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00:05This is an oldie but a goodie back here.
00:11Wow.
00:12That is my dad, my brother, and myself.
00:16That portrays a father and two sons that look happy
00:21and look like they're a family.
00:25There's trophies here for football, basketball, car racing.
00:32Whatever choice I made in my life were based on
00:36trying to get approval or to be loved.
00:40But you're brainwashed.
00:43You could never fill that void.
00:47Never.
00:48He would continually say that he regretted having kids,
00:52that were worthless, and so you start doing crazy things
00:57to get attention.
00:59In straight line Nevada, a time of tension and danger
01:02is moving toward a conclusion.
01:03Officials say the bomb was planted in an extortion attempt.
01:06Vases are pressed against the glass windows,
01:09awaiting the latest development in this bizarre case.
01:12A family portrait.
01:15It's propaganda.
01:18It's not even close to being remotely true.
02:01This is normally a bustling gambling resort,
02:04but today the place was virtually deserted.
02:06A device believed to be a bomb was discovered
02:09at this hotel yesterday morning.
02:12Has there been any communication between yourself and the person
02:14who said that?
02:14No, there hasn't.
02:15Are you attempting to reach him or her or whoever they are?
02:18I don't know how we would attempt to reach them
02:19when we're available and they can reach us.
02:23The bomb got into Harvey's.
02:24Can you believe this shit?
02:25You know, I probably should have put the bomb in
02:28because the plan to get the money was such a harebrained scheme
02:31that you're more likely to get caught there or die.
02:37Big John had managed to draw on Jim, me and his girlfriend,
02:40and now he had us all neatly wrapped around his little finger.
02:44His plan to pick up the three million sounded like an episode
02:47of Mission Impossible.
02:49He went over the route from Fresno to Sacramento thoroughly
02:53as if he had mapped out every inch of the course we were to take.
02:59And the plan was my brother would drop me and my father off
03:02at the first drop site.
03:06And he would continue on and then pull over at a payphone
03:11and make a phone call.
03:13In the ransom note, they had instructed the pilot
03:16to come alone to the Lake Tahoe airport
03:18and stand by the payphone to receive further instructions.
03:24And that instructed him to fly about 15 miles along the highway
03:29to the west of the airport until he saw a strobe light.
03:33The pilot was supposed to land in the clearing by the strobe.
03:36Big John and his son Jim would hijack the helicopter when it landed.
03:41They would fly through the canyons under radar with no lights to where I was waiting.
03:49And they would drop off the money and Jim, and they would drive with the money back down to their
03:57home in Fresno County.
04:00And then finally, Big John would fly the helicopter to the Placeville Airport.
04:07Where all the John was waiting, they'd leave the chopper and drive home.
04:12That was how it was supposed to go.
04:20For the most part, the streets belonged to the lawmen and the bomb squad tonight.
04:24For almost a two-mile stretch along Highway 50 on Casino Road, the streets were empty of people.
04:29About a dozen bomb experts were trying to figure out what to do with the suspected bomb.
04:33The extortionist still a mystery.
04:38The initial extortion letter said we had 24 hours to deliver that ransom.
04:45The bomb had been delivered around 5 o'clock in the morning of the 26th.
04:50And so, that was one of the reasons we had to move this along.
04:56That night, the bomb squad heard a whirling sound.
05:02It would stop, and then there'd be another intermittent sound.
05:08So, is that some kind of a timer that's not functioning correctly?
05:14We didn't know.
05:17So, we just hoped we would catch these people at the time they picked up the money.
05:25The helicopter has to be filled up with gas.
05:28Do not come armed with any weapon.
05:30Do not bring a shotgun rider.
05:32You are to have no communication with anyone after you reach the airport.
05:37In these extortions, the bomber always has rules.
05:41And the rules are meant to protect him.
05:44But we don't follow those rules.
05:47We're not there to protect him.
05:48We're there to protect our own people.
06:04There will be no extension or renegotiation.
06:08Demands are firm regardless.
