FIRE ON THE WATER

The General Slocum Disaster

Guest Blog by Rene Kruse

On June 15, 1904 one of the great disasters in American history occurred in the Hell Gate area of New York City’s East River. Although overshadowed by ever greater disasters to come in the city’s history, the burning of the General Slocum and the loss of nearly 1,000 lives, remains one of the most horrific events to ever occur during our nation’s past – and it’s one that left tales of doom, curses, despair, death and even hauntings in its fiery wake.

By the early summer of 1904, the Knickerbocker Steamship Company needed a second passenger steamship to carry visitors back and forth from New York City to Rockaway Beach during the thriving resort season. The SS General Slocum was commissioned and built in Brooklyn to fulfill that need. Before and after the Rockaway Beach season, the General Slocum was an excursion ship carrying visitors around New York City and was available for private charter.

The ship had a 235-foot-long wooden hull, three expansive decks and a passenger capacity of three thousand.  The Slocum was, by design, a “sidewheel” boat. This means her paddlewheels, 31 feet in diameter, were located on each side, just aft of the center of the ship. Launched in 1891, her white hull with brilliant gold lettering and bright orange paddlewheels made her a spectacular sight as she steamed around New York. As an excursion ship, she was one of the most popular and recognizable steaming the New York City waters. At the time the General Slocum burned, at least half of the people living in New York had either been aboard her or had seen her close up.

Many believed the General Slocum was a cursed ship, however that idea never made it into print until after the fire and sinking. In support of these claims, during her fourteen years afloat, she did experience a series of unfortunate mishaps. The first in a long succession of problems that plagued the General Slocum involved the drowning of a young girl, who had been accidentally pushed overboard by an overzealous crowd.

The ill-fated General Slocum

It turned out that 1894 was a very bad year for the ship. In July, while carrying 4,700 passengers, she ran onto a sandbar so hard that her lights were completely knocked out. The New York Times reported, “A panic followed, in which women who fainted were trampled upon, and men fought with each other to get to the boats. Pandemonium reigned for half an hour, until order was restored by the crew. Then it was found that hundreds had been injured in the wild scrimmage.”  In August, she ran into another sandbar off Coney Island during a terrible storm. Panic again ruled the night until the storm eased and the passengers were transferred to another boat. The very next month, the Slocum collided with a tugboat, the R.T. Sayre. She drifted helplessly about the East River, nearly running aground on the rocks off Governor’s Island before another tugboat was able to push her to safety.

The General Slocum suffered only minor scrapes over the next four years; however, in 1898 she collided with the lighter Amelia, just off the Battery. The two ships struck each other so hard that they became locked together and had to be separated by tugs. Then in June of 1902, during a return trip from Rockaway Beach, she again ran aground on yet another sandbar. As it was already dark, the four hundred passengers on board had to camp out on deck all night until they could be rescued the next morning.

On August 17, 1901, a bizarre event occurred aboard the General Slocum. The ship had been hired to take a group of four hundred people, mostly men, to Rockaway Beach. The men, immigrant workers from the silk mills of Paterson, New Jersey, were reportedly already drunk when they boarded the vessel. As the ship steamed into open waters, she was met by a storm with heavy seas. The drunken passengers, whom news reports dubbed the “Paterson Anarchists,” for their rowdy behavior and labor union affiliation, panicked and insisted that the captain turn around. When he refused, a group of them stormed the bridge in an attempt to take over the ship. The crew fought the group off successfully and was able to lock them in cabins until the captain could land. At least seventeen of the so-called anarchists were arrested and most of those ended up in jail.

St. Mark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church was located in Little Germany, also known as Kleindeutschland, a New York community of eighty thousand German inhabitants located along the Lower East Side near Tompkins Square.  St. Marks held an annual celebration to commemorate the conclusion of their Sunday school year. In 1904, the parishioners chose to charter the General Slocum to take them to Locust Point on Huntington Bay on the North Shore of on Long Island for a picnic. The charter cost them $350 and for most of them, their lives.

On the morning of June 15, 1904, Captain William Van Schaick and his crew of twenty docked the General Slocum for boarding at the Third Street and East River pier. The scene was that of great fanfare with excited parents and children. The Slocum band played German favorites. Because it was a Wednesday and most men were at work, a majority of those boarding the ship that day were women and children. In all, 1,358 souls were on the General Slocum that day. Only 337 were still alive just two hours later.

  

The ship was loaded and underway by 9:30 a.m. One survivor recalled the General Slocum, “glided through the water so smoothly that the children were allowed to move around and play as they wished about the deck.” As it turned out, her smooth sailing was not so fortunate, as families who had wandered apart towards the beginning of the journey would later spend much precious time frantically searching the parts of the ship not burning, trying to find their children.  

Less than thirty minutes after casting off, twelve-year-old Frank Prawdzicki was the first to notice signs of fire.  He tried to warn the captain but was pushed away from the bridge and told not to bother the officers again. Ten minutes later, a general fire alarm spread through the ship. Young Frank Prawdzicki and his mother survived the fire but his four sisters, Annie, age fifteen, Henrietta, age thirteen, Gertrude, age three and one-year-old Johanna, were all lost.

The fire spread through the ship faster than anyone could have possibly imagined. Feeding the flames further was the highly flammable paint with which the ship had recently been repainted. However, the main reason the flames spread with such ferocity was because of what Captain Van Schaick did next. Many believed that he badly mishandled the fire and the situation that followed.

When the Captain was first notified of the fire in the forward compartment, they were steaming past a large set of piers where he could have docked in time to possibly save countless lives. Instead, he steamed ahead at full speed for nearly five minutes before beaching the ship on the shores of North Brother Island. He later tried to explain, “I started to head for 134th Street, but was warned off by the captain of a tugboat, who shouted to me that the boat would set fire to the lumber yards and oil tanks there. Besides, I knew that the shore was lined with rocks and the boat would founder if I put in there. I then fixed upon North Brother Island.”  

Unfortunately, as the ship steamed ahead at full speed, the wind fanned the flames fiercely and caused them to move toward the aft (rear) part of the ship where most of those aboard had taken refuge from the smoke and heat.  The fire ate away at the decks with amazing speed. A flotilla of small boats and tugs followed the raging inferno as she sped down river.

The ruins of the General Slocum, still on the water.

