The Mad Bomber of New York (9 page)

At 5:25 in the afternoon, at the peak of New York's rush hour, Metesky's unit detonated, spraying shards of sand and debris in all directions. By happenstance nobody was passing by the area at the particular moment of discharge, but the blast was heard throughout the station and into the confines of the Oyster Bar. There were no injuries and there was little, if any, panic by commuters and patrons, though the bomb squad investigation that ensued well into the evening was a curious and disrupting sight in a location that thrived on a certain frenzied order.

Investigators were immediately stumped. This did not appear to be a typical pipe bomb, and, since there was a detonation, a conclusion as to its design and construction would be a difficult task. The attempted bombings of the Con Ed buildings in the early 1940s were a fleeting memory, and no immediate connection was made by police.

In the following days, Metesky was gratified by several newspaper articles that covered the incident. Though some of the particulars conflicted, the story was picked up by the wire services and the news had spread across the country, albeit in small accounts beneath the fold or buried in the back pages. For the most part, these stories emphasized the homemade nature of the device and confirmed that no one had been injured. The
New York Times
contained a page 24 article titled “Bomb Blast in Terminal
,
” which stated that the police attributed the incident to “boys or pranksters.”

The Grand Central bombing was, in reality, intended by Metesky as more of a prototype of a new fusing mechanism rather than a full-fledged explosive device. It did not contain a pipe casing or a measure of volatile powder, only a .25-caliber cartridge and an ingenious apparatus designed to automatically discharge the round at a predetermined time. Though destroyed in the ignition, the focus of this mechanism was, once again, the throat lozenge that had so confounded bomb squad detectives in the past—and would continue to do so in the future.

Metesky knew that the “throat disc,” as he called it, had a constant rate of dissolution when exposed to moisture. Through years of experimentation he observed that by applying varying amounts of water to a disc that had been meticulously filed down to a prescribed thickness, he could predict, with some accuracy, the time it would take for the disc to melt. A spoonful of water, for example, would disintegrate the disc in half an hour, while two to three drops would take several days. In his earlier units (which had failed to detonate either by design or defect), he applied these properties to complete the circuit between a battery and a flash bulb. As the lozenge dissolved it would bring the fusing wires into contact and thus, in theory, detonate the bomb.

His new method, though still crude, carried a greater level of ingenuity—and risk. In the Grand Central incident Metesky used the throat disc to compress a spring within a slot in the bomb housing. Once the disc sufficiently dissolved (the time this took depending on the amount of water added), the spring would release, driving a ball-bearing into a second spring, which, in turn, slammed a firing pin into the .25-caliber cartridge, causing its detonation. In his future bombings, the cartridge and the throat disc fusing mechanism would be used to trigger a larger cache of smokeless gunpowder contained within a pipe casing. On March 29, 1951, however, it was nothing more than the sound of a .25-caliber bullet that echoed through the lower concourse of Grand Central Terminal near track 27.

Metesky was now ready to begin what he called “the rough stuff.” He had perfected several workable versions of his bomb units, and to give his crusade maximum exposure he would seek further high-profile targets in heavily traveled areas. He always insisted that it was never his intention to kill or injure any person, and thus he would purposefully design his bombs to be smaller in scale and less likely to inflict harm. “I've read,” Metesky would later say, “that a man with a hammer can wreck a sixteen-inch naval gun, just by hitting it until it shatters. It takes a while. It's the same way with bombs. Individually, they couldn't knock a telephone off the wall. Collectively, they had an effect.”

The New York City police would beg to differ. In each case, investigators would conclude that Metesky's bombs were purposefully placed in public locations and that each was capable of causing injury or death to anyone within proximity. Every so-called unit was, in fact, “lethal.”

About three weeks after the Grand Central incident, Metesky struck again. He stole into a telephone booth on the basement level of the New York Public Library on Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue, and placed a three-and-a-half-inch length of pipe fueled with smokeless gunpowder and a .25-caliber cartridge mechanism—throat disc fused—inside the metal fan casing at the top of the enclosure. At 6:10 in the evening of April 24, 1951, the bomb detonated, tearing through the booth's ventilation apparatus and horrifying (but remarkably not injuring) a library security guard who happened to be leaning against the booth at the time of the blast. Bomb squad detectives immediately saw the connection with the Grand Central bombing, both in the form of the mechanism and in the manner of its placement, and the newspapers were quick to recall the earlier police conclusion that they were dealing with “pranksters.”

Over the months that followed, Metesky seemed to regroup and assess what, if anything, he had accomplished. He had successfully planted several of his units, each of which had detonated as designed, and each had garnered some minor publicity. Yet, whatever satisfaction he gained from these events was trifling and short-lived. With every painful and labored breath that he drew, he was reminded of his nemesis, Con Ed, and his mission to make them pay for what they did to him. He was compelled to finish what he had started.

On August 27, 1951, Metesky once again struck Grand Central Terminal. At 9:00 p.m., well beyond the evening rush hour, a length of galvanized pipe detonated in a telephone booth on the west concourse of the terminal, causing damage but no injuries. And several weeks later, in a direct assault against Con Ed, a five-inch pipe bomb, his largest to that point, exploded in a telephone booth in the lobby of the company's main offices on Irving Place. Again, in an apparent effort to minimize the possibility of injury, the unit was timed to explode at 6:15 in the morning, well before most employees arrived for work.

