The Mad Bomber of New York (45 page)

dismayed to find threads
: Transcript of Interrogation of George Metesky, January 22, 1957.

The next day, newspapers reported
: “Penn Station Blast: FBI, Cops Hunt ‘Mad Bomber,'”
New York Journal-American
, February 22, 1956, 3.

he felt “sick”
: Transcript of Interrogation of George Metesky, January 22, 1957.

“I took an oath to keep on placing them”
: Ibid.

including one in the Empire State Building
: Ibid.

As the two men talked
: “Pipe Bomb from R.C.A. Building Blasts Guard's Home in Jersey,”
New York Times
, August 5, 1956, 64.

“You never know when a piece of pipe”
: “Rockefeller Center Escapes a Bombing,”
New York Herald Tribune
, August 5, 1956, 1.

“like two cars coming together”
: Ibid., 6.

“a mess . . .”
: “PipeBomb from R.C.A. Building Blasts Guard's Home in Jersey,” 64.

“I haven't been as religious”
: “Rockefeller Center Escapes a Bombing,” 1.

“His face remains a blank”
: Joseph Carter, “Wanted: The Man without a Face,” 56.

“. . . WHILE VICTIMS GET BLASTED
”
: “Psychiatrist Depicts the Bomber,”
New York Herald Tribune
, December 27, 1956, 1. Also see Brussel,
Casebook
, 21–22.

CHAPTER VII: THE “TWELFTH STREET PROPHET”

Parakeets flying freely
: Telephone interview with John Israel, James A. Brussel's stepson, May 29, 2009.

“It is a comfortable enough face”
: Brussel,
Casebook
, 3.

“Bow-tied, Mustachioed and Natty”
: “My New York,”
Titusville Herald
, August 8, 1959, 6.

From his office
: Telephone interview with John Israel, May 29, 2009.

His submissions were so frequent
: Ibid.

A prolific and incessant writer
: Telephone interview with Judith Gutmann, James A. Brussel's stepdaughter, June 5, 2009.

“[A] man has to be paranoid”
: “My New York,” 6.

On one of many working vacations
: Telephone interview with John Israel, May 29, 2009.

“There is a kind of poetic justice”
: Brussel,
Casebook
, ix.

A native-born New Yorker
: Biographical information is derived from Brussel,
Casebook
, 4;
The New York Red Book, Volume 71
(Williams Press, 1963), 645; and a telephone interview with John Israel, May 29, 2009.

Though he focused some of his
: See James A. Brussel, “Military Psychiatry,”
Military Surgeon
88 (1941).

he developed an intriguing interest
: See James A. Brussel, “Charles Dickens: Child Psychologist and Sociologist,”
Psychiatric Quarterly
12, no. 1 (1938); James A. Brussel, “Van Gogh: Masochist Genius of the Canvas, A Psychiatric Study,”
Psychiatric Quarterly
14, Supplement 1 (1940): 7–16; and Judith A. Peraino,
Listening to the Sirens: Musical Technologies of Queer Identity from Homer to Hedwig
(University of California Press, 2006), 83.

Established in 1926, the stated function
: “Preliminary Guide to Mental Health Documentary Sources in New York State,”
www.archives.nysed.gov/a/research/res_topics_health_mh_recguide_dmh.shtml
, accessed October 9, 2009.

“The history of mental disease”
: New York State Department of Mental Hygiene,
Annual Report
, 1948, 46.

“the great mystery of human behavior”
: Brussel,
Casebook
, 4.

“with an attitude of cool scientific inquiry”
: Ibid., 5.

“common psychiatric principles in reverse”
: Ibid., 3.

“That the human mind works at all”
: Brussel,
Casebook
, xii.

“Sherlock Holmes of the Couch”
: Ibid., 3.

CHAPTER VIII: “THE GREATEST MANHUNT IN THE HISTORY
OF THE POLICE DEPARTMENT”

In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's classic
: A. Conan Doyle,
The Sign of Four
(Spencer Blackett, 1890), 93.

“greatest manhunt in the history”
: “Kennedy Orders Wide Manhunt,” 1.

“New York's ‘finest career officer'”
: “Portrait of Our No. 1 Cop,”
New York Times
, November 15, 1959, SM16.