It would not be one single thing that doomed the ship. Even though the General Slocum had experienced a variety of mishaps during her short life, Captain Von Schaick had received a number of safety commendations as he was ultimately in charge of safety on board the ship. Little did anyone know that the Captain had become very lax in regard to safety. In reality, the General Slocum had become a floating deathtrap. The crew had never been trained in the required safety drills or with the safety equipment, most of which was aged and rotted. The ship’s life boats were originally lashed in place with ropes, but as the ropes had begun to rot, they were reattached with wire and could not be released during the fire.  

The times were also a factor in the large number of lives lost. In the early twentieth century, very few people knew how to swim, especially those living in the city. The clothing worn by the women and young girls also proved to be a great hindrance to their survival. Long, heavy skirts and the petticoats worn underneath grew heavy in the water and clung to their legs, pulling them down and making it impossible to for them to swim or even stay afloat.  And these were Victorian times. Devout, church-going women would never have considered stripping down to their undergarments before jumping, even to save their own lives. Also, many waited on the ship too long and were killed when the decks burned through and collapsed. Others were mauled to death by the still-turning paddle wheels as they jumped over the side. 

The first action taken by the crew was to try to put out the fire using the on-board fire hoses. Having never been used before or replaced as needed, most crumbled as they were taken from their racks. The hoses that didn’t crumble into pieces, burst apart when the water pumps were turned on. After this first course of action failed, a majority of the crew abandoned ship leaving the passengers to fend for themselves. One survivor related, “...it seemed to me that the crew of the boat lost their heads -- they were undisciplined, and did not do what sane men would have done to stay the panic and restore order.”

Three thousand life preservers were hung along the interior deck walls near the ceilings. Passengers climbed onto deck chairs and camp stools to take them down but found that many of them were stuck to the walls, evidently put back too soon after the recent paint job. Others simply fell apart in their hands, the fabric shredding, releasing the granulated cork inside. At that time, solid pieces of cork were sewn inside life preservers and maritime law required a minimum amount of cork be placed in each, measured by the weight of the finished jacket. The Nonpareil Cork Works, makers of the life preservers used on the General Slocum, had used useless lightweight granulated cork instead of the required solid cork. It was later discovered that in order to reach the required minimum weight, the company had placed iron bars and pieces of stone inside the jackets.    

A few of the life jackets did stay intact for a while. Mothers strapped their babies and young children into the remaining life preservers, took them to the rail of the ship and dropped them over the side. To their utter horror, they stood and watched as their children hit the water’s surface and immediately sunk from sight, pulled down by the weighted jackets that were supposed to keep them afloat.

Joseph Halphusen, the church sextant described the scene as “pure panic.” He further described how a sheet of flame followed rolling clouds of smoke. A rush began towards the sides of the boat during which women and children were thrown down and trampled. He said that many were pushed overboard and even more jumped into the river.  Mr. Halphusen waited till the last minute before he dropped his two daughters over the side and jumped himself, just as a rescue tug arrived in time to fish all three from the water.

Because this was to be a cheerful family-oriented outing, George Maurer, the Slocum bandleader, brought along his wife. Margaret, and daughters Clara, age twelve, and Matilda, age fourteen. Margaret died a few days after the fire from burns. His daughters drowned, as did Maurer himself. When his body was recovered, his forehead carried the imprint from a boot heel. It was believed that after he was already in the water, someone landed on him as they jumped.

As the General Slocum struck the shore of North Brother Island, Nicholas Balser was at the aft end of the ship, waiting till the last minute to jump. When at last he did jump, to his surprise he landed in water only up to his armpits and walked out onto the shore. “When I finally emerged, I looked back and to my dying day I’ll never forget the scene. Around me were scores of bodies, most of them charred and burned. I helped as many as possible of those still living to land. From the stern of the boat, where hundreds of persons were huddled fighting like mad to leap into the water, I saw dozens of women and children throw themselves over the side.”

Catherine Kassebaum, and the ten family members she brought with her that day, wanted to listen to the music, so they all gathered around the band. A woman’s scream reached them before any smoke was noticed.  Thinking that someone had fallen overboard, she and her family scanned the waters below. Within seconds, the true nature of the problem became apparent when smoke began billowing toward them and they heard general panic on the forward part of the deck. Catherine, realizing that she had to stay calm if there was any chance for survival, called her family together, instructing the strong to care for the weak, but they were soon overtaken by a mass of screaming women and children rushing toward them in an attempt to escape the oncoming smoke and flames. 

Catherine’s family disappeared as the crowd swept past her. She was able to climb onto a rail for a better vantage point, trying to spot any of her family. Her hands and face were scorched and blistered, holes were burning in her clothing; she finally decided to take her chances by jumping into the water. She described the feeling that she would never again surface when she saw a flash of light and something solid above her. She was later found alive, clinging to the ship’s paddle box. Her daughter Nettie had waited until she saw a tugboat approach the burning ship and jumped onto the deck, breaking her leg. Though mother and daughter were reunited, the remaining nine members of their family perished.

The family of Anna Weber was slightly more fortunate than the Kassebaums. At the first puff of smoke, Anna began rushing about the deck searching for her children. The heat was so intense that her face was scorched and her hair caught fire. Hoping that her husband had found their children, she went to the side of the boat and tried to lower herself down by a rope. Her flesh blistered every time her hands or face touched the side of the boat. She finally dropped when her rope burst into flames. Anna was soon pulled to the shore of North Brother Island by an unknown savior where she found her husband with his clothes burned off, wandering about looking for their children.

Frank and Anna Weber lost both their son and daughter, along with her sister. Their friends, Paul and Anna Liebenow, whom the Webers had invited along as a special treat, lost two daughters but their six-month old daughter Adelia was miraculously saved. The following year little Adelia Leibenow (later Witherspoon) unveiled the Steamboat Fire Mass Memorial. She went on to live a full life and was the last known General Slocum survivor. She died in 2004 at the age of one hundred.

The Reverend George Hass, pastor of St. Marks, had been on a tour of the ship as it first got underway. As smoke began pouring up from below he was able to find his wife, Anna, and his sister, Emma. They waited on the middle deck, searching for George and Anna’s thirteen-year old daughter, Gertrude. When they realized that the deck above them was about to collapse, they jumped together into the water.  Rev. Hass described how he thought he must have put on his life preserver incorrectly because it seemed to be pulling him deeper under water. He was able to free himself and floated to the surface, but by that point, had lost track of his wife. Of the entire Hass party, only Rev. Hass and his sister survived the ordeal.  

By the time the General Slocum was beached on North Brother Island, she was fully engulfed in flames. She ran aground in about 25 feet of water, just off the shoreline. Fireboats arrived shortly, along with other small boats and tugs. These smaller boats maneuvered around the bodies and wreckage, plucking any survivors they found from the water. Captain Van Schaick jumped to the deck of an approaching tug, with an injury to his eye that left him blind on one side, but otherwise unharmed and dry. 

