Satisfied with the plausibility of Brussel’s analysis, Finney inquired about a possible illness or disease suffered by the Bomber and wondered about its nature. The letters had alluded to the Bomber’s health and his angry conclusion that his former employer had been the cause. “I AM NOT WELL,” he had written. “AND FOR THIS I WILL MAKE THE CON EDISON SORRY.” Brussel deduced that, because of the passage of time, they were, in all probability, talking about a chronic illness of some kind. Recognizing that thousands of such conditions existed, he again placed his wager on the most statistically common chronic afflictions of the day: heart disease, cancer, and tuberculosis.
He quickly ruled out cancer, since grim survival rates would make the long period of bombings unlikely. “Heart disease is my guess,” he said. In what he would later call a failure “to make every possible allowance for the known facts,” Brussel had ruled out tuberculosis, noting that the disease had been fairly treatable with several modern drugs. What he had failed to take into consideration, however, was the probable unwillingness of the paranoiac to heed the suggestions of doctors or to follow a prescribed regimen of treatments. “The Bomber was God, punishing an unjust world that had made him suffer and had failed to recognize his superiority,” Brussel would write in his memoirs. “What could any doctor do for God?”
The long shadows of the day now began to submerge Manhattan in their cold December gloom. The early dusk of winter had cast its tenebrous veil upon the office, though the men had seemingly failed to notice. Nearly four hours had passed, and a rising sentiment of hope seemed to infuse the air like vivid sunlight. The faceless ghost that the New York police had so painstakingly sought through the years had, at last, taken shape—and a technique, developed through history as a curious blend of science and intuition, had suddenly come of age in the office of a New York crime psychiatrist.
“Tell me something,” Dr. Brussel asked. “What are you going to do with what I’ve given you?”
“Well, it’ll help somehow,” said Captain Finney. “We know where to start looking at least.”
Brussel frowned and sarcastically noted that the department could not possibly position an officer at every city intersection searching for a “neat, single, middle-aged Slav from Connecticut.”
He thought for a moment and said, “I think you ought to publicize the description I’ve given you. Publicize the whole Bomber investigation, in fact.” He leaned forward and his voice seemed to erupt. “Spread it in the newspapers, on radio and television.”
Finney peered dubiously at the animated Brussel and reminded him of the department’s general policy of nondisclosure regarding the Mad Bomber case. “I don’t think the commissioner would favor that,” he said.
Brussel pressed the issue. “I think he wants to be found out now.” He insisted that the Bomber craved attention and was becoming progressively more frustrated by his inability to secure the public’s notice. The arrogant superiority of the paranoid mind, Brussel theorized, could not resist the direct challenge of the police actually describing the unseen man. Given the right circumstances, he thought that the Bomber might actually reveal himself.
Brussel rose from his desk and fixed his eyes on the pensive gaze of Finney. “By putting these theories of mine in the papers,” he pleaded,
you might prod the Bomber out of hiding. He’ll read what I’ve said about him. Maybe a lot of my theories will be wrong, maybe all of them. It’ll challenge him. He’ll say to himself, ‘Here’s some psychiatrist who thinks he’s clever, thinks he can outfox me—me the Bomber! Well he’s all wet, and I’ll tell him so.’
Finney listened intently to Brussel’s lecture and reluctantly conceded the point. Though he was certain that every crackpot in the city would plague the department with hoaxes and false alarms, he would prevail upon Commissioner Kennedy to publish the entire Mad Bomber file. “I guess it has to be done,” he said with a shrug.
What happened next would test the credulity of the three officers like nothing else that occurred that afternoon. If the prior four hours had proven nothing else, it had shown that Brussel was prone to making snap judgments. Now, as Finney and his detectives made their way to the door, Brussel once again impulsively verbalized his brazen mind-set.
“Inspector.”
“Doctor?”
“One more thing.”
