The Mad Bomber of New York (24 page)

And then, in a doff of the hat to Seymour Berkson, the Bomber signed off with the tribute that would both forge and antagonize the bond between journalism and police work forever:

IN ABOUT 3 WEEKS TIME THE N.Y. JOURNAL AMERICAN ACCOMPLISHED WHAT THE AUTHORITIES COULD NOT DO—IN 16 YEARS—YOU STOPPED THE BOMBINGS.
F.P.

XV
ALICE KELLY

T
HE DELIBERATIONS REGARDING AN APPROPRIATE RESPONSE TO THE
Bomber's revealing letters took place at the home of Seymour Berkson on Sunday, January 20, mere hours after their delivery to the
Journal-American
. The usual team of editors and police officials was markedly cheered by the bond of trust they had forged with the Bomber, but the question remained as to how best to reel in their prey. They studied and debated the content and tone of the letters and the offers contained in each and, at the behest of Berkson, even consulted with several psychiatrists retained by the newspaper to analyze the psychological implications of the communiqués. Plans were immediately drawn to publish the hand-printed portions of the Bomber's groundbreaking communication, though, at the insistence of Commissioner Kennedy, the typewritten letter, which contained the date and details of the Bomber's injury at Con Ed, would be withheld as the investigation continued. Finally, it was agreed that another open letter would be drafted that would combine an empathic appeal and a shared desire for justice with an insistence that the time had come for the Bomber to avail himself of the opportunities that had been offered to him. “You can decide where, how and when to meet us,” the letter coaxed. “Please write us in the same manner as previously, outling [
sic
] the procedure you would like to follow for the face-to-face meeting . . .”

The overture would never appear in the
Journal-American.

As part of the routine investigation of the case, a painstaking search of Con Ed's employee records had been conducted by detectives of the Bomb Investigation Unit and Con Ed clerks alike in the quest for any match of handwriting or other telltale sign of the Mad Bomber. For several years police investigators had independently combed through thousands of the company's employment records, and during the first few weeks of January 1957 they had narrowed their search to the “dead” compensation files kept at a Con Ed warehouse on Hester Street. The search had been limited to the records of past employees who were not expected to further protest their claims or have future dealings with the company, and it was completed by detectives on Friday, January 18, just prior to the
Journal-American
's receipt of the Bomber's latest revealing missives. Later that afternoon, a call was placed by police to Con Ed headquarters asking whether the company had in its possession any further employee records of compensation cases. Con Ed's widely reported and generally accepted version of what followed next would be the subject of conjecture and heated debate for years to come.

According to Con Ed, at the very moment of the police request for further documents, an administrative task force of company employees was, in fact, hard at work in a second-floor suite of the corporate office building on Irving Street, reviewing a set of 1,000 compensation files that had been labeled “troublesome”—many of which were dated prior to 1940. The mysterious files, all of which were subject to the possibility of future claim or contained some express or implied threat, had been originally housed at Hester Street and were transferred to Con Ed's main facility several years earlier. With the increased level of scrutiny that came as a result of the Bomber's published reference to an unresolved compensation case, however, the task force, made up of four female clerks and a male supervisor, had been assigned, according to the company, to begin an in-depth review of these compensation files as of Tuesday, January 15.

Con Ed reported that in the late afternoon of Friday, January 18—at perhaps the very moment that the Mad Bomber was composing his latest letters to the
Journal-American
—one of the task force members, a tall and trim New York woman by the name of Alice Kelly, came across a startling find. A senior office assistant and twenty-five-year employee of Con Ed, Alice had been assigned to review some of the “troublesome” files contained in several cabinets on the second floor of the company offices, and by close of business on Wednesday, January 16, she was, according to her own estimation, about halfway through the task. Called away to other business the following day, she returned to the assigned file drawers on Friday afternoon, where about two hundred of the original one thousand files assigned to the team remained.

At approximately 4:20 p.m., as Alice later recounted, she reached the third file of the second drawer and casually glanced at its outer cover. Immediately, her blue eyes were drawn to the words “injustice” and “permanent disability,” which had been placed at the top of the file in bold italic printing in red ink, as if to key certain corresponding information within.

