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

would ‘just build up the ego of the nut who did it,’” said one detective. The department was also concerned that heavy publicity about the bombings might panic the city and bring out the inevitable copycats. This position would prove to be a dreadful blunder. As Metesky himself would explain, “They got some stupid advice from some psychiatrist, ‘If you don’t bother with him, he’ll stop.’ And that just made me work all the harder.”
    Thirteen days after the Con Ed bombing, a clerk in the third floor Con Ed mail room accepted postal delivery of a large manila envelope that seemed to bulge at its seams. The package, postmarked “White Plains, NY,” was hand-addressed to the personnel director of the company and contained, at the upper left corner, a printed return designation of “Lehman and Lehman.” Though the Con Ed security force had advised all company personnel to remain alert for strange or unexplained devices in the building, the clerk was not cued to any obvious danger that might have been suggested by the package. Upon tearing it open, however, he identified the ashen hue of galvanized metal and dashed for security.
    Following the usual protocol, a bomb squad detective, in full protective gear, examined the device via the portable fluoroscope, then jostled it from a distance in an attempt to test the trigger mechanism. When nothing occurred, the device was removed from the building in the mesh envelope and whisked, via the armored containment vehicle, to a safer locale. Upon closer scrutiny, the device seemed to contain all the familiar earmarks of the Bomber’s handiwork, though the powder within the casing didn’t look right. When it was deemed safe to do so, the detectives dismantled the contraption and out poured the phantom powder, which, upon further analysis, proved to be nothing more than sugar. Metesky’s howls of laughter could almost be heard all the way to police headquarters. In describing the incident years later, one New York newspaper wrote, “The weirdie patently pulled this caper for laughs.”

    On October 22, 1951, a longshoremen’s strike that had pressed its way up the New York waterfront had paralyzed thirty miles of docks and now expanded into shipments of rail freight, and at the White House an announcement had been made that the Soviet Union had once again conducted a test of an atomic weapon. News of the day had been coming in at a brisk pace, and the night crew of the New York Herald Tribune was hard at work bringing the next day’s early edition to life. Decisions as to lead stories and copy position were being made at the usual breakneck speed, and interruption was the last thing the staff of the paper needed—but interruption was exactly what it got.
    At approximately 10:15 on the evening of October 22, a special delivery letter found its way into the hands of the Tribune ’s city editor. With one angry eye focused on a staff writer who was protesting the deletion of certain passages from a feature article that he had proudly authored, the editor fumbled with the envelope whose late-night delivery carried the air of some import. As he began reading the missive, his full attention was abruptly garnered and the clamor of the writer’s remonstrations slipped into the hum of background noise generated by the clattering office. In handwritten block letters stroked in pencil, the note informed the reader that a bomb had been planted in the ventilation system of the men’s restroom located in the basement of the Paramount Theatre, at Broadway and Forty-third Street. The letter went on:
    BOMBS WILL CONTINUE UNTIL THE CONSOLIDATED EDISON COMPANY IS BROUGHT TO JUSTICE FOR THEIR DASTARDLY ACTS AGAINST ME. I HAVE EXHAUSTED ALL OTHER MEANS. I INTEND WITH BOMBS TO CAUSE OTHERS TO CRY OUT FOR JUSTICE FOR ME . . . IF I DON’T GET JUSTICE I WILL CONTINUE, BUT WITH BIGGER BOMBS.
    Within minutes word