06:10The transaction has to take place within 24 hours.
06:14If you do not comply, we will not contact you again.
06:23Did you read the letter as soon as you got there?
06:26Yeah, I think I walked by and picked up a copy of it.
06:31Instructions for delivery.
06:32The money is to be delivered by helicopter.
06:34The pilot has to be alone and unarmed.
06:38Was the pilot alone?
06:40No, the pilot was not alone.
06:42I was in the back of the helicopter.
06:45Unarmed?
06:46I was very heavily armed.
06:50Do not try to be a hero.
06:52Arlington is full of them and they can't even smell the flowers.
06:56We don't want any trouble, but we won't run away if you bring it.
06:59Happy landing.
07:03Once we started getting closer to the time that the helicopter had to deliver the money,
07:10we had to decide what we were going to do as far as how much money we were going to
07:15pay.
07:16That was up to Harvey Gropes, who was the owner.
07:21Do you know if Big John and Harvey knew each other?
07:24He was a high roller and he did get an invitation to go down to the ranch house.
07:30And they would entertain high rollers there and then they had a hunt club down there.
07:36They would, you know, line up at the end of the day and do trap shooting until you missed
07:42and you got knocked out.
07:58Big John was helping him on the ranch, working on equipment.
08:02He basically kindled a friendship up there with him.
08:05He lost millions of dollars.
08:08He was borrowing money from Harvey and, you know, it was putting a strain on the relationship.
08:13The friendship between them dwindled until there was nothing left.
08:18His name was dropped from the list of the elite group.
08:21He's no longer invited to the high roller parties.
08:23And this world began to crumble beneath his feet.
08:34Harvey Gross was adamant that he was not going to pay a single dollar to these guys.
08:39So immediately we reconstructed a ransom package, a duffel bag full of newspaper with a thousand dollars cash inside.
08:51The helicopter pilot was instructed to be at the Lake Tahoe airport at midnight and stand by the payphone to
08:58receive further instructions.
09:06Reading the letter, I didn't think it would be a very good outcome for whoever the pilot was, regardless of
09:15how well he followed the instructions.
09:17It sounded to me like they wanted the money in the helicopter and the pilot was expendable.
09:26I was betting against them ever getting that money.
09:29And I was a part of that bet.
09:39The first drop site, we got there and started unpacking when Big John realized there was no battery to run
09:47the strobe light.
09:47So there was no way to turn this thing on.
09:50We were pushing 11 o'clock.
09:53And so at that point we had no choice but to go back to Placerville and get a battery.
09:59I was supposed to call a pilot at 1210.
10:02Time was running out.
10:04Without the battery, it all falls apart.
10:09We found the shale gas station about 10 miles from where it had to be to make the phone call.
10:14So bought the 12 volt battery and then drove up to the drop off site.
10:19And it's already late.
10:21That whole process took over an hour.
10:29My brother dropped me and Big John off.
10:32I turned on Old Fiddler Road.
10:35At that point the road became narrow, winding its way through the mountains.
10:40My headlights barely let me see a hundred yards ahead.
10:43There was no time to react.
10:56At the same time that we're waiting to hear from the bomber, the activity in the bomb squad command post
11:04has increased considerably.
11:07Bomb techs at that time were not trained up to the level to be able to even start understanding how
11:13to approach this.
11:14So they started the phone tree calling other experts.
11:17How do we address this device?
11:19And we started discussing render safe options.
11:24Some of the ideas that floated were crazy.
11:31Like one of the important concrete, you know, poor concrete all around.
11:36But, you know, is it going to move?
11:38Drilling into this thing, you know, well that was discounted right off the bat.
11:43And then one of the ideas was to freeze it.
11:46It's a use of cryogenics.
11:50Using liquid nitrogen to possibly kill any power source that was in there.
11:54But there's a float switch involved.
11:57So it just wasn't feasible.
11:59And at that point, nobody had a fail-safe method of disrupting that device.
12:06So that was scary.
