by James Mauro
“What is it?” Sullivan asked.
Morlach never got a chance to answer. The last thing he remembered before hearing the explosion was the sight of Sullivan’s hat being blown off his head.
Morlach felt the force of the blast at his back, and it shoved him forward, practically crashing him into Sullivan’s chest as the two men were thrown to the ground. Morlach lay still for a moment, stunned but trying to regain his senses. Finally, he stood up and turned around. He saw a gaping hole in the ground where the suitcase had been sitting. Leaves from a tall maple tree were swirling in every direction, as if an early and angry autumn had descended suddenly, the tree itself having been blown bare by the bomb.
Morlach stared at it for a moment and then searched around for Lynch and Socha. He spotted what looked like the remains of two smoldering bodies on the ground, one with his knees raised upward, the other lying in a grotesque hunk of carnage. Two other officers, Federer and Gallagher,20 were crawling away from the crater on their hands and knees, their uniforms in tatters and smoke rising from their backs, dragging their mangled legs behind them.
Morlach, unable to contain himself, vomited into some weeds—the smell and the horror convulsing his body into great, heaving waves of nausea and sobs.
“It was terrible,”21 said a waitress in the Polish Pavilion’s café. “It came all of a sudden and shook everything in the place. I saw people running and then I saw people lying on the ground near the restaurant.”
Another eyewitness, Josephine Chmiel, who worked as a salesgirl in the pavilion’s candy shop but was on a break at that moment, broke down as she described the scene. “It was a terrible explosion,”22 she cried. “I saw three men lying on the ground and two more were trying to crawl away. They were holding their faces. One tried to get up. Oh, it was horrible!”
Morlach ran toward the first body, Freddy Socha. The explosion had been so intense that it had blown him all the way to the fence line. Seeing that there was nothing to be done for him, he slowly approached Joe Lynch, or what remained of him. The bomb had stripped off his uniform and half of his face. He lay, arms outstretched, like the Savior on the cross. Hunched over the suitcase as it went off, he had been lifted straight up by the blast with a force so powerful that it had separated his legs from his feet, which clung to his ankles by strings of exposed tendons.
There was confusion everywhere. McLaughlin stood frozen, staring down at his left leg, wondering where all the blood was coming from. Customers who had been drinking in the Polish Pavilion café sat stunned; two windows in the rear of the restaurant were shattered, fifty yards away from the blast. Several others, farther away, began running toward the scene, followed by every other cop in the vicinity. Morlach recovered himself and took charge. A cordon was quickly set up; ambulances were called for the wounded and the dead. Within minutes, the crime scene was under control.
Detectives from the Bomb and Forgery, Alien, and Homicide squads were called in, basically anyone who could get there fast enough to collect all the evidence. They combed the area around the Polish Pavilion, and when that was done they moved on to the neighboring Netherlands and Venezuela buildings. Debris was found as far as one hundred yards away in every direction. Officers picked it up as carefully as they could and spread it all out on makeshift newspaper pallets, focusing first on items belonging to Detectives Lynch and Socha: money and coins, wallets, their firearms, fountain pens, and police notebooks.
Someone thought to measure the size of the hole the blast had left; it was a crater five feet wide and approximately three feet deep. Dynamite will do that, another remarked, blast as strong downward as in every other direction.
Commissioner Valentine arrived shortly after, followed by Lieutenant Pyke and the rest of his men. Pyke directed them to begin sorting out whatever appeared to be fragments from the bomb itself and store it carefully in boxes for transport to the Police Technical Laboratory for inspection. He personally collected several key fragments that he wanted to turn over to explosives experts at the DuPont plant in New Jersey.
Grover Whalen, dressed in an unfortunate white suit for the summer holiday, hustled over from the midway. For several minutes he stood silent and stared at the scene. This was his breaking point, the horrible coda to his career as Fair president and former police commissioner. He talked to the already gathering reporters with noticeable tears in his eyes.
At seven-thirty, La Guardia showed up, looking pale and frazzled; the men around him noticed that he wasn’t wearing a hat. In fact, he had just driven in from his summer home in Northport, Long Island. It was normally about an hour’s drive, longer on a big holiday like this one, but the mayor had made it in twenty minutes by having his driver blare the siren as he sped up the opposite direction on the Grand Central Parkway.
Knowing that he needed to make a formal statement, La Guardia chose his words carefully to avoid a panic.
“As to the accident23 itself,” the mayor said, clearly shaken, “I must say that the very intelligent and courageous action of the police who handled this matter prevented what might have been an extremely serious calamity.”
It was by no means an understatement. By later accounts, Joe Lynch and Freddy Socha, along with Fred Morlach and the others, had in all likelihood saved the lives of hundreds gathered in the British Pavilion that afternoon. Given the intensity of the blast, it was not inconceivable that the entire building might have come down.
“We get letters all the time threatening various kinds of outrages,” La Guardia continued, “and we have had the Fair buildings of all belligerents covered by police since the Fair opened, just as their consulates are covered in Manhattan. In this instance the police did a splendid job in handling the bomb and staying with it, even to the point where Detectives Lynch and Socha lost their lives in consequence.”
