The Mad Bomber of New York by Michael M. Greenburg Page A

anyone in proximity had it detonated, and the police department officially branded it a “lethal weapon.” The New York media—television, radio, and print—were quick to react with detailed and inflammatory coverage. Unlike the newspapers’ treatment of the prior incidents, there was nothing equivocal or restrained in the reporting of the attempted Radio City bombing. The New York Journal-American chillingly proclaimed, “Radio City Bomb Found to Be Deadly,” while the front page banner headline of the Mirror shrieked, “City Hunts Mad Bomb Planter.” And across America, the wire services informed anxious readers of a “Mad Bomber Being Hunted in New York.”
    As the doings of the Mad Bomber became more public and the citizens of New York more uneasy, the pressure on the New York City Police Department to make an arrest began to increase. Some of the top brass of the department, including deputy chief inspector Edward Byrnes, chief of detectives James Leggett, inspector in charge of technical services Edward Fagan, captain in charge of the police laboratory Howard Finney, and even police commissioner Stephen Kennedy himself, assumed greater organizational roles and became more involved in the day-to-day activities and decisions of the investigation as opposed to mere policy making. From a detailed study of the bombings, these officials knew that the “diabolical genius,” as he was called by one New York newspaper, was capable on a whim of dramatically increasing the size and potency of his bombs and even attacking a bridge or a crowded train. A palpable fear began to stir in the city of New York, and a growing frustration brewed within the police department. The Mad Bomber needed to be stopped.
    In the coming months of 1955, as New Yorkers nervously went about their business, infernal machines continued to turn up throughout the city. In August, a cheap pocketknife and an ominous-looking length of pipe wrapped in a wool sock slipped from a tear in a movie seat as it was being repaired by an upholsterer at the Roxy Theatre. Though unexploded, the bomb caused the usual ruckus and traffic snarls, as detectives, using their steel-mesh envelope, whisked the device out of the building with five hundred curious bystanders looking on from behind police lines. The signature dud had been left by Metesky some two years earlier and had remained undetected since then. In October, a man was slightly injured as a bomb exploded in the twelfth row of the Paramount Theatre in Times Square during an evening showing of Blood Alley , and in December, emergency crews dispersed a large crowd of rush-hour commuters in Grand Central Terminal who had gathered for a look after an explosion ripped through the upper level in the main men’s lavatory .
    With city newspapers maintaining a foreboding (though often inaccurate) count of the Bomber’s sorties, the police department was forced to divert extraordinary resources to the case. Time, money, and manpower typically expended in other crime-fighting or community endeavors was redirected to the investigation, and officers with little formal training in explosives became adjunct deputies of the city bomb squad. Following the second Radio City incident, extra details of detectives—fifty additional men in all—were assigned to covertly watch rail stations, bus terminals, and movie theaters, with special instructions to search for suspicious characters carrying packages of any kind. Crime lab technicians conducted detailed technical analyses of past unexploded devices as well as fragments from the ones that had exploded, and opinions and conclusions were taking shape as to the Bomber’s motives, capabilities, and vocations. An exhaustive study of numerous samples of handwriting as well as reliable firsthand descriptions of the Bomber’s voice (derived from the various advance warning calls that had been placed) provided a baseline