He Wore A Double-Breasted Suit
Con Edison workers in the West 64th Street building found a wooden toolbox sitting on a windowsill. Inside was an unexploded pipe bomb with a note wrapped around it: “Con Edison crooks, this is for you.”
It was November 16, 1940, and the man who would be known as The Mad Bomber walked into the Consolidated Edison office, dropped his toolbox, and walked out again. The small bomb never exploded. The Bomb Squad of the NYPD found no fingerprints or other evidence. It was wartime, everybody was busy, and after a cursory investigation, the case went away. But the Mad Bomber did not go away for 16 years.
A year after the first bomb, an alarm clock bomb was found a few blocks from another Con Ed building on West 14th Street. It was wrapped in an old sock, but no note, and tossed in the street. Three months later, the police received a letter: “I will make no more bomb units for the duration of the War – My patriotic feelings have made me decide this – Later I will bring the Con Edison to justice – they must pay for their dastardly deeds.” The Mad Bomber signed this, and other letters he sent over the next nine years, with the initials F.P. He sent such letters to Con Edison, the police, newspapers, movie theaters, and to private citizens over the years.
Then, the grace period and the War over, New York City faced years of terror as bomb after bomb was discovered in public places all over the city. Starting again on March 29, 1950 at Grand Central Station, more than 30 bombs would be found in phone booths, public libraries, transit stations, and movie theaters. His special method with movie theaters was to slit a seat, tuck in the bomb, and leave by an emergency exit.
On December 2, 1956, the Mad Bomber carried out the act that would galvanize the police into effective action at last. The Paramount Theater in Brooklyn was filled with holiday shoppers taking a break with an evening movie. It was almost 8PM when the explosion ripped through the theater injuring six, three seriously.
It seemed only a matter of time before somebody would be killed. The devices were getting more and more powerful and sophisticated; the locations more and more crowded with New Yorkers. The media, without a war on its hands, was out for bear and the police. The public was up in arms demanding results.
At a complete loss, as traditional police methods had brought no results, the detectives on the case turned to something new: a criminal profile. Criminal profiling at the time was still experimental and had little legitimate standing among police, but they were desperate. A Missing Persons Bureau captain recommended Dr. James Brussel, a Manhattan criminal psychiatrist for the work.
Dr. Brussel was quite specific.
The Mad Bomber was a male, middle-aged, meticulous, largely self-educated, Slavic and Roman Catholic, had an Oedipal Complex, and lived in Connecticut with unmarried female relatives. He would have worked for Con Edison or one of its subsidiaries. Dr. Brussel insisted to the skeptical police that to draw out the Bomber, the case and the profile would have to be widely publicized. As the detectives were leaving, Dr. Brussel stopped them.
“One more thing,” he said, “When you catch him, and I have no doubt you will, he’ll be wearing a double-breasted suit. And it will be buttoned.”
It was a Con Ed clerk named Alice Kelly who aimed the police at Waterbury, Connecticut and George Metesky. Searching employee files she had found him working in a pre-merger Con Ed company called United Electric & Power. He had suffered an accident at the plant and subsequently developed tuberculosis. When his disability benefit was denied, he blamed the company and wrote several angry letters swearing revenge. He noted Con Edison’s “dastardly deeds.”
When the police arrived in Waterbury, Connecticut, where he lived with two unmarried sisters, 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.
