Post #135311 by Hakalugi on Thu, Jan 13, 2005 11:29 AM

Here's the short version from: http://members.xoom.virgilio.it/all42day/history/h4aug/h4aug26.html

August 26, 1980 -
Extortionist's 450-kg bomb destroys casino-
Workers at Harvey's Resort and Casino in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, discover a 450-kg bomb disguised as a copy machine in an executive suite. A ransom note attached to device demands $3 million to be paid in return for instructions on how to defuse the bomb. As experts from the bomb squad examined the complex, handmade explosive containing a control box with 28 switches, the hotel is evacuated and the adjoining streets shut down. However, the nearby casino remains open to the gamblers so addicted that they are willing to gamble their lives.
The extortionist demands that a helicopter fly $3 million in cash to an area south of the Lake Tahoe airport where a strobe light would give further coded instructions. But when the FBI violate the ransom instructions by contacting the helicopter by radio, the plan goes awry and the bomb squad is left to dismantle the bomb. From the Sahara Tahoe Hotel, experts try to do it with robots. But he bomb explodes, demolishing the hotel. Luckily, none of the gamblers are killed.
After remaining at large for nearly a year, the four perpetrators were arrested by FBI agents in 1981. John Waldo Birges, who had lost a large amount of money at the casino in the months before the bomb exploded, orchestrated the plan with the help from his girlfriend, Ella Williams, and two other men. His sons later testified that he stole the TNT from a construction site. Birges was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Harvey's Resort and Casino was eventually rebuilt.