The Mad Bomber of New York (16 page)

A more scientific, though still flawed, application of profiling began to emerge in the nineteenth century with the work of the Italian physician Cesare Lombroso. In a methodical attempt to classify and predict criminality, Lombroso announced in his 1876 book
The Criminal Man
that physical and anthropological characteristics found in certain groups of offenders suggested the existence of what he called “born criminals,” as opposed to those driven to crime by illness, insanity, or circumstances. Based upon a study of 383 Italian prisoners and postmortem analysis of various offenders' bodies, Lombroso concluded that certain physical features of some criminals denoted a primitive or lower evolutionary order. “I seemed to see,” said Lombroso, “all of a sudden, lighted up as a vast plain under a flaming sky, the problem of the nature of the criminal—an atavistic being who reproduces in his person the ferocious instincts of primitive humanity and the inferior animals.”

Pursuant to his anthropological theory, Lombroso developed a series of eighteen physical and congenital characteristics, including asymmetry of the face, excessive dimensions of the jaw and cheekbones, deformities of the nose, swollen and protruding lips, excessive arm length, and so on, the presence of five or more of which, in his view, suggested the born criminal. Lombroso believed that the identification of these physical attributes could be used, like a “mark of Cain” to predict future criminality.

Since Lombroso's day other criminologists have made similar attempts to classify and predict criminal behavior based upon such factors as race, intelligence, and anatomical attributes. Though most of these theories have been scorned and discredited through the years, the concept of behavior as a reflection of personality has endured as an axiom of modern psychology.

The practical application of the behavioral sciences to criminology found perhaps its greatest influence in the pages of fictional literature. In November 1887, an English doctor and writer, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, published the first of his Sherlock Holmes mysteries,
A Study in Scarlet.
In a series of four novels and fifty-six short stories and articles that made up the classic adventures, “Conan Doyle continually referenced observation, logic, and dispassion as invaluable to the detection of scientific facts, the reconstruction of crime, the profiling of criminals, and the establishment of legal truth,” wrote renowned forensic scientist Brent Turvey
.
Sherlock Holmes and the renowned Dr. John Watson would engross aspiring detectives for years to come, and inspire future forensic scientists and profilers with their legendary nonbiased inferential study of crime.

Perhaps influenced by the fiction of Conan Doyle, the first actual interpretation of crime scene evidence to infer details of an offender's personality took place in Great Britain in 1888 in response to the Whitechapel murders—the fabled case of Jack the Ripper. Baffled by a series of gruesome and sadistic murders of women, London authorities enlisted the help of a police surgeon named Thomas Bond to examine the evidence and, based upon his medical expertise, draw conclusions as to the personality of the killer. By a careful examination of the stab wounds and an analysis of the extensive mutilation of the bodies, Bond extrapolated that all five murders had been committed by one individual who was physically strong, dispassionate, and brazen. His comprehensive profile continued:

. . . A man subject to periodical attacks of Homicidal and Erotic mania. The murderer in external appearance is quite likely to be a quiet inoffensive looking man, probably middle-aged and neatly and respectably dressed. He would be solitary and eccentric in his habits, also he is most likely to be a man without regular occupation, but with a small income or pension.

The Whitechapel murders were never solved, and thus the accuracy of Bond's inferences remain unverified, but his detailed findings stand, to this day, as a historical example of a pragmatic criminal profile.

The technique and theories associated with the study of modern profiling underwent comprehensive development in the early to mid twentieth century through the work and teachings of dedicated teachers and criminologists such as Dr. Hans Gross, August Vollmer, Dr. Paul Kirk, and Dr. Walter Langer. In a famous American account of a psychological study conducted during World War II, the US Office of Strategic Services enlisted the assistance of Dr. Langer to develop an evaluation of Adolph Hitler for planning and tactical purposes. In a 135-page assessment later published under the name
The Mind of Adolph Hitler,
Langer noted a series of psychological characteristics such as an unresolved Oedipus complex, evidence of sadism, and an irrational fear of germs and disease. Of strategic significance was Langer's prediction that Hitler would likely fight to the end and commit suicide rather than endure capture—a calculation that would prove entirely accurate. Though Langer's assessment was confined to the study of a known subject rather than providing aid in the search for an unidentified offender, his work nonetheless represented a practical attempt to predict patterns of future behavior and would lay the foundation for further study in the field.

Yet, despite the steady historical development of the behavioral sciences in the context of criminology by academics and practitioners alike, there existed prior to 1956 no reported case of a professionally generated criminal profile being sought by an American law enforcement agency as a tool to identify and apprehend a criminal suspect.

Captain Finney sat expressionless across from the desk, waiting for Dr. Brussel to say something. It was a cold and variably cloudy winter afternoon in Manhattan, and the occasional yellow hues of sunlight filled the seventeenth floor office and then faded like a fleeting whisper. Finney and the two detectives had brought with them a large satchel stuffed with every accumulated document that made up the official police record on the case of the Mad Bomber. The bundled contents of the file had been spread across the desk, and the men waited patiently as Brussel painstakingly sifted through the hundreds of letters, reports, photographs, and memos that they hoped somehow might contain an unseen clue or the missing element, drawing authorities closer to an arrest.

