombing could ever be forgotten, considering the outcome.
This episode has it all.
A great plot, incompetent criminals, an amazingly well-designed bomb, and a huge explosion.
And it's made even cooler somehow because it takes place in 1980.
Plus, no one dies, which makes it okay for me to call this episode kind of charming.
Enjoy.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here and this is Stuff.
You Should Know.
The true crime edition where nobody gets hurt.
Isn't that amazing?
Yeah, I think this falls into our sort of caper edition.
Yes.
Well put.
Well put.
Do we have any other capers?
Yeah, like the Chowchilla Kidnapping and I think any non-murder crime podcast, I think, would fall under this.
Like D.B.
Cooper.
Exactly.
And before I forget, Chuck, that was definitely a caper.
Good call.
This was a request, which, like you said last time, we've been doing a lot of these lately.
But this one was requested by Nick Hales.
And I say, good request, Nick.
Thanks for that.
And I totally spaced on shouting out Neil Stevens from the UK for Georgia Guidestones episode.
He requested it and gave me the idea to do it.
All right.
Nice work.
This one was so familiar to me that...
I was sure that we had either touched on it or that I saw – what I really thought was that I saw a documentary about it.
But I hadn't because I don't think there's been one.
I don't know what it is.
It was really familiar with some other thing, true life thing that I saw.
I don't know.
I don't know.
But the fact that there's not a movie about this is insane.
Yeah.
I don't know if it's movie worthy.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
Oh, man.
Just like the pork chop sideburns alone, I think, would warrant a movie.
But because I said pork chop sideburns, of course, we're talking about 1980, right, Chuck?
August 26, 1980?
That's right.
And on August 26 1980, very early in the morning, a couple of delivery dudes would-be delivery dudes arrived, wheeled a big piece of equipment.
It had a cover on it that said IBM into Harvey's Resort Hotel in Lake Tahoe, Nevada.
Shout out to our buddy Aaron Hagar representing Lake Tahoe.
Oh, is he in Tahoe?
Oh, yeah.
He's got it made out there in Tahoe.
Nice.
Except for the bears and wildfires.
I'll bet he's heard of this story then.
I bet you he has.
We'll hear from him on this.
But anyway, they wheeled it in there up to the second floor offices and dropped it off and basically skedaddled after that.
They had a guy waiting in a van outside and drove them the heck out of there.
Yeah.
So it's kind of weird 5 am to drop off a piece of office equipment, not waiting around for anybody to sign it.
Kind of odd.
And within an hour, the oddity behind it kind of became really apparent.
A slot manager, I believe, or maybe the night manager in general he noticed this piece of office equipment that was kind of randomly placed on the second floor offices.
And he saw that there was a note by it.
And he gathered some other employees and they were all kind of hanging out reading the note.
And one of the details I love that I saw in an Adam Higginbottom article on the Atavist was that one of the people reading the note was leaning up against the machine while they were reading the note.
All right.
The note said, should we read the note?
Yeah, because then it makes the whole thing about somebody leaning up against it really hilarious.
All right.
Stern warning to the management and bomb squad, in which case I would have been out of there.
That's all I need to hear.
Right, exactly.
Do not move or tilt this bomb, because the mechanism controlling the detonators in it will set it off at a movement of less than 001 of the open-end Richter scale.
So let's confuse people right out of the gate with this note, is what this guy's thinking.
Sure.
Don't try to flood or gas the bomb.
There's a float switch and an atmosphere pressure switch set at two numbers, 26.00 to 33.
Both are attached to detonators.
Do not try to take it apart.
The flathead screws are attached to triggers, and as much of a quarter to three quarters of a turn will cause the explosion.
In other words, this bomb is so sensitive that the slightest movement, either inside or outside, will cause it to explode.
Full stop.
Yeah, and you can guess.
The person leaning against the machine stood up and moved away from it, right?
That's right.
And basically they said— I love that part.
No one can detonate or no one can deactivate this bomb.
Not even I, not even the creator can defuse this thing.
So it is going to go off at some point.
Your best hope of not getting hurt is to pay a 3000 ransom, and you're going to receive instructions on how to move it out of here so it can explode somewhere else.
Yeah, and it would have been a bargain for $3,000.
It was actually a $3 million ransom.
Did it save $3,000?
You did.
I think you were being optimistic.
Yeah, $3 million.
I mean, if you just look at the ransom note when it's talking about the bomb, that's a pretty amazing bomb.
And it actually became pretty legendary with the FBI, so much so that I saw that they still I don't know if they still do today, but for many years they used it as a teaching model for bomb technicians.
