Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and Jerry's here and this is stuff
Speaker 1: you should know. The True Crime EDITIONE where nobody gets hurt.
Speaker 1: Isn't that amazing? Yeah? I think this falls into our
Speaker 1: sort of caper a dish, yes, well put, well put?
Speaker 1: Do we have any other capers? Yeah, like the child
Speaker 1: Chilla kidnapping. And I think any non murder crime podcast
Speaker 1: I think would fall under this, like dB dB Cooper exactly.
Speaker 1: And um, before I forget Chuck, that was definitely a caper.
Speaker 1: Good call. Um. This was a request which, like you
Speaker 1: said last time, we've been doing a lot of these lately,
Speaker 1: but this one's requested by Nick Hales, and I say,
Speaker 1: good request, Nick, Thanks for that. And I totally spaced
Speaker 1: on shouting out Neil Stephen from the UK for Georgia
Speaker 1: Guidestones episode. He requested it and gave me the idea
Speaker 1: to do it all right, nice work. This one was
Speaker 1: so familiar to me that I was sure that we
Speaker 1: had either touched on it or that I saw. What
Speaker 1: I really thought was that I saw a documentary about it,
Speaker 1: but I hadn't because I don't think there's been one.
Speaker 1: I don't know what it is. It was really familiar
Speaker 1: with some other I think true life thing that I saw.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know. But the fact that
Speaker 1: there's not a movie about this is insane. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's a movie worthy. Oh really yeah?
Speaker 1: Oh man, just like the pork Chop side Burns alone,
Speaker 1: I think would would warn a movie. But um that
Speaker 1: because I said pork chop sideburns. Of course, we're talking
Speaker 1: about nineteen eighty, right, Chuck, August eight, that's right. Uh.
Speaker 1: And on August eighty, very early in the morning, a
Speaker 1: couple of delivery dudes would be delivery dudes wield a
Speaker 1: big piece of equipment had a cover on it, said
Speaker 1: IBM into Harvey's Resort hotel in Lake Tahoe, Nevada. Shout
Speaker 1: out to our buddy, Aaron Hagar representing Lake Tahoe. He's
Speaker 1: got it made out there in Tahoe. Nice except for
Speaker 1: the bears and wildfires. I'll bet he's heard of this story, then,
Speaker 1: I bet you he has. We'll hear from on this.
Speaker 1: But anyway, they wheeled it in there up to the
Speaker 1: second floor offices and dropped it off and basically skidaddled.
Speaker 1: After that, they had a guy waiting in a van
Speaker 1: outside and drove them the heck out of there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's kind of weird five am to drop off
Speaker 1: a piece of office equipment, not waiting around for anybody
Speaker 1: sign it. Kind of odd, And within an hour the
Speaker 1: oddity behind it kind of became a really apparent. A
Speaker 1: slot manager, I believe, or maybe the night manager in general. Um,
Speaker 1: he noticed this piece of office equipment that was kind
Speaker 1: of randomly placed on the second floor offices, and he
Speaker 1: saw that there was a note by it, and he
Speaker 1: gathered some other employees and they were all kind of
Speaker 1: hanging out reading the note. And one of the details
Speaker 1: I love, um that I saw in a um Adam
Speaker 1: higginbottom Uh article on on the atavist um was that
Speaker 1: one of the people reading the note was leaning up
Speaker 1: against the machine while they were reading the note. All right,
Speaker 1: the notes that should we read the note? Yeah, because
Speaker 1: then it makes the whole thing about somebody leaning up
Speaker 1: against it really hilarious. Al Right, stern warning to the
Speaker 1: management and bomb squad, in which case I would have
Speaker 1: been out of there. That's all I need to hear
Speaker 1: a right exactly. Uh, do not move until this bomb
Speaker 1: because the mechanism controlling the detonators in it will set
Speaker 1: it off at a movement of less than point o
Speaker 1: one of the open end Richter scale. So let's confuse
Speaker 1: people right out of the gate, is what this note
Speaker 1: is what this guy's thinking. Uh, don't try to flood
Speaker 1: or gas the bomb. There's a float switch and an
Speaker 1: atmosphere pressure switch set at two numbers twenty six point
Speaker 1: zero was zero to thirty three. Both are attached to detonators.
Speaker 1: Do not try to take it apart. The flathead screws
Speaker 1: are attached to triggers, and as much of a quarter
Speaker 1: to three quarters of a turn will cause the explosion. Uh.
Speaker 1: In other words, this bomb is so sensitive that the
Speaker 1: slightest movement, either inside or outside will cause it to
Speaker 1: explode full stop. Yeah, and you can guess the person
Speaker 1: leaning against the machine stood up and moved away from it, right,
Speaker 1: that's right. Uh. And basically they said that part No
Speaker 1: one can detonate or no one can can deactivate this bomb,
Speaker 1: not even I, not even the creator can diffuse this thing.
Speaker 1: So it is going to go off at some point.
