The Mad Bomber of New York (39 page)
As the asylum at Auburn gradually reached capacity and then became overcrowded, legislative appropriation was made for a larger, more accessible facility in Beacon, New York. The nine-hundred-acre estate of John J. Scanlon, a locally famous race horse owner, was purchased and in 1892 the newly constructed, 450-bed asylum for insane criminals at Matteawan was unveiled among the placid backdrop of the Fishkill Mountains.
The stated purpose of Matteawan was to provide for the “isolation of dangerous and vicious patients.” According to one New York judge later reviewing an application for commitment to Matteawan, the internment function of the institution “gives primacy to the problems of security and custody and little or no recognition to the need of the patient for care and treatment.”
Through the years, the emphasis on mere confinement of the criminally insane, as opposed to recovery, would inevitably lead to allegations of maltreatment and abuse. Sadistic beatings and involuntary medication at the hands of unqualified and unlicensed staff would send a lifeless and tormented population into a vortex of physical and psychological hardship. Unlike the more benign conditions of the civil institutions operated by the Department of Mental Hygiene, the close confinement, inadequate staffing, and poorly equipped facilities of Matteawan regularly deprived patients of opportunities for treatments and therapies sorely demanded by their pathetic psychological circumstances. The dangers, restraints, and poor conditions to which the criminally insane were routinely exposed extended far beyond what they would endure even at some of New York's harshest prisons. Grievous overcrowding and a gravely distressed atmosphere would contribute to a general environment of indignity and frustration that, according to one observer, would make Matteawan “a place more likely to drive men mad than to cure the insane.”
Into this hopeless and malevolent environment entered a legislative dereliction that often made commitment to Matteawan tantamount to a life sentence. Denied any effective therapeutic measures, patients often remained on the wards of the institution for years without care or improvement, and the self-fulfilling prophecy of prolonged hospitalization kept them sick. Until the mid-1960s, when reform would take hold, state hospitals for the criminally insane operated under a loose regulatory scheme that permitted the superintendent and internal staff of each institution to arbitrarily decide on the fate of each patient. Without the constitutional safeguards of due process that would eventually penetrate the system, patients were left to flounder on the stark wards of Matteawan and other state hospitals with little possibility of recovery or release. In 1965, prior to the introduction of reform measures, 703 patients of Matteawan had been confined for at least ten years, 306 for at least twenty years, 119 for at least thirty years, 29 for at least forty years, 4 for at least fifty years, and 1 for an astonishing sixty-four years. Many of these forgotten souls had become, in the words of one judge, “marooned and forsaken.”
As the sallow and haggard George Metesky was wheeled into the tuberculosis ward of Matteawan State Hospital in the early spring of 1957, it appeared unlikely that he would survive long enough to add to the facility's grim longevity statistics.
Despite the abysmal record of treatment of the psychological needs of its residents, Matteawan ironically fared well in the physical care of its medically ill patients. With the development of modern multi-drug therapies for tuberculosis, many afflicted with the condition were stabilized and often improved at the facility and on hospital wards across the country. Though Metesky was administered the appropriate therapeutic remedies at Matteawan for his grave illness, it initially appeared that any recovery was in doubt. He had lost more than twenty pounds and remained confined to bed, struggling for every breath and suffering from fevers and night sweats.
In the months following his arrival, the New York County district attorney's office hovered like a vulture, repeatedly writing to the superintendent of the facility inquiring as to the condition of their indicted defendant, and in each case the prosecutor was informed that Metesky continued to suffer the debilitative effects of the disease and remained on the tuberculosis ward of the hospital, receiving treatment. As the months passed, however, though the doctors had predicted an imminent death, Metesky's physical condition gradually began to stabilize, and by December 1958 he had even begun to shown signs of improvement. The Matteawan staff was quick to point out, however, that his psychological condition had shown no signs of change, and soon the letters from New York County trickled to a halt. A prosecution of George Metesky, it seemed, would depend on the whims of a mental health system slow to relinquish its own.
As Metesky began his slow convalescence, word came from Albany that the state Workmen's Compensation Board had rejected Bart O'Rourke's bid to reopen his client's original claim for benefits. In rejecting the appeal the board stated that no conclusive proof had been offered to show that Metesky was mentally incompetent at the time of his 1931 accident at Hell Gate, and thus there had been no excuse for the late filing of claim. Following his mandate from the
Journal-American
, O'Rourke filed an appeal of the decision with the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court, but on December 4, 1958, the court sided with the board and once again firmly and irrevocably denied the claim.
The life workâthe vast crusade of George Meteskyâhad finally come to an end.
