Speaker 1: This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2: He saw a shine in his eyes and a smile
Speaker 2: on his face and felt that he was being played with,
Speaker 2: and because he's being played with like a cat and
Speaker 2: mouse or whatever else, he needed to take action.
Speaker 1: I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
Speaker 1: in Austin, Texas. I'm also the co host of the
Speaker 1: podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and throughout my career,
Speaker 1: research for my many audio and book projects has taken
Speaker 1: me around the world. On Wicked Words, I sit down
Speaker 1: with the people I've met along the way, amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers,
Speaker 1: and podcasters who have investigated and reported on notorious true
Speaker 1: crime cases. This is about the choices writers make, both
Speaker 1: good and bad, and it's a deep dive into the
Speaker 1: unpublished details behind their stories. We're talking about a very
Speaker 1: famous case this week. In nineteen eighty four, Bernie Gets
Speaker 1: shot four black teenagers on a subway in Manhattan. He
Speaker 1: was hailed as a hero in the press, a man
Speaker 1: who stopped would be robbers. But as the public learned
Speaker 1: more about the evidence and about Gets himself, the stories
Speaker 1: seem to shift. Elliott Williams is a CNN legal analyst
Speaker 1: and former federal prosecutor, and he wrote a book about
Speaker 1: the case called Five Bullets. The story of Bernie Gets
Speaker 1: New York's explosive eighties and the subway vigilante trial that
Speaker 1: divided the nation. Give me context for where we are,
Speaker 1: what time period, and what is New York City like
Speaker 1: in this time period.
Speaker 2: No one can really comprehend today what nineteen eighties and
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies New York really looked like. When we think
Speaker 2: about Labradoodal New York, when we think about Lululemon and
Speaker 2: Whole Foods New York, and Skyscraper New York and Tech
Speaker 2: Company New York, it's very different than the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 2: And the world of this book is a gritty, grimy
Speaker 2: place that's just not the New York of our imagination.
Speaker 2: Think about some of the films that came out of
Speaker 2: the nineteen seventies about New York City, Death Wish, which
Speaker 2: comes up a lot in my book Saturday Night Fever.
Speaker 2: The Warriors Escape from New York are all about somewhat
Speaker 2: of a healthscape where it's rough, it's dirty, it's overcome
Speaker 2: with litter, the city faces rampant corruption scandals. The city
Speaker 2: is broken, mismanaged and seeking bailouts from the federal government.
Speaker 2: It's firing teachers and sanitation workers. In nineteen seventy seven,
Speaker 2: there's a blackout, which happens in every municipality in America,
Speaker 2: and I start the book Five Bullets with this. But
Speaker 2: the blackout, unlike say the blackout in two thousand and
Speaker 2: three that many listeners might be familiar with, where people
Speaker 2: are outside doing the waltz on the street and rolling
Speaker 2: out there their barbecues and having cookouts and cooking jerk
Speaker 2: chicken and sipping mimosas it becomes the most vicious single
Speaker 2: evening in New York City history. Literally, The New York Post,
Speaker 2: I believe, our time magazine Pardon calls it twenty four
Speaker 2: hours of terror, where arson, looting, homicide, assaults just take
Speaker 2: the city over. And that's indicative of how rough New
Speaker 2: York City was at the time. Homicide rate was I believe,
Speaker 2: seventeen hundred a year, which is about four or five
Speaker 2: times greater than it is now. So it's just a
Speaker 2: different place and like nothing we've seen today.
Speaker 1: I was in New York in two thousand and four.
Speaker 1: I lived in New York off and on for about
Speaker 1: ten years. In two thousand and four, I think, and
Speaker 1: we had a blackout, and I was scared to death
Speaker 1: because I had read all about the seventy seven blackout,
Speaker 1: and yeah, it was pretty much the way you described.
Speaker 1: I was in the East Village in Tompkins Square Park.
Speaker 1: They were doing bongo drums. And what was nice about
Speaker 1: the time period where I lived in New York was
Speaker 1: when that happened. You have bodega's and they're passing out
Speaker 1: free water because of course they have no electricity. And
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, people were really pulling together. And
Speaker 1: of course this is post nine to eleven. So in
Speaker 1: eighty four when your story is taking place, who is
Speaker 1: in charge? I am mixed up between Dinkins or who's
Speaker 1: the mayor at this time?
Speaker 2: This is Coach, this is Kach, and this is Ed
Speaker 2: Koch at his height, and he gets re elected in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty five. Really at his peak, he was New
Speaker 2: York City had had a string of Look, everybody's a
Speaker 2: Democrat for the most part, or a Republican who today
Speaker 2: would be a Democrat. In John V. Lindsay, who was
Speaker 2: mayor two mayors before, but the mayor I spoke about
Speaker 2: the rampant corruption and problematic that was Abraham Beam, who
Speaker 2: was the mayor before. Kach Koch gets elected really on
Speaker 2: a law and order and sort of toughness platform, on
Speaker 2: a centrist We are not safe. Public safety is a
Speaker 2: big concern in the city. I represent you Brooklyn, part
Speaker 2: of me, Brooklyn, parts of Brooklyn, but definitely Queens and
Speaker 2: Staten Island and the sort of outer Borrows and the
Speaker 2: working class ethnic whites. And really we're big fans of him.
Speaker 2: Cotchin eighty five, So just after, really just after the
Speaker 2: incident in my book, Cotchin eighty five gets elected and
Speaker 2: I think the first mayor ever to get elected on
Speaker 2: both the Democratic and Republican Party platforms and like seventy
Speaker 2: five percent of the vote. So he's at his height,
Speaker 2: and he's sort of the guy who, for better or
Speaker 2: for worse, is credited in many ways for kind of
Speaker 2: turning around or at least starting the turnaround of New
Speaker 2: York City from the grit and the grime to the
Speaker 2: you know, like I said, labradoodal New York. Now, if
Speaker 2: anybody's read the book Gods of New York by Jonathan Maller,
Speaker 2: which came out in twenty twenty five in the summer.
Speaker 2: It sort of picks up where my book leaves off.
Speaker 2: Where my book is about the grit and grime of
Speaker 2: the late seventies into the early nineteen eighties, and one
Speaker 2: emblematic incident that came from that. His about the rebirth
Speaker 2: of New York from eighty six to nineteen ninety, and
Speaker 2: you sort of some of the characters transfer from one
Speaker 2: to another and sort of an interesting arc of a
Speaker 2: city in crisis, which is really what my book was about.
Speaker 1: Now, let's talk about the racial tensions, which I know
Speaker 1: you know really play such a large part in your book.
Speaker 1: Describe what this is like, Is this sort of segregation
Speaker 1: situation in the city where you don't have people living
Speaker 1: together as they might now or what really was it like?
Speaker 2: It was rough? And something I refer to in the
Speaker 2: book Five Bullets is this idea of there's a racial incident,
Speaker 2: there's a protest and unrest. Al Sharpton shows up, the
Speaker 2: mayor issues a statement calling for calm. It blows over
Speaker 2: and then simmers underneath the surface until the next one
Speaker 2: happens about a year later, and New York city through
Speaker 2: starting in the late seventies deep into the frankly into
Speaker 2: the nineteen nineties. I clocked it ATCHI probably about every
Speaker 2: year year and a half there was some major above
Speaker 2: the fold incident that galvanized and just sort of got
Speaker 2: in the city's consciousness. Now, obviously there's Bernard Getzen. I
Speaker 2: assume we're going to talk about that a little bit today,
Speaker 2: the corusue in the book Five Bullets. But then in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty three, I believe Eleanor Bumpers is shot by
Speaker 2: police officers in her home during an eviction with a
Speaker 2: shotg They shoot her with a shotgun. She's being evicted,
Speaker 2: but she's also a grandmother who's mentally ill and naked
Speaker 2: as they kill her, and that causes a big polarization
Speaker 2: in the city. There's Howard Beach and benson Hurst and
Speaker 2: Crown Heights, and I throw them all out together because
Speaker 2: even having grown up there, they all blur together. For me.
Speaker 2: One of them is the guy who's looking for a
Speaker 2: pontiac in a neighborhood in Brooklyn, in a white neighborhood
Speaker 2: in Brooklyn, These white guys with baseball bats and guns
Speaker 2: or screaming ethnic slurs at him, telling him to get
Speaker 2: out because they thought he was there to meet white girls.
Speaker 2: So they chase him, run him down. He ends up
Speaker 2: getting hit by a cars he's crossing a highway. Another one,
Speaker 2: same thing, crossing into the wrong side of town, chased
Speaker 2: down and beaten to death by baseball bat wheeling white guys.
Speaker 2: That Benson Hurston, Howard Beach. I just can't remember which
Speaker 2: one was which Crown Heights was Lebovich. Jewish caravan runs
Speaker 2: over a couple kids, two of them, one gets injured,
Speaker 2: one dies, a boy named Gavin Cato, and that causes
Speaker 2: a lot of black and Orthodox Jewish tension. And ultimately
Speaker 2: that was a big one at the center. You saw
Speaker 2: Al Sharpton at the center of it. I talk about
Speaker 2: it quite a bit in the book. That got really
Speaker 2: ugly because there was a lot of rioting and looting
Speaker 2: of Jewish businesses in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Then you move
Speaker 2: later into the nineteen eighties, you get the Central Park five,
Speaker 2: which everybody knows about, which these five young men accused
Speaker 2: of a horrific sexual assault ends up to be inaccurate.
