The Mad Bomber of New York (31 page)

Commissioner Kennedy chafed with anger at Con Ed's statements but remained characteristically understated to the reporters who raced to police headquarters for a response. “The complete investigation showed that our men had checked through all available files of Con Edison,” Kennedy responded diplomatically. “My impression is that we were told that 1940 was the earliest record.”

As the relationship between Con Ed and the New York Police Department disintegrated into a cynical rift of mystery and suspicion regarding access to the company files, the underlying question of entitlement to the reward money became the talk of the town. With accusations being hurled in every direction it appeared that no one was willing to come forward and lay claim to the prize. Though Con Ed and the public at large appeared to favor Alice Kelly as the leading entrant, the police privately seethed at the thought of any Con Ed employee collecting the reward, and Alice herself had soured at all the attention and appeared reluctant to make a claim.

Police investigators had quickly concluded that not only had Con Ed obstructed their search for files, but also, in an effort to protect themselves, they had concocted the story of how Metesky's file had actually been located. Edward Lehane, one of Metesky's arresting officers, later disclosed in a magazine interview:

[Alice] was like an executive secretary, some type of highly rated job in Con Edison.

[The Metesky file] was in a file in a vice president's or somebody's office. They knew that file was there. There was a whole file cabinet full of cases that they felt were sensitive cases, cases that may have brought embarrassment to Con-Ed. They knew that we had detectives in Albany looking over all the old compensation files. There was some indication, I believe, that we were getting close . . . So they knew that the goddamn net was closing. That's when Con-Ed suddenly came up with it.

For his part, Commissioner Kennedy, whose charge it was to determine eligibility for the reward, had considered the politically unpopular decision of withholding the prize altogether on the technical legal ground that a “conviction,” as required by the Board of Estimates posting, would never be attained if the Bomber were to be held incompetent to stand trial or otherwise committed to a psychiatric institution. Though the department appeared ready to use every available tool to prevent Con Ed or its employees from profiting by the reward, Kennedy declared, perhaps untruthfully, that “[a]nybody who files a just claim will get consideration from me.”

On January 25, Harland Forbes contacted Commissioner Kennedy and requested a meeting between the two men in an effort to resolve the simmering conflict between Con Ed and the police force. After an hour-long conference, it was announced that a formal investigation headed by Deputy Police Commissioner Aloysius Melia, who was in charge of the department's legal affairs, would be held to determine exactly who should be given credit for trapping the Mad Bomber. The pressure on Kennedy to take the focus off the police investigation and to place it upon the swift prosecution of George Metesky, however, was mounting with each passing day. That weekend, as Melia prepared the details of his fact-finding probe, the
New York Times
posed the larger question that all of New York seemed to be asking: “Why, with all the available clues, did it take more than fifteen years to track down the Bomber?” Kennedy couldn't wait to change the subject.

During the first week of February, Deputy Commissioner Melia interviewed twenty-five detectives and officers of the New York City Police Department involved in the Bomber investigation, and formally deposed multiple employees of Con Ed, including Alice Kelly herself. Alice had consistently indicated that her role in finding the Metesky file was nothing more than a routine part of her job and that she accordingly intended to make no claim for the reward money. “I have no more right to [the reward],” testified Alice, “than the man in the moon.”

With Alice Kelly out of the reward picture, and no other legitimate claimants willing to enter the fracas, the Federation of Women Shareholders, led by its outspoken president, Wilma Soss, sensed another battleground for her feminist crusade. A longtime advocate of minority shareholder rights and more particularly women's causes in the corporate arena, Soss demanded that Con Ed make claim for the reward on behalf of Alice Kelly and, if awarded, distribute the monies evenly amongst Con Ed Employees, the Mutual Aid Association, the Police Welfare Fund, and the New York Newspaper Reporters Association. Con Ed refused Soss's entreaties, citing complete neutrality in the matter, and Alice, feeling somewhat manipulated, forwarded a stern statement to Soss explaining that her refusal to make application for the reward was based upon her own “long and serious consideration,” made without influence. The decision, she stated, was “irrevocable.” Confirming her consistent posture of privacy, Alice informed Soss, “I realize of course, that I cannot prevent any action your organization sees fit to take as stockholders of Consolidated Edison, but I must, in all fairness, inform you that I, personally, object to any action which may involve me in a controversy of which I want no part.”

