The Mad Bomber of New York

by Michael M. Greenburg

  “Now getting to the legal application,” continued Schmier, “the defendant tells me a story of how he comes to stand before your Honor.” Noting that the case against Metesky was already a matter of well-known public record, Schmier elected not to burden the court with a recitation of the obvious and instead began to lay the foundation for what his well versed legal mind told him would almost certainly become an insanity defense. “Apparently,” observed Schmier:

  He is a man who in speaking to any member of the community could easily pass for a person who could be your next-door neighbor. But with all my thousands of cases behind me, your Honor, I get to see through the defendant as I talk to him a man who is laboring under a terrific psychosis, a persecution complex, something which had bothered him for years, and he says that he finds all of his aggrievement against the public satiated by the bombings because the public treated him so poorly in his desires to . . . get his compensation case heard. So that from this compensation case, which has its incept many, many years ago, the defendant justifies himself against the general public, which is the very basis of a schizophrenic personality, your Honor . . .

  You are asking me to act for this defendant and before I can act, I must be convinced in my legal mind that this defendant understands the nature of the charges against him and is able to differentiate between right and wrong. I am not sure of that. As a matter of fact, if I were forced to make a statement for the record on that score, I would say it is my humble belief at this time that this defendant is of such a state of mind as not to understand the nature of the charges against him. I would like to be fortified with a psychiatric report and I think the interest of justice would be served if your Honor would grant my application.

  Judge Levy listened intently to Schmier’s plea and turned to George Metesky, who was absently listening to the proceedings. “My feeling,” began Levy,

  is that the manner in which Mr. Metesky gave expression to the real or fancied grievances are, well, to say the least, indicative of a deranged mind . . . and I think it is proper at this point to commit him for observation, so before he is asked to meet this charge it can be determined by experts that he is in a condition to understand the nature and quality of his acts and make a defense to the charge.

  The judge paused and searched Metesky’s eyes for any indication of comprehension. “Committed to Bellevue for observation,” he said with a rap of the gavel.

  Metesky smiled politely and, when prompted by the officers, serenely shuffled out of the courtroom, still clinging to the New York Journal-American.

  XVIII

  REWARDS, ACCOLADES, AND ACCUSATIONS

  FROM THE MOMENT OF GEORGE METESKY’S ARREST, ALICE KELLY HAD been considered the most logical recipient of the $26,000 reward offered by the city and the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association. The newspapers touted her as the girl with the “rare photographic memory” and offers of congratulations for her fine public service poured in from all corners of the city. Admiration for Alice Kelly was so high in the days following the arrest that it was suggested by some that she be invited to the reviewing stand at the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade, while one vocal shareholder of Con Ed even demanded that she be considered to fill an open seat on the company’s board of directors. As the City of New York unanimously sung the praises of Alice Kelly and her employer, however, some members of the police department bristled with anger.

  “. . . [W]e say it’s not so,” said Deputy Commissioner Walter Arm upon his return from Waterbury at a hastily convened press conference held at the Centre Street police headquarters. His voice quivered with emphatic emphasis. “The physical act of picking . . . out [the file] was done at the request of the Police Department.” Arm explained that on Friday night, January 18, detectives from the Bomb Investigation Unit had finished their work at the Hester Street warehouse and then continued their search at the Con Ed main offices upon being advised of the existence of the so-called troublesome company files. Later that evening or early Saturday morning, he insisted, his officer, Detective Bertram Scott, came upon the Metesky file and recognized the characteristic handwriting and use of language. Though Arm acknowledged that he did not yet have a full report on the issue and that there still existed a “difference of opinion” as to who actually located the revered file, he insisted that “[a]s far as we know now it was one of our men.” As if to emphasize the pivotal role of the department in the apprehension and arrest of the Bomber, the next morning Commissioner Kennedy called the entire membership of the BIU into his office to thank and congratulate them for their part in tracking the man down. Kennedy made special public mention of Bertram Scott as well as the four New York detectives who made the arrest in Waterbury, and promised that as a result of their “excellent work” promotions of both grade and assignment would be forthcoming. There was no mention of Con Ed at the commissioner’s meeting.