Speaker 2: Donald Trump, then just a real estate developer takes out
Speaker 2: an ad in the New York Times calling for their
Speaker 2: ex acution. There was Amadu Diallo, an immigrant, standing on
Speaker 2: his porch holding a wallet that police shot him forty
Speaker 2: one times. So anyway, all of this happens, and it's
Speaker 2: literally every year from probably seventy seven, seventy eight to
Speaker 2: up into the nineties, and they just kept happening, and
Speaker 2: it was just simmering under the surface in a way
Speaker 2: that we all internalize, I think as people from the area.
Speaker 1: What was the safety like on the subway system in
Speaker 1: the eighties, because you know, I lived in New York
Speaker 1: starting I would say ninety seven until probably about you know,
Speaker 1: two thousand and four, two thousand and five, and I
Speaker 1: felt safe on the subways. Now, I was also not
Speaker 1: somebody riding the subways at midnight. Yeah, and you know
Speaker 1: I was living in Lower Manhattan. So what was it
Speaker 1: like in the eighties? I suspect a little scary depending
Speaker 1: on where you were.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and no doubt. And I was in the
Speaker 2: city because I was in law school at that time
Speaker 2: in the city from ninety eight to two really, and
Speaker 2: so at the same time, the subway was not bad
Speaker 2: at that point. It was not. And by then the
Speaker 2: cars had started getting modernized and so on, so it
Speaker 2: was just a different experience. The subway was rough, and
Speaker 2: something I talk about a fair amount in the book
Speaker 2: is the amount of crime that took place in the
Speaker 2: subway also was at an all time high, where you're
Speaker 2: talking about hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of assaults, snatches
Speaker 2: and grabs, whatever the grammatical plural would be. But the
Speaker 2: assaults not many homicides or serious serious assaults, but bad ones,
Speaker 2: really horrible things that made daily life exceptionally difficult for people.
Speaker 2: Now another one, and I'm not going to come out
Speaker 2: here embracing the broken windows theory of policing, which is
Speaker 2: that brit and grime and roughness make people commit worse crimes. Right,
Speaker 2: That was the whole thing with Giuliani in the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 2: But New York City's subways were dirty. They were a
Speaker 2: place that people through their trash, people went to the bathroom,
Speaker 2: they were all and I talk about this in the book.
Speaker 2: Every subway car in nineteen whatever year, every single one,
Speaker 2: every single inch of every single one was covered in graffiti.
Speaker 2: And it became a contest among graffiti artists who have
Speaker 2: tagged at least one subway car in every one of
Speaker 2: the five boroughs, and they were called kings. You became
Speaker 2: a king if you tagged up graffiti in every one
Speaker 2: of the burrows of the city. Now again you look
Speaker 2: at them now and their relics. In many ways, they're
Speaker 2: almost beautiful and there if you were to wash one
Speaker 2: down and just see the graffiti covering them, it's a
Speaker 2: fascinating artistic group of compositions. That said, it is all
Speaker 2: indicative of how rough the subway was. Signs didn't work,
Speaker 2: maps didn't work, windows were broken. Trains were constantly breaking
Speaker 2: down and on fire and derailing at a rate far
Speaker 2: more than any subway system we could think of today. Now,
Speaker 2: obviously you hear about sometimes fires or derail the unhappy.
Speaker 2: It's a cost of machinery in our world. But it
Speaker 2: was really bad, and people relied on the subway. They
Speaker 2: needed it. It is the best way to get around
Speaker 2: New York City. But it was rough.
Speaker 1: What about the transit police? Were they understaffed? I can't
Speaker 1: imagine they weren't. Aren't they always?
Speaker 2: Oh, horribly horribly understaffed, horribly understaffed and also not fully
Speaker 2: And I say this having worked in law enforcement for
Speaker 2: quite some time before being a journalist. They were never
Speaker 2: fully syncd up with the NYPD, and so their radios
Speaker 2: were on different frequencies, for instance. And so you would
Speaker 2: have a major incident underground and both NYPD and New
Speaker 2: York Transit cops were working on it, but they couldn't
Speaker 2: talk to each other over their walkie talkie. So that's
Speaker 2: just the incompetence of eighties New York that set some
Speaker 2: of the scene here.
Speaker 1: Let's go ahead and get into the crux of the book.
Speaker 1: Is the incident that happened that sparked all of this.
Speaker 1: Tell me about the day that it happened. And let's
Speaker 1: start with the victims, who were the four teenage the
Speaker 1: four black teenage who were on the subway when they
Speaker 1: encounter burning gets that day.
Speaker 2: Okay, so there's four eighteen and nineteen year old young men.
Speaker 2: They live in a housing project called Claremont Village. It's
Speaker 2: regarded as a heralded facility, if you want to call
Speaker 2: it that, but a heralded concept in public housing where
Speaker 2: they combined all of these edifices under one major, massive,
Speaker 2: sprawling complex. It's really now the size literally of a
Speaker 2: small college campus. It's I think it was thirty thousand residents,
Speaker 2: although up to seventy thousand lived in it because people had,
Speaker 2: you know, would multi generational families and friends living together
Speaker 2: and so on. So it was this crowded, big housing project.
Speaker 2: And to be clear, you know, we were talking about
Speaker 2: safety a bit. The projects in the early nineteen eighties
Speaker 2: were quite safe for people who lived there. It wasn't
Speaker 2: until the introduction of crack cocaine in nineteen eighty five
Speaker 2: to New York City that really made that the projects
Speaker 2: what we think of today as this place of crime
Speaker 2: and grit and so on. It pushed a lot of
Speaker 2: the crime into the housing projects. So these four guys
Speaker 2: live relatively, I don't want to say, not cloistered, but
Speaker 2: they had family lives Daryl Caby, Barry Allen, Troy Knty,
Speaker 2: and James Ramsur. Darryl Caby is the most interesting story,
Speaker 2: or the most sort of heart wrenching story of all
Speaker 2: the people. He grew up with his mother, Shirley. He
Speaker 2: lived with her and a bunch of siblings in the house. Well,
Speaker 2: his dad wasn't around because his dad was a taxi
Speaker 2: driver who'd gotten run over by his own cab because
Speaker 2: he was fighting off a carjacker, which might be the
Speaker 2: most single nineteen eighties Claremont Village, Bronx, New York story
Speaker 2: of all the others. They'd known each other, they'd engaged
Speaker 2: in some crimes together, but really they were young men
Speaker 2: in and around the projects, so they'd interacted together and
Speaker 2: committed some crimes together. The big one that they where
Speaker 2: they knew each other from was a common crime from
Speaker 2: young men of that time, and it was breaking open
Speaker 2: video game machines downtown. So fun bit of history. Right
Speaker 2: around nineteen eighty or so, the video game Space Invaders
Speaker 2: is invented, is it comes out and creates a boom
Speaker 2: in video arcades across the United States. Well, because there
Speaker 2: was all this this new concept of video game machines
Speaker 2: became really widespread in businesses like bars and bodegas that
Speaker 2: took a lot of cash. Well, the problem is that
Speaker 2: a video game machine, if you ever looked at one,
Speaker 2: was a giant piggy bank. It can hold hundreds, if
Speaker 2: not thousands, of dollars at a time. Well, the guys were
Speaker 2: going downtown to break open video game machines. It was
Speaker 2: a common crime. It just is what everybody did. You
Speaker 2: just get a screwdriver. Pop it open. One guy pretends
Speaker 2: to play the game while other guys pop it open.
Speaker 2: You just grab the quarters and run away. Well, they
Speaker 2: were on the subway. They had a couple screwdrivers on them.
Speaker 2: Pay attention there. And we're on the subway heading downtown
Speaker 2: to Pace University in Lower Manhattan to break video game machines.
Speaker 2: And they get on this train around midday. They're goofing around.
Speaker 2: They're causing noise, they're doing pull ups on the bars,
Speaker 2: they're shadow boxing, and they're also going around to different
Speaker 2: people on the train asking for cigarettes and matches and
Speaker 2: causing certainly a disturbance. Now some of the people think, eh,
Speaker 2: I don't I'm not crazy about how these guys are behaving.
Speaker 2: But and maybe even some even got up to move.
Speaker 2: But no one was directly threatened by them or injured
Speaker 2: by them.
Speaker 1: So these guys are sort of troublemakers. No violence in
Speaker 1: their history that you know of.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's definitely violence in their history. No violence on
Speaker 2: this train, like they certainly two of them, and I
Speaker 2: want to say Ramser and one other I want to
Speaker 2: say Canty or KB had gotten They knew each other
Speaker 2: through a fist fight, through their buddies, like one of
Speaker 2: them had gotten like I think, and forgive me it's
Speaker 2: I think it was Kanty's brother fights Ramser's friend fights Ramster,
Speaker 2: and they knew each other, so they're not tight. But
Speaker 2: they all had and let's be clear, they had copious
Speaker 2: criminal histories. Rams gets really bad in the future, however,
Speaker 2: it's a lot of the thefts and the robberies, and
Speaker 2: stealing from Macy's and stealing from kids, stealing from charities,
Speaker 2: a lot of stealing. It's a lot of stealing. And
Speaker 2: all four had at some point in varying degrees, had
Speaker 2: issues with cocaine. Crack, as I've mentioned, doesn't really hit
Speaker 2: the projects in New York until nineteen eighty five, but
Speaker 2: one of them had starts smoking marijuana at age thirteen
Speaker 2: and then tries cocaine certainly through his teen years. So
Speaker 2: they all are reflective as much of society's failures as
Speaker 2: their own and their tragic stories, no matter how you
Speaker 2: look at it. But to be clear, they all had
Speaker 2: criminal records, and a couple of them were pending on
Speaker 2: warrants at the time they were on the train.