There was a noticeable murmur in the crowd. Most as of yet did not know that anyone had been killed in the blast. In fact, except for the few who had been enjoying a quiet afternoon drink on the terrace of the Polish Pavilion and had felt the force of the impact and the windows shattering behind them, almost everyone else at the World’s Fair thought that the explosion they had heard was just more fireworks24 going off on the Fourth of July.
“There had been25 World’s Fair fireworks in the vicinity about an hour before,” said a coat checker who gave his name only as L. Morski, “and some thought it was more fireworks. But the explosion was much louder than that. It was like a cannon blow. The building was rocked.”
All around the crime scene, the Fair was going on as usual, as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. Even Cecil Pickthall, who had heard the bomb go off while sitting in his office in the British Pavilion, thought it was part of the day’s celebration.
After all, the suitcase found in his building was safely in the hands of the police. “I thought no more about it,”26 he said.
Word began to spread, and within a couple of hours a crowd of ten thousand people stood around watching and whispering rumors to one another. The Irish Republican Army had done it; that’s why it was in the British Pavilion. No, it had to be the Nazis—a symbolic strike against Great Britain in the face of war. What about Palestine? Revenge against the white paper? Didn’t they read something about suitcase bombs going off in London?
La Guardia understood what was at stake. Two policemen had died here today, and out of sheer decency he felt he should at least close down the area, if not the entire fairgrounds. But what would happen to the World’s Fair if he shut it down? Would anyone ever come out here again? On the other hand, what would it say to allow the celebrating to continue?
And then there was the worst consideration of all: What if another bomb went off?
“All the buildings27 involved are covered by our police,” he reassured the press, “and I want to tell the public not to get panicky. The situation is pretty well covered, but I suppose that things like this will happen.”
Of course, he had no way of knowing
whether or not anything was sufficiently covered at that point. But there were still three and a half months left to go in the season; if he acted rashly now, the World’s Fair would never recover. Worse, it would be tainted forever with the stain of saboteurs’ blood. The Fourth of July could not become known as the day New York backed down to a terrorist act.
Darkness began to fall, and over in the Great White Way the frenzied celebrations were just getting into full swing. There would be more nighttime fireworks, the biggest show yet. Extra police details were called out for protection, but as the hours passed no order came to evacuate the area or the Fair itself. The risk of chaos was too great; there would be no safe method to control the panic. Sometime during that evening, the decision was made to allow the party to continue.
A police detail was sent out to Jennie Socha’s apartment to tell her the news; the rest of Freddy’s family found out over the radio. Easter Lynch heard it from one of the priests at St. John’s. When he left, she had a tough decision to make. She and Joe were supposed to drive up to the hospital that night. Easter decided to make the trip anyway, if only to make sure the nurses understood that in no way was Essie to find out that her father had just been killed.
Dressing for the visit became the hardest part. She couldn’t wear mourning clothes, but she couldn’t dress normally, either, out of respect for Joe. She finally settled on a plain brown dress and black stockings, hoping the child wouldn’t notice.
“Who died?”28 Essie asked playfully as her mother walked in the room.
“It’s just raining outside,” Easter said. Where’s Dad? He’s on business. Where? At the World’s Fair. She let it go at that.
Detectives went on swarming the foreign pavilions; now they were up on the rooftops and still finding and picking up bits and pieces of debris and evidence. When darkness fell, a large truck equipped with floodlights drove up and bathed the scene in light again. The men kept on working, digging the barren maple tree out of the ground and cutting away a section of the fence whose wire had been twisted and blown outward, when a lone bugler asked to be admitted to the scene. The officers, thinking he had come to blow “Taps” in honor of Joe and Freddy, lifted the cordon and let him through. The man raised his horn to his lips, and they heard the familiar notes that had been sounding out over the Polish Pavilion night after night. It was the “Heynal,” and at the last note the bugler broke off, as he always did, in midnote. Without a word, he turned and left again.
It took several minutes for the officers to collect themselves and go on digging.
Sometime during that night, a detective handed Valentine a small piece of metal. It was twisted from the blast, but there was no mistaking it as a small brass cogwheel, the kind found in alarm clocks.
La Guardia finally left when Pyke reassured him that his men had combed every inch of the area and found no other suspicious packages. He would be back at the New York City Building early the next morning to give an address thanking the police department and minimizing the potential danger to visitors in the coming weeks and months.
“There will be a most thorough29 investigation, and there will not be any letup,” La Guardia promised.
Before leaving, he was given a full report of the damages:
Detectives Lynch and Socha: killed instantly. The extent of damage to their bodies was too gruesome to detail.
William Federer: compound fractures of both legs; burns on his arms, face, and body; severe shock. Condition critical.
Joseph Gallagher: compound fractures of both legs; burns on his arms, face, and body. Condition critical.
Martin Schuchman: multiple abrasions and burns on his legs, body, and head. Condition fair.
Emil Vyskocil: multiple abrasions and contusions on both legs. Condition fair.
John McLaughlin: minor cuts to his face, mouth, and leg; treated at the scene and sent home.
