Of the thousands of interrogations conducted by police in the sixteen-year search for the Mad Bomber, at least one, at the pinnacle of the 1956–57 holiday histrionics, would turn tragic. On December 28, police detectives, hungry for valid leads, apprehended an elderly “mystery man” who had been suspiciously milling about the telephone booths and washrooms of Grand Central Terminal, where one of many false alarms was being investigated. Intrigued by a pair of red wool socks found in the man’s pocket, the officers took the man into custody and transported him to the East Thirty-fifth Street police station for questioning. As the detectives began the process of booking and fingerprinting, the suspect—later identified as George Cermac, a sixty-three-year-old Yugoslavian immigrant living in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania— suddenly clasped his chest and collapsed to the floor. He was dead before the interrogation could begin, though later he was cleared of any suspicion of being the Mad Bomber.
As 1956 came to a close, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover grimly announced that Americans had committed more major crimes during the year than any previous year in the country’s history. Offenses ranging from auto theft to capital murder had shown a stark national increase, and local trends in New York City weren’t expected to be dramatically better. Back in Waterbury, Connecticut, George Metesky, undaunted by the feckless statistics of law enforcement, reveled in the spotlight of notoriety that he had at long last achieved, anonymous as it was. Daily, he drove out of town to purchase the New York newspapers that chronicled the trail of havoc he had so skillfully ignited, and he gleefully tracked what he saw as the impotent efforts of a hapless police force. Carefully appraising and assessing every word of the articles, Metesky pondered whether even greater bombs in higher-profile locations would be required to bring Con Ed to justice.
On December 26, 1956, as George Metesky sat in his Daimler automobile with the New York Journal-American sprawled across his lap and contemplating his next move, his eye was enticingly drawn to “An Open Letter to the Mad Bomber.”
XIV
“THE FOUR FISHERMEN”
SEYMOUR BERKSON WOULD BE ACCUSED BY RIVAL NEWSPAPERS OF STAGING nothing more than a cheap publicity stunt in the publishing of his open letter, but he would staunchly defend his decision as not only a service to the community, but the blazing of an “uncharted course” in journalistic history. “We’ve heard of people being pulled off ledges by word of mouth,” he would later say, “but we didn’t know if the printed word would stop acts against society.”
In his Christmas morning conversation with Paul Schoenstein, Berkson had casually—almost offhandedly—noted that the Bomber seemed to harbor a deep-seated grievance. Why, he posited, couldn’t the paper publish a communiqué to the Bomber urging him to reveal his complaints and accusations and at the same time assure him that he would receive, in Berskson’s words, “a fair deal under American justice.” Might not such a letter “pique his interest and tempt him to bring his grievance into the open?”
Though the proposition appeared to be reasonably formulated, the risks were enormous. While Berkson maintained a good faith belief that his open letter would be seen and responded to by the Bomber, he also knew that there was a possibility of a boomerang effect against the paper if, in fact, the Bomber reacted to it in a violent or vengeful manner. The angry backlash of the readership could severely harm the paper or even put it out of business. As publisher, Berkson weighed such risks against the obvious and opposite benefits if the Bomber actually took the overture seriously and responded in kind. In the end, Berkson maintained that he never would have exposed the Journal-American to the colossal hazards if he hadn’t absolutely believed in the soundness of the idea.
The deliberations on the subject were brief indeed. The typically contemplative Schoenstein enthusiastically jumped at the proposal and instantly suggested that it be put into swift action. A flurry of telephone calls ensued to the managing editor of the paper, Sam Day, known for his stalwart crusades on behalf of journalistic freedom, and the burly and flamboyant city editor, Edward Mahar, and within minutes there was a consensus among the four to forge ahead with Berkson’s intrepid plan.
From the beginning Berkson insisted that the strategy for the open letter be executed with the full knowledge and cooperation of the New York City Police Department. Commissioner Kennedy had already adopted Dr. Brussel’s suggestion that an open provocation of the Bomber might challenge him and force him into a reaction. Here, thought Kennedy, was the perfect opportunity to put Brussel’s theory to the test, and, without hesitation, the commissioner endorsed the plan.
