The Mad Bomber of New York (6 page)

Summer in the Lower Bronx is often slow to depart, and the sweltering heat of September 5, 1931, provided little hint of the promised change in the season to come. The stairways and catacombs of Hell Gate seemed to magnify the outside heat, and as George Metesky made his way through the columns of deafening machines ominously arranged in the boiler room, he gently padded a folded handkerchief against his now profusely sweating brow.

Each of the twenty-one coal-fired boilers at Hell Gate represented a complex maze of cast iron and steel that was designed to operate under the most severe conditions, constantly confronting enormous pressure and temperature, and continually requiring a complex array of repair and maintenance. The obvious and foreboding danger of malfunction was a constant presence, and despite the implementation of safety measures, a palpable sense of concern was prevalent throughout the plant.

Metesky scanned the meters of the high-tension board, and the usual tumult of the boiler room suggested good order. He made his way blithely along the gray aisle with his eyes focused ahead of him, thinking only of his assigned tasks—and heedless of the danger that lurked before him.

Obscured by the racket of raging boilers and unbeknownst to Metesky, one sick and heaving machine lay along his path. The technical maintenance of this particular cistern had failed, and sinister residues of coal and soot now clogged the gaps between its iron segments—the so-called “baffles”—and the boiler thrashed in a suffocating dance to free its pressurized air channels of the foul obstruction. Drowned by the noisy clamor of the other boilers, the groans that would have announced the malignant condition of this particular machine went unnoticed by Metesky. He strolled forward, unaware of the dangers that lay ahead. As he approached, disparate forces within the boiler reached a breaking point and, with a deafening burst, a toxic potion of soot and sickly gases expulsed through the intakes and directly into the path of George Metesky.

III
THE SEEDS OF MADNESS

T
HE BOILER ROOM FILLED WITH AN ACIDIC ODOR THAT SUGGESTED
a metallic decay or perhaps even the merging of discordant chemicals. George Metesky staggered backward, one hand clutching his constricted throat, the other reaching out for balance that instantaneously waned. As the searing combustion gases filled his lungs, he gasped and began to cough violently and uncontrollably. One knee settled to the concrete floor and then the other, and soon the harsh and burning sensations in his chest were accompanied by a gurgling bark, suggesting the presence of blood. Metesky instantly recoiled as the carmine film sprayed the floor and his trousers like a macabre work of art.

Two plant workmen named Cavanaugh and Casey heard the commotion and came upon Metesky lying on the floor and struggling for air. Upon viewing the splatters of blood the men nervously eyed one another as Metesky, through staggered breaths, attempted to explain what had happened. After regaining somewhat his strength and composure, he reported the episode to the foreman, a Mr. Purdy, who, according to Metesky's later statements, all but ignored the incident and even ordered the stricken worker to assist in the non-plant-related task of loading of wood into a car owned by one Lawson, the floor boss. “Apparently,” recalled Metesky, “the coughing and blood were normal occurrences at Con Edison because when I told these . . . three guys [Cavanaugh, Casey, and Purdy] they weren't a bit surprised . . .”

After the twenty minutes of laborious effort required to assist the foreman, Metesky, per his own statement, fell to the concrete floor in exhaustion. It was two o'clock in the afternoon, and he was forced to remain on that spot for nearly two hours without comfort or assistance. “There were over 12,000 ‘Danger Signs' in the plant,” Metesky would later recall, “yet not even ‘First Aid' was available or rendered to me. I had to lay on cold concrete.” Finally, according to Metesky, around four o'clock, he gathered his strength and was able to get up off the floor and make his way home.

In the coming days he remained alone and in bed in the rooming house on West Eighty-eighth Street, his condition growing progressively worse. He continued to experience episodes of uncontrolled coughing during which he would expectorate blood, and he grew more fatigued by the day. Increasingly concerned, he sent for a doctor, who, without the benefit of X-rays or medical tests, was unable to arrive at a specific diagnosis. He did, however, suggest that Metesky return home to Waterbury, where he could receive proper care and be looked after by family.

Following the doctor's advice, he called on his brother, John, to bring him home to Waterbury. He was promptly seen by a Dr. Max Ruby, and within two hours Metesky was admitted to Waterbury Hospital. There, doctors immediately diagnosed an aggressive form of pneumonia and confirmed that the pain, exhaustion, and bleeding that he was experiencing had been caused by a series of pulmonary hemorrhages. During his hospitalization he received antibiotic treatment for his conditions and came under the constant observation of physicians and hospital staff. After two grueling weeks, Metesky was finally stabilized enough to be sent home to continue with his recovery.

Despite continued aggressive medical therapies during the next eleven months, Metesky's condition did not significantly improve, and, in fact, his symptoms grew so pronounced that his doctors soon began to suspect tuberculosis. He endured such a constant state of pulmonary distress that he remained, for the most part, confined to home and bed and unable to return to his job at the Hell Gate plant. Somewhat alarmed, and aware that the facilities of Waterbury Hospital were inadequate to care for such an illness, Dr. Ruby referred his patient to a sanitarium in Tucson, Arizona. Metesky made the difficult journey west and, upon his initial examination by staff physicians, was definitively diagnosed with “active pulmonary tuberculosis.”

Metesky was clearly a sick man, but he settled well in Tucson. He was provided with a small bungalow “like a tourist cabin,” and though alone except for the visits of a nurse who occasionally stayed with him during his more acute periods of distress, he began his long road toward recuperation. Not two months into his stay, however, he endured another series of lung hemorrhages that required treatment with a painful array of pneumothorax therapies, which consisted of the introduction of nitrogen gas into the pleural cavity via long hollow needles. Progressively, over a period of nearly three years, these therapies started to take hold and the tubercular lesions in Metesky's lungs began to subside.

