Scamtown - Harvey’s Casino Bomb | 2

Episode Date: August 26, 2024

In the summer of 1980, Harvey’s Casino in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, prepares for the busy Labor Day weekend. But when a new photocopy machine turns out to be a 1,000-pound bomb, a wild series of events ensues as the FBI races against time to deactivate the explosive and stop a criminal mastermind.Scamtown is an Apple Original podcast, produced by FunMeter. Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts.http://apple.co/Scamtown

So picture this. It's 1980, Lake Tahoe, Nevada. You spent the day out on the boat, and now you're trying your luck in the casino. The air is filled with smoke, slot machines are going off all over the place, and you're up a couple hundred bucks. It's not a bad day.

Until someone taps you on the shoulder and says you need to evacuate immediately because there's a bomb in the building. August 26, 1980. A photocopy machine-looking bomb arrives at Harvey's Casino, which triggers a wild series of events. Imagine if the Coen brothers were asked to direct Martin Scorsese's casino, but with half the budget. We'll dive into the psyche of a criminal mastermind and the FBI's race against time to stop them. Welcome to Scam Town,

an Apple original podcast produced by Fund Meter. I'm Brian Lazzarte. And I'm James Lee Hernandez. We're filmmakers who've been trading stories now for quite some time, This is Scam Town, a world that's stranger than fiction and writing that line between comedy and tragedy. This is Scam Town, a place for our favorite stories that do just that. Today's episode, Harvey's Casino Bomb. James, have you ever been to Lake Tahoe? I have. I've gone snowboarding at Heavenly many times. What about the summer?

It's beautiful. The lake's fantastic. Although if you don't get it at exactly the right time, it's still pretty damn cold. Well, it's one of the most beautiful backdrops to a casino. For those who don't know, it's like right at the border of Nevada. And for nearly 40 years, the Wagon Wheel Casino lured those with an appetite for the clean outdoors, smoke-filled indoors, free booze, and a chance to win big. A former butcher by the name of Harvey Gross decided to open one of the first gambling halls in Lake Tahoe in 1944. It was actually just one room

that looked more like a log cabin than an actual casino. It had a lunch counter, three slot machines, and two card tables. That's it. I worked at Harvey's in Lake Tahoe on and off since 1962. John Graves grew up in Lake Tahoe, and he came of age at the wagon wheel. It was a place where the casinos were no taller than two stories. No high-rises, no nothing.

My mom first started working there in 1957. She had her hair all fixed up and fixed her eyes and makeup, and she looked like Liz Taylor. Twenty-plus years later, cocktail waitresses are sporting big hair and corseted skirts, and you could sit at the penny slots for hours, all while inhaling dangerous amounts of secondhand smoke. 1980, Christopher Cross's aggressively gentle yacht rock tune, Sailing. Sailing takes me away. Where I'm always dirty.

Okay, I'm not going to go into the rest of it. Oh, please don't. Was the number one song in the country at the time, Okay, I'm not going to go into the rest of it. Was the number one song in the country at the time, and people are just blasting that in their cars while they're riding down Highway 50 to Lake Tahoe to ring out the last little bit of summer going into Labor Day weekend. My name is Bill Jahnke. I was with the FBI for almost 30 years. Bill Jahnke was one of the main investigators of the Harvey's Casino bomb case.

He grew up in Southern California, and like most Southern Californians, he loved the water. I surfed just an awful lot in the winter, and of course it got a little cold, but you could be out there in the water for 20, 30 minutes. Jonky went from braving the elements in the water to essentially dodging bullets working for the Long Beach Police Department. While responding to a robbery in progress, there was a shootout, leaving the robber dead

and Jonky shot in the chest. The bullet tore through his lungs and got lodged into his spine. He was out of commission for several months. Pretty soon, he'd had enough of the Golden State. About 1971, I realized I had to get out of California. It was just getting too crowded for me. So with California being too crowded, he decided to join the FBI. I'd always wanted to be in the FBI anyway, but I kind of moved it up on my schedule a little bit. He packed up his things and moved that same year. He did some stints in bigger cities, like Denver and Vegas, but he finally settled on a smaller

resident agency in Carson City, Nevada. The smaller post out in the country really appealed to him. Jockey doesn't consider himself a cowboy per se because he's never earned a living on the back of a horse. But he does exude a kind of cowboy ethos and style. He sports dusty boots and, my dad's favorite, a handlebar mustache. Not to mention, early to bed and early to rise. Jahnke was still in bed when he got the call that would change his life forever. I was at home asleep about five in the morning. I was advised by dispatch that there was a large bomb at Harvey's Hotel and Casino. So I told them I would be en route, and I headed that direction.

