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7
of furniture in the front living room. Found by Sgt. SWANSON in the living room against the east wall was a
Marathon 6 volt battery of the type that could be used to construct a bomb."
The police report (written shortly after the search) mentions the name of each officer who found the guns, the
blasting caps, even the battery. But it neglects to mention who found the dynamite. It is especially odd, because
the man who testified at the trial that he found the dynamite was the same man who wrote the report, Sgt. Jack
Swanson. Notice that he referred to himself in the third person regarding the discovery of the battery but he forgot
to mention that he found the dynamite.
At the trial, Sgt. Swanson was questioned by the defense on page 713 of the Bill of Exceptions.
Q: You also found the dynamite in the basement, is that right?
A: Yes.
Q: Were you the first person to find the dynamite?
A: Yes.
Q: Who was the next person to see the dynamite? Did you summon other people from upstairs when you
found it, or what did you do?
A: As I recall, it may have been Sgt. Pfeffer or Agent Sledge from the Alcohol, Firearms Division. I couldn't
tell you for sure.
Q: When you found the dynamite, what did you do, holler or go upstairs or did they just come downstairs,
or what happened?
A: I informed someone that I thought we had some dynamite in the basement.
Q: But you don't know who else actually saw the dynamite after you, is that right?
A: Well, there were at least four or five other parties...
Q: But you can't recall exactly who saw it before it was moved?
A: Well, Agent Curd was there and Bob Pfeffer and Agent Sledge.
Bob Pfeffer was an Omaha police officer. Agents Curd and Sledge worked for the ATF. On p. 730 Sgt. Pfeffer
testified:
A: Sgt. Jack Swanson found the dynamite.
And on p. 732 the defense asked Sgt. Pfeffer this question:
Q: You never saw it in the basement, did you?
And Sgt. Pfeffer answered:
A: No. I never went down.
Three years later, Mondo appealed his conviction to the federal courts and a hearing was held before a Federal
District Court Judge. At that hearing, Sgt. Swanson testified under oath,
"and that's when we or I- I can't recall specifically now who saw it first"
Recall that at the trial, Sgt. Swanson testified very positively that he found the dynamite, he saw it first. Three years
later, he's not so sure.
Also at that hearing in 1974, the police were shown a photograph of Mondo's basement and asked to put an X in
the photo on the spot where the dynamite was found. Mondo recalls that they had difficulty doing this.
At the trial, the police testified that they had found the box of dynamite in a coal bin. According to Mondo, the coal
bin was not pictured in the photograph shown to them at the hearing. Therefore, he contends that each one of the
officers lied when he pointed to a place in the photograph where the dynamite had been found.
In 1990, the BBC (British Broadcasting
Corporation) made a documentary about this case. The following
is a transcript of a comment made by Sgt. Jack Swanson in that film.
"I was there. I found it. Uh, I didn't personally discover it but I was there when it was discovered and went right to
where it was. It was there."
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