Speaker 1: Welcome to Unexplained Extra with me Richard McClean Smith, where
Speaker 1: for the weeks in between episodes, we look at stories
Speaker 1: and ideas that, for one reason or other, didn't make
Speaker 1: it into the previous show. In the last episode, A
Speaker 1: Darkness on the Edge of Town, we ventured out to
Speaker 1: the American pastoral town of the Liska in southwest Iowa, where,
Speaker 1: in June nineteen twelve, eight people, six of whom were
Speaker 1: young children, were brutally murdered by an unknown assailant. Looking
Speaker 1: at all the available evidence, it seems reasonable to assume
Speaker 1: that whatever motivated the killer to commit these murders was
Speaker 1: nothing as simple as revenge or money, as private detective
Speaker 1: James Wilkerson suggested. Rather, the killer was far more likely
Speaker 1: to have been driven by a dark and complex desire
Speaker 1: that was both violent and sexual in nature, perhaps operating
Speaker 1: in the spur of the moment, having been unable to
Speaker 1: hold back his urges any longer. And how do I
Speaker 1: know this Because, despite having no experience in the field
Speaker 1: at all, years of watching police procedurals, true crime documentaries
Speaker 1: and movies about cannibalistic psychopaths as equipped me with all
Speaker 1: the analytical skills I could possibly need to think, I
Speaker 1: know what I'm talking about. And if I had to
Speaker 1: pick one suspect out as the most likely culprit, clearly
Speaker 1: it would be the socially awkward Reverend Lynn David Kelly,
Speaker 1: with his history of sexual deviancy and numerous statements in
Speaker 1: which he confessed to the crime. Simply put, he fits
Speaker 1: the profile as tempting as it is to play the
Speaker 1: Maverick forensic psychologist. All of this is, of course, wild
Speaker 1: and uninformed speculation. It did get me thinking, however, the
Speaker 1: history of criminal profiling and how the practice first came about,
Speaker 1: but more importantly, just how effective is it? Anyway, the
Speaker 1: answers might surprise you. On the evening of December second,
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty six, fifteen hundred people crowded into the Brooklyn
Speaker 1: Paramount Cinema in New York City to watch an evening
Speaker 1: showing of the latest blockbuster, War and Peace. It was
Speaker 1: about half an hour into the screening when a loud
Speaker 1: explosion ripped through the theater. A pipe bomb inserted into
Speaker 1: the cushioning of one of the seats had gone off,
Speaker 1: injuring six people. As it happened, This bomb was the
Speaker 1: thirty second such device that had been planted by the
Speaker 1: same perpetrator in a seemingly relentless campaign of terror aimed
Speaker 1: at the people of New York City, which had been
Speaker 1: going on for the last sixteen years. With fifteen people
Speaker 1: injured to date, and the bonds often being planted in
Speaker 1: popular public destinations such as train stations, libraries, and phone booths,
Speaker 1: it seemed only a matter of time before someone would
Speaker 1: lose their life. However, despite concerted efforts from the New
Speaker 1: York Police Department, not one person had been identified as
Speaker 1: a possible culprit. A series of letters written to the
Speaker 1: police by the perpetrator, who signed off only with the
Speaker 1: initials f P, suggested a grievance of some sort against
Speaker 1: the con Edison Energy Company. Aside from that, they had
Speaker 1: little else to go on, and so in late December
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty six, MYPD Captain Howard Finney decided to try
Speaker 1: something different and took two plainclothes colleagues to pay a
Speaker 1: visit to the office of fifty one year old psychologist
Speaker 1: James Brussell. At the time, Brussel was working as assistant
Speaker 1: commissioner at the Department of Mental Hygiene, tasked with overseeing
Speaker 1: the state's programs on mental health. He'd also once carried
Speaker 1: out counter spy work for the FBI. With nothing to lose,
Speaker 1: Finney wondered if Brussel might be able to turn his
Speaker 1: undoubted intelligence to the case of the mad bomber. As
Speaker 1: he was being called to see if he could discern
Speaker 1: anything from all the evidence they'd collected on him, they
Speaker 1: would not be disappointed. After being invited into Brussel's office,
Speaker 1: Finney and his colleagues laid out all their evidence on
Speaker 1: the revered psychologist's desk, which included photos of damaged crime scenes,
Speaker 1: as well as images of the unexploded bombs that ranged
Speaker 1: from four to ten inches long and had been finally
Speaker 1: constructed with timers made from pocket watches and torch batteries.
Speaker 1: And then there were the letters, all handwritten in the
Speaker 1: bombers distinctive style. I'm going to need some time, said Brussel,
Speaker 1: trying to ignore the look on the officers behind Finney,
Speaker 1: who clearly held out little hope for his input. That
Speaker 1: was fine, said the captain. They'd be more than happy
Speaker 1: to wait. Brussel began briefly with the photographs before turning
Speaker 1: to the letters. I will bring the con edison to justice.
