Speaker 1: You're listening to Law and Order Criminal Justice System, a
Speaker 1: production of Wolf Entertainment and iHeart podcasts.
Speaker 2: In the criminal justice system, landmark trials transcend the courtroom
Speaker 2: to reshape the law. The brave many women who investigate
Speaker 2: and prosecute these cases are part of a select group
Speaker 2: that is defined American history. These are their stories. January first,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five, three fifteen am, Bourbon Street, New Orleans.
Speaker 1: The countdown had passed and New Orleans was still alive
Speaker 1: with celebration.
Speaker 3: New Year's Eve was definitely insane. You could barely move
Speaker 3: through the streets. The atmosphere it's just happy. Everybody's happy.
Speaker 1: Jeremy Senske, fifty years old, in visiting from out of town,
Speaker 1: had spent the night surrounded by thousands of other revelers.
Speaker 1: Around three am, he set up towards his hotel in
Speaker 1: his motorized wheelchair. But in seconds the festivities gave way
Speaker 1: to mayhem.
Speaker 3: There was a very loud noise, very weird, windy noise.
Speaker 3: There was like two or three people to my left
Speaker 3: that were on the sidewalk. There was a bunch of
Speaker 3: people to my right. We all heard the noise and
Speaker 3: I looked over and they all had their mouths up
Speaker 3: and like gasping.
Speaker 4: By the time I turned to the left, I was
Speaker 4: just that was it.
Speaker 3: It was like an explosion, and I basically was just
Speaker 3: like going through the air and smashed my face off
Speaker 3: the sidewalk, and I was laying face first.
Speaker 4: And the other thing I saw was the truck, the
Speaker 4: white truck.
Speaker 1: It had accelerated through the crowd near Bourbon Street, no honking,
Speaker 1: no warning.
Speaker 4: I couldn't figure out what had happened.
Speaker 3: I didn't really think that I had been hit by
Speaker 3: the truck because I was very confused.
Speaker 1: The truck crashed, the driver came out holding a weapon.
Speaker 3: Gun started happening around me. I pulled with bricocheting off
Speaker 3: the ground. I started hearing people screaming, people crying.
Speaker 1: He didn't know what to do.
Speaker 4: Started screaming help. No one acknowledged me.
Speaker 1: Then out of the haze shapes began to emerge, dark figures, heavy, vast,
Speaker 1: long rifles.
Speaker 3: I saw that the guys coming down the road with
Speaker 3: machine guns.
Speaker 1: These were the good guys. The people that walked towards
Speaker 1: the gunfire.
Speaker 4: Someone came up the truck.
Speaker 3: Someone screamed at them not to open up the door
Speaker 3: because there might be explosives in the door. So now
Speaker 3: like screaming and help get me away from the truck.
Speaker 3: It's gonna blow up. I'm thinking there's explosive in his truck.
Speaker 3: My adrenaline kicked in because I was actually scared to death.
Speaker 3: So I pushed myself somehow onto my back. I lifted
Speaker 3: up my arm and my whole body had blot all
Speaker 3: over it. I reached on to my right leg and
Speaker 3: I picked it up. In my leg was a mush
Speaker 3: like and a bunch of pieces, and I was holding
Speaker 3: my leg on my chest, screaming because I couldn't feel
Speaker 3: my legs.
Speaker 4: I didn't know what was wrong.
Speaker 1: What unfolded in the French Quarter that night wasn't random.
Speaker 1: It was deliberate, an active terror, designed for maximum impact,
Speaker 1: time to strike when the world was watching. And as
Speaker 1: Jeremy lay there, it felt like time stood still.
Speaker 3: The first cough that came over to me, I said,
Speaker 3: my legs, my legs, my legs.
Speaker 4: I screamed my legs, and I was like, what happened?
Speaker 4: He said, we don't know.
Speaker 3: You were trying to assess this situation, and he just
Speaker 3: looked at me and said, you're lucky to be alive.
Speaker 3: Everyone around you is dead.
Speaker 4: I got a call get out to LaGuardia Airport. There's
Speaker 4: been a bombing.
Speaker 5: There was a thirty two foot crater in front of
Speaker 5: what was left of the building.
Speaker 1: I was trying to figure out, Am I dead? Am
Speaker 1: I alive?
Speaker 5: Where?
Speaker 1: Alma? I'm Anethega Nicolazzi.
Speaker 6: That's why terrorism works. It doesn't care who you are.
