Tom Lundborg was a teenager in the late 1970s when he worked under Nashville bomber defendant Anthony Quinn Warner, who was a technician for an alarm company.
At the time, Lundborg’s father owned ACE Alarms, a company that provided commercial and residential anti-theft systems, but was incapacitated in a car accident. This left a young Lundborg and twenty-five “Tony” Warners to run the business, and they went to different places to make burglar alarm installations and service calls.
“I worked with Tony as his assistant. I looked at him. She was a kind of hippie. He had long hair, a Magnum, PI mustache, “Lundborg told The Daily Beast.” He was a smart, arrogant guy. He went with him all day every day, during the summers, at least for a couple of years. “
Lundborg said Warner disliked authority, loved smoking weeds, and said he had just left the Navy. (It is unclear whether Lundborg was ever in the U.S. Armed Forces, but records show he was arrested for marijuana possession in 1978).
They drove listening to 103 KDF, formerly Nashville’s main rock station, and if Warner detected a police officer, it would break the silence for lecturing the Lundborg teenager.
“I hate police. They are all corrupt, ”Warner would say. “Never trust a cop.”
Lundborg said he spoke to the FBI about Warner as authorities try to gather a reason for the Christmas Day explosion that injured eight people and destroyed several buildings. Warner, 63, died in the blast.
In the early hours of the morning, a Warner-registered recreational vehicle detonated after playing a recording that had a warning sign: a bomb would fire in 15 minutes. The RV also played Petula Clark’s 1964 Downtown hit, a song that opens with the words, “When you’re alone and life makes you lonely / you can always go downtown.”
“He was a small boy, of the quiet type, but with a nice appearance for the girls … My father went diving bars with him. It was popular with the women there, you could only tell.”
The reason for the bombing is still unclear, although investigators are reportedly studying whether Warner acquired conspiracy theories about 5G technology. Warner parked his RV next to an AT&T building before the vehicle detonated.
“It seems that the intention was more destruction than death. All of this is still speculation at this time, as we continue our research with all of our partners, “David Rausch, director of the Tennessee Office of Research, said Monday.
Authorities are also investigating why Warner, who was single and did not appear to have children, had moved two of her homes to Michelle Swing, a 29-year-old music executive in Los Angeles. One of the resignation deeds was filed on November 25, while the other was in 2019.
A neighbor, Rick Laude, told the Associated Press that he and Warner chatted days before the bombing, and Laude asked, “Will Santa bring you anything good for Christmas?”
“Oh yeah, Nashville and the world will never forget me,” Warner replied.
Laude said she didn’t think anything was weird in her conversation and that “nothing about this guy raised any red flags.”
Meanwhile, another neighbor, who refused to identify himself, told a Daily Beast reporter that when a peacock hovered last month, Warner left his home to feed him. “My daughter was telling me it was like‘ I want this peacock, ’” the neighbor stated.
Warner was known to have dogs and it is unclear if they also died in the RV explosion.
“I was extremely shocked,” Lundborg said of Warner’s seemingly intentional bombing. “Don’t expect anyone with whom you have normal thoughts to do something so abnormal. My memories of him are very distant, but even so, those were the memories I had ”.
“I guess he was crazy about something. You would think he did it, to do what he did, ”added Lundborg, whose family security company is now called Symspire.
Warner was the only Lundborg coach, and they worked at the Lundborg family residence in Antioch, Tennessee, where Warner went to high school.
“He was a small boy, of the quiet type, but good-looking for the girls,” Lundborg said. “My father went diving with him. It was very popular with the women there, you could say. I didn’t flirt much, but it looked like they liked it. ” Lundborg said Warner had a girlfriend at the time.
Lundborg said Warner “betrayed” his parents and set up his own alarm company, taking an ACE customer with him. But the business collapsed, Lundborg said, because it “didn’t have the personality” to deal with customers.
The last time Lundborg saw Warner was in 2007, when the technician managed the computer work for a Chevrolet dealership in downtown Nashville.
But more recently, Warner was managing Fridrich & Clark Realty technology. The owner of the company, Steve Fridrich, said he hired Warner four or five years ago as an independent contractor and that Warner repaired the firm’s computers and installed machines for new employees.
Fridrich said Warner had other customers in the area, but did not know their names.
“Tony Warner has never been an employee of our company, but from time to time he came to our office to take care of our computers. Earlier this month, he warned us that he was retiring and Fridrich & Clark has not had any contact with him since, ”Fridrich said in a text message.
“Upon learning that Tony is suspected of the bombing on 2nd Avenue on Christmas morning, Fridrich & Clark notified the authorities that he had provided computer services to our company. The Tony Warner we knew was a nice person who never showed up. no less professional behavior ”.
– with additional reports from Steven Hale