The explosion ripped through the Las Vegas motel, decapitating people and sending body parts flying, with one woman’s leg embedded in a wall.
Triggered by an AWOL soldier with 50 sticks of dynamite, the blast left six people dead and garnered national news coverage.
When a gunman killed 58 people at the Route 91 Harvest music festival on the Strip on Oct. 1, it was the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. But it wasn’t the first mass killing in town.
The explosion, at the Orbit Inn motel at Fremont and Seventh streets, where the Downtown Container Park retail complex now stands, got front-page coverage in Las Vegas newspapers, but only for a few days. Former longtime local journalist Myram Borders said she doesn’t recall any major follow-ups, either.
The blast happened around 1:30 a.m. on Jan. 7, 1967, a Saturday. In Sunday’s paper, the Review-Journal reported that an AWOL Army soldier, R.J. Paris of Hollywood, California, had apparently triggered a homemade bomb.
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