North Brother Island was a hospital island for contagious diseases. Many medical personnel and patients watched from the hospital windows as the General Slocum approached. They rushed the short distance to the shore to render any aid they could. City Health Commissioner Thomas Darlington happened to be visiting the hospital that day. “I will never be able to forget the scene, the utter horror of it,” he said later. He described how the patients in the contagious wards “went wild at the things they saw from their windows.” They screamed and beat at the doors until they were finally quieted by a number of staff members. They watched as the small boats were arriving with the survivors, and towing large numbers of bodies.

The island became a “scene of courage and panic.” Many stories of heroism and cruelty were printed in the newspapers over the next week. A tugboat captain risked his boat and crew by pulling right up to the flames and is said to have saved nearly a hundred lives. Some quite ill patients left the safety of their hospital beds and ran into the water, rescuing as many children as they could. One newspaper reporter wrote of the actions of a particular hospital staff member, “A nurse who always wished she could swim ran into the river to grab some children, which she did again and again until she was swept into deeper water, where she discovered that she could swim, and continued saving lives.”

Over the following few days, hordes of souvenir hunters made the recovery of bodies much more difficult as they washed ashore on North Brother Island and other sites down river. Thieves stripped many of the bodies of jewelry and other valuables as they lay at the high tide line. Hospital attendants chased away a man they found stooped over the body of a woman, attempting to steal the gold watch chain that she wore at her waist. Then there was the large and mysterious white yacht that was cursed by many as it lay just yards away without making any attempt to help with the rescue. A New York Times headline screamed from the page that the private captain “Kept His Yacht Back While Scores Perished: White Vessel’s Captain Watched Slocum Horror Through Glasses.”

The bodies that were pulled from the water or washed ashore on North Brother Island were laid out side by side on the grass outside the hospital. They were later moved to a makeshift morgue at the East 23^rd Street Pier. Coroner William J. O’Gorman announced that more than $200,000 in cash and jewelry was recovered from the victims. Eva Eingler’s body was found to have $30,000 in cash, securities and bankbooks on it. It is unknown why she took that much money with her on what was supposed to be a short excursion. The funds, jewelry and personal items taken from the victims were taken to the coroner’s office to be held for the owners’ survivors. A volunteer who was taking inventory of the victims’ personal effects was startled to discover that fifteen-year-old Clara Hartman of East Ninth Street, pulled from the water and thought to be drowned, was still alive three hours after the fire on board the General Slocum.

Bodies of the dead were placed on display on North Brother Island. They were eventually packed in ice so they could be preserved until someone could identify them.

Rescue volunteers and police openly sobbed as they moved bodies hour after hour. As morgue staff worked to lay out the bodies as they arrived, others were sent to search the city for wooden coffins. Still others brought back tons of ice to help maintain the bodies until they could be identified and claimed by family members.  

While still burning, the hull of the General Slocum was washed a few thousand yards down river by the current until it became lodged in the mud. In following weeks the hull remained partially submerged just off of Hunts Point in the Bronx. Divers were sent down into the hull to search for and recover trapped bodies. Police continued to search the riverbanks for many weeks, collecting bodies and debris from the boat that continued to wash ashore.

While the divers were searching the burned-out hull, they discovered many bodies lying at the bottom of the river. Continuing their search they found a deep hole in the riverbed from which they retrieved more than fifty more bodies. All of these bodies were wearing life preservers. The very life preservers that were supposed to save their lives were weighing their bodies down, making the recovery that much more difficult.

When news of the disaster spread, grief-stricken families flocked to St. Mark’s Church to await the news of their loved ones.

When they heard about the disaster, huge numbers of people amassed at St. Mark’s Church to await news of survivors. Still others rushed to the morgue trying to get information faster. Over the next week, thousands upon thousands of New Yorkers walked past the rows of bodies, hoping to find a lost friend or family member. Though many bodies were never recovered, assumed to have washed out to sea, 61 were never identified and were buried in a common grave in the Cemetery of the Evergreens in Brooklyn. The tragedy was further deepened as people committed suicide after learning they had lost their entire families. They may have died later but they were killed by the General Slocum as surely as if they had been killed by the flames.

Funerals were held every hour around the clock in Little Germany. With such a large number of dead, all having lived in the same community, nearly everyone in Little Germany had lost a friend or family member or knew someone who had. The deep sadness of the tragedy seemed to permeate the very fabric of the community and people started to leave. Within a few years, only a small handful of the original inhabitants were left and Little Germany was no more.

Of the 1,021 people who died as a direct result of the fire on board the General Slocum, over ninety percent of them were women, children and infants.

Outrage was the order of the day as people wondered how such a tremendous tragedy could occur within a few hundred yards of one of the most modern cities in the world. Someone had to be held accountable for such a great loss. City leaders vowed to bring to justice those who were to blame. Within a few weeks, the main executives of the Knickerbocker Steamship Co. were indicted along with Captain Van Schaick and a safety inspector. Also indicted were the top executives of the Nonpareil Cork Works, makers of the deadly life preservers. They were never convicted.  

During the trial, it was revealed that the Knickerbocker Steamship Company had falsified records, covering up its lack of concern for passenger safety. In return for their complicity in the tragedy, they received only a small fine. 

Captain Van Schaick’s story ended differently. Though he tried to explain his actions on that terrible day, the jury was not convinced. In the end, the captain was the ultimate authority for safety on his ship and he was held accountable. Convicted of criminal negligence and manslaughter, Captain Van Schaick was sentenced to ten years hard labor at Sing Sing Prison. Though he appealed for his release directly to President Theodore Roosevelt, a native New Yorker, he was repeatedly refused. After serving three and a half years, he was pardoned under President William Howard Taft and spent the rest of his life in seclusion, a broken man, until his death in 1927.

The cause of the fire was quickly discovered. The night before the General Slocum’s final trip, deck hand Dan O’Neill violated fire regulations by storing a barrel of packing hay on board. He placed the hay in a closet with a stash of oil lamps. This proved to be the deadliest of mixtures.

Just one month before the fire, Henry Lundburg, Assistant Inspector of Hulls, performed a safety inspection of the General Slocum. During this inspection, he determined that the life preservers were “up to date and of good quality.” When inspecting the water pumps and fire hoses, he didn’t seem at all concerned that no water came out when he turned the valves on and off. Another part of the inspection required him to climb up to the lifeboats to check them. Instead, he merely glanced up and checked the box for “in good condition” on his form and walked on.