A picture of the Mad Bomber pierced though his mind. A meticulous and conservative man of impeccable order. Brussel closed his eyes almost ashamed by the audacity of his own coming words.
“When you catch him—and I have no doubt you will—he’ll be wearing a double-breasted suit.”
“Jesus!” whispered one of the detectives.
“And it will be buttoned.”
XI
CHRISTMAS IN MANHATTAN
FOR SIXTY-FIVE YEARS THE ELEGANT WHITE SPRUCE HAD FLOURISHED in the open forests of a Dalton, New Hampshire, dairy farm. Its perfectly symmetrical girth and sixty-four-foot stature stood as a majestic tribute to New England’s natural beauty. It was, in fact, those very attributes that would make the sprawling evergreen the ideal yuletide offering from New Hampshire’s governor, Lane Dwinell, to the city of New York. With typical holiday fanfare, the three-ton softwood had been hoisted into place at the west end of the Rockefeller Center skating rink, draped with two miles of not so carefully concealed wiring, and illuminated with 2,200 seven-watt “firefly” bulbs and 1,200 red, green, and white globes. To the top was wired a four-foot plastic star. The twenty-fourth annual tree lighting at Rockefeller Center had been attended by hundreds, including, according to the New York Times, “some of the city’s most sophisticated critics,” all of whom “acclaimed it as an overwhelming success.”
Elsewhere in the city, retail citadels such as Macy’s and Gimbels battled hard for holiday shoppers. Department store artisans scurried to complete festive window scenes of marching toy soldiers and snow-covered gingerbread houses, and at each of these popular outlets industrious shopgirls readied decorous displays of winter clothing and holiday wares. Undulating lines of vivacious children wearing leggings and puffy winter coats (and a few bearing apprehensive looks on their faces) snaked past displays of candy canes and frosty angels floating above train set villages ensconced with cotton snowdrifts for a brief moment at the knee of Kris Kringle. It seemed that each year Christmas was coming earlier and earlier.
Though seasonal cheer had spread through the city with its usual commercial regalia, dreams of a white Christmas in the days before the holiday had been dashed with a soaking rain that swept across Manhattan. Umbrellas and yellow rain slickers had taken the place of winter scarves and wool mittens, and a dense fog had intermittently blanketed the area. It was an ominous sign for local merchants hoping for strong last-minute holiday sales, though the changeable weather would prove to be the least of their business concerns. As festive shoppers made last-minute forays into the city’s retail districts on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, the piercing sound of police car sirens and the splash of emergency vehicles through puddles along congested city streets once again shattered the otherwise cheerful spirit of the season and seemed to eerily complement the murky gloom that had befallen New York City.
The day seemed to be creeping by and David Cruz just couldn’t keep his mind on the growing stack of books that still needed to be reshelved. College students, most of them home for the holidays, had flocked to the musty reading rooms of the New York Public Library on Forty-second Street, intent on completing some last-minute studies before heading out for some Christmas Eve cheer. Nineteen-year-old Cruz, a page at the library, appeared to be battling against a rising tide of Shakespeare, Browning, and Poe; with every book he returned to the stacks, it seemed three more would appear. He thought the building was more crowded than ever, and that the day would never end.
He had made tentative plans for the evening with his girlfriend, and right now what he wanted to do was to confirm them. It was around 1:30 p.m., and Cruz made his way to one of the tw
o telephone booths on the second floor at the rear of the building. He pulled opened the folding door and fished in his pocket for a dime, which abruptly fell from his hand and onto the corrugated metal floor of the booth. As he knelt to retrieve the coin, Cruz noticed a strange object encased in a maroon wool sock and affixed with a magnet to the bottom of the metal bell box. Paying little attention, he deposited the dime and dialed his girlfriend’s phone number. As they spoke, he began to absently examine the object, which appeared to be a five-inch length of iron, capped at both ends and neatly tucked into the sock. Suddenly, his mind flashed to the accounts of the Mad Bomber and the rendering of an unexploded bomb that he had seen in a local tabloid newspaper, and Cruz abruptly ended his call. Holding the object at arm’s length, he proceeded to a storage room at the rear of the main reading room, where three other pages examined it and confirmed that, indeed, it appeared to be the work of the Bomber. At that point, Cruz became frightened, opened the casement window in the room, and tossed the device into a patch of ground-ivy vines in Bryant Park, a few feet from the library wall.