Though he had never met Finney, Brussel immediately recognized him as a direct and intelligent man who demanded honest appraisals or none at all. “I knew I wasn't going to fool him with psychoanalytic doubletalk,” wrote Brussel. The two plainclothes detectives, however, did not share the captain's intellectual curiosity and carried in their skeptical eyes the contempt that had marked law enforcement's traditional attitude toward the field of psychiatry. Brussel captured the moment in his memoir,
Casebook of a Crime Psychiatrist
: “I'd seen that look before,” he recalled,

most often in the Army, on the faces of hard, old-line, field-grade officers who were sure this newfangled psychiatry business was all nonsense . . . The two detectives were obviously quite sure [Captain] Finney was wasting his time and theirs. They fidgeted, they sighed, they exchanged glances of alternating amusement and impatience. Catching criminals was police work. What could a psychiatrist know about it?

Despite the intimidating circumstances, Brussel seemed to immediately recognize the significance of the moment and the far-reaching implications of what he'd been asked to do. He felt a certain stress at the meeting, and would later articulate in his memoir a sense of insecurity about the overwhelming nature of the task:

I felt that my profession was being judged as well as myself. And curiously, I was one of my own accusers in this bizarre trial of wits. Did I really know enough about criminals to say anything sensible to [Captain] Finney? I'd seen hundreds of offenders in my career, but had I learned enough from them and about them? . . . Did I actually have any business at all sitting here and talking to these three highly trained, experienced policemen?

I stood up from my desk, went to my window, and looked down at City Hall, seventeen floors below . . . The streets were crowded with cars and trucks, the sidewalks with pedestrians. Millions of people live in New York and more millions travel in and out every day. Any one of those people I saw below could have been the Mad Bomber . . . So little was known about . . . [him] that virtually anyone in the city could be picked at random as a suspect. Anyone—and no one.

He seemed like a ghost, but he had to be made of flesh and blood. He had been born, he had a mother and father, he ate and slept and walked and talked. He lived somewhere. Somewhere people knew him, saw his face, heard his voice . . . He had a name. Probably thousands of people in and around New York had some fleeting contact with him at one time or another. He sat next to people on subways and busses. He strolled past them on sidewalks. He rubbed elbows with them in stores. Though he sometimes seemed to be made of night stuff, unsolid, bodiless, he patently did exist. This was one of the few things about him that were known for sure. It narrowed the search to perhaps ten million people in and around the New York metropolitan area.

On that cold afternoon in the glimmer of the 1956 Christmas season, as Brussel studied the letters and photographs that had so perplexed the leading analysts of the New York City Police Department, he quickly reached one clear and quite obvious conclusion: “At large somewhere in or near New York City was a man who was quite definitely mad.”

“A psychiatrist's dominant characteristic is his curiosity,” wrote Dr. Brussel. “Sometimes he gets satisfying answers, and at other times he doesn't, and all the time he is aware of vast unknown territories that he and his colleagues have only begun to explore.” Drawing upon his exhaustive knowledge of psychological disorders and the behavioral characteristics of each, but aware of the daunting challenge ahead, he scanned the material before him for particular items of psychologically relevant data. Each such item, he surmised, could be individually analyzed for specific meaning and impact, and then combined to form an overall picture of the Bomber's mental status and underlying psychopathology. He knew that certain behaviors were indicative of certain disorders, and that each disorder carried a set of known and predictable characteristics and symptoms. Thus, if he could make a diagnosis of sorts based upon the Bomber's behaviors and add a modicum of intuitive insight, general knowledge, and pure luck, he could then extrapolate a series of personality traits and, perhaps, even predictions as to future tendencies. It would, in effect, become an innovative brew of science and art.

Brussel gazed, almost hypnotically, at the collection of crime scene photographs strewn across his desk, and one in particular suddenly caught his eye. The fully intact unexploded device that was left at Radio City Music Hall on May 2, 1955, had become an archetype of sorts for study, evaluation, and publication, and it piqued Brussel's curiosity. He raised his eyes to Finney's, and in a loud, staccato-paced voice suggestive of quick wit and confidence he asked, “These mechanical affairs . . . What's your opinion of them . . . Do your bomb experts consider them well or clumsily made?”

“Highly skilled work,” said Finney. The man has obviously had some training.”

It was an evident point, previously considered by the police department, that the Bomber had some level of mechanical skill, enabling him to construct fairly sophisticated explosive devices. Every homeowner, Brussel mused, had some knowledge of household repairs and was thus capable of using tools even on a perfunctory basis. But these infernal machines indicated a greater range of mechanical aptitude and a clear ability to use complicated metal shaping machines not typically used by the layman. The evidence, Brussel concluded, weighed in favor of the Bomber having some vocational training as a metalworker.

The assumption had always been that the Mad Bomber was a man, though some newspapers and even several police investigators had entertained the possibility that perhaps they were dealing with an angry or disgruntled woman. Brussel's personal notions toward women were aligned with the traditional and chauvinistic attitudes prevalent in the mid-1950s. Based on this mind-set, it was a simple and natural matter for him to point out that the precise mechanical skills required for bomb construction and the very act of bombing are “alien to the feminine personality.” Though he noted several historical anomalies to this axiom, most notably the role of female bombers in the 1918 Russian Revolution, he quickly advised the officers that the manufacture and placing of explosive devices had been, through history, the work of men. Consequently, Brussel indicated that, as a preliminary matter, he was satisfied that the Bomber was male.