On February 28, 1976, Harriet Sisk reported to police that her two-month-old daughter Davi Calline had gone missing - possibly abducted, she said, from the family's mobile home. The search ended quickly. Officers found the baby's body in a shallow grave a short distance from the home, wrapped in three blankets with a rag doll. Harriet confessed to the killing and said Bruce had helped her bury the body and file the false report. She was arrested. A funeral was held the next day, March 1, for the infant who would have turned three months old later that month. Both parents were permitted to attend under supervision.

On the morning of March 2, Bruce came to the courthouse and was allowed a 10-minute visit with Harriet in her basement cell. Her cellmate, Alice Missen, later said the conversation was conducted in whispers. Hours later Bruce returned carrying a sawed-off shotgun and a suitcase. He forced his way past Deputy Anson and into the cell, where he and Harriet held Missen briefly before releasing her at Harriet's insistence. Missen reported their warning to State Trooper Lloyd Akers: have the building clear by morning or you will be sorry. Negotiators attempted to communicate with the couple. The couple refused to respond. At some point before dawn, an electronic blasting cap wired to a one-and-a-half volt D-cell flashlight battery detonated the dynamite inside the cell.

Five people died. Bruce Sisk, age 19. Harriet Sisk, age 18. Deputy Kenneth Love, age 33. Sheriff Elvin Pete Wedge, age 48. Deputy Earnest Hesson, age 71. Three law enforcement officers and a young couple, all but one of them under the age of fifty. Eleven other people were wounded. The basement jail and a substantial portion of the Mason County Courthouse were destroyed. Officials feared the building itself would collapse. The Sisks' surviving 18-month-old child, Michaell, was taken in by the West Virginia Department of Welfare. Each of the three officers left behind a family - wives, children, parents - in a county whose population was small enough that almost everyone knew at least one of the dead.

Forensic investigators determined the bomb had been triggered by the electrical detonator, not by Bruce shooting the suitcase with his shotgun as initial reports suggested. He had not fired the shotgun at all. The dynamite came from a construction firm where Bruce had once worked; the shotgun came from a mid-February burglary. A suicide note found in the Sisks' home, combined with Harriet's confession and witness testimony, established the bombing as a deliberate suicide pact. The Mason County Commission contracted for the rebuilding of the jail about eleven months after the explosion. A memorial was placed outside. Point Pleasant has lived with the bombing in the way small towns live with their worst days - not constantly, but not forgotten. The deputies and the sheriff are still named on the memorial. The Sisks are buried in the same county. Whatever drove a teenage mother to kill her own child, and the husband to follow her into the cell with a bomb, the answers have not survived. Only the names have.