12:12Startled but relieved that only the fender received any damage and not enough to render the car inoperable.
12:18Inoperable, I continued on.
12:29And then he landed.
12:30He immediately called for a gas truck.
12:32And he walked over to the nearby public phone.
12:40I was supposed to make a call and tell the helicopter where the instructions were.
12:46I kept telling myself that I was simply following the instructions I'd been given.
13:11He answered it.
13:13And he said, okay, I'm here. What do you want me to do?
13:17Disguising my voice, I replied, you will find your instructions taped beneath the table in front of you.
13:22You have three minutes to get your helicopter in the air.
13:28And they hung up.
13:38We followed the instructions.
13:40West on Highway 50.
13:43And we took off.
14:02Big John, he had spent extensive time up here trying to find clearings big enough for a helicopter land and,
14:10you know, months up here canvassing.
14:14It would be a miracle if I could find that opening, but, you know, gotta be around here somewhere.
14:26You know, it's weird how you go, you can go back in your life and there's certain instances where in
14:30your mind's eye you can see like it's happening right now, you know.
14:34It's a vivid memory and I can see that scared shitless kid.
14:40It might have been it.
14:42It might have been it.
15:04I was always searching for what I didn't have.
15:08The dynamic of the family, the approval you get from a parent when you do well, we're all missing.
15:19So when he asked us to participate in this whole scheme, you try to get away from that, but you're
15:28stuck in the web.
15:29It's just something I wrestle with still to this day on why I went along with something that crazy.
15:39This is it.
15:42You know how I remember?
15:44Those two trees right there.
15:46Those ones right next to each other.
15:48Those two parallel trees.
15:51And, uh, he would, uh, he would hide behind that knoll stationed on that hill with his .22 waiting for
15:59the helicopter.
16:06What was your task specifically assigned to you?
16:12That's a good question.
16:15I was just there to back up, I guess, you know, we had this puny little .22 caliber rifle that,
16:24you know, Big John had with him.
16:26That was going to be the safety of it all.
16:29And he felt that if he was by himself and, you know, the helicopter pilot was by himself, that he
16:35needed help to take the helicopter away from the helicopter pilot.
16:41I mean, what were you going to do to the helicopter pilot?
16:44Well, I don't know if I'm comfortable with that because, I mean, that makes, you weren't, you weren't there, so
16:51you don't know.
16:52I mean, I should, should have known better.
16:55But I just, you know, don't want to sound like this is something that I was enthusiastic about and wanted
17:01to do.
17:04He's still deflecting.
17:06Yeah, he's still, you could, his, his walls are really up.
17:12A child's love for their parents is deep.
17:17And he needed his dad's love so much.
17:20And I think he didn't want to disappoint his dad in any way.
17:25And he did what he was told.
17:27And to be, you know, frank, I think Jim tried to bury a lot of that.
17:50Any time you go into a situation where you're putting yourself, your team, or somebody in danger, you have to
17:59devise a plan ahead of time.
18:01To counter whatever threat might be encountered.
18:06That's kind of wordy, isn't it?
18:09You have to be thinking about what threats you might encounter.
18:14And does it rise to the level where you have to shoot?
18:19Every time he'd hear something he thought was a sound, he'd go turn on the strobe light just listening for
18:26plane, any kind of motor, almost desperate.
18:31If we found the strobe, the plan was for the pilot to kill the lights, I would roll out, I
18:39would try to assess the situation, and if necessary, go hunting.
18:45We didn't know it at the time, but there was going to be no attempt for the mummy.
18:49They were just going to come out and start shooting.
18:53We were screwed.
19:15So either way, it goes bad.
19:17Helicopter crashes landing, crashes taking off.
19:21The guy with the Uzi, there was...
19:26God, what a miserable night that was.
19:35It's just nothing but bad memories, man.
19:40Nothing but...
19:41It just brings it to the surface.
19:51When I talk about these things that happened with Jim, I'm picturing a picture I've seen of him and his
19:58mom in the kitchen with Johnny.