And the FBI considered it very sophisticated.
And they said it was unlike anything any bomb technician had ever seen before.
No one had ever made a bomb like this.
Yeah, very good bomb if there was such a thing.
It was a couple of stacked boxes lined with metal and rubber that, through conventional methods, you couldn't separate, of course, without it going boom.
And so the FBI did what they do in this case.
They come in.
They start taking pictures.
They X-ray it.
They sweep it for fingerprints.
Obviously, they don't move it.
They find out that it has about 1,000 pounds of dynamite inside.
And they can't find a way to like.
Basically they're saying this note seems to be right on the money.
Like, we can't find a way, at least right off the bat, about how to diffuse this thing safely.
Yeah, and very famously, the bomb technicians in the room started running around in aimless circles saying oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.
And they did that for a good three hours, I think, before somebody stepped in and stopped them.
But that ransom note also showed a lot of planning, not just the bomb.
This bomb was amazing, just full stop amazing, one to really be proud of if you were a bomb maker.
But the actual heist itself – had like a real shot at extorting this $3 million successfully.
And it started with, they knew what they were doing out of the gate.
They said we want 3 million in used bills 100 bills already used, not marked, not bugged.
Don't even try to chemically treat them.
And we want you to fly a helicopter to Lake Tahoe Airport.
Have the pilot land by the payphone and wait by the payphone for instructions.
Are instructions going to come from the payphone?
Who knows?
They could also come by taxi.
They could also come by carrier pigeon.
I'm making that last one up.
But they were just trying out of the gate to confuse them so that they couldn't plan for everything.
And I think it was a really well-planned heist.
Yeah.
I mean they basically said no one involved from this point that you meet up with, like anyone that might deliver a note, anyone that might drive a vehicle that's involved, like no one's going to know anything, so don't bother.
And I think I believe that that's probably true.
They said that I, the creator of the bomb –
I'm not going to be a part of this money drop.
I'm not going to be around.
Nobody that's a part of any of this exchange of money is going to know anything about how to defuse this bomb.
Like this thing is going to go off and there's nothing you can do to stop it.
Again, the only thing that you can do is follow what will ultimately be six sets of instructions to safely get this bomb out of there.
Yeah, after he gets the loot, or they.
So the first set of instructions was going to be given to the helicopter pilot.
The rest of the instructions would arrive through the local post office, which is putting a lot of faith in the USPS.
But then there was another demand, too, that was probably the most ridiculous demand of all.
They said that all news media, local or national, was to be kept ignorant of the heist until the bomb was successfully removed.
Yeah, that was impossible.
Totally impossible, because the first thing the cops did when they realized like this is for real, which they figured out pretty quickly.
I think the thing was discovered before 6 am and by 7 or 8 at the very latest they were rousting hotel guests at Harvey's.
Many of them from sleep telling them like, nope, you don't have time to grab your belongings.
You got to go.
And not only did they evacuate Harvey's, a thousand pounds of dynamite can do some real damage.
They actually evacuated Harrah's across the street from Harvey's too.
Yeah.
So they said, you're all going to go to this nearby high school.
And, of course, the media.
It's a big thing when that happens, when people are being massively bust out in their bathrobes and stuff.
So basically, within a few hours, all the media knows this.
They cordon off the area.
There's people hanging out.
There's gawkers.
There's reporters.
Yeah.
There's before you know it, of course, because there's casinos around there.
They're taking bets, of course, like over under on whether this thing's going to detonate.
And not only did they not keep the media out of it, but it became like I mean call it.
A sensation indicates that it drug on.
It was like a day and change, but it was a crazy day and change for the media.
For sure.
And it was over the week before Labor Day weekend.
So Tahoe was crawling with people.
And this was 1980, right?
Just 36 years before, the first casino was opened on the south shore of Lake Tahoe.
And it was opened by the same guy whose hotel now had a bomb in it, Harvey Gross.
His first thing was Harvey's Wagon Wheel Saloon and Gambling Hall, which I saw described as a cabin that had six slot machines in it.
And at the time in Tahoe, Chuck, there was no phone, no water, no sewer, no power lines.
The roads would close at like the first sign of snow.
And it was like a real podunk area.
But gambling made it, actually, put it on the map.
For a second there, I thought you were going to say, not a single luxury.
Oh, man.
Yeah.
I really should have.
I wish I had.
I'm not on my game today.
Like Robinson Crusoe.
They were what?
Primitivist can be, right?
That's what they said, but it was the 60s.
