The governor, Averell Harriman, forwarded a telegram to Seymour Berkson that read: “I congratulate the Journal-American for its part in the evident solution of the ‘Mad Bomber’ case. This is in the finest tradition of American journalism in the cooperation of a newspaper with the police and other authorities.”
Similarly, Mayor Wagner lauded the Journal-American’s efforts in the case and officially wrote:
The New York Journal-American is to be heartily congratulated on the splendid public service it has performed in this matter.
In close cooperation with our own Police Department, the Journal-American has once again demonstrated how a newspaper can be of great service to the community.
Speaking for all New Yorkers I want to extend our grateful thanks for the Journal-American’s unselfish devotion to the good principles of government.
Again my heartfelt congratulation to all members of the Journal-American staff who contributed toward ending this menace to the community.
By unanimous vote of the New York City Council, a resolution of appreciation for the Journal-American’s “outstanding public service” in bringing about the Bomber’s arrest was read into the public record, praising the paper’s “exceptional vision and dedication to the safety of the city by devoting unlimited space to stories and appeals aimed at discovering the identity of this elusive terrorist.”
And from Washington, D.C., came a telegram from the FBI addressed to Seymour Berkson that read:
I know you and your staff can take great satisfaction in your most recent cooperative efforts which have led to the identification and apprehension of the quote Mad Bomber unquote. This is another graphic illustration of how the press on a day to day basis cooperates with law enforcement agencies. Law enforcement can very well look upon the press as an ally and the developments in the quote Mad Bomber unquote case conclusively prove the point.
Congratulations on a job well done.
John Edgar Hoover.
Perhaps the most meaningful tribute of all to the Journal-American, however, came directly from the desk of Commissioner Stephen Kennedy.
In a congratulatory letter of thanks, Kennedy wrote:
The capture of the Mad Bomber was the direct result of information furnished by the N.Y. Journal-American and developed by the police. The close cooperation in turning over to us promptly all letters received from the Mad Bomber made this outstanding arrest possible. I wish to congratulate the publisher and all those staff members of the Journal-American who spent many tireless hours aiding us in ending this menace. The Journal-American deserves the gratitude of all citizens of New York for outstanding public service.
In the coming days and weeks, the Journal-American and its “Four Fishermen” would receive awards from the Newspaper Reporters Association of New York City, the local chapter of Sigma Delta Chi (a national journalism fraternity), the Women’s Press Club of New York, and the National Broadcasting Company. And in a bath of self-adulation William Randolph Hearst Jr. wrote in his syndicated “Editor’s Report” that his Journal-American’s work on the Mad Bomber case was “one of the great journalistic coups of the past generation”—a “Milestone in Press-Civic Understanding.”
With the flood of praise and honors pouring into the Journal-American, it appeared obvious to some that the paper would, in fact, lay claim to the offered reward. In a January 25 editorial, however, the Journal-American removed itself from the conversation. Noting that the paper’s name had been raised as a possible recipient, the editorial made their position clear. “Under no circumstances,” the Journal-American declared, “would this newspaper claim or accept any monetary reward for performing a public service . . . [W]e feel the Journal-American has been richly rewarded by the expressions of praise from high public officials and the many warm-hearted letters of congratulations from our readers.”
Though the Journal-American excluded itself from consideration of the reward, by no means had it modestly accepted the accolades of the city without thought of profit. During its dialogue with the Mad Bomber, the paper experienced what Berkson called a “modest rise” in readership. Upon the arrest, however, daily circulation skyrocketed by 100,000 readers and profits correspondingly rose. Berkson himself appeared on radio and television news programs and was interviewed by the likes of Mike Wallace on the WABD-TV news program Night Beat. A dramatization of Berkson’s role in the Mad Bomber case even became the focus of an episode of the television program The Big Story that aired in April 1957.
As the public tributes flowed into the paper, Berkson and his staff of editors made certain that every word was visibly printed, and at times the self-exultation became insufferable. On January 24, a cartoon rendering appeared in the paper depicting a proud-looking member of the New York Police Department standing side by side with an animated copy of the Journal-American that bore the headline “Mad Bomber Captured.” An arm from the human-like newspaper was raised in unity with that of the police officer, and both held high a torch labeled “Public Safety.” The drawing was named “Partners in Public Service.”
For the most part, commentary among rival newspapers regarding the Journal-American’s good fortune remained cordial if not outright congratulatory. Recognizing that they had simply been beaten at their own game, the New York World-Telegram and Sun extended through their editorial pages congratulations to their “esteemed compeers at the New York Journal-American for some first-class newspaper work.” The Journal-American reprinted every word of the editorial in its next day’s edition. Other papers from across the country recognized the Journal-American’s work with an editorial tip of the hat, and most recognized the paper’s efforts as innovative and groundbreaking. The January 21 issue of Time magazine, however, carried a haughtily composed piece titled “Bombs Away,” in which the Journal-American was accused of withholding from the police vital information contained in one the Bomber’s letters in an effort to hold out, in essence, for the “jackpot”—the surrender of the Mad Bomber. An outraged Seymour Berkson promptly sued Time Incorporated for libel.