20:00And that's the little boy I see when we talk about this.
20:03I don't see my husband. I see that little boy.
20:09My mom was a great gal. I mean, she was our safe spot.
20:12My mother was a very intelligent, sharp woman.
20:17John Jr. would only share with me the good things.
20:20That his mom was very loving, very kind.
20:23You know, she could play any instrument, and she baked really good, and he has a lot of fond memories
20:29of her playing and reading.
20:32When Big John would hit the boy, she was always there trying to stop him.
20:38She was their protector, 100%.
20:41My parents being European, I always kind of felt that we were different.
20:45So I really didn't know what was happy or sad, but my parents argued a lot.
20:51My dad and my mom both drank.
20:53I developed insomnia.
20:55My mom.
20:56She would intervene in the beatings and intervene in the abuse, and putting herself in harm's way, and getting beat,
21:04too.
21:05And it just got worse and worse and worse.
21:09In 1973, they filed for divorce.
21:12And my mom moved into a trailer on the property.
21:16She wouldn't move away because she was trying to be protective of me and my brother.
21:20So she didn't move out.
21:22She passed away about a year or two years before I met John Jr.
21:28They said it was a suicide.
21:32I was 12 years old.
21:34She'd been gone three days, and I was out there in the back, and I stumbled across her body.
21:47You know, it's in my mind's eye. I can see it like it happened, you know, five minutes ago.
21:53You know, I don't really know if I've even said anything to anyone about it.
21:57When John got her ashes back, he threw them in the trash.
22:10Then I tried to go get the ashes out.
22:14He grabbed a shovel, and he says, don't take those out, or I'm going to beat you.
22:18And, you know, what does a 12-year-old do?
22:21He watches the garbage truck come and take his mom away.
22:25Throwing away her ashes?
22:28You've got to be kidding me.
22:30I just...
22:32It makes me emotional.
22:37We weren't allowed to grieve.
22:39My father didn't allow us to do that.
22:43So, you have to go into survival mode.
22:47That trauma numbed me.
22:52I mean, that guy was pure evil.
22:57Nothing, nothing can emotionally affect him anymore.
23:01I think he'll work through that for his whole life, because I don't think anyone ever processes that.
23:06I don't think that's real to... I mean, I don't know how anybody comes out of that with any sanity
23:10whatsoever.
23:12Over the entire lifetime, I was on there. He never cared about my brother or myself at all.
23:20You know, people nowadays go to prison for life for what he did to his kids.
23:40The pilot flew Highway 50 up and down, and up and down, probably five or six times. An awful lot.
23:50Tel-fuel was starting to become an issue for him.
23:56We did not land because we never found a stroke.
24:01At some point, maybe one or two in the morning, he gave up and covered the stuff.
24:10And, you know, this is days before cell phones or any kind of communication like that.
24:13So, we just began to walk out, which was miles and miles to walk out, because there's no way to
24:20communicate with anybody else.
24:24Something had gone wrong, either with our interpretation of the directions or their strobe light.
24:30Who knows? But it didn't occur.
24:34He returned to the airport, landed, and we figured we'd go to Plan B.
24:45What went wrong? I did everything Big John told me to do, and still, there was no money.
24:53I decided to just go back and see what happened.
24:56So, on the way back, I stopped at the airport where my dad's girlfriend, Joanne, was waiting.
25:07And so, I said, well, did you hear from her or anything?
25:10She said, no, that the governor had got on the radio and asked to pay the ransom.
25:15This request is made due to a failure of enlightenment and confusion in following the previous directions.
25:21The hotel is prepared to comply and is standing by as before.
25:27We both agreed to go back and find my dad and, you know, see what he wanted to do.
25:35I relaxed a little and let my foot get a little heavy on the gas.
25:39Forgetting Ella Joan had to keep up with me.
25:41She was panicked and came to this hairpin and she couldn't make up her mind whether she was going to
25:46go right or left
25:47and, you know, realize the Ice House Road went to the right.