The great tragedy that occurred aboard the General Slocum, resulting in the horrific deaths of so many innocent men, women and children were in large part due to the illegal actions and corrupt behaviors of Henry Lundberg and Dan O’Neill. Neither of these men spent a single day in jail.

In 1906, a memorial fountain to the victims of the fire was erected at the north end of Tompkins Square Park.

The remains of the General Slocum’s hull were recovered and rebuilt into a barge named the Maryland, which sank off of Sandy Hook, New Jersey, during a December storm in 1911. The curse, some said, continued.

Captain Van Schaick lived for twenty years after he was released from prison, though he didn’t get much rest during that time. He privately told friends that his nights were frequently interrupted by the screams of women and children. His days were filled with shadows in the corners and the smell of burning flesh. In the end, it was said that he welcomed death. Was he being haunted by the victims of the great tragedy in which he was at least partially to blame, or was his tormentor his own conscience?

So many suffered to learn such harsh lessons. Perhaps the greatest tragedy of this disaster is that so much is left without rest, so many lost forever. But many were left witness, to remember the flames, to remember the screams, to remember the horror. 

HARRY THAW & THE GIRL IN THE RED VELVET SWING

MURDER BY INSANITY – OR THE SUPERNATURAL?

On April 11, 1907, after being out for 24 hours, the jury in the Harry Thaw murder case announced that they had been unable to reach a verdict in what had become known as the “crime of the century.” Thaw was charged with the murder of renowned architect Stanford White. While there would be many other spectacular celebrity murders to follow in the twentieth century, few would boast participants as famous -- or events as strange -- as those in the case of Harry K. Thaw.

Wealthy Killer Harry Thaw

Harry Thaw was the son of an ambitious Pittsburgh family and heir to a vast fortune that had been earned by cornering the coke market, a product necessary to make steel. The Thaw family connections and wealth had managed to allow the family into the upper crust of New York society. Though well-educated, Harry Thaw was also considered to be rather odd, even by his own family. His school escapades and wild behavior caused his father to limit his allowance to just $2,000 per year. His doting mother supplemented this income with an additional $80,000 and yet Thaw bemoaned the poor state of his finances. He didn’t believe that what he considered this paltry amount could possibly support his standard of living.

One of Thaw’s greatest expenses was the apartment that he maintained at a high-priced New York brothel. Here, he would entice young girls with offers of helping them to star in plays and in Broadway shows. Once he had them in his clutches, as the house madam, Susan Merrill, later testified, he would rape the girls and often beat them badly for his own sexual pleasure. Merrill later stated, “I could hear the screams coming from his apartment and once I could stand it no longer. I rushed into his rooms. He had tied the girl to the bed, naked, and was whipping her. She was covered with welts.”

Evelyn Nesbit. She was so beautiful that she inspired Charles Dana Gibson’s “Gibson Girl” and was called “the loveliest looking girl who ever breathed” by author Irvin S. Cobb

Despite Thaw’s peculiarities, it is unlikely that he would have come to public attention if he had not become involved with a young woman named Evelyn Nesbit. She had come to New York at the age of 16 and when Thaw met her, she was becoming known as an actress and a model. As a member of the chorus of the hit show Floradora, she was one of the beauties asked the musical question, “Tell me, pretty maiden, are there any more at home like you?” She also posed for a Charles Dana Gibson drawing called "The Eternal Question" and was described by some as the “loveliest looking girl who ever breathed.” Writer Irvin S. Cobb described Nesbit in print as having “the slim, quick grace of a fawn, a head that sat on her flawless throat as a lily on its stem, eyes that were the color of blue-brown pansies and the size of half-dollars, and a mouth made of rumpled rose petals.” She looked innocent but her gentle beauty hid a more sultry side: soon after arriving in New York, she had become the mistress of millionaire architect Stanford White.

The red-haired, hulking White was considered the most distinguished architect of his day. He had designed more than 50 of New York’s most admired buildings, including Madison Square Garden and the Washington Square Arch. He was credited with being the single greatest influence in beautifying the rather drab, brownstone New York City of the Nineteenth Century. Madison Square Garden itself, with its amphitheater for horse shows and prize fights, and its theater, roof garden, restaurant, and arcade of fashionable shops, was regarded by most as his greatest accomplishment.

Famed architect Stanford White

But there was another side to the acclaimed architect. He enjoyed mixing in theatrical and Bohemian circles, was an avid party-goer, and, although married, loved pretty girls. After meeting young Evelyn Nesbit, he seduced the teenager and gave her large amounts of money, expensive clothing and jewelry. Evelyn remained with White until she was 19 and at that point she left him and became involved with Harry Thaw. He married her on April 4, 1905 when she was 20. In the interval, he had twice lived with her as man and wife on trips to Europe and caused a major New York scandal when the two of them were evicted from a hotel where they were blatantly co-habiting.

Despite ensnaring the girl of his dreams, Harry Thaw was slowly going insane. During the first 14 months of their marriage, Thaw persecuted Evelyn about her former relationship with White. He refused to allow her to use White’s name and only permitted her to refer to him as “the Beast” or “the Bastard.” Once, while crossing the Atlantic on a vacation to Europe, Thaw tied Evelyn to a bed in their stateroom. He beat her with a belt for hours and made her confess every sexual act in which she had engaged with Stanford White. To stop the whipping, she later confessed that she made things up just to appease her brutal husband, claiming that White raped her and forced her to pose naked with other women.

Evelyn’s tales only incensed Thaw even further and he vowed revenge. He would sometimes carry a revolver around the house and would mumble to himself about saving other young girls from sharing Evelyn’s fate.

Thaw’s revenge came on the night of June 25, 1906. He and Evelyn, accompanied by two friends, attended the opening of a play called Mam’zelle Champagne at the dining theater on the roof of Madison Square Garden. The theater was a frequent gathering place for New York society and thousands of the city’s wealthiest people were all in attendance. For the occasion, Evelyn donned a daring white satin gown and looked spectacular under the stage lights. Soon after taking their seats, she and Thaw noticed Stanford White being ushered to a table in the privileged section near the footlights.

