Mad Bomber of NYC

1
Mad Bomber of NYC
2
George Metesky

• George Metesky planted thirty bombs in New York
  City from 1940 to 1956. He was known in the media
  as the Mad Bomber.

3
Early bombings

• He placed his first bomb on November 16, 1940 on
  the window ledge of a Manhattan office building
  used by Consolidated Edison, NYCs utility. The
  small, poorly made pipe bomb was wrapped in a
  hand written note that read, Con Edison Crooks -
  This is for you. The bomb did not explode.
  Thinking it an isolated incident, police took
  little notice of it.
• The second device, another dud, appeared the
  following September. A bomb was found lying on a
  downtown street. Metesky then sent a note,
  composed of cut-out letters and signed "F.P."
  (Fair play), announcing the cessation of his
  bombing campaign due to "patriotic feelings" for
  "the duration of the war."
• In December 1941, shortly after the bombing of
  Pearl Harbor, police received a bizarre letter,
  allegedly from the bomber. Using the same
  block-style handwriting and paper type as the
  previous note, the bomber declared that he would
  cease his activities for the duration of the war,
  but added, "I WILL BRING THE CON EDISON TO
  JUSTICE - THEY WILL PAY FOR THEIR DASTARDLY
  DEEDS." It was signed simply, "F.P."

4
The bombing campaign

• He did send a series of threatening letters---17
  in all---to various sources in the fallow period
  during the war years up to his third bomb -
  discovered before it exploded on March 29, 1950
  at Grand Central Station.
• His fourth device was the first to explode,
  planted in a telephone box in the NYC Public
  Library.
• He targeted public places, notably movie theaters
  where he inserted his devices in the underside of
  seats. Most of his pipe bombs failed to explode,
  he planted three more devices in 1950, all duds.
• From that point on, the bombs -- and letters
  bitterly attacking Con Edison -- were coming fast
  and furious. Between 1951 and 1956, as many as
  thirty-seven bombs were planted around the city
  and at least a dozen of them were detonated,
  injuring at least ten people.

5
Bombs that injured

• It was not until 1953 that a Metesky bomb caused
  injuries.
• On December 2, 1956, a December 2, 1956 bombing
  at a movie theatre in Brooklyn left six people
  injured.

6
Criminal Profiling is born

• The police requested the aid of Dr. James
  Brussel, a psychiatrist with the NY State
  Commission on Mental Hygiene. Brussel produced a
  criminal profile of the bomber. Brussel proposed
  that the bomber was male, unmarried, foreign
  (possibly a Slav), a Catholic, in his 50s, living
  in Connecticut, a genuine paranoiac,
  self-educated and suffering from an oedipal
  complex.

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How Brussel formed his profile

• First, the Bomber was male because statistically
  men are bomb makers, not women.
• Second, bomb making an activity of paranoid
  individuals. The Bomber's letters revealed other
  paranoid characteristics, such as a sense of
  persecution, tenacity in holding a grudge,
  intense resentment of criticism and a feeling of
  superiority.
• In determining the Bomber's age, Brussel was
  playing the averages paranoia takes years to
  develop and generally peaks around age 40 since
  the first bomb was found in 1940, Brussel figured
  that by 1956 the Bomber had to be pushing or past
  fifty.
• He predicted the Bomber would be unmarried
  because paranoics are typically loners and
  because of clues in his handwriting his letters
  were all very square-edged capitals, except for
  his "W's", which were rounded at the bottom,
  suggesting a woman's breasts. Brussel believed
  this indicated a sexual inadequacy.
• Brussel was again playing the averages when he
  predicted the Bomber would have a muscular build,
  relying on a 1955 German study that found that
  85 of paranoid individuals were athletic and
  stocky

8
How Brussel formed his profile? (2)

• The Bomber's letters also indicated a high level
  of education.
• The use of certain terms like "dastardly deeds"
  and "The Con Edison" sounded to Brussel like the
  usage of a non-native. Brussel speculated that
  the Bomber was from central Europe because
  historically that region had a high incidence of
  bombers. If the Bomber was indeed from that
  region, he was probably Catholic and given the
  cultural emphasis on family, an ummarried man
  would most likely live with female relatives.
• In addition, Brussel predicted that while the
  Bomber mailed his letters from Westchester, he
  probably lived in southern Connecticut. Brussel's
  reasoning was that the Bomber was far too smart
  to mail his letters from the town where he lived.
  But if he lived in south Connecticut - which at
  that time had a high concentration of central
  European immigrants - he would pass through
  Westchester on his way to Manhattan.