Speaker 1: So on this train, what burrow are we in? And
Speaker 1: how many people are we talking about in this one carriage.
Speaker 2: They start in the Bronx and it's a train that
Speaker 2: starts up if folks know the geography of New York City,
Speaker 2: it starts in the Bronx, head south through Manhattan, then
Speaker 2: makes the left turn into Brooklyn and goes deep into
Speaker 2: Brooklyn on the train car. By the time the incident
Speaker 2: goes down, there's about two dozen a dozen to two
Speaker 2: dozen people fifteen twenty and no one ever had a
Speaker 2: clear count. But it's not an empty car, but it's
Speaker 2: not a packed one, okay.
Speaker 1: And you know this is people standing and sitting and
Speaker 1: all of that. And these guys, these four guys are
Speaker 1: just sort of as a group, just not harassing necessarily,
Speaker 1: but just causing an uproar. And I'm certainly making people
Speaker 1: feel uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: Certainly making people feel uncomfortable. And that is the important
Speaker 2: takeaway before we get to burn ourd gets who gets
Speaker 2: on the train a little bit later in the West
Speaker 2: Village in southern Manhattan, people were uncomfortable. Now a few
Speaker 2: of the band and I spoke to one of the
Speaker 2: passengers still alive, and he said, look, I've ridden the
Speaker 2: subway a lot before, I've seen these kinds of guys around.
Speaker 2: I'm not crazy about their behavior, but this is just
Speaker 2: part of a cost of life in a big city.
Speaker 2: You're going to find young guys who are goofing off
Speaker 2: on a train, maybe even threatening people. But everyone's in agreement.
Speaker 2: They did not harm anyone on the train. They were
Speaker 2: certainly causing a, let's say, a nuisance, but didn't pull
Speaker 2: one of the screwdrivers out or try to fight with
Speaker 2: anybody or anything like that.
Speaker 1: That's what I was going to ask, because you hinted
Speaker 1: at the screwdrivers, so they're not pulling these out in
Speaker 1: any way at least. Okay, no, no, So we have
Speaker 1: then Bernard Getz getting on the train. You said in
Speaker 1: the west village. Tell me about his background. How old
Speaker 1: he is, you know all of that stuff. Electrical engineer,
Speaker 1: is that right?
Speaker 2: Electrical engineer and a very very bright one. He'd gone
Speaker 2: to NYU, so he'd grown up relatively privileged in Westchester County,
Speaker 2: starts in Queens, grows up in Westchester County, New York,
Speaker 2: which is just north of the city, just above Bronx,
Speaker 2: and privileged. His dad was, i want to say, in
Speaker 2: the same line of work in engineering, and so on.
Speaker 2: I think the galvanizing There were a few galvanizing moments
Speaker 2: in Bernard Gets his life, and I think all identify
Speaker 2: two of them. One is when he is a early
Speaker 2: teenage his father gets arrested and accused for sexually assaulting
Speaker 2: a few teenagers. These two boys who are regarded as
Speaker 2: troublemakers in town. Now, the Gets family regarded it as
Speaker 2: singling out their wealthy father and politically connected father, that
Speaker 2: that opponents of Dad had really turned on Dad and
Speaker 2: wanted to embarrass him. So he ultimately sends up spending
Speaker 2: some time in jail over this result. Now, this is
Speaker 2: one of the moments that begins Bernard Gets his total
Speaker 2: lack of disillusionment with the criminal justice system. He regards
Speaker 2: throughout life, including my interview with him, he regards criminal
Speaker 2: justice system as not focused on keeping people safe, being
Speaker 2: rife with bias, and ultimately a place where criminals get
Speaker 2: coddled and game the system out. And it turned him off.
Speaker 2: So that big moment happens. Number one. Number two, he's
Speaker 2: actually mugged nineteen eighty one. He's carrying a bunch of
Speaker 2: engineering equipment on the subway. Once again, rough stuff in
Speaker 2: the early nineteen eighties, but he's carrying a bunch of
Speaker 2: electrical equipment. Three young black dudes jumped him for his
Speaker 2: sheepskin jacket. They jump him, start pounding on him. Two
Speaker 2: of them get away. The cops grab one of them,
Speaker 2: and gets completely disillusioned with the system there too, saying
Speaker 2: that why are the cops so focused on protecting this guy?
Speaker 2: Why did they only question him for two hours and
Speaker 2: me for six hours? All they care about is this guy.
Speaker 2: I'm the one who's the victim here. Why is this
Speaker 2: guy not going to jail? The kid just gets charged
Speaker 2: with criminal mischief I believe, not assault or anything over
Speaker 2: the fight that they get into. So for all these reasons,
Speaker 2: at a certain point, Bernie gets starts carrying firearms, and
Speaker 2: he vowed after that assault at Mugging to never get
Speaker 2: victimized again. He was going to start carrying firearms, and
Speaker 2: so over the course of a pretty long period, he
Speaker 2: starts amassing a bunch of different firearms, handguns, some legally,
Speaker 2: many of them, not selling them and giving them to
Speaker 2: other people. He buys one on the day of his
Speaker 2: father's funeral when he's down in Florida. So he's just
Speaker 2: a big gun owner and starts carrying one with him
Speaker 2: wherever he goes, has a quick draw holster, has his
Speaker 2: belt buckled to the side so that he can get
Speaker 2: to his gun quickly. He doesn't wear gloves in public anymore,
Speaker 2: and he's just ready in case trouble comes along.
Speaker 1: What are the concealed weapon laws like in New York
Speaker 1: in this time period?
Speaker 2: New York as now certainly had very restrictive gun rules,
Speaker 2: and there were people who could get concealed carry permits.
Speaker 2: Eleanor Roosevelt fun Fact was a big handgun carrier and possessor,
Speaker 2: but not in order to get a license to carry
Speaker 2: a firearm in New York, you really had to have
Speaker 2: some demonstrated need for it. Now, rich people can make
Speaker 2: a demonstrat need for anything, but you needed to have
Speaker 2: some demonstrated need. And simply I walk around a lot
Speaker 2: with expensive electrical equipment is not and was not seen
Speaker 2: as a sufficient need, and so they would just deny
Speaker 2: them mostly. And part of what turns gets off is
Speaker 2: he applies for a license and they deny it on
Speaker 2: that basis you don't have a specialized need for it.
Speaker 1: So he's doing this illegal? Is that right?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah? I mean he had I don't know offhand
Speaker 2: if any of his guns were procured lawfully, but he
Speaker 2: certainly had a lot of illegal firearms, handguns, not long guns.
Speaker 1: So I think I have a handle on the four
Speaker 1: guys who ended up being the victims. But tell me
Speaker 1: about gets his personality and you know, his current family
Speaker 1: life when all of this stuff happens. Is he still
Speaker 1: wealthy from his dad's side.
Speaker 2: It's hard to say. I don't know if he's wealthy
Speaker 2: at the time, but he's certainly comfortable doing electrical engineering
Speaker 2: work around the city. Now. Everybody throughout time has commented
Speaker 2: on Bernard Getz's timidity and nerdiness, his paralegal eventual paralegal.
Speaker 2: When Day said he's a nerdy pocket protector kind of guy,
Speaker 2: for Batim is what she called him.
Speaker 1: I haven't heard pocket protector in a very long time,
Speaker 1: so that's that's a phrase out of the past.
Speaker 2: I know, right, bespectacled, thin, blonde guy wearing glasses. He
Speaker 2: sort of walks with a hunch, he sort of stooped
Speaker 2: over his skinny, he's tall. But the thing that riled
Speaker 2: him up was public safety. It was throughout his time
Speaker 2: he just felt that the city wasn't doing enough to
Speaker 2: keep people safe. He just felt that it's fat cats
Speaker 2: in New York, up in Gracie mansion or whatever that
Speaker 2: don't care about public safety. And he would constantly be
Speaker 2: peppering his neighbors and the doorman and everybody with petitions
Speaker 2: and and why can't we get the streets cleaned up?
Speaker 2: In all of the above, and it was really a thing.
Speaker 2: So that's one, just public safety was the thing that
Speaker 2: riled him up more than anything else. In two, he's
Speaker 2: just all over the place. People regard to him as
Speaker 2: I didn't know if this guy was as sicky or not,
Speaker 2: which is what one of the people said about him.
Speaker 2: He was just hyperkinetic and hands clenched and darting from
Speaker 2: different topics. And someone would say hello to you one
Speaker 2: day and be warm to you and your kids, and
Speaker 2: then make eye contact with you several hours later and
Speaker 2: not not even say hello. Just odd. And they every
Speaker 2: single person throughout time seems to comment on his oddness
Speaker 2: as a human. He had been married briefly for about
Speaker 2: five years back in the early nineteen seventies. Nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 2: He gets married but doesn't have kids and at the
Speaker 2: time was single.
Speaker 1: Okay, he steps on the train this afternoon. How long
Speaker 1: do we know that the guys have been on the
Speaker 1: train kind of being hooligans before they encounter Bernard gets.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's about thirty minutes from where they get
Speaker 2: on in the South Bronx to the West Village fourteenth
Speaker 2: Street where gets gets on. So it's about thirty minutes
Speaker 2: and they're gooping around on the train. In the seventh
Speaker 2: car of the train, doors open up. Bernard gets walks in.
Speaker 1: Oh, okay, what line is this just out of cre
Speaker 1: is it a I can't remember.