Later that Christmas day, Schoenstein drove to the faded sandstone building on the Lower East Side of Manhattan that was home to the Journal-American and, with the guidance and assistance of Berkson, Day, and Mahar, began work on the paper’s open letter. Together, the Journal-American’s “Four Fishermen,” as they would come to be known, trawled their lines into uncertain waters, hoping for the ultimate catch.
Public appeals for information by the Journal-American continued unabated. With promises to shield the identity of anyone providing the paper or the police with information relevant to the Mad Bomber case, staff writers and editors beseeched jewelers, plumbers, hardware stores, hunting shops, and the public at large for cooperation. As a steady flow of hoaxes and pranks poured into the paper’s city room, most of New York doubted that the real Bomber would ever respond to an open letter. “More than one rival paper, more than one reader of the Journal-American, considered the appeal to be a new high in wishful thinking,” wrote one Hearst reporter.
Notwithstanding the prevailing skepticism, competing newspapers made similar overtures to the Bomber so as not to be excluded from the frenzy of increased circulation. The news-radio arm of the New York Daily News, WNEW, had been transmitting cryptic late-night messages at the end of their hourly news breaks, sympathetically consoling the Bomber and coaxing him to contact News reporter Jess Stearn, in an effort to address his concerns and perhaps negotiate a surrender. Stearn had, in fact, received several letters from the Bomber in response to the effort, but as the Journal-American seized a more dominant role in the attempted communications, the WNEW campaign turned derogatory toward the Bomber and eventually faltered. A similar plea was made by Walter Winchell in his Of New York column in the Daily Mirror, wherein he wrote, “To the sick person who has placed bombs in different places for the past 16 years . . . Please inform me of your losses and suffering . . . I want to help you. Tell me how.”
Meanwhile, a watchful Journal-American city room scrutinized every article of mail that it received in the days after Christmas, hunting for those distinctive-looking block letters and hoping for a response to their alluring open letter.
William Randolph Hearst Jr. would describe the Journal-American as a “family”:
Reporters, advertising salesmen, secretaries—we had worked there most of our lives. We cared for and helped one another . . . No one had more fun covering the heartache and happy times of the city. That was because most of us were native New Yorkers. We were a wild and often sentimental bunch who loved New York because it was our town. We wrote about it with affection, anger, and despair . . .
No one covered New York as well as we did in the 1950s . . . not the Times, not the Herald-Tribune, not the World-Telegram & Sun, Daily Mirror, Daily News, or the Post. In those days you competed hard for millions of subway readers . . . New York was then the most exciting city in the world . . .
We were good. At times, magnificent.
In what Hearst would later call the Journal-American’s “finest hour,” at 8:10 p.m. on the night of Friday, December 28, a copy boy dropped a special delivery envelope on the desk of the Journal-American’s assistant night city editor, Richard Piperno. The letter, postmarked the previous night at the Mt. Vernon, New York, post office, bore the neatly formed, pencil-written signature characters of the Mad Bomber—and Piperno, who had studied previous samples of the distinctive handwriting, knew it. Within minutes,
deputy police commissioner Walter Arm was notified of the letter and, soon after, he and Commissioner Kennedy converged upon the Journal-American’s sixth-floor offices on the South Street waterfront, where Berkson and Schoenstein had already gathered.
The city room, where the Bomber’s letter would be scrutinized, was unquestionably the vital pulse of the newspaper, taking up one dominant area of the floor sectioned off into various departments and haphazardly furnished with chipped and cigarette-burned filing cabinets. A series of interconnected steel desks illuminated by wire-hung light fixtures were manned by reporters and rewrite staff busily verifying leads or tapping out stories on Remington typewriters. The building itself, constructed in 1926–27, was set among the soot and grime of abandoned East River docks and tenements, and had a deteriorated and arcane appearance. Originally one of Arthur Brisbane’s real estate ventures, the building was purchased by the senior Hearst, who reportedly erupted, after seeing the moaning structure for the first time after completing the transaction, “Arthur, you’ve done it to me again!” The only section of the sixth floor with separator walls was the executive offices, which ran along a narrow corridor adjacent to the city room. Here, in Berkson’s private suite, beneath the fixed leer of a mounted Acapulco sunfish proudly displayed by its conqueror, the team met for the next four hours to discuss the details of the Bomber’s response and to create and adopt a joint strategy for moving forward.
