The Mad Bomber of New York (20 page)
The heightened sense of awareness caused a tense and jumpy public to misinterpret normally innocuous objects as creations of the Mad Bomber. Throughout New York and beyond, hazardous-looking sights that were in reality nothing more than discarded auto parts or shattered electrical components were reported by concerned citizens and investigated by harried police departments. In Baltimore, a frantic call placed to police headquarters insisted that the Mad Bomber had hit their city and implored police to respond. At the scene, perplexed detectives found the wreckage of a twenty-one-inch television set lying on the sidewalk outside of an apartment house and, upon locating its owner, seventy-year-old John McKnight, were told, “I paid $258 for that durned TV set. I was sitting there watching a program when the thing went blooey. I got so doggone mad, I just picked up the set and threw it out the window. When it hit the pavement, the picture tube exploded.” And in Queens, New York, a woman telephoned police headquarters with the clue she was certain would solve the Mad Bomber case once and for all: “He's my husband,” she proclaimed. “He's plain crazy. Take my word for it, and don't bother checking. Just arrest him and put him away. It'll be good riddance for everyone.”
In the final weeks of 1956, the targets of the hoax calls and imitation pipe bombs included such locations as a crowded-to-capacity Madison Square Garden, a bustling Grand Central Terminal, Yankee Stadium (where 56,836 fans had gathered for the professional football championship game between the New York Giants and the Chicago Bears), the Coliseum, the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, and even the Egyptian consulate on Park Avenue. Each call and response was carefully documented by eager newspaper reporters and television newsmen, and daily inventories began appearing in local tabloids and broadsheets alike, cataloguing the exact time and location of each bogus report. The highly publicized woes of New York City soon began to spread into surrounding cities and towns and, inevitably, throughout the country and around the world. Bomb scares and homemade devices were reported from Dallas to Wichita, from Philadelphia to St. Paul, and a threat to blow up Albert Hall in London shook England to its core.
The hysteria would reach dramatic proportions. In a
Journal-American
article titled “Siege by Bomber Recalls Terror of âJack the Ripper,'” the reporter, Syd Livingston, wrote, “Not since the âJack the Ripper' murders in London's teeming East End in 1888â89 has a great city been held in a state of mental siege comparable to what the Mad Bomber has done in New York.” On a visit to Hollywood, British filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock was shown a headline of the latest pipe bomb found in New York City and was asked his opinion of the Mad Bomber case. Clearly familiar with the matter, Hitchcock opined in his classically sluggish enunciation,
The Mad Bomber . . . is a man with a diabolical sense of humor. And he is not a stupid man. You could hardly say that a man who has avoided being caught for 16 years is stupid. Whatever it is that has made this man an enemy of society one can only see a man who is enjoying this thing. He apparently is as much concerned with taunting the police to try and catch him as he is in blowing people up.
And also out of Hollywood, the film studio Twentieth Century-Fox announced that the former head of the company's Movietone News Bureau, Anthony Muto, would soon begin production on a feature film titled
The Mad Bomber of New York City
despite the lack of a writer, script, or, as the
New Yorker
mocked, “a suitably dramatic ending.”
With the deluge of hoaxes and false alarms paralyzing the city, Commissioner Kennedy was immediately placed in the position of defending the decision to go public with the details of the investigation. Faced with criticism from the same media that had demanded a more open and forthcoming posture, Kennedy observed that from the time the decision was made to publicize the case, many helpful leads had poured into the department, and though he conceded the “calculated risk” of publicity, he maintained that, on balance, the campaign was succeeding. “The public can cope with the known,” he suggested. “It is fear of the unknown that causes apprehension.”
Nonetheless, the torrent of pranks and false alarms was clearly taking a toll on the fatigued bomb squad and the department as a whole. Manpower and equipment earmarked for other important investigations had been diverted to round-the-clock bomb scare response duty, prompting the chief of detectives, James Legget, to limit the involvement of the squad and its equipment solely to situations in which an actual device had been uncovered as opposed to the mere receipt of a threatening call. Though defensive of his decision to bring the case public, Kennedy was also angered by the impact of the vexing hoax wave on the actual Mad Bomber investigation and on the already taxed resources of the police department. He publicly warned that all pranksters and hoaxers would be dealt with “firmly,” and pointed out that although there was no specific New York law for the prosecution of hoaxers, other provisions such as disorderly conduct and malicious mischief, each of which carried jail terms and heavy fines, could be implemented to end the barrage. “Our policy is to arrest these people and bring them to justice,” said Kennedy.
In an authoritative backlash designed to quell the rising tide of hoaxes, a series of well-publicized arrests and prosecutions soon followed. On Long Island, eight boys were arraigned for goading another student to call in a phony bomb scare to gain days off from school, and in Brooklyn two girls who were out for “a little fun” were arrested and held by a night court magistrate on $2,500 bail for phoning in a false bomb threat. A variety of youths throughout New York were arrested for setting off large firecrackers or cherry bombs, and a thirty-seven-year-old fruit store clerk named Morris Rubin, described by his brother as a “low-grade moron,” was apprehended at Grand Central Terminal with ninety-two dimes and thousands of private telephone numbers of government officials bulging in his pockets. Arraigned on a charge of disorderly conduct, Rubin admitted to “numerous” fake bomb warnings and was committed to Bellevue Hospital for psychiatric observation. In a nod to Commissioner Kennedy, the presiding magistrate lectured, “If I, or any of my colleagues, get a real prankster . . . he will get the maximum, despite the wails.”
In the early morning hours of December 28, amid this wave of hoaxes and public hysteria, an actual device placed by the real Mad Bomber was found embedded deep within the foam cushion of a leather-bound seat in the fifteenth row of the Paramount Theatre at Broadway and Forty-third Street after a showing of Hitchcock's
The Wrong Man.
