The Mad Bomber of New York (8 page)
As the scourge of fascism spread across Europe, the violent impulse that now inculcated George Metesky's ailing mind searched for expression. The decade that gave birth to radio and radar, Art Deco and swing,
The Grapes of Wrath
and
The Wizard of Oz;
that saw Olympic triumph in Berlin and Hindenburg disaster in New Jersey; that began with the hardship of depression and the repeal of Prohibition, would end with America edging ever closer to world conflict. And for an unpretentious man from Waterbury, Connecticut, ravaged with mental illness, the decade of the 1930s would end with a simple decision to use bombs to settle a personal score.
W
ITH THE GREAT MISSION OF HIS LIFE HELD IN ABEYANCE IN FAVOR OF HIS
patriotic feelings following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Metesky withdrew deeper into his quirky and enigmatic world. His initial assaults against Con Ed had proven feeble at best, but the postponement of his objectives would allow him time and opportunity to prepare for the ultimate conflagration envisaged by his steadfast mind-set. Though his two spinster sisters, Anna and Mae, happily labored and sacrificed for the benefit of their younger brother, whom they still viewed as sickly and vulnerable, Metesky rarely conversed with them or shared any of his inner thoughts. His aging father, though still residing on the property, exerted minimal influence on George's life and contributed meagerly to the household. His sisters provided him with clothing, money, and all the necessities of life. “We would deprive ourselves for him,” Anna would later recall. “We were sorry for him.” It was a “classic study in over-protection,” wrote one observer.
His daily routine began at eight o'clock each morning, after his sisters left for work, at which time he arose, tidied his bedroom, and prepared a light breakfast. Other than an afternoon nap of several hours and a short walk along Fourth Street, he would busy himself with his automobile, which he always serviced on his own, and would study electrical engineering from a series of books that he had accumulated through the years. By four-thirty in the afternoon, Metesky's day was typically over. He would prepare an evening meal, dine alone, and immediately go to bed. His reclusive lifestyle would later be described as “timid and dull.” Not a soulâhis sisters includedâhad the slightest inkling of the rage and insanity that brewed within.
Metesky was true to his promise to forego bomb-planting activities during the war, but he used the hiatus to study the craft and hone his skills, confident that in time they would be put to good and productive use. Alone in his garage, he extended his knowledge of electrical properties and experimented with different kinds of galvanized metal and fusing mechanisms. He began to stockpile the essential elements of his later units, which would have greater power and more efficient mechanics than his early ones. While the war raged through Western Europe and the Pacific, Metesky essentially lay in wait. The distorted reality that preyed upon his paranoid mind, however, continued in earnest. The passage of time did not dissuade his seething hatred of Con Ed or the list of its co-conspirators, which, to his unhinged way of thinking, expanded by the day.
Shortly after the start of the war, Metesky, then thirty-nine years of age, received his draft notice. To add to his feelings of alienation, he was rejected for military service on the basis of his medical history. Several months later he attempted to enlist but, upon examination by the Waterbury draft board, was again rejected based on the results of a chest X-ray that evidenced prior lung disease. Sensing a schemeâa pervasive and surreptitious fraudâMetesky immediately lashed out against one of the draft board members, Miles Kelly, whom he suspected of being complicit. Kelly was a former tenant in Metesky's home, and the relationship was strained from the outset. Following his enlistment rejection, Metesky sent letters to the company where the man worked denouncing his actions and berating his character. At the same time, he wrote to the local draft board and even President Roosevelt, complaining of the man's improprieties and cynically suggesting that Kelly himself be drafted for service. The carefully constructed logic of Metesky's arguments was twisted to everyone but himself. “He was a person who always was ready to fight authority . . . ,” said one Waterbury citizen.
In December 1942 Metesky cajoled the owners of the Waterbury Tool Company to give him a job. At first, the owner was hesitant to offer the position because of his prior health problems, but “after much discussion and medical examinations” Metesky was able to persuade him that his mechanical expertise would be a valuable asset to the company and he was hired.
During the next year, he maintained the appearance of a productive and functioning employee. Ironically, however, Metesky found himself working side by side with Miles Kelly, who was also employed at the tool company, and the personal rancor between the two stemming from the draft board incident continued. Metesky repeatedly complained about Kelly's work and often petitioned his employer to fire him. Despite this discord, Metesky eagerly worked with both the public and other company personnel, sorting, shelving, and selling tools and other mechanical equipment and earning a very respectable wage of between $60 and $70 per week. As time went on, however, his chronic lung disease had begun to resurface and his absences from work started to increase. Finally, in December 1943, Metesky suffered another pulmonary hemorrhage and was diagnosed with an advanced case of bilateral tuberculosis.
With the assistance of his doctor, Max Ruby, he was able to gain admittance to the Undercliff Sanitarium in Meriden, Connecticut, a state-run facility exclusively dedicated to the diagnosis and treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis, where he would remain for the next fourteen months. Though examined and treated on many occasions by facility personnel, Metesky's condition did not materially improve. By his own account, he was “miserable and lonely,” and on February 25, 1945, he left the sanitarium against the advice of his doctors and returned home. A few months later he was re-examined and found to have “further progression” of the disease, but because of “the patient's lack of cooperation” further treatment became impossible. Spending most of each day at home and in bed, Metesky gave up all thought of employment, electing rather to independently follow the routines of the sanitarium and live off the hard work and good intentions of his father and doting sisters.