You wouldn't say that anymore.
So things go great for Harvey and his little wagon wheel cabin.
You know it's on the state line of California.
So that's a pretty smart thing because you get those out-of-staters, those richies from California, throwing down some money.
Yeah, and it was so on the state line.
It was in a town called State Line.
That's very Nevada.
It's very on the nose.
And isn't Nevada – I'm so nervous about us saying it the right way, because those people will email you like gangbusters.
Oh, it's Nevada, but I always say Nevada.
Okay.
Okay, but they say it Nevada.
Yeah, everyone outside the state of Nevada says Nevada, and that drives them nuts.
Drives them crazy.
It's really something.
So Harvey – no, let's wait on a break.
So Harvey was doing great with this little tiny casino in the 40s through the 50s, makes a lot of dough and by 63 had expanded and upgraded to Harvey's Lake Tahoe, which at the time was the tallest building – at 11 stories, which is you know, that's a pretty tall building for that area of the country.
Yeah, less than 20 years, he went from a cabin to an 11-story casino resort.
Yeah.
And I believe it was at that same 11-story casino resort that this bomb was placed in 1980, 17 years later.
And Harvey himself was like, I mean, he was a casino owner in Nevada.
Like, he had...
I don't want to say checkered past, but he had a past like he'd been hauled in front of the IRS for tax evasion.
There was he had been given an honorary name by the Nevada Intertribal.
Did I say it right?
Nevada?
Nope.
By the Nevada Intertribal Council.
He was called Chief Hunai.
And there was an article that was written back in, I think, 1980 that said that it meant the man who runs the game and takes a percentage of the bets.
I don't know if that's a joke or not.
I can't tell.
I don't either because that's definitely like that era kind of joke, you know?
Yeah.
You can see that on like a tiki napkin.
Right.
But the long and short of it is, he'd had his little run-ins with the IRS and stuff and the gaming board, but it wasn't anything unusual.
He wasn't like some bad guy, like a mafioso type.
He was, like you said, he owned a casino, and he's going to be brought up by the IRS at some point.
But all of this to say he wasn't like some big mark because of all his dirty dealings in his past.
Right.
I saw him actually referred to as a good guy by some people.
Yeah, it sounds like it.
Like he was well known to have put off expansion.
Like he didn't want to expand to other towns.
He basically said, I'm making enough money.
He had a quote that he would refer to as, I have a nice little business.
How many steaks can I eat?
Yeah.
Which is to say, like, he had everything he needed and this was fine.
He was happy with his business where it was.
That's right.
It just seems like all this kind of hijinks.
There's still stuff like that happens occasionally, but not like it did back then.
I think it's because Chuck, the police state hadn't evolved enough that they would catch you no matter what.
Yeah, cameras everywhere now.
Right.
And leaded gas had been around long enough to really have the effects on a whole new generation of brains.
So you put those two things together, you have everything converging on the 70s for people trying all sorts of heists and kidnappings and stuff like that.
Yeah, and that happened back then around there even.
I think as far back as the early 70s there were kidnapping conspiracies against Gross ransom things that had been uncovered.
In the late 70s, there were smoke bombs with ransom notes found at other casinos around Tahoe.
I don't know about that.
It was what, the smoke bombs?
Yeah, what is that?
You might as well say, like, there's a box of sparklers in your lobby.
Give me 500,000 simoleons or else.
Give me 35 cents.
I know, to pay me back for the smoke bomb.
So it was a time where if you owned a casino that brought in I think he made about 4 million profit, but brought in like 70 million a year, like his did then that simply just meant you were a mark by virtue of that fact alone.
Right.
The thing is though, is the FBI found out as they started investigating the case about a year after that it actually was a personal vendetta against Harvey himself or Harvey's casino that led to that bomb being placed there in August of 1980.
That sounds like a great cliffhanger for a break.
Thank you.
Thanks, man.
All right.
We'll get back to it right after this.
Let's talk about something you probably haven't thought about, your couch.
Yeah, that thing you nap on, eat on, cry on.
Turns out that most sofas are basically bacteria playgrounds.
It's true.
We looked it up.
It's not good.
But Anabay changes that.
It's washable, like fully washable.
Take the covers off, throw them in the machine, boom, clean.
Also, it's actually affordable, which is surprisingly rare.
So yeah, if you're going to sit on something every day, maybe don't make it a biohazard.
And here's the kicker.
It's not just practical, it's affordable.
Starting at just $699, you can make your sofa as clean as it is comfy.
Right now, you can even get up to 60% off your Anabase sofa.