Within minutes, more than a dozen emergency vehicles, including patrol and detective cars, the bomb containment vehicle, the mobile laboratory unit, and a fire truck, converged on the scene. More than fifty uniformed officers cordoned off the streets and sidewalks along Forty-second Street, while bomb squad detectives and an array of police brass made their way to the rear of the building, where the device had been thrown. Instantly several thousand Christmas shoppers, curious about the rush of activity, massed along wooden police barriers that stretched across the road at either side of the building. Opposite the library, managers of Stern’s department store dialed up the volume of their outdoor public address system to allow the calming sounds of Christmas carols to pervade the confused scene.
Under the anxious eye of Captain Howard Finney, bomb squad detective John O’Brien, donned in a steel helmet and fragment-proof body plating, approached the device and gingerly applied an apparatus that looked like a stethoscope to its outer shell. Unable to detect the pulse of an active timing mechanism, O’Brien guardedly placed the contraption in the usual steel-mesh envelope and attached it by metal chains to the center of a fifteen-foot horizontal bar. Upon his signal that the task was complete, a second similarly adorned detective approached, and with each side of the bar gently resting on their shoulders, the two men slowly made their way around the building to the front of the library grounds and to the massive steel-armored containment vehicle that waited on Forty-second Street. A full police and motorcycle escort blocked traffic at every intersection from Times Square to Fifty-fifth Street along the Hudson as the device was transported to the empty parking lot of a sand and gravel company between piers 92 and 94, where it stayed under guard until the threat of detonation passed. Finally, at Fort Tilden, the bomb was dismantled, examined, and analyzed. From the moment of the initial call to the police, however, there was never a doubt in Finney’s mind that he was once again dealing with the work of the Mad Bomber.
On Christmas morning, an already skittish New York public awoke to the headlines “MAD BOMBER STRIKES AGAIN IN MAIN LIBRARY” and “BOMB IN 5TH AVE. LIBRARY SPURS HUNT FOR PSYCHOTIC,” while details of the culprit’s “Yuletide gift” unfurled across newspapers and television screens throughout America. Special bulletins interrupted local Christmas broadcasting, and New York radio news programming focused principally on the pervasive threat of the bombings afflicting the city and the status of the ailing police investigation. And in the New York Times a front page exposé titled “16-Year Search for Madman” provided enthralled readers with an in-depth revelation of the full police investigation into the case of the Mad Bomber. The article, written with the full cooperation of the New York City Police Department, unveiled in copious detail the clues developed in the case and the arduous pains taken by police detectives to find a suspect. The final section of the article, titled “Psychiatrist Conceives Image,” revealed that the police had enlisted the help of a Dr. James A. Brussel, assistant commissioner of the New York State Department of Mental Hygiene, in the hope that the psychiatrist might be able to work “a kind of portrait of the bomb-planter.” The article noted that Brussel had “conceived this image”:
Single man, between 40 and 50 years old, introvert. Unsocial but not anti-social. Skilled mechanic. Cunning. Neat with tools. Egotistical of mechanical skill. Contemptuous of other people. Resentful of criticism of his work but probably conceals resentment. Moral. Honest. [Not] interested in women. High school graduate. Expert in civil or military ordnance. Religious. Might flare up violently at work when criticized. Possible motive: discharge or reprimand. Feels superior to critics. Resentment keeps growing. Present or former Consolidated Edison worker. Probably case of progressive paranoia.
Brussel would later write, “[The Times story] didn’t contain all my predictions, but it crystallized the major ones. It told enough to embarrass me severely if I turned out to be grossly wrong.”