Speaker 1: From Wolf Entertainment and iHeart Podcasts, this is Lawn Order
Speaker 1: Criminal Justice System. In season one, we told the story
Speaker 1: of law enforcement's battle against the mafia, fought in back rooms,
Speaker 1: on wire taps, and in courtrooms. This season, we're turning
Speaker 1: our focus to a threat that hides in plain sight,
Speaker 1: that's harder to predict and even harder to stop. Terrorism
Speaker 1: you'll hear from law enforcement on the front lines and
Speaker 1: from survivors like Jeremy Sensky, ordinary people caught in the
Speaker 1: path of extraordinary destruction. Because terrorism doesn't always look like war.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it looks like Bourbon Street at three am, the
Speaker 1: place where a forty two year old United States Army
Speaker 1: veteran from Texas named shamsu Den Jabbar Rammed a rented
Speaker 1: Ford F one fifty into the crowd, and then moments
Speaker 1: later he opened fire on responding officers.
Speaker 7: Police now telling us at least ten people were killed
Speaker 7: and thirty others injured. Authorities also investigating shots fired in
Speaker 7: the area. We're hearing that the person driving that truck
Speaker 7: then got out of the vehicle and started shooting. There
Speaker 7: is some pretty disturbing video.
Speaker 1: The damage was devastating, at least fourteen lives lost, more
Speaker 1: than fifty injured. We'll come back to Bourbon Street later
Speaker 1: this season. That attack happened just months ago, and it
Speaker 1: wasn't the only one since then. There have been others
Speaker 1: Las Vegas, Palm Springs, Boulder. These aren't isolated events. They're
Speaker 1: more reminders of our present reality. We're tracking how terrorism
Speaker 1: transformed and had the United States was forced to change
Speaker 1: with it. Terrorism doesn't sleep, neither do the people fighting it.
Speaker 1: Before we get to the motives and manhunts, we need
Speaker 1: to better understand what's led us to where we are today,
Speaker 1: because this kind of violence didn't just appear. It wasn't
Speaker 1: always gunfiring, crowds or trucks used as weapons. In decades past,
Speaker 1: terrorism was aimed more at institutions rather than people, until
Speaker 1: one day things changed. On a January afternoon in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy five, a bomb tore through a restaurant in Lower Manhattan,
Speaker 1: killing innocent people. In this episode will take you inside
Speaker 1: that attack, but first we have to understand how the
Speaker 1: violence and the response to it evolved. The seventies a
Speaker 1: decade defined by Vietnam, Watergate and by growing unrest at home.
Speaker 1: America was divided and on edge. Cities like New York,
Speaker 1: which we explored in season one, were gripped by crime.
Speaker 1: Protesters clashed in the streets. It was a decade of
Speaker 1: reckoning and reinvention and terrorism. It was beginning to take
Speaker 1: root on American soil. Here is someone who can definitely
Speaker 1: help break down its many complexities.
Speaker 8: My name is Michael Jensen. I'm the research director at
Speaker 8: the START Center at the University of Maryland. I lead
Speaker 8: a team at the center that looks at extremism in
Speaker 8: the United States.
Speaker 1: Michael's team is part of an organization known as START,
Speaker 1: which stands for a mouthful. The National Consortium for the
Speaker 1: Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism. START was launched
Speaker 1: by the Department of Homeland Security in two thousand and five.
Speaker 1: It tracks global terror trends and analyzes why people radicalize.
Speaker 8: When the START Center was founded, there was virtually no
Speaker 8: data available on terrorism happening in the United States and
Speaker 8: outside of the United States.
Speaker 1: Today, it's home to the Global Terrorism Database, the world's
Speaker 1: most comprehensive record of terror attacks, and trains the next
Speaker 1: generation of national security experts. Michael's a scientist, a collector
Speaker 1: of facts, but part of that search for understanding led
Speaker 1: him back to a strange, almost forgotten chapter in US history.
Speaker 8: People often forget that in the late nineteen sixties through
Speaker 8: about the mid nineteen seventies that terrorism in the United
Speaker 8: States was really synonymous with left wing activism.
Speaker 1: At the time, the Vietnam War was tearing the country apart.
Speaker 1: Cities were burning, the air thick with tear gas and rage.
Speaker 1: Civil rights marches gave weight to violent clashes, and out
Speaker 1: of the chaos, new groups emerged.
Speaker 8: There were a number of groups of movements dedicated to
Speaker 8: social justice issues, civil rights issues, anti capitalist, Marxist issues,
Speaker 8: even ethno national issues like Puerto Rican independents that were
Speaker 8: the ones that were on the forefront of engaging in
Speaker 8: crime and violence on behalf of their beliefs.
Speaker 1: Groups like the Weather Underground and the Symbionese Liberation Army.
Speaker 9: People calling themselves members of the Weather Underground last Night
Speaker 9: planted bombs and federal office buildings in Washington and Open California.
Speaker 8: What was key in these organizations, though, was that their
Speaker 8: violence was largely symbolic. They weren't trying to hurt and
Speaker 8: kill large numbers of individuals. They were trying to attack
Speaker 8: iconic targets to draw attention to their cause.
Speaker 1: They often targeted symbols of power, banks, police stations, government offices,
Speaker 1: and they were prolific.