Predictably, Metesky lay blame for his troubles squarely at the feet of Con Ed. The persistent grudge that he bore against the company continued to advance, and on various occasions between 1941 and 1946 he again launched volleys of letters to concerns around New York, all containing the familiar vitriol, and all closing with the characteristic “
F.P.
” sign-off. For all practical purposes, however, through World War II and for several years beyond, George Metesky dropped from sight.
The record is practically void of specific detail regarding Metesky's life for much of the 1940s. His health remained in various states of advance and decline during those years, and perhaps his total focus was centered on the pursuit of physical well-being. By his own words, the period was marked by feelings of disillusionment, and even his letter-writing campaign had begun to subside. None of his actions had succeeded in drawing attention to Con Ed's evil conduct, and the ideal of the “unknown man battling for justice,” as he preferred to view himself, had seemed a distant and faltering aspiration.
Disillusionment notwithstanding, there is also evidence that, during this reclusive period after the war, Metesky resumed his bomb-making endeavors. He would later admit to planting up to twenty-four units that would remain unexploded and undiscoveredâseveral at locations in and around the offices of Con Ed in the late 1940s. Neither the police nor the public had taken any notice of these devices, but Metesky's later declarations against his own interest would suggest that the statements were reliable and consistent with the underlying resentment that continued to brew within him.
With the war behind her, America had entered a new era of optimism and prosperity. Families would be reunited and the national ethos would turn from the horrors of war to the solace of social and economic renewal. For George Metesky, however, the war against tyranny had just begun. To him, the advent of the 1950s would herald a rebirth of fury and a resurgence of fixated obsession.
As the 1940s drew to a close, the inherent and unmistakable traits of paranoia, though not fundamentally changed, had begun to broaden and steadily intensify, leaving him unrelentingly persecutory and pathologically self-absorbed. The focus of his anger, though still emanating from the deeds of his former employer, had generalized through the years, leaving him with the paranoiac view that “the world had done him wrong.” The failure of newspapers, retail stores, theaters, dance clubs, hotels, and other New York institutions to respond to his letters and render aid to his cause was viewed not merely as indifference or confusion to his myriad claims, but as active and malevolent collusion with Con Ed to deny him justice. Alone against a vast conspiratorial network that penetrated into every crevice of society and threatened not only his own interests but those of countless others, he regarded himself as “the instrument selected by destiny to overcome this conspiracy.” “[H]is fury of hatred so enveloped his mental faculties and impaired his judgment to such a degree that it excluded all conscious, rational behavior and thinking.” With the advent of a new era and the apparent resurgence of his health, he had become convinced that the “great mission” of his life, his “messianic role,” his “crusade” to provide society with a “great service” was now at hand.
Deep within the throes of a progressive and severely incapacitating schizophrenia, George Metesky once again declared war on the Consolidated Edison Company.
R
OWS OF CASKETS BEARING THE BODIES OF FALLEN
A
MERICAN SOLDIERS
had become an all too familiar sight beneath the high vaulted ceilings of the Forty-third Street entrance to New York's Grand Central Terminal during World War II
.
The terminal had been used by the military as a stop-over point from which grieving families could retrieve their loved ones and then continue the final journey home. At the arched entrance of the terminal, the statuary metaphor of Progress rising from the American Eagle, with Physical Force and Mental Force at its feet, seemed burdened once again by the strains of war.
The celebrated story of Grand Central, steeped in triumph and tragedy, began with its 1913 opening. It quickly transformed the culture and economy of surrounding Manhattan. Covering seventy-nine acres and bragging a capacity of 30,000 people without crowding, the station, at various times, was home to movie theaters, art galleries, museums, schools, and a wide variety of exhibitions. Considered by some at its opening the “greatest railway terminal in the world,” Grand Central would host, through the years, such famous long-distance trains as the
Fast Mail,
the
Water-Level Limited,
the
Wolverine,
and the
Twentieth Century Limited.
With the advent of postwar suburban life and effortless automobile travel, however, interstate rail service had begun a steady decline, and by the early 1950s the condition of the once majestic terminal had suffered greatly, prompting murmurs of its possible demolition. Among the many legends and architectural oddities of Grand Central that had survived, however, was the so-called Whispering Gallery that lay beneath the tiled Guastavino arches, extending across the ceilings of the lower concourse in front of the famous Oyster Bar, a seafood restaurant that opened in 1913 with the inauguration of the station itself. Created by the low ceramic structures of the domed ceiling, the unique architectural design allowed even faint whispers in one corner of the gallery to be heard clearly and distinctly across the expanse to the other.
As George Metesky stole into the lower level of Grand Central Terminal in the early afternoon of March 29, 1951, and placed his latest edition of revenge in a cigarette sand urn outside of the Oyster Bar, the acoustical quirk of the Whispering Gallery carried his footfalls throughout the passageway. The later explosive blast would fill the area with the same force and avid resolve as Metesky now brought to his reborn cause.
