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00:02It's something I wrestle with still to this day.
00:07Why I went along with something that crazy.
00:10There's a big bomb scare on the south shore of Lake Tahoe.
00:14Two men posing as computer technicians trundled a box
00:17covered with blankets lettered IBM into a casino yesterday
00:21and left the box there.
00:23This thing was a massive device.
00:26That is a building killer.
00:29The whole idea was incredible.
00:32We all knew exactly what we were supposed to do.
00:34I kept it secret. I didn't tell anybody.
00:40You start doing crazy things to get attention.
00:45With the suspected bomb, a note demanding three million dollars.
00:49Three million dollars to tell how to disarm the bomb.
00:51Now the search is on for the criminals who planted it.
00:54Who are we dealing with?
00:55And why is this casino across the street?
00:59The richest gambling casino in the world.
01:03I was betting against them ever getting that money.
01:08Such a far-fetched scheme.
01:12You would never think anybody would pull that off.
01:18The nightmare was just beginning.
01:21There was no way out.
01:36Tahoe was a relatively small town.
01:42Kind of a wide-open atmosphere.
01:45I'm not saying, you know, there were gunfights.
01:47But you didn't have to worry about restrictions, regulations.
01:53It was an atmosphere that was related to fun.
01:57It takes a lot to drag people away from the gambling tables of Stateline, Nevada,
02:01on the shores of Lake Tahoe, even when they're told a bomb could go off.
02:06A strange-looking device, thought at first to be a computer,
02:09was found in Harvey's Hotel Casino, along with a list of demands.
02:13Officials face two questions.
02:15Is it really a bomb?
02:16And if it is, what do they do with it?
02:24On August 26th of 1980, I got a call from the sheriff's office.
02:31I arrived at Harvey's Casino, where I was met by Captain Danny Daniels,
02:37who was the bomb squad commander.
02:42I was at home.
02:43My wife and daughter were going to go on a camping trip.
02:46The phone rang, and they said that there's a device that they found at Harvey's.
02:51I threw as much stuff out of the truck as I could and drove over there.
02:55When the alarm goes off, you're called, that's what you do.
02:58I thought, it'll be in a bag, it'll be in a suitcase, it'll be relatively easy.
03:03And then we walked into the second floor, and it was huge.
03:11We didn't know if it was a real explosive device or not when we initially looked at it.
03:17I had never seen anything so sinister in my life.
03:20It was absolutely frightening.
03:23But the first thing that runs through your mind is that if this container is full of explosives,
03:29you know, we're in trouble.
03:31According to police officials here, they tell us that the bomb apparently is near that particular window
03:37right up there within 10 or 20 feet of it from what we've been told here.
03:42Along with the suspected bomb, a note which said the box held 1,000 sticks of dynamite, wired and extremely
03:49sensitive.
03:51Tahoe was a thriving area with a lot of people, and there were thousands of vacations in that casino.
04:00I was sound asleep at 8.30, and they came through pounding at the doors, and they said that they
04:04had a security problem.
04:05They had blocked all the streets, wondering what was going on.
04:09We left everything else there, and we got out of the hotel.
04:13One of the things I'm asked often is how much damage can an explosive do?
04:18How many people can it kill?
04:191,000 pounds in an open field, not going to do much.
04:221,000 pounds in a building, you can devastate a portion of a city.
04:28So getting those casinos closed and getting the people out of there was terribly important.
04:34Even though the hotel was evacuated, people were trying to get in.
04:38Serious police officers weren't kidding when they kept pushing back crowds.
04:42About a dozen buses were sent in to clear the area, and hotels along the strip were boarding up.
04:48In a town where people know more than a little about odds, no one is taking any chances.
04:56Once the building was secured, we got everyone out of there except for the squad,
05:00and we started setting up photographing the thing and trying to document as much as we could.
05:06So what you're trying to do is you've got a metal box of mystery,
05:09and you want to know what's inside that metal box.