At the time, Bill Jahnke was in the process of being certified as a bomb technician. And you add on top of that, he had gained a ton of experience on the job. Agents received anywhere from four to six bomb threats a year in Lake Tahoe. Most of them were hoaxes or hoax devices, but they still had to respond to them like they were a real thing. I have to imagine that calling in a fake bomb threat is pretty easy, especially back then with payphones. The hard part was collecting the money.

I wonder how many people actually pulled it off. Very few, and the people who actually tried it got really creative. I remember one incident, the caller said to bring the money and put it in the trash can that was on a specific beach in Lake Tahoe. Here's this trash can sitting out all by itself, maybe about 20 feet from the water's edge. And right away, you just know there's the only way that somebody can access that trash can is to come out of the water.

We had an individual drop the package that looked like the money into the trash can, and then we just hid ourselves and waited. And sure enough, a guy dressed like a frogman comes out of the water and reaches for the package. When you look back, certainly a handful were comical, but they would all lead to immediate arrests. That, however, was not the case with Harvey's. As Jahnke arrived and began investigating the casino bomb threat, residents were just hearing about it. Like former blackjack dealer Dale Shear.

When I learned about the bomb, I was on my way to work. And in the car, I had turned on KOWL. I heard him say, whoever is going to the casinos, turn around, go back, there is a bomb. And I thought the guy was crazy, or maybe he was doing this for ratings. And I realized this must be for real. So I turned the car around and went back to my house. And I told my husband, and he said, yeah, it's all over TV. There's a bomb at Harvard's casino.

I said, what? The crisis here began around 8 a.m. when residents of the hotel were warned to get out immediately. One of those residents was Sue Brown, who was actually mid-shower in her hotel room at the time. There was this big knock at the door saying everybody needs to evacuate and leave everything behind. That's when I got out and I put on some clothes real quick and I went downstairs. She wasn't lying. It was chaos for most people. In fact, the parking lot scene was described to us like a refugee camp.

Some hotel guests were barefoot, and others rushed out of their rooms with barely enough time to throw in some clothes or a bathrobe. And that's the scene that Jahnke walked into. I noticed that there was an obvious evacuation in place. They had, oh, I don't know, 700, 800 guests, so it was taking a while. One of the cardinal rules is you don't really examine that bomb very much while there's still people in the hotel. At first glance, it didn't look like a bomb. This thing was well-crafted. It was smooth, painted metallic gray. It looked like a big desk-sized box with a smaller box fused on top.

So the closer they got to this device, or as close as they felt comfortable inching up to it, they noticed these 28 mysterious toggle switches all in the off position. Except for one. And when Jockey saw it himself, he said it was the biggest freaking bomb he'd ever seen. I was just astounded at the size of it.

It looked extremely formidable. And I'd say it was a holy shit moment. Speaking of holy shit, how is it even possible for a bomb to make its way into a casino? This is actually kind of the classic movie version

of how you do something. A white Dodge van pulls up and two men in coveralls dressed as workers wheel out a large piece of machinery

that's cloaked by a cover with an IBM logo on it. That's why no one thought the wiser that this was just a copy machine being delivered to a casino. But this diabolical device makes its way to the second floor offices. And right next to it sits a three-page typed extortion letter. And this is where the classic movie version

turns strangely comedic. So they see a random letter on the ground and they look at that and think, oh my God, this might be a letter bomb. Here's journalist Jim Sloan who covered the story for the Lake Tahoe News. Security folks had just had some training on letter bombs. And the extortion letter was on the floor next to the bomb.

So they hid behind the actual bomb and poked the letter with a broomstick. And when it didn't go off, they said, oh, okay, it must not be a letter bomb. And they opened it up and they realized that they'd been hiding behind, you know, a thousand pounds of TNT. Well, I'll just climb over this big stupid machine right here and I'll get on the other side and I'll be protected. One of the guards had a stick and he was going underneath the bomb and smashing the envelope with the letter. And when that didn't explode, I guess he felt pretty good about that.