The play turned out to be a dull one and in time, the Thaws rose to leave. As Harry stepped out into the aisle, he looked down the length of it and saw White framed dramatically at the end. While the girls in the chorus sang a production number, Thaw walked down the aisle and stopped next to White, who pretended not to see him. He then calmly reached into his coat, withdrew a revolver and fired three shots into the architect’s head. Two of those bullets slammed into White’s brain and he died immediately. His heavy frame crashed forward on the table and then rolled over onto the floor. Thaw then changed his grip on the pistol, holding it by the muzzle so that it was plain that he didn’t intend to shoot anyone else. He was arrested and taken to Center Street Station. Thaw was charged with murder and placed in the Tombs to await trial.

While he was in jail, Thaw had all of his meals catered from Delmonico’s, one of New York’s finest restaurants. He also had whiskey smuggled to him and was allowed to continue playing the stock market, meeting with his broker in jail at all hours of the day and night.

After he was arraigned for murder, Thaw’s mother, who was in England at the time visiting her daughter, the Countess of Yarmouth, announced that she was returning to the United States to stand by her son. She said, “I am prepared to pay a million dollars to save his life.” She hired the famous trial lawyer Delphin Delmas from California to defend her son. He would be opposed by the equally famous district attorney, William Travers Jerome, who upon hearing that the Thaw fortune was at stake for Harry’s defense stated, “With all of his millions, Thaw is a fiend! No matter how rich a man is, he cannot get away with murder!”

Thaw’s trial did not begin until January 21, 1907. In the seven months that preceded it, William Stanford White underwent a character assassination in the newspapers that was unprecedented for an American of his distinction and society connections. There were so many tales of his amorous activities that, for even half of them to be true, he would have had to have slept with the majority of the young women and girls in New York. The most famous stories involved White’s legendary red velvet swing, which was secreted in one of the many love nests that he kept throughout the city. In this heavily curtained pleasure palace on the West Side, he was alleged to keep the velvet swing hanging from the ceiling. In this swing, he would place his young women, dressed like little girls, and would wildly push them back and forth. It was said that he would peer lasciviously up their billowing skirts in prelude to more adult passions.

The campaign of slander and vilification against White was masterminded by Ben Atwell, a press agent hired by Thaw’s mother. She also financially backed a play based loosely on the events that occurred – or at least in the way that the yellow press had painted them. The play featured three characters named Harold Daw, Emeline Hudspeth Daw, and Stanford Black. In this first scene, the Black character brutally assaulted a blind man asking for news of his beautiful young daughter. The play ended with Daw shooting Black during a performance in a roof garden theater, then declaring from his cell at the Tombs, “No jury on earth will send me to the chair, no matter what I have done or what I have been, for killing the man who defamed my wife. That is the unwritten law made by men themselves, and upon its virtue, I will stake my life.”

The play was not exactly subtle but it was popular. It likely had an effect on the legal proceedings that followed, for while the case certainly seemed open and shut, the trial lasted for more than four months. From the start, Thaw’s attorney would claim his client to be innocent and that a form of insanity had made him want to kill White. And while Thaw may have been insane, he would state that his urge to kill had come from a mysterious force outside his body. Namely, that he was possessed by the spirits of the dead!

The claim was supported by a doctor of medicine and a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science named Dr. Carl Wickland. The Chicago doctor’s wife was a proponent of Spiritualism and a professed medium. Three weeks after Thaw’s arrest, Mrs. Wickland insisted that a spirit voice came through her during a séance and confessed that it had forced Thaw to kill Stanford White. The spirit told the group gathered in the séance room, “I killed Stanford White. He deserved death. He had trifled too long with our daughters.”

According to Mrs. Wickland, the ghost identified himself as a man named Johnson. He had been from a lower social scale when he was among the living and denounced the wealthy, saying that the rich womanizers like Stanford White had no right to live, “stealing our children from us and putting fine clothes on them.” The spirit’s daughter was allegedly a young girl named Susie, a 15-year-old model, who had been the highlight of a Bohemian party that White attended. She had risen out of a giant pie and exhibited her charms, which were scarcely hidden behind a wisp of chiffon. White was so taken with her that he plied her with champagne and, when she was intoxicated, took her to one of his apartments and seduced her. Later, he turned her out, penniless, and she died at the age of 23 and was buried in a pauper’s grave.

In addition to Johnson’s angry spirit, another entity also came through during the séance. He identified himself as Harry Thaw’s deceased father. He defended his son and claimed that the young man had been sensitive to spirit influence throughout his life. The spirit added that he never understood Harry’s actions when he was alive but in death, realized that his son’s depraved activities were the result of having “been a tool in the hands of earthbound spirits, evil spirits that ordered death.” The ghost went on to add explicitly that Harry Thaw was “obsessed by revengeful spirits when he killed Stanford White.”

It was certainly a novel defense and one that played well with the jury. Delphin Delmas and the other lawyers representing Thaw used it to muddy the waters while they assassinated the character of Stanford White. It only served to help the case that prosecuting attorney William Travers Jerome was curiously inept during this peak moment in his career. He lost his temper several times in court while his opponent stayed calm and clever. Delmas brought Evelyn into court looking very demure and innocent in sailor blouses and Buster Brown collars. A crowd of over 10,000 milled around outside, hanging on news that filtered from the building. Inside of the courtroom, spectators soaked up the seamy details of Evelyn’s seduction and her descriptions of sex with Stanford White – some of which was allegedly so risqué that the “delicate” young woman would only whisper it into the ear of the judge.

Evelyn first met White in 1901, when she was just 16 years old. A girlfriend took her to lunch at the architect’s apartment on West 24th Street. A second man was there but left after the meal. White then took the girls upstairs to a room where the red velvet swing hung from the ceiling. He let the girls take turns on it as he pushed them. Evelyn recalled, “Right up to the ceiling. They had a big Japanese umbrella on the ceiling, so when we swung up very high our feet passed through it.”

White did not lose touch with Evelyn, who he considered his new discovery. He met her mother by arrangement and suggested that Evelyn should have some dental treatment. He sent her a hat, a feather boa and a long, red cape. Throughout, he behaved with the utmost correctness. Evelyn testified, “At supper, he wouldn’t let me have but one glass of champagne, and he said I mustn’t stay up late. He took me home himself to the Arlington Hotel, where we were staying, and knocked on my mother’s door.”

Then came the day when Evelyn’s mother left town to visit friends in Pittsburgh, dismayed at leaving her daughter alone in New York. When he heard of this, White immediately offered his services, promising to take good care of the girl if she was left in his care. He made Evelyn promise, in front of her mother, not to go out with anyone but him while he mother was away. White paid for her mother’s trip to Pittsburgh and, the second night after her departure, sent a note to the theater where Evelyn was appearing in Floradora and asked her to a party at his apartment. When she arrived, there was no one else there and White lamely explained that no one else was able to come. He suggested that they have something to eat, and afterwards, White offered to show her the rooms that she had not seen during her previous visit. He took her up some backstairs to a bedroom and poured her a glass of champagne. Evelyn later said her head began to pound, the room started spinning and she passed out.

