George Metesky

Metesky returned to his home in Waterbury, where he died 20 years later in 1994 at the age of 90.

In 1973, the United States Supreme Court ruled that a mentally ill defendant cannot be committed to a hospital operated by the New York State Department of Correctional Services unless a jury finds him dangerous. Since Metesky had been committed to Matteawan without a jury trial, he was transferred to the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center, a state hospital outside the correctional system.

Doctors determined that he was harmless, and because he had already served two-thirds of the 25-year maximum sentence he would have received at trial, Metesky was released on December 13, 1973. The single condition was that he make regular visits to a Connecticut Department of Mental Hygiene clinic near his home.

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 based on clues given in letters he wrote to a newspaper. He was found legally insane and committed to a state mental hospital.

Eight months after Metesky's January 1957 arrest, a bomb not found in several police searches was discovered at the Lexington Avenue Loew's Theater by an upholsterer repairing a recently vandalized seat. It was the last of the three bombs Metesky said he had planted there. The first two had exploded, one in June 1952 and one in December 1952, with the December explosion resulting in one injury.

Con Edison clerk Alice Kelly had for days been scouring company workers' compensation files for employees with a serious health problem. On Friday, January 18, 1957, while searching the final batch of "troublesome" worker's compensation case files – those where threats were made or implied – she found a file marked in red with the words "injustice" and "permanent disability", words that had been printed in the Journal-American.

Accompanied by Waterbury police, four NYPD detectives arrived at Metesky's home with a search warrant shortly before midnight on Monday, January 21, 1957. They asked him for a handwriting sample, and to make a letter G. He made the G, looked up and said, "I know why you fellows are here. You think I'm the Mad Bomber." The detectives asked what "F.P." stood for, and he responded, "F.P. stands for Fair Play."

After hearing from psychiatric experts, Judge Samuel Liebowitz declared the tubercular Metesky a paranoid schizophrenic, "hopeless and incurable both mentally and physically", and found him legally insane and incompetent to stand trial. On April 18, 1957, Judge Liebowitz committed Metesky to the Matteawan Hospital for the Criminally Insane at Beacon, New York.

In April 1956, the department issued a multi-state alert for a person described as a skilled mechanic, with access to a drill press or lathe (for its ability to thread pipe), who posted mail from White Plains, was over 40, and had a "deep-seated hatred of the Consolidated Edison Company". A warning circular picturing a homemade pipe bomb similar to the bomber's was distributed. Police distributed samples of the bomber's distinctive printing and asked anyone who might recognize it to notify them. A review of drivers' license applications in White Plains, the city favored by the bomber for posting his mail, found similarities in 500 of them to the bomber's printing; the names were forwarded to the NYPD for investigation.

The December 2, 1956, bombing of the Brooklyn Paramount drew tremendous news coverage and editorial attention. The following day, Police Commissioner Stephen P. Kennedy met with commanders of every NYPD division and ordered what he called the "greatest manhunt in the history of the Police Department". Calling the bomber's activities "an outrage that cannot be tolerated", he promised "an immediate good promotion" to whoever arrested the bomber, and directed commanders to alert every member of the force to the absolute necessity of a capture.

On December 27, 1956, the New York City Board of Estimate and the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association posted $26,000 in rewards for the bomber's apprehension.

On December 29, 1956, at the height of false bomb reports from theaters, department stores, schools and offices, a note left in a phone booth at Grand Central Terminal reported that a bomb had been placed at the Empire State Building, requiring a search of all 102 floors of the landmark. A 63-year-old railroad worker picked up at Grand Central as a suspect died of a heart attack while being questioned at the East 35th Street station house. Later investigation eliminated him as a suspect.

Newspapers published the profile on December 25, 1956, alongside the story of the so-called "Christmas Eve" bomb discovered in the Public Library. By the end of the month, bomb hoaxes and false confessions had risen to epidemic proportions. At the peak of the hysteria on December 28, police received over 50 false bomb alarms, over 20 the next day.

His first two bombs drew little attention, but the string of random bombings that began in 1951 frayed the city's nerves and taxed the resources of the New York City Police Department (NYPD). Metesky often placed warning calls to the buildings where he had planted bombs, but would not specify the bomb's exact location. He wrote to newspapers warning that he planned to plant more. Some bombs came with notes, but the note never revealed a motive, or a reason for choosing that particular location.

Around 1951 Frederick Eberhardt, 56 years old and like Metesky a former Con Edison employee with a grudge, sent a simulated pipe bomb filled with sugar to the company's personnel director at 4 Irving Place. Eberhardt was charged with sending threatening material through the mails. At his arraignment in November, an assistant district attorney told the judge, "This defendant is a particular source of annoyance to the New York City police. We are firmly convinced that he is not of sound mind. He has been sending simulated bombs around the city the past few months. Hundreds of police have been called out at all hours of the day and night to investigate because of his actions."

In October 1951, the main waiting room at Grand Central Terminal was emptied and 3,000 lockers were searched after a telephoned bomb warning. The search involved more than 35 NYPD personnel, and took three hours because 1,500 of the lockers were in use and only one master key was available. As each locker was opened, the head of the bomb squad palpated its contents, keeping a portable fluoroscope at the ready.

As of the Loew's discovery, only two of the dozens of bombs that Metesky claimed to have planted remained unaccounted for: one at a Con Edison site on the East River, the other at the Embassy Theater at 7th Avenue and 47th Street.

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 one 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:

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. 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.

He 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.

Between 1940 and 1956, Metesky planted at least 33 bombs, of which 22 exploded, injuring 15 people.

Police investigators who later reviewed the path that led them to Metesky said that Con Edison had impeded the investigation for almost two years by repeatedly telling them that the records of employees whose services were terminated prior to 1940, the group Metesky was in, had been destroyed. The investigators said that they had learned of the records' existence only on January 14, through a confidential tip, and that even in the face of police demands and formal requests Con Edison stalled, declaring that the papers were legal documents and that the company's legal department would have to be consulted before granting access. A statement by the president of Consolidated Edison said this was due to a "misunderstanding".

The accident left him disabled and, after collecting 26 weeks of 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.

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.

Metesky's third letter was received by the newspaper on Saturday, January 19. The letter complained of lying unnoticed for hours on "cold concrete" after his injury without any first aid being rendered, then developing pneumonia and later tuberculosis. The letter added details about his lost compensation case and the "perjury" of his co-workers, and gave the date of his injury, September 5, 1931. The letter suggested that if he did not have a family that would be "branded" by his giving himself up, he might consider doing so to get his compensation case reopened. He thanked the Journal-American for publicizing his case and said "the bombings will never be resumed." This letter was published Tuesday, the day after Metesky was arrested.

The file indicated that one George Metesky, an employee from 1929 to 1931, had been injured in a plant accident on September 5, 1931. Several letters from Metesky in the file used wording similar to the letters in the Journal-American, including the phrase "dastardly deeds". The police were notified shortly before 5:00 that evening. They initially treated the notification as just "one of a number" of leads they were working on, but asked Waterbury police to do a "discreet check" on George Metesky and the house at 17 Fourth Street.

While he was at Matteawan, the Journal-American hired a leading workers' compensation attorney Bartholomew James O'Rourke to appeal his disallowed claim for the 1931 injury, on the grounds that Metesky was mentally incompetent at the time and did not know his rights. The appeal was denied.

On November 28, a coin-operated locker at the IRT 14th Street subway station was bombed, without injury. Near the end of the year, the Herald Tribune received another letter, warning:

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.