Though improved physically, his mental state had already begun to show signs of the irretrievable free fall that was to come.

In the mind of George Metesky the events of September 5, 1931, at the Hell Gate power plant boiler room were absolute and real, though later a lack of corroborating evidence would cast a mantle of uncertainty and conjecture over them. Con Ed never reported the incident to the Workmen's Compensation Board, and the three employees who came to Metesky's aid would later offer confused and differing accounts of what occurred. Though his physical illness was unquestionably genuine— George Metesky was clearly ailing—its derivation would be the subject of conjecture for years to come. What remains undisputed, however, is that the backdraft of gases that afflicted him, whether real or imagined, and the series of events that followed planted the seeds that would ultimately transform the seemingly inoffensive George Metesky into a psychotic and vindictive personality.

During his extended illness, Metesky had noted on many occasions that he had been discharged healthy from the United States Marine Corps in 1929. Indeed, in his yearly physical examination mandated by his employer, he was deemed “physically sound” as late as March 10, 1930. In the months and years that followed his employment at the power plant, however, he had been undeniably crippled by the effects of constant and debilitating lung disease. Though there remained no medical proof that a blast of hot gases could be the underlying source of tuberculosis, it was not difficult for him to make the causal link. There was no doubt in George Metesky's mind that the root of his enduring physical problems lay at the feet of the Consolidated Edison Company.

Understandably, from the first onset of his illness, Metesky had deep concerns not only for his physical well-being but also for his financial well-being. Immediately upon his accident, he applied for and was granted sick benefits from Con Ed. For six months the company paid him roughly eighty percent of his $38.16 weekly salary. He drew an additional $58.00 per month for roughly three years as a settlement on a company group life insurance policy.

Though Metesky incurred ever rising medical and living expenses, especially upon his admission to the Arizona sanitarium, he was able to nominally survive with some assistance from his father. By mid-1933, as the prospect of dissipating insurance benefits began to loom, however, it became clear that his expenses were going to be well beyond the means of his family to absorb alone. Metesky knew he was going to need further means of financial sustenance.

On the good days—the days when he felt physically well enough— Metesky would spend his time pistol shooting at targets in the yard surrounding his cabin in Tucson. The new hobby provided a welcome respite and served to pass many unfilled hours of boredom as his body healed in the dry Arizona climate. During these times his thoughts would drift, and as he fired the weapon his mind would invariably flash to the Hell Gate boiler room and the pure injustice of his present situation. His illness, his dwindling finances—they were all the fault of Con Ed. “They owe me,” he would mutter. “Con-Ed owes me.”

By the close of 1933, Metesky had already begun a campaign of what would become his signature form of communication—letter writing. With nothing but time and a growing disposition of anger on his hands, Metesky began incessantly hammering out typewritten missives to Con Ed that brashly demanded an increase in his benefits. By his own estimate, Metesky, while living in Arizona, would write two to three hundred letters to his former employer.

Initially his letters succeeded; perhaps out of sheer exasperation, Con Ed agreed to increase his insurance settlement to $180 per month. When that ran out, Metesky badgered the company to pay his medical bills and total living expenses. “I asked them to take care of me,” he would later confess. As the barrage continued, the financial managers of the company finally concluded that they had fully discharged their obligations to Metesky and terminated all further benefits to him effective December 31, 1933. At wit's end, they suggested that if he wished to pursue the matter further he should contact the Workmen's Compensation Board. Of course, the disgruntled former employee construed this as “the run around.”

New York's workmen's compensation system, one of the first in the country, was born in 1914 largely out of a tragic fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory that killed 146 workers, almost all of them women. The Lower Manhattan sweatshop occupied the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors of the Asch Building off Washington Square and manufactured 10,000–12,000 women's blouses each week. Somehow, a bin of loose cotton beneath a worker's bench ignited and the fire quickly rose to the floors above. Panic-stricken employees encountered a partially blocked and unstable fire escape that collapsed and a stairwell door leading to the roof that had been locked to prevent employee theft. Many of the victims were faced with the unthinkable choice of burning to death or leaping from upper-story windows. In a matter of moments the fire had consumed the factory and ravaged many of its unfortunate workers. Through the time of George Metesky and for years beyond, the Triangle Shirtwaist tragedy would be considered “the worst work-place fire in the history of New York City.”

The owners of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company were criminally tried on manslaughter charges but acquitted, and civil suits brought by surviving family members ultimately netted each family a pittance in damages. What would begin as a simple outpouring of grief by stunned New Yorkers soon turned to outrage and a clarion call for reform. The political strength of labor unions and progressive movements gradually increased following the tragic fire, and soon activist members of the New York legislature—and indeed legislatures across the country—would enact sweeping changes in workplace regulation and state labor laws. Within this progressive era would emerge state workmen's compensation legislation that created a statutory scheme of automatic no-fault payments to injured employees. The “compensation bargain” created by this system required the acceptance of an employee's damage award as an exclusive remedy for workplace injuries. In exchange for this prescribed benefit without proof of fault, all rights to sue the employer for negligence in the workplace were relinquished. This policy compromise ensured guaranteed protection for workers while providing employers with limited liability (usually covered by insurance) and the avoidance of costly and protracted litigation. The misery and destitution that followed the Triangle Shirtwaist tragedy would, it was theorized, never be repeated.