That is until they opened it and read what it said. Stern warning to the management and bomb squad. Do not move or tilt this bomb because the mechanism controlling the detonators in it will set it off. The extortion letter basically described what not to do. Do not try to flood or gas the bomb. There is a float switch and an atmospheric pressure switch.

Both are attached to detonators. Don't try to take some of these screws out because they're attached to triggers. And that made sense to us. You know, no, we're not going to stand up over this thing with a screwdriver and try to manually take it apart. Don't move it. This bomb is so sensitive that the slightest movement, either inside or outside, will cause it to explode. Jahnke and his team immediately had the bomb x-rayed to see if the mastermind's claims were true. And they were, with a couple exceptions. Remember those 28 switches? Even though all the toggle switches were in one position, with the x-ray, you could see through that, and you could see at the back of the switches,

he had reversed some of those switches. So even though it appeared it was off from the label on the outside, by looking on the inside, it was on. So that raises the pucker factor a little bit. Adding to the pucker factor was the claim that the bomb was filled with 1,000 pounds of TNT. So what did the bomber actually want out of this? They want what anybody else wants in a scenario like this. They wanted money, specifically 3 million bucks. In addition to describing what was actually in the bomb,

the letter gave us a sneak peek at who this person was underneath it all. We determined from about the first seven or eight lines of that letter that this guy was very proud of this device that he built. And he was telling us what he had in it, not to calm us down, but to let us know that he was a genius. You're looking at a very egotistical jerk but to let us know that he was a genius. You're looking at a very egotistical jerk, let alone a bomb maker.

Jerk or not, the bomb maker was still stumping the best minds in law enforcement. Over 100 FBI agents descended on this case. They flew in the best bomb experts in the country, had scientists concocting theories on what could possibly defeat this explosive device. They even had the fire department set up a perimeter just in case the bomb went off. They needed to buy time.

So at one point, casino owner Harvey Gross and law enforcement had to move forward with actually trying to meet the ransom demands. At first, it reads like a typical ransom note. Then, it gets a little weird. We demand $3 million in used $100 bills. If we find anything wrong with the money, we will stop all instructions for moving the bomb.

The money is to be delivered by helicopter. The pilot is to get out and stand by the chain link fence gate. He has to wait for further instructions which will be delivered by a taxi that will be hired before the pilot enters the helicopter. He has to take a strong flashlight and shine it around the inside of the helicopter so that it will light up the entire inside. Do not come armed with any weapon. All radio channels will be monitored. Do not try to be a hero. Arlington is full of them, and they can't even smell the flowers.

Follow the orders strictly. Happy landing. Okay, Brian, did you get all that? Think so. Whoever the mastermind was, they were determined to make the drop as complicated as humanly possible to elude capture. It just wasn't going to work. Again, that's our local reporter, Jim Sloan.

It seems odd because a guy was bright enough to build this elaborate bomb, but he wasn't smart enough to figure out how to get the extortion money. The pilot was supposed to fly low at midnight and look for a strobe light, which told him where to land. He turned out to be quite a good bomb builder, but he was a piss-poor map reader. The helicopter didn't come anywhere near to him. When he was trying to set up this whole event, his whole plan went to hell in a handbasket when that drop was supposed to occur. There was last night an attempt to make a contact and a payoff to the extortionists. We asked the governor to come up and in front of all the cameras make a pitch to the bomber who might be watching.

He said they did their best to fulfill the extortionist's request, but they didn't show up in the second location for the payoff. So the bomber's elaborate plan didn't help him collect the cash. Basically said we, meaning the FBI, was still interested in making that payment, but we just need additional directions.

Meanwhile, residents like Juliet Tansey remember that in spite of nonstop media coverage, there was still a lot unknown. Which obviously prompted a bunch of rumors and collective stress around town. When we first heard about it, they were concerned that it was a nuclear bomb. And I'm like, oh my God, that would like not just ruin the hotel, that would like ruin Tahoe. It's like, should we be here? How far can this go? So when this all stretched past that dangerous 24-hour mark, someone rang the sheriff's department, claiming to be working with the bomb maker and telling them to flip toggle switch number five. Oh, yeah, like they're totally going to take some random person's advice at that point.