Speaker 8: In nineteen seventy alone, there was well over one thousand
Speaker 8: bombings that took place in the United States that were
Speaker 8: committed by these groups. Most of them did not produce
Speaker 8: fatalities or injuries. They were property crimes.
Speaker 1: The goal wasn't mass casualties. It was spectacle. These groups
Speaker 1: wanted to shake the system, not very bodies, at least
Speaker 1: not yet.
Speaker 10: You know, I always liked history as a child.
Speaker 1: That's John Fox, the FBI's official historian. He's been digging
Speaker 1: into the bureau's past since he joined in nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 10: In the nineteen seventies, we saw the FBI primarily focusing
Speaker 10: on what would be considered terrorist attacks here at home,
Speaker 10: domestic terrorist.
Speaker 1: Attacks, bombings, hijackings, shootouts. The Bureau wasn't even sure what
Speaker 1: to call it. One group made their answer loud and clear.
Speaker 11: Police are intensifying their efforts since yesterday's incidents. They're distributing
Speaker 11: this poster all over town. These four individuals are wanted
Speaker 11: by the FBI and the police in connection with several
Speaker 11: FALN bombings.
Speaker 10: The FALN was a group advocated revolution to separate Puerto
Speaker 10: Rico from the United States.
Speaker 1: The FALN or Armed Forces of National Liberation in English,
Speaker 1: a nationalist group with the cause, a manifesto, and a
Speaker 1: bomb making playbook, and unlike some of the others, they
Speaker 1: weren't just out to make noise. They wanted the government
Speaker 1: to feel it.
Speaker 10: They engaged in a series of bombings and other illegal
Speaker 10: activities to try and draw interest and concern about their
Speaker 10: cause and ultimately to spark revolutionary activity.
Speaker 1: The FALN wasn't acting in a vacuum. Their campaign fit
Speaker 1: into a much larger, older story, one that stretched back
Speaker 1: more than a century.
Speaker 10: The rise of the Puerto Rican nationalist groups traces its
Speaker 10: origins back to the mid eighteen hundreds and the rise
Speaker 10: of anarchists and revolutionary communist ideologies. But over time it
Speaker 10: broadens out as the more radical protest elements to use
Speaker 10: violence to make their point.
Speaker 1: That history of political violence wasn't confined to Puerto Rico.
Speaker 1: It mirrored a broader global pattern where ideology, identity, and
Speaker 1: armed resistance converged. Here's Michael Jensen again, this.
Speaker 8: Is the era of anti colonial movements across the globe.
Speaker 8: In places like Africa. We saw similar movements in the
Speaker 8: nineteen sixties rising up to defeat colonial powers, and in
Speaker 8: their view, they saw the United States as just that
Speaker 8: it was a colonial power. Puerto Rico had been colonized,
Speaker 8: and according to international law, they had the right to
Speaker 8: defend themselves and to defeat colonizers by any means necessary,
Speaker 8: including violence.
Speaker 1: The fal and picked up that threat and detonated it
Speaker 1: in the heart of American cities, namely New York with
Speaker 1: its large Puerto Rican community. The Big Apple became I'm
Speaker 1: a focal point. Their bombs hit Wall Street offices, the Bronx,
Speaker 1: even Middown Manhattan. Their cause Puerto Rican independence hadn't gone away,
Speaker 1: and they had no interest in fading quietly. If anything,
Speaker 1: their campaign was about to grow louder and deadlier. The
Speaker 1: ideas were already in motion. The anger had been building.
Speaker 1: Then came the moment it literally exploded. January twenty fourth,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five, was a gray winter day in Manhattan.
Speaker 1: That afternoon, an agent hurried into the squad room at
Speaker 1: the Upper east Side headquarters of the FBI.
Speaker 5: He came out and he said, Hey, I got a
Speaker 5: big bombing down in Lower Manhattan. Can you help out?
Speaker 5: So we grabbed our bags and away we what.
Speaker 1: It soon became a day that FBI agent Richard Banteu
Speaker 1: would never forget. Richard and his fellow agents drove through
Speaker 1: traffic heading south at lightning speed. Nine one one calls
Speaker 1: flooded the city's police stations to report that there'd been
Speaker 1: an explosion.
Speaker 5: We pulled up I had never heard of from since Tavern.
Speaker 1: But the target of the blast wasn't a government building,
Speaker 1: police station, or a bank. It was a quaint little
Speaker 1: lunch spot. The place, even back then, was a throwback
Speaker 1: red brick colonial charm, surrounded by the glass and steel
Speaker 1: of the Financial district. But as the FBI agents arrived
Speaker 1: that day, it wasn't business as usual.
Speaker 5: I just remember seeing an awful lot of grass within view.
Speaker 5: It was mayhem there. But let me tell you, the
Speaker 5: New York City Police had the area cording off maintained
Speaker 5: in a crime scene.