05:12So the tools were limited.
05:14You have a stethoscope, you've got some x-rays.
05:16You're not going to start poking around and flipping switches.
05:18That would not be, you know, well advised.
05:21So then we started setting up to x-ray this thing,
05:26and we were able to identify some of the contents in the top box.
05:29We could see wires coming from the top box going down to the bottom box.
05:35Looking at the x-rays, ultimately we determined that this was the real thing.
05:42Holy shit, this is real.
05:44That's a bomb.
05:47Demolitions experts have been working to decide just how they can best disarm the device,
05:51which they say is definitely a bomb.
05:55The best possible situation in working with bombs is distance.
06:00You want to move the device.
06:03You know, we had dealt with smaller devices and been successful.
06:07But, you know, when I saw the size of it and the switches and everything
06:10and the fact that there were bullseye bubbling levels on every corner.
06:15We realized right then that we were not going to move this device.
06:20And going through my head is the fact that I got to find out who put it there.
06:25And why Lake Tahoe?
06:35This was a felt cover that was on one of the gaming tables inside of Harvey's.
06:41I found this on eBay, which is where I get a lot of my rare collectibles.
06:47I've also collected assorted news photos and clippings.
06:52This is Harvey Gross, the owner of the casino.
06:57A one-time butcher, Harvey Gross got his start at Lake Tahoe in 1946
07:01with a roadside cafe where his wife did the cooking.
07:05Harvey expanded it over the next several years into Harvey's Wagon Wheel Saloon.
07:10And in 1963, he completed an 11-story hotel tower,
07:15which was the tallest hotel tower at the time in Lake Tahoe.
07:19Well, we feel that the future is tremendous up here.
07:22There's ample room for Gross for the next 20 years is tremendous.
07:26As opposed to the stereotype of mobsters running casinos,
07:30Harvey brought legitimacy to the casino business in Lake Tahoe.
07:38It's a picture of my grandparents, Harvey and Llewellyn Gross.
07:45Harvey Gross in his office.
07:47Pretty chipper.
07:49As long as you weren't making his day a bad day, you were probably okay.
07:53But, yeah, kind of brings back a lot of memories, you know,
07:58just all the family that was involved in this business over the years.
08:04And there was competition.
08:06Always was competition.
08:08Everyone knows who the big men are here.
08:11It's an open secret that no love is lost between the owner of Harrah's Club
08:16and the proprietor of Harvey's Wagon Wheel.
08:19Bill Harrah was direct competition with my grandfather.
08:24They were directly across the street.
08:27They would compete toe-to-toe for customers,
08:30but we had no idea who would do something like this.
08:35There was a lot of unknowns at the time and a lot of fear.
08:44Harvey's casino has been empty since an object believed to be a bomb
08:48was delivered in a photocopier box.
08:49An extortion note said it is a powerful, sensitive device.
08:55This was the ransom note that was found with the bomb.
08:59Stern warning to the management and bomb squad.
09:02Do not move or tilt this bomb.
09:05Don't try to flood or gas the bomb.
09:07There is a float switch and an atmospheric pressure switch.
09:10Both are attached to detonators.
09:12Do not try to take it apart.
09:14The flathead screws are also attached to triggers
09:17and as much as one-quarter to three-quarters of a turn
09:20will cause an explosion.
09:22The letter said it had eight different ways for it to go off.
09:26So that put it in a category that I certainly had never seen
09:30and that nobody had ever seen.
09:33All the usual techniques went out the window.
09:36So that was scary.
09:48Is there some reason to believe that they had some training in electronics
09:52because of the sophistication of the device?
09:54Absolutely.
09:55The bomb experts told us that this device was the most sophisticated,
10:01homemade bombing device they have ever experienced and ever witnessed.
10:04I also had the issue of the extortion payment.
10:09He wanted $3 million in a helicopter.
10:13He said we had 24 hours to deliver that ransom.
