The Day LAX Was Bombed By The Alphabet Bomber

DRIVING DOWN CENTURY BOULEVARD - Driving down the boulevard amid the towering hotels leading into Los Angeles International Airport suddenly figuring out what lane you need to be in for arrivals or departures sometimes you are held up by airport police checks, and when that happens hopefully you are not running late for your flight. It is said, "everything changed after 9/11," and with that includes posting police officers in airport entrances for random security checks. However, well before the obscene events of September 11, 2001, threats and terror attacks on airports were, unfortunately, nothing too new.


The iconic Theme Building at LAX. Photograph used under Creative Commons license.

On August 6, 1974, the most deadliest terrorist attack in Los Angeles since the 1910 Los Angeles Times bombing occurred at LAX, which resulted in the death of three people and dozens injured. In fact, it was, at the time, the worst terrorist attack at an American airport.

The 1970s was an overall turbulent era in America, and adding to the turbulence were many nationalist and domestic groups setting off various bombs around the country for mostly political reasons. New York seemed to be the center of these domestic terrorist attacks with many bombs set off in office buildings around Manhattan damaging buildings. San Francisco and the Bay Area also experienced dozens of bombings during this time. L.A. had been mostly spared from these political terrorist attacks.

Today, when a pipe bomb or even simply the threat of a terror attack occurs it causes great fear and panic around the country. Back then in the 1970s, frankly, much like how the British shrugged off IRA attacks, domestic bombings, hijackings and other such terror attacks in the United States were almost accepted as a "normal" way of life in 1970s America.

What Happened?

The 1974 LAX bombing was, at the time, the most destructive, deadliest bombing to ever hit a U.S. airport. The bomb was set off at the Pan American World Airways (Pam Am) terminal about 20 feet from the Pam Am check-in counter. Three people were killed and 36 people were injured.

According to the United Press International news report of the event,

Michael Strong of the police airport detail said he was about 100 yards away when "a tremendous blast shook the area and it was a scene of utter devastation. People were down on the floor crying for help. Bodies were blown all over the lobby. "All I could see was blood. There was blood everywhere," said skycap Gary Cartwright.

Police and federal agents tried to determine the origin of the blast. Investigators said the force indicated an explosive charge equal to about eight pounds of dynamite. 

The Damage

The bomb tore out sections of a concrete wall behind the lockers, hurled some of the lockers through the lobby, ripped into the ceiling shredded baggage and blew out the glass from of the terminal.

The Alphabet Bomber 

The suspect behind the LAX bombing was a Yugoslavian immigrant named Muharem Kurbegovic who claimed to be the leader of Aliens of America. The bomber was dubbed "The Alphabet Bomber" after he dropped off an audiotape at KNXT- TV (now KCBS-TV) following the LAX attack. The audiotape said in part, "The first bomb was marked with the letter A, which stands for airport [...] The second bomb will be associated with the letter L, etc., until our name has been written on the face of this nation in blood."

The second bomb was found inside a locker at the downtown L.A. Greyhound station, which, according to the Los Angeles Police Bomb Squad, was, at the time, the most powerful explosive device they ever handled and defused.

Prior Alphabet Bomber Attacks Before The LAX Bombing

About year before setting off the bomb at the Pam Am terminal The Alphabet Bomber set off firebombs at the homes of two Los Angeles Police commissioners and a judge. Furthermore, Kurbegovic burnt down two Marina Del Rey apartment buildings.

Hoax Attacks On The U.S. Supreme Court Justices

The first public movements concerning The Alphabet Bomber was an audiotape sent to the L.A. Times on July 7, 1974, with Kurbegovic claiming he put nerve gas on tiny lead disks hidden under stamps on postcards mailed that June to all nine justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. As Kurbegovic explained on the tape, "Each postcard shows the Palm Springs home of entertainer Bob Hope and reads as follows: ‘It is justices of your greatness that made this nation so great. Respectfully, Bob Hope’."

The postcards never made it to Supreme Court, and in fact, they never made it out of Southern California, because the nine postcards had been intercepted at the Palm Springs Post Office on June 16, where the canceling machines had broken the tiny vials under the stamps. The postal worker at the Palm Springs Post Office thought they were toy caps.

Turns out the nerve gas was not real as Kurbegovich admitted a few weeks later, in another threatening tape to the L.A. Times, the postcards were a hoax and the liquid in the vials was harmless. In this audiotape Kurbegovich said, “A reasonable man will pause to think if someone points a gun at him whether the gun is loaded or empty."