Because let's be real, you deserve better than a germ factory for a place to rest your head.
Check out washablesofas.com now and give your couch the upgrade it's begging for.
That's washablesofas.com.
Wayfair, they've got just what you need.
And as your trusted destination for all things home, Wayfair's got everything you need to cozify your space this fall, from comfy recliners to warm bedding and autumn decor.
That's right.
The weather's starting to cool down a little and get.
This Wayfair even has espresso makers, so you can make that latte at home.
You know the one I'm talking about.
Yeah, and why not stock up on warm linens, cozy throw blankets, autumn-themed throw pillows and storage for every space.
You got to put your outdoor furniture up and you need a place to store it?
Wayfair's got you covered.
That's right.
There's something for every style and every home, no matter what your space or your budget.
Wayfair is going to make it easy to tackle your home goals with room ideas and curated collections.
So cozify your space with Wayfair's curated collection of easy, affordable fall updates.
From comfy recliners to cozy bedding and autumn decor, find it all for way less at Wayfair.com.
That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R.com.
Wayfair, every style, every home.
Are you looking for a smarter way to teach your child to ride a bike and support American jobs at the same time?
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I gotta tell you, it's super easy.
My daughter has a Guardian bike, and she loves it.
Yep.
So if you're ready to support American jobs and keep your kids safe, head to GuardianBikescom today.
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And when you join their newsletter, you'll get a free bike lock and pump, a $50 value.
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All right, so we're back in action here at the bomb site.
The FBI's bomb squad is working hard trying to figure this thing out.
They have another team working on a fake ransom drop.
Special Agent William Jonke basically told Harvey hey listen, why don't we drag this thing out as much as we can?
We'll do a fake payoff arrangement.
Maybe we can just sort of put off this bomb going off long enough for us to figure it out either how to stop it or how to catch these people.
Like the bomb is going to go off no matter what.
And once Gross heard that, he was like, well, I'm not paying anything.
If this thing's going off, no matter what, you can use my.
By God.
You can use my own helicopter for the drop, even.
And that's what they did.
They used his own personal helicopter, but the pilot was a fed and there was another fed with a gun hiding behind the pilot seat with a suitcase full of mostly fake money.
Yeah, I think a few grand is what I saw.
And, just like the ransom note said, the agent flew the helicopter to Lake Tahoe Airport, landed next to the pay phone and got there just in time, from what I saw, for the phone to start ringing, although I suspect they were being watched.
And the phone rang and rather than giving them instructions over the phone, I think it's hilarious that they said look underneath the phone.
There's instructions taped beneath the phone, and then I guess hung up.
We didn't want to tape it to the front of the phone booth.
Right.
So he checks out the instructions, and it says, okay, this is what you're going to do.
There's some compass setting they told him to turn toward.
I never found which one.
And then, after a certain amount of time, he should start looking for a beacon, which is going to be a strobe light in a field.
He should land there, and that's where the money drop would happen.
And so the pilot took off.
And he did exactly as the thing instructed, as the ransom note instructed.
And there was nothing.
He flew around for 45 minutes just waiting, hoping.
I guess probably came close to running out of gas.
And then he flew back to the Lake Tahoe airport and went back to the pay phone in case they called to say, like what the heck's going on.
And they never did call, actually.
So the money drop never happened.
I wonder—
The Fed takes off and he's got the other Fed behind him hiding with a gun.
And he's like, hey, how do you think this guy knows how far we're going to be in 15 minutes?
And the other Fed went, beats me.
And that's exactly what happened.
And it's at this point in the story where we will introduce you to the guy behind the whole thing.
And we'll learn more about him later.
But his name was John Waldo Burgess Sr., And that was one of the key mistakes he made.
He kind of botched this money drop because he should have said miles, like fly so many miles or fly to this destination.
He just said fly for 15 minutes.
And I don't know if he put it like at an average rate of speed for your helicopter.
Yeah.
But the long and short of it is.
They didn't know, after he had flown 15 minutes, exactly where he was going to end up.
And they were like, well, that stinks.
And this is after they had forgotten the battery to the strobe light.
They left it in Fresno.
They eventually got one.
Yeah, they left it at their place.
They eventually got one.
They tried to break into an auto parts store to get one and got chased off and then got one at a shell station.
So they had the strobe, but by the time all this happens, they don't even know where the helicopter is.
No, and that Shell station also has its own hilarious story, because the gas station attendant they were trying to buy the battery from basically was like no, you need this kind of battery for the Volvo that you have parked outside that you're driving.