Speaker 1: Your best hope of not getting hurt is to pay
Speaker 1: a three thousand dollar ransom and you're gonna receive instructions
Speaker 1: on how to move it out of here so it
Speaker 1: can explode somewhere else. Yeah, and it would have been
Speaker 1: a bargain for three thousand dollars. There was actually a
Speaker 1: three million dollar rans to save you did. I think
Speaker 1: you're being optimistic three But it was a it was
Speaker 1: a big fat ran and um the bomb itself. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you just look at the at the ransom note
Speaker 1: and when it's talking about the bomb, that's a pretty
Speaker 1: amazing bomb. And it actually became pretty legendary with the FBI,
Speaker 1: so much so that I saw that they still I
Speaker 1: don't know if they still do today, but for many
Speaker 1: years they used it as a teaching model for UM
Speaker 1: bomb technicians, and the FBI considered it very sophisticated, and
Speaker 1: they said it was unlike anything any bomb technician had
Speaker 1: ever seen before. No one had ever made a bomb
Speaker 1: like this. Yeah, very good bomb, if there is such
Speaker 1: a thing. Uh. It was a couple of stacked boxes
Speaker 1: lined with metal and rubber that through conventional methods you
Speaker 1: couldn't separate, of course, without it going boom. And so
Speaker 1: the FBI did what they do in this case. They
Speaker 1: come in, they start taking pictures, the X ray it,
Speaker 1: they sweep it for fingerprints. Obviously they don't move it. Uh.
Speaker 1: They find out that it has about a thousand pounds
Speaker 1: of dynamite inside, and they can't find a way to
Speaker 1: Like basically they're saying, this note seems to be right
Speaker 1: on the money, Like we can't find a way at
Speaker 1: least right off the bat about how to diffuse these
Speaker 1: things safely. Yeah, and very famously, the bomb technicians in
Speaker 1: the room started running around in aimless circles saying, oh
Speaker 1: my god, oh my god, oh my god. And they
Speaker 1: did that for a good three hours I think before
Speaker 1: somebody stepped in and stopped them. But that ransom note, also, UM,
Speaker 1: showed a lot of planning, not just the bomb, Like
Speaker 1: this bomb was amazing, just full stop amazing. I wanted
Speaker 1: to really be proud of if you're a bomb maker, UM.
Speaker 1: But the actual heist itself had like a real shot
Speaker 1: at extorting this three million dollars successfully UM. And it
Speaker 1: started with UM. They they knew what they were doing.
Speaker 1: Out of the gate, they said, we want three million
Speaker 1: dollars in used bills, hundred dollar bills already used, not marked,
Speaker 1: not bugg don't even try to chemically treat them. Um.
Speaker 1: And we want you to fly helicopter to Lake Tahoe Airport,
Speaker 1: have the pilot land by the pay phone, and wait
Speaker 1: by the payphone for instructions. Are instruction is going to
Speaker 1: come from the payphone? Who knows? They could also come
Speaker 1: by taxi. Uh, they could also come by carrier pigeon.
Speaker 1: I'm making that last one up. But they were just
Speaker 1: trying out of the gate to to confuse them so
Speaker 1: that they couldn't plan for everything. Um. And it was
Speaker 1: I think it was a really well planned heist. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean they basically said, no one involved from this
Speaker 1: point that you meet up with, like anyone that might
Speaker 1: deliver a note, any someone that might drive a vehicle
Speaker 1: that's involved, Like, no one's gonna know anything, so don't bother.
Speaker 1: And I think I believe that that's probably true. Um.
Speaker 1: They said that the you know, I the creator of
Speaker 1: the bomb, I'm not gonna be a part of this
Speaker 1: money drop. I'm not gonna be around. Uh. Nobody that's
Speaker 1: a part of any of this exchange of money is
Speaker 1: going to know anything about how to diffuse this bomb, Like,
Speaker 1: this thing is gonna go off and there's nothing you
Speaker 1: can do to stop it. Again, the only thing that
Speaker 1: you can do is follow what will ultimately be six
Speaker 1: sets of instructions to safely get this bomb out of
Speaker 1: there after I get my loot. Yeah, after he gets
Speaker 1: the loot or they um, So the first set of
Speaker 1: instructions was going to be given to the helicopter pilot.
Speaker 1: The rest of the instructions would arrive through the local
Speaker 1: post office, which is putting a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of faith in the USPS. But then there was another
Speaker 1: demand too, that was probably the most ridiculous demand of all.
Speaker 1: They said that all news media, local or national was
Speaker 1: to be kept ignorant of the heist until the bomb
Speaker 1: was successfully removed. Right, And that was impossible, totally impossible
Speaker 1: because the first thing the cops did when they realized
Speaker 1: like this is for real, which they figured out pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: I think the thing was discovered before six am, and
Speaker 1: by seven or eight at the very latest, they were
Speaker 1: rousing um hotel guests at Harvey's Um, many of them
Speaker 1: from sleep, telling them like, Nope, you don't have time
Speaker 1: to grab your belongings. You gotta go. Uh. And not
Speaker 1: only did they evacuate Harvey's. A thousand pounds of dynamite
Speaker 1: can do some real damage, they actually evacuated hairs across
Speaker 1: the street from Harvey's too. Yeah, so they said, you're
Speaker 1: all going to go to this nearby high school. And
Speaker 1: of course the media, it's a it's a big thing
Speaker 1: when that happens, when people are being like massively bust
Speaker 1: out in their bathrobes and stuff. So basically within a
Speaker 1: few hours, like all the media knows this, they cordon
Speaker 1: off the area. There's people hanging out, there's there's gawkers,
Speaker 1: there's reporters, there's before you know it, of course, because
Speaker 1: there's casinos around there. They're taking bets, of course, like
Speaker 1: over under on whether this thing's gonna detonate. And not
Speaker 1: only did they not keep the media out of it,
Speaker 1: but it became like, uh, I mean, call this sensation
Speaker 1: indicates that it drug on. It was like a day
Speaker 1: and change, but it was a crazy day and change
Speaker 1: for the media for sure. And it was over the
Speaker 1: week before Labor Day weekend, so Tahoe was crawling with people.