Armed with a prior sample of the Mad Bomber's handwriting and a mounting sense of anticipation, she opened the file and began examining its contents. At first she noticed nothing unusual. The file contained the same application forms and claim letters that she had seen countless times in the course of her records search. The employee had commenced work at the Hell Gate powerhouse in 1929, earning $30.12 per week, and was injured in a boiler room accident in 1931. He was separated from payroll in 1932 and he filed a claim for compensation in 1934. The claim was disallowed, subsequently appealed several times, and conclusively denied in 1936. There were several typewritten letters in the file addressed to the compensation board, but none appeared to be overly aggressive or indicative of hostility or violence. As Alice continued her examination of the file, however, she noted that the claimant's correspondence after 1936 began to carry a distinctly biting style and an oddly familiar stiff and stilted tone. Suddenly she noticed one particular letter that had been forwarded to Con Ed in which the writer stated his intention to retaliate for certain “injustices” that had been inflicted upon him and to “take justice in my own hands.” Instantly, Alice's mind flashed to the articles she had recently read in the
Journal-American
, and to the strange expressions used by the Bomber in his now infamous letters. “The word ‘injustices' sort of remained seared in my mind,” she would later say.

Her pulse began to quicken as the phrases “dastardly deeds” and “treachery” leapt off the pages of several other letters, and with her widened eyes still firmly fixed on these telltale clues she shrieked to the other members of her team, “I think we have it!” The women gathered around and eagerly flipped through the various letters in the file, quickly agreeing on the significance of the find. As she nervously turned the elusive file over to her supervisor, Alice Kelly barely noticed the typewritten name and address on the lip of the folder: “Metesky, George P., 17 Fourth Street, Waterbury, Connecticut.”

Police officials would doubt every word of Con Ed's account.

George Metesky had seriously considered turning himself in. He had purposefully provided personal details to the
Journal-American
that he knew might lead to his apprehension, and the inner rage that had goaded him for nearly two decades had finally found an outlet. Though his health was again deteriorating—he claimed in one of his recent letters that he spent nearly sixteen hours of each day in bed—he had been energized and even purified by his public dialogue with Seymour Berkson. When he began his violent rampage against Con Ed, he had never intended for it to stop. Indeed, with the ravages of his chronic illness, he never expected to live as long as he had. But finally the relevant parts of his story had begun to come out, and the “kind attitude of the Police Commissioner,” as he noted in his latest communication, had provided him with the cathartic gift of an empathetic ear. And now, a milder George Metesky simply figured it was over.

Thoughts of surrender, however, came with many complications and Metesky was justifiably concerned about what an arrest would do to his sisters. “WHAT ABOUT MY PEOPLE—WHO HOUSED ME— FED ME—CLOTHED ME—AND DID EVERYTHING THEY COULD—AND STILL DO—TO SUSTAIN MY LIFE?” his note had questioned. “I WOULD NOT SELL MY PEOPLE OUT FOR ALL [THE] MONEY IN N.Y.C.” “Were I alone,” the typewritten companion letter assured, “I would accept what is now offered me without a moments delay.” Perhaps, thought Metesky, if he sought the refuge of his friends at the
Journal,
his family could be protected and he would finally be given the opportunity to air the full details of his grievances against Con Ed. Conceivably, he mused, a surrender could be the only way for his nemesis to be brought to justice.

As directed, when dealing with a file of interest, Herbert Schrank, the Con Ed task force supervisor, promptly telephoned the presiding detective at the Hester Street warehouse and informed him of the Metesky file purportedly unearthed by Alice Kelly. He read aloud each of the relevant letters and provided the name and address listed on the folder, and though the information appeared to be of interest to the detective, he had no confirmation that the discovery was of any real value. It would be several hours before receipt of the Bomber's most recent dispatches containing the stunning revelation of the injury date, and thus there was no immediate suggestion that the file necessarily contained any vital clues. The supervisor was simply thanked for his good work and told that someone would come by to pick up the file.

On the following morning, Saturday, January 19, detectives from the New York City Bomb Investigation Unit, acting on the information provided by Herbert Schrank, forwarded a teletype query to the Waterbury Police Department, requesting a “discreet check” on George Metesky of 17 Fourth Street in Waterbury. At the same time a message was forwarded to the Connecticut State Motor Vehicle Bureau in Hartford requesting a photostatic copy of any automobile registration held by Metesky. At first, the local police could find no public record of their suspect. The town clerk's office indicated a registered owner of 17 Fourth Street by the name of George Milauskas, however, and Captain Ernest Pakul decided that a further check was warranted. Pakul, a veteran officer of the Waterbury Police Department and a longtime resident of the Brass City, was familiar with the tousled neighborhood along the Naugatuck River, and he knew that it was not uncommon for the first-and second-generation immigrant families in the area to informally adopt undocumented or unofficial surnames without reporting the change to local authorities. Pakul thought that perhaps the name “Milauskas” had, at some point, been informally changed to “Metesky,” and, though he had not been informed by New York Police of the purpose for their requested check, he sent one of his detectives into the area to discreetly investigate further. Under the pretext of a fact-finding mission in connection with an automobile accident, the officer conducted a detailed canvassing of the neighborhood in a cloaked effort to uncover as much information as possible about 17 Fourth Street and its occupants.