Yeah, exactly. Well, they didn't do it. They had to do something, but they were running out of options. We just went through all the possible solutions that we had. They had one last chance. If you remember from earlier,

the best experts in the country were there. And their Hail Mary 25% chance of success idea was this. If they could somehow use a tiny explosion to separate the brains from the main part of the bomb, it might prevent a thousand pounds of dynamite from going off. So they tried it. Basically, a mini explosion to stop a massive explosion. At this point, everyone's been evacuated from the hotel, casino, and everything surrounding it. There was a huge perimeter.

Streets were blocked off. Pretty much half the city was down there to see what was going to happen. Some were taking cover in fear of a massive catastrophic destruction. And then, on the police radio network, there was a countdown. Okay, that was not a mini-charge. Yeah, definitely not a mini-explosion at all. That was the actual bomb. One of the many reasons why it didn't work was because there was actually explosives in the top part of this box, and they didn't know it.

So let's go back to the explosion. Yeah, you heard that right. That was cheering. But not everyone. When that thing went off, there was people laughing and shaking their hands and happy. I just remember people screaming and applauding. People are jumping down and yelling. It's not what I expected. Made a lot of people extremely mad.

I can understand them being upset, but this is happening at a casino after all. These people are out to be entertained, and they were. The crowd reacted sort of euphorically, as if we had been waiting for this moment all day long. It was a carnival-type atmosphere, like New Year's Eve in August. Add to that, not surprisingly, in the state of Nevada,

the event was definitely an excuse to gamble. There were bets being placed on when this explosion might happen. I ended up going down and working at the inn and dealing the cards when the bomb was going off. And they said that we may feel shaking or whatever to cover our tray and make sure there was, you know, cover our money.

And duck. About half of Harvey's 11 stories were lost in the explosion. The damage is quite severe to the second and third floors. My wedding suite got blown up. My wedding cake got blown up. One group not experiencing losses? The street vendors. The t-shirt makers are already at work.

There's one over here that says, bang, other t-shirt makers are saying, I survived the bomb. The goofy slogans were popular, but vendors also moved a lot of product because when Harvey's guests were evacuated, remember, they had to leave with only the clothes on their back. Or no clothes on their back.

I bombed at Tahoe. All of this within the last 24 hours. These days, a vintage Harvey's bomb t-shirt will cost you upwards of $1,500 on eBay. What? That's even expensive for a vintage band T-shirt. Except for, like, maybe Nirvana. When it exploded and the hotel remained standing, we were all very relieved. That eliminated a major, major problem for us was a live ticking bomb in that building.

Jahnke said 33 plus hours later, the impressive, impossible to defeat bomb hadn't killed anyone. But the FBI still had a painstaking crime scene search of the blast rubble ahead of them and an investigation into what the hell happened. Not to mention the bomber is still out there. Everyone had theories about who was responsible for causing $18 million in damage and terrorizing the whole lakefront community. The FBI looked into every possible angle. At one point, they had about 500 suspects. Naturally, they set up a hotline. They offered a reward, which ultimately was

increased to $500,000. Special Agent Bill Jahnke says the tips poured in immediately, and that was great, but the volume also had a challenge. Joe Schmuck the Ragman did it, so we'd have to go find Joe Schmuck the Ragman and do a background on him and find out what he was and where he was and then ultimately talk to him and eliminate him. Oftentimes you get sidetracked by these guys who may seem, we had one group that was outside of Reno that sounded pretty good. We had them surveilled for 24 hours a day, and we wasted two weeks with them. The FBI was determined not to miss any clues, but they might have gone a little overboard with some of their tactics. I mean, the late 20th century was an interesting time.

Hypnotic interviews were used from time to time. The results could not be used in court, but you would bring in a hypnotist, and he would interview your witness. Count now to 10, along with me, repeating the thought, I'm going to sleep. I'm going to sleep. In a isolated area, and sometimes those witnesses could remember details that they wouldn't ordinarily remember. Have you ever been hypnotized? Yeah. Grad night. What?

High school. For real? Did they make you dance on one foot and cluck like a chicken? I've got to be honest with you, I have no idea. Wow. Interesting how hypnosis can be such a powerful tool on certain individuals, but as an FBI tactic for uncovering crimes, not so great. I'd sit in on these hypnotic interviews.