Speaker 1: Um and this was right, um, just thirty six years
Speaker 1: before the first casino was opened on the south shore
Speaker 1: of Lake Tahoe, and it was opened by the same
Speaker 1: guy whose hotel now how to bomb in it, Harvey
Speaker 1: gross Um. His first thing was Harvey's Wagon Wheel Saloon
Speaker 1: and gambling hall, which I saw described as a cabin
Speaker 1: um that had six slot machines in it. Um And
Speaker 1: at the time in Tahoe chucked. There was no phone,
Speaker 1: no water, no sewer, no power lines. The roads would
Speaker 1: close at like the first sign of snow, um and
Speaker 1: it was like a real podunk area. But gambling made
Speaker 1: it actually put it on the map for a second there.
Speaker 1: I thought you were gonna say, not a single luxury.
Speaker 1: Oh man, I really should have. I wish I had.
Speaker 1: I'm not on my game today like Robinson Crusoe. They
Speaker 1: were what primitives can be, right, that's what they said.
Speaker 1: But it was the sixties. You wouldn't say that anymore. Uh.
Speaker 1: So things go great for Harvey and his little wagon
Speaker 1: wheel uh cabin You know, it's on the state line
Speaker 1: of California. So that's a pretty smart thing because you
Speaker 1: get those out of staters, those richies from California throwing
Speaker 1: down some money. Yeah, and it was so on the
Speaker 1: state line it was in a town called state Line.
Speaker 1: That's very Nevada. It's very on the nose. I'm so
Speaker 1: nervous about us saying it the right way because those
Speaker 1: people will email you like Gangbusters. Oh it's Nevada, but
Speaker 1: always say Nevada. Okay, but they say it Nevada. Everyone
Speaker 1: outside the state of Nevada says Nevada, and that drives
Speaker 1: them nuts, drives them crazy. It's really something so Harvey
Speaker 1: no less way, don't break. So Harvey was doing great,
Speaker 1: uh with this little tiny casino in the forties through
Speaker 1: the fifties makes a lot of dough, and by sixty
Speaker 1: three had expanded an upgrade to Harvey's Lake Tahoe, which
Speaker 1: at the time was the tallest building UM at eleven stories,
Speaker 1: which is you know, that's a pretty tall building for
Speaker 1: that area of the country. Yeah, less than twenty years
Speaker 1: he went from a cabin to an eleven story casino resort.
Speaker 1: And I believe it was at that same eleven story
Speaker 1: casino resort that this bomb um was placed in in
Speaker 1: seventeen years later. Um and Harvey himself was like, I
Speaker 1: mean he was a casino owner in Nevada, like he
Speaker 1: had I don't want to say, a checkered past, but
Speaker 1: he had a past like he'd been hauled in front
Speaker 1: of the the I R S for tax evasion. There was
Speaker 1: um he had been given an honorary name by the
Speaker 1: Nevada Inner Tribal Did I say it right? Nevada? By
Speaker 1: the Nevada Inner Tribal Council. He was called Chief hu
Speaker 1: and I. And there was an article that was written
Speaker 1: back in I think that said that it meant, uh,
Speaker 1: the man who runs the game and takes a percentage
Speaker 1: of the bats. I don't know if that's a joke
Speaker 1: or not. I can't tell. I don't either, because it's
Speaker 1: definitely like that era kind of joke. You know, you
Speaker 1: can see that on like a tiky napkin. But the
Speaker 1: long and short of it is he was he'd had
Speaker 1: his little run ins with the I R S and
Speaker 1: stuff and the gaming board, but it wasn't anything unusual.
Speaker 1: He wasn't like some bad guy like mafios type. He
Speaker 1: was like he said, he owned a casino and there's
Speaker 1: you know, he's gonna be brought up by the I
Speaker 1: R S at some point. Um. But all of this
Speaker 1: to say, he wasn't like some uh, some big Mark
Speaker 1: because of like all his dirty dealings in his past.
Speaker 1: Basically I saw him actually referred to as a good
Speaker 1: guy by some people. It sounds like it like he
Speaker 1: he was well known to have put off expansion, like
Speaker 1: he didn't want to expand to other towns. Uh. He's
Speaker 1: basically said, I'm I'm making enough money. He had a
Speaker 1: quote that he would refer to is, um, I have
Speaker 1: a nice little business. How many stakes can I eat?
Speaker 1: Which is to say like he had everything he needed
Speaker 1: and this was fine. He was happy with this business
Speaker 1: where it was. That's right. But it was uh, the
Speaker 1: seventies and into the early eighties, which was um, just
Speaker 1: sort of the golden age of all this kind of
Speaker 1: stuff of kidnappings and ransoms and hijackings, and it just
Speaker 1: seems like all this kind of hi jinks. There's still
Speaker 1: stuff like that happens occasionally, but not like it did
Speaker 1: back then. I think it's because took the police state
Speaker 1: hadn't evolved enough that they would catch you no matter
Speaker 1: what right, and leaded gas had been around long enough
Speaker 1: to really have the effects on a whole new generation
Speaker 1: of brains. So you put those two things together, you
Speaker 1: have everything converging on the seventies for people trying all
Speaker 1: sorts of heists and kidnappings and stuff like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that happened back then around there, even I think
Speaker 1: as far back as the early seventies there were kidnapping
Speaker 1: conspiracies against gross ransom things that had been uncovered in
Speaker 1: the late seventies. There were smoke bombs with ransom notes
Speaker 1: found at other casinos around Tahoe. So I don't know
Speaker 1: about that. It was what the smoke bombs? Yeah, what
Speaker 1: is that? You might as well say, like there's a
Speaker 1: box of sparklers in your your lobby, give me five
Speaker 1: hundred thousand smoleans orrel give me thirty five cents, I know,
Speaker 1: to pay me back for the smoke both. Um. So
Speaker 1: it was a time where if you owned a casino
Speaker 1: that brought in I think he made about four million
Speaker 1: profit but brought in like seventy million dollars a year
Speaker 1: like his did, then that simply just meant you were
Speaker 1: a mark by virtue of that fact alone, right. Um.