Note On Public Warnings About 1970s Domestic Terrorist Attacks

It may seem strange for terrorists to call into media outlets and to buildings that were being targeted warning them about an impending terror attacks, but however, in the 1970s many groups behind bombings often telephoned or mailed notices of upcoming terrorists attacks. Certain groups, like The Weather Underground, did this to prevent mass causalities. Leaving messages, be it an audiotape or letter, in seemingly random locations, like a restaurant or telephone booth, was typically the mode of operation for many 1970s domestic terrorists.

Why Did The Alphabet Bomber Do All This? 

It is believed this terrorist committed these acts because judges and commissioners prevented him from opening his own taxi dance hall. A taxi dance hall is where a person can pay a woman to dance with you. Kurbegovic, it turns out, was caught in a taxi dance hall doing a lewd act, which led to his arrest. Kurbegovich believed that arrest would prevent his chances to open his own taxi dance hall business, and threatened his chances of becoming an American citizen.

So, Just What Was The Alphabet Bomber's Main Demand?

Well, simply put, Kurbegovic's main demands of his campaign of terror was to bring an end to immigration and naturalization laws, and ending many laws about sex.

What Happened To The Alphabet Bomber?

He was finally caught after being followed by investigators, and has spent time between high-security prisons and mental facilities.

As the L.A. Times reported,

Oct. 16, 1980: After six days of deliberations, a jury convicted Muharem Kurbegovic of first-degree murder for a 1974 bombing at Los Angeles International Airport that killed three people and injured 36 others.

The jury found the so-called Alphabet Bomber guilty on 25 counts of murder, arson, attempted murder, possession of explosive material and exploding a bomb, The Times reported.

Kurbegovic, 37, an immigrant from Yugoslavia, "acted as his own attorney during the eight-month trial," The Times said.

It is extraordinarily unlikely Kurbegovic will ever be freed.

Was Aliens of America A Large Terrorist Group?

Nope!

Unlike many domestic terrorist groups of the 1970s all investigations show and proved Aliens of America was simply a one-man-act of Kurbegovic.

The Worst Terrorist Attack At An Airport Would Happen Over A Year Later

In summer 1974 the bombing at the Pam Am terminal at LAX was the worst, deadliest terrorist attack at an airport, but, sadly, over a year later that record would be broken.

On December 29, 1975, a bomb exploded at the TWA baggage reclaim terminal at LaGuardia Airport in New York killing 11 people. It is believed Croatian nationalists were likely behind the attack. Still, to this day, the LaGuardia Airport bombing remains unsolved.

Those Freeways Named After Traffic Reporters

WHERE THE 101 AND 110 MEET IN DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES - Motoring rapidly across the freeways that make up the fabric of Southern California, or maybe moving slowly across the freeways due to a Sig-Alert, you have probably come across more than a few memorial signs on the side of the freeway. There may be a few memorial signs you have noticed and perhaps wondered just who are those people.


Coming up northbound on the 110 just before The Hollywood Freeway it is a slightly different view of the famous Four Level Interchange in Downtown L.A. in this public domain photograph.

Some of those people on the memorial signs along side the freeway were legendary broadcast traffic reporters warning us all about Sig-Alerts and what alternative routes to use to get back home.

Somehow it just seems appropriate that in Southern California portions of freeways would be named after traffic reporters, and, in no particular order, here are three very big names in the world of broadcast traffic reporters that very much earned their name on the freeway.

1 - The Bill Keene Memorial Interchange


Even way back then, as shown in this 1962 KNXT-TV advertisement with Bill Keene, the seven-day forecast was a big deal.

Sitting in traffic is never fun, and merging on an old interchange like the Four Level Interchange in Downtown L.A. can rattle some nerves. Sometimes you just need to have a little fun when the traffic is not all that fun to deal with, and Bill Keene was one who made traffic reports fun. Anybody with a decent enough voice can go on-the-air and say, "On the 110 northbound a ladder is blocking the number two lane just before the Four Level." In similar situations Mr. Keene would go on-air and say, “Watch out for rung way drivers ... Don’t worry, the highway patrol will be taking steps to remove that ladder.” If things got a little fishy on the freeway Mr. Keene would report that, "With the highway patrol on the scene, it's fish and chips," according to KNX radio's Jim Thornton in a 2000 interview with the Los Angeles Times. Mr Thornton, by the way, succeeded Keene.

Mr. Keene had a very long, rewarding career in L.A. broadcasting that began in 1957 at KNXT-TV, which, of course today after changing call-letters in 1984, is KCBS-TV.

While at KNXT Mr. Keene was one of the on-air people to help bring about the groundbreaking hour-long "Big News on 2" along with Jerry Dunphy and Ralph Story.