“number one headache”
: Marjorie Dent Candee, ed.,
Current Biography Yearbook 1956
(H.W. Wilson, 1956), 334.

“Deceptively gentle in appearance”
: “Portrait of Our No. 1 Cop,” SM16.

He grew up in the tough Greenpoint section
: “Strong Arm of the Law,”
Time
, July 7, 1958.

Soon after, he attended
: Candee, ed.,
Current Biography Yearbook 1956
, 334.

In 1951 he was promoted
: “Strong Arm of the Law.”

though he had a reputation
: “‘All Cop' Commissioner, Stephen P. Kennedy,”
New York Times
, February 14, 1956, 21.

“Mr. Kennedy is a man”
: Ibid.

Though this authoritative deportment
: Gerald Astor,
The New York Cops: An Informal History
(Charles Scribner's Sons, 1971), 209.

By 1958, the department would boast
: “Strong Arm of the Law.”

“to make every effort”
: “‘Get Bomb Maniac,' All Police Told,”
New York Daily News
, December 4, 1956, 2.

“The man is not”
: “Kennedy Orders Wide Manhunt,” 47.

“an outrage that cannot”
: Ibid., 1.

He concluded the conference
: Ibid.

“I appeal to members”
: “‘Get Bomb Maniac,'” 2.

“
DO YOU RECOGNIZE”
: “Do You Recognize This Writing?”
New York Daily News
, December 11, 1956, 10.

“A ‘faceless man'”
: “‘Mad Bomber' Believed to Be Man About 45,”
New York Journal-American
, December 4, 1956, 11.

“He is searching desperately”
: “His Secret Notes Paint the Portrait of Mad Bomber,”
New York Daily News
, December 11, 1956, 10.

The
New York Journal-American
: “Bomber Mystery,”
New York Journal-American
, December 26, 1956, 19.

the
World-Telegram and Sun
: “The Mad Bomber,”
Time
, Janaury 7, 1957, 17.

BIU detectives canvassed
: “16-Year Search for Madman,”
New York Times
, December 25, 1956, 1.

“reached the end”
: “Publicity Heat Turned Toward Mad Bomber,”
New York Journal-American
, December 5, 1956, 6.

CHAPTER IX: A CITY IN TURMOIL

“I didn't see any reason”
: Deborah Kops,
Racial Profiling Open for Debate
(Marshall Cavendish, 2006), 27.

“A whole generation”
: James, “The Mad Bomber vs. Con Ed,” 46.

“He had the whole city”
: “Injured Victims Express Relief,”
Waterbury Republican-American
, January 23, 1957, 1.

“It is one thing”
: “Terror in the Age of Eisenhower,” New York Times, September 10, 2004, B1.

“He has been described”
: “New Man Heads Troubled Police Force,”
Bee
(Danville, Virginia), June 28, 1962, 2-B. (AP).

“Book of Rules”
: Jeane Toomey,
Assignment Homicide: Behind the Headlines
(Sunstone Press, 2006), 94.

His 1956 contribution
: Morris Ploscowe,
Manual for Prosecuting Attorneys
(Practising Law Institute, 1956), 432.

Through 1956
: James A. Brussel, M.D., “History of the New York State Department of Mental Hygiene,”
N.Y. State Journal of Medicine
57, no. 3 (1957): 559.

Though the arcane methodology
: Ibid.

“I had real people”
: Brussel,
Casebook
, 28.

“I don't know what”
: Ibid., 12.

CHAPTER X: PROFILE OF A BOMBER

Homer's eighth century
BC
:
Richard N. Kocsis and George B. Palermo,
Criminal Profiling: Principles and Practice
(Humana Press, 2006), 4.

Published in 1486
: Brent E. Turvey,
Criminal Profiling: An Introduction to Behavioral Evidence Analysis
, (Elsevier, 2008), 6–10.

“born criminals”
: Ibid., 17.

“I seemed to see”
: Colin Wilson and Damon Wilson,
Written in Blood: A History of Forensic Detection
(Carroll and Graff, 2003), 591.

Pursuant to his anthropological theory
: Turvey,
Criminal Profiling
, 17–18.

“mark of Cain”
: Ibid., 18.

Though most of these
: Kocsis and Palermo,
Criminal Profiling
, 4.