Speaker 2: It's the two. It's a downtown two Express. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: the so the stops would be right there, So it
Speaker 2: would be thirty fourth Street, which is Harold Square which
Speaker 2: where Macy's is and Penn Station and Madison Square Garden.
Speaker 2: Then fourteenth Street, which is the West Village basically NYU
Speaker 2: where that's where gets gets on.
Speaker 1: Okay, so he gets on what a witnesses say, because
Speaker 1: you have I think what a couple doesen' Is that
Speaker 1: what you said, witnesses?
Speaker 2: I mean that that's probably that's probably a liberal estimate,
Speaker 2: probably about twenty Okay, Yeah, so they again they're commenting
Speaker 2: on the guys No one really notices Bernard gets get on.
Speaker 2: He just immediately gets on and sits down. In fact,
Speaker 2: some witnesses weren't sure if he got on at fourteenth
Speaker 2: Street or a few stops before at ninety sixth Street.
Speaker 2: They just weren't sure. But he gets on and sits down,
Speaker 2: and immediately Troy Canty, one of the four young men,
Speaker 2: approached him.
Speaker 1: So what do you think made Bernard gets somebody that
Speaker 1: this guy thought would be approachable or were they just
Speaker 1: approaching everybody?
Speaker 2: That's the million dollar question of many million dollar questions,
Speaker 2: Kate about this entire case. What was it about Bernard
Speaker 2: gets Now again, I said, he's meek, he's timid, he's frail,
Speaker 2: he's a white guy, he's feeble. Maybe that's it right
Speaker 2: the Canty and the testimony later comes out, Oh, he
Speaker 2: was just there. He was just the guy who was there,
Speaker 2: and he walked on. We were up there. He enters
Speaker 2: at the north side of the train where the guys
Speaker 2: are hanging out, and that's why Canty approached him. That
Speaker 2: at least that's his theory. Now it doesn't strain common sense. Say, look,
Speaker 2: this guy looks pretty feeble. Let's go up to the
Speaker 2: feeble guy and see if we can mess with him
Speaker 2: a little bit. But it's just not clear what it
Speaker 2: was about Bernard gets Now. To be clear, they'd approached
Speaker 2: a lot of people on the train. They had encounters
Speaker 2: that were probably not that different from the encounter they
Speaker 2: had with Bernard Gets, which was walk up to them
Speaker 2: and ask him for money.
Speaker 1: So they just said, hey, buddy, can I have five bucks?
Speaker 1: Give me five bucks? How does the convo go after that?
Speaker 1: I mean, what does he do?
Speaker 2: Well, there's not much convo after that because the guy
Speaker 2: comes out. But even the second thing, this is the
Speaker 2: second great mystery, what does Troy Kanty say to Bernard
Speaker 2: gets Now? And you really touch on this well, k
Speaker 2: because it remains a mystery forty one years later, which
Speaker 2: is does he say give me five dollars? Or hey, mister,
Speaker 2: can I have five dollars? One of them is a demand,
Speaker 2: one of them is a request for money. One of
Speaker 2: them's panhandling. And the guys all say that Kanty was panhandling.
Speaker 2: They was just asking for money. Is that's money? Because
Speaker 2: quite frankly, they're going downtown to play video games before
Speaker 2: breaking the machines open. They needed some money and so
Speaker 2: they just wanted some cash. Bernard Gets remains adamant that
Speaker 2: those guys were specifically coming to rob him, to mug him,
Speaker 2: and because of that fear, he felt empowered to act.
Speaker 1: What about witnesses, somebody standing right there or sitting right
Speaker 1: next to him, right.
Speaker 2: No one really really knew exactly what had gone down.
Speaker 2: One woman said, hey, look at that. She testifies this
Speaker 2: later because she leans over to her husband, this is
Speaker 2: the guy I interviewed. Hey, look at those four punks
Speaker 2: bothering that man. Or look at those four punks bothering
Speaker 2: that white man, one of those two things. That wasn't
Speaker 2: clear whether she said that the memories and testimony conflicted,
Speaker 2: but hey, look at those four punks bothering that man.
Speaker 2: So at least one witness thought, wait a second, they're
Speaker 2: sort of acting up around him, maybe they're attacking him.
Speaker 2: But no one else, I believe, really saw the initial exchange,
Speaker 2: or at least was so struck by it to think,
Speaker 2: wait a second, what's happening up there at the north
Speaker 2: end of the car.
Speaker 1: But nobody Also, I know everybody's trying to mind their
Speaker 1: own business as what I but nobody is picking up
Speaker 1: on a feeling like Bernard Guests is being threatened. I mean,
Speaker 1: you would just kind of get a vibe from I
Speaker 1: think if these kids were really going to do that.
Speaker 2: I think that's an excellent question, Kate. It's sort of
Speaker 2: what's the vibe and are people really picking up that
Speaker 2: something bad is about to go down? Part of what
Speaker 2: undermines that point or that question is it just happened
Speaker 2: so quickly. It's from the moment. From the moment Gets
Speaker 2: walks in and sets down, it's probably a matter of
Speaker 2: seconds before Kanty approaches him, and then the whole thing
Speaker 2: just spiraled out of control very quickly.
Speaker 1: So Gets doesn't even respond. He just pulls out a
Speaker 1: gun and start shooting.
Speaker 2: So he looks down. He thinks it's rude to make
Speaker 2: eye contact and just just doesn't really respond. But he
Speaker 2: felt that the mugging was going on, so he stood up,
Speaker 2: reached into his jacket and knew he had his gun there.
Speaker 1: What are people saying about the days before this? I mean,
Speaker 1: is there any change in him? Was there an inciting incident?
Speaker 1: There's nothing. He's just kind of the.
Speaker 2: Weird guy, weird gadfly about New York who's really mad
Speaker 2: about the drunks. And the beggars on the stoopid his
Speaker 2: building in the West Village, and nothing really was different,
Speaker 2: and particularly nothing was different, and that it was just
Speaker 2: another day. He was just going out of the house
Speaker 2: with a gun. He in two occasions, at least two occasions,
Speaker 2: had pulled a gun on people, folks that were yelling
Speaker 2: at him or barking at him or threatening him. One
Speaker 2: guy like he was walking and Harlem gets off got
Speaker 2: off the wrong on the train and is walking and
Speaker 2: the guy came up behind him, and Guts just pulled
Speaker 2: out his gun held it up and the guy freaked out,
Speaker 2: turned white and ran away. Another one, he's in the
Speaker 2: West Village, same thing. He's on sixth Avenue and a
Speaker 2: young guy comes up behind him, white kid or I
Speaker 2: don't know how old he was, but I'm going to
Speaker 2: get you, and when I do, I'm gonna u MF.
Speaker 2: I'm going to do this, and then to do that.
Speaker 2: And then the same thing gets pulls out his gun
Speaker 2: and just pulls it out and sticks it at him,
Speaker 2: and same thing, and Guts felt almost empowered and excited
Speaker 2: when he saw the guy turn so scared and run
Speaker 2: away like he knew he did. The one thing he
Speaker 2: could do to sort of like clap back and frighten
Speaker 2: this guy. And so those were the at least two
Speaker 2: incidents that are documented of him having pulled a gun
Speaker 2: out before, but he'd never really had any training. He
Speaker 2: claimed that playing cowboys and Indians that as a kid
Speaker 2: was what taught him how to use a gun, and
Speaker 2: that's really his only meaningful training in the use of firearms.
Speaker 1: It's a thirty eight, Is it right that he pulls
Speaker 1: in It's.
Speaker 2: A thirty eighth? Okay, thirty eight Smith and Wesson.
Speaker 1: He pulls out eight and there are upwards of twenty
Speaker 1: people around in this car, and what is tell me
Speaker 1: just kind of lay out the scene, what ends up happening,
Speaker 1: and who gets shot first.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so he apparently Now again, a lot of these
Speaker 2: things are in dispute in some way four decades later,
Speaker 2: but generally, here's what we think happens. I'll give I'll
Speaker 2: give all those five dollars to you, or I'll let
Speaker 2: you have five dollars, pulls out his gun and immediately
Speaker 2: shoots Canty in the chest, then turns and shoots both
Speaker 2: Alan and Ram Surr, both of whom end up with
Speaker 2: wounds in their back. Now it's an open question as
Speaker 2: to are they running away, are they turning, are they flinching?
Speaker 2: The train is lurching and going back and forth as
Speaker 2: is going on, so no one really knows what really
Speaker 2: happens here except somebody says that they were looks like
Speaker 2: they were trying to get out climb through the walls
Speaker 2: of the train, like they're in a slasher movie, and
Speaker 2: so gets says I let them have it, and then
Speaker 2: shoots them right, so boom, boom boom. Both end up
Speaker 2: with wounds in their back or in their sides, suggesting
Speaker 2: they're shot in the back. Then he goes to Darryl Kby,
Speaker 2: sees him maybe slumped in a chair or slumped in
Speaker 2: a bench at the end, and either shoots him and
Speaker 2: then says, you don't look so bad. Here's another and
Speaker 2: then shoots him again, or fires a shot and maybe
Speaker 2: says you don't look so bad. Here's another and then
Speaker 2: shoots him again. That's again, it's inconclusive what he actually
Speaker 2: says to him, although he seems to have acknowledged that
Speaker 2: he said that you know, look so bad. Here's another,
Speaker 2: shoots KB ends up shooting him in the chest. It
Speaker 2: severs his spine right there in the moment, and then
Speaker 2: that's it. Somewhere one of the panels on the side
Speaker 2: of the train ends up with a bullet hole in it.