Speaker 1: The thing is, though, is the FBI found out um
Speaker 1: as they started investigating the case about a year after that,
Speaker 1: it actually was a personal vendetta against Harvey himself. Or
Speaker 1: Harvey's casino that led to that bomb being placed there
Speaker 1: in August of m It sounds like a great cliffhanger
Speaker 1: for a break. Thank you, thanks man. All Right, we'll
Speaker 1: get back to it right after this. All right, So
Speaker 1: we're back in action here at the bomb site. The
Speaker 1: FBI's bomb squad is working hard trying to figure this
Speaker 1: thing out. They have another team working on a fake
Speaker 1: ransom drop. UH Special Agent William john Kie basically told Harvey, hey, listen,
Speaker 1: why don't we drag this thing out as much as
Speaker 1: we can. We'll do a fake payoff arrangement maybe weekend,
Speaker 1: just sort of put off this bomb going off long
Speaker 1: enough for us to figure it out, either how to
Speaker 1: stop it or how to catch these people. Like the
Speaker 1: bomb is going to go off no matter what. And
Speaker 1: once uh Gross heard that, he was like, well, I'm
Speaker 1: not paying anything if this thing's going off no matter what.
Speaker 1: You can use my my god, you can use my
Speaker 1: own helicopter for the drop even And that's what they did.
Speaker 1: They used his own personal helicopter, but the pilot was
Speaker 1: uh fed and there was another fed with a gun
Speaker 1: hiding behind the pilot seat with a suitcase full of
Speaker 1: mostly fake money. Yeah, I think a few grand is
Speaker 1: what I saw. And just like the ransom note said,
Speaker 1: the agent flew the helicopter Lake Tahoe Airport, landed next
Speaker 1: to the pay phone UM and got there just in
Speaker 1: time from what I saw too, for the phone to
Speaker 1: start ringing, although I suspect they were being watched, and
Speaker 1: the phone rang and rather than giving them instructions over
Speaker 1: the phone, I think it's hilarious that they said, look
Speaker 1: underneath the phone. There's instructions tape beneath the phone, and
Speaker 1: then I guess hung up. We didn't want to tape
Speaker 1: it to the front of the phone booth, right, So
Speaker 1: he checks out the instructions and it says, Okay, this
Speaker 1: is what you're gonna do. You're gonna fly west along
Speaker 1: the I wait for fifteen minutes from the airport, and
Speaker 1: you're gonna turn. There's some compass sitting they told him
Speaker 1: to turn toward. I've never found which one, UM. And
Speaker 1: then after a certain amount of time he should start
Speaker 1: looking for a beacon, which is gonna be a strobe
Speaker 1: light in a field. He should land there and that's
Speaker 1: where the money drop would happen. And so the pilot
Speaker 1: took off, and he did exactly as the thing instructed,
Speaker 1: as a ransom note instructed, and there was nothing. He
Speaker 1: flew around for forty five minutes, just waiting, hoping, I
Speaker 1: guess probably came close to running out of gas. And
Speaker 1: then he flew back to the Lake Tahoe Airport and
Speaker 1: went back to the pay phone in case they called
Speaker 1: to say, like, what the heck is going on? And
Speaker 1: they never did call, actually, so the money drop never happened.
Speaker 1: I wonder. The FED takes off and he's got the
Speaker 1: other FED behind him hiding with a gun, and he's like, hey,
Speaker 1: how do you think this guy knows how far we're
Speaker 1: going to be in fifteen minutes? And the other FED
Speaker 1: went beats me, and that's exactly what happened. Uh. And
Speaker 1: it's at this point in the store where we will
Speaker 1: introduce you to the guy behind the whole thing, uh,
Speaker 1: And we'll learn more about him later. But his name
Speaker 1: was John Waldo Burgess, Sr. And that was one of
Speaker 1: the key mistakes he made. He kind of botched this
Speaker 1: money drop because he, uh, he should have said miles,
Speaker 1: like fly so many miles or fly to this destination.
Speaker 1: He just said fly for fifteen minutes uh, and I
Speaker 1: don't know if he put at like at an average
Speaker 1: rate of speed for your helicopter. Right. But the long
Speaker 1: insure of it is they didn't know after he had
Speaker 1: flown fifteen and that's exactly where he was going to
Speaker 1: end up. And they were like, well that stinks. And
Speaker 1: this is after they had forgotten the battery to the
Speaker 1: Strobe light. Right, they left it in Fresno. They eventually
Speaker 1: got one. Yeah, they left it at their at their place.
Speaker 1: They eventually got one. Uh. They tried to break into
Speaker 1: an autopod store to get one and got chased off,
Speaker 1: and then got one at a shell station. So they
Speaker 1: had the Strobe. But by the time all this happens,
Speaker 1: they don't even know where the helicopter is now. And
Speaker 1: that shell station also has its own hilarious story because
Speaker 1: the gas station attendant they were trying to buy the
Speaker 1: battery from basically was like, why no, you need this
Speaker 1: kind of battery for the Volvo that you have parked
Speaker 1: outside that you're driving there, Like it doesn't matter what
Speaker 1: kind of battery is for. He's like, well, yeah it does,
Speaker 1: because Volvo won't take any battery. And they finally I
Speaker 1: guess convinced him to just sell them a battery. And
Speaker 1: he's like, fine, I guess that you're gonna find out
Speaker 1: yourself that it's not gonna work. And they finally drove off.