In actuality, the Journal-American city desk had received two letters, both contained in the same envelope. The first, directed to WNEW and to Jess Stearn of the Daily News, began with the terse rebuke, “YOU ARE FINISHED—” The missive, which spoke of betrayal and abuse, claimed that the two bombs found at the public library and the Times Square Paramount during Christmas week had actually been planted months earlier, and accused the paper and the radio station of being “NOTHING MORE THAN THE SLIMY CREATURES THAT YOU ARE. ” It closed with the menacing warning, “I MAY PAY YOU A VISIT. F.P. ”
The second letter, written on decorative Christmas paper and adorned with an ornamental snowman at the top, began:
TO JOURNAL-AMERICAN—I READ YOUR PAPER OF DEC. 26—WHERE WERE YOU PEOPLE WHEN I WAS ASKING FOR HELP? PLACING MYSELF INTO CUSTODY WOULD BE STUPID—DO NOT INSULT MY INTELLIGENCE—BRING THE CON. EDISON TO JUSTICE—START WORKING ON LEHMAN—POLETTI—ANDREWS . . . THESE GENTS KNOW ALL . . . ALL THE N.Y. PRESS WAS ALSO INFORMED—
I WILL KEEP MY WORD—NO BOMBS UNTIL AFTER MID-JANUARY—THE METHOD OF BOMBING WILL THEN BE—DIFFERENT—
In an attempt to indicate good faith the writer then pointed out the location of several undiscovered bombs at Radio City Music Hall and provided a list of all bombs that he had placed during 1956, should additional devices be located during the period of “truce,” as he called it—one of which, at the Empire State Building, has never been found. The letter concluded:
BEFORE I AM FINISHED—THE CON. EDISON CO. WILL WISH THAT THEY HAD BROUGHT TO ME IN THEIR TEETH—WHAT THEY CHEATED ME OUT OF.
MY DAYS ON EARTH ARE NUMBERED—MOST OF MY ADULT LIFE HAS BEEN SPENT IN BED—MY ONE CONSOLATION IS—THAT I CAN STRIKE BACK—EVEN FROM MY GRAVE—FOR THE DASTARDLY ACTS AGAINST ME. CALLING ME NAMES—IS JUST FRUSTRATED STUPIDITY IN ACTION— F.P.
“Unquestionably genuine,” said Commissioner Kennedy. Berskon’s eyes widened like a child’s, his mind formulating the eighty-point boldface banner headline of the next morning’s issue. The elation was short-lived. Though the letter had contained good news for anxious New Yorkers— word of a truce—it had also contained a plethora of information, undeniably useful to police analysts, for which time and contemplation would be required. Kennedy thought for a moment and then expressed what Seymour Berkson had already begun to surmise in the pregnant pause of silence: Pending further lab and investigative analysis, the contents of the letter should not, for the time being, be publicized.
The request, one that Berkson found difficult to defy with the stern-faced police commissioner sitting directly opposite him, ran counter to everything he felt as a journalist. Here was a scoop that could easily send readership figures of his paper off the charts, but the risk of alienating his new rapport with the Bomber and the police department itself with an all-out burst of headlines weighed heavily on his mind. The matter was fully discussed between the men, and it was finally agreed, in the spirit of compromise, that the Bomber’s letter would not be immediately published so as to give the police time to digest and investigate the new clues presented. A more considered and deliberative approach was called for.
On January 2, 3, and 4, an obscure yet compelling item, composed with the full input and cooperation of the New York City Police Department, appeared hidden in the personals column in the announcements section of the New York Journal-American:
WE RECEIVED YOUR LETTER. WE APPRECIATE TRUCE. WHAT WERE YOU DEPRIVED OF? WE WANT TO HEAR YOUR VIEWS AND HELP YOU. WE WILL KEEP OUR WORD. CONTACT US SAME WAY AS PREVIOUSLY.
The mysterious communication was another daring shot in the dark, open for all to read yet intended only for one set of eyes. Its writers could only hope that the scrutiny of those eyes would find its way to the beseeching message.
As the city of New York said goodbye to one year and intrepidly entered the next, the Four Fishermen and the brain trust of the New York City Police Department anxiously awaited word from the Mad Bomber.
