The Mad Bomber of New York (10 page)

The police and the public at large now knew that the person responsible for planting explosive devices in locations throughout the city bore a venomous hostility against the Consolidated Edison Company. Hungry for attention and retribution, Metesky had openly revealed his motives.

Even with the revelation to the
Tribune
, police detectives remained in the dark as to who was plaguing the city with these infernal machines. The obvious conclusion that the Bomber was in some way affiliated with Con Ed was muddled by the fact that bombs had turned up in other locations throughout New York, and, in any event, the universe of individuals bearing some kind of grievance against the power company could number in the tens of thousands. As frustration mounted, wild theories began to circulate through the department and the police groped for clues. Following the lead of a former New York City fire marshal in the investigation of a serial arsonist in the 1920s, it was observed that the Bomber seemed to follow a pattern of one bomb per month and that each of these was planted within three days of a full moon. Some in the department theorized that the culprit was a so called “mooner”—“one in whom flashes of lunacy are induced by lunar fullness.” It was even successfully argued that extra manpower be devoted to possible targets during these full-moon periods. The lengths to which the department would go to apprehend the Bomber seemed to expand by the day.

Wild theories notwithstanding, police detectives pursued every practical lead and parcel of evidence available to them. They analyzed each word of the Bomber's letter to the
Tribune
as to both appearance and substance, and they pored through as many relevant Con Ed personnel files as time and manpower would permit. Finally, through the identification of a file from a particularly disgruntled former Con Ed employee and a positive comparison of handwriting samples, detectives began to focus on a possible suspect. In the first week of November 1951, it appeared that an arrest was imminent.

“This defendant is a particular source of annoyance to the New York City Police. We are firmly convinced that he is not of sound mind.” Chief Magistrate John Murtagh regarded the words of the assistant district attorney with interest as the felony court arraignment began. The suspect, who silently looked on, had been arrested the previous day in his Connecticut home on a charge of sending a threatening letter and a package containing a sugar-laden “bomb” to the offices of Consolidated Edison Company. “He has been sending simulated bombs around the city the past few months,” continued the attorney. “Hundreds of police have been called out at all hours of the day and night to investigate because of his actions.”

The arrest had been prompted by the similarity of the suspect's handwriting to the block printing contained in the letter to the
Tribune
(a similarity that the accused himself was forced to admit), as well as a documented and ongoing dispute between the suspect and Con Ed that police had adroitly unearthed. Though at the time of the arrest there existed no direct evidence to link him to any of the other bombings around Manhattan, it was assumed that such evidence would soon pour into the department. Faced with these charges and potential charges, the prisoner waived extradition and willingly accompanied the officers to New York for arraignment. He was considered by police to be the prime—and only—suspect.

As a white-haired, fifty-six-year-old former employee of Con Ed, Frederick Eberhardt, was lead out of the courtroom bound in handcuffs and committed to Bellevue Hospital for thirty-seven days of psychiatric observation, his sobbing wife was heard to protest, “This arrest is an outrage. He never sent those things. He couldn't hurt a fly.”

As to his confinement at Bellevue, Eberhardt would later recall, “They were the most harrowing days of my life.”

In the days following the arrest, police officials held their collective breath, hopeful that the rash of bombings had finally come to an end. On November 11, however, as Frederick Eberhardt underwent a battery of mental testing at Bellevue, bomb squad detectives were once again called into action. Anonymous calls had been made to the East Twenty-second Street police station and to an operator at the Plaza exchange of the telephone company, reporting that bombs had been planted and were ready to explode at the Capitol Theatre on Broadway and a Roman Catholic church on East Twenty-eighth Street.

At 10:33 on the morning of November 28, 1951, air-raid sirens pierced through the chaotic drone of Times Square, bringing the usual tangle of traffic to a complete stop and sending drivers, passengers, and pedestrians alike for the cover of designated bomb shelters. “With horns silenced and other noises stilled, an eerie quiet settled on the streets, deserted except for policemen and a few defense workers,” said the
New York Times
. “It lasted until the first wailing note of the all-clear was heard at 10:43 A.M. and then within seconds the city bustled back to life and New Yorkers went about their affairs as if nothing unusual had happened.” In a three-minute exercise that the presiding civil defense director, Arthur W. Wallander, called a “pattern for survival,” New Yorkers had ushered in the atomic age with a “remarkably successful,” first of its kind air-raid drill. “I feel it would go just as well if an actual raid had occurred,” gloated Wallander. “It was money well spent—If only for insurance.”

Later that evening, in what would be considered troubling news to all but Frederick Eberhardt, a small explosion ripped through several coin-operated parcel lockers on the southbound mezzanine of the IRT subway station located at Union Square on Fourth Avenue and Fourteenth Street. Among the people passing near the lockers at the time of the blast was a lieutenant of the New York Fire Department, who told newspaper reporters that the explosion “sounded like a stick of dynamite.” Remarkably, no one was injured, but George Metesky had placed his exclamation point upon the earlier events of the day.

At the start of the 1951 Christmas season
,
the
New York Herald Tribune
received another letter:

TO HERALD TRIBUNE EDITOR—HAVE YOU NOTICE THE BOMBS IN YOUR CITY—IF YOU ARE WORRIED, I AM SORRY—AND ALSO IF ANYONE IS INJURED. BUT IT CANNOT BE HELPED—FOR JUSTICE WILL BE SERVED. I AM NOT WELL, AND FOR THIS I WILL MAKE THE CON EDISON SORRY—YES, THEY WILL REGRET THEIR DASTARDLY DEEDS—I WILL BRING THEM BEFORE THE BAR OF JUSTICE—PUBLIC OPINION WILL CONDEMN THEM—FOR BEWARE, I WILL PLACE MORE UNITS UNDER THEATER SEATS IN THE NEAR FUTURE. F.P.

On May 15, 1952, the case against Frederick Eberhardt was dismissed by a felony court magistrate for lack of evidence. A disheartened New York City Police Department was forced to hesitatingly admit what they had known for months: their serial bomber was still on the streets of Manhattan.

In 1952, Metesky struck three more times: once at a telephone booth in the Forty-first Street Port Authority Bus Terminal, and twice at the Lexington Theatre on Fiftieth Street and Lexington Avenue. Bomb squad detectives, now working from their new home on the top floor of the 84th precinct station on Poplar Street in Brooklyn, immediately recognized the familiar components and construction of each device and the pocketknife left within the torn recesses of the theater seats, and ominously noted that the Bomber's handiwork seemed to be improving.

The Lexington was one of the first of many movie theaters to be struck by Metesky, and in its bombing the Bomber established a method that he would repeatedly follow—a method that the New York Police would soon identify as uniquely his:

He buys an admission ticket shortly after the theater opens in the morning, about 10:00 a.m., possibly the fiftieth patron. He has nothing in his hands, for his bomb is in one pocket of his coat and an ordinary cheap jackknife in another.

This shadowy figure sits in an empty section of the orchestra, away from other persons. In the darkness of the show, he reaches to the seat next to him, slits the bottom with his knife, and slides in both the bomb and the knife (presumably so if anything goes wrong and he is searched before he leaves the theater, the knife will not be found on him).