Speaker 1: That's how they got the battery. But they made it
Speaker 1: to that drop point, which was twenty five miles away
Speaker 1: from the airport, and um, they sat there and waited
Speaker 1: and waited and waited and waited and waited. No helicopter.
Speaker 1: No helicopter came. And the reason why is because they
Speaker 1: were separated, separated by so many miles. They couldn't even
Speaker 1: hear the helicopter where it was. It was so far
Speaker 1: away from where they were at the drop site. All right,
Speaker 1: so this is botched. Back at the the bomb side
Speaker 1: the casino, this a full on party is going on
Speaker 1: because it's a casino and people are just out of
Speaker 1: their minds at those places. So the barricades are set up,
Speaker 1: people are selling T shirts. I got bombed at Lake Tahoe.
Speaker 1: I had a dynamite time at Lake Tahoe. Like that's
Speaker 1: how quickly this thing was moving. And the bomb squad
Speaker 1: team said, all right, here's what I think we should do.
Speaker 1: Like they called this and they said, if we flip
Speaker 1: switched number five. Then it'll buy some more time because
Speaker 1: this thing isn't playing out quite right. But I don't
Speaker 1: know if I trust that no one volunteered to flick
Speaker 1: that switch like they felt basically, we should go on
Speaker 1: our own, like with our own gut feeling on how
Speaker 1: to do this, which is too basically blow this box apart,
Speaker 1: but do it so quickly that it severs the relay switch,
Speaker 1: like before the signal can reach the dynamite. Yeah, which
Speaker 1: is pretty fast. And it was possible. They had They
Speaker 1: had some of like the greatest minds in the United
Speaker 1: States who knew about bombs working on this problem, and
Speaker 1: they designed a charge especially for this, and it was
Speaker 1: built and brought to the site and put up and
Speaker 1: they said, this still has at best chance. But we
Speaker 1: talked to the engineer, one of the engineers at Harvey's,
Speaker 1: and he said, it probably won't bring the whole building down,
Speaker 1: so let's give it a shot. And so, almost thirty
Speaker 1: five hours after the bomb had been discovered, around three
Speaker 1: pm the next day, a guy named Danny Daniel Um
Speaker 1: was the person who volunteered to go take the charge
Speaker 1: put it on the bomb exactly at the angle he
Speaker 1: was told to put it at and then walked out
Speaker 1: and started the countdown for the remote triggering. And remember
Speaker 1: there are hundreds, if not thousands of people thronged together
Speaker 1: to watch this to see if it worked. And when
Speaker 1: they finally did, apparently they broadcast the radio the countdown
Speaker 1: on like local radio, Chuck. And when they finally set
Speaker 1: it off, that charge did not work the way it
Speaker 1: was intended. No, it set off the bomb. Uh, the
Speaker 1: entire thing went off, and it was, like we said,
Speaker 1: it was a thousand pounds of dynamite. It created at
Speaker 1: ft hole in the ground in the middle of this casino,
Speaker 1: shooting shrapnel everywhere, obviously shooting cash and chips everywhere, which
Speaker 1: is obviously problematic. They said there were TV sets swinging
Speaker 1: on cords, toilets hanging by the pipes. It was a huge,
Speaker 1: massive explosion in the middle of a casino. And because
Speaker 1: it's a casino and because it's Tahoe, it was not
Speaker 1: very long afterward that the surrounding casinos got right back
Speaker 1: to business, and it didn't take too long, a couple
Speaker 1: of days before Harvey's got back to business. UH. With
Speaker 1: what was left of the casino, they put glass around
Speaker 1: it and was kind of like, hey, come see the
Speaker 1: bomb hole and and gamble some and what's the FBI
Speaker 1: work on this crime scene? That's that just took place.
Speaker 1: So one of the other great details of the story
Speaker 1: for me is that the bandits didn't know that the
Speaker 1: bomb had been detonated, and so a few minutes after
Speaker 1: the bomb went off, they called the local sheriff's office
Speaker 1: and said, we'll be calling back in one hour to
Speaker 1: arrange another payment drop he said, whatever. Yeah, kids. You
Speaker 1: imagine like the person who took the call being like, oh, yeah, great, okay,
Speaker 1: we'll talk to you in an hour. Yeah. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: that didn't matter. Harvey Gross Uh was very sad. He
Speaker 1: just cried when he saw the damage. Um, eighteen million
Speaker 1: dollars worth of damage. Uh. And you know, we'll tell
Speaker 1: you what ultimately happened later. But um, they got back
Speaker 1: to business, like I said, And I guess we should
Speaker 1: talk a little bit more about who this mastermind was.
Speaker 1: I agree, Chuck, and I say, before we start talking
Speaker 1: about the mastermind behind the plot, we take a break,
Speaker 1: all right, let's do it. So we already revealed who
Speaker 1: it was, a guy named John Burgess sr Um and
Speaker 1: his son wrote a book later that I saw. He
Speaker 1: called the publisher to find out how many copies have
Speaker 1: been sold at the time, and they told him zero.
