Tom Lundborg was a teenager in the late 1970s when he worked under accused Nashville bomber Anthony Quinn Warner, who was a technician for an alarm company.
At the time, Lundborg’s father owned ACE Alarms, a company that provides burglary systems for commercial and residential buildings, but he became incapacitated in a car wreck. That left a young Lundborg and a twenties “Tony” Warner to run the business, and they drove to various locations to make burglar alarms and service calls.
“I worked with Tony as his helper. I looked up at him a little. He was kind of a hippie. Had long hair, one Magnum, PI mustache, ”Lundborg told The Daily Beast. ‘He was a smart, opinionated guy. I drove him all day every day – during the summers, at least for a few years. “
Lundborg said Warner hated authority, liked to smoke weed, and claimed he had just gotten out of the Navy. (It is unclear if Lundborg ever served in the United States military, but the records indicate that he was arrested in 1978 for marijuana possession.)
They drove around listening to 103 KDF, formerly Nashville’s main rock station, and when Warner saw a police officer, he broke his silence to lecture the teenage Lundborg.
‘I hate cops. They’re all corrupt, ”Warner would say. “Never trust an agent.”
Lundborg said he spoke to the FBI about Warner while authorities are trying to find a motive for the Christmas Day explosion that injured eight people and destroyed several buildings. Warner, 63, died in the explosion.
Early that morning, a recreational vehicle registered on Warner exploded after playing a recording with a stark warning: a bomb would go off in 15 minutes. The camper also played Petula Clark’s 1964 hit ‘Downtown’, a song that starts with the words, ‘When you’re alone and life makes you lonely / You can always go downtown’.
“He was a little boy, the quiet type, but looked nice to girls … My daddy went to bars with him. He was popular with the females in there, you could just tell.“
A motive for the bombing remains unclear, although researchers are reportedly investigating whether Warner adopted conspiracy theories about 5G technology. Warner parked his RV next to an AT&T building before the vehicle detonated.
“It seems the intention was more destruction than death. That’s all speculation at this point as we continue our investigation with all of our partners, ”said David Rausch, the director of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, Monday.
Authorities are also investigating why Warner, who was unmarried and appeared to have no children, turned over two of his homes to Michelle Swing, a 29-year-old music director in Los Angeles. One of the quitclaim deeds was filed on November 25, while the other was in 2019.
A neighbor, Rick Laude, told the Associated Press that he and Warner had been talking days before the bombing, and Laude asked, “Is Santa going to bring you something good for Christmas?”
“Oh yes, Nashville and the world will never forget me,” replied Warner.
Laude said he found nothing strange about their conversation and that “nothing about this man caused red flags.”
Meanwhile, another neighbor, who refused to identify himself, told a Daily Beast reporter that when a peacock wandered around last month, Warner came out of his house to feed him. “My daughter told me he was like ‘I want this peacock,'” the neighbor claimed.
Warner was known to have dogs, and it is unclear whether they also died in the RV explosion.
“I was extremely shocked,” Lundborg said of Warner’s apparently deliberate bombing. ‘You don’t expect someone with whom you had normal thoughts to do something so abnormal. My memories of him are very distant, but those were the memories I had. “
‘I suppose he was mad at something. You would think it was him to do what he did, ”added Lundborg, whose family-owned security business is now called Symspire.
Warner was the elder Lundborg’s only technician, and they worked out of the Lundborg family’s residence in Antioch, Tennessee, where Warner attended high school.
“He was a little boy, the quiet type, but looked nice to girls,” Lundborg said. ‘My father went to bars with him. He was popular with the females in there, you could just tell. He didn’t flirt much, but you could tell they liked him. Lundborg said that Warner had a girlfriend at the time.
Lundborg said Warner “betrayed” his parents and started his own alarm company, taking one or two ACE customers with him. But the business stranded, Lundborg said, because “he didn’t have the personality” to deal with customers.
The last time Lundborg saw Warner was in 2007, when the technician did the IT work for a Chevrolet dealership in downtown Nashville.
But most recently Warner worked with technology for Fridrich & Clark Realty. The owner of the company, Steve Fridrich, said he hired Warner as an independent contractor four or five years ago, and that Warner fixed the company’s computers and set up machines for new employees.
Fridrich said Warner had other customers in the area, but he didn’t know their names.
“Tony Warner has never been an employee of our company, but occasionally came to our office to maintain our computers. Earlier this month he told us that he was retiring and that Fridrich & Clark have not had contact with him since then, ”said Fridrich in a text message.
“When Fridrich & Clark learned that Tony is a suspect in the 2nd Avenue bombing on Christmas morning, Fridrich & Clark informed authorities that he had provided IT services to our company. The Tony Warner we knew is a nice person who never showed anything less than professional behavior. “
– with additional reporting by Steven Hale