They're like, it doesn't matter what kind of battery it's for.
He's like, well, yeah, it does because Volvo won't take any battery.
And they finally, I guess, convinced them to just sell them a battery instead.
And he's like, fine, I guess.
You're going to find out yourself that it's not going to work.
And they finally drove off.
That's how they got the battery.
But they made it to that drop point, which was 25 miles away from the airport.
And they sat there and waited and waited and waited and waited and waited.
No helicopter.
No helicopter came.
And the reason why is because they were separated by so many miles, they couldn't even hear the helicopter where it was.
It was so far away from where they were at the drop site.
All right, so this is botched.
Back at the bomb site, at the casino, a full-on party is going on, because it's a casino and people are just out of their minds at those places.
So the barricades are set up.
People are selling T-shirts.
I got bombed at Lake Tahoe.
I had a dynamite time at Lake Tahoe.
That's how quickly this thing was moving.
And the bomb squad team said, all right, here's what I think we should do.
Like they call this, and they said, if we flip switch number five, then it'll buy some more time because this thing isn't playing out quite right.
But I don't know if I trust that.
No one volunteered to flick that switch.
Like they felt.
Basically, we should go on our own like, with our own gut feeling on how to do this, which is to –.
Basically blow this box apart, but do it so quickly that it severs the relay switch, like before the signal can reach the dynamite.
Yeah, it was just pretty fast.
And it was possible.
They had some of the greatest minds in the United States, who knew about bombs, working on this problem.
And they designed a charge especially for this.
And it was built and brought to the site and put up.
And they said, this still has at best a 25% to 30% chance.
But we talked to one of the engineers at Harvey's.
And he said, it probably won't bring the whole building down.
So let's give it a shot.
And so almost 35 hours after the bomb had been discovered, around 3 pm the next day, a guy named Danny Daniel was the person who volunteered to go take the charge, put it on the bomb exactly at the angle he was told to put it at, and then— walked out and started the countdown for the remote triggering.
And remember, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of people thronged together to watch this, to see if it worked.
And when they finally did, apparently they broadcast the countdown on local radio, Chuck.
And when they finally set it off, that charge did not work the way it was intended.
No.
It set off the bomb.
The entire thing went off.
And it was, like we said, it was 1,000 pounds of dynamite.
It created a 40- to 50-foot hole in the ground in the middle of this casino, shooting shrapnel everywhere, obviously shooting cash and chips everywhere, which is obviously problematic.
They said there were TV sets swinging on cords, toilets hanging by the pipes.
It was a huge, massive explosion in the middle of a casino.
And because it's a casino and because it's Tahoe, it was not very long afterward that the surrounding casinos got right back to business.
And it didn't take too long, a couple of days before, Harvey's got back to business with what was left of the casino.
They put glass around it and was kind of like, hey, come see the bomb hole and gamble some.
And watch the FBI work on this crime scene that just took place.
So one of the other great details of this story for me is that the bandits didn't know that the bomb had been detonated.
And so a few minutes after the bomb went off, they called the local sheriff's office and said we'll be calling back in one hour to arrange another payment drop.
He said, whatever.
Yeah.
Can you imagine like the person who took the call being like, oh, yeah, great.
OK, we'll talk to you in an hour.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that didn't matter.
Harvey Gross was very sad.
He just cried when he saw the damage.
Eighteen million dollars worth of damage.
And, you know, we'll tell you what ultimately happened later.
But they got back to business, like I said.
And I guess we should talk a little bit more about who this mastermind was.
I agree Chuck, and I say, before we start talking about the mastermind behind the plot, we take a break.
All right, let's do it.
Let's talk about something you probably haven't thought about, your couch.
Yeah, that thing you nap on, eat on, cry on.
Turns out that most silphas are basically bacteria playgrounds.
It's true.
We looked it up.
It's not good.
But Anabay changes that.
It's washable, like fully washable.
Take the covers off, throw them in the machine, boom, clean.
Also, it's actually affordable, which is surprisingly rare.
So yeah, if you're gonna sit on something every day, maybe don't make it a biohazard.
And here's the kicker, it's not just practical, it's affordable.
Starting at just $699, you can make your sofa as clean as it is comfy.
Right now, you can even get up to 60% off your Anabase sofa.
Because let's be real, you deserve better than a germ factory for a place to rest your head.
Check out washablesofas.com now and give your couch the upgrade it's begging for.
That's washablesofas.com.
Wayfair, they've got just what you need.
And as your trusted destination for all things home, Wayfair's got everything you need to cozify your space this fall, from comfy recliners to warm bedding and autumn decor.