  The tiff over who actually found the Metesky file at Con Ed’s main offices was, in reality, one of form rather than substance. A simple interview of the detectives assigned to the matter would quickly reveal that the department, in fact, had no direct role in locating the file, and on January 23 Commissioner Kennedy reluctantly conceded the point to a gathering of twenty feisty reporters who had persistently demanded a meeting while posted outside of his door. Seated at the same mahogany desk used by Theodore Roosevelt during his term as commissioner sixty years earlier, Kennedy explained that Arm’s statements as to who had found the so-called “hot” file had been made on the basis of incomplete information supplied by tired and overworked detectives, and though they were made in good faith, the assertions were, in fact, mistaken. In making the admission, however, Kennedy had opened an inevitable firestorm of controversy. Noting that detectives had been notified of the Metesky file on Friday evening and had communicated with Waterbury police on Saturday, the gritty reporters pointedly inquired why the department had waited until Monday to make the arrest in Waterbury. The befuddled commissioner could only stammer that detectives were working hard on other similarly promising leads at the time. “The main thing is that we got the man,” he said with a feigned grin.

  “This was not good police work, was it, Commissioner?” asked one of the reporters sharply.

  “A man has been arrested who was at liberty for sixteen years,” he defensively responded. “His dangerous potentialities have been nullified. Yes.”

  The reporters persisted on the point, arguing that the commissioner could not possibly have been satisfied with his department’s slow reaction to Con Ed’s recovery of the Metesky file. Kennedy hesitated for a pregnant moment and then, feeling cornered, responded with the true crux of his anger. Slowly he began, “Police were working for five or six years and did not know of such a file.” He folded his hands in front of his breast, restraining a bitter tone that now enveloped his voice. The reporters furiously scribbled their notes on pads of tousled yellow paper. “We have no power over Con-Ed to force them to give over their files—to know that there was such a file.” What Commissioner Kennedy did not tell reporters was that a growing suspicion had taken root among police brass and BIU detectives implicating Con Ed personnel in a years-long, systematic scheme to fraudulently withhold the Metesky file from their view.

  For years, despite persistent requests from police investigators, Con Ed lawyers and administrators had consistently maintained that all employee files dated prior to 1940 were no longer in existence. Frustrated, but understanding of the company’s policy of records retention and destruction, detectives limited their search to what was known and available. On January 14, 1957, however, just days prior to Alice Kelly’s find, detectives received what they called a “confidential tip” that Con Ed did, in fact, possess those earlier files and had purposely withheld them for more than two years of the investigation. Though the identity of the informant was never disclosed, later facts would bear out its reliability.

  The explosive allegations did not remain secret for long. By Friday, January
25, fierce charges and arrogant denials were publically exchanged through the New York media. Statements from unnamed police sources were published accusing Con Ed of obstructing the search for employee records and charging that if the relevant files had been produced by Con Ed upon their original request, Metesky would, in all likelihood, have been apprehended sooner. As specific files of interest did emerge, police alleged that Con Ed protested and stalled at every instance, claiming that the records contained sensitive legal matters that would have to be reviewed by company lawyers prior to their release.

  The Con Ed response to the allegations was swift and indignant. “Our employees have worked around the clock going into files and making information available to the police,” erupted William Brady, a Con Ed public relations official at a hastily arranged press conference. “If any charge is to be made, let them take off their masks. Let the man making the charges identify himself and tell us what the charges are . . . We are not police. We sell electricity,” he hissed. “When the police asked for information or names, or access to files, we gave it.” Harland Forbes, the president of Con Ed, announced simply, “As far as I know, they had complete access to our files and went through them many times.”