An ambiguous message had been delivered to the theater earlier that evening, stating that a bomb had either already been found in a seat or had earlier been planted and was set to go off. Police were immediately notified, and fourteen detectives and officers from the West Forty-seventh Street station converged upon the theater. A preliminary flashlight search of the seats and aisles was quietly conducted during the movie presentation and turned up nothing, but a more thorough lights-on check after the 2,500-member audience had departed revealed the bomb. Wrapped in a red wool sock and appearing nearly identical to the Christmas Eve device, police had little difficulty in identifying it as the work of the real Bomber. Bomb squad detectives, clad in the usual metal-armored protective suits, carried the mechanism from the theater in the steel mesh envelope to the waiting transport vehicle, where it was whisked, under motorcycle escort, through the streets of Manhattan to the beachfront of Fort Tilden. Before the watchful eyes of 150 witnesses, including police detectives, army personnel, television and radio news crews, and newspaper reporters from across the city, the device was placed in a hole dug in the sand and detonated upon the clarion announcement, “Fire in the Hole.”
Hours after the find at the Times Square Paramount, the New York Board of Estimate unanimously adopted the following resolution offered by Mayor Wagner at the request of Commissioner Kennedy:
Resolved . . . that the City of New York hereby offer a reward of $25,000 for information leading to the apprehension and conviction of the individual responsible for the placing of infernal machines or bombs in various places in the city during the past several years.
The Police Commissioner shall be the sole judge in determining the person or persons entitled to said reward and the proportionate distribution thereof.
Nothing contained herein shall authorize the payment of such reward or any part thereof, directly or indirectly, to any member of the Police Dept. of the City of New York.
Shortly thereafter, the Police Patrolmen's Benevolent Association augmented the reward by an additional $1,000. It was the first time since the 1940 bombing of the British Pavilion at the New York World's Fair that reward money had been posted by the city or an arm of the police department for the apprehension of a wanted criminal. As the reward was announced, Chief Leggett appealed to members of the public who might have seen anyone carrying any peculiar-looking object into the Paramount on the evening of the twenty-seventh or who otherwise might have appeared suspicious or somehow out of character. Commissioner Kennedy later stated that the Bomber was “of the killer type . . . He is not a mastermind but a mental defective who is under the delusion that he is a superior man . . . He sets the bombs off for a psychic kick. He needs help.”
With the announcement of the reward money by the city of New York, the level of hysteria only multiplied. Nervous residents kept suspicious vigil over the movements of their neighbors, and darkened houses and unexplained excursions suddenly became the focal point of rumor and accusation. As published police photographs of lethal devices and abandoned knives joined reports of covert FBI involvement in the case, the already frayed nerves of New Yorkers deteriorated and the general “atmosphere of a siege prevailed.”
Police detectives investigated hundreds of tips, leads, and sources provided by a now fully engaged citizenry, but as the bomb hoaxes continued and even increased, the watchful eyes of the public often drew erroneous and unreliable conclusions. The department dealt with the usual rash of serial confessors guilty of nothing but the act of a sham confession, but it was the flawed perceptions of well-intended citizens, and even the police department itself, that would lead to the inevitable flood of bogus leads and false accusations.
Shortly after the public library bomb was discovered and publicized, two scientists recalled a chance encounter they had with a shabbily dressed man at a science and technology exhibit held at the library on Christmas Eve. The man spoke incessantly of the explosive properties of a particular compound and the various strategic uses of chemical-based bombs. Convinced that the individual was nothing more than a sophistic crank, the scientists evaded him and went about their business. Later in the day, when they heard of the explosive device found on the library grounds, they were immediately reminded of their earlier encounter and contacted the police. During two hours of interrogation, the scientists had provided a detailed description of the suspect, and police scurried about in search of a garrulous, dingily dressed man about six feet in height with a bookish interest in explosive substances.
When the Mad Bomber struck the Times Square Paramount Theatre on December 28, movie patrons, eager for a chance at the alluring newly announced reward money, searched their minds for any clue of a suspect. Among them, a couple described a suspicious man sitting two seats away in an area of several otherwise unoccupied rows and in very close proximity to where the bomb was ultimately located. The suspect, according to the couple, was bald, in his early fifties, stood about five foot six or perhaps seven inches in height and spoke in a thick German accent similar to what several police descriptions had attributed to the Bomber. Of particular interest to police was the description of a middle-aged woman who apparently accompanied the suspect, thus furthering the intriguing possibility of a female accomplice. The idea that the Bomber could be a woman disguised in men's clothing had previously been advanced, and now the concept gained momentum with new and seemingly credible evidence.
On the Upper East Side, several jewelry shops reported what seemed at the time to be a promising lead. Each of the jewelers had notified police detectives and journalists that they had been visited on a number of occasions by a “poorly dressed, thin, pale-faced . . . [man], possibly of German or Nordic extraction,” who repeatedly asked for particular inexpensive used watch movements that he said he wanted for a collection. After finally being apprehended and enduring no less than eight separate interrogations by different members of the New York City Police Department, each of whom thought that perhaps they had nabbed the Bomber, the “meek and simple” itinerant watch repairman who sought mechanisms from local jewelers for mending and resale was cleared of all suspicion. For his own protection and for the sake of overwrought detectives, the man was gently prodded to drape a small cardboard sign over his chest like a beggar's plea, reading: “I am NOT the Mad Bomber.”
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 1956â57 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 suspectâlater identified as George Cermac, a sixty-three-year-old Yugoslavian immigrant living in Bethlehem, Pennsylvaniaâ 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.