Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - He Planted a Bomb (And it Went Off) // The John Briges Sr. Casino Bombing

Episode Date: September 8, 2026

John Birges Sr. was a landscaping contractor who masterminded the 1980 Harvey's Resort Hotel bombing in Stateline, Nevada, after racking up massive debts from a severe gambling addiction.

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free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Don't you wish you could just hit skip on the worst parts of your life? You know the same way you can skip an ad? I get it. I'm Siaiaa and I live in Ice Cove. I've made some questionable decisions that didn't end up the way I planned. And today I'm still figuring it out.

Somehow things usually get worse before they get better. Apparently, that's how I roll. So bundle up and come along for the bumpy ride. Stream a new episode of North of North Tuesdays on CBC Gem. So there's this casino out in Lake Tahoe, and one day, kaboon, a bomb goes off inside it. Why is someone trying to blow up this casino? So this all starts with Burgess.

And Burgess is 53 years old during this time, living in Clovis, California, and he's a successful businessman with millions in the bank. And one day, in 1975, the worst thing happens to him. His wife leaves him, because he's apparently abusive. And then she dies of an overdose. And of course, Burgess is all devastated over this. So to cope, he starts neglecting his landscaping and restaurant businesses, and he starts spending a lot of time at this casino four hours away in Lake Tahoe called Harvey's Wagon Wheel Casino.

And over the years, he goes more and more, and eventually he becomes addicted to gambling. He's apparently very into blackjack. And ultimately, he loses over $750,000, which is the equivalent of about $3 million in today's money. Not only that, but while he's spending all day at the wagon wheel, he has abandoned the day-to-day management duties of his businesses. And so his businesses start to fail. Regardless, he wants to continue gambling. So he starts writing bad checks to the casino. At one point, he borrows a bunch of money from a loan shark to keep gambling.

And by 1979, he's unfortunately broke, and he's bouncing checks to the casino and the IRS is after him and he's borrowing rent money from one of his teenage sons. Then it gets worse because it's New Year's Eve and Burgess wants to celebrate by gambling, of course, and hanging out at the wagon wheel. And normally, since he spends so much money there, they put him up in one of their most luxurious VIP suites. But this time, they kick him and the waging. woman he's seeing out of that suite so that they can give it to a wealthier higher spending guest. And this pisses Burgess off. He feels humiliated. I mean, this casino like took all his money and

they kicked him out of the VIP suite. So he comes up with a diabolical plan to get revenge on the wagon wheel and make all his money back. He's going to build a really big bomb. So he gets to work on this plan. He tells his two teenage sons about what's going on and they're apparently all in. So in the middle of the night, Burgess and his two sons go to Helms Creek in the mountains to this hydroelectric construction site. And I guess this place has terrible security because these guys just sneak right in. And they steal about a thousand pounds of industrial explosives and they take it all back to Burgess's place in Clovis. And from here, he starts building this bomb. And he spends all summer in his machine shop working on this thing until it's finally done. Here is a picture of it. It's about the size of a dishwasher.

Now from here, Burgess needs to get this monstrosity into the casino. And he can't just wheel it into the wagon wheel by himself. It's huge. He needs help. So he hits up two guys that he knows, workers who had previously helped him on some landscaping jobs. And he tells these guys, hey, I'll pay you $2,000 if you deliver this machine for me. And these guys are like, $2,000,000, that sounds great. I mean, they have no idea this machine is a bomb. So it's early in the morning, around 5 a.m. And Burgess meets the two delivery guys outside the wagon wheel, and he has the bomb, and he's painted the IBM logo on the side of a drop sheet that he had draped over it. So it'll look like they're delivering a big computer, I guess. And Burgess, he's wearing a disguise so the casino staff won't recognize him.

they unload the bomb onto a dolly and they start pushing it toward the casino. And the three of them, they wheel it right through the front doors, then through the lobby, then into an elevator, and they haul it all the way up to the second floor, and they leave it right there in the employee's only area. After that, they leave an envelope beside it, and they walk away, and the two guys helping him still don't know that they just left a whole ass bomb in the casino. Anyway, about 30 minutes later, security notices this huge mysterious silver box. They're like, what the hell is this?

And they open the envelope. And in it is a letter. And this letter demands that the casino pay a $3 million ransom. And the money is to be delivered by a helicopter and the pilot must arrive alone. And they have 24 hours to comply or the bomb inside will go off. Here's the bad part, though. The letter warns them not to move. or tamper with or mess with the bomb at all.

Otherwise, it will explode. And Burgess really did build it that way. Any attempt to mess with this bomb would cause it to go off. And moving it around would cause it to explode. Even flooding it with water would cause it to explode. So the casino, they're kind of stuck. I mean, they have to take this threat seriously and do what Burgess says. So immediately, they start evacuating the entire casino.

And the police shut down all the streets and businesses for a half-mile radius. And they call the bomb squad in. So the bomb squad comes and they look at this bomb and they're like, yep, the letter ain't wrong. We can't tamper with this thing. So they have no idea how they're going to disarm it. Meanwhile, Burgess and one of his sons go up to the mountains outside Placerville and they sit and they wait in a remote clearing. Anyway, so this helicopter, it's supposed to arrive and pick up the money. And Burgess and his sons, they're going to wait there in the mountains with this big strobe light.

And when they hear that helicopter coming, they'll turn on the strobe light, which will signal the pilot to land. Once he lands, they'll hold him up at gunpoint, hijack the helicopter, and fly it a ways away to a different clearing. And there, Burgess's girlfriend will pick them up in her car, because I guess she's involved in this too. And from there, they'll take the money and they'll escape. And so, this helicopter pilot gets the money and he takes off and he starts off. looking for the strobe light along the highway, where Burgess's letter told them to look. Here's the thing, though. The FBI is involved in this now, and they have an agent hiding inside the helicopter waiting to strike. Also, the $3 million that they're supposed to be paying to Burgess is fake. It's just duffel bags filled with paper.

But anyway, regardless of that, unfortunately, the helicopter got the directions wrong, and they're like circling in the wrong place, and they can't see Burgess's strobe light, and eventually the helicopter pilot gives up, and he just leaves and flies away. Meanwhile, back at the Wagon Wheel Casino, the bomb squad finally comes up with a way that they might be able to disarm this bomb. They're going to place a small amount of C4 on it

and detonate it, like they're going to place a little bomb on top of the bigger bomb, and they're hoping that a little explosion will disconnect the bomb's wires and essentially render the bomb useless. So they place a little C4 on the bomb and they set it off and instead of disabling the big bomb, kaboom, it sets this bomb off entirely.

And this blows apart walls and windows and it leaves a massive hole in the side of the casino. Now, luckily, no one is injured because the entire area has already been evacuated. Anyway, eventually the FBI is able to trace the van that these guys used back to Burgess's family. And so later, the feds bring both of Burgess's sons in,

and they question the hell out of them, and that is when the sons decide to come clean and confess. And so, bam, both sons get arrested. Here's one mug shot. Here's another mug shot. Also, bam, Burgess's girlfriend is arrested. Here's her mug shot. And finally, bam, Burgess gets arrested.

Here's his mug shot. And ultimately, Burgess's girlfriend gets sentenced to seven years in prison, but that sentence is overturned, while Burgess's sons get suspended sentences in exchange for cooperating with the FBI, while Burgess gets sentenced to life in prison.