10:18The bomb had been delivered around 5 o'clock in the morning of the 26th.
10:23And so that was one of the reasons we had to move this along.
10:27And still we didn't have a motive other than a ransom.
10:35Are we dealing with just some crank or are we dealing with somebody that's very serious?
10:40Somebody that wants to cause a large loss of life?
10:43You've got to establish the means, motive and the opportunity in order to come up with a suspect.
10:53New Soviet crisis.
10:55And from our desk in Washington, Frank Reynolds.
10:58In Straight Line, Nevada on the south shore of Lake Tahoe,
11:01there is a powerful bomb in one of the major gambling casinos there.
11:05And police and demolition experts are preparing to deal with it.
11:08Here is a report from Tom Schell.
11:12I can distinctly recall seeing on the news that the bomb got into Harvey's.
11:19And I immediately called my brother and I said,
11:21we're screwed. What are we going to do with it?
11:24The authorities have appealed to the extortionists to make contact immediately
11:27so they can avoid a potentially disastrous explosion.
11:32There it was on TV. Top news story of the day.
11:36He had actually made it happen.
11:38I know who was responsible for all of this
11:41because my brother and I were forced to help him.
11:54I don't even know why I still have this album or how I wound up with it,
11:58but it's just stuck around through all the moves and all the years.
12:03The John Burgess family.
12:07The picture of...
12:08Is that grandma?
12:09That's grandma.
12:11She has kind of my hair.
12:13We all kind of look like each other.
12:15Like you look like your dad. I look like you.
12:17I got your nose.
12:19I hope you can get my nose.
12:22This is just all articles about the court trial and the way it went.
12:29And this went on for years.
12:31You know, I couldn't get on with my life until all this was over.
12:35Are you guys ever in these?
12:37Yeah, well that's a picture of my brother, but it says my name underneath.
12:40And then they tried to put a love-hate relationship between father and son,
12:44so they started doing that.
12:44A love-hate relationship?
12:46I guess, yeah.
12:46Didn't y'all just not like him?
12:48Well, it's a weird deal.
12:49He's your parent.
12:50No matter how bad your parent is,
12:52it's still your parent.
12:55What do you know about your dad's involvement in all of that and the bombing?
12:59Not much.
13:00I mean, he doesn't like to talk about it.
13:03Sometimes he will.
13:04I don't think he, like, helped build the bomb.
13:08Because he would have told me if he did, but did you help build the bomb?
13:14We haven't really had an in-depth discussion on the mechanics of what I was involved in
13:20and what I wasn't involved in.
13:26Hey, B Mark.
13:33A dad should be, you know, your guidance.
13:39And take care and giving you an environment where you can thrive.
13:44And he had that opportunity. He was a successful millionaire.
13:49It all came crashing down for him.
13:51And he was going to get even.
13:55If you wronged him, he extricated revenge.
13:59He did it with people that worked for him, that worked with him.
14:03His ex-wife.
14:05There was never any good outcome dealing with Big John.
14:15You know, I was 18 at the time.
14:18He came home from work one day and my dad said, I got to talk to you.
14:22And he was broke and lost all his money.
14:27He just said, I'm going to build a bomb and bomb Harvey's and get my money back.
14:36It was like a joke.
14:38You would never think anybody, let alone your father talking to you,
14:42could even have a plan to make that succeed.
14:45He says, I've got to keep it a secret.
14:48So I need you and your brother to help me with this.
14:51And you need to call your brother and ask him.
15:02My name is Kelly Cooper and I was John Jr.'s girlfriend.
15:07I was only 14 when I met him at Little Okie's, which is a motocross place.
15:18You know, John and Jim and all the guys would be racing motorcycles.
15:22And all of us girls would be yelling and having a good time.
15:28I would say it was love at first sight for both of us, I think.
15:32But John Jr. was not a good excellence on me.
15:36He dropped out of school and had his own place.
15:39He drove a van, which is also a parent's nightmare.
