The two stacked boxes, lined with metal and rubber, were completely impenetrable.

When special FBI agents arrived at the empty resort, they were equally perplexed by the steel monolith, which had been disguised as an IBM copy machine and brought to the second floor. Others speculated that it could be worse: a nuclear threat. At first, some whispered that the bomb was sheathed in lead. “In order words, the bomb is so sensitive that the slightest movement either inside or outside will cause it to explode,” he wrote.Īs tourists evacuated, rumors began to swirl. It was so complex, not even he could take it apart. 01 of the open end Ricter scale.” According to the bomb’s anonymous creator, dismantling, flooding, or gassing the device would detonate it, since it was attached to multiple triggers and booby traps. “Do not move or tilt this bomb, because the mechanism controlling the detonators in it will set it off at a movement of less than. “STERN WARNING TO THE MANAGEMENT AND BOMB SQUAD,” the terse extortion note began. A bomb loaded with 1,000 pounds of dynamite had been wheeled into the hotel, and law enforcement had just 24 hours to meet its creator’s strict demands. Just as their daughter found out she won $20 on a keno ticket - and was about to cash it to cover the bill – they were suddenly told that they had to evacuate.

Across the street at Harrah’s, Lynn Heckler, her husband Steven, and their children were eating breakfast and drawing lottery tickets. When two men wearing white jumpsuits dropped off a copy machine at Harvey’s Resort Hotel and Casino in Stateline, Nevada on the morning of August 26, 1980, no one thought much of it.Īt the time, then-22-year-old Terry Patterson from Citrus Heights, California, was celebrating the first day of her honeymoon at the Lake Tahoe resort.

Nomad hotel and casino lake tahoe