The suit against Time meandered its way through the court system of New York, and, though the statement made in the article was patently untrue, it did not rise to the level of the legal standard for libel. On June 25, 1959, a decision was rendered by the appellate court in favor of the magazine.
Seymour Berkson, who had died earlier that year of a heart attack at the age of fifty-three, did not outlive the case, but, as always, he had made his point.
XIX
A QUESTION OF COMPETENCY
THE NINE-STORY BRICK AND LIMESTONE STRUCTURE THAT HOUSED THE cheerless if not gruesome psychiatric division of the Bellevue Hospital stood against the gray winter skies of Manhattan like a dismal shadow—a harbinger of stormy weather. The fetid East River quietly flowed at the rear of the building while its decaying piers clung tenuously to wooden retention walls along its banks. Though Bellevue Hospital Center—said to be the oldest general public hospital in the United States—was a cluster of hospital pavilions extending four city blocks along First Avenue and interconnected by a labyrinth of foreboding underground tunnels, the epithet “Bellevue” was often used to denote only its infamous and gloomy psychiatric division.
The red brick and wrought iron gates of the Bellevue asylum had, by the 1950s, been firmly ensconced in the public imagination. A temporary (and often longer) home to the wretched and the poor, the facility also hosted notables such as Charlie Parker, Norman Mailer, and Eugene O’Neill for observation following crimes or activities that defied sanity. None other than Kris Kringle himself found himself behind the spiked fences of Bellevue, in the 1947 classic Miracle on 34th Street, enduring the probes of psychiatric analysis as he awaited his day in court. In stark contrast to the tortured souls that vacantly roamed the halls of the First Avenue asylum, George Metesky freely traded his neatly buttoned double-breasted suit for the institutional garb of gray wool pajamas, a faded bathrobe tied at the waist, and cotton slippers. He
appeared like a man beginning the first day of a holiday retreat.
The city guards who deposited Metesky on the second floor prison ward at Bellevue, occupied by murderers, rapists, and other violent offenders, described their prisoner as a “most happy fellow.” “He mingles freely with the other 25 male patients in Ward No. 2 talking ‘small talk’ about the weather, breakfast and radio and TV shows,” wrote one newspaper in the early days of his confinement. “He smiles almost constantly.” He was crowned the checkers champion of the ward and became popular with the staff and inmates alike. He cheerfully reminded the nurses and guards when it was time for another patient’s medication, and he dutifully informed them when anyone was sick or in need of assistance. “He’s always smiling and willing to help,” said one attendant.
Metesky’s ward consisted of two rooms that formed the corner of the building: one long and narrow and lined on either side with rows of white steel-framed cots, and the other a common area “day room” containing several wooden tables and benches, a television, and a radio. The windows were barred with steel, and three separate iron-gated doors at various exit points of the ward with guards stationed on either side made thoughts of escape a futile endeavor. Within the rooms themselves, many of which smelled of a potent disinfectant-urine combination, four white-coated male attendants joined three corrections officers and a charge nurse to attend to patients’ needs and prevent hostilities. Though he had spent the last sixteen years in a most violent endeavor, Metesky showed not the slightest inclination toward violence and spoke not a word to inmate nor staff of why he found himself imprisoned in the dreary confines of Bellevue Hospital.
The notorious and oft quoted phrase “remanded to Bellevue for observation” was decreed by New York judges more than 1,500 times each year by the late 1950s. Criminal defendants whose mental capacity was in question would be dispatched to the prison ward of the psychiatric division as a way station between the courts and freedom, prison, or final commitment in other institutions. The innocuous “observation” was, in reality, a detailed inquiry required by statute to determine whether the accused was “in such a state of idiocy, imbecility, lunacy or insanity as to be incapable of understanding the charge, indictment, or proceedings or of making his defense.”
In earlier years the process of such determination had been left in the hands of a so-called lunacy commission comprising political henchmen haphazardly appointed by the courts through graft and nepotism. With New York’s enactment of the Desmond Act in 1939, however, judicial assessments as to the mental capacity of criminal offenders shifted to the examination of capable and licensed psychiatrists within the state or municipal hospital systems. Since the settled law in New York and across most of the country was that one could not be tried, convicted, or sentenced for a crime if his mental condition prevented him from understanding the proceedings or assisting in his defense, the considered judgments of qualified experts expressed through full and detailed reports would often become the deciding factor in a judicial determination of competence or incompetence to stand trial. As George Metesky blissfully adjusted to his new surroundings in the prison ward of Bellevue Hospital, the eyes of multiple psychiatric professionals followed his every move.
Prior to the adjournment of Metesky’s January 22 arraignment, Assistant District Attorney Grebow pointed out that, while Metesky may have been supported by his two sisters, he did, in fact, have $500 on his person and approximately $11,000 in the bank. Though the judge refused to engage the issue of Metesky’s finances at that time, his court appointed attorney, Benjamin Schmier, did make inquiry and quickly determined that his client’s finances went well beyond the level of destitution required for assistance from the Legal Aid Society. As Schmier prepared to withdraw from Metesky’s representation, Anna and Mae were hard at work to secure the best lawyer that they could afford for their brother.
The New York Journal-American kept its word to the Mad Bomber. Within hours of his arrest, the Hearst Corporation had retained, on behalf of George Metesky, the services of the city’s foremost authority on workmen’s compensation law. Bart J. O’Rourke, a sixty-two-year-old attorney specifically licensed by the state to represent claimants in compensation matters, had pioneered the early development of the field going as far back as the passage of the Workmen’s Compensation Act itself in 1914. His knowledge of the law was absolute, and Metesky was overjoyed at news that he had been retained. Finally, Metesky mused, he would get the hearing that had been denied him so long ago.
O’Rourke’s first course of action was to review the files of the Workmen’s Compensation Board that had been retrieved from Albany upon Metesky’s arrest. The board’s chairwoman, Angela Parisi, had pledged the full cooperation of her offices and had herself studied Metesky’s file and claim history. “[T]here is no question,” Parisi revealed to reporters, “that the previous Board was within the scope of its rights” in denying Metesky’s claims. The matter had, in her words, been “properly disallowed” by the one-year statute of limitations that applied at that time. At first blush O’Rourke had to agree with the assessment. For whatever reason, Metesky had delayed in the actual filing of his compensation claim. As O’Rourke probed the files, however, his mind searched for a legal technicality or loophole that could bypass the time restrictions and revive his client’s fateful claim.
On the day following Metesky’s arrival at Bellevue, O’Rourke paid his client a visit. Still clad in blue pajamas and appearing somewhat less poised than he had during the prior several days, Metesky warmly greeted the lawyer. As the two sat opposite one another outside the doors of ward 2, Metesky recounted, in a torrent of memory, the details of his claim for compensation beginning with his September 5, 1931, accident at the Hell Gate power station. Following the conversation O’Rourke explained that he was still in the process of a complete review of the compensation board files but that he could promise nothing in terms of a result. “I understand,” said Metesky. “[A] man can only do his best. If the New York Journal-American sent you, then you must be the best.”
Though O’Rourke gave very few details of his intended legal strategy following his meeting with Metesky, he did tell a reporter, “I believe a new claim for compensation may hinge a great deal on the determination in the criminal action and the facts brought out in his trial or at Bellevue.” O’Rourke was clearly hinting that his client’s sanity, or lack thereof, may determine whether or not an untimely filing of claim could be excused in the eyes of the law.
James D. C. Murray extracted the black horn-rimmed glasses from his eyes and rubbed his temples, which now throbbed with demonic pain. His typically neatly parted and meticulously combed thinning white hair now hung in tousled shards across his head, disheveled by the desperate passes of his opened and probing fingers. Migraines had plagued him for much of his professional career, and now, as he peered out over the glimmering East River from his upper-floor office of the Woolworth Building, he struggled to regain the poised composure that his standing and responsibility relentlessly demanded. Renowned as a “champion of lost causes,” the brooding and introspective seventy-four-year-old had, during the last half-century, built a reputation as an eloquent and disarming advocate of the law and had become one of New York’s most sought-after criminal attorneys.
A product of an all-Irish ethnic upbringing, Murray was known for rich expression and thorough preparation, and though he could boil with rage or ooze with sarcasm, he would always retain a simple and unassuming professional decorum in the face of hardship. “He’s very much the fox,” a colleague would later say. “You have to watch him closely every minute or he’ll catch you off guard.” In the courtroom, Murray was aided by an incomparable memory for facts and details, seldom resorting to files or notes of any kind and only occasionally even carrying a briefcase.
An incessant smoker and an eloquent orator, Murray had maintained an overriding ethic that emphasized the right of every citizen to a vigorous defense under the law regardless of t
he charge against him. Despite his representation of some of the city’s most abhorrent criminals and the withering disdain of the public that resulted, Murray’s genteel demeanor and zealous protection of offenders’ rights never faltered for a moment. “I guess I was born with a constitutional pity for those in trouble,” Murray would later tell a writer in a rare interview. “When I go to the grave, ten thousand secrets will be buried with me.”
The fermenting tensions of his calling had taken their grueling toll, and the curse of relentless and ongoing headaches had been the price extracted for a long and often punishing career. On this day, however, as the pounding began to subside and Murray regained his equanimity, he was finally able to lend focus to the primary cause of his most recent bout of pain.
Murray was a native of Waterbury, Connecticut, and had earlier received a call from another Waterbury attorney by the name of Harry Spellman, who had been retained by none other than Anna and Mae Milauskas on behalf of their beleaguered brother. Though a former New Haven County prosecutor and a respected Connecticut lawyer, Spellman was a bit out of his jurisdiction and comfort zone in the matter of the Mad Bomber, and he asked Murray to join him in the case. He knew that the soft-spoken New York attorney would never turn him down, for his legal philosophy was known to Spellman: “To me, the man on trial is always the underdog, regardless of his background,” Murray had been quoted as saying. “He is but an individual, and opposing him is the organized might of society. The forces of law are set in motion to destroy the defendant; the only one who can stand between him and destruction is his lawyer.”
The Mad Bomber of New York Page 20