Of all the officers on the scene, Detective Morlach was indeed the luckiest. Although he had been right beside Lynch and Socha as the suitcase was cut open, he had turned his back on the bomb and was walking away from it to give his observation of the dynamite when the suitcase exploded, and he had escaped, he’d thought, without any injury at all.
Morlach continued working30 through the night, the scene of horror keeping his anger and energy fresh. When he finally got home it was nearly sunrise. He took off his uniform jacket and then, after stripping off his shirt, stared blankly at the back of it. It was soaked in blood. He walked into his bathroom, turned around, and looked in the mirror. Using his fingernail, he dug a piece of metal about the size of a penny out of his shoulder. He hadn’t felt a thing.
Mayor La Guardia (seated) and Grover Whalen (in white suit) confer with the press at the bomb site. (© Bettmann/Corbis)
Official reproduction of the World’s Fair bomb (without the Ingraham clock face) constructed during the investigation (Courtesy of the New York City Police Museum)
25
AFTERMATH
On Friday, July 5, the sun actually came out, and it looked as though it was going to be a nice weekend. It was, and over the four-day holiday, attendance at the Fair soared to 640,000. Harvey Gibson quietly ordered that the bomb crater be filled in, the dead tree replanted, the fence repaired, and every other visible evidence of the blast cleared away. The barriers stayed up while police continued to comb the area for clues, but it didn’t stop the large groups of people who kept coming by all day and evening, hoping to get a look at the crime scene. Workmen had rushed to replace the windows of the Polish Pavilion, and the restaurant, it was noted, “did a rushing business all day.”
Even the British Pavilion opened that morning, on time, and remained open throughout the weekend. Commissioner Pickthall reported that he saw no drop in business, which he attributed more to American pluck than morbidity. “I take my hat off1 to them,” he said. Guards at the pavilion reported that they saw more visitors that weekend than they had since the Fair opened.
The same was true for the entire International Area. Gibson had worried that the explosion would cause people to shun the Fair, but “the reverse was the case.”2 More people came than ever.
Security was tightened, but there wasn’t much else they could do. A couple of hundred city policemen and World’s Fair cops patrolled the buildings; Grover Whalen himself visited all of them and made sure they were checking all packages and purses and that the locks he had instructed to be placed on all interior doors had been installed properly.
After that, it was business as usual as far as the Fair went. Gibson bade a formal farewell to Borden’s Elsie the Cow, who was off to Hollywood to star in a movie. Two new families moved into their homes in the Town of Tomorrow for their one-week residence, each from a small town and each with exactly one girl and one boy, as had been predicted. Eight thousand General Motors employees visited and named Miss Betty Crain the new “Miss General Motors 1960.”3
By Sunday, it was as if the tragedy had never happened. In fact, the only one still agitated about it was Emil Chodorowski, manager of the Polish restaurant, who actually filed a complaint with the police department because they hadn’t finished wrapping up their business in the area where the bomb went off. Worse, they were taking suspicious-looking packages back there for examination, and customers were getting afraid. It was bad for business, he said.
On Sunday night, Gibson ordered the barriers taken down.
The night of the explosion, Commissioner Valentine stayed at the fairgrounds as long as he could, then returned to his office to make a few announcements in time for the morning papers. First, he ordered an immediate roundup of “agitators and other suspects … including Bundists, Fascists [and] members of the Christian Front.” He knew it was a meaningless gesture—mostly the cops would rope in a few crackpots who hung around Columbus Circle and spewed their verbal garbage at anyone who would listen. But he also understood that his office would need to give off at least the appearance of doing something.
Then h
e took a more serious step and placed every available officer in the department on twenty-four-hour duty pending further notice. “We are mobilizing4 the entire police force of the City of New York,” he announced, “not only to apprehend the perpetrators of this atrocious crime but also for the purpose of preventing any repetitions.”
The situation, he knew, was dire. The city had been suffering from bomb fever for several weeks; a blast like this, on the nation’s biggest holiday and at its most popular tourist attraction, could cripple business and create widespread panic. It wasn’t just a matter of solving the crime; it was a matter of how fast they were going to solve it. Already, reporters were referring to the “war atmosphere”5 created by what they were calling “the World’s Fair bomb.”
Once again, Pyke wasn’t wrong. First thing the next morning, the Capitol in Washington, D.C., had a police guard around it; tourists could still get in, but they now had to show identification and open all bags. Security made it clear that their actions were tied directly to the bombing of the British Pavilion.
The mystery of why the bomb hadn’t gone off during the course of the two days it had spent in the fan room was apparently solved when the crime lab discovered that the brass cog found at the scene came from an eight-day Ingraham clock.
Then things got a little weird. The husband of Marjorie Rosser, the operator at the British Pavilion who had received the earlier bomb threat, reported that at eleven-thirty a few nights later, a man had phoned their apartment in Queens and asked to speak to her. Before Mr. Rosser could call her to the phone, the man shouted, “I’ll kill her!”6 and hung up.
Valentine considered it a prank. Rosser’s name had been in the papers, after all. Then someone pointed out that her name had in fact been misspelled as “Rossner.” Further, after her husband described the man’s voice, she said it sounded exactly like the original caller. Valentine picked up the thread again.