  Commissioner Kennedy chafed with anger at Con Ed’s statements but remained characteristically understated to the reporters who raced to police headquarters for a response. “The complete investigation showed that our men had checked through all available files of Con Edison,” Kennedy responded diplomatically. “My impression is that we were told that 1940 was the earliest record.”

  As the relationship between Con Ed and the New York Police Department disintegrated into a cynical rift of mystery and suspicion regarding access to the company files, the underlying question of entitlement to the reward money became the talk of the town. With accusations being hurled in every direction it appeared that no one was willing to come forward and lay claim to the prize. Though Con Ed and the public at large appeared to favor Alice Kelly as the leading entrant, the police privately seethed at the thought of any Con Ed employee collecting the reward, and Alice herself had soured at all the attention and appeared reluctant to make a claim.

  Police investigators had quickly concluded that not only had Con Ed obstructed their search for files, but also, in an effort to protect themselves, they had concocted the story of how Metesky’s file had actually been located. Edward Lehane, one of Metesky’s arresting officers, later disclosed in a magazine interview:

  [Alice] was like an executive secretary, some type of highly rated job in Con Edison.

  [The Metesky file] was in a file in a vice president’s or somebody’s office. They knew that file was there. There was a whole file cabinet full of cases that they felt were sensitive cases, cases that may have brought embarrassment to Con-Ed. They knew that we had detectives in Albany looking over all the old compensation files. There was some indication, I believe, that we were getting close . . . So they knew that the goddamn net was closing. That’s when Con-Ed suddenly came up with it.

  For his part, Commissioner Kennedy, whose charge it was to determine eligibility for the reward, had considered the politically unpopular decision of withholding the prize altogether on the technical legal ground that a “conviction,” as required by the Board of Estimates posting, would never be attained if the Bomber were to be held incompetent to stand trial or otherwise committed to a psychiatric institution. Though the department appeared ready to use every available tool to prevent Con Ed or its employees from profiting by the reward, Kennedy declared, perhaps untruthfully, that “[a]nybody who files a just claim will get consideration from me.”

  On January 25, Harland Forbes contacted Commissioner Kennedy and requested a meeting between the two men in an effort to resolve the simmering conflict between Con Ed and the police force. After an hour-long conference, it was announced that a formal investigation headed by Deputy Police Commissioner Aloysius Melia, who was in charge of the department’s legal affairs, would be held to determine exactly who should be given credit for trapping the Mad Bomber. The pressure on Kennedy to take the focus off the police investigation and to place it upon the swift prosecution of George Metesky, however, was mounting with each passing day. That weekend, as Melia prepared the details of his fact-finding probe, the New York Times posed the larger question that all of New York seemed to be asking: “Why, with all the available clues, did it take more than fifteen years to track down the Bomber?” Kennedy couldn’t wait to change the subject.

  During the first week of February, Deputy Commissioner Melia interviewed twenty-five detectives and officers of the New York City Police Department involved in the Bomber investigation, and formally deposed multiple employees of Con Ed, including Alice Kelly herself. Alice had consistently indicated that her role in finding the Metesky file was nothing more than a routine part of her job and that she accordingly intended to make no claim for the reward money. “I have no more right to [the reward],” testified Alice, “than the man in the moon.”

  With Alice Kelly out of the reward picture, and no other legitimate claimants willing to enter the fracas, the Federation of Women Shareholders, led by its outspoken president, Wilma Soss, sensed another battleground for her feminist crusade. A longtime advocate of minority shareholder rights and more particularly women’s causes in the corporate arena, Soss demanded that Con Ed make claim for the reward on behalf of Alice Kelly and, if awarded, distribute the monies evenly amongst Con Ed Employees, the Mutual Aid Association, the Police Welfare Fund, and the New York Newspaper Reporters Association. Con Ed refused Soss’s entreaties, citing complete neutrality in the matter, and Alice, feeling somewhat manipulated, forwarded a stern statement to Soss explaining that her refusal to make application for the reward was based upon her own “long and serious consideration,” made without influence. The decision, she stated, was “irrevocable.” Confirming her consistent posture of privacy, Alice informed Soss, “I realize of course, that I cannot prevent any action your organization sees fit to take as stockholders of Consolidated Edison, but I must, in all fairness, inform you that I, personally, object to any action which may involve me in a controversy of which I want no part.”