At Matteawan the Mad Bomber seemed to be anything but. By 1961 his tubercular condition had fallen into remission, and he was transferred to a psychiatric ward of the hospital. He associated with few and was, by most accounts, a model inmate who troubled neither the staff nor the inmate population. He received no treatment, medication, or therapy of any kind relating to his adjudicated mental illness, and he was, subject to the limits of his broad confinement, left to his own devices for activity and recreation. For the most part he passed his hours calmly reading books, writing in his tablet, and listening placidly to radio programs that he eagerly anticipated throughout the day.
As Metesky's health improved, however, his anger and bitterness once again began to brew. While on the tuberculosis ward he had witnessed an inmate named Paul Simulick being repeatedly beaten by two night shift guards, and he quickly developed a deep resentment for the staff of Matteawan and the institution itself. “They used to take him out around midnight and beat him up,” wrote Metesky. “They would do this almost every night. It terrorized the other patients . . . Six months after I got off [the tuberculosis ward], Paul died. He just couldn't take it anymore.”
By 1962, fueled by the horrors of Matteawan, Metesky was back to his old cantankerous ways. He began an angry letter-writing campaign to anyone who would listen regarding the horrid conditions at the institution and the poor treatment of its patients. Rambling dispatches began arriving at the desks of New York judges, including that of Judge Leibowitz and others, in which Metesky complained bitterly about Matteawan itself and the process by which he found himself confined there. He accused James Murray and Harry Spellman of bungling his case and stealing his money, and he claimed that they purposely engineered and contrived his insanity so as to relieve him of his assets. “I became fully convinced that I was betrayed and abandoned by my attorneys,” wrote Metesky in one letter.
Soon, like so many others on the wards of Matteawan, he began to protest his continued institutionalization at the facility, and in November 1963, just two days after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Metesky sent a confused and irate letter to New York County District Attorney Frank Hogan demanding that he, Metesky, either be put on trial for his crimes or that all charges against him be dropped. The slow or nonexistent responses to his letters only served to further infuriate him and instigated what would become the new crusade in George Metesky's lifeâa bid to personally secure his release from Matteawan.
For the next ten years Metesky dedicated nearly every waking hour to the complicated and thorny legal questions surrounding the confinement of the criminally insane. He educated himself as to the constitutional issues of his case and he meticulously researched and hand-drafted a storm of legal documents designed to gain a new hearing as to his sanity and to eventually advance his case to trial in New York and Kings County. “So many injustices have been done to me,” Metesky told a Matteawan psychiatrist. “[T]hat is why I want to go to court, to straighten them out, and to question all these people. I was never mentally ill, but I was sent to a mental institution. All this was concocted and contrived.”
In January 1964 Metesky brought a petition to the Supreme Court of New York in Dutchess County for a writ of habeas corpus. His statement alleged that his civil rights had been violated by his imprisonment at Matteawan, and it requested that he be discharged from the facility in order to face trial on the criminal charges pending against him. At a short hearing held a month later before a county judge behind the walls of Matteawan, Metesky testified, “I made this application in order to tell the Court that I am sane, that I understand the nature of my charges, and that I am able to confer with counsel.” Upon the perfunctory statement of a state psychiatrist that Metesky remained in a mentally impaired condition, unable to assist in any defense, however, the petition was summarily dismissed.
Angry and undeterred, Metesky immediately drew and filed a carefully handwritten appeal of the dismissal with an accompanying brief to the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court, alleging that he was denied a hearing in the true sense of the word since he was not permitted to cross-examine the psychiatrist who testified against him. Two years later, a five-judge panel of the Appellate Court unanimously agreed. The dismissal of Metesky's habeas corpus petition was reversed and the matter was sent back to the county court for a further hearing as to his competency to stand trial.
On December 15, 1966, Metesky, now represented by an attorney familiar with the perilous landscape of Matteawan, was provided his long-awaited hearing in a Poughkeepsie, New York, courtroom. In an often contentious examination, several Matteawan psychiatrists testified that their patient had exhibited no perceptible psychological improvement since 1957, when he was originally committed to the institution. When asked to describe some of the symptoms still displayed by Metesky, one of the witnesses stated, “Inappropriate emotional reaction, expressed delusional ideas. Illogical thinking. Misrepresentation of real occurrences. Impaired judgment and lack of insight. I may add, grandiosity, autistic thinking. Suspiciousness. Distrust.” When another psychiatrist was asked whether Metesky appreciated the possibility of his losing should he be released from the hospital and advanced to trial, he informed the court, “He doesn't pay much attention to the charges. That's [not] what's important. The importance is to bring out to this Court injustices, and that's what I feel would also prevent him from really defending himself and discussing with his counsel.” According to the Matteawan psychiatrists, Metesky was still looking for a forum to expose his old nemesis, Con Ed.