George Peter Metesky (November 2, 1903 – May 23, 1994), better known as the Mad Bomber, was an American electrician and mechanic who terrorized New York City for 16 years in the 1940s and 1950s with explosives that he planted in theaters, terminals, libraries and offices. Bombs were left in phone booths, storage lockers and restrooms in public buildings, including Grand Central Terminal, Pennsylvania Station, Radio City Music Hall, the New York Public Library, the Port Authority Bus Terminal and the RCA Building, and in the New York City Subway. Metesky also bombed movie theaters, where he cut into seat upholstery and slipped his explosive devices inside.
Angry and resentful about events surrounding a workplace injury suffered years earlier, Metesky planted at least 33 bombs, of which 22 exploded, injuring 15 people.
The hunt for the bomber enlisted an early use of offender profiling. He was apprehended in 1957 on the basis of clues given in letters he wrote to a newspaper. He was found legally insane and committed to a state mental hospital.
Early life and industrial injury
George was born on November 2, 1903, in Waterbury, Connecticut, to two Lithuanian immigrants, George and Anna Milauskas. He was the youngest of three siblings. Following World War I, Metesky joined the U.S. Marines, serving as a specialist electrician at the United States Consulate in Shanghai. Returning home, he went to work as a mechanic for a subsidiary of the Consolidated Edison utility company and lived in Waterbury, Connecticut, with his two unmarried sisters. In 1931, Metesky was working as a generator wiper at the company's Hell Gate generating plant when a boiler backfire produced a blast of hot gases. The blast knocked Metesky down and the fumes filled his lungs, choking him.
The accident left him disabled and, after collecting 26 weeks' sick pay, he lost his job. According to claims disputed by Consolidated Edison, the accident led to pneumonia that in turn developed into tuberculosis. A claim for workers' compensation was denied because he waited too long to file it. Three appeals of the denial were also rejected, the last in 1936. He developed a hatred for the company's attorneys and for the three co-workers whose testimony in his compensation case he believed was perjured in favor of the company.
Metesky's bombs were gunpowder-filled pipe bombs, ranging in size from 4 to 10 inches (10 to 25 cm) long and from 0.5 to 2 inches (1 to 5 cm) in diameter. Most used timers constructed from flashlight batteries and cheap pocket watches. Investigators at bomb sites learned to look for wool socks, which Metesky used to transport the bombs and sometimes to hang them from a rail or projection.
Between 1940 and 1956, Metesky planted at least 33 bombs, of which 22 exploded, injuring 15 people.
Metesky planted his first bomb on November 16, 1940, leaving it on a window sill at the Consolidated Edison power plant at 170 West 64th Street in Manhattan. The bomb was crude, a short length of brass pipe filled with gunpowder, with an ignition mechanism composed of sugar and flashlight batteries and enclosed in a wooden toolbox. It was found before it could detonate. The bomb was wrapped in a note written in distinctive block letters and signed "F.P.", stating
Con Edison crooks – this is for you.
Some investigators wondered whether the bomb was an intentional dud, as if it had exploded, the note would have been obliterated.
In September 1941, a bomb with a similar ignition mechanism was found lying in the street about five blocks away from the Consolidated Edison headquarters building at 4 Irving Place. This bomb had no note and was also a dud. Police theorized that the bomber might have spotted a police officer and dropped the bomb without setting its fuse.
Shortly after the United States entered World War II in December 1941, the police received a letter in block capital letters:
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 will pay for their dastardly deeds ... F.P.
True to his word, Metesky planted no bombs between 1941 and 1951, choosing instead to send letters and postcards to police stations, newspapers, private citizens and Con Edison. Investigators studying the penciled, block-lettered messages noted that the letters G and Y had an odd shape, possibly indicating a European education.
Metesky's first two bombs drew little attention, but the string of seemingly random bombings that began in 1951 frayed the city's nerves and taxed the resources of the New York City Police Department. Metesky often placed warning calls to the buildings where he had planted bombs, but he would typically not specify the bombs' exact locations. He wrote to newspapers warning that he planned to plant more. Some bombs came with notes, but the notes never revealed a motive or a reason for choosing any particular location. The long hiatus since the last bomb and the improved construction techniques of the first new bomb led investigators to believe that the bomber had served in the military.
For his new wave of bombings, Metesky mainly chose public buildings as targets, bombing several of them multiple times. Bombs were left in phone booths, storage lockers and restrooms in public buildings including Grand Central Terminal (five times), Pennsylvania Station (five times), Radio City Music Hall (thrice), the New York Public Library (twice), the Port Authority Bus Terminal (twice) and the RCA Building, as well as in the New York City Subway. Metesky also bombed movie theaters, where he cut into seat upholstery and slipped his explosive devices inside.
On March 29, Metesky's first bomb of the new wave, and also his first to explode, startled commuters at Grand Central Terminal but injured none. It had been dropped into a sand urn near the Grand Central Oyster Bar & Restaurant on the terminal's lower level. In April, Metesky's next bomb exploded without injury in a telephone booth in the New York Public Library. In August, a phone-booth bomb exploded without injury at Grand Central Station.