New book 'Five Bullets' explores divisive 1984 NYC subway shooting

Geoff Bennett:

In 1984, a shooting on a New York City subway thrust Bernard Goetz into the center of the national spotlight. After opening fire on four Black teenagers he said were trying to rob him, Goetz was hailed by some as a vigilante hero in a city gripped by fear and rising crime and condemned by others as a symbol of racial violence.

The case unfolded against the backdrop of New York's turbulent 1980s, when public anxiety about safety collided with enduring questions about race, justice and the limits of self-defense.

In "Five Bullets," Elliot Williams, a former federal prosecutor and legal analyst, revisits the shooting, the trial that followed and the cultural moment that turned a single act of violence into a referendum on American law and society.

I spoke with him recently about the book.

Elliot Williams, welcome to the "News Hour."

Elliot Williams:

Oh, thank you so much for having me here, Geoff.

Geoff Bennett:

Absolutely.

So this book revisits a case that many Americans remember in broad strokes as the subway vigilante.

Elliot Williams:

Right.

Geoff Bennett:

Forty years later, why did this whole story feel so urgent to return to?

Elliot Williams:

Right.

It's lived in my head for quite some time. I grew up, as you did, in New Jersey and remember this quite well from all over the headlines and the nightly television every night. I think we are still living with many of the issues that are central to the book "Five Bullets."

That's polarization, media bias, but also race and crime and how much society tolerates or even encourages vigilante behavior. So there's lots of threads in the world we live in, and it just felt too ripe to pass up.

Geoff Bennett:

And the notion of fear, how does this entire episode reveal how fear operates in not just law, but public opinion?

Elliot Williams:

Sure.

Well, fear is one of the greatest motivators of human behavior. It's one of the few things that links all of us as human. Everybody experiences fear in some way. Now, the fear drives how -- fear drives how laws are written and enforced. At the center of this case is the question of the legitimacy of Bernard Goetz's fear. How afraid was he and did that entitle him to use lethal force against these four Black teenagers?

And, in general, fear drives a lot of -- I used the words media bias earlier. Fear drives clicks on social media and headlines that newspapers put up, which has an effect on how people see the world. So all of these things fit together and fear often is at the center of it.

Geoff Bennett:

And you place Goetz in the long tradition of American vigilantism. Why does this idea of the armed citizen taking matters into his own hands, why does this loom so large in the American imagination?

Elliot Williams:

Right.

So, going back to the country's founding, the idea of individual defense or self-defense or public defense has been really part of what makes America, whether folks want to agree with that or not. It's enshrined in the Constitution. The country won its independence after a very vicious civil war.

And violence, oddly and perhaps at times tragically, is who we are as Americans. Now, there's a long tradition of Americans almost making a fantasy or fetish out of vigilantes, from films like "Death Wish," which really Bernard Goetz gets called the Death Wish Vigilante by The New York Post, and that becomes his nickname, to the way that society lifts up men, usually white men, who engage in vigilante behavior.

Kyle Rittenhouse was more of a celebrity than many people at the time on account of engaging in behavior that one could quite confidently call vigilante behavior, stepping out to protect society with violent force. And so it really is baked into who we are as Americans.

And Bernard Goetz in 1984 was probably one of the earliest modern big television, nightly news, American experience examples of it.

Geoff Bennett:

Well, say more about that. How did media coverage at the time amplify that case in a way that distorted the reality, instead of clarifying it?

Elliot Williams:

Yes. Sure.

I have an entire chapter in "Five Bullets" about Rupert Murdoch's takeover of The New York Post in 1970, I believe it was '6, where he'd had a bunch of tabloid newspapers in other cities and other countries and really wanted a big city tabloid to compete with. He got The New York Post and really shifted the coverage of The Post to focusing on the most sensational aspects of crime, woman found in bathtub and guns and fear and a night of terror and everybody's screaming.

And those were, in three-inch headlines, the kinds of headlines you would see in The New York Post all the time. And they sold very, very well. In New York, The Daily News and Newsday, other tabloids people would read every single day, would sort of follow suit and it became an arms race in the 1980s to have the most sensational, most violent, most shocking headlines.

That's all really largely how people consume their news. And by the end of it, everybody was scared, everybody was buying more newspapers, then getting more scared. And it was just a culture of fear that pervaded New York and really a lot of America.

Geoff Bennett:

You interviewed Bernard Goetz for this book.

Elliot Williams:

Yes.

Geoff Bennett:

What surprised you the most about how he sees himself in that day all these years later?

Elliot Williams:

Right.

He regards himself as having committed an act of public service. And I asked him that question. And he's almost proud or indignant about how -- the appropriateness of his actions. So that was something that stunned me. I would have thought that, even if he did not feel he was guilty of a crime -- and he was acquitted of violent crime charges in 1987 -- even if he didn't feel he was guilty, I would have thought there might have been some self-reflection.

And there was absolutely none, number one. Number two, I was shocked the extent to which he, speaking to a Black man, was willing to not use ethnic slurs or really go there, but to say things that would not be acceptable in mixed company. I was just shocked by his comfort and looseness in speaking with him.

And then, I guess, three, he's obsessed with the 1980s. Mario Cuomo came up more in this conversation than with anybody I have talked about in a long time. He's just obsessed with liberal leaders, the 1980s and how the fat cats and the politicians and the media are all in cahoots and aligned against us.

Geoff Bennett:

This book humanizes an event often described and discussed in abstractions.

Elliot Williams:

Yes.

Geoff Bennett:

What do you want readers to carry forward from the story?

Elliot Williams:

That I want readers to carry forward that all stories are more complex.

I approached this as a journalist, not an advocate or activist or whatever else. And I approached it wanting to create a three-dimensional look at this immensely polarizing story.

And so, for instance, Geoff, you mentioned my conversation with Bernard Goetz, which many might have taken issue with the fact that I even sat down with Bernard Goetz. Now, he does not come across sympathetically in this book at all. This is -- he's not the hero of this story, but he comes across as three-dimensional.

And I made every effort to make him three-dimensional, while pointing out the big warts I saw with him as an individual and his actions. Same thing with the young men, who certainly had, at times, horrific or ugly criminal histories, but were human beings with families and lives.

And I wanted that to come through and signify that, even if they had troubled pasts or criminal histories or whatever else, that did not entitle anyone to take violent force against them under nebulous circumstances or confusing circumstances. So everything is just more complex than we remember it to be when we were young.

Geoff Bennett:

"Five Bullets: The Story of Bernie Goetz, New York's Explosive '80s, and the Subway Vigilante Trial That Divided the Nation."

Elliot Williams, great to speak with you. Thanks for being here.

Elliot Williams:

Always great to talk to you, Geoff. Thanks.