The Mad Bomber of New York (4 page)

By 1919 America's anxiety over domestic terrorism would shift from the work of militaristic spies to the radical statements of anarchists and foreign leftists. In April 1919 militant followers of the outspoken revolutionist Luigi Galleani, the so-called Galleanists, deposited into the mail dozens of bombs intended for prominent American politicians, officials, and capitalists. Though the devices were discovered and ultimately defused, a few months later a similar coordinated attack was successfully carried out across eight American cities, where explosives ripped through the homes of a series of government officials including various congressmen and the attorney general of the United States. Anarchist literature and leaflets were strewn about the sites of each bombing, proclaiming that the “revolution” had begun. Then, on September 16, 1920, a horse-drawn cart laden with one hundred pounds of dynamite exploded on Wall Street in front of the headquarters of J. P. Morgan Bank, instantly killing thirty people and injuring hundreds more. Shortly before the explosion, flyers were found in a nearby mailbox with hand-stamped red lettering reading:

REMEMBER
WE WILL NOT TOLERATE
ANY LONGER
FREE THE POLITICAL
PRISONERS OR IT WILL BE
SURE DEATH FOR ALL OF YOU.
AMERICAN ANARCHIST FIGHTERS

The backlash was both harsh and predictable. These bombings, juxtaposed against the patriotism and nationalist pride generated by World War I, would be the catalyst for the systematic xenophobic assault of immigrants, socialists, and left-wing groups across America. Though based on the palpable fear of radical insurrection, the “Red Scare” would envelop the country and evoke a period of civil rights violations that would endure from 1918 to 1920.

Through the ensuing years, most of the incidents involving planted explosives involved lone reprobates with unexplained motives or racketeers hurling “pineapples” at one another from moving vehicles. The rash of political bombings that would mark later decades would strike New York with harsh and bewildering force. Left-wing militant groups issuing declarations of war against the power structures of America would prompt one New York police commissioner to declare that the problem had reached “gigantic proportions.” The
New York Times
would describe the city as “[a] real boom town.”

In the days following the Con Ed incident, the Bomber anxiously scanned newspaper after newspaper searching for any mention of the unit that he had quietly placed on the windowsill of the West Sixty-fourth Street office building. Though some sources have concluded that the device was a live explosive filled with volatile black powder, the evidence appears to indicate otherwise. “It wasn't loaded. It was complete, but instead of powder, there was a note,” he would later explain. “It was a[n] empty bomb.”

Knowing that the writing would have been obliterated by the force of a detonation, police theorized that the culprit either inserted the note to satisfy some inner compulsion, aware that it would be destroyed, or that the bomb had been purposely constructed to deliver nothing more harmful than a sinister message to its recipient. The Bomber's own words would suggest a non-lethal intent. “That first unit was just a sample of what was to come.”

War was raging in Europe and the American public and media were focused on other, more pressing, matters. To the Bomber's dismay, his handiwork would never find its way into the newspapers. He gained no satisfaction from the “message” that he had served upon the power company, feeling instead that it had been ignored and even ridiculed. The lack of public interest in his initial bomb-making endeavor served only to anger and embolden the already seething miscreant. He knew that further steps would have to be taken to focus the world's attention on the misdeeds of the corrupt Con Ed.

On September 24, 1941, traffic in and about the area of Nineteenth Street between Fourth Avenue and Irving Place was disrupted by the discovery of a strange object in the roadway. Crammed into a red wool sock was a contraption similar in construction and appearance to the pipe bomb found the previous November on the Con Ed windowsill. Though there was no note or identifying markings, bomb squad detectives quickly recognized the neatly capped four-inch length of galvanized pipe—and, once again, the inexplicable throat lozenge. This, coupled with the fact that the object had been placed within mere blocks of the main headquarters of Con Ed at 4 Irving Place, led them to the inescapable and disturbing conclusion that both devices had been conceived and assembled by the same individual.

Though single-minded and persistent in his deluded vocation, the Bomber had also become supremely cautious in his planning and execution. The ultimate target for his second bomb had, no doubt, been the twenty-seven-story Con Ed office building, but his attention had been diverted, perhaps by a lurking patrolman, and the bomb was abandoned short of its intended target. The unalterable resolution that dominated his mind, however, was to him logically conceived and, therefore, to be patiently revealed. A meticulous attention to order demanded no less.

In the weeks and months following the planting of his initial devices, the Bomber engaged in an incessant letter-writing campaign. Angry and insidious declarations postmarked from areas such as White Plains, Mount Vernon, and Morris Heights in New York, and Pittsfield, Massachusetts— locations that prudently gave no hint of the writer's true address—found their way into mail slots across Manhattan. “I was very careful,” he later said. “I meticulously removed all my fingerprints . . . in mailing my letters. I carried with me a small piece of cloth and wiped the envelope clean. I would put this cloth over my knuckles and push the envelope into the mailbox.”