That's right, the weather's starting to cool down a little and get this.
Wayfair even has espresso makers, so you can make that latte at home.
You know the one I'm talking about.
Yeah, and why not stock up on warm linens, cozy throw blankets, autumn-themed throw pillows and storage for every space.
You got to put your outdoor furniture up and you need a place to store it?
Wayfair's got you covered.
That's right.
There's something for every style and every home, no matter what your space or your budget.
Wayfair is going to make it easy to tackle your home goals with room ideas and curated collections.
So cozify your space with Wayfair's curated collection of easy, affordable fall updates.
From comfy recliners to cozy bedding and autumn decor, find it all for way less at Wayfair.com.
That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R.com.
Wayfair, every style, every home.
Are you looking for a smarter way to teach your child to ride a bike and support American jobs at the same time?
Yeah well, we need to tell you about Guardian Bikes because, let me tell you, most kids' bikes are just cheap imports heavy, clunky and hard for kids to control.
Guardian Bikes is changing that, assembling bikes right here in the USA, with plans for full US manufacturing in the next few months.
Yeah, it's a commitment to higher quality and American craftsmanship that you can trust.
Each bike is lightweight, low to the ground, and built to help kids learn to ride faster.
Many in just one day.
No training wheels needed.
And here's the real game changer, Guardian's patented SureStop braking system.
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So we already revealed who it was, a guy named John Burgess Sr.
And his son wrote a book later that I saw.
He called the publisher to find out how many copies had been sold at the time and they told him zero.
But in this book, he depicts his dad as not a very nice guy.
He was an abusive husband, physically abusive, a really terrible dad.
He liked to emotionally blackmail his family by threatening to take his life by suicide.
And he was an actual Nazi, like a genuine Nazi, just to put the cherry on top of everything.
Yeah, he flew for the Luftwaffe and spent eight years in a Soviet prison camp before coming to America and becoming a multimillionaire.
So it kind of ended up okay for him.
He had a landscaping business in Fresno that apparently did really, really well.
But he also liked to gamble a lot.
And lost a ton of money over the years.
I think about $750,000 they'd estimated that he lost, I think at Harvey's alone, right?
Yeah.
I think that was the whole shebang, but most of that was at Harvey's.
That was my take on it.
Okay.
And we do need to put a pin in.
Something else is that years before he had a business, a restaurant, that it was pretty clear that he burned down for the insurance money, got 355000 from that and gambled that away.
Yeah, he was that kind of guy, right?
So the heist itself.
It was an attempt to make back some of the money that the house had taken from him over the years that he felt bitter about.
That's how—
Often he gambled at Harvey's.
Like he was well-known there.
But he had amassed such a debt that they actually took him that evening out of the high roller suite and put him in a regular room.
That was why he did it, man.
Much to his great humiliation.
Yeah.
I mean that was pretty much why he – at the very least why he targeted Harvey's.
He considered that quite a loss of pride because I guess he was with a date and the date was like I thought you said you were big time.
Yeah.
Right.
Which didn't make it any better.
So that's why Harvey's got targeted in particular.
That's right.
And they put Aaron Hagar in that suite instead.
And everything was right with the world.
That's right.
So actually, Aaron, he's about my age, so he would have been a kid back then.
Or maybe they did.
He could have been high rolling.
Maybe he was like a 9- or 10-year-old running the show in that gambling room.
I could totally see it.
So we mentioned he was Burgess Sr.
There was a Burgess Jr.
He had a couple of sons, John Jr. and Jimmy, who were 20 and 18, respectively.
And then Jimmy, or wait, was Ella Williams the senior's girlfriend?
Yes.
Okay.
So you had a girlfriend named Ella Williams who were also in on it, and these two numbskulls who delivered the bomb named Bill Brown and Terry Hall.
The FBI later said, after they caught Bill Brown, they described him – or no, it was from a report like somebody who witnessed the bomb being delivered.
They said one of them was a hayseed, a real goober type.
That's how they described Bill Brown.
And it's sad for Bill Brown and Terry Hall, Chuck, because they got a total of $2,100.
But it wasn't until after they were driven away early that morning that they were told what they'd just done.
They did not know that they were delivering a bomb until after they delivered the bomb.
Isn't that terrible?
Yeah, I mean, they were probably just sold, here's some money, go deliver this thing.
That was a lot of money.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
Yeah, and John Burgess Jr. just totally misled him, which is another mark against that guy.
All right, so spinning back a little bit.