15:43If you can think about that.
15:44And well, you know, crazy things happen in vans.
15:53But then Jim was kind of known as the goody two-shoe kind of guy.
15:59I've known Jimmy since 1973.
16:02He's like my adopted little brother.
16:04He was just a naturally gifted rider.
16:08He had the potential to be really good.
16:12I got sponsored on my motocross racing and was doing well there.
16:16So I was a little bit better than my brother.
16:18And it was a big issue.
16:20You know, he talked about his brother some, but they were completely different worlds.
16:25Little John did drugs, that kind of stuff.
16:27And Jimmy was not that way at all.
16:39Your brother wrote a book. Can you tell us about that book?
16:43Did I? I skimmed through that book.
16:47I probably didn't read all of it because with my brothers and my relationship, it was always a lot of
16:56fighting.
16:59I think that is one of the best places to get his voice since he's no longer here.
17:06And so I was in a rendezvous place about an hour away from my brother and my dad.
17:10So when the sun came up, I decided to just go back and see what happened.
17:15So on the way back, I stopped over here.
17:29I will try to recreate to the best of my memory what would consume three and a half years of
17:35my life.
17:37I was in the kitchen fixing breakfast for me and Kelly on a Saturday morning.
17:42Sitting on the porch was the brother I'd avoided since the day I moved out of Big John's house three
17:48years before.
17:51When Jim came to his apartment that first day, he walked in, I was there.
17:55Jim told John Jr. what their dad's big plan was.
18:00Jim said, he says he's going to blow up Harvey's Casino.
18:04I said, you'll go to prison for the rest of your life. Are you kidding?
18:07For your dad, who you don't even like.
18:10Yes, it was definitely a shock.
18:14The man who couldn't wait to throw me out of his house.
18:17Now what's my help?
18:26My dad was born in Hungary, and as kids he told us, he was a double agent for the CIA.
18:32He said that when the Nazis invaded Hungary, he was forced to join the German Luftwaffe and was trained as
18:38a pilot.
18:39He scored 13 kills before his plane was shot down, and he found himself in a Russian prison camp.
18:45Which I find plausible, because he did have all the prison tattoos from the Gulag.
18:49As kids, what we had heard is that his wife or a group of people used a bomb and blew
18:55up the prison wall to get him out of prison.
18:59I mean, it was a great story to hear as a kid, but it also made you like, oh my
19:02gosh, this guy's kind of spooky.
19:06So, you hear your dad tell you these stories, you automatically, you know, believe it, but I couldn't tell you
19:11one way or another for sure.
19:13He managed to find his way to America with his wife, Elizabeth.
19:17And Clovis, California, became their home.
19:20They found jobs, they learned the language, they had two sons.
19:24Within a few years, Big John had his own landscaping business.
19:27And I think by 1966, he was one of the biggest contractors in California.
19:32It was a multi-million dollar company then, in the 60s, and then they bought a restaurant.
19:38My parents were living the American dream.
19:41My mother was the bookkeeper and he did the work.
19:45From the outside, they were a success story in Fresno.
19:48But nobody knew how bad it was for the kids, the boys.
19:54His problems, in my mind, started to manifest when he started having marital problems with my mom.
20:02He started drinking, and at some point, he started gambling.
20:19When Big John went to Harvey's, he was a very high roller.
20:23He was doing $10,000 a hand playing two hands in blackjack.
20:28In rolling that kind of money, he attracted a lot of attention from casino management, from Harvey.
20:38He was really treated like royalty.
20:40I mean, to him, it was intoxicating.
20:44And he wound up just being there all the time.
21:04Big John became Harvey's friend as he spent into the millions inside Harvey's Casino.
21:11And he became addicted to his status as much as he was addicted to the gambling.
21:16And he just kept losing.
21:21He lost more than he wanted at the tables until he found himself deeply in debt.
21:26He lost his landscaping business and his restaurant due to his addiction at the blackjack table.