Speaker 1: Police pushed back the crowd and scanned for more bombs.
Speaker 1: First responders locked down the scene. Medics moved fast, helping
Speaker 1: the injured working triage on the sidewalk. The worst got
Speaker 1: loaded into ambulances. First fire cruise check for structural damage.
Speaker 1: What was chaos a moment ago became controlled. Nothing moved
Speaker 1: unless it had to. Every fragment, every scorch mark was
Speaker 1: potential evidence. That's where Richard came in. When he pulled
Speaker 1: up to the corner of Pearl and Broad Street in
Speaker 1: Lower Manhattan, he was hit with a signature sign of
Speaker 1: a bombing.
Speaker 5: If you go to these things, I don't care where
Speaker 5: it is, it's got to smell to it. Got to
Speaker 5: get on your hands and knees and crawl around in
Speaker 5: the dirt and the dust and see what you can find.
Speaker 1: That's where he uncovered a major clue.
Speaker 5: We started finding nails.
Speaker 1: Not from the building, but from inside the bomb.
Speaker 5: I personally think if I was building a bomb, I
Speaker 5: could have done a better job than nails, but that
Speaker 5: was just simply shrapnel.
Speaker 1: The nails may have pointed to an amateur, but the bomb.
Speaker 5: That was not just a small bomb. That turned out
Speaker 5: to be twenty two sticks of dynamite.
Speaker 1: Richard continued to crawl through the torn out tavern.
Speaker 5: And we're collecting various items which would be appropriate for
Speaker 5: starting a criminal investigation.
Speaker 1: That's when he happened upon something that will stay with
Speaker 1: him forever.
Speaker 5: I was crawling around on the floor and I remember
Speaker 5: distinctly finding something and I said to one of the investigators.
Speaker 5: I picked it up. I said, what is this? And
Speaker 5: they looked at it. They felt it. It was like sponge.
Speaker 5: I would say, no more than an inch, but it
Speaker 5: was all over. So we decided we were going to
Speaker 5: put it in a container and we started collecting it,
Speaker 5: and before it was over with, we had like a
Speaker 5: shoe box filled with this material. We couldn't figure out
Speaker 5: what it was, and it was dru happened a snutch.
Speaker 5: So we sent it off to the FBI lab with
Speaker 5: a big question mark.
Speaker 1: When they got the answer, it was something no one
Speaker 1: wanted to hear, he says.
Speaker 5: We found out what it was, I said, what's that?
Speaker 5: He says human remains. Whoever, the poor soul that was
Speaker 5: standing there when this thing went off so much force
Speaker 5: just totally took his torso and blew it to little
Speaker 5: pieces like that.
Speaker 1: The attack killed four people and injured over sixty. Countless
Speaker 1: more were impacted in ways that would stay with them forever, wives, husbands, friends, families, children.
Speaker 6: My name is Joe Connor, and my father was murdered
Speaker 6: by the Faln Puerto Rican Marxist terrorists on January twenty fourth,
Speaker 6: nineteen seventy five, at Francis Tavern.
Speaker 1: On the day of the bombing, Joe was just nine
Speaker 1: years old. His father was Frank Connor. Frank was a
Speaker 1: young banker who left his home in New Jersey every
Speaker 1: day to go to his job in New York City's
Speaker 1: financial district. In the evening, he'd return home to his
Speaker 1: wife and to play with his two sons.
Speaker 6: My father was a New York City kid, the son.
Speaker 1: Of immigrants in pursuit of the American dream.
Speaker 6: My grandmother got a job as a cleaning lady at
Speaker 6: the old Morgan Bank Morgan Guarantee Trust Company, and she
Speaker 6: worked nights so she could be home with my father
Speaker 6: during the day.
Speaker 1: In high school, Frank's mom helped him get a job
Speaker 1: at the bank. He started off as a clerk and
Speaker 1: eventually worked his way up to assistant vice president. Frank
Speaker 1: was nineteen when he first met his wife, Joe's mom,
Speaker 1: at a dance in New York's Old City Center.
Speaker 6: She just saw the back of his head at first
Speaker 6: and said, I want to dance with that guy. And
Speaker 6: her friends are laughing at her, saying, you don't even
Speaker 6: know what he looks like, and he turned around and
Speaker 6: asked her to dance out of nowhere so she knew.
Speaker 12: Then.
Speaker 1: The two married and had three boys. The youngest son
Speaker 1: passed away at a very young age, leaving the Connors
Speaker 1: a family of four. The family moved to New Jersey.
Speaker 1: Frank juggled night school, a day job, and together with
Speaker 1: his wife, raising two boys, but he also found time
Speaker 1: for some fun.
Speaker 6: He had tons of friends, more than I've ever had, really, Like,
Speaker 6: they moved to New Jersey and the next thing you know,
Speaker 6: they have a bar in the basement, and you know,
Speaker 6: it was like the early seventies and people like seem
Speaker 6: to have a lot of fun, and there was always
Speaker 6: people around, and he was good to be.