On KNXT Mr. Keene did the weather, but soon he would have his own variety shows on the CBS owned and operated station, "Keene at Noon," and "The Bill Keene Show."

Mr. Keene would stay with KNXT until a baffling massive management shakeup led to his, along with Mr. Jerry "From the desert to the sea to all of Southern California" Dunphy, being laid off.

Much like Mr. Dunphy, who would not be off the air for long, Mr. Keene quickly returned to television a couple blocks east on Sunset Boulevard at KTLA. Now Mr. Keene never totally left Columbia Square as he was doing traffic reports part-time on KNX while at KTLA. After his brief stint at KTLA it would be in 1976 that Mr. Keene began working full-time at KNX delivering his unique traffic reports. In the late 1980s as KCBS-TV began to expand their morning news program Mr. Keene would do televised traffic reports in the morning on Channel 2 along with his reports on KNX.

In 1992, Mr. Keene, who, by the way, served as a navigator in the Air Force during World War II, was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.


Coverage from KCAL-TV of Mr. Keene receiving his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. 

After many decades having made the commute a little more fun, or sometimes downright funny, Mr. Keene retired in 1993.

Mr. Keene passed away in April 2000.

In 2006 The California Department of Transportation, or, as we all simply know it, CalTrans, officially named the historic Four Level Interchange in Downtown L.A., where U.S. Route 101, Interstate 110 and State Route 110 meet, The Bill Keene Memorial Interchange in Mr. Keene's honor.

2 - The Mark Denis Melbourne Memorial Interchange 


A traffic reporter who knows his freeways. The guy with all the computers, maps and scanners around him is, Mark Denis at the KFI/KOST traffic center circa 1999. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Whether you are coming out of The Corona Crawl going into Anaheim and out to Long Beach, or getting ready to brave The Corona Crawl going into the Inland Empire, the sort of the unofficial western terminus of The Corona Crawl is where The Riverside Freeway meets The Costa Mesa Freeway, and that is named The Mark Denis Melbourne Interchange.

Mark Denis Melbourne was on Southern California radio for many years and went by the name, Mark Denis. Perhaps using his full name might have been a little too much for the jingle singers.

Many jingles across Southern California sang Mark Denis' name. Mr. Denis was on-the-air at KFXM and later top-40 rival KMEN in San Bernardino, and later came over to 1190 AM at KEZY in Anaheim. Mr. Denis also worked for the KGB. That is, rather, KGB-AM radio in San Diego. In the 1980s Mr. Denis had a chance to be on-the-air at the legendary KHJ-AM, which is where he started his legendary traffic reports during 93/KHJ's short lived "Car Radio" format. Being on "Car Radio, 93/KHJ" led the way for Mr. Denis being best known as the legendary traffic reporter on KFI and KOST, and Mr. Denis is best remembered as being one of the nicest guys in broadcasting.

In an industry where ego and personality clashes, along with very long, tiresome hours, are apart of job, many colleagues and contemporaries of Mr. Denis always spoke very fondly of Mr. Denis as he was a very nice guy to work with, and just an all around very nice guy.

Mr. Denis had many wonderful pieces of advice, and one he often said was, "Find a job you love, and you'll never have to work a day in your life."

He took his own advice to heart as Mr. Denis told Variety in 1996 as he celebrated his 35th year in Southern California broadcasting, "It's like going to the circus every day [...] When it comes to job satisfaction, I'm in the 90th percentile. Then there are days that it's even better than that."

Born in Glendale and raised in Compton it was at Compton Junior College where Mr. Denis announced the halftime show during football games, and it was from there he knew what he wanted to do with the rest of his life, and it is safe to say Mr. Denis never again worked a day in his life.


A memorial of Mr. Denis' life, which features photographs of his time at KMEN, KGB and KEZY, among other photographs.

During his time at KFI and KOST it is believed he broadcasted around 9,000 traffic reports a year.

If you rode the Disneyland Monorail in the mid-1980s or early 1990s as it left the Tomorrowland Station making its way across the vast (now long gone) parking lot to the Disneyland Hotel the narrator you heard was Mark Denis.


Unfortunately the audio is not all that great in this 1990 video of the Disneyland Monorail, but you can still make out Mark Denis' voice.

Mr. Denis passed away in 2000.

In January 2002 the California state senate introduced Senate Concurrent Resolution Number 50, which designated the SR-91 and SR-55 interchange as the Mark Denis Melbourne Memorial Interchange.

3 - The Paul Johnson Memorial Freeway 

"Buckle up, be careful out there." With that perfect baritone voice made perfect for broadcasting those were the wise words of longtime KNBC-TV and Metro Networks traffic reporter Paul Johnson.