21:33He borrowed more and more money from Harvey in order to feed his addiction.
21:39It got to a point where he was losing and not paying the markers.
21:48And he was no longer welcome there.
21:53His obsession had cost him almost everything he owned.
21:56He was so deranged that he actually thought the only way that he would lose would be somebody had to
22:04cheat him.
22:05So he was going to build that bomb and get this $3 million that he felt was stolen from him.
22:12He was so했던, and Iizжd, but that he would make it a loss of $3 million.
22:28And Iizd, but that's the only way it would make a difference.
22:28Kim, Kim, Kim, Kim, Kim.
22:28Where were we headed?
22:30Where were we headed?
22:31We're headed to my childhood home where the infamous bomb was constructed.
22:39I haven't even seen pictures of it,
22:41so I have no idea what it looks like.
22:42I mean, you didn't help build the bomb, right?
22:44Or did you?
22:46No, I didn't. I wouldn't know what to build.
22:49But the day it came to fill it full of dynamite,
22:51we helped him do that.
22:54You know, Jim's lived here for his whole life,
22:57and he's never taken the kids by.
23:00Maybe they've done a drive-by,
23:01but they don't know a lot about the story
23:04because it just takes him back to places
23:07that are uncomfortable for him.
23:09Going over the past with my kids,
23:13they have no idea.
23:14We never talked about it, ever.
23:16But my youngest daughter, Hope,
23:19is the one who's most curious about it.
23:24So I'm trying to open up more,
23:28to have her wind up different than me.
23:37Well, I used to live here years ago.
23:39I grew up here.
23:41You are a burgess.
23:42Yes.
23:43No shit.
23:44No.
23:46Sorry about that.
23:47Is there any chance that we can just come in
23:50and look around?
23:50Oh, yeah.
23:51He's my husband's got all kinds of stuff in there.
23:54But it's still original.
24:00Light still.
24:02Yeah, there you go.
24:04Wow.
24:07That car is so cool.
24:16Well, this is...
24:18I remember when he built this shop.
24:19You know, he built the poles
24:21and welded them all together,
24:22and this is all self-tied.
24:25So?
24:30This is where he built a bomb.
24:33In here.
24:34In here.
24:37In here.
24:38In that era in time,
24:40obedience to your parents was a lot different
24:43than what it is now, you know?
24:47Mm-hmm.
24:48I mean, if you talk back, you got beat.
24:50So it's like...
24:53It's just a different world now.
24:55So...
25:01I don't want to sound like this is something
25:04that I was enthusiastic about
25:05and wanted to do.
25:07It was something that we were trained to say yes,
25:10so we said yes.
25:13And so he just started evolving from that point forward,
25:18mainly with trying to procure the dynamite.
25:21And it's not easy to find 1,000 pounds of dynamite.
25:27In the High Sierra, a new season begins
25:30and construction continues on a massive undertaking,
25:34the Helms Pump Storage Project.
25:37At that time, Garnet Construction Company
25:40was in the beginning stages of constructing the Helms hydroelectric plant.
25:49Tony, who was a friend, had stopped by to visit Jim.
25:53He had just started working at Granite Construction.
25:55And in the conversation, Tony had unknowingly given Big John
26:00all the information he needed to know about the existence
26:03and the location of the dynamite.
26:05And that next day, my brother came over
26:07and Big John described the plan he concocted.
26:11I couldn't help thinking how nice Big John could be
26:15when he wanted something.
26:17There was one or two in the morning, late night.
26:22We drove my brother's van up there.
26:25There was a little bit of activity a few hundred yards away.
26:29This job set was working 24 hours.
26:31So we waited until it calmed down a little bit.
26:36My dad had decided that he's going to use this backpack torch.
26:40I thought it was kind of risky,
26:42you're torching a lock off the dynamite locker, but...
26:49I got in the locker and proceeded to empty the contents
26:53of the locker and the van.
26:56I was in such fear thinking at any moment,
26:58this is going to blow up.
