“Subway Vigilante” or “Bigot?” Revisiting the 1984 Bernhard Goetz Shooting

BIANNA GOLODRYGA: It was a moment that shocked New York and divided a nation. In 1984, Bernie Goetz opened fire on four black teenagers who he claimed were trying to rob him. At a time when fears of rising crime were rife, some saw him as a hometown hero, naming him the subway vigilante, while others condemned him for what they saw as an act of racial violence. Now, former federal prosecutor Elliot Williams is reexamining this case in his new book, Five Bullets. And he speaks to Michel Martin about why this story still resonates today.

 

MICHEL MARTIN: Thanks Bianna. Elliot Williams, thank you so much for joining us.

 

ELLIOT WILLIAMS: Great to be here, Michel.

 

MARTIN: I think people know you as a legal analyst, former federal prosecutor. But in this book, you’re revisiting, I don’t know, one of the most explosive, divisive cases in New York from the mid eighties. I mean, I’m saying New York, but this became a national issue. What drew you to it?

 

WILLIAMS: Well, it’s part of me growing up, Michel. I grew up, I was born in Brooklyn and grew up not far from the city. And remember this story from the nightly news, from when it happened. And, you know, there’s an anecdote I have in the preface to the book that the, my first memory of the case is a story on the nightly news about how Bernie Goetz was the muse for hip hop songs, which, you know, you don’t really think of this associated with rapper hip hop. And for years, I’ve just wondered what was all this about and why has this story stayed with us? Why has Billy Joel included the name Bernie Goetz in his songs and I realized, it’s not just pop culture. There are aspects of this case that really resonate with us today.

 

MARTIN: So remind people of what happened.

 

WILLIAMS: Okay. So what’s not disputed is that Bernhard Goetz, on a downtown Manhattan, number 2 subway train shoots four unarmed black teenagers who he claimed were trying to mug him. He ran to New Hampshire, was on the run for nine days and then ultimately turned himself in. When he came back, he was heralded as somewhat of a hero by a big segment of the population. And it really was an immensely polarizing case about self-defense in New York, in one of its roughest times in history with crime rates that were through the roof.

MARTIN: Who is Bernhard Goetz? I think most people haven’t heard of him in years. I think some people might be surprised he’s still alive. You actually had a lengthy conversation with him. We’ll get to that later. But who is Bernhard Goetz and who was he then and what did he represent to people?

 

WILLIAMS: He was a, this quirky, odd loner in effect, a man that lived in New York City. He was 37 at the time of the shooting, and just an odd individual. His neighbors would say that he was immensely friendly one day, and then odd and dismissive another day. Quirky, hyperkinetic, clench fists walking through his building. But the one issue that really seemed to rile him up was public safety and crime. You could just say the words crime or drugs or drunks on the stoop. And he would just go off. And this goes back to even the 1980s. He had been mugged quite violently a few years before this shooting. And thereafter always walked the streets of New York, never left home without an unlicensed firearm. He always had this handgun on him. And to some extent, it was always a matter of when not if he would use it on somebody.

 

MARTIN: So what happened on that subway car? Like what was going on? Like, set the scene for us.

 

WILLIAMS: So New York City was at its roughest, quite possibly ever. Just to put it in perspective, back then, the homicide rate in New York City was about 2,000 homicides a year, 2,000 murders a year. It’s about 300 now. It’s just rough in an incomprehensible way to most modern thinkers or viewers or audiences. Right. And that the subway wasn’t immune, it was rough. People were often assaulted or mugged, or chain snatched or purses grabbed on the subway. So that’s the backdrop. 

He got on the subway car and one of the four young men, Troy Canty, is his name, either asked Bernhard Goetz for $5, Mr. Can I have $5? Or demanded, give me $5. That’s not clear. And that was never quite established, which of the two it was. Needless to say, Goetz thought he was being mugged. And New York law at the time, and as now allows someone who believes reasonably – that’s the word – that they are about to be the victim of a robbery, can use deadly force, believe it or not. And so he felt empowered to do so, thought a mugging was imminent – even said, even if the guy just says hi to you sometimes, you know, even those words, hello, might be an attempt for a mugging – pulled out his gun and then just opened fire on the four boys in rapid succession.

 

MARTIN: And you say boys, were they boys? 

 

WILLIAMS: Well, they were 18 and 19 years old. That’s a fair question. And throughout time, you know, as you read coverage of it, it’s this question of how to refer to them now throughout the book “Five Bullets,” I use the term teens or young men because they were in their teen years, but they were still adults. And we should be fair in characterizing the good and the bad in all of this. Right. But, you know, boys came out there. Some people refer to them as kids, I did not in the book.

 

MARTIN: So, almost immediately this case became more than a case. Like, it became more than one incident. So I wanna ask about both of those things. Why, what happened? Like, why did this thing sort to blow up into this almost kind of mythic thing, and what were some of the things that people were saying? 

