Disneyland Bomb Extortion Try Fails : Anaheim Police Say No Suspects or Explosives Have Been Located

Anaheim police said Monday that an attempt to extort money from Disneyland by threatening to set off a bomb in the amusement park failed Saturday.

“It was an attempted extortion, but they never located any suspect or any bombs or anything,” said Sgt. Gordon McConnell.

Anaheim police investigators referred questions to the FBI, but a spokesman at the FBI office in Los Angeles refused to comment. “Our comment is that we have no comment to make,” said Special Agent John Hoos.

Terrorist Plot Denied

Hoos did, however, deny initial rumors that the bomb threat had come from terrorists. “We are not investigating any terrorist plot at Disneyland,” Hoos said.

In August, 1980, an extortion attempt at Disneyland prompted heavy security measures, including examination of all visitors’ purses, camera cases and tote bags. (Disneyland security officials were checking some visitors’ bags Monday, but Disneyland spokesman Bob Roth said such checks now are done routinely.)

Sources in the 1980 investigation said initial demands from extortionists had a “revolutionary” tenor to them. At least one non-explosive package was placed inside the park as a demonstration that the threat could be carried out, sources said.

Followed Directions

FBI ground units attempted on several occasions to follow the extortionists’ directions and on one occasion delivered a bag supposedly containing payment to a drop-off spot. But contact was never made, and after four days, the extortionists were never heard from again, sources said.

The threat Saturday came the day after Disneyland had its biggest crowd in eight years, an estimated 70,000 people. The amusement park closed its main gates Friday for about three hours until the crowds thinned out, park officials said. Roth would neither confirm nor deny the report of a bomb scare, but he emphasized that park operations were not curtailed in any way Saturday. He said the crowd on Saturday was not as big as Friday’s, “but that is normal after a big crowd--people hear about a crowd and not as many come the next day.”

Roth repeatedly said that as of Monday, nothing unusual was happening at the amusement park. “There is absolutely no investigation going on in the park now,” he said. “If there ever was, it’s history now.”

He said that threats have never forced Disneyland to close during the park’s 30-year history.

He acknowledged, however, that “we (at Disneyland) get some kooky calls” from time to time. “One of my concerns is that this today may prompt some copy-cat responses,” he said.

About 30,000 people attended Disneyland on Monday, Roth said, and he estimated a crowd of about 20,000 would attend the separate, limited-seating New Year’s Eve show Monday night.

During the day hours Monday, long lines of tourists flocked to the Disneyland ticket windows. Roth said that the week between Christmas and New Year’s is traditionally the busiest in the amusement park’s annual calendar.

Times staff writer Mark Landsbaum contributed to this story