Alice's pleadings were ignored, and on February 13, 1957, a formal application was made with the commissioner's office by the Federation of Women Shareholders on behalf of Alice Kelly for consideration of the reward money. It would be the only official claim for the reward filed with the commissioner's office.

Among the clamor and conversation regarding rewards and compensation, Thomas Dorney, the security guard at the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center who had, in August 1956, unwittingly taken home one of the Mad Bomber's creations, now threatened to bring suit against Metesky for $500 in damages sustained to his kitchen when the pipe bomb exploded in his home.

Frederick Eberhardt, who had been wrongfully arrested in 1951 as a prime suspect in the Mad Bomber case, filed a claim with the New York City controller, seeking redress for the loss of forty days work, the expenses of seven trips to New York, and the return of his bail money.

Lloyd Hill, the Penn Station porter who spent two months in St. Vincent's Hospital recovering from eighteen fractures of the right foot suffered in the Bomber's washroom explosion of February 1956, had been unable to work since the incident but contemplated no claims for further recompense beyond the $15 per week he received from the state Workmen's Compensation Board. “I haven't had any ill feeling toward him,” said Hill regarding the Bomber. “Most people can work their way out of difficulties; some have to resort to such means; it's not their fault.”

And in a letter to the Editor of the
New York Times,
Ruth S. Jackson of Norwalk, Connecticut wrote: “Why not contribute the reward money offered for the identification of George Metesky to the National Association for Mental Health? It might be used there to prevent some similar maladjustment to society. Then we would all be rewarded.”

The official report of Aloysius Melia's inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the location of Metesky's Con Ed file conceded full credit for the find to Alice Kelly. It explained that Walter Arm had innocently misconstrued a police statement alluding to Detective Bertram Scott's Monday morning retrieval of the file to mean that Scott had been the one to actually locate the file, and insisted that at no time during the investigation had Scott or any other member of the department actually taken credit for the find.

Notwithstanding the acknowledged credit given to Alice Kelly, she steadfastly refused to lay claim to the reward. It remains unpaid to this day.

The mystery of Con Ed's role in withholding files and obstructing the search remained even after Melia's inquiry. While general counsel for Con Ed admitted that he had informed police that some company files dated before 1940 had been destroyed, he insisted that he was referring only to “litigation files” and that the remaining compensation files existed and were never withheld from police. Harland Forbes called the matter a “misunderstanding,” and by then Commissioner Kennedy just wanted to put the matter to rest.

Though the formal inquiry was officially closed without sufficient evidence to implicate Con Ed personnel in any type of criminal misconduct resulting from the search for the Metesky file, the department privately and evermore maintained its suspicions against the power company. When asked why Alice Kelly didn't take the $26,000 reward money, a member of the BIU, Detective William Schmitt, simply said, “You tell me.”

As the New York City police feuded with Con Ed over files and rewards, the staff of the
Journal-American
city room drank away the days following Metesky's arrest at a former longshoreman's watering hole on the South Street docks called Moochie's Saloon. There, among the stench of stale beer and decaying plaster, pressmen, reporters, editors, and secretaries celebrated the tributes of New York and awaited the Pulitzer prize that each knew they deserved. Though the Pulitzer would never come, accolades and messages of congratulations from all over the state poured into the offices of the
Journal-American
like ale from Moochie's spigots for their role in the capture of the Mad Bomber.

The governor, Averell Harriman, forwarded a telegram to Seymour Berkson that read: “I congratulate the
Journal-American
for its part in the evident solution of the ‘Mad Bomber' case. This is in the finest tradition of American journalism in the cooperation of a newspaper with the police and other authorities.”

Similarly, Mayor Wagner lauded the
Journal-American
's efforts in the case and officially wrote:

The
New York Journal-American
is to be heartily congratulated on the splendid public service it has performed in this matter.

In close cooperation with our own Police Department, the
Journal-American
has once again demonstrated how a newspaper can be of great service to the community.

Speaking for all New Yorkers I want to extend our grateful thanks for the
Journal-American's
unselfish devotion to the good principles of government.