27:01So it was just terrifying the whole time.
27:10The Fresno Bee ran an article telling of the dynamite theft.
27:13I went, oh my gosh, they did it.
27:17They did it.
27:18I remember saying that to myself.
27:19They did it.
27:20I didn't tell anybody.
27:24Big John took about four months
27:26to fabricate and complete the bomb.
27:29I heard from Big John again.
27:31He said, ready for your help.
27:32Can you come to the house tomorrow?
27:35Showed me some drawings he had made.
27:37The whole idea was incredible.
27:40A very unique aspect of this device
27:42that someone is cogitating and saying,
27:44all right, what can the police do
27:46to try to take this thing out?
27:49Big John said, what could we use to prevent it
27:51from being flooded or foamed to short out the wiring?
27:53We stood there silently concentrating on the problem.
27:57Suddenly my dad's eyes widened.
27:59So what we have here is our reproduction of wheel bomb.
28:03And in the FBI, we have a unit that does nothing but create courtroom exhibits.
28:09In case you were thinking of flooding this, you have this toilet float.
28:13And you can see in the very center, there's a piece of plastic, white plastic.
28:17As it rises, it comes up into this tube.
28:19And when those two screws make contact, you complete a switch and the bomb goes off.
28:26The motion detector was my idea.
28:28Back in the 1980s, automotive alarms were really simple.
28:32If you shook the car, it would go off.
28:34And so we kind of made a homemade version of that.
28:38At the very center of this device, you can see what we call a trembler.
28:41You can see this ball bearing move in there.
28:45And what makes contact, it could set off the bomb.
28:48I bid John's eyes lit up.
28:49I could see that he was noticeably impressed.
28:53As this went along, I mean, I saw exactly how I was doing it.
28:57It had a seven-day irrigation timer.
29:00Pressure switches on the top lid.
29:02And the bomb was double-walled, so if you attempted to drill through it,
29:07it would complete the circuit and detonate.
29:11At that moment, I felt a connection with my father that, until this night, had never existed.
29:17And I found myself unexpectedly caught up in the thrill of the adventure.
29:23I mean, it was all very simple, but that was the genius of it.
29:40As the bomb got closer to completion, he got his girlfriend Joan, a parole officer, to make a gray cover
29:49for this thing.
29:49With homemade, cut-out letters that said IBM on it.
29:54And she helped him write the letter, because his broken English could give away that he was a foreigner.
29:59I'm sure she knew things about the law or things of police procedure or investigative procedures.
30:06I couldn't understand how a Fresno County probation officer could participate in an extortion attempt.
30:11She must have been under the same spell as Jim and me.
30:15The farther along it went, we still just kept on rationalizing it that this isn't going to happen, this is
30:23going to happen.
30:24The thoughts rolled through my head, what the hell am I doing?
30:29I'm helping a man who is definitely insane.
30:37It's just like a whirlpool you get stuck in and you can't get out.
30:52My dad's idea of discipline was just physical abuse, you know, physically beating you.
31:00And it was just a common occurrence.
31:06You know, I lost teeth when he punched me in the mouth for having my elbow on the table.
31:11Beat with a belt, beat with a stick, beat with a shovel.
31:15And his idea, it made you tough, you know, tough for the world.
31:31Yeah, John Jr. and Jim, they do the motocross racing together.
31:35But other than that, they didn't hang out with one another or anything like that.
31:40My brother and me didn't have a close relationship ever.
31:44And that was by design.
31:46For my father, it was like raising two pit bulls.
31:50You know, they might have been from the same litter, but they're trained to fight each other.
31:57But I think the bomb, in a weird way, brought them together.
32:02Because they knew what they were doing was absolutely wrong.
32:09The more a reality it was becoming, me and my brother were trying to figure out an exit strategy onto
32:15this.
32:16This bomb is going to either kill me, kill everybody, kill somebody, or I'm going to get caught rolling this
32:24thing in the front door.