Speaker 1: Around, even with the long hours in full house. Frank
Speaker 1: always made room for what mattered most time with his boys.
Speaker 6: My brother's two years older, so whenever we would like
Speaker 6: as a family do stuff like together, so we might
Speaker 6: go down and play basketball whatever, it was always Tom
Speaker 6: and my mom on the same team and me and
Speaker 6: my dad because I was the youngest, so it was
Speaker 6: always us two on the same team. So I always
Speaker 6: felt like, yeah, you know, he's my teammate to me,
Speaker 6: you know, he could do anything.
Speaker 1: To Frank's boys, he was their hero.
Speaker 6: My brother had just made his communion and my dad
Speaker 6: was going to take his communion money and spend it
Speaker 6: on a tent because we want to go camping. So
Speaker 6: we were at the sporting good store and I saw
Speaker 6: Tom sever Mit autographed by Tom sever and you know,
Speaker 6: anyone who lived around here in the early seventies, my god,
Speaker 6: Tom sever So that's what I wanted, but he was
Speaker 6: like looking at me, like, you know, we can't afford that.
Speaker 6: So I went home and I didn't get my Mit.
Speaker 6: And a couple of days later, I guess I was
Speaker 6: hanging out down at the park and Tom came down
Speaker 6: and said, Dad wants to see and I'm like, oh god,
Speaker 6: what did I do now? So I rode my bike
Speaker 6: home and when I got home, there.
Speaker 10: Was the mit.
Speaker 6: That was something I'll never forget and I'll always treasure
Speaker 6: because he didn't have to get that for me.
Speaker 10: He didn't.
Speaker 6: It wasn't my birthday or.
Speaker 1: Anything, but there would soon come a birthday that will
Speaker 1: stick with Joe forever. January twenty fourth, eighteen seventy five
Speaker 1: was planned to be a special day.
Speaker 6: We were going to be celebrating my ninth birthday, which
Speaker 6: was January twentieth. On my brother's eleventh, They'd.
Speaker 1: Already celebrated with friends, so this Friday was just going
Speaker 1: to be family. The brothers went to school, their mom
Speaker 1: stayed home preparing their favorite dinner. Frank went to work
Speaker 1: in downtown New York City, as he always did. That day,
Speaker 1: Frank had lunch plans with two clients. At the last minute,
Speaker 1: the location of their lunch moved to a different restaurant.
Speaker 6: There was a problem with the reservation, so they decided
Speaker 6: they would walk down to Frances, which is right around
Speaker 6: the block.
Speaker 1: The men sat down at a table in the tavern,
Speaker 1: ordered their food and talked while they ate.
Speaker 6: They were getting to the end of their meal, and
Speaker 6: I think the check had just come. One of the guys,
Speaker 6: Charlie Murray, talked about seeing a guy come in that
Speaker 6: kind of looked out of place with a knapsack, set
Speaker 6: it on a stair behind their table where they were sitting,
Speaker 6: and I think I was scruffy looking.
Speaker 1: This was Wall Street in nineteen seventy five. People dressed
Speaker 1: to impress, sharp suits, crisp white shirts, and polus shoes,
Speaker 1: business formal with a hint of swagger, not scruff so
Speaker 1: someone like.
Speaker 6: This guy would look very out of place. He dropped
Speaker 6: his package and walked out, and within a couple of
Speaker 6: minutes it detonated.
Speaker 1: The blast tore through the restaurant, shattering windows and collapsing walls.
Speaker 6: It was about twenty five pounds of explosives and shrapnel,
Speaker 6: absolutely intended to inflict as much death as it could.
Speaker 1: Word of the attack hadn't yet traveled the seventeen miles
Speaker 1: northwest to te Neeck, New Jersey.
Speaker 6: Tom and I went to school and came home and
Speaker 6: went out to play.
Speaker 1: Then Joe heard his mother scream, and the afternoon warped
Speaker 1: from a day of soon to be birthday celebrations into
Speaker 1: something surreal.
Speaker 6: She called us in from playing and she said there
Speaker 6: had been an explosion downtown and she told us my
Speaker 6: dad was there.
Speaker 1: At first, Joe assumed the best a child's instinct to
Speaker 1: believe that their parent is invincible.
Speaker 6: I remember thinking, well, he's probably injured. He was my dad, right,
Speaker 6: He's indestructible.
Speaker 1: His mother's intuition said otherwise.
Speaker 6: She had called him at work and someone else picked up,
Speaker 6: and she said she knew immediately that he was killed.
Speaker 1: Nine year old Joe still held on to hope.
Speaker 6: I remember thinking, well, he's probably like buried under debris,
Speaker 6: you know, bricks or rock or something. The fireman will
Speaker 6: will get them, you know, they'll find them and it'll
Speaker 6: be okay.