Speaker 1: They will pay for their dastardly deeds, FP read one
Speaker 1: in bold capital letters, while another read, I have exhausted
Speaker 1: all other means, I intend with bombs to cause others
Speaker 1: to cry out for justice for me. One after another.
Speaker 1: He studied them intently, scanning and rescanning them over and
Speaker 1: over again. Then after a few hours, he stood up
Speaker 1: and wandered over to the window which looked out over
Speaker 1: City Hall and gazed down at the people on the street.
Speaker 1: You saw a man stood next to a car, another
Speaker 1: leaning in a doorway, while one was walking along the
Speaker 1: street suspiciously looking up at the surrounding buildings. The bomber
Speaker 1: could have been any of them, he thought. Then, after
Speaker 1: another hour of work, he gave his assessment. I believe
Speaker 1: the man you're looking for is possibly Slavic, he said,
Speaker 1: judging by the stilted language and lack of American colloquialisms
Speaker 1: in his writing. He suggested also that the police might
Speaker 1: want to focus their efforts on one of the industrial
Speaker 1: towns in Connecticut where large Slavic immigrant communities were known
Speaker 1: to concentrate. He pointed to the watermark on the letters
Speaker 1: by way of demonstration. The marks were made in Westchester,
Speaker 1: which was clearly part of an effort to disguise the
Speaker 1: perpetrator's true whereabouts. He said. Westchester also happened to be
Speaker 1: exactly halfway between Connecticut and New York City, the perfect
Speaker 1: place therefore for the bomber to stop en route to
Speaker 1: the city to post off his letters. The man thought.
Speaker 1: Brussel was also clearly in a state of advanced paranoia,
Speaker 1: having extended his campaign to the wider public at large,
Speaker 1: having initially being focused on only the con Edison company.
Speaker 1: It was as if he blamed everyone that used them
Speaker 1: to Such a state was rarely reached before the age
Speaker 1: of thirty five, he said, and since the first bomb
Speaker 1: was in nineteen forty, he suggested, the culprit would be
Speaker 1: late forties, possibly older, and would also be very neat
Speaker 1: and clean shaven on account of his handiwork constructing the bombs.
Speaker 1: He's probably a virgin, who thought Brussel. In fact, I'll
Speaker 1: bet he's never even kissed a girl, he said, and
Speaker 1: probably lives with some older female relatives who remind him
Speaker 1: of his mother, to whom he has confused eatable feelings.
Speaker 1: And with that Brussell was done. A stunned Howard. Finney
Speaker 1: and his colleagues thanked him for his time, then gathered
Speaker 1: the evidence into their bags and headed for the door.
Speaker 1: Oh and just one more thing, said Brussel. Finney stopped
Speaker 1: and turned back to see Brussel standing in deep concentration
Speaker 1: with his eyes closed. When you catch him, he'll be
Speaker 1: wearing a double breasted suit and it will be buttoned up,
Speaker 1: he said. A double breasted suit, repeated Finney. Brussel opened
Speaker 1: his eyes, yes and buttoned up, he replied. It was
Speaker 1: just before midnight on January twenty first, nineteen fifty seven,
Speaker 1: when police arrived at the door of George Meteski in Waterbury, Connecticut. Meteski,
Speaker 1: who was of Lithuanian descent, was unmarried and lived with
Speaker 1: two older sisters. Having worked for con Edison for two
Speaker 1: years between nineteen twenty nine and nineteen thirty one, he'd
Speaker 1: been forced to quit his job after sustaining an injury
Speaker 1: at work. Mateski had attempted to claim compensation for the accident,
Speaker 1: but had been continually denied it by the company. With
Speaker 1: the police being let into the property by Meteki, a
Speaker 1: quick search of his bedroom revealed a notebook full of
Speaker 1: writing identical to that found in the bomber's letters, Mateski
Speaker 1: was clearly their man. When the search was over, detectives
Speaker 1: turned their attention to the stocky, meek looking Meteski, who
Speaker 1: was still in his pajamas, and suggested he get dressed
Speaker 1: before they took him down to the station. A short
Speaker 1: time later, George Meteski appeared with his hair neatly combed,
Speaker 1: his shoes freshly shined, and wearing a buttoned up, double
Speaker 1: breasted suit. James Brussel, labeled the Profit of Twelfth Street
Speaker 1: and the Psychiatric Seer by the press, was understandably lauded
Speaker 1: for his efforts in helping to catch the mad bomber,
Speaker 1: efforts that effectively marked the beginning of what would become
Speaker 1: the practice of criminal profiling. Brussel's method, which he originally
Speaker 1: called reverse psychology, was a complete reversal of what psychologists
Speaker 1: would ordinarily do, looking at someone's actions and trying to
Speaker 1: determine what kind of person they were, as opposed to
Speaker 1: trying to determine what actions someone might take on account
Speaker 1: of their personality. This process would later be adapted and
Speaker 1: expanded on by FBI profiler Howard Tetten who helped establish
Speaker 1: the Bureau's now famous Behavioral Science Unit at Quantico in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two. Tenet's work was then expanded on by
Speaker 1: his protege, John Douglas. As some may know, Douglas was
Speaker 1: the inspiration for the character Jack Crawford in the novels
Speaker 1: Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs, as well
Speaker 1: as for Will Graham from the TV show Hannibal and
Speaker 1: the Michael Mann film Manhunter. Douglas and his most prominent
Speaker 1: partner at the BSU, Robert Wrestler, would also provide inspiration
Speaker 1: for the central characters of Holden Ford and Bill Tench, respectively,
Speaker 1: in the twenty seventeen Netflix drama mind Hunter. Though the
Speaker 1: methods of criminal profiling have developed considerably since James Brussell's day,
Speaker 1: Broadly speaking, profilers tend to base much of their analysis
Speaker 1: through the categorization of a crime as either organized or disorganized.