“Conan Doyle continually referenced”
: Turvey,
Criminal Profiling
, 21.

By a careful examination
: Tim Newburn,
Handbook of Criminal Investigation
(Willan Publishing, 2007), 493–494.

“. . . A man subject to periodical attacks”
: Kocsis and Palermo,
Criminal Profiling
, 5.

The Whitechapel murders
: Ibid.

Of strategic significance
: Newburn,
Handbook of Criminal Investigation
, 494.

Though Langer's assessment
: Kocsis and Palermo,
Criminal Profiling
, 6.

“I knew I wasn't going to fool him”
: Brussel,
Casebook
, 13.

“I'd seen that look before”
: Ibid.

“I felt that my profession”
: Ibid., 13–14.

“I stood up from my desk”
: Ibid., 11–12.

“He seemed like a ghost”
: Ibid., 28.

“At large somewhere”
: Ibid., 14.

“A psychiatrist's dominant characteristic”
: Ibid., 5.

Each such item
: Email from Howard Teten to author dated July 9, 2009, in which a detailed analysis of Dr. Brussel's approach to criminal profiling was provided. Dr. Teten was an instructor at the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit at Quantico, Virginia, and developed the Bureau's original approach to profiling which was adapted, in 1970, as a lecture course titled “Applied Criminology.”

It would, in effect
: See Charles Patrick Ewing and Joseph T.

McCann,
Minds on Trial: Great Cases in Law and Psychology
(Oxford University Press, 2006), 14.

“These mechanical affairs”
: Brussel,
Casebook
, 28–29.

“alien to the feminine personality”
: “Bomber a Woman? Idea Called ‘Silly,'”
New York Herald Tribune
, December 28, 1956, 11.

Consequently, Brussel indicated
: Brussel,
Casebook
, 29.

The threats had continued
: “Psychiatrist Depicts the Bomber,” 1.

“a chronic disorder”
: Brussel,
Casebook
, 30.

“These are the people”
: “Psychiatrist Depicts the Bomber,” 1.

“The paranoiac is the world's”
: Brussel,
Casebook
, 30–32.

“He's symmetrically built”
: Ibid., 32.

Brussel spoke in assured tones
: Douglas and Olshaker,
Unabomber
, 10.

In a study
: Ernest Kretschmer,
Physique and Character
(University of Michigan, 1925; reprinted by Read Books, 2008), 16–36.

Brussel told the officers
: Brussel,
Casebook
, 32–33.

“He's middle-aged”
: Ibid., 33.

It was a logical assumption
: Ibid. See also “Bomber a Woman? Idea Called ‘Silly,'” 11.

Since the Bomber's overriding contempt
: Ibid.

“He wants to be flawless”
: Brussel,
Casebook
, 41.

Repeated use of odd phrasings
: “Mad Bomber Believed ‘Ordinary Man' in 40s,”
New York Journal-American
, December 26, 1956, 3. See also “Search for the Bomber,”
New York Times
, January 6, 1957, E2.

Another theory
: Joseph Carter, “Wanted: The Man without a Face,” 56.

“It was like a slouching soldier”
: Brussel,
Casebook
, 36.

“something inside him”
: Ibid.

“Something about sex”
: Ibid.

“Once again, I realized”
: Ibid., 37.

“Could the seat symbolize”
: Ibid.

Brussel was convinced
: Ibid., 37–38.

“And now,” thought Brussel
: Ibid., 39.

“inferential mosaic”
: Ibid., 38–39.

“A loner”
: Ibid., 39–40.

He has no friends
: “Bomber a Woman? Idea Called ‘Silly,'” 11.

“He [is] unmarried”
: Brussel,
Casebook
, 40–41.

Since men typically don't reside alone
: Ibid., 40.

“at least two years of high school”
: Ibid., 41.

He flipped through the pages
: Ibid., 34.

The letters almost read
: Douglas and Olshaker,
Unabomber
, 11.

“Historically,” responded Brussel
: Brussel,
Casebook
, 42 (emphasis added).

“To play the odds again”
: Ibid.

Recognizing that thousands
: Ibid., 42–43.

“Heart disease is my guess”
: Ibid., 43.

a failure “to make every possible allowance”
: Ibid., 42.

“The Bomber was God”
: Ibid., 43.