 

WILLIAMS: Well, so let’s rewind. 10 years before, the movie Death Wish, in 1974, the film Death Wish had come out. And within days of the shooting, I think the next day, even before anybody knew who Bernhard Goetz was, the New York Post began running graphics, calling him the Death Wish vigilante, the Death Wish shooter. And there’s the, there’s a myth in American popular culture and history of the noble vigilante, the man who steps in – it’s usually a white man – who steps in and fills the void where police cannot. And that was an attractive fantasy to many people. 

And just think about the kinds of things that happened at the time, Michel, the police set up a tip line for those nine days before they caught Goetz. It’s inundated with phone calls, but the phone calls were all in support or overwhelmingly in support of the shooter suggesting that he run for mayor, that he should run for office, that he’s a hero. “I would’ve done the same thing if I were in the same position.” And something about him really touched a nerve in people. And it was such an easy narrative to build. 

They were black teenagers. They were ostensibly mugging him. That’s the narrative that got built. He was an otherwise law abiding, meek white engineer. And it was – the narrative just took off and took hold that in a city in which elected officials cannot keep us safe and have failed overall, this person did what needed to be done. And that narrative took hold and there was really no getting off it once it did.

 

MARTIN: Gosh, there’s so many recent cases that come to mind when you think of this, there’s the story of Kyle Rittenhouse he decided he was gonna go and help the police at this Black Lives Matter demonstration, wound up shooting somebody. And there’s the more recent case of the man who choked this guy out on the subway, who was frightening people because he was sort of a Michael Jackson impersonator. And then, I mean, there’s maybe people think this is analogous to Luigi Mangione, who shot this United Healthcare CEO on the street, allegedly because he’s angry at the way the healthcare system is treating a Americans. So talk about if you would just, are there misconceptions about this case that took hold in part because of the way it was covered? Are there things that even now people, that there’s a sort of a variance from reality? 

 

WILLIAMS: Yes. Oh my gosh. Absolutely. The biggest one being – there was a rush to demonize the four young men. Case in point, within days of the shooting, this notion that they were armed took off. And newspapers ran with this notion that they were all carrying sharpened screwdrivers that they brandished as weapons in an attempt to mug Bernhard Goetz. That simply was not true. Now, these young men all had copious and sometimes quite awful criminal records. But they were not carrying weapons at the time that they encountered Bernhard Goetz. 

Now they did have screwdrivers on them, but that’s because they were going downtown to break open video game machines to steal the quarters. Right. Now, still a crime, but not armed in an attempt  to attack Goetz. And even today, when people come at me on social media about the book, and, oh, this guy was a hero, people still say – and even, you know, in my DMs – these were four guys who were carrying shivs and weapons to attack Bernhard Goetz. And so a lot of things like that took off and were just, and as I said a moment ago, were just easy narratives for people to latch onto. Of course, these four young black guys from the Bronx were armed and attacking a white man who was defenseless on the subway. Of course that’s what happened because that’s just an easy narrative for society to get it, to get its head around.

 

MARTIN: You write “the nickname “Subway Vigilante,” romanticizes Goetz. Notice that he was never called “the subway terror,” “the subway assassin or anything less ambiguous.” Segments of America love the idea of a vigilante, a noble (mostly white) warrior who acted not because he wanted to, but because he felt he had to.” Why do you think that this notion has such staying power? And I’m mentioning some of these other cases that we have that have been in the news subsequently, including Luigi Mangione who allegedly killed this United Healthcare executive. But people are calling him a vigilante, somebody who’s sort of avenging the vulnerable. Luigi Mangione, race is not a factor there. Race was a factor here. How do you think race was a factor here? 

 

WILLIAMS: Oh, it absolutely was a factor here. I almost invite readers to search yourself and ask the question, if you heard about a shooting on a subway where a middle aged black man shot for white 18 and 19 year olds, what would your knee jerk response be? And people always reflexively seem to say, oh, I would, I would regard it the same way. But that’s simply not true, Michel. It’s just not, you know, and this is the whole notion of what we all have, white people and black people quite often, kicking around in the back of their brains implicitly. 

And so, what civil rights leaders at the time were very honest and upfront about including Sharpton, Charlie Rangel, who was a congressman at the time, saying that, look, this is not a defense of these young men. It’s not a defense of their actions or an exoneration of whatever bad things they may have done. But let’s be honest here, if these were white boys or white teenagers and a black adult, the world would see this differently. It’s still a crime. It would probably still be prosecuted. But the way everything from the media to the way the jury regarded the case would have been entirely different. 

 

MARTIN: And you point out that Goetz was a bigot. Was/is, maybe is, I don’t know. Was/is a bigot. I mean, he, it, it came out at trial that he made racist remarks. But, then that really turns on this question of did he have a right to be afraid? And if so, on what basis? 

 

WILLIAMS: I, so I would say it, there’s no question that he had – like, is being a bigot a binary? Either you are or you aren’t? Well, there’s no question, you know, and that’s a tough one for everyone to answer. There’s no question though that, as you said, he used those ethnic slurs specifically and unambiguously when talking at a co-op meeting about getting the black people and Hispanic people out of the neighborhood, right? And he used vicious words. You can figure out and speculate, folks, as to what they are. Even when I interviewed him talking to him, I was stunned by the language he was willing to use on the phone with me. Now, he wasn’t using –

 

MARTIN: Did he know you’re black?