Speaker 2: People don't quite know. This is why the inconclusive nature
Speaker 2: of what happens to Daryl Kby at the end there.
Speaker 2: Does he just fire a shot off that missus? Does
Speaker 2: he then go up to KB and shoot him? Does
Speaker 2: he say he don't look so bad? I mean, it's
Speaker 2: just it's just open and memory faded about that. But
Speaker 2: the general thing is it is believed that he delivers
Speaker 2: that line looking into Darryl KB and shoots him. Now
Speaker 2: a point I left out a second ago, And there's
Speaker 2: an important one when he shoots Troy Canty like bang
Speaker 2: right away, real quick. The first guy that says it
Speaker 2: to him, he says, he is about to take his
Speaker 2: keys out and gouge Troy Canty's eyes out. He was
Speaker 2: so filled with rage that that's what he wanted to do,
Speaker 2: but he saw fear in his eyes and backed off
Speaker 2: of it. And eyes it's really interesting, you know, just
Speaker 2: thinking this through. Eyes were such a powerful motivator in
Speaker 2: all of this, because also Gets claims that before he
Speaker 2: shot him he saw a shine in his eyes and
Speaker 2: a smile on his face and felt that he was
Speaker 2: being played with, And because he's being played with like
Speaker 2: a cat and mouse or whatever else, he needed to
Speaker 2: take action. So he just was looking at these men's
Speaker 2: eyes and sort of judging what he saw as motivating
Speaker 2: his decision to do open fire.
Speaker 1: I have a bunch of tiny, detailed questions. You said
Speaker 1: that he gets on the train, he's quickly approached by
Speaker 1: one of these guys, and his response is quick, so
Speaker 1: you think this is all what's the estimation? As soon
Speaker 1: as he steps on there just like thirty seconds.
Speaker 2: For the many many listeners of this program in New
Speaker 2: York City who are familiar with it, the train's going
Speaker 2: from Fourteenth Street to Chambers Street, which is really only
Speaker 2: one express stop. Train never makes it to Chambers Street.
Speaker 2: It's a short short ride before the train gets stopped.
Speaker 2: When the emergency brake gets pulled, it's within a minute,
Speaker 2: and ultimately it's unclear whether the shots are fired off.
Speaker 2: Bang bang bang bang bang or bang bang bang bang.
Speaker 2: You don't look so bad. Here's another bang. Needless to say,
Speaker 2: he empties the firearm within three seconds four seconds of
Speaker 2: opening five ten seconds of the first time he opens fire,
Speaker 2: and so it's an incredibly short amount of time.
Speaker 1: How can he be clear when he sits down, Troy
Speaker 1: comes over and says, you know, give me five dollars
Speaker 1: or can I have five dollars? Whatever it is, and
Speaker 1: he starts shooting. How can he be clear that the
Speaker 1: other three men are working with or even know Troy?
Speaker 1: If it happens? Is he just shooting black men who
Speaker 1: were standing nearby?
Speaker 2: So somehow folks figured out that these guys were together.
Speaker 2: I guess they were who knows, but yeah, he shoots
Speaker 2: those four. One of the other passengers on the train
Speaker 2: wondered if is this a hate crime or a terrorist act?
Speaker 2: And is this man just walking around shooting black people?
Speaker 2: So he literally grabs his baby and his wife and
Speaker 2: runs because he's thinking, oh my god, he's coming after
Speaker 2: us next because that was the pandemonium that broke out
Speaker 2: in the car, just not knowing what was going to
Speaker 2: happen next.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I have to think they're not in a
Speaker 1: semicircle surrounding him.
Speaker 2: I mean, they're on a train.
Speaker 1: He's sitting down, and I'm just thinking, I mean, how
Speaker 1: does he even know who to shoot? At this point,
Speaker 1: what about the not the main doors, but the doors
Speaker 1: between the cars. Are those both unlocked and opened? Like,
Speaker 1: can people flee through into other cars?
Speaker 2: People can flee through into other cars, and some people
Speaker 2: actually did. In fact, at least one person ran screaming
Speaker 2: into the car the next car, which is the sixth
Speaker 2: car of the train. I only mentioned that it's the
Speaker 2: sixth because that's where the motorman sat, and at least
Speaker 2: one of the passengers. A savvy train rider always sat
Speaker 2: in the sixth or seventh car of the train, so
Speaker 2: that if there were trouble on the train, at least
Speaker 2: there'd be an official set of eyes watching over people
Speaker 2: just expected crime or just badness or trouble. Gosh, yeah,
Speaker 2: isn't that wild. It's a wild little detail. So, you know,
Speaker 2: so at least one ran into the motorman's car screaming.
Speaker 2: And then and after the train stops, the motorman runs
Speaker 2: into the seventh car say hey, what's going on here?
Speaker 2: You know? We hear gunshots?
Speaker 1: So gets what he sits down as they approach Chamber Street.
Speaker 2: Well, he's nervous and start sitting down and standing up
Speaker 2: and sort of pacing around a little bit. He's silent,
Speaker 2: and many passengers in the train are commenting on his poise,
Speaker 2: his calm, his sense of balance. He wasn't freaking out,
Speaker 2: but he seemed nervous at that point. The cars stopped
Speaker 2: the emergency break and the train's not moving anywhere. The
Speaker 2: motorman comes in and says, hey, wait a second, are
Speaker 2: you a police officer? And Gets says no, And he
Speaker 2: says give me the gun, and Gets says, I don't
Speaker 2: want to misquote it or make him say a statement
Speaker 2: that he didn't make, but those guys were those guys
Speaker 2: were bothering me, and I shot them. I think that's
Speaker 2: like it's in any for the lawyers in the room.
Speaker 2: It's it's a confession. What he gives. You don't have
Speaker 2: to like it or not. But he ultimately confesses right there.
Speaker 2: He says, they were askling me, and I shot them.
Speaker 2: So motorman asks for the gun, Gets, does not give
Speaker 2: it to him, and doesn't respond and walks away. He then,
Speaker 2: to your question, Kate goes through the doors between the
Speaker 2: cars and jumps down onto the tracks and then runs away.
Speaker 2: And so all those questions you had about where is
Speaker 2: this between Chambers Street, it's relevant because he then gets
Speaker 2: off the train and sprints to the Chambers Street stop,
Speaker 2: climbs up, climbs up to the you know, to the
Speaker 2: platform above, takes the steps up hits Sixth Avenue or
Speaker 2: whatever broadway, and just starts running home. And as he's
Speaker 2: running home, police cars are zipping by because word has
Speaker 2: now gotten to the NYPD that wait a second, there
Speaker 2: was a massive shooting on the number two train and
Speaker 2: Bernard Guess is just walking by up sixth Avenue or
Speaker 2: whatever street he was on in New York seeing these
Speaker 2: cars zip by. They were going to the carnage that
Speaker 2: he left there.
Speaker 1: Now, I remember you saying that there were frequently communication
Speaker 1: issues between transit police and NYPD above ground because their
Speaker 1: radios weren't in sync. Was that the case here too?
Speaker 1: Was there a significant delay?
Speaker 2: No? No, no, because the NYPD got there very very quickly.
Speaker 2: The problem is that their guy has gone and nobody
Speaker 2: knows where he is. They literally don't know where he is.
Speaker 2: And a fun little bit of policing fact is part
Speaker 2: of the reason why. You know, I've mentioned a couple
Speaker 2: times that they pulled the emergency brake and the car
Speaker 2: stops right and the train stops. Well, they do that
Speaker 2: so that if there's a crime on board and they
Speaker 2: need to arrest somebody, all that evidence and all the
Speaker 2: people are still there and police can deal with it easily.
Speaker 2: That's the thing that enabled Bernie gets his escape. Because
Speaker 2: the train was stopped, he just could quickly jump off
Speaker 2: and run away. So he sprints and got away and
Speaker 2: immediately got off that subway platform at Chamber Street, hops
Speaker 2: in a cab back home and goes back to his house.
Speaker 1: Tell me about the status of the four victims. So
Speaker 1: the police come, ambulance comes, everybody gets off the train,
Speaker 1: The interview witnesses, and you still have these four guys.
Speaker 1: What's happening with their health?
Speaker 2: They're bleeding and fading in and out of consciousness. The
Speaker 2: general consensus is that Troy Kanty, who's the first one
Speaker 2: if you remember who approach gets he's in the worst shape,
Speaker 2: that's the consensus, because he's shot in the chest and
Speaker 2: he's bleeding through a hole in his chest, and so
Speaker 2: they're treating him. He's going into shock. Barry Allen is lucid.
Speaker 2: But they're all kind of out of it and bleeding
Speaker 2: a lot, lot and in various places through the train.
Speaker 2: Now I mentioned KB in the mid chest. He's certainly
Speaker 2: paralyzed at this point, not feeling his legs, but all
Speaker 2: of them. It's interesting. I've never been shot by a firearm,
Speaker 2: but Barry Allen claims that he thought he was paralyzed
Speaker 2: as well. He claimed that he felt his arm when
Speaker 2: the bullet goes in. He felt his arm sees up
Speaker 2: and like he'd been shot with what he called a
Speaker 2: paralyzer gun. So they're all in various states of shock
Speaker 2: or confusion, eyes lolling and passing in and out.
Speaker 1: Everybody survives, so all four.
Speaker 2: Everybody survives except and everybody has varying degrees of serious injury.