Starting in 1988 Mr. Johnson was apart of KNBC's "Today In L.A." For a time in the mid-1990s Mr. Johnson began doing traffic reports for KNBC's afternoon newscasts.

What some people may not know about Mr. Johnson is well before he began reporting on Sig-Alerts, tie-ups and alternative routes, the Southern California traffic reporter was once an opera singer and stage performer.

In the 2007 movie "Mr. Woodcock," starring Billy Bob Thornton, Mr. Johnson makes an appearance as the announcer at the corn-eating contest.

An avid golfer Mr. Johnson used his skills on the course to hold and appear in charity tournaments to help disabled children.

Before Mr. Johnson passed away his wife, Nancy, told her husband that there is a push in Sacramento to have part of a freeway named after him. In a February 2011 interview with the Orange County Register Nancy Johnson said Paul's reaction to that was, "He looked at me, square in the face, and he said, 'Well, I'll be damned,' in that deep baritone voice, and we both just giggled and laughed."  

In 2010 state assembly speaker John A. Perez, D-Los Angeles, introduced the bill that put Mr. Johnson's name on the freeway a few days after he passed away, and it passed the Assembly and the Senate by unanimous votes and was signed into law in September 2010.

Now as you drive through Orange, perhaps on the way to Newport Beach, South Coast Plaza or John Wayne Airport, on SR-55 you are driving along The Paul Johnson Memorial Freeway.

Now For Something Different: 1980s T-V-O-D Theme Songs

FROM THE TRANSMITTERS OF MOUNT WILSON -  Growing up in Southern California there is one thing that has seemingly bonded us whether we live in Anaheim, Compton, La Puente, East Los Angeles, Covina or Cudahy, and that is what has been broadcast in the airwaves from the transmitters of Mount Wilson to thousands of homes in Southern California. Local Southern California television is highly unique and very memorable for many of us, but this blurb is not about local television (that will, and MUST, have its own posting soon), but rather national network television of the 1980s.



Like ignoring much of a changing, and sometimes troubling, America in the 1980s network television hardly represented what was happening in diverse places like Southern California.

Television in 1970s America seem to reach a certain level social awareness, most notable with Norman Lear at the helm behind hits like "All in the Family," "Good Times," and "Sanford and Son," among others. The decade had its share of over-the-top, utterly inane programs as television should be an escape from the perhaps nerve-racking way of life, but it seem television in the decade that gave us the resignation of President Richard Nixon and election of Jimmy Carter had something to say. Come the new decade of the 1980s a seemingly cultural shift takes place, Ronald Reagan is elected president ushering in a new era of social conservatism, and this change is strongly reflected on television where programming moves from social awareness and gives way to absurd over-the-top escapism programs like a Texas oilman who is an international spy on the side. Despite their over-the-top appeal more times than not the shows, unlike many of the previous decade, were very decadent and non-offensive. 

All that said, this story is not really meant to be a social-culture study on 1980s television, and, despite that setup above, what follows is really a tongue-and-cheek post about one thing that really mattered in 1980s television, the theme song.

For all their blandness, the 1980s televisions show theme songs left a major impression on American pop culture, and frankly the theme songs were much better than the program itself.

In no particular order here is an assortment are some of the best and worst theme songs from the long gone era known as the 1980s.

Last Season of Happy Days
Okay, we know what you are probably thinking, Happy Days is considered to be more of a 1970s show, despite lasting until the summer of 1984, and surely Happy Days' best days were in the mid-70s, and so it is easy to understand why it is often associated being a "70s show." Come the dawn of the new decade seismic shifts in the Cunningham's world took place when Richie left to join the Army followed by his pal Ralph Mouth. Replacing Richie was some kind of distant family member played unexplainable by a modern 1980s bleached-blond hair Ted McGinley, and the always talked about but never seen Jenny Piccolo finally showed up. From that moment it was tantamount to that moment in your life where something changes and you know things will never be the same again. Indeed things were never the same again, but by their final season when the shark The Fonz jumped over had long died and sank to the bottom of the ocean the show truly reached its nadir by altering its beloved opening theme song.


If there ever was a television show that is the ethos of being a shell of its former self it is Happy Days. Come the final season there was no effort to at least give the show a proper sendoff and maybe try to go back to the program's roots, or at the very least develop a plot explaining why the style and feel of the show changed, and give what few viewers were left some closure.

Diff'rent Strokes
No need to make any improper Gary Coleman jokes, or such jokes concerning to travesties that would befall the cast of Diff'rent Strokes, all there is to say is, how can you not want to sing along with this song.