With an air of narcissistic and intellectual superiority, the letters, addressed to newspaper editors, hotels, clothiers, department stores, and, of course, Con Ed, spoke of the “dastardly deeds” and “ghoulish acts” of the power conglomerate and demanded justice for wrongs perpetrated against the writer and others. As police detectives duly noted, some of the notes were typewritten; most, however, were hand-printed on postcards or simple white typewriting paper and displayed characteristically neat block letters, with clauses that were, intriguingly, separated with dashes rather than commas or periods. Many of the letters contained threats to bomb the recipients, and several were sent “with the compliments of the ‘mobsters' at #4 Irving Place—for further information—see the Mayor.”

And all of the letters were signed with the cryptic and baffling cipher “
F.P.
”

Dispatches of the “Day of Infamy” spread to the mainland and America once again found herself at the doorstep of war. The attack on Pearl Harbor “was just the kind of unexpected thing the Japanese would do,” lamented Franklin Roosevelt. “At the very time they were discussing peace in the Pacific, they were plotting to overthrow it.” On the evening of December 7, 1941, as Roosevelt began dictation of his clarion “call to arms” to be delivered to Congress on the following day, men and boys from every corner of the nation set aside best laid plans and lined up outside of recruitment offices to enlist in the United States armed forces. The palpable anger that arose from Battleship Row on the island of Oahu roared through small towns and major cities alike and every American knew that the world, as they knew it, had changed forever.

The Bomber bore his own form of anger following the attack on Pearl Harbor. He was not lacking in patriotic feeling, as later events would clearly demonstrate, but his initial reaction to the news was peculiar and oddly self-centered. He knew that the attack would bring a single-minded national undertaking that would marshal all of the public's effort and attention. His ordained role to alert the world to the evildoings of Con Ed would now be sidetracked. The country would simply be too distracted by the war effort to take notice of the great service that he was performing for society. The jealously welled in him like a fever.

On the evening of December 7, 1941, as President Roosevelt completed the finishing touches on his address to the nation, the Bomber once again placed pen to paper. In a torrent of letters—nine in all—addressed to the managers of Bloomingdales, Bonds Clothes, the Capitol Theatre, Radio City Music Hall, the Roxy Theatre, the Paramount Theatre in Times Square, the Strand Theatre, the Astor Hotel, and Hotel Commodore, he lambasted Con Ed with accusations and condemnations that, under the circumstances, went far beyond the pale of propriety.

With America reeling from the devastating losses at Pearl Harbor, the letters were received with a mix of curiosity and distaste—but mostly stoic disregard. Though he cajoled, implored, and, of course, threatened the recipients with harm, the Bomber, in reality, knew painfully well that his letters could not achieve the goals that he so compulsively clung to. Convinced that disparate forces of the world had conspired against him, he reasoned that punishment for Con Ed's misdeeds would have to be postponed.

After enumerating the usual litany of offenses perpetrated by Con Ed, the Bomber, in his last penned letter on the evening of America's Day of Infamy, concluded with the following statement neatly printed in block letters:

I WILL MAKE NO MORE BOMB UNITS FOR THE DURATION OF THE WAR—MY PATRIOTIC FEELINGS HAVE MADE ME DECIDE THIS—LATER I WILL BRING THE CON-ED TO JUSTICE—THEY WILL PAY FOR THEIR DASTARDLY DEEDS
. . . F.P.

In a self-indulgent fit of control over uncontrollable events, knowing that his portentous objectives had been delayed, the Mad Bomber vowed never to be forgotten.

II
HELL GATE

T
HE MENACING STRUCTURE THAT WAS THE
H
ELL
G
ATE POWER PLANT
spanned two city blocks along the East River and reached eight stories skyward in a gloomy morass of faded redbrick and terra-cotta. Four smokestacks spewing their black and sickly gases erupted from the base of the plant, taking aim at the skies above. By the time of the Great Depression, the power plant at Hell Gate was the primary supplier of electrical current to Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, and Westchester County.

The plant's interior was dominated by two mammoth 160,000-kilowatt turbine generators with a combined capacity of more than 420,000 horsepower, and was served by a tangled mesh of piping, pumps, condensers, and boilers. At the dedication ceremony in 1929 marking the installation of these machines, the chairman of the New York Public Service Commission declared: “What we are doing here is forging a link with the industrial genius of other lands to form that indefinable, great force called civilization.” Some would beg to differ.

Iron-grated floors and staircases crisscrossed the building, and asbestos-laden dust infused the air, flaking from aging mortar while unsuspecting workmen brushed against the gray and deteriorating walls. “Cement dust was everywhere in the air,” complained one plant worker. “We came out filthy, dirty and coughing at the end of a day's work.” In later years, the Hell Gate power plant would be identified as the source of pulmonary illness and disease in many of its workers, but in Depression-era America a job was the only thing that sheltered a man from certain destitution.