The New York City police downplayed the Con Ed incident, again insisting that they were dealing with a prankster and that damage had been “trifling.” Privately, however, bomb squad detectives had begun to grow uneasy. Detective William Schmitt, an affable, brawny veteran of the force charged with the task of examining and cataloguing each fragmented component of the exploded machines, immediately realized that the city was dealing with a serial bomber. Though the contraptions thus far had been constructed on a small scale, he recognized the progressively improved workmanship of each and, along with the bomb squad as a whole, privately worried that the culprit would take the obvious next step of increasing the potency of his work. Contained in the official police record of the second Grand Central bombing was this ominous notation: “This is a well constructed mechanism. It shows considerable advance in technique as compared with earlier bombs.”

In what would become the standing policy of the New York City Police Department for the next five years of the investigation, department personnel refused to provide any specific details of their investigation. “It would ‘just build up the ego of the nut who did it,'” said one detective. The department was also concerned that heavy publicity about the bombings might panic the city and bring out the inevitable copycats. This position would prove to be a dreadful blunder. As Metesky himself would explain, “They got some stupid advice from some psychiatrist, ‘If you don't bother with him, he'll stop.' And that just made me work all the harder.”

Thirteen days after the Con Ed bombing, a clerk in the third floor Con Ed mail room accepted postal delivery of a large manila envelope that seemed to bulge at its seams. The package, postmarked “White Plains, NY,” was hand-addressed to the personnel director of the company and contained, at the upper left corner, a printed return designation of “Lehman and Lehman.” Though the Con Ed security force had advised all company personnel to remain alert for strange or unexplained devices in the building, the clerk was not cued to any obvious danger that might have been suggested by the package. Upon tearing it open, however, he identified the ashen hue of galvanized metal and dashed for security.

Following the usual protocol, a bomb squad detective, in full protective gear, examined the device via the portable fluoroscope, then jostled it from a distance in an attempt to test the trigger mechanism. When nothing occurred, the device was removed from the building in the mesh envelope and whisked, via the armored containment vehicle, to a safer locale. Upon closer scrutiny, the device seemed to contain all the familiar earmarks of the Bomber's handiwork, though the powder within the casing didn't look right. When it was deemed safe to do so, the detectives dismantled the contraption and out poured the phantom powder, which, upon further analysis, proved to be nothing more than sugar. Metesky's howls of laughter could almost be heard all the way to police headquarters. In describing the incident years later, one New York newspaper wrote, “The weirdie patently pulled this caper for laughs.”

On October 22, 1951, a longshoremen's strike that had pressed its way up the New York waterfront had paralyzed thirty miles of docks and now expanded into shipments of rail freight, and at the White House an announcement had been made that the Soviet Union had once again conducted a test of an atomic weapon. News of the day had been coming in at a brisk pace, and the night crew of the
New York Herald Tribune
was hard at work bringing the next day's early edition to life. Decisions as to lead stories and copy position were being made at the usual breakneck speed, and interruption was the last thing the staff of the paper needed—but interruption was exactly what it got.

At approximately 10:15 on the evening of October 22, a special delivery letter found its way into the hands of the
Tribune
's city editor. With one angry eye focused on a staff writer who was protesting the deletion of certain passages from a feature article that he had proudly authored, the editor fumbled with the envelope whose late-night delivery carried the air of some import. As he began reading the missive, his full attention was abruptly garnered and the clamor of the writer's remonstrations slipped into the hum of background noise generated by the clattering office. In handwritten block letters stroked in pencil, the note informed the reader that a bomb had been planted in the ventilation system of the men's restroom located in the basement of the Paramount Theatre, at Broadway and Forty-third Street. The letter went on:

BOMBS WILL CONTINUE UNTIL THE CONSOLIDATED EDISON COMPANY IS BROUGHT TO JUSTICE FOR THEIR DASTARDLY ACTS AGAINST ME. I HAVE EXHAUSTED ALL OTHER MEANS. I INTEND WITH BOMBS TO CAUSE OTHERS TO CRY OUT FOR JUSTICE FOR ME . . . IF I DON'T GET JUSTICE I WILL CONTINUE, BUT WITH BIGGER BOMBS.

Within minutes word had reached the bomb squad and a quiet search of the Paramount had begun. As 3,600 unwitting patrons enjoyed that evening's movie presentation, an unexploded four-inch “cylindrical object” charged with black powder and a .25-caliber bullet was carried from the building and hurried from the area in the squad's containment vehicle.

In what would become a further signature of his operations, Metesky had provided an advance warning of his doings in an effort not only to curtail injuries but also to maximize the potential publicity garnered from the event. Beginning with the Manhattan Paramount, he would, on occasion, place a terse and angry telephone call to his targets or write advance letters warning of his bombs—and scolding the recipients of the consequences of their failure to blame Con Ed for the incidents. With the letter to the
Herald Tribune
, Metesky accomplished each of these goals. Though, for now, the
Tribune
itself had resisted publishing the contents of the letter, other local newspapers (as well as a prominent wire service) had obtained a copy and included full-length quotations, over the formal objections of the New York City Police Department.