Speaker 2: Everybody goes into some form of surgery, some you know
Speaker 2: Barry Allen. Still they leave the one of the bullets
Speaker 2: in there, it's somewhere in his shoulder. One of them
Speaker 2: has a spleen removed. But they all get out in
Speaker 2: a couple of weeks, except Daryl Kaby, who again paralyzed.
Speaker 2: And then after because of the paralysis, things start compounding
Speaker 2: in his body with his diaphragm. He had trouble breathing,
Speaker 2: went into respiratory arrest maybe a week or two later.
Speaker 2: So he's blacked out for I want to say it's
Speaker 2: around eight minutes, and then goes into a coma before
Speaker 2: going you know, so he's blacked out, then goes into
Speaker 2: a coma, doesn't wake up for two months, and at
Speaker 2: the time he wakes up, because of that time that
Speaker 2: they're performing CPR and trying to resuscitate him, he's just
Speaker 2: not getting oxygen to his brain and he ends up
Speaker 2: brain damaged quite severely. He ends up with at the time,
Speaker 2: believed to be the intellectual capacity of about a nine
Speaker 2: year old. Couldn't tell you what day it was, couldn't
Speaker 2: tell you who the mayor was. So he the rest
Speaker 2: of them end up in pain and with gunshot wounds
Speaker 2: and out and bandaged up, but he ended up probably
Speaker 2: the worst shape.
Speaker 1: How do they truck down gets It's really wild.
Speaker 2: It's they couldn't figure out the guy. And at this
Speaker 2: point the city is a buzz this mysterious vigilante who
Speaker 2: finally clapped back and stood up for us. But no end,
Speaker 2: they're flooding the police tip line, not with ideas about
Speaker 2: the shooter, but with praise saying that, my god, somebody
Speaker 2: finally stood up for us. Overwhelmingly to the mayor, to
Speaker 2: the prosecutors and so on, so they're at an impasse. Finally,
Speaker 2: after a little while, the police, the NYPD's tip line,
Speaker 2: gets a tip about a man named Bernard Gets who
Speaker 2: lives in the West Village. That's it. And they knew
Speaker 2: that they could check city records, and they knew that
Speaker 2: Bernard Gets, remember, had applied for a gun license. So yeah,
Speaker 2: so they went back, found a photograph of Bernie Getz,
Speaker 2: went to the motorman and the train and said, do
Speaker 2: you see this guy? Do you know who this is?
Speaker 2: Motorman says, I didn't see nothing. I don't know nobody.
Speaker 2: I don't know anything. I ain't touching this get away.
Speaker 2: Get off my train. So he didn't want he'd wanted
Speaker 2: no time for that smoke. Then they knew they were
Speaker 2: onto something, so figured out with the photograph and the address,
Speaker 2: they went to the apartment building that Gets lived in
Speaker 2: and just put a note under his door saying, mister Getz,
Speaker 2: this is the New York Police Department, please call us.
Speaker 2: And one of the door, one of the mailbox, maybe
Speaker 2: one under the mat or something, and that was it.
Speaker 2: That was the steps they took. And then they just.
Speaker 1: Waited, who's the DA this is Morganhaw.
Speaker 2: This is Morgan Thaw.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh well, because he was there for how long
Speaker 1: was he there thirty years or something?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, more than thirty It was much of the
Speaker 2: great part of a generation, I think, the sixties into
Speaker 2: the early two thousands.
Speaker 1: Did you end up talking to somebody with the police
Speaker 1: during that time period or to get the idea of
Speaker 1: what was happening, you know, behind the scenes.
Speaker 2: The guy who came up with the idea for leaving
Speaker 2: the note, I spoke to him, Jim Levison, who was
Speaker 2: the lead detective on the case, and I interviewed him,
Speaker 2: and he believes it wasn't a great piece of police
Speaker 2: work at all. It's just sloppy. But they were out
Speaker 2: of options. But they think that is the step they
Speaker 2: took that actually got them to figure out who and
Speaker 2: where Bernie gets was.
Speaker 1: So does he contact them?
Speaker 2: He does, but now he disappeared. No one knows where
Speaker 2: he is. He's not in his apartment, He's not anywhere,
Speaker 2: Remember I said, soon after the shooting, he went back home.
Speaker 2: He quickly grabbed a duffel bag, took off the windbreaker,
Speaker 2: took the gun, put into a duffel bag, goes and
Speaker 2: rents a car and drives north out of the city
Speaker 2: and ends up in New Hampshire, and he was just
Speaker 2: hiding in the snows of New Hampshire. He buries the
Speaker 2: parts of the gun, he burns his jacket, thinks he's
Speaker 2: going to freeze to death because he has no jacket
Speaker 2: now because he's burned the one he had and is
Speaker 2: hiding in New Hampshire. He went up there, came back
Speaker 2: to New York, at which point he met with one
Speaker 2: of his neighbors who told him they left a note
Speaker 2: for you, at which point he hands her a package,
Speaker 2: doesn't tell her what's in it, but says, this isn't
Speaker 2: the gun that was used. Can you just hold onto
Speaker 2: this for me for a little while, And then disappeared.
Speaker 2: And then about a day later, in conquered New Hampshire,
Speaker 2: he walks into the police department shivering and says, I'm
Speaker 2: the man they're looking for in New York. And so
Speaker 2: Levison that detective really believes. He said to me, it
Speaker 2: was not a good piece of police work. I don't
Speaker 2: think this was good detective work, but that's really all
Speaker 2: I had. But he thinks that is the thing that
Speaker 2: spooked Bernie gets so much. They felt he had to
Speaker 2: turn himself in.
Speaker 1: But what is Morgenthal saying once he does turn himself in,
Speaker 1: what is the general attitude of the DA's office about
Speaker 1: what the heck do we do with this guy who
Speaker 1: shot so called vigilantes and put him all in the
Speaker 1: hospital but at the same time took off and it's
Speaker 1: illegal and had an illegal gun.
Speaker 2: He was torn, torn, torn because, like all prosecutors, knew
Speaker 2: and felt there was a crime committed, a potential homicide,
Speaker 2: at least an attempted homicide, but it was a very
Speaker 2: popular homicide in the city, and the victims were unsavory.
Speaker 2: These were drug addicted black boys from the Bronx who
Speaker 2: were muggers and shakedown artists and so on, and Morgan
Speaker 2: Thha was torn about what to do. So they ultimately try,
Speaker 2: but in a ham fisted way. But they try to
Speaker 2: indict Gets for murder, for attempted murder pardon and end
Speaker 2: up the grand jury doesn't even buy it. The grand
Speaker 2: jury only indites him for gun possession. And nobody was happy.
Speaker 2: Gets wasn't happy with being charged with gun possessions. Supporters
Speaker 2: weren't happy, the police weren't happy. Nobody was happy with
Speaker 2: that decision, but the prosecutors just didn't have a ton
Speaker 2: of options with what to do.
Speaker 1: What is the media saying at this point, what is
Speaker 1: the I'm thinking of it, like the Daily News, and
Speaker 1: what the different the different tabloids and what these headlines
Speaker 1: must be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Daily News, well it's really the New York Post.
Speaker 2: Rupert Murdoch had just bought the New York Post and
Speaker 2: shifted the coverage of the cities tabloids, using a lot
Speaker 2: of the tactics he'd used in other markets. He'd been
Speaker 2: buying up a lot of tabloids around the country and
Speaker 2: certainly in Australia, but just to frighten people. It was,
Speaker 2: you know, the headlines where screams ignored, she's shot dead
Speaker 2: and things in all these these giant capital letters, and
Speaker 2: so they were. The Daily News and the New York
Speaker 2: Post were largely quite supportive of the shooter and driving
Speaker 2: some of the public sentiment, which in turn was pretty
Speaker 2: turebo charged. Now it was. It was divisive. There were
Speaker 2: certainly many people who thought that this was racist open
Speaker 2: season on black people, but a lot of people were
Speaker 2: lined up behind Bernard Gets and the papers reflected that.
Speaker 1: At some point is there an investigation into his background.
Speaker 1: Of course, you know, we know about what happens with
Speaker 1: his father and the mugging and all of that. Is
Speaker 1: there any sort of digging into maybe his viewpoints on
Speaker 1: people of other races.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it over time, the world starts learning more
Speaker 2: and more about Bernard Gets and about these four young men,
Speaker 2: and it just starts seeming, it starts blurring a little bit.
Speaker 2: They realize how quirky and odd he is. They realize
Speaker 2: about his firearm possession. They realize that he's gotten in
Speaker 2: trouble and kicked off his co op board for using
Speaker 2: ethnic slurs and saying that we got to get the
Speaker 2: ends and the s's. You can speculate as to what
Speaker 2: those words are, but we've got to get the only
Speaker 2: way to clean this neighborhood up is to get the
Speaker 2: ends and the s's out of here. Well, everyone else
Speaker 2: in the co op board, this is okay. That's not cool.
Speaker 2: Even you're not even saying the quiet part out loud.
Speaker 2: You're just yelling. And he claims he was high on
Speaker 2: angel dust and weed that night and that he didn't
Speaker 2: really know what he was saying, but he was just
Speaker 2: making a point that we need to clean the neighborhood up,
Speaker 2: and the bad elements in the neighborhood are black and Hispanic.
Speaker 2: And it all started trickling out over time, and eventually
Speaker 2: people started getting a less sunny or rosy idea of
Speaker 2: who Bernard Getz was and what he stood for.
Speaker 1: Now, I mean, he is claiming self defense, I'm assuming right.