Speaker 1: But as people began arriving at the house, family friends, coworkers,
Speaker 1: the silence was telling.
Speaker 6: We got the news a few hours later.
Speaker 1: That night, the young boys crawled into bed with their mom,
Speaker 1: the three of them huddled together in grief, still in
Speaker 1: shock and trying to make sense of what happened.
Speaker 6: I remember asking, my mom, is Grandma's still our grandmother?
Speaker 6: And you know my mom was great? She said, well, absolutely,
Speaker 6: in very strong terms, which was very reassuring, because then
Speaker 6: I kind of knew that the family'd be kept together.
Speaker 1: In that moment, Joe Connor wasn't thinking about terrorism, or politics,
Speaker 1: or his decades of advocacy that would follow. He was
Speaker 1: just a child who lost his father, confused about what
Speaker 1: happens to families when someone dies, not wanting his to
Speaker 1: fall apart.
Speaker 6: It was devastating to go one minute from celebrating your
Speaker 6: ninth birthday with your dad to him being dead for
Speaker 6: no reason.
Speaker 1: Trying to move through such trauma and grief is unthinking
Speaker 1: doable to most people, let alone for a child, But
Speaker 1: human beings often proved to be remarkably resilient even in
Speaker 1: the wake of incredible tragedy.
Speaker 6: As mc Grandma Conor would say, we just did the
Speaker 6: best we could.
Speaker 1: In the days following the January nineteen seventy five bombing
Speaker 1: at New York City's Francis Tavern, the Connor family soon
Speaker 1: learned who was responsible.
Speaker 6: They left a communic kee around the corner from Frances
Speaker 6: in a phone booth. For those of you old enough
Speaker 6: to know what a phone booth is, it left words
Speaker 6: to the effect that this was an attack by the
Speaker 6: Faln Armed Forces for Puerto Rican Independence, who hit reactionary
Speaker 6: corporate executives is the terms that they used, and that's
Speaker 6: a very Marxist type language.
Speaker 1: Michael Jensen says that message was rooted in retaliation.
Speaker 8: The reason that they did this is because there had
Speaker 8: been a bombing that occurred in Puerto Rico in which
Speaker 8: a couple of young independence activists had been killed. The
Speaker 8: group blamed the CIA for orchestrating this bombing, and the
Speaker 8: Francis Tavern bombing was their response to it.
Speaker 1: And the location of the attack wasn't chosen at random.
Speaker 1: Here again is John Fox.
Speaker 10: The Francis Tavern traces back to our revolutionary days and
Speaker 10: was a key meeting place for some of the planning
Speaker 10: and peoples who were involved in our revolution back in
Speaker 10: the mid seventeen seventies.
Speaker 6: You know, it's where George Washington bade farewell to his
Speaker 6: officers after the revolutionary war. It's really historic and significant place.
Speaker 6: It's where Alexander Hamilton and the Sons of Liberty met.
Speaker 6: It was chosen for that very reason as a target.
Speaker 1: By bombing it, the the FALN sent a calculated message
Speaker 1: they weren't just fighting for Puerto Rican independence, they were
Speaker 1: striking at the very foundations of the American identity. But
Speaker 1: this wasn't just cryptic symbolism. As Michael Jensen puts it,
Speaker 1: it was a turning point.
Speaker 8: It was really like a departure for the organization in
Speaker 8: its level of violence. The fla in actually went out
Speaker 8: of their way to commit attack in which they knew
Speaker 8: people would be hurt and killed.
Speaker 1: Until then, most domestic bombings were late night blasts, empty offices, statements,
Speaker 1: without bloodshed. France's tavern was different. This wasn't an accident.
Speaker 1: John Fox says, it was a shift in tactics.
Speaker 10: The bombings claimed by the FALN were aimed at at
Speaker 10: least some civilian casualties. Placed and detonated around the lunch hour,
Speaker 10: obviously meant to be a more high pro file and
Speaker 10: populated event.
Speaker 1: Francis Tavern marked a pivot to deadly force. The bomb
Speaker 1: was timed and placed for maximum civilian impact. It wasn't
Speaker 1: aimed at anyone in particular, but that was exactly the point.
Speaker 1: The explosion was meant to kill whoever happened to be
Speaker 1: there at that very moment.
Speaker 6: My father moved his table. If he didn't, we wouldn't
Speaker 6: be having this conversation, might be talking to somebody else.
Speaker 6: That's why terrorism works. That's why terrorism works as a
Speaker 6: political tool because it's random and it's indiscriminate. It doesn't
Speaker 6: care who you are. Anyone can die at any point.
Speaker 6: I think people really need to understand that that no
Speaker 6: one's immune from this crap, and you don't have to
Speaker 6: go around your life worrying about it, but you do
Speaker 6: kind of have to understand that it can happen. It
Speaker 6: could happen to anybody.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, this is how we understand terrorism to work today.