You'd almost find yourself falling under the trance, if you will. But to my recollection, we didn't get any concrete leads or information on a hypnotic interview. So the trance sessions didn't work. But Jahnke says he received what seemed like a genuinely juicy lead. The hotel owner at South Lake Tahoe called in to report some suspicious activity being involved with a white van. And we followed that up right away, but it just dead-ended. And then, a few more months later, another tip came in, and that connected to the van. A young man called our Fresno office of the FBI and basically said that his girlfriend, she knew about this bombing. She claimed that her ex-boyfriend owned a white van and that it wasn't

her ex-boyfriend that they needed to investigate, but it was actually his father. You were looking at the sons instead of the parent, and that's what turned everything for us. Once we got on to John Burgess Sr., we knew we were very, very close. John Burgess. Is it John Burgess? You called him Big John? John Burgess. Brian, take a guess at what suspect John Burgess' favorite pastime was. Did it involve gambling? It was gambling. You're right. It was gambling. With the slight twist

of him being terrible at it. Kind of like me. That's why I don't do it. Problem gamblers develop when they have a lot of money and they lose that money. Now they don't have an adequate means of support,

not only for themselves, but to support their habits. Obviously, Burgess needed a better hobby. He'd lost a fortune at the blackjack tables at Harvey's Casino. His plan was to obtain the $3 million from Harvey's because he figured that's about what he lost. And then he was going to use that money and live the rest of his life in leisure.

I remember checking in John Burgess. He was kind of a regular at Harvey's. Burgess wasn't just another face in the crowd. He actually left an impression on Harvey's employees. It was mostly terrible. I didn't really interact much with him because he didn't make me feel good. It was sort of like you want to check this guy in and then next. Sandy Ross remembers the wannabe high roller as arrogant and entitled. When you're a front desk clerk, you're kind of the low person on the guest radar. He just treated you like nothing. like he was special, you know,

and you had to treat him like he was special. Dale Shear says when it came to cards, it was like Burgess was under a spell. I was a high limit dealer and all my friends, they go, watch out for this one. He doesn't look at his cards. I go, what? And he'd sit at first base, and he wouldn't count his cards. He wouldn't look at his cards. I'd deal to him. He'd play $5, $5, $5, and I would ask my pit boss, what's up with this guy? Don't pay him any attention. Just deal to him, and I did.

Then it came after so many hours of being on the shift, four or five hours, and I was running very hot. So I was taking all his money, and I was trying very hard to take all his money so I could get him off the table. And the pit boss gave him $10,000, and then he started really betting. And I go, uh-oh, I'm in trouble. And I blew the game. Well, he'd win, but he'd give it all back to you. If you ever saw the movie The Gambler, you'd understand what I'm talking about. Have you seen The Gambler, Brian?

You're talking like that movie from the 70s with, who was that actor? James Caan? James Caan. Yep, yep. At the peak of his movie stardom. Not his best work, but the whole point of the film is that Khan is this obsessed gambler, and he loses everything, seemingly on purpose. I could have wiped the floor with your ass.

Yeah? How? By playing just the games I knew I'd win. Then why didn't you? Listen, if all my bets were safe, there just wouldn't be any juice. After years of dealing cards, Bashir has this theory. They gamble to lose because they are punishing themselves for something deep in their childhood or whatever that might be. And that makes them feel better. Whether Burgess actually lost on purpose is unclear.

But his addiction is connected to one hell of a backstory. Hungarian-born with an IQ of 191, Burgess spent eight years in a KGB gulag, emigrated to California, and made his fortune in landscaping. In an interview he did from prison for KLAS-TV, John Burgess Sr. recalled how his wife's death impacted his habit. And it destroyed me totally. So I gambled every penny. Depending on who you believe, after Hungary was invaded in World War II, Burgess flew for the German Luftwaffe, was captured by the Russians, and sentenced to hard labor

in a prison camp. He eventually was either released or escaped. And if he escaped, I really hope he blew up a wall to get out. Either way, he was free. Jockey says all these claims were never proven. When he tells you he's with the Luftwaffe and all that stuff, you have to think he's about 75% bullshit.