Speaker 2: Now, I say he is in New York law, not
Speaker 2: just self defense. It's New York law at the time
Speaker 2: allowed lethal force to prevent an imminent violent crime, okay,
Speaker 2: and that violent crime being a robbery or a mugging.
Speaker 2: And so because he felt that one was imminent, or
Speaker 2: at least claim to feel that one was imminent, he
Speaker 2: was able to use lethal force.
Speaker 1: Can you explain though, the other end of this, which
Speaker 1: I kind of think about battered women and you know,
Speaker 1: women who kill well, I don't know why I connected
Speaker 1: always to this, but the idea that the prosecutor will
Speaker 1: say she could have left any time. He had exit strategies, right,
Speaker 1: he could have or he had exit options. He could
Speaker 1: have gone to another car. There were other witnesses. Was
Speaker 1: there not a way for Morgan thought to look at
Speaker 1: this and say, yeah, but this was not a last
Speaker 1: resort for you.
Speaker 2: The law in New York did not require retreat. It
Speaker 2: was in apprehension of an imminent mugging or robbery, one
Speaker 2: could use lethal force and full stop. This is what
Speaker 2: the law allowed. Now, and you're touching on an important point,
Speaker 2: this idea of duty to retreat, and different jurisdictions have
Speaker 2: different rules around the obligations someone has to retreat before
Speaker 2: trying to kill somebody. Here at the time, oddly enough,
Speaker 2: New York would have just let you. If you thought
Speaker 2: a violent crime was coming, you could you could try
Speaker 2: to kill the person who was coming at you.
Speaker 1: Now, what is the case now if this happened today,
Speaker 1: what would be the likely outcome if there were not
Speaker 1: all of these political ramifications surrounding it.
Speaker 2: Forgive the lawyer speaking to you right now, But there
Speaker 2: is an interesting New York State Court of Appeals case
Speaker 2: that set the law on this. It's called State versus Gets. Literally,
Speaker 2: this story ends up changing the standard in New York law,
Speaker 2: and it's complicated. It's both subjective and objective. Do I
Speaker 2: feel threatened? Right? If I can say that I feel threatened,
Speaker 2: and if people the jury ultimately believes that you feel threatened, Okay,
Speaker 2: that's bucket one. And separately, did I act in a
Speaker 2: way that I would expect a reasonable person to have
Speaker 2: acted under the same circumstances. That's objective, right, So it's
Speaker 2: both what are my feelings, but also how do we
Speaker 2: expect other members of society to act in the same circumstance?
Speaker 2: And if both of those things are true, then you
Speaker 2: will not be found guilty of having killed someone. Right.
Speaker 2: This case set that law. It was complicated, no need
Speaker 2: to get into the weeds of the law that it
Speaker 2: goes all the way up to the highest court in
Speaker 2: the state New York, but ultimately sets that standard that
Speaker 2: courts would first look at what the guy felt and
Speaker 2: was it genuine and real? Was it real fear that
Speaker 2: he felt? And in acting with lethal force, would we
Speaker 2: have expected an ordinary or reasonable person to have done
Speaker 2: the same thing?
Speaker 1: How do you get into that though as an attorney
Speaker 1: of being able to say, I don't you can't even
Speaker 1: say definitively look at the look on his face from
Speaker 1: CCTV or the witness next to him said, you know
Speaker 1: his tone was this way or that way. I mean,
Speaker 1: you can't lean totally onto that, right, This is apparently
Speaker 1: what he was feeling, and he made a couple of
Speaker 1: racist remarks you know, in the past.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the thing. I mean, the racist remarks in
Speaker 2: the past wouldn't come up in trial, probably in a
Speaker 2: criminal trial, in a straight criminal trial. Now if it
Speaker 2: were a hate crime trial or something, maybe that would
Speaker 2: be relevant. But it's hard getting into someone's head, is
Speaker 2: the and something for me as a CNN legal analyst,
Speaker 2: this is the thing that I find explaining on air
Speaker 2: the most, this idea of criminal intent being exceptionally hard
Speaker 2: to prove, exceptionally hard to establish what was in someone's mind,
Speaker 2: absent finding a manifesto or him screaming I'm going to
Speaker 2: kill you because you have threatened to mug me, and
Speaker 2: I felt that I was an imminent apprehension of a
Speaker 2: mugg you know, absent that. It's really just trying to
Speaker 2: divine the circumstances. Now any jury, there are all juries
Speaker 2: of peers who live in the neighborhood, and they were
Speaker 2: probably going to bring whatever they thought of New York
Speaker 2: City subways and quite frankly, young black kids from the
Speaker 2: Bronx into their views of what actually happened. In judging
Speaker 2: what was right and wrong, it ends up getting to
Speaker 2: a grand jury. The first time, they only get him
Speaker 2: on gun possession. They go back a second time, two
Speaker 2: of the four victims testified, and he ends up getting
Speaker 2: charged with attempted murder, attempted assault, and gun possession.
Speaker 1: Has the narrative in the media changed now that we
Speaker 1: find out that he's used the in word, and you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know what else gets dug up about his past.
Speaker 1: Is there at any point where they were the media
Speaker 1: or whoever kind of says, oh okay, maybe there's more
Speaker 1: to this than we thought it.
Speaker 2: Definitely the tone shifts a little bit. But in general,
Speaker 2: there is a widespread notion that the city, remember all
Speaker 2: that stuff we talked about blackouts and riots and looting
Speaker 2: and bailouts in the city and joblessness and fire tee,
Speaker 2: all of that, that the city is a rough place
Speaker 2: and someone needs to stand up within days. Remember we
Speaker 2: talked about the movie Death Wish a little bit earlier,
Speaker 2: the Death Wish Vigilante. That's the nickname he got. The
Speaker 2: New York Post called him the Death Wish Vigilante in
Speaker 2: the mold of Charles Bronson and the movie Death Wish,
Speaker 2: that there's this guy who is going to clap back
Speaker 2: against the forces of disorder, and he's doing it for
Speaker 2: our common good. So yes, it got more nuanced overtime.
Speaker 2: There were certainly commentators who were not so on board
Speaker 2: with gets and the narrative. Jimmy Breslin, a very famous
Speaker 2: long time columns of the Daily News. Earl Caldwell was
Speaker 2: another one, Less Pain, who has ended up being the
Speaker 2: head of the National Association of Black Journalists. They all
Speaker 2: took some issue with it, but for the most part
Speaker 2: there was a pretty universal rush to support Bernard Getz.
Speaker 1: So if they had not had screwdrivers in their jackets,
Speaker 1: would this have changed the case? I mean, I assume
Speaker 1: that's what was brought up by the defense it.
Speaker 2: Was and the screwdrivers. You know, it's interesting a number
Speaker 2: of newspapers right off the back comment on the screwdrivers
Speaker 2: saying that the men were armed, including The New York
Speaker 2: Times right off the bat, so that the men were armed.
Speaker 2: That narrative shifted over time. Get still points at that,
Speaker 2: saying that, look, they were armed, they were armed, they
Speaker 2: had screwdrivers and so on. I don't I think irrespective
Speaker 2: of the screwdrivers, I just think the narrative would would
Speaker 2: have still been the same. It was just too easy
Speaker 2: to not to have, you know, timid, weak white guy
Speaker 2: scared of being or tired of being bullied and pushed
Speaker 2: around for his entire life, and black dudes from the
Speaker 2: Bronx who were rorizing this train car. It just it
Speaker 2: was the narrative took hold within within hours literally, and
Speaker 2: it was just it was never going going back.
Speaker 1: Well, I think I know the answer to this, But
Speaker 1: tell me ultimately what happens with this case with these
Speaker 1: two guys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so he ends up gets ends up getting acquitted
Speaker 2: of violent of all the violent crime charges, assault, attempted
Speaker 2: murder and so on. He's so he ends up getting acquitted.
Speaker 2: He ends up getting convicted of gun possession, of just
Speaker 2: the possession of the illegal gun and actually acquitted. Remember
Speaker 2: I told you he hands his neighbor of package. He
Speaker 2: was charged with illegal possession of those guns, the guns
Speaker 2: that were in that bag. He got acquitted of that too.
Speaker 2: They did not convict him of even possessing those guns
Speaker 2: that were widely known to have been given to a neighbor.
Speaker 2: They felt that the neighbor who was actually Janis Joplin's publicist.
Speaker 2: Oddly enough, she'd written a whole. She'd sold her story
Speaker 2: to New York magazine, and they saw her as capitalizing
Speaker 2: on the tragedy. He's such that she might have lied
Speaker 2: about receiving this package in the first place, and they
Speaker 2: just didn't trust They didn't trust her testimony, and so
Speaker 2: he's equitted of those So he ends up spending eight
Speaker 2: months in jail just on that illegal gun possession charge.
Speaker 2: It was pretty much now that the interesting thing about
Speaker 2: jail is that quickly they figure out that he's an engineer,
Speaker 2: at which point he ends up making money as the
Speaker 2: helping repair New York City bus radios while he's in prison,
Speaker 2: and he's making he makes like forty nine cents a day,
Speaker 2: and he's just they knew this guy's an engineer, We're
Speaker 2: going to put him to work. And so he ends
Speaker 2: up in this inmate who is a big help in
Speaker 2: the you know, because you can have a job in
Speaker 2: prison depending on the nature of the you know, the
Speaker 2: nature of the crime you committed. And they let him.
Speaker 2: They let him do that.
Speaker 1: Well. As an attorney, well educated attorney, what do you
Speaker 1: think about the verdict being objective?