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How Brussel formed his profile (3)

• Brussel predicted the Bomber's serious illness
  because of the numerous references to "pain and
  suffering" in his letters. And, finally, the most
  interesting prediction - that the bomber would be
  wearing a buttoned double-breasted suit - was
  because paranoics are usually obsessively tidy
  and fastidious. At the time, a double-breasted
  suit was the most "proper" attire for a man.
• Brussel also convinced the police to heavily
  publicise the profile, predicting it would gain a
  response from the bomber. The publicity, from
  late December, created a large number of false
  confessions and poor quality leads.

10
The Profile

• The Bomber was male.
• The Bomber was likely to be a former employee of
  Con Edison (the receipient of the 4th bomb) and
  held a grudge against him.
• The Bomber believed to have been permanently
  injured by the company and was seeking revenge.
• The Bomber was a textbook paranoid.
• The Bomber believed that Con Edison and the
  public at large were conspiring against him.
• The Bomber was middle aged, possibly around 50.
• The Bomber was neat, meticulous and skilled at
  his work.
• The Bomber was highly sensitive to any criticism.
  
• The Bomber was a foreigner or spent the vast
  majority of his time with foreign people.
• The Bomber had, at the least, a high school
  education but probably had not attended college.
• The Bomber lived in Connecticut, not New York and
  was possibly a Slav, being Roman Catholic as most
  Slavs are Catholic.
• The Bomber suffered from an "Oedipal Complex".
  That is, he was unlikely to be married and lived
  with a single female relative and/or relatives,
  these not being his Mother. This is the case of
  most "Oedipal" sufferers.
• The Bomber had been without a Mother from a young
  age.

11
Con Edisons investigation

• On Christmas Day, 1956, Brussel's profile was
  published.
• Alice Kelly, a secretary at Con Ed, read the
  profile in the papers. For days, she had been
  scouring old files for employees with health
  complaints. Then she found this one a man
  injured in a boiler accident. On sick pay for
  months, he was dropped from the roster when
  doctors found nothing wrong. He spend the next
  three years writing angry letters, and in them,
  "dastardly deeds," that uncommon phrase mentioned
  in the profile, was used repeatedly. Alice Kelly
  saved this file for the police.
• An employee of the company from 1929-31, Metesky
  had been denied a disability pension, several of
  his letters were on file and there were matches
  in the phraseology between Metesky and F.P. and
  to the profile. The match was made with certainty
  when Metesky actually wrote a letter to Journal
  American giving the date of the injuries he
  blamed on Consolidated Edison.

12
Meteskys arrest

• When police went to Metesky's home in Waterbury,
  Connecticut, they found an unmarried,
  fifty-four-year-old Polish man, living with his
  two older sisters. He had a muscular build and
  made no attempt to hide the bomb-making workshop
  in his garage. In fact, he good-naturedly
  admitted he was the Bomber and told the police
  that the "F.P." with which he signed his letters
  stood for "Fair Play."
• When the police arrived in Waterbury,
  Connecticut, George Metesky was wearing a
  bathrobe. They gave him time to dress and then
  arrested him. He wore a double-breasted suit it
  was buttoned, which had been foretold, by Dr.
  James Brussel.
• It seemed that the only part of Brussel's profile
  that was incorrect was the prediction of heart
  disease, but even that was only slightly off
  Metesky had once had tuberculosis.

13
Metesky found incompetent to stand trial

• On April 18, 1957, George Metesky was found
  mentally unfit to stand trial and was committed
  to the Matteawan Hospital for the Criminally
  Insane. Released in 1973, he returned to his home
  in Waterbury, where he died in 1994 at the age of
  90.
• Metesky was found NCR in court and was committed
  to the Matteawan State Hosptial.
• He was resistant to treatment but caused no
  trouble and was released in 1973. He died in
  1994.

14
Similarities between the Mad Bomber and the
Unibomber

• Like the Unabomber's first incident, the Mad
  Bombers first event went virtually unnoticed.
• The Mad Bomber signed "FP," and it took sixteen
  years to learn what those initials stood for,
  about the same time it took to discover what the
  Unabomber's "FC" meant.
• The "Mad Bomber" placed a second device one year
  later. Then, like the Unabomber, his bombs
  stopped for years.
• Like the Unabomber, he too fabricated most of
  his bomb components.