Speaker 1: An organized crime is one that is premeditated, well planned,
Speaker 1: and often leaves little evidence at the scene, while a
Speaker 1: disorganized crime, by contrast, would happen on the spur of
Speaker 1: the moment, is messily executed and tends to occur in
Speaker 1: a high risk environment where the perpetrator is lucky to
Speaker 1: get away. Certainly, as the movies would have it, the
Speaker 1: art of criminal profiling as a lot going for it,
Speaker 1: not least of all the compelling image of the Maverick
Speaker 1: mastermind cracking the case by getting into the head of
Speaker 1: the most complex and dangerous criminals to figure out how
Speaker 1: they tick. However, as Malcolm Gladwell pointed out in his
Speaker 1: twenty oh seven New Yorker article Dangerous Minds, Criminal Profiling
Speaker 1: made Easy, the reality is a little different. As Gladwell notes,
Speaker 1: in the mid nineties, a study into the efficacy of
Speaker 1: criminal profiling by the British Home Office found that after
Speaker 1: analyzing one hundred and eighty four crimes, profiling had only
Speaker 1: led to the capture of a perpetrator in five of
Speaker 1: those cases, which equates to a success rate of two
Speaker 1: point seven percent. A study conducted back in nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: showed also that a trained profiler, on average, did no
Speaker 1: better than someone with no training whatsoever in producing an
Speaker 1: accurate profile, a result that was later backed up by
Speaker 1: a similar study conducted ten years later. As it turns out,
Speaker 1: much of what we know about James Brussell's apparent success
Speaker 1: in identifying the so called mad Bomber back in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty six came from Brussel's own nineteen sixty nine memoir
Speaker 1: Casebook of a Crime Psychiatrist. In truth, he'd actually told
Speaker 1: police to look for a bomber in White Plains in
Speaker 1: Westchester County, New York, not Connecticut. He also told them
Speaker 1: he'd have a facial scar and be an expert in
Speaker 1: civil or military ordinance, none of which turned out to
Speaker 1: be true. He also never suggested that he would be Slavic,
Speaker 1: but rather that he was born and raised in Germany.
Speaker 1: Though some of what Brussel told them was useful, the
Speaker 1: true hero, as Malcolm Gladwell also pointed out in his
Speaker 1: New York apiece, was in fact the much lesser known,
Speaker 1: humble kN Edison secretary Alice Kelly. In nineteen fifty six,
Speaker 1: the New York journal American published an open letter urging
Speaker 1: the bomber to give themselves up. The enigmatic bomber then
Speaker 1: wrote a number of letters in reply, which Alice Kelly
Speaker 1: later read in the journal. Realizing he was a former
Speaker 1: con Edison employee, she took it on herself to laboriously
Speaker 1: read through the files of ex employees to see if
Speaker 1: she could find any who been injured on the job.
Speaker 1: In one she found numerous angry letters that had been
Speaker 1: written to the company, including one letter that employed the
Speaker 1: awkward phrase take justice in my own hands, a phrase
Speaker 1: that had also occurred in one of the bombers publicly
Speaker 1: published letters. The file, of course, was George Meteski's, and
Speaker 1: with that the police had an address, and soon after
Speaker 1: Meteski was arrested. All of which just goes to show
Speaker 1: perhaps there is simply no substitute for simple, honest, hard
Speaker 1: detective work, running the numbers, running the names, and double
Speaker 1: triple quadruple checking everything. If you enjoy Unexplained and would
Speaker 1: like to help supporters, you can now do so via patroon.
Speaker 1: To receive access to add three episodes, just go to
Speaker 1: patron dot com forward slash Unexplained pod to sign up. Unexplained,
Speaker 1: the book and audiobook, featuring ten stories that have never
Speaker 1: before been covered on the show, is now available to
Speaker 1: buy worldwide. You can purchase through Amazon, Barnes and Noble,
Speaker 1: and Waterstones, among other bookstores. All elements of Unexplained, including
Speaker 1: the show's music, are produced by me Richard McClain Smith.
Speaker 1: Please subscribe and rate the show wherever you listen to podcasts,
Speaker 1: and feel free to get in touch with any thoughts
Speaker 1: or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show.
Speaker 1: Perhaps you have an explanation of your own you'd like
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