Like Happy Days the series' last season theme song in 1985-86 changed a bit with added synthesizers along with cast changes, and moved to ABC from NBC, but, unlike Happy Days, the show stayed the course without any major upsets to the series.

Days of our Lives
If you were a kid in this decade of the 1980s home sick, or pretending to be sick, you knew your free rein of watching the morning fare of network game shows and old cartoons on maybe KTLA or KTTV was over when you heard this creepy theme, and suddenly you were not so sick as going outside now seems like a better option. Yes, for you young kids today it is hard to imagine when parents demanded the television your only option until you could get the TV back was playing outside, playing with toys that you have played with several times before, or maybe, listening to records alone in your room.


This opening was used from 1972 until 1993 when McDonald Carey died as Mr. McDonald's family requested the show no longer use his likeness. Did you care to know, the sand falling into the hourglass was just a string.

Hunter and Magnum P.I.
If fast cars, guns drawn, explosions, steamy romances and morally rogue within the law cops sounds like several programs from the 1980s, you would be right. Two of the more successful shows of this genre were Hunter and Magnum P.I., which followed unconventional, but really conventional, cops and their sidekicks around to catch the evil bad guy. (Okay, Magnum P.I. was some kind of private eye and quasi-cop.) Each show followed the trail of the bad guy that always led to explosions, car chases, sometimes preventing a time-bomb from destroying the city, catching "urban" drug dealers, dealing with a steamy romantic interest, who sometimes becomes a hostage, which sometimes caused a dramatic plot twist by revealing she once had a relationship with the bad guy, and all accompanied by humorous jabs towards the partner. Rinse, wash and repeat. The complexity of thwarting some criminal mastermind always took just a hour every week with officers of the law who would never think of colluding with the enemy like Officer Vic Mackey.


The moral goodness of LAPD officer Richard Hunter is a long way from the boys at The Shield.


Oh Tom Selleck, in the 1980s women wanted to be with you and you made men grow mustaches to assert their masculinity.

Silver Spoons
So the premise of Silver Spoons was Ricky Stratton, who's mother threw him into a military boarding school after she remarried thinking her son would interfere with her new life, somehow manages to track down his father he never met, and as luck would have it his dad is not only super wealthy, but basically the CEO of his own toy company. It gets better, the father's home, aside from being an sprawling mansion, is filled with toys. With all that there is one question, or plot hole, many have wondered, where in the hell did that train go to when it left the house?


It could be argued Silver Spoons was a good refection of the Reagan era showing excessive wealth and creating a desire for audiences to dream and just maybe obtain such wealth.

Punky Brewster
In many "remember these theme song" stories Punky Brewster often seems to be left out, much like Punky's mother did to her and her dog Brandon. It is true, in the plot for some reason Punky's mother just utterly abandoned her and Brandon at a supermarket one day and this old unmarried man named Henry who she never met, who also happens to owns a photography shop, picks her up and they live together. Yes, read the plot synopsis again, because it does sound a bit creepy and something that would be in one of those Lifetime channel movie reenactments.


It is a very endearing theme song accompanied by Punky dressed in very bright, totally gnarly clothes. It would seem Henry did not mind so much shopping inside the woman's section at Chess King for his adoptive daughter.

It's Garry Shandling's Show
Finally, there was one show that broke through the absurdity of the era with witty comedy, but more times than not the show itself is often overlooked for the show's very catchy theme song, and it is easy to understand.


Just like the show the theme to It's Garry Shandling's Show was ridiculous, but cleaver. The show truly pointed out the absurdity of television comedies during this era.

While we look back at plenty of television shows from the 1980s with campy eyes one must remember that was pretty much want you had to choose from. Yes, there was bit of a broad brush painted here as there were a handful of interesting shows in this era, and if you were lucky you had HBO or some other cable channel, like the Z Channel, showing unique fare uncommon for its time, but there were a lot of places in Southern California that well into 1990s were still not wired for cable. Whatever thought-provoking, compelling unique television did exist in this time most shows were often, if not quickly, met with a cancellation notice. There were no internet forms or YouTube to find the series and create a new fanbase in hopes of having the show reinstated, or at the very least have a web revival. This was the era of "the big three" and those suits in New York who decided what America was going to watch.

Today, despite the nonstop glut of so-called reality shows there is much better television than in the 1980s. Hard to believe? Well, just compare some of the best scripted shows on television today to that of the 1980s. Of course the trade off is we no longer have many of the catchy themes today as we did back then, and we have to wade through more moronic television to find the good stuff, and that is too bad.

The past is always fun to visit, but trust us when we say you never want to live there.