Speaker 1: But in this book, uh, he depicts his dad is
Speaker 1: not a very nice guy. He was an abusive husband,
Speaker 1: physically abusive, a really terrible dad. Um. He liked to
Speaker 1: emotionally blackmail his family by threatening to take his life
Speaker 1: by suicide. Um. And he was an actual Nazi, like
Speaker 1: a genuine Nazi. Just to just to put the cherry
Speaker 1: on top of everything. Yeah, he flew for the Luftwaffa
Speaker 1: and uh spent eight years in a Soviet prison camp
Speaker 1: before coming to America and becoming a multimillionaire. So it
Speaker 1: kind of ended up okay for him. He had a
Speaker 1: landscaping business in Fresno that apparently did really, really well.
Speaker 1: But he also liked to gamble a lot and lost
Speaker 1: a ton of money over the years. Uh. I think
Speaker 1: about seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars they had estimated
Speaker 1: that he lost. I think at Harvey's alone, right, I
Speaker 1: think that was the whole shebang, But most of that
Speaker 1: was at Harvey's. That was my take on it, Okay,
Speaker 1: And and we do need to put a pin in
Speaker 1: something else, is that years before, uh, he had a business,
Speaker 1: a restaurant that it was pretty clear that he burned
Speaker 1: down for the insurance money, got a three d and
Speaker 1: fifty five thousand dollars from that and gambled that away. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was that kind of guy, right. So the heist itself,
Speaker 1: it was, um, it was an attempt to make back
Speaker 1: some of the money that the house had taken from
Speaker 1: him over the years that he felt bitter about. But
Speaker 1: also the reason that he targeted Harvey's, they later found out,
Speaker 1: was that on some New Year's Eve a few year
Speaker 1: or two before, he had been given the high Roller suite.
Speaker 1: That's how often he gambled at Harvey's, Like he was
Speaker 1: well known there, um, but he had amassed such a
Speaker 1: debt that they actually took him that evening out of
Speaker 1: the high Roller suite and put him in a regular room,
Speaker 1: much to his great humiliation. Yeah, I mean that was
Speaker 1: pretty much why he very at least why he targeted Harvey's.
Speaker 1: They he he considered that quite a a loss of
Speaker 1: pride because I guess he was with a date and
Speaker 1: the date was like, I thought you said you were
Speaker 1: a big time which didn't make it any better. So
Speaker 1: that's why Harvey's got targeted in particular, that's right. And
Speaker 1: they put Aaron Hagar in that swite instead, they did,
Speaker 1: and everything was right with the world, that's right. Uh So,
Speaker 1: actually Aaron's he's about mate. So he would have been
Speaker 1: a kid back then, or maybe they did. He could
Speaker 1: have been high rolling and he was like a nine
Speaker 1: year old like running the show in that gambling room.
Speaker 1: I could totally see it. So, uh we mentioned he
Speaker 1: was Burgess Senior. There was a Burgess Jr. He had
Speaker 1: a couple of sons, John Jr. And Jimmy who were
Speaker 1: twenty and eighteen respectively, and then Jimmy or wait was
Speaker 1: was Ella Williams the seniors girlfriend? Yes, okay, so you
Speaker 1: had a girlfriend named Ella Williams who were also in
Speaker 1: on it. In these two numb skulls who delivered the bomb,
Speaker 1: named Bill Brown and Terry Hall. The FBI later said
Speaker 1: after they caught Bill Brown, they described him or no,
Speaker 1: it was from um a report like somebody who witnessed
Speaker 1: the bomb being delivered. They said one of them was
Speaker 1: a hay seed, a real goober type. That's how they
Speaker 1: described Bill Brown. And it's sad for Bill Brown and
Speaker 1: Terry Hall Chuck because they got a total of bucks.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't until after they were driven away early
Speaker 1: that morning that they were told what they'd just done.
Speaker 1: They did not know that they were delivering a bomb
Speaker 1: until after they delivered the bomb. Isn't that terrible? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean they they were probably just soldier some money
Speaker 1: go deliver this thing. There was a lot of money,
Speaker 1: that's exactly right. Yeah, And I'm Burgess Jr. Just totally
Speaker 1: misled him, which is another mark against that guy. All Right,
Speaker 1: So spinning back a little bit, when they hatched this plan, Uh,
Speaker 1: the first thing he did was go out and get
Speaker 1: all this dynamite which they stole from a power plant
Speaker 1: in California and stashed it in their walk in freezer
Speaker 1: in their garage and started building this bomb. And no
Speaker 1: one That's kind of one of the mysteries of this
Speaker 1: case is it was such a sophisticated device and no
Speaker 1: one still really knows how this guy managed to build
Speaker 1: this thing. Uh, if he had help, if he was
Speaker 1: just this bomb genius that no one knew about. It
Speaker 1: was just super smart and did his research. But uh,
Speaker 1: no one really knows how he managed to build such
Speaker 1: a sophisticated bomb. I mean, it's still not clear. I
Speaker 1: don't think anybody will ever know he just did it.
Speaker 1: And what's crazy is, um, John Burgess might have gotten
Speaker 1: away with the whole thing. Uh. The FBI did not.
Speaker 1: They were not on him and Ashley. They interviewed something
Speaker 1: like five suspects in the whole case. And Um, there
Speaker 1: were two things that seemed to have brought Burgess down.
Speaker 1: One was a hotel owner who was the night manager
Speaker 1: of the hotel that Burgess, Brown and Hall stayed up
Speaker 1: before they planted the bomb. Her name was Nancy Domenico,
Speaker 1: and she found those three suspicious enough that she wrote
Speaker 1: down their license plate on their van, make, model, color,
Speaker 1: and the license plate number, UM, and just kept it
Speaker 1: on file just in case. And it turned out that
Speaker 1: that would become really important later on. And then the
Speaker 1: other factor was John Burgess Jr. Had a really loud mouth.
