Bombing a mystery 2 years after rattling Nevada town

LAS VEGAS — A Nevada sheriff said authorities still don’t have a clue why an out-of-work nurse blew up a friend’s house two years ago in the tiny Southern Nevada town of Panaca.

Friday marked the two-year anniversary of the bomb attack, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.

In July 2016, Glenn Franklin Jones drove 250 miles to the Panaca home of his former co-worker Joshua Cluff, lit the fuses on the two bombs he’d brought, and killed himself before the explosion.

The bombing destroyed the house, but Cluff’s wife and young daughters escaped with their lives. Jones was the only casualty.

Lincoln County Sheriff Kerry Lee said he’s no closer to knowing why Jones carried out the bombing or where he got the explosives.

Jones was out of work and living in an RV park in Kingman, Arizona.

Lee, who was born and raised in Panaca and lives there in a house less than two blocks from the bombing site, said it appeared Jones took old, empty artillery shells or mortar rounds he got surplus from the military and filled them with explosives. Lee said he was told that Jones may have been mixing his own explosives — or at least assembling the bombs — inside his RV in Arizona, but the sheriff has yet to see any written reports to back that up.

Lee says he’s eager to hear from the FBI or the Nevada Department of Public Safety’s Investigation Division about the case.

“I’ve got really nothing out of them, nothing at all,” he said.

The state Investigation Division this week said it could not release any documents about the bombing because the case is open.

In a written statement Thursday, the FBI declined to say whether it is conducting an investigation

In December, the Review-Journal asked Aaron Rouse, the FBI’s special agent in charge for Las Vegas, for an update on the Panaca case.

“Sorry, not going there. But thanks for trying,” Rouse said.

When asked if there would be a report released at the conclusion of the investigation, he said, “I can’t speak to that.”