What is verifiably true is that Burgess immigrated to the U.S. with his wife Elizabeth, and they settled in Clovis, California, near Fresno. They did well for themselves and had two sons in the mid-1960s. Known as Big John to his sons, he wasn't what you'd call a great father. So they never called him dad. And we're all from Clovis. We all went to Clovis High where we, did you take the bomb making class they had there? No, actually, biology was probably my

best subject. Older son John Burgess Jr. sat for an interview with a former high school classmate for a local public access show called Central Valley Talk back in 2010. Host Mike Briggs recalls that John was still burdened by old feelings. Talking to him, you can kind of feel the fear in him of his father, that he always had that fear of his father, and it was irreconcilable fear. He wasn't tolerant of a lot of insubordination. So when he came home on the weekends, it was just nothing but terror.

You know, me and my brother both were just scared, you know, just we didn't want to be around. Were you glad when he was gone? If that wasn't bad enough, life got much worse once their mother died. Actually, two of my friends found her on their way home because they lived in the track of houses that were behind her house. And I still remember that day. I was 15. I was 15. It was a crushing day for the family. The coroner ruled it a suicide, but for the boys, that didn't totally add up. They'd found Valium and whiskey in her system,

even though everyone knew she only drank vodka. According to the boys, specifically Jimmy Burgess, his father was very abusive and he believed that his father had killed his mother. There was no returning to normal after that. Everyone seemed to descend into their own personal hell. The boys bickered and the father became even more unhinged. It was then that the rest of the world started to see the cracks in Big John's veneer. He was dating a lot of younger girls, which me and my brother didn't approve of, you know, because we were trying to get over my mom, you know. While the boys

were grieving, Big John married one of the waitresses from his restaurant, The Via Basque. And as that marriage unraveled too, he started spending more time and money in Lake Tahoe, scooting over there in his jet like a real high roller. As Big John's finances were drying up, his restaurant caught fire. Jonke says it wasn't much of a mystery. All the food from that restaurant was in his walk-in freezer at his residence. So you tell me, did he have anything to do with it? Suddenly the food disappears before the fire. Kind of unusual. Well, that didn't stop him from receiving an insurance payout

of $300,000. Though that wasn't enough to last. It was time to enact the plan he'd been brewing for months. Big John had an innate mechanical ability, often tinkering in his off hours on gadgets or just random contraptions. None of it impressed his sons. But this time, he forced them to help him create his biggest invention of all by stealing a thousand pounds of dynamite from a local construction site. From there, it was full steam ahead. Burgess might have lied about his biography, but he had the right kind of criminal smarts to build an undefeatable bomb. And you know what else he kept in the meat freezer? Dynamite. So here these poor kids are helping senior cut these sticks of dynamite, opening them up and dumping the contents out. Now this dynamite is unigel

dynamite, which is a nitroglycerin-based gelatin. One tiny flaskful of this yellow oily liquid contains enough power to blow this laboratory off the planet. Nitroglycerin. Nitroglycerin is very, very conducive to giving you one hell of a headache. And so here these two boys are all day long cutting this out, and they all had tremendous headaches from this odor. It wasn't easy to say no to Big John. I didn't want to really shatter his dreams, and this brought him some kind of happiness. So as the thing progressively was built and I was getting closer and closer,

then I kind of was getting cold feet, and I was really realizing that he was serious. It's kind of crazy to hear his son say he didn't want to shatter his dad's dreams. Yeah, I mean, that's kind of a wild thought. But he and his brother, Jimmy, did try to draw a line by saying they wouldn't help Big John when it came time to deliver the bomb. But there were others who did. Yep.

Burgess tempted two of his former landscaping employees with, of course, a promise of a payout. They threw on the coveralls, they loaded the explosive copy machine into the van, and headed to the casino. They all rolled over to Tahoe in the white van. Yep, and of course, Big John demanded to use John Jr.'s van to deliver the monster thousand pound weapon. So later on, when law enforcement came knocking, Big John said, I don't know what you're talking about. That's my son's van. Pivotal point in my perception of him.