  Alice’s pleadings were ignored, and on February 13, 1957, a formal application was made with the commissioner’s office by the Federation of Women Shareholders on behalf of Alice Kelly for consideration of the reward money. It would be the only official claim for the reward filed with the commissioner’s office.

  Among the clamor and conversation regarding rewards and compensation, Thomas Dorney, the security guard at the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center who had, in August 1956, unwittingly taken home one of the Mad Bomber’s creations, now threatened to bring suit against Metesky for $500 in damages sustained to his kitchen when the pipe bomb exploded in his home.

  Frederick Eberhardt, who had been wrongfully arrested in 1951 as a prime suspect in the Mad Bomber case, filed a claim with the New York City controller, seeking redress for the loss of forty days work, the expenses of seven trips to New York, and the return of his bail money.

  Lloyd Hill, the Penn Station porter who spent two months in St. Vincent’s Hospital recovering from eighteen fractures of the right foot suffered in the Bomber’s washroom explosion of February 1956, had been unable to work since the incident but contemplated no claims for further recompense beyond the $15 per week he received from the state Workmen’s Compensation Board. “I haven’t had any ill feeling toward him,” said Hill regarding the Bomber. “Most people can work their way out of difficulties; some have to resort to such means; it’s not their fault.”

  And in a letter to the Editor of the New York Times, Ruth S. Jackson of Norwalk, Connecticut wrote: “Why not contribute the reward money offered for the identification of George Metesky to the National Association for Mental Health? It might be used there to prevent some similar maladjustment to society. Then we would all be rewarded.”

  The official report of Aloysius Melia’s in
quiry into the circumstances surrounding the location of Metesky’s Con Ed file conceded full credit for the find to Alice Kelly. It explained that Walter Arm had innocently misconstrued a police statement alluding to Detective Bertram Scott’s Monday morning retrieval of the file to mean that Scott had been the one to actually locate the file, and insisted that at no time during the investigation had Scott or any other member of the department actually taken credit for the find.

  Notwithstanding the acknowledged credit given to Alice Kelly, she steadfastly refused to lay claim to the reward. It remains unpaid to this day.

  The mystery of Con Ed’s role in withholding files and obstructing the search remained even after Melia’s inquiry. While general counsel for Con Ed admitted that he had informed police that some company files dated before 1940 had been destroyed, he insisted that he was referring only to “litigation files” and that the remaining compensation files existed and were never withheld from police. Harland Forbes called the matter a “misunderstanding,” and by then Commissioner Kennedy just wanted to put the matter to rest.

  Though the formal inquiry was officially closed without sufficient evidence to implicate Con Ed personnel in any type of criminal misconduct resulting from the search for the Metesky file, the department privately and evermore maintained its suspicions against the power company. When asked why Alice Kelly didn’t take the $26,000 reward money, a member of the BIU, Detective William Schmitt, simply said, “You tell me.”

  As the New York City police feuded with Con Ed over files and rewards, the staff of the Journal-American city room drank away the days following Metesky’s arrest at a former longshoreman’s watering hole on the South Street docks called Moochie’s Saloon. There, among the stench of stale beer and decaying plaster, pressmen, reporters, editors, and secretaries celebrated the tributes of New York and awaited the Pulitzer prize that each knew they deserved. Though the Pulitzer would never come, accolades and messages of congratulations from all over the state poured into the offices of the Journal-American like ale from Moochie’s spigots for their role in the capture of the Mad Bomber.