XII
“AN INNOCENT AND ALMOST
ABSURDLY SIMPLE THING”
SEYMOUR BERKSON WAS NOT PARTICULARLY ENJOYING CHRISTMAS morning. He had risen early and exchanged gifts with his family, but the usual holiday cheer seemed absent from his typically vibrant demeanor. The dynamic publisher of the New York Journal-American had been bothered by his paper’s handling of the Mad Bomber story, and the events of the past few days had served only to heighten his concerns. He was proud of the urban workingman feel of the Journal-American and its reputation for aggressively covering the local news stories of metropolitan New York, but as he began to see highbrow papers like the Times and the Herald Tribune becoming more active in their reporting on the case, he wondered whether he and his editors had lost their hardnosed competitive edge in the turf war for the world’s most vibrant media market. Now, on Christmas morning, with his competitors’ version of the Bomber story spread haphazardly across his kitchen table, Berkson’s mind began to swim.
He had been a longtime envoy of the Hearst Corporation, coming of age as a special correspondent for the International News Service, Hearst’s journalistic “window on the world.” Covering stories throughout Europe during the 1930s, he would head the Rome and Paris bureaus and pilot narrative series on Mussolini and other European luminaries. Later, back in New York, he would serve as managing editor of the INS, and in 1945, upon the death of its president, he would be appointed vice president and general manager of the news service, a post he would hold for the next ten years. While serving at the INS in the early 1950s, it was Berkson who was widely credited with coining the legendary phrase “Get it first, but first get it right.” In 1955, Berkson was named successor to William Randolph Hearst Jr. as publisher of the Journal-American, the New York flagship paper of the Hearst organization. He quickly earned a reputation for hard work, quick wit, and high energy. “To ask Seymour Berkson to relax, really relax,” wrote one colleague, “was tantamount to telling him to get out of the news business, or roll over and die.”
After sharing an early Christmas brunch with his wife, fashion publicist Eleanor Lambert (who would earn the moniker “Empress of Seventh Avenue”), Berkson retired to the living room in their sprawling East Side penthouse and placed a telephone call to his assistant managing editor, Paul Schoenstein, to discuss the day’s news, as he often did on holidays when the editorial staff was away from the office. Schoenstein, who had won the Pulitzer Prize in 1943 for distinguished reporting and for his dramatic personal role in helping to procure penicillin, then rare, for an acutely ill child, had become a staple of the Journal-American’s city room and was relied upon by Berkson in most strategic decisions of the paper.
The focus of the conversation immediately turned to the Mad Bomber case and to the latest device found at the public library. It was obvious that the story was going to be the lead for the following day’s issue, but Berkson quickly shifted his emphasis to the broader topic of the paper’s own disquisitive role in the case
. In the early part of December, as the police department began lifting the gag on the flow of information relating to the Bomber, the Journal-American had created a special team of investigative reporters specifically assigned to the matter and dedicated to the generation of leads that had, perhaps, been overlooked by the department. As the search for the Bomber heated up, he had been frustrated by the team’s lack of results, and he repeatedly pressed Schoenstein on what plans the paper had to further develop the story. Berkson grasped the base of the telephone, rose, and peered through the eleventh-story row of windows to the city streets below. He insisted that the police had developed blind spots in the course of their sixteen-year search, and he was certain that employing the full investigative ingenuity of the paper would result in the disclosure of some unnoticed fact or clue that could lead to fundamental progress. His team of reporters, Berkson persisted, must use all of their creative resources in pursuing the case.
Near the tail end of the conversation, Berkson, shifting his preoccupied gaze between the bustle of Fifth Avenue and the solitude of Central Park, was struck with a thought that he would later describe as a “rather innocent and almost absurdly simple thing.” It was, in fact, a proactive “stab in the dark” that would change the entire face of the Mad Bomber investigation.
The Mad Bomber of New York Page 12