 

WILLIAMS: I don’t know. I mean, I’d sent him my bio and he’s read the book at this point, which I acknowledge that I’m a black person. There’s a photograph of me in the book. So I don’t know if he did. That’s an excellent question. But –

 

MARTIN: But he was very free with his remarks, is what you’re telling me.

 

WILLIAMS: Free with his remarks about the things the blacks were doing, and this is what the blacks do. And he kept saying that. So there’s no question that knocking around in his mind, and part of his fear was of black people. 

 

MARTIN: Okay. So, fast forward, what actually happened? 

 

WILLIAMS: He ends up getting acquitted of violent crime charges and then only convicted of the gun possession charge. Remember I said a few times, he was carrying an unlicensed firearm, acknowledged that it was unlicensed, everybody knows that he was carrying it ’cause he shot four people with it. So ultimately he’s end, he ends up getting acquitted

 

MARTIN: And served time. Served eight months, was sued in, in civil court by well, I think at first all four, but then the most seriously injured of the, of the four.

 

WILLIAMS: And one fact I left out. So of the four – so the three end up in as far as gunshot wounds go, not ultimately that seriously injured, they all ended up okay. One of them who Goetz is believed to have stood over and shot twice saying, “you don’t look so bad. Here’s another.” Before shooting him the second time, he ended up paralyzed from the mid chest down and brain damaged with the mental capacity of roughly a 9-year-old. Well, he ends up suing Goetz for $50 million, wins a, I believe a $43 million settlement, which Bernhard Goetz still 30 years later has not paid and, and likely never will.

 

MARTIN: So what, you know, that’s interesting. We talked about the four young men, they’re, you, you weren’t able to interview them in part because two of them are deceased. Right. So, what happened to them? 

 

WILLIAMS:  I tried to recreate their stories as best I could without interviews with them. I got, as far as speaking to two of the sisters of one of the young men, they all declined, or I just couldn’t get ahold of them. Now one ends up dying in prison in 2018. One sort of the, the most tragic of the stories ends up dying in an apparent suicide on the anniversary of the shooting, the 27th anniversary of the shooting, right? One ends up brain damaged, and is sort of away from the city. And then one seems to have somewhat moved on with his life. I would’ve loved to have asked him sort of about his current existence, but he moved outta the city, apparently does not like coming back and works as an auto mechanic and doing other things. 

 

MARTIN: But one of the things you point out though, is that this wasn’t just one case. This case is like other cases where it’s not just about the facts themselves. You used this term yourself. It was a Rorschach test about what, you know, safety means, who has the right to feel safe, what right do you have to do something about your lack of sense of safety, et cetera. So, what are you left with after having spent so much time thinking about this? And also, it has to be said, with your own sort of history as a former prosecutor.

 

WILLIAMS: Yeah. I, I think things are just more complicated than we allow them to be, or than, or, or than that we are willing to accept. I think Bernhard Goetz is a far more complicated figure than the world saw. Everybody saw this avenging hero, and I saw, from interviewing him and, and now being email buddies with them in some bizarre way, an odd, angry, complex man. Right? I think these were young men with family histories and so on, but became the face of black urban terror at the time. It can both be the case, Michel, that New York city was historically and mythically rough at the time, and that the subway was a frightening place, and that the four individuals whom get shot with criminal records themselves did not do anything to deserve lethal force being used against them. It’s just more complicated than either noble vigilante or vicious victims. And maybe it’s somewhere in between the two, but I just think it’s very easy for the world to get reductive about virtually every story or case that we grew up with.

 

MARTIN: And you point out that New York has changed, that the country has changed in, in some respects. I mean, there’s been an African American president, the crime rate has fallen into historic lows. I mean, obviously we’re in a sort of a different political moment. I wonder – and I don’t know if you asked sort of Bernhard Goetz this question is – has he changed?

 

WILLIAMS: Oh, he has not changed. And if anything you know, we all have elderly relatives that calcify in their views over time, I think. And, oh, I think he’s gotten even more indignant about the shooting. I asked him when I interviewed him, Do you feel you committed an act of public service? Because it sounds, from all the interviews I’ve read of you, that you feel you did something good. And he says, “those guys needed shooting. That’s not why I shot them, but they needed shooting.” He almost seems an advocate for eugenics and believing that some people are just so irredeemable that they’re just not, they ought not be welcome as parts of society.

 

MARTIN: An American tragedy, really.

 

WILLIAMS: It’s all tragic. It’s almost Shaeksperian, and for lack of a better way to put it, all of these were horribly tragic figures. Every – certainly the five, the five men and the, and the city generally. But it’s all just deeply tragic, profoundly tragic, Michel.

 

MARTIN: Elliot Williams, thank you so much.

 

WILLIAMS: Thank you.