Speaker 1: It turns out, yeah, he had a girlfriend leading up
Speaker 1: to the event, and he would just brag all about
Speaker 1: this thing. They break up. You never think about the
Speaker 1: breakup side of things when you're when you're spilling your
Speaker 1: innermost thoughts. Uh. And she has a new boyfriend tells
Speaker 1: him all about this guy I dated before you that
Speaker 1: told me all about this bomb plot. Uh. The new
Speaker 1: boyfriend calls in the FBI tip. So now they have
Speaker 1: a couple of tips pointing to these dudes. Uh. They
Speaker 1: tracked down the van that the um Nancy Domenico had
Speaker 1: reported as shady, and it was a van that was
Speaker 1: registered to the restaurant that Burgess Senior allegedly had burned down.
Speaker 1: So that's where that comes back into play. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: they're like, okay, let's go interview John Burgess Senior. And
Speaker 1: John Burgess Senior says, oh, John Jr. Was driving the
Speaker 1: van justly gave us the immediately. Yeah, I mean, like
Speaker 1: that first interview, said him, probably said here's his address.
Speaker 1: Hopefully at least called his son to give him a
Speaker 1: heads up. I don't know. But they went over and
Speaker 1: they interviewed John Jr. And he said, yes, I was
Speaker 1: around Tahoe at the time. Yes, I was with my van,
Speaker 1: but I was looking for places to plant marijuana. And
Speaker 1: you know that's true because I've just admitted to a
Speaker 1: crime to the FBI, right right, And apparently the FBI
Speaker 1: didn't didn't really buy it. They said like, this story
Speaker 1: is awful, but he's stuck to it and they didn't
Speaker 1: have anything else they could get him on right then,
Speaker 1: but he was definitely on their radar from that point forward.
Speaker 1: I thought, it's a pretty good story to be put
Speaker 1: on the spot. Personally, Well, well, it didn't work, but
Speaker 1: like to admit to another crime, I was like, right,
Speaker 1: all right, not bad, I'll give you that part, the
Speaker 1: part of the FBI. The FBI was like, you're you're kidding, right,
Speaker 1: he said, the battery died, so I abandoned the van.
Speaker 1: Somebody must have taken it and used it in the
Speaker 1: crime and then brought it back while I was away
Speaker 1: from the van, right well, which is a long way
Speaker 1: of saying was it wasn't me, right exactly. Uh So
Speaker 1: they you know, they do what they do in the movies.
Speaker 1: They don't have enough hard evidence, so they spend a
Speaker 1: year getting that evidence, building a case on a montage
Speaker 1: with a great like upbeat song where they're putting this
Speaker 1: stuff together. Right. Sure, I don't know why John jr.
Speaker 1: Uh and John SR. Are still in the country. I
Speaker 1: would have been out of there so fast. Where would
Speaker 1: you go? I'd leave the country. I know where where'd
Speaker 1: you go? Oh, that's a really good question. Everyone just
Speaker 1: always talks about like who would you have over for dinner?
Speaker 1: Living or dead? Like where would you go if you
Speaker 1: were guilty of a bombing blot? I mean it's got
Speaker 1: to be a non extradition treaty country, right, So you're
Speaker 1: looking at like Venezuela. I'd have to do my research then,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I would go someplace with a beach and
Speaker 1: uh and like a very quiet life, okay, yeah, and
Speaker 1: then they just you know, they eventually show up at
Speaker 1: the beach in the movie as well. So tie out
Speaker 1: of your hands and your ex. Canada has beaches, sure,
Speaker 1: lovely beaches. Not quite the beaches I was looking for, though,
Speaker 1: You're welcome and chunk. Uh. So the FBI is getting
Speaker 1: this evidence. Uh, they have rewards. I think like a
Speaker 1: half a million bucks is about as high as the
Speaker 1: reward went and fly. About a year later, they arrest
Speaker 1: John Jr. And Jimmy and they say they dang a
Speaker 1: little carrot in front of their faces, said how would
Speaker 1: you like to how'd you like to turn on dad
Speaker 1: and maybe get a little leniency And they went that jerk,
Speaker 1: I'm happy to And that's exactly what they did, right,
Speaker 1: and um, they turned other dad, they arrested their dad,
Speaker 1: They arrested Ella Williams, Bill Brown, Terry Hall, and from
Speaker 1: what we understand, every single person who had anything to
Speaker 1: do with that was rounded up and one fell swoop basically,
Speaker 1: and the convictions started coming out. Ella Williams got seven
Speaker 1: years for her involvement. And she hasn't factored in hugely
Speaker 1: into this podcast, but she was definitely an accomplished She
Speaker 1: typed the ransom notes up. She Um, she did a lot.
Speaker 1: I think she dropped some people off at the one
Speaker 1: of the landing sites, like she was very much involved.
Speaker 1: So she got seven years, but a judge later overturned
Speaker 1: her conviction and I couldn't see why. But um, as
Speaker 1: far as I know, she did not do any time
Speaker 1: in prison, maybe beyond her trial. Yeah, I think the
Speaker 1: sons did get that leniency. As for John SR. He
Speaker 1: represented himself in court, cross examined his own sons. Eventually
Speaker 1: got twenty years in federal prison and then I believe
Speaker 1: life without parole in state prison. Yeah. His his um.