Speaker 1: Leans meant not only to destroy, but also to shock,
Speaker 1: spread fear, and force attention. But in nineteen seventy five
Speaker 1: that idea hadn't fully taken hold. It was a lesson
Speaker 1: being learned in real time. As this new brutal reality
Speaker 1: became clear, law enforcement also needed to pivot to try
Speaker 1: and tackle it, and as the bombs kept exploding, they
Speaker 1: would need to make a plan and fast. The bombing
Speaker 1: at Francis Tavern sent shockwaves through New York City. The
Speaker 1: FBI quickly ramped up its surveillance and cracked down of
Speaker 1: the Faln.
Speaker 6: They never left the news cycle, and they couldn't catch them.
Speaker 1: Despite the pressure and urgency, the fal In seemingly stayed
Speaker 1: one step ahead. They vanished into safe houses and silence,
Speaker 1: leaving investigators with little left to track. But over time
Speaker 1: law enforcement did make headway.
Speaker 9: There was an unnumbered, undated Communica's that body fail and
Speaker 9: logo that used the rhetoric that has become quite common
Speaker 9: in their communic cayse.
Speaker 10: There were a number of FALN members arrested over the
Speaker 10: coming years. Several of them were associated with the frances
Speaker 10: tavern bombing.
Speaker 1: Arrest trickled and slowly, some tied to bomb plots, others
Speaker 1: to weapons stockpiles, and some suspected in the France's tavern attack.
Speaker 6: These guys were extremely disciplined. They left one fingerprint in
Speaker 6: there one hundred and thirty bombings, but other than that,
Speaker 6: they were absolutely clean in the way that they went
Speaker 6: about their business. They were Cuban trained, financed to a
Speaker 6: large degree the art of spycraft through the Cuban intelligence services.
Speaker 6: So the FBI and the MPD really didn't know what
Speaker 6: they were up against with these guys.
Speaker 1: And at the center of the f ALN's destruction was
Speaker 1: still out there as dedicated to the cause as he'd
Speaker 1: ever been. Here's Michael Jensen again.
Speaker 8: William Morales was the f ALNS chief bomb maker, and
Speaker 8: he was discovered in nineteen seventy eight because he accidentally
Speaker 8: detonated an explosive device in which he severely injured himself
Speaker 8: and disfigured himself. That's how the authorities came to identify
Speaker 8: and to nab him.
Speaker 11: When the bomb exploded yesterday, it blew up in the
Speaker 11: hands and face of William Morales. Today police told us
Speaker 11: that they've known for some time of Morales's link to
Speaker 11: f ALN suspect Carlos Alberto Torres.
Speaker 1: He'd been building bombs in a secret apartment in Queens
Speaker 1: and you may know the saying, if you play with fire,
Speaker 1: eventually you get burned.
Speaker 6: On what would have been by dad's thirty seventh birthday,
Speaker 6: July twelfth, nineteen seventy eight, William Morales was torking a
Speaker 6: pipe bomb when it exploded. There must have been some
Speaker 6: of the explosive got caught in the treads and when
Speaker 6: he torqued, it blew up and blew off nine of
Speaker 6: his fingers, one of his eyes, and ripped through the
Speaker 6: Queen's bomb factory.
Speaker 1: But even mangled and half blind, his self declared mission
Speaker 1: came first.
Speaker 6: He immediately turned on the gas in the place and
Speaker 6: went into the bathroom to try to shred evidence.
Speaker 1: While severely injured, Morales survived.
Speaker 8: He was arrested, He was charged and convicted, sentenced to
Speaker 8: eighty nine ninety years in prison. He actually ended up
Speaker 8: escaping from a prison ward out of Bellevue Hospital, and
Speaker 8: he eventually made his way to Cuba and Castro gave
Speaker 8: him safe haven there.
Speaker 1: Instead of serving out his sentence, Morales has remained in Cuba,
Speaker 1: avoiding accountability. And for Joe, it felt like a second
Speaker 1: kind of trauma, a betrayal.
Speaker 6: This is a guy with one finger and one eye
Speaker 6: being that dedicated to his cause. That event woke us up.
Speaker 6: That was jarring, and to me, Morales became the face
Speaker 6: of the faln in my head. And you know, faln
Speaker 6: and ev il felt like they were the same word
Speaker 6: to me.
Speaker 1: For decades, Joe fought to bring Morales back to the
Speaker 1: United States.
Speaker 6: I started writing letters to the State Department, to the
Speaker 6: Justice Department, to Secretary of State and warn Christopher. I
Speaker 6: think was at the time, because I wanted Morales return.