25:50And so, she lost control and hit this embankment right here going 40, 50 miles an hour.
26:05The entire driver's side was smashed against the mountain.
26:11When I opened the door, I could see that she was stunned and bleeding from her head.
26:18I helped her out of her car and into the passenger seat.
26:25Put her in the car, drove up a little ways.
26:29Got my dad and my brother.
26:32I drove up Ice House Road hoping she wouldn't lose consciousness.
26:38Time was not on Ella Joan's side.
26:51The extortion letter said we had 24 hours to deliver that ransom.
26:56Well, we were way beyond that.
26:58And so, every moment we spent overtop that thing, we felt it was just getting riskier and riskier and riskier.
27:05So, after 24 hours, we would only send one bomb tech up there and sometimes two, but that was one
27:13of the reasons we had to move this along.
27:16At the same time, we were waiting to hear from the bomber.
27:22As soon as the car was parked next to the emergency entrance, Big John ordered, take her in and tell
27:27him you found her in her car.
27:28Tell him you don't know who she is.
27:30Then get back out here.
27:32We need to contact Arby's.
27:36This request was made due to a failure of enlightenment and confusion in following the previous directions.
27:42We were listening to the radio to see if anything happened.
27:46They were actually making a plea on the radio for the bombers to contact, you know, to negotiate.
27:59A half mile from the hospital, we found the pay phone.
28:02Big John told me, call the Douglas County Sheriff.
28:05I was tired of having to fix all the wrongs.
28:08I'd spent close to a year helping a crazy old man do something so outrageous it could never work.
28:14The only thing I wanted at this moment was to have my life back.
28:21If I said, flip switch number five, I'm not even trying to disguise my voice.
28:31Switch number five was supposed to shut off one of the supposed three timers that were in there, which would
28:36buy them more time.
28:37It was a stall tactic, throw switch number five and wait for instructions.
28:42You know, the beauty and the horror of this is no one except the bomb builder knows what any of
28:48those switches are for.
28:50If they're telling me, hey, flip switch number five, you got to ask yourself, do they really just want to
28:56kill me and just make this bomb go away?
28:58Are they actually trying to buy time?
29:01And so I would not be the one who would want to follow that and say, oh, sure, I'll just
29:05do that.
29:06I don't trust anyone who's building something like this.
29:09I don't know where that phone call came from. I don't know if it was bogus.
29:13If somebody just wanted the highway open, if it was from the perpetrator, nobody knew they couldn't confirm it to
29:18us.
29:19And so one of the higher ups said, you know, OK, let's rig, rig that up for throwing a switch
29:25five if you if you don't mind.
29:30OK, you know, we can do that, but I'm not going to do it.
29:34Sandbags have been brought in and the cleared area around the hotel kept expanding.
29:39The rumors persisted over whether the bomb would be intentionally set off.
29:43Finally, officials saying it would, but only as a last resort.
29:47Are we going to try to dismantle it or are they going to try to move it?
29:50I understand those are the two decisions that are being weighed at this point.
29:55Not to detonate it.
29:56Detonating that thing is the absolute last choice.
30:04Harvey was next door with authorities and he expressed that he was more worried about all of his employees than
30:13he was about his actual hotel being damaged.
30:15My grandfather was very concerned about people over property.
30:21This was their livelihood and it was Lake Tahoe.
30:25They didn't have a lot of choices, so he was concerned.
30:30And I knew my grandfather was calling the shots.
30:32So he was in charge and made the decision as to what to do.
30:38Their opinion was the only way that there was a chance of disarming the bomb was to try and blow
30:44the controls off the box and not detonate the main device.
30:56So the method they decided to use to address this device was a linear shape charge.
31:02And that is a focusing of explosive energy.
31:05You basically have this channel here.
31:07It detonates out like a blade, if you will.
31:12It's an explosive hatchet or guillotine.
31:15And it would sever the electrical components in there before electricity could travel from the top box to the explosives
31:21in the bottom box.