When she revived, Evelyn was in the bed. All of her clothing was gone and White was naked and lying beside her. There were mirrors all around the bed. Evelyn remembered, “I started to scream and Mr. White quieted me. I don’t remember how I got my clothes on or how I went home, but he took me home. Then he went away and left me and I sat up all night.” Evelyn implied that the two of them engaged in sex that night but testimony of it was not admitted into the trial.

White called on her the next day and found her sitting in a chair, staring out the windows. She was obviously upset but White reassured her. He told her, “Everyone does those things.” She asked if the various people that she had met at parties with White also made love and White convinced her that they did, but it was always kept secret. She was told that it was important that they not be found out and White made her promise not to say a word about it to her mother.

Harry Thaw was also smeared during all of the mudslinging that took place during the trail, although his attorney managed to make his bizarre sexual proclivities a further symptom of his madness, whether it was inspired by the spirits or simply garden-variety insanity. Reporters managed to dig up stories of Thaw beating and whipping young women, including a legal suit brought against him by Ethel Thomas in 1902. He had purchased a dog whip one day in a store and when she asked him what it was for, he told her that he intended to use it on her. She said, “I thought he was joking, but no sooner were we in his apartment and the door locked than his demeanor changed. A wild expression came into his eyes, and he seized me and with his whip beat me until my clothes hung in tatters.”

Evelyn has also suffered from the same sort of treatment from Thaw. The trouble began when they were staying at a castle that Thaw had rented in Austria. One morning, she had come to breakfast wearing only her bathrobe. After the meal had finished, Thaw accompanied her to the bedroom, where he ripped the bathrobe from her body, leaving her completely naked, save for her slippers. She testified, “His eyes were glaring and he had in his hands a cowhide whip. He seized hold of me and threw me on the bed. I was powerless and attempted to scream, but he placed his fingers in my mouth and tried to choke me. He then, without any provocation, and without the slightest reason, began to inflict on me several severe and violent blows with the cowhide whip. So brutally did he assault me that my skin was cut and bruised. I besought him to desist, but he refused. I was so exhausted that I shouted and cried. He stopped every minute or so to rest, and then renewed his attacks upon me, which he continued for about seven minutes. He acted like a demented man. I was absolutely in fear for my life… It was nearly three weeks before I was sufficiently recovered to be able to get out of my bed and walk.”

 Why, many people wondered, had she married a man who treated her so badly? Evelyn’s motives seemed clear: the desire for wealth and position. Thaw was apparently “persuaded” to marry Evelyn at her family’s insistence. The alternative was a charge of corrupting a minor, since Thaw, like White, had gotten involved with the young woman when she was underage.

The trial ended on April 11, 1907, but after being out for more than 24 hours, the jury announced that they had been unable to reach a verdict. On the final ballot, it was later learned, seven had voted Thaw guilty of first-degree murder, and five had voted him not guilty by reason of insanity. Thaw was kept in custody until his second trail started in early January 1908. This time, his “ordeal” was shorter and on February 1, the second jury came to the conclusion that something had temporarily taken over control of Harry Thaw at the time of the murder. They returned a verdict of “not guilty, on the grounds of insanity at the time of the commission of the act.” Thaw had been saved from the electric chair, but he certainly wasn’t free. He was imprisoned for life at the New York State Asylum for the Criminally Insane at Mattewan, New York.

Attempts by his attorneys (and by his mother, who spent tens of thousands of dollars trying to get him declared sane) were protracted and unsuccessful. On the morning of August 17, 1913, Thaw escaped from the asylum. With the aid of a limousine that was waiting outside the gates, he fled and sought refuge in Canada. The next month, under pressure from the U.S. government, the Canadian Minister of Justice agreed to return him to the United States. He was jailed in Concord, New Hampshire, and fought a long legal battle against returning to New York. He was not sent back, to stand trial again, until December 1914.

Meanwhile, Evelyn went on to become a vaudeville attraction. Her beauty wasted away before cheap audiences, but not before she became pregnant with a son that she stubbornly insisted was Harry Thaw’s. When reporters pointed out that Thaw had been inside a mental institution for the past seven years, Evelyn swore that Harry had bribed a guard at the hospital and she had been allowed to spend the night with him. The baby, for whom she filed for huge support payments, was a result of that one evening.

In July 1915, a New York court pronounced Thaw sane and cleared him of all charges. Shortly after his release from jail, he publicly denounced Evelyn and denied that he had anything to do with fathering her child. Soon after, he divorced her and went on an outrageous spending spree, hoping to burn through whatever inheritance he could.

Unfortunately for Thaw, he was jailed again in 1916. He was arrested for horsewhipping a teenager named Frederick Gump and while Thaw tried to buy off the boy’s family with over a half million dollars, he was still sent back to the mental hospital. He was kept there under tight security until his release in 1922.

After that, Thaw continued his interrupted career of high living until his death in 1947. He traveled the world, sporting attractive young girls on his arms and billed himself to reporters as a theatrical and movie producer. Needless to say, Thaw never moved in entertainment circles and most laughed off his pretensions to a vivid imagination. Or perhaps it was something else. On certain occasions, Thaw’s playful gaze would become a wild stare and his mouth would open to emit strange words that seemed to pass incoherently from his lips. Insanity – or influences from beyond this world?

THE MAD BOMBER

On this date in 1957, suspected “Mad Bomber” George Metesky, accused of planting more than 30 explosive devices in the New York City area since 1940, was arrested in Waterbury, Connecticut. The arrest ended a 16-year campaign of terror with bombs being left in train stations, libraries, offices, phone booths, storage lockers, public restrooms and even the New York City subway. Most notably, Metesky bomber theaters, where he cut into seat upholstery and left explosive devices inside. Angry and resentful after a workplace injury that he’s suffered years earlier, the strange little man began making bombs that ended up injuring 15 people – and terrorizing the city. What drove him to his bizarre and bitter acts? And why did he end up in an insane asylum when it was all over?

"Mad Bomber" George Metesky

Shortly after 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 Consolidated Edison utility company and lived in Waterbury, Connecticut, with his two unmarried sisters. In 1931, a boiler backfired and produced a blast of hot gases. Metesky was knocked down and fumes filled his lungs. The accident left him disabled and, after collecting 26 weeks of sick pay, he lost his job. The fumes caused him to contract pneumonia, which 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. Out of revenge, he planted his first bomb on November 16, 1940, leaving it on a window sill at the Consolidated Edison power plant on West 64th Street in Manhattan.