Speaker 1: The big key to his defense was his sons had
Speaker 1: given him a Father's Day car that said you're the
Speaker 1: best dad around ten years before. It didn't work on
Speaker 1: the jury, Sorry, how could I have done this? Um?
Speaker 1: He served sixteen years, died in prison of cancer. But
Speaker 1: then there's one final little potential twist here, right Yeah,
Speaker 1: Um so John Burgess had talked to a reporter while
Speaker 1: he was alive and he said, you know what, this
Speaker 1: wasn't my idea. I was a patsy, I was a rube.
Speaker 1: I got and I got dragged into this by a
Speaker 1: loan shark. I owed sixty large two. That's that's what
Speaker 1: you say when you're a gambler. And um, he recruited
Speaker 1: me to plant this bomb, and that really the loan
Speaker 1: shark was working on behalf of Harvey's top executives and
Speaker 1: the mafia who were conspiring to blow the place up
Speaker 1: so that they could collect the insurance money. Look at there,
Speaker 1: you believe it? Not at all? No? Now, And like
Speaker 1: the the the thing that just like completely proves it is, yeah,
Speaker 1: they used insurance money to rebuild. It's like, no, that
Speaker 1: doesn't prove anything. Of course you're going to use insurance
Speaker 1: money to rebuild. It doesn't mean there is a conspiracy.
Speaker 1: Is that place still there? Any idea? Yeah, it's still there. Um,
Speaker 1: I think it's been updated even even more since then.
Speaker 1: But yeah, as far as I know, Harvey's is still there. Awesome.
Speaker 1: I don't know why for the best two weeks, I
Speaker 1: never thought to look that up me either. I'm almost
Speaker 1: positive we'll have to leave it to Aaron Hagar to
Speaker 1: tell us whether it's there or not. Sweet it is.
Speaker 1: I'm looking at a picture of it. It's definitely been updated. Well,
Speaker 1: while you're online, Um, why don't you look at eBay
Speaker 1: and see if there's any like I got bombed at
Speaker 1: Harvey's T shirts still around? Oh wow, Well, if there are,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna tell you. I'm just gonna get you
Speaker 1: one for Christmas. Fair enough. I like that a lot.
Speaker 1: That's a good plan. Um. Well, since Chuck said what
Speaker 1: he's gonna give me for Christmas and I realized, Man,
Speaker 1: I've got to figure out what to get Chuck for Christmas,
Speaker 1: it's time for listener mail. You just got me a
Speaker 1: great record, which one? Oh the Bill Evans one? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: do you like it? Have you listened to it yet?
Speaker 1: I love it? I mean it's Bill Evans, but it's
Speaker 1: just yeah, it's it's good, very evocative, of changing in
Speaker 1: the seasons, which I think was the whole point for sure.
Speaker 1: I'm glad um all right, Hey guys. After listening to
Speaker 1: the Introvert Extrovert episode, I thought i'd reach out because
Speaker 1: Chuck at one point talked about finding ways to discipline
Speaker 1: his child by removing fun activities. I remember saying that,
Speaker 1: and but I guess you were so mad. You're like
Speaker 1: frothing at the mouth. I've been ever heard you more angry.
Speaker 1: You don't even really do that, so I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if I may have been kidding or not. Anyway, I'm
Speaker 1: a third grade teacher because this is like a tip here,
Speaker 1: so we gotta read the tips. I'm a third grade
Speaker 1: teacher on a reservation, and with sixteen kids in my class,
Speaker 1: I have never had to use discipline. My classroom functions
Speaker 1: like a well oiled machine. Due to a type of
Speaker 1: behavior management known in the educational world as pb I
Speaker 1: s positive behaviors and supports. It's a way to manage
Speaker 1: challenging child behavior solely solely through the use of using
Speaker 1: praise and rewards. Can easily be applied in the context
Speaker 1: of raising your own child, especially if you want to
Speaker 1: raise a psychopath. This is a huge topic. And when
Speaker 1: that's near and deeed in my heart, I thought it
Speaker 1: might be incredibly useful for all the parents out there who,
Speaker 1: like Chuck, struggle to find a way to manage their
Speaker 1: child's behavior. You convention that discipline. Man, this guy's scoring
Speaker 1: all over you, Chuck a little bit. And this is Anthony.
Speaker 1: You guys rock. Thanks for all the wonderful knowledge and
Speaker 1: hlarryst dialogue. Uh, I want to be super clear, Anthony,
Speaker 1: we don't struggle to find a way to manage her behavior.
Speaker 1: She's she's a good kid. And not to say the
Speaker 1: kids who have trouble behaving are bad kids at all.
Speaker 1: Everyone has their challenges as kids and parents. But um,
Speaker 1: it's not too bad. And I don't know that this
Speaker 1: pb I S would work necessarily in my household. But hey,
Speaker 1: I mean we already do that kind of thing, but
Speaker 1: I'll ramp it up and see if that helps run
Speaker 1: an experiment, Chuck in true s YSK fashion. Sure, I'm
Speaker 1: curious though, because Anthony didn't say if Anthony had kids.
Speaker 1: Because I will say that the way kids behave for
Speaker 1: teachers is not at all related to how they behave
Speaker 1: for parents. A lot of imagine. So yeah, I'm curious. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you guys listening out there, um try this. Let
Speaker 1: us know if it works or what. And also, Anthony,
Speaker 1: thank you very much for writing in Anthony. It was great.
Speaker 1: Um So if want to be like Anthony, you can
Speaker 1: write into two Stuff podcast at i heart radio dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of I heart Radio.
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