Aftermath of the Christmas Day bombing
A few weeks before Anthony Warner detonated a bomb in an RV on downtown Nashville's Second Avenue, killing himself and damaging or destroying dozens of historic buildings up and down the street, his best and last friend unknowingly encountered him finalizing two particularly chilling elements of his plan: a prerecorded female voice issuing an evacuation alert, and the 1964 Petula Clark rendition of "Downtown. Both would ultimately blare from Warner's RV before it exploded on Christmas morning.
That bit of info is among the myriad new details about Warner revealed in a New York Times story on the bombing and the bomber published Wednesday morning. The piece, whose bylines include Nashville reporters Steve Cavendish and Jamie McGee, examines Warner's bizarre obsessions and the troubling trail that led to his devastating final act. His true motive remains frustratingly unclear, but the Times does add clarity to the picture of Warner, a conspiracy theorist whose bizarre suicide itself spawned a number of conspiracy theories.
Crystal Deck, who became close to Warner toward the end of his life and spoke to the Times about encounters like the one above, says she "believes that some combination of a fatal cancer diagnosis salted with a belief in conspiracy theories led Mr. Warner to kill himself in such a brutally spectacular manner."
Deck first met Warner at the Waffle House where she worked, and she describes her first impression of him like this: “The first time I met him, I just thought his cornbread wasn’t really done in the middle and he was off a little bit."
Deck tells the paper that the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks set Warner off down the rabbit hole of dark and bizarre theories. He believed 9/11 was an inside job and frequently camped in Montgomery Bell Park to hunt for giant alien reptiles, which he believed were posing as humans on earth.
Deck wasn't the only person who witnessed Warner's increasingly concerning behavior. In 2019, his then-girlfriend reported to the Metro Nashville Police Department that Warner was building bombs in the RV parked outside his house. But officers never spoke to Warner or sought a warrant to search his property. MNPD Chief John Drake has defended the department's handling of the report, and a committee is now reviewing the matter.
In her interview with the Times, Deck says that the last time she saw Warner was on Dec. 17 at Waffle House. He gave her his car, the paper reports, along with the jacket and gloves he used to wear when he walked her dog. He implied that he didn't have much time left to live.