When they hatched this plan, the first thing they did was go out and get all this dynamite, which they stole from a power plant in California, and stashed it in their walk-in freezer in their garage.
Wow.
And started building this bomb.
And that's kind of one of the mysteries of this case is it was such a sophisticated device and no one still really knows how this guy managed to build this thing, if he had help, if he was just this bomb genius that no one knew about, or was just super smart and did his research.
But no one really knows how he managed to build such a sophisticated bomb.
I mean, it's still not clear.
I don't think anybody will ever know.
He just did it.
And what's crazy is John Burgess might have gotten away with the whole thing.
The FBI did not.
They were not on him initially.
They interviewed something like 500 suspects in the whole case.
And there were two things that seemed to have brought Burgess down.
One was a hotel owner who was the night manager of the hotel that Burgess Brown and Hall stayed at before they planted the bomb.
Her name was Nancy Domenico.
And she found those three suspicious enough that she wrote down their license plate on their van make model, color and the license plate number and just kept it on file, just in case.
And it turned out that that would become really important later on.
And then the other factor was John Burgess Jr. had a really loud mouth, it turns out.
Yeah, he had a girlfriend leading up to the event, and he would just brag all about this thing.
They break up.
You never think about the breakup side of things when you're spilling your innermost thoughts.
Yeah.
And she has a new boyfriend, tells him all about this guy I dated before you.
That told me all about this bomb plot.
The new boyfriend calls in the FBI tip.
So now they have a couple of tips pointing to these dudes saying They tracked down the van that Nancy Domenico had reported as shady and it was a van that was registered to the restaurant that Burgess Sr allegedly had burned down.
So that's where that comes back into play.
Yeah, so they're like, okay, let's go interview John Burgess Sr.
And John Burgess Sr. says, oh, John Jr. was driving the van.
Just completely gave his son up.
Immediately.
Yeah, I mean, like, that first interview said, probably said, here's his address.
Hopefully at least call his son to give him a heads up.
I don't know.
But they went over and they interviewed John Jr., And he said, yes, I was around Tahoe at the time.
Yes, I was with my van.
But I was looking for places to plant marijuana.
And you know that's true because I've just admitted to a crime to the FBI.
Right?
Right?
And apparently the FBI didn't really buy it.
They said, like, that story is awful.
But he stuck to it.
And they didn't have anything else they could get him on right then.
But he was definitely on their radar from that point forward.
Yeah.
I thought it was a pretty good story to be put on the spot, personally.
It didn't work, but to admit to another crime, I was like, all right, not bad.
I'll give you that part.
The FBI was like, you're kidding, right?
He said, the battery died, so I abandoned the van.
Somebody must have taken it and used it in the crime and then brought it back while I was away from the van.
Right, well, which is a long way of saying it wasn't me.
Right, exactly.
So they do what they do in the movies.
They don't have enough hard evidence, so they spend a year getting that evidence, building a case.
And a montage with a great upbeat song where they're putting this stuff together, right?
Sure.
I don't know why John Jr. and John Sr. are still in the country.
I would have been out of there so fast.
Where would you go?
I'd leave the country.
I know.
Where would you go?
Oh, that's a really good question.
Everyone just always talks about, like, who would you have over for dinner, living or dead?
Where would you go if you were guilty of a bombing blot?
I mean, it's got to be a non-extradition treaty country, right?
So you're looking at, like, Venezuela?
I'd have to do my research then.
But, yeah, I would go someplace with a beach and, like, a very quiet life.
Okay.
Yeah.
And then they eventually show up at the beach in the movie as well.
Pull that Mai Tai out of your hands and you're toast.
Exactly.
Canada has beaches.
Sure.
Lovely beaches.
Thank you.
Not quite the beaches I was looking for, though.
You're welcome, Chuck.
So the FBI is getting this...
They have rewards.
I think like a half a million bucks is about as high as the reward went.
And finally, about a year later, they arrest John Jr. and Jimmy.
And they say they dang a little carrot in front of their faces.
I'm so glad you said carrot.
How would you like to turn on dad and maybe get a little leniency?
And they went, that jerk, I'm happy to.
And that's exactly what they did.
Right.
And they turned on their dad.
They arrested their dad.
They arrested Ella Williams, Bill Brown, Terry Hall.
And, from what we understand, every single person who had anything to do with that was rounded up in one fell swoop, basically.
And the conviction started coming out.
Ella Williams got seven years for her involvement.
And she hasn't factored in hugely into this podcast, but she was devastated.
Definitely an accomplice.
She typed the ransom notes up.
She did a lot.