I mean, you know, here he is selling me out. You know, I'm like, I call him up and I go, what are you doing? Why these guys are here? Why? And he just said, you know, come to the house. We'll make up a story why your van was up in the Tahoe area. We, I go out to his house and me and my brother sit down and we concoct the story that I'm up there

looking for a place to grow marijuana, which doesn't make much sense. Former special agent Jahnke circled back to John Jr., and he stuck to his weed story. He lied to us, and lying to the federal grand jury is a felony. So in the process, shortly afterwards, a bench warrant is issued by a federal judge. I went back down to Fresno with this bench warrant in hand, basically. From there, younger brother Jimmy was arrested. And with the threat of federal charges against him,

they folded and agreed to testify against their dad. So then we took him back to their separate rooms. Oh, I think we spent about two days with him. When they finally realized that it was their time to do the right thing and to tell us what happened, it was like turning on the spigot. You couldn't shut them up. And, of course, we didn't want to shut them up. There were times when both those boys were crying their hearts out

and shedding real tears. It makes sense letting go like that, after holding on to so many painful secrets growing up. Burgess was charged nearly a year after Harvey's exploded, and surprisingly, he wasn't laying low. John Jr. said that when his dad was finally caught, he was taking steps to build another bomb. Apparently, he took my brother's truck one night without telling him and went up and stole another four or five hundred pounds of dynamite.

So he buried it. So the FBI is looking into him, investigating him, kind of watching him, and he goes up and steals more dynamite. Yeah, that's just how arrogant he was. Talk about a menace to society. The Burgess boys had to face Big John one more time. Once the trial began, he represented himself and cross-examined both sons. That's insane. To think that they had to testify against their father in five or six pre-trial hearings, and their father would grill them and grill them, and those boys hung in there and told the truth.

Burgess was convicted of federal extortion and bombing charges and sentenced to life in prison without parole. Journalist Jim Sloan remembers interviewing Burgess while he was locked up. He had a hawk-like presence about him. Like he had, his eyes were very focused on you. He was sizing you up immediately. And as I think back on it now, I think, well, he's just trying to figure out, okay, how do I use this person?

Sloan says that Burgess was trying to prove that casino owner Harvey Gross put him up to the bombing. He claimed that he was the fall guy in the larger scheme cooked up to remodel his property and collect insurance. It was interesting to meet him because by that point he was this larger than life figure. But he was so immersed in this conspiracy theory that he had and he was just, he was locked on it. He wouldn't veer from it. Harvey Gross and John Burgess knew each other, but none of the inside job allegations proved to be true. Burgess died of liver cancer at the Southern Nevada Correctional Center 16 years and one day after the bombing. John Jr. did his best to get over being named

after a man who masterminded this dangerous crime. He self-published a book about Harvey's bombing and even moved to Nicaragua in support of his dream of making surfboards. In spite of his genuine attempts to start over, in 2018, John Jr. took his own life. Former Special Agent John Key is now retired and lives on a ranch in northwestern Nevada. He and the youngest Burgess son remain close. I got to see Jimmy Burgess once again fairly lately, and it was just great to see him and see how well he's done and re-establish that friendship. I gotta say, it's a pretty rare

breed of law enforcement to stay in touch with the son of a perp you collared, but that's just who he is. Jahnke will forever be tied to this case, and he's okay with that. One of the few FBI agents I know that can still talk about or still have people interested in a case that's 42 years old. So to have had the biggest and most complicated bomb in your pedigree, it was a great thing. Believe it or not, Harvey's bomb is still studied today in both FBI and military training courses. And even with all the things that they know now and the massive advancements in technology for disarming a bomb, Bill Jahnke says if encountered today, it's still unclear if they'd be able to disarm it.

It's crazy to think about. You know what's also crazy to think about? What? The Coen brothers making Casino on half the budget. Or Fargo made by Scorsese. Mm. Yeah, I'd watch both of those, actually. If you or someone you know needs support, go to apple.com slash here to help for resources.

On the next episode, a tale of two lovers, a dograte, and A Los Lonely Boys Classic Hit. You know, I think any one of us is capable of anything under the right circumstances. That's next week on Scam Town. Scam Town is an Apple original podcast produced by Fun Meter. New episodes come out each Monday. If you want to check out a few extras from our show, you can find us at fun meter official on Instagram. The show is hosted and executive produced by us. I'm Brian Lazarte and I'm James Lee Hernandez. Kathleen Horan produced this episode. Clarissa Sosin was our researcher. Our senior producer is Christopher Olin.

Our co-executive producers are Shannon Pence, Nicole Laufer, and Matt Kay. The show was edited and sound designed by Jude Brewer. Final mixing by Ben Freer from Fiddle Leaf Sound. Music for the podcast was composed by James Newberry. Additional music by Five Alarm. Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts.