The Mad Bomber of New York (19 page)
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”
S
EYMOUR
B
ERKSON WAS NOT PARTICULARLY ENJOYING
C
HRISTMAS
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.
On December 26, 1956, the front page of the
New York Journal-American
brimmed with details of the case and trumpeted the “
ALL-OUT SEARCH FOR
MAD BOMBER
”
that was under way by the police. Just below this searing headline in brash prominence lay Seymour Berkson's inventive brainchild:
AN OPEN LETTER
TO THE MAD BOMBER
(Prepared in Co-operation with the Police Dept.)
Give yourself up.
For your own welfare and for that of the community, the time has come for you to reveal your identity.
The N.Y. Journal-American guarantees that you will be protected from any illegal action and that you will get a fair trial.
This newspaper also is willing to help you in two other ways.
It will publish all the essential parts of your story as you may choose to make it public.
It will give you the full chance to air whatever grievances you may have as the motive for your acts.
We urge you to accept this offer now not only for your own sake but for the sake of the community.
Time is running out on your prospects of remaining unapprehended.
You can telephone the City Editor of this newspaper at COrtlandt 7-1212, or you can go to any police station or even the policeman on the street and tell him who you are.
In all cases you will be given the benefits of our American system of justice.
Give yourself up now.
C
OMMISSIONER
K
ENNEDY HAD BEEN DULY IMPRESSED WITH THE REPORT
on Dr. Brussel's image of the Mad Bomber and nervously acquiesced to his suggestion to publish the full history of the investigation. “At first we requested that no publicity be given to his acts,” the commissioner told reporters, “but this did not deter him. Now we are working on the theory that publicity will enable us to learn something from somebody and thus bring about his arrest.” Said another high-ranking police official, “Every hopeful lead has vanished, and the bomber is still as much a mystery as ever.” The admission had the feel of desperation and added to the palpable unease settling upon the city.
In late December, as assorted versions of Brussel's psychological amalgam circulated throughout the local newspapers and police department appeals for assistance to the citizens of New York barraged the airwaves, the already glaring media coverage only intensified. With the cooperation of the police, urgent warnings describing the Bomber's handiwork were published together with extensive excerpts of his angry missives, while impassioned pleas for vigilance flooded local editorial pages. “Any one who has any helpful information can help enormously by coming forward with it, for this city will be confronted with a nagging sense of danger until the culprit is caught,” wrote the
Herald Tribune.
And the
Journal-American
cajoled, “This then clearly is a case that calls for the fullest cooperation of watchful citizens in working with police to bring the âMad Bomber' to justice . . . Let us all then be alert. Only with the capture of this madman will our citizens feel secure once more.” Public service notwithstanding, a soaring and inflammatory rhetoric undeniably marked the insatiable reporting of the local media, to the heightened anxiety of the average New Yorker. “For more than 15 years,” extolled the
Journal-American
,
“
a mysterious man has walked the city's streets, threatening the lives of 8,000,000 people. He defies detection and presumably delights in the feeling that he has the power of life and death over all. This man is potentially New York City's most dangerous individual . . .”
It was only a matter of time before a vagarious faction of New York bedlamites would augment, in their own peculiar way, the public anguish generated by the extensive news coverage of the Bomber. Almost from the moment of Commissioner Kennedy's release of information, the feared and inevitable wave of false alarms and bomb scares began to plague the city like a virus. “The hysteria,” reported the
New York Times,
“provided a field day for cranks, holiday-season pranksters, lunatic fringers and youths with a perverted sense of humor.”
Beginning in early December, a flood of anonymous and malicious telephone calls poured into theaters, department stores, air terminals, office buildings, schools, newspapers, subway stations, police precincts, and even an army base. The calls were placed by a variety of deep-voiced males, harsh-sounding women, and squeaky-pitched teenagers, each informing bewildered call recipients of planted bombs and pending explosions. In many cases, actual lengths of empty pipe, capped on both ends to resemble the widely publicized handiwork of the Bomber, had been placed by the pranksters, and in each instance overtaxed emergency personnel dutifully responded in full crisis mode, expecting the worst and finding either nothing or deviously placed simulations. On December 4, two days after the Brooklyn Paramount bombing, police responded to no fewer than thirteen false warnings, and from December 5 through December 21, fifty separate prank calls were received. As Christmas approached, the hoaxes seemed to subside, but after the highly publicized bomb was found at the New York Public Library, the calls once again surged, and by the end of the year the total had exceeded 160. One New York police officer complained that he had responded to the same movie house on so many occasions that he had seen virtually the entire screen presentation. Another lamented, “Every time we find a real bomb, every whack in New York calls or writes in about imaginary ones. This city has plenty of whacks with a screwball sense of humor.”