31:22We're going to take the head off the Cobra.
31:25That's the tool that they decided upon.
31:31There have been rumors for hours that the authorities would detonate the bomb.
31:35The area is now being evacuated.
31:36Buses have moved in and so have ambulances.
31:39There is a possibility of an explosion in the state line area and request that all people stay clear of
31:46the area at least one mile from state line.
31:49And despite orders by police to evacuate the area, the people were reluctant to leave.
31:54It seems their curiosity is much bigger than their sense of danger.
31:57They're just plain curious and thinking that they're going to see something that nobody else is going to see.
32:01I want to get some pictures.
32:03I'm not really afraid.
32:04You know, they were starting to lose control a little bit.
32:07People were sneaking in.
32:09They wanted to get closer.
32:11Tempers flared as the news media was pushed back to remote location and several TV crews were told they would
32:17be put on a bus and taken out of the area.
32:25You know, bomb techs are a unique breed.
32:28Going into that room with a bomb is going into the lion's den.
32:31And so anyone brave enough to go into that room and deal with that knows that they are going to,
32:35they're going to perish if that bomb detonates.
32:40Unfortunately, I was the person that was tasked with detonating the shape charge and trying to render this safe.
32:47You have to get in there and concentrate. You know what your job is. You've trained for it.
32:51But if you have anxiety or you have doubts or something else in your mind, you need to excuse yourself
32:58because there's no place for it.
33:04We all drove back up to Placerville Hospital to check on Joan before giving us another attempt in the evening.
33:11We were in the waiting room when they were trying to disarm it.
33:14About a dozen buses were sent in to clear the area and hotels along the strip were boarding up.
33:21It wasn't that we weren't afraid. You get to a certain point in your fear and that's just it. I
33:26mean, you can't be any more scared.
33:32The charge was prepped.
33:35Placed it on the device.
33:39I took one final look at it and walked out of the building.
33:46Very eerie to walk through a casino with all the chips and everything just laying there and no people in
33:52it whatsoever. Just dead silence.
33:57We're getting close. We're getting close. You know, one way or another, you know, we're going to resolve this.
34:05Jerry Maple looked at me and I looked at him and he said, should we do this? And I said,
34:09what choice do we have?
34:11He said none. And we nodded at Danny Daniels, who's lying in the gutter.
34:20Waited for the warnings to go off from the sheriff's office and then energize the circuit.
34:25Oh, no. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.
34:49No, no. No. No, no.
35:18The thousand pounds of dynamite blew a five-story hole through the middle of Harvey's hotel.
35:25The explosion that everyone has been waiting for has taken place.
35:29You can see part of the wall, of course, when the smoke clears away that has been blasted out of
35:34the side of Harvey's Resort Casino Hotel.
35:42I could compare it to a natural disaster, like a fire or a flood or something that happened so quickly
35:50that you tried to be prepared,
35:51but there wasn't really a way to prepare for a bomb going off in this casino.
36:01I know that my grandfather, Harvey Gross, put his lifetime work into building this casino and operating it.
36:09It's scary to this day, processing the damage that was done to the community and people and to my grandfather.
36:25We're watching the news and right there in the hospital waiting room, it shows the bomb detonating.
36:31Immediately, Big John just was really sad because he wasn't going to get his money.
36:37FBI agents in Nevada tonight are searching for the extortionists who planted a bomb yesterday.
36:42There was an attempt to pay off the ransom of three million dollars.
36:46But officials say they never showed up.
36:49They are not even close to making any arrests.
36:55John, he became so depressed and distraught and said he was going to kill himself.
37:02FBI agents say that anyone sophisticated enough to make a bomb such as the one that destroyed Harvey's is capable
37:08of making another.
37:14Well, 48 hours later, Big John's is already planning to bomb the Bank of America building.
37:21I don't think anybody was thinking that we had failed.
37:26I think just about everybody was thinking we have just begun.
37:30Being out.
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