I think she dropped some people off at one of the landing sites.
She was very much involved.
So she got seven years, but a judge later overturned her conviction.
And I couldn't see why, but as far as I know, she did not do any time in prison, maybe beyond her trial.
Yeah, I think the sons did get that leniency.
As for John Sr, he represented himself in court, cross-examined his own sons, eventually got 20 years in federal prison and then, I believe, life without parole in state prison.
Yeah, the big key to his defense was his sons had given him a Father's Day card that said you're the best dad around 10 years before.
It didn't work on the jury.
Sorry.
How could I have done this?
He served 16 years, died in prison of cancer.
But then there's one final little potential twist here, right?
Yeah.
So John Burgess had talked to a reporter while he was alive, and he said, you know what?
This wasn't my idea.
I was a patsy.
I was a rube.
I got dragged into this by a loan shark I owed 60 large to.
That's what you say when you're a gambler.
And he recruited me to plant this bomb and that really the loan shark was working on behalf of Harvey's top executives and the mafia who were conspiring to blow the place up so that they could collect the insurance money.
Looky there.
Do you believe it?
Not at all.
No.
Same.
No, and the thing that just completely proves it is, yeah, they used insurance money to rebuild.
It's like, no, that doesn't prove anything.
Of course you're going to use insurance money to rebuild.
It doesn't mean there was a conspiracy there.
Is that place still there?
Any idea?
Yeah, it's still there.
I think it's been updated even more since then.
But, yeah, as far as I know, Harvey's is still there.
Awesome.
I don't know why over the past two weeks I never thought to look that up.
Me either.
I'm almost positive.
We'll have to leave it to Aaron Hagar to tell us whether it's there or not.
Sweet.
It is.
I'm looking at a picture of it.
It's definitely been updated.
Well, while you're online, why don't you look at eBay and see if there's any like I Got Bombed at Harvey's t-shirts still around.
Oh, wow.
Well, if there are, I'm not going to tell you.
I'm just going to get you one for Christmas.
Fair enough.
I like that a lot.
That's a good plan.
Well, since Chuck said what he's going to get me for Christmas and I realized man, I've got to figure out what to get Chuck for Christmas, it's time for Listener Mail.
You just got me a great record.
Which one?
Oh, the Bill Evans one, yeah.
Yeah.
You like it?
Have you listened to it yet?
I love it.
I mean, A, it's Bill Evans, but it's just, yeah, it's good.
Very evocative of changing the seasons, which I think was the whole point.
For sure.
I'm glad you liked it.
All right.
Hey, guys.
After listening to the introvert extrovert episode, I thought I'd reach out, because Chuck At one point talked about finding ways to discipline his child by removing fun activities.
I don't remember saying that.
Oh, you were so mad you were like frothing at the mouth?
I've never heard you more angry.
We don't even really do that, so I'm not sure if I may have been kidding or not.
Anyway, I'm a third grade teacher because this is like a tip here, so we've got to read the tips.
I'm a third grade teacher on a reservation and, with 16 kids in my class, I have never had to use discipline.
My classroom functions like a well-oiled machine due to a type of behavior management known in the educational world as PBIS positive behaviors and supports.
It's a way to manage challenging child behavior solely, solely through the use of using praise and rewards.
Wow.
Can easily be applied in the context of raising your own child.
Especially if you want to raise a psychopath.
This is a huge topic and one that is near and dear to my heart.
I thought it might be incredibly useful for all the parents out there who, like Chuck, struggle to find a way to manage their child's behavior through conventional discipline.
Man, this guy's scoring all over you, Chuck.
A little bit.
This is Anthony.
You guys rock.
Thanks for all the wonderful knowledge and hilarious dialogue.
I want to be super clear, Anthony.
We don't struggle to find a way to manage her behavior.
She's a good kid.
And not to say that kids who have trouble behaving are bad kids at all.
Everyone has their challenges as kids and parents.
But it's not too bad.
And I don't know that this PBIS would work necessarily in my household.
But hey...
I mean, we already do that kind of thing, but I'll ramp it up and see if that helps.
There you go.
Run an experiment, Chuck, in true SYSK fashion.
Sure.
I'm curious, though, because Anthony didn't say if Anthony had kids.
I will say that the way kids behave for teachers is not at all related to how they behave for parents.
I can imagine, for sure.
So, yeah, I'm curious.
Yeah, if you guys listening out there, try this.
Let us know if it works or what.
And also, Anthony, thank you very much for writing in, Anthony.
It was great.
So if you want to be like Anthony, you can write in, too, to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com.
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