With the deluge of hoaxes still plaguing the department—130 from Christmas Eve through New Year’s alone—and a slew of bogus replies pouring into the Journal-American daily, police detectives sifted through every word of the Bomber’s curious response to the open letter, searching for any clue as to the identity of its writer. The task of distinguishing the Bomber’s genuine communications from the counterfeits was made considerably easier by his idiosyncratic use of pencil rather than ink on a uniquely cut and folded standard stamp-embossed U.S. Post Office envelope with the placement of “N.Y.” on a separate line in the address above the words “Journal-American.” Though Berkson had agreed not to immediately publish the contents of the Bomber’s response or the distinctive characteristics of its mailing, the paper did allude, in a general way, to the leads generated by it and from his prior letters, and the police vigorously pursued each.
The Bomber’s reference to Lehman, Poletti, and Andrews as individuals possessing some special knowledge of his grievances had caught the eye of police investigators as suggestive of some tangential political involvement in the matter. Herbert H. Lehman had served as governor of New York from 1933 through 1942, and Charles Poletti served as his lieutenant governor. More specifically, the mention of Elmer Andrews, who was the state industrial commissioner under Governor Lehman, reaffirmed the possibility of a workmen’s compensation dispute that had been reviewed, perhaps at the upper levels of state government, as being somehow part of the Bomber’s feud.
When contacted by police, Andrews recalled an incident around 1935 in which he was forced to discharge an angry and menacing employee of the compensation board for a continuous string of infractions, and that the same individual had once lost another job at Consolidated Edison under the same set of circumstances. Each of the three politicians, however, police discovered, had routinely received hundreds if not thousands of crank letters from disgruntled citizens, none of which could be specifically recollected by either man or his staff as particularly eye-catching or alarming. As for the specific lead provided by Elmer Andrews, the police investigated and then dismissed it as heading them down a “blind alley.”
The spotlight of the investigation then turned to the outskirts of New York City. The telltale Mt. Vernon postmark on the Bomber’s letter to the Journal-American was from the same general community as his prior letters. Most had come from White Plains or other points north of the city and had led investigators to the conclusion that their perpetrator might reside in or have connections with the affluent suburbs of Westchester County. Dr. Brussel had suggested that the Bomber lived farther north, perhaps in the st
ate of Connecticut, and used the areas outside of the city as a postal way station of sorts, but the supposition reached by the New York police was based upon other compelling evidence uncovered by simple, boots-on-the-ground investigative work.
During the first few days of 1957, detectives had begun questioning a number of plumbers and supply house managers throughout the area to better understand the Bomber’s repeated past use of the words “well-coupling” in his letters to describe the lengths of pipe used in the construction of his devices. Investigators had always found the expression somewhat puzzling and foreign, and upon speaking with the local tradesmen, confirmed that the phrase was, in fact, specifically indigenous to the towns in and around Westchester County, as opposed to the term “line pipe coupling,” which was commonly used by plumbers and suppliers within the confines of New York City. Combining this revelation with the telling postmarks on the Bomber’s various letters, police quickly honed their search for the Bomber and converged in droves upon the quiet northern New York suburbs of Mt. Vernon and White Plains.
On January 3, 1957, New York City police detectives informed a gathering of seventy-five public officials representing thirty-nine separate police departments in Westchester County that the hunt for the Bomber would now focus within their jurisdiction. Samples of the Bomber’s distinctive block printing were circulated to each of the represented departments, and, before long, detectives, sheriffs’ staff, and patrolmen descended upon a variety of Westchester County offices in a round-the-clock check of 357,000 automobile license applications, 26,000 court files, 150,000 jury lists, 20,000 pistol permit requests, and 9,000 county clerk judgments for handwriting matches. To aid in this monumental task, thirty veteran New York detectives in the midst of a refresher course at the police academy were abruptly removed from class to join the newly formed Bomb Investigation Unit, twelve of whom were sent directly to White Plains to sift through documents. Meanwhile, the department, on the direct order of Commissioner Kennedy, redistributed a circular with a photograph of one of the Bomber’s unexploded devices to all 23,000 members of the force, including those serving in White Plains, together with detailed instructions on what to do if such a contraption were to be found.
The Mad Bomber of New York Page 14