Speaker 6: That was before we even had emails, so these were
Speaker 6: letters and I still have some of them. They you know,
Speaker 6: were sent back and forth where the you know, they
Speaker 6: acknowledged that, you know, he's Morales is there, he's a terrorist,
Speaker 6: but we have no extradition treaty with Cuba, which as
Speaker 6: it turns out, isn't exactly true. So I really kind
Speaker 6: of pushed that, and.
Speaker 8: To this day there are still demands for him to
Speaker 8: be extradited back to the United States to serve out
Speaker 8: his sentence.
Speaker 1: There's obviously much more to this story and many more
Speaker 1: layers to go, and we'll get to some of that,
Speaker 1: but for right now, this is the point to remember.
Speaker 6: No one was held accountable, specifically for my dad's murder.
Speaker 1: It's another type of wound that remains open for the victims,
Speaker 1: the survivors, and those impacted by the blast. No justice
Speaker 1: for the four who were murdered by that bomb.
Speaker 6: It was my dad, Alejandro Berger, and Jim Gezork.
Speaker 1: And the fourth victim, Harold Sherburn, succumbed to his wounds
Speaker 1: at the hospital. For the ones who made it out alive.
Speaker 6: Bill Newhall was at the table and he survived and
Speaker 6: he's still passing shrapnel. He still has hearing issues. He
Speaker 6: says this will eventually kill him. Just didn't happen that day.
Speaker 1: Each tragedy affects not only the actual victims, It goes
Speaker 1: many more layers deep.
Speaker 6: My kids even are affected by it, and they never
Speaker 6: met their grandfather. I mean, my poor kids. They had
Speaker 6: nothing to do with any of this, but they've suffered
Speaker 6: because of when had happened, and probably from my fighting it.
Speaker 1: As the survivors of the Francis tavern bombing continued to reel,
Speaker 1: law enforcements scrambled to tackle this growing threat, and they
Speaker 1: were building the system while under fire. While threats multiplied
Speaker 1: in the shadows, from separatists and nationalists to far left radicals,
Speaker 1: the blueprint on how to carry out these attacks was
Speaker 1: spreading faster than their response, and as the enemy evolved,
Speaker 1: America's defenses looked for new ways to meet the threat.
Speaker 10: In the nineteen seventies, the assignment of responsibility and even
Speaker 10: the definitions of crimes related to such things weren't always cleared,
Speaker 10: and often in times the state or local police would
Speaker 10: take precedence.
Speaker 1: It was a patchwork response to a national problem. Departments
Speaker 1: agencies both local and national continued to respond, but the
Speaker 1: one thing they lacked was an actual integrated system. While
Speaker 1: they shared, there was no real time intelligence sharing. They
Speaker 1: worked together, yet not as a unified front. Federal agents,
Speaker 1: bomb squads, arson units all working parallel cases rather than
Speaker 1: lock and step. And as the dust was still settling
Speaker 1: from the Francis Tavern bombing, terror struck again, we had
Speaker 1: to up the.
Speaker 12: Jane juppet program to bring you this further update in
Speaker 12: connection with the tragic disaster at LaGuardia Airport tonight, in
Speaker 12: which a powerful bomb explosion that devastated the baggage area
Speaker 12: in the main terminal at the airport killed at least
Speaker 12: twelve persons and injured at least seventy five others.
Speaker 2: Next time on Law and Order Criminal Justice System.
Speaker 5: R Ricola switchboard, saying there's been a bombing at the
Speaker 5: TWA terminal.
Speaker 12: The explosion actually impelled building material, metal glad bodies inside.
Speaker 4: There was an extensive fire.
Speaker 8: This really was the era of mass bombing campaigns, and
Speaker 8: the FBI had a very very long list of usual
Speaker 8: suspects to go through to try to figure out who
Speaker 8: did this.
Speaker 10: Some suspected fal and others suspected Croatian nationalists.
Speaker 2: Law and Order Criminal Justice System is a production of
Speaker 2: Wolf Entertainment and iHeart Podcasts. Our host is Anna Sega Nicolazzi.
Speaker 2: The show was written by Cooper Mall, Executive produced by
Speaker 2: Dick Wolf, Elliot Wolf and Even Michael at Wolf Entertainment
Speaker 2: on behalf of iHeart Podcasts. Executive producers Trevor Young and
Speaker 2: Matt Frederick, with supervising producer Chandler Mays and producer Jesse Funk.
Speaker 2: This season is executive produced by Anna Sega Nicolazzi. Our
Speaker 2: researchers are Luke Stantz and Carolyn Tolmage. Editing and sound
Speaker 2: designed by Trevor Young and Jesse Funk. Original music by
Speaker 2: John O'Hara, original theme by Mike Post with additional music
Speaker 2: by Steve Moore and additional voice over by me Steve Zernkelton.
Speaker 2: Special thanks to Fox five in New York for providing
Speaker 2: archival material for the show. For more podcasts from iHeart
Speaker 2: in Wolf Entertainment, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 2: wherever you get your favorite shows. Thanks for listening.