More than a year before Anthony Warner detonated a bomb in downtown Nashville Tennessee on Christmas Day, officials visited his home after his girlfriend told police that he was building bombs in a camper trailer at his residence, according to records from The Associated Press. But they couldn’t contact him or look into his motor home.
The officers were called to see Pamela Perry in Nashville on Aug. 21, 2019 after receiving a report from her attorney that she made suicide threats with firearms on her porch, the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department said in an email on Tuesday . A police report said attorney Raymond Throckmorton told officers that day that he was also representing Warner.
When officers arrived at Perry, police said they had two unloaded pistols beside them on the porch. She told them those guns belonged to Tony Warner, the police said, and they didn’t want them in the house anymore. Perry, then 62, was taken for a psychological evaluation after speaking on the phone with psychiatric professionals.
Throckmorton told The Tennessean that Perry was afraid for her safety and thought Warner might harm her. The lawyer was also on the spot that day, telling officials that Warner “speaks a lot about the military and bomb making,” the police report said. Warner “knows what he’s doing and is able to build a bomb,” Throckmorton told the officers who responded.
The police then went to Warner’s house, which was 1.5 miles from Perry’s house, but he did not open the door when they knocked several times. They saw the motorhome in the back yard, the report said, but the yard was fenced and officers couldn’t see inside the vehicle.
According to the report, there were also “several surveillance cameras and cables attached to an alarm sign on the front door” in the house. The officers then notified the superiors and detectives.
“They saw no evidence of a crime and were not allowed to enter his home or fenced property,” the police statement said.
After officials visited Warner’s house last August, the Police Hazardous Equipment Department received a copy of the police report. They contacted Throckmorton during the week of August 26, 2019. Police said officers remembered Throckmorton and said Warner “did not look after the police” and would not allow Warner to “visually inspect the RV.”
Staff from the FBI and the Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms Bureau are investigating the area that was involved in a Christmas Day explosion in Nashville, Tennessee, USA on Tuesday, December 29, 2020 [Mark Humphrey/AP Photo]Throckmorton denies that he told police that they could not search the vehicle. “I have no recollection of it at all,” he told The Tennessean. “I no longer represented him. He wasn’t an active customer. I am not a criminal lawyer. “
Throckmorton told the newspaper that he represented Warner in civil proceedings a few years ago and that Warner was no longer his client in August 2019. “Somebody dropped the ball somewhere,” he said.
The day after officers visited Warner’s home, the police report and identifying information about Warner was sent to the FBI to review their databases and determine if Warner had any previous military connections, police said.
Later that day, police said, “The FBI reported that they had checked their holdings and found no records of Warner at all.” FBI spokesman Darrell DeBusk told The Tennessean the agency had conducted a standard agency-to-agency file review.
Six days later, “the FBI reported that the Department of Defense’s controls on Warner were all negative,” the police department said.
After August 2019, the department or the FBI were not given any further information about Warner, police said. “At no point has evidence of a crime been found and no additional measures have been taken,” the statement said. “The ATF had no information about him either.”
Warner’s only arrest was on a 1978 marijuana-related charge.
The bombing occurred on Christmas morning long before the downtown streets were busy. Police responded to a report of gunfire fired on Friday when they stumbled upon the RV and issued a recorded warning that a bomb would explode in 15 minutes. For reasons that may never be known, the audio was switched to a recording of Petula Clark’s 1964 hit “Downtown” shortly before the explosion. Dozens of buildings were damaged and several people were injured.
Prior to the attack, 63-year-old Warner surrendered his car and signed a document that would return his home to a California woman for nothing in the suburb of Antioch, Nashville. He told one employer that he was retiring.
Investigators have not revealed a motive for the Christmas Day bombing, nor has it been revealed why Warner chose the particular location that damaged an AT&T building and destroyed communications between cell phones, police and hospitals in several southern states than that Company worked to restore service. The company said Monday that most services to residents and businesses have been restored.
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