Metesky's first bomb was crude, a short length of brass pipe filled with gunpowder, with an ignition mechanism made of sugar and flashlight batteries. Enclosed in a wooden toolbox and left on the window sill, it was found before it could go off. It was wrapped in a note written in distinctive block letters and signed "F.P.", stating CON EDISON CROOKS – THIS IS FOR YOU.

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:

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 crank 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.

The first two bombs had drawn 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. Metesky's bombs were gunpowder-filled pipe bombs, ranging in size from four to ten inches long and from one-half inch to two inches in diameter. Most used timers constructed from flashlight batteries and cheap pocket watches. Investigators at bomb sites learned to look for a wool sock – Metesky used these to transport the bombs and sometimes to hang them from a rail or projection.

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 (three times), 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. Perhaps most notably, Metesky bombed movie theaters, where he cut into seat upholstery and slipped his explosive devices inside.

On March 29, 1951 was the first Metesky bomb of the new wave, and also the first Metesky bomb to explode, startling commuters in Grand Central Terminal but injuring no one. It had been dropped into a sand urn near the Oyster Bar 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. Metesky next planted a bomb that exploded without injury in a phone booth at the Consolidated Edison headquarters building at 4 Irving Place. He also mailed one bomb, which did not explode, to Consolidated Edison from White Plains, New York.

On October 22, the New York Herald Tribune received a letter in penciled block letters, stating

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.

The letter directed police to the Paramount Theater in Times Square, where a bomb was discovered and disabled, and to a telephone booth at Pennsylvania Station where nothing was found.

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:

HAVE YOU NOTICED THE BOMBS IN YOUR CITY – IF YOU ARE WORRIED, I AM SORRY – AND ALSO IF ANYONE IS INJURED. BUT IT CANNOT BE HELPED – FOR JUSTICE WILL BE SERVED. I AM NOT WELL, AND FOR THIS I WILL MAKE THE CON EDISON SORRY – YES, THEY WILL REGRET THEIR DASTARDLY DEEDS – I WILL BRING THEM BEFORE THE BAR OF JUSTICE – PUBLIC OPINION WILL CONDEMN THEM – FOR BEWARE, I WILL PLACE MORE UNITS UNDER THEATER SEATS IN THE NEAR FUTURE. F.P.

On March 1952, a bomb exploded in a phone booth at the Port Authority Bus Terminal without causing injury. In June and again in December bombs exploded in seats at the Lexington Avenue Loew's theater. The December bombing injured one person, and was the first Metesky bomb to cause injury. Police had asked the newspapers not to print any of the bomber's letters and to play down earlier bombings, but by now the public was becoming aware that a "Mad Bomber" was on the loose.

In 1953, Bombs exploded in seats at Radio City Music Hall and at the Capitol Theater, with no injuries. A bomb again exploded near the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Terminal, this time in a coin-operated rental locker, again with no injuries. Police described this bomb as the homemade product of a "publicity-seeking jerk.” An unexploded bomb was found in a rental locker at Pennsylvania Station.

A bomb wedged behind a sink in a Grand Central Terminal men's room exploded in March 1954, slightly injuring three men. A bomb planted in a phone booth at the Port Authority Bus Terminal exploded with no injuries. Another bomb was discovered in a phone booth that was removed from Pennsylvania Station for repair. As a capacity Radio City Music Hall audience of 6,200 watched Bing Crosby's White Christmas on November 7, a bomb stuffed into the bottom cushion of a seat in the 15th row exploded, injuring four patrons. The explosion was muffled by the heavy upholstery, and only those nearby heard it. While the film continued, the injured were escorted to the facility's first-aid room and about 50 people in the immediate area were moved to the back of the theater. After the film and the following stage show concluded an hour-and-a-half later, the police roped off 150 seats in the area of the explosion and began the search for evidence.

In 1955, a bomb exploded without injuries on the platform at the IRT Sutter Avenue subway station in Brooklyn. A bomb hung beneath a phone booth shelf exploded on the main floor of Macy's department store, with no injuries. Two bombs exploded without injuries at Pennsylvania Station, one in a rental locker and one in a phone booth. A bomb was found at Radio City Music Hall after a warning phone call.

At the Roxy Theater, a bomb dropped out of a slashed seat onto an upholsterer's workbench without exploding.  A seat bomb exploded at the Paramount Theater; one patron was struck on the shoe by bomb fragments but disclaimed injury. Investigators discovered a small penknife pushed inside the seat, one of several found at theater seat bombings. They theorized that the bomber left his knives behind in case he was stopped and questioned. In December, a bomb exploded without injuries in a Grand Central men's-room stall.

The bombings continued in 1956. A 74-year-old men's-room attendant at Pennsylvania Station was seriously injured when a bomb in a toilet bowl exploded. A young man had reported an obstruction and the attendant tried to clear it using a plunger. Among the porcelain fragments, investigators found a watch frame and a wool sock. A guard at the RCA Building in Rockefeller Center discovered a piece of pipe about five inches long in a telephone booth. A second guard thought it might be useful in a plumbing project and took it home on the bus to New Jersey, where it exploded on his kitchen table early the next morning. No one was injured. A December 2 bombing at the Paramount Theater in Brooklyn left six of the theater's 1,500 occupants injured, one seriously, and drew tremendous news coverage and editorial attention. The next day, Police Commissioner Stephen P. Kennedy ordered what he called the "greatest manhunt in the history of the Police Department."

On December 24, a clerk at the New York Public Library discovered a maroon-colored sock held to the underside of the shelf by a magnet. The sock contained an iron pipe with a threaded cap on each end. After consulting with other employees, he threw the device out a window into Bryant Park, bringing the bomb squad and more than 60 NYPD police officers and detectives to the scene. In a letter to the New York Journal American the next month, Metesky said that the Public Library bomb, as well as one discovered later the same week inside a seat at the Times Square Paramount, had been planted months before

Metesky was arrested in January 1957, but his bombs continued to be found. Eight months later, a explosive device 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.

Tracking down Metesky had required some pretty amazing police work. Throughout the investigation, detectives were convinced that the bomber was a former Con Edison employee with a grudge against the company. Con Edison employment records were reviewed, but there were hundreds of other leads, tips and crank letters to be followed up on. Detectives ranged far and wide, checking lawsuit records, mental hospital admissions, vocational schools where bomb parts might be made. Citizens turned in neighbors who behaved oddly, and co-workers who seemed to know too much about bombs. Everything had to be checked. A new group, the Bomb Investigation Unit, was formed to work on nothing but bomber leads.

