Saturday, August 27, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

JANE ANN MORRISON: TV special on 1980 bombing puts focus on old memories, new attitudes

The legend of Jerry Doherty began 25 years ago today.

The FBI agent was standing at the command post outside Harvey's Wagon Wheel, a Lake Tahoe hotel-casino, which had received an extortion letter. Unless $3 million was paid, a bomb would explode.

A piece of office equipment was rolled into the hotel's executive offices about 5 a.m. the day before. Sitting on top was an extortion letter, claiming the equipment contained a bomb. By the next day, authorities decided to try to defuse it.

As they were counting down from 10, when the count hit 3, Doherty, a veteran lawman who had been at about 100 bomb scares, proclaimed to the other law enforcement types around him, "If that's a real bomb, I'll kiss everybody's ass in Lake Tahoe."

Just as he said "Tahoe" the bomb went off, blowing a five-story hole through the Stateline hotel, which had been evacuated. No one was injured.

"It was the most terrifying sound I've ever heard," Doherty remembers 25 years later. "You could look through the Nevada side and see California. É It sucked all the air out of you."

Nowadays, it would be assumed that it was an act of terrorism designed to harm Nevada's gambling-driven economy. In reality, the bomb was the work of a disgruntled gambler, John Birges Sr., who told a complicated tale of why he did it, a tale that involved a nymphomaniac wife and supposed threats from a man named "Charlie."

Although I covered his federal court trial in October 1982, I hadn't thought of Birges or the bombing until Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Bill Jansen told me that the A&E channel is airing a television special on the Harvey's bombing on Sept. 17.

Jansen, who was interviewed for the program, was the spokesman for the FBI then, and it was the power of the blast that stuck in his mind. "It was unbelievable. The whole front end of Harvey's was blown out into the streets. It was a most complex and sophisticated bomb.

"I can remember after the detonation, a lemon meringue pie was in the center of Harvey's parking lot, not even touched. It blew out of the bakery," Jansen said. (Doherty remembered it as an apple pie, but the unscathed pie was one of his vivid memories, too.)

Jansen recalled that, earlier in the day, owner Harvey Gross had met with law enforcement officers and said, "Gentlemen, I don't care what it takes, but I want the road open by 6 o'clock. You've got my permission to do whatever it takes." Gross was aware that it was the last big weekend of the summer, and he didn't want Highway 50 blocked so that tourists couldn't reach their destinations.

"At 4 p.m., the bomb blew, and at 6 o'clock that night, one lane was open," Jansen said.

It took nearly a year to capture mastermind Birges. As is often the case, someone squealed. By the time of the trial, his two sons, who had helped him, had become witnesses for the prosecution.

Birges, then 61, took the stand and in excruciating detail claimed that a man named Charlie told him to bomb the hotel or he would make him an invalid.

Birges was a gambler, a Hungarian who owned a landscaping business in Fresno, Calif., and had lost as much as $750,000 at Harvey's.

He implied that Gross was behind the actions of Charlie because the aging hotel was rebuilt with the insurance money after the bombing.

Of course, all this was his dead wife's fault.

Birges said his nympho wife started him on the path to compulsive gambling by giving him $2,000 to get him out of the house so that she could have sex with other men.

The jury didn't buy it.

Birges was convicted and died in prison.

Soon after the bombing, T-shirts declaring "I had a Blast at Harvey's" were sold.

Today's bombings, driven by religious and political hatred, aren't taken so lightly. In these treacherous times, Jerry Doherty, now retired, might not be so quick to assume that a bomb threat is a fake or so quick to make his legendary offer to pucker up.

Jane Ann Morrison's column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. E-mail her at jane@reviewjournal.com or call 383-0275.