Speaker 2: I think a different jury and certainly in a different time,
Speaker 2: would have convicted him. I see why they acquitted him.
Speaker 2: I understand, and you can read the record. The thing
Speaker 2: that we left out when he was in New Hampshire
Speaker 2: that we talked about a little bit, he confessed to
Speaker 2: police for two hours. Oh I know, it's four hours.
Speaker 2: Part of its two different two hour confessions, first of
Speaker 2: the Conquered Police Department and then to the New York
Speaker 2: City Police Department, using language like I wanted to murder
Speaker 2: them and make them suffer as possible. I was. I
Speaker 2: wanted to butcher them. I felt savage. I was overcome
Speaker 2: with rage all plain as day, saying he wanted to
Speaker 2: kill these guys. The difference is the jury felt that
Speaker 2: he was in in a dreanal haze at the time
Speaker 2: he went into New Hampshire. He'd been on the run
Speaker 2: for nine days and was out of his mind and
Speaker 2: didn't really know what he was saying, and so they
Speaker 2: discredited his entire confession.
Speaker 1: Going back to what we just talked about, how do
Speaker 1: you know unless you are that person, what the person's
Speaker 1: intent was in making that confession. How did they he
Speaker 1: they know? I mean, that's making assumptions that you shouldn't make.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, his defense was very mindful of this fact and
Speaker 2: leaned into even though our guys confessed, you can't trust
Speaker 2: his confession. He's out of his mind. He didn't He
Speaker 2: doesn't even know what he's saying. Why do you trust
Speaker 2: what he's saying?
Speaker 1: Okay, well tell me the future of these five people
Speaker 1: who become just inexplicably intertwined one afternoon on the Number
Speaker 1: two train going from the Bronx all the way down
Speaker 1: to Brooklyn.
Speaker 2: Bernard gets has a fascinating future, and I interview him
Speaker 2: in the book Five Bullets, and I talked to him
Speaker 2: about what life is like today, which is a little bonkers.
Speaker 2: He ends up just this gadfly, crazy gish guy around
Speaker 2: town who he runs for mayor and public advocate, which
Speaker 2: is like the city's ombudsman on a vegetarian meals in
Speaker 2: schools and anti circumcision platform. He shows up in the
Speaker 2: media sometimes. He is an animal rights activist. He's a
Speaker 2: pro vegetarian activist. He almost was evicted from his apartment
Speaker 2: for washing squirrels in his saying he would find squirrels
Speaker 2: in Washington Square Park and try to wash them and
Speaker 2: nurse them back to health. He ended up getting arrested
Speaker 2: in twenty thirteen, oddly enough for marijuana sales, because he
Speaker 2: says an undercover cop flirted with him and tried to
Speaker 2: he wanted to give her the drugs, she insisted that
Speaker 2: he pay, that she pay, and then as soon as
Speaker 2: there was a transaction of money, he got arrested. Well, ironically,
Speaker 2: the whole case gets thrown out because police waited too
Speaker 2: long to charge it, which is fascinating because Bernard gets
Speaker 2: his whole ethos was that the city is slow and
Speaker 2: incompetent and devoid of decision making. Well that's how he
Speaker 2: got off. So that's Bernard gets his future.
Speaker 1: Wait is he still alive?
Speaker 2: He is close to eighty, seventy eight years old, seventy
Speaker 2: years old and just all over the place. He's just
Speaker 2: you talk to him, he's all over the place. He's
Speaker 2: literally all over the place.
Speaker 1: And he's okay with the book? Or how do you
Speaker 1: think he feels about this book?
Speaker 2: I don't know. I mean he made clear to me
Speaker 2: he wanted me to do a reenactment of the shooting
Speaker 2: that rather than doing a book, I should get television
Speaker 2: to reenact the shooting because nothing else would be fair.
Speaker 2: He has conveyed through an intermediary actually that if my
Speaker 2: book does not accurately convey the criminal histories of the
Speaker 2: four young men, that it's not a fair book, which okay,
Speaker 2: I mean, what I would respond is that the book
Speaker 2: Five Bullets makes at least forty one different references to
Speaker 2: the criminal histories or drug abuse of these young men,
Speaker 2: but also notes that Bernard Getz didn't know any of
Speaker 2: it at the time he decided to shoot them. So okay, sir,
Speaker 2: So yeah, he's just around and it is what he
Speaker 2: is now. Daral Caby ends up paralyzed and brain damaged
Speaker 2: and just moved out of the city. Doesn't like coming back,
Speaker 2: but he's around and has family around him. I tried
Speaker 2: to interview him and his family. They passed. So Kanty
Speaker 2: is the one that seems to have gotten his life
Speaker 2: the most back together. He's in upstate New York as
Speaker 2: an auto mechanic. Barry Allen ended up in jail for
Speaker 2: a whole bunch of things, end up dying in prison
Speaker 2: in twenty eighteen, and James Ramseur, who ended up with
Speaker 2: the ugliest criminal history of all of them around the
Speaker 2: time of the shooting, ended up being charged with a
Speaker 2: horrific sexual assault, in robbery, in battery, ends up going
Speaker 2: to jail for eight to twenty five years for that,
Speaker 2: gets out back end parole violations and so on, and
Speaker 2: then ends up killing himself on December twenty second. I
Speaker 2: believe it's twenty seventeen or twenty twenty eleven, the anniversary
Speaker 2: of the shooting. Oh yeah, found in a dingy low
Speaker 2: rent hotel room and a highway in the Bronx, just
Speaker 2: pill bottle floating in the toilet. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: And you must have reflected over and over again about
Speaker 1: how this one incident, this one minute incident in these
Speaker 1: people's lives, changed the trajectory of their lives. Really. I mean,
Speaker 1: we don't know what would have happened with Gets, but
Speaker 1: these four guys.
Speaker 2: Yes, immeasurably. You can't tell me now. Again, odds weren't
Speaker 2: great for kids from Housing Pride in the South Bronx
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty five, as Crack was getting there. However,
Speaker 2: being shot does not help. Being brain damaged certainly did
Speaker 2: not help del Kby's prospects, or being paralyzed from the
Speaker 2: midchest down didn't help his prospects at all for his future.
Speaker 2: All of them expressed or at least two expressed some interest,
Speaker 2: some desire to move on from it all before the shooting,
Speaker 2: to get out of the city, to move up to
Speaker 2: just find a new life, and were sort of pulled
Speaker 2: by the forces that got them there. But the four
Speaker 2: of them and every figure attached to the case. I've
Speaker 2: been talked about Greg Waples, the prosecutor who I interviewed
Speaker 2: for the case for the book, too, and he felt
Speaker 2: that it just he was one of the most seasoned
Speaker 2: prosecutors in New York City and one of Robert Morgenthaw's
Speaker 2: top lieutenants, and a great widely respected on all sides.
Speaker 2: He just felt broken by the case. He felt that
Speaker 2: the hate and the acrimony that came his way dogged
Speaker 2: him for the rest of his career, and he was
Speaker 2: just sort of trying to live his life and do
Speaker 2: his job. And everybody who touched this case seemed to
Speaker 2: really be brought down by accept the national figures who
Speaker 2: sort of rose to prominence out of it, which is
Speaker 2: Rudy Giuliani, who was the US Attorney and certainly used
Speaker 2: it on his path to start him Al Sharpton. It
Speaker 2: was his first big national story. Rupert Murdoch. Anything that
Speaker 2: gave the New York Post something to glom Onto was
Speaker 2: good for Rupert Murdock. And finally, the National Rifle Association
Speaker 2: had just pivoted from being a hunting with Grandpa organization
Speaker 2: to being a self defense and political advocacy organization, and
Speaker 2: they funded his trial a little bit, given twenty thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: So, finally, how do you think this specific story is framed?
Speaker 1: Now we've heard a lot about the menindas brothers and
Speaker 1: how it's been sort of reframed. Now that we have
Speaker 1: all of this context, now, what do you think is
Speaker 1: there a reframing.
Speaker 2: I don't think there's a reframing, but there's a gentle
Speaker 2: shift in how we think about these people. Many people
Speaker 2: who I think might have been quick to think of
Speaker 2: Bernard Gets as a hero in nineteen eighty four would
Speaker 2: be more skeptical of him and his behavior in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty six. I just think he's a more nuanced, complex
Speaker 2: figure than the avenger who's standing up for us. And
Speaker 2: I think the four victims would be seen as, Yeah,
Speaker 2: they did bad things, and I am not going to
Speaker 2: gloss over their misdeeds, particularly James Ramser's vicious sexual assault.
Speaker 2: They committed awful crimes that hurt many people, but they
Speaker 2: would be treated with a little bit more care than
Speaker 2: certainly the media would have regarded them, or tried to
Speaker 2: regard them in the early nineteen eighties, and just well,
Speaker 2: this is far more complex and one of the epigraph
Speaker 2: I always get the epi's wrong. I think it's the
Speaker 2: quote at the beginning of the book. One of the
Speaker 2: two that I use is from an old New York
Speaker 2: State case, which is that the worst man in society
Speaker 2: has every right to live in society as the best
Speaker 2: man in society, regardless of his status. Right. And the
Speaker 2: fact that you're sort of a shakedown artist and a
Speaker 2: bad guy might mean that you should go to jail
Speaker 2: for that, But that doesn't mean that a vigilante has
Speaker 2: the right to just open fire on you because you
Speaker 2: look at him funny, and that's kind of you know. Again,
Speaker 2: I don't want to be too dismissive of Gatz, but
Speaker 2: that's kind of what happened here.
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