It was one of the first American cases that leaned heavily on a criminal profile. Fingerprint experts, handwriting experts, the bomb investigation unit and other NYPD groups worked with dedication but made little progress. With traditional police methods seemingly useless against Metesky's erratic bombing campaign, police captain John Cronin approached his friend Dr. James Brussel, a criminologist, psychiatrist, and assistant commissioner of the New York State Commission for Mental Hygiene. Captain Cronin asked Brussel to meet with Inspector Howard E. Finney, head of the NYPD's Crime Laboratory.

In his office with Finney and two detectives, Brussel examined the crime-scene photos and letters and discussed the bomber's metal-working and electrical skills. As he talked with the police, Brussel developed what he called a kind of "portrait" of the bomber, what would now be called an offender profile. The bomber's belief that he had been wronged by Consolidated Edison and by others acting in concert with Consolidated Edison seemed to dominate his thoughts, leading Brussel to conclude that the bomber was suffering from paranoia, a condition he describes as "a chronic disorder of insidious development, characterized by persistent, unalterable, systematized, logically constructed delusions." Based on the evidence and his own experience dealing with psychotic criminals, Brussel put forth a number of theories beyond the obvious grudge against Consolidated Edison:

1. The bomber was male (fit historically)

2. Well-proportioned and average build (based on studies of hospitalized mental patients)

3. 40-50 years old (paranoia develops slowly)

4. Precise, neat and tidy (based on handwriting and bomb building)

5. Good employee, on time and well-behaved

6. A Slav, since bombs were favored in Middle Europe and also Catholic

7. Well-educated, but no college

8. Foreign-born or living in ethnic community (phrasing of letters)

9. Sex issues (likely with older female relative)

10. Loner, no friends, little interest in women, likely a virgin

11. Because of where letters were posted, lived between New York City and Connecticut

Brussel additionally predicted to his visitors that when the bomber was caught, he would be wearing a double-breasted suit, buttoned.

Although the police policy had been to keep the bomber investigation low-key, Brussel convinced them to heavily publicize the profile, predicting that any wrong assumption made in it would prod the bomber to respond. Under the headline "16-Year Search for a Madman", the New York Times version of the profile summarized the major predictions:

Single man, between 40 and 50 years old, introvert. Unsocial but not anti-social. Skilled mechanic. Cunning. Neat with tools. Egotistical of mechanical skill. Contemptuous of other people. Resentful of criticism of his work but probably conceals resentment. Moral. Honest. Not interested in women. High school graduate. Expert in civil or military ordnance. Religious. Might flare up violently at work when criticized. Possible motive: discharge or reprimand. Feels superior to critics. Resentment keeps growing. Present or former Consolidated Edison worker. Probably case of progressive paranoia.

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.

The day after the profile was published, the New York Journal American published an open letter, prepared in cooperation with the police, urging the bomber to give himself up. The newspaper promised a "fair trial" and offered to publish his grievances. Metesky wrote back the next day, signing his letter "F.P.". He said that he would not be giving himself up, and revealed a wish to "bring the Con. Edison to justice". He listed all the locations where he had placed bombs that year, and seemed concerned that perhaps not all had been discovered. Later in the letter he said that his days were numbered, but that he would continue to strike “even from my grave.”

After some editing by the police, the newspaper published Metesky's letter on January 10, along with another open letter asking him for more information about his grievances. Metesky's second letter provided some details about the materials used in the bombs (he favored pistol powder, as "shotgun powder has very little power"), promised a bombing "truce" until at least March 1, and wrote "I was injured on job at Consolidated Edison plant – as a result I am adjudged – totally and permanently disabled", going on to say that he had had to pay his own medical bills and that Consolidated Edison had blocked his workers' compensation case. After police editing, the newspaper published his letter on January 15 and asked the bomber for "further details and dates" about his compensation case so that a new and fair hearing could be held.

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.

Con Edison clerk Alice Kelly had read the Christmas Day profile and for days had 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. 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 that evening, but initially, it was treated as just “one of a number” of leads. But the Waterbury police were asked to do a discreet check of Metesky’s house. Further investigation was carried out with the Con Edison files and when the injury date given in the bomber's third letter matched George Metesky's accident date, police knew they had their man. 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."

He led them to the garage workshop, where they found his lathe. Back in the house they found pipes and connectors suitable for bombs hidden in the pantry, as well as three cheap pocket watches, flashlight batteries, brass terminal knobs, and unmatched wool socks of the type used to transport the bombs. Metesky had answered the door in pajamas; after he was ordered to get dressed for the trip to Waterbury Police Headquarters, he reappeared wearing a double-breasted suit, buttoned – just as Dr. Brussel had predicted.

During his interrogation, Metesky admitted to everything. He told detectives that he had placed 32 bombs. He was indicted by a grand jury on 47 charges – of attempted murder, damaging a building by explosion, maliciously endangering life, and violation of New York State's Sullivan Law by carrying concealed weapons, the bombs. Seven counts of attempted murder were charged, based on the seven persons injured in the preceding five years, the statute of limitations in the case. Metesky was brought to the courtroom to hear the charges from Manhattan's Bellevue Hospital, where he had been undergoing psychiatric examination.

After hearing from psychiatric experts, Judge Samuel S. Liebowitz declared 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.

Expected to live only a few weeks due to his advanced tuberculosis, Metesky had to be carried into the hospital. After a year and a half of treatment, his health had improved, and a newspaper article written fourteen years later described the 68-year-old Metesky as "vigorous and healthy looking.”

While he was at Matteawan, the Journal American hired a leading workers' compensation attorney 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.

Metesky was unresponsive to psychiatric therapy, but was a model inmate and caused no trouble. He was visited regularly by his sisters and occasionally by Dr. Brussel, to whom he would point out that he had deliberately built his bombs not to kill anyone.

In 1973, the “Mad Bomber” case took a strange turn when 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.

Interviewed by a reporter upon his release, he said that he had forsworn violence, but reaffirmed his anger and resentment toward Consolidated Edison. He also stated that before he began planting his bombs, “I wrote 900 letters to the Mayor, to the Police Commissioner, to the newspapers, and I never even got a penny postcard back. Then I went to the newspapers to try to buy advertising space, but all of them turned me down. I was compelled to bring my story to the public.”

And he certainly did that…

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