32:32We ended up going through a trial loading of the bomb into the van.
32:40The steel was a quarter inch plate, probably weighed, you know, twelve, thirteen hundred pounds, at least.
32:48Jim held one wheel while I held the other, making sure they stayed in place.
32:54Before I knew what was happening, my fingers were under the wheel of the bomb.
33:00Big John said nothing.
33:02He was too busy calculating what had gone wrong.
33:05It hit me, uh, I had found a legitimate exit out of this debacle.
33:09And at that point, my brother, he says, F this.
33:12Jim finally spoke up.
33:14I won't do it, if John won't.
33:19He says, if I can get somebody else to push it in, will you pick up the money?
33:23Will you commit to doing the ransom?
33:25Sure, I'll pick up the money with you.
33:28My brother goes, sure, you know, it's never going to happen anyway, so we're in the clear.
33:37Well, we found out later that after we backed out, Big John hired two guys who used to work at
33:42his landscape business.
33:43And he promised them a hundred grand apiece to roll this thing in the front.
33:48Whether he told them that was a bomb or not, I got no clue.
33:53I mean, they went along with it, no problem.
33:57They were dressed up in those, you know, all the one suits with the zip up.
34:01And they had their little names on them, just like they would be.
34:04I guess they just looked the part.
34:11This thing was so heavy, and the carpet there was making it very difficult to push it.
34:15So they called security to help them push, physically push this thing into the elevator.
34:20Wait, security helped push it?
34:21Yeah, security, they had to call security to help them push it.
34:24I mean, it's a heave-ho thing, you know.
34:28Then they took it up to the second floor where all the offices were.
34:36Big John began to feel the exhilaration of what would be one of the most impressive hands ever dealt him.
34:46This was his moment.
34:52The loss of his businesses, all the money being gone, was for a moment completely forgotten.
35:01He knew there would be panic and mass evacuations.
35:05Harvey would have no choice but to pay the three million.
35:10He felt alive again.
35:11His pride reborn.
35:16At that time there was three news channels, and it was on all of them.
35:19There was a report from Tom Schell.
35:21Not just national news but worldwide as well.
35:25As the evacuation progressed, authorities said they have not heard from the extortionist since they found a three page note
35:30that demands a three million dollar payment in exchange for instructions on how to disarm the bomb.
35:35The authorities have appealed to the extortionist to make contact immediately so they can avoid a potentially disastrous explosion.
35:43I was in shock.
35:46Never at any time did I think my father could pull this off.
35:51He had actually made it happen.
35:57At that point, we still didn't have enough information on what was going on inside that device.
36:03And he has alluded to a time frame.
36:06You know, if I don't receive my money in 24 hours, then, you know, don't contact me.
36:11We won't contact you. It's going to, you know, blow up.
36:15That's our time limit is 24 hours because he's not going to blow it up before he gets his money.
36:21So he has to give us 24 hours.
36:23But after that, it's anybody's guess.
36:28We knew that he wanted three million dollars in a helicopter and our best shot was to catch these people
36:36at the time they picked up the money.
36:38That was the weak part. They had to appear or send somebody.
36:42We had done this over the years many times.
36:46Never once did the criminal get the money and get away with it.
36:57On hindsight, in looking at this, I probably should have put the bomb in because the plan to get the
37:03money was such a harebrained scheme that you're more likely to get caught there or die.
37:10A time of tension and danger is moving toward a conclusion.
37:13Has there been any communication between yourself and the person who said that?
37:15No, there hasn't.
37:16It was time for me to keep my word.
37:18There is a possibility of an explosion in the state line area.
37:22Detonating that thing is the absolute last choice.
37:30The nightmare was just beginning and there was no way out.
37:50Behind the blue lights, the tough reality of policing Northern Ireland.
37:54Stephen Nolan on the streets with appealers.
37:57PSNI for real.
37:58Watch on BBC iPlayer.
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