A picture Nashville bomber Anthony "Tony" Warner is emerging.
In one report, a friend of Warner's from the '70s decribes the 63-year-old Tennessee native as "kind of a hippie." Warner had long hair and a mustache and liked to smoke pot.
“I worked with Tony as his helper,” Tom Lundborg, who knew Warner from Antioch, tells The Daily Beast. "I kind of looked up to him. He was a smart, cocky kind of guy. I rode around with him all day every day - during the summers, at least for a couple years. He was a little guy, the silent type."
Back then they installed burglary alarms and until recently Warner did IT work for different companies.
On January 29, 1978, Warner was arrested on a "marijuana possession for resale" felony charge in Nashville (see police record below). He'd just turned 21. The case was resolved with a guilty plea on November 8, 1979. Criminal court records show Warner was sentenced to one year in jail and also was given two years probation. It's unclear how much time he spent in jail.
It's still unclear what prompted Warner to blow up his RV in downtown Nashville on Christmas Day. The Daily Beast report indicates he disliked authority and police, though the bombing was not specifically directed at anyone or entity or company.
"Never trust a cop," Warner would allegedly say. This may have had to do with his marijuana arrest or other encounters with police or others' encounters or just news reports.
One neighbor called him "kind of a hermit."
Warner went to great lengths to make sure nobody was injured, announcing an evacuation warning before the vehicle was about to explode and oddly playing the song, "Downtown," with Petula Clark singing. More than 40 buildings were damaged, including the AT&T headquarters. Warner died in the blast.
Doug McVay contributed to this article.
