The NY Subway Vigilante

Today we dive into the unremorseful life of NYC Subway vigilante Bernhard Goetz. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:35Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:45Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here, too. We're pretty sure. And this is Stuff You Should Know.

• 1:54Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:56Speaker 02

  Eighties history, New York City history edition? Yeah?

• 1:59Josh Clark?

  Oh, it's definitely, I mean, not just like New York City history. This is one of the pivotal moments in, in the history of New York.

• 2:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right, because everyone, we are talking about somebody who, as far as pop culture goes, was on the cover of Time Magazine, somebody who has been in pop songs by Billy Joel, of course, Lou Reed, none other than the Beastie Boys, has been a Trivial Pursuit answer, has been a question on Jeopardy, has been mentioned in an episode of Seinfeld even? And of course, who are we talking about, Josh?

• 2:35Josh Clark?

  Wow. Well, hold on, I can top your Time Magazine. He was also in Mad Magazine.

• 2:41Speaker 02

  Okay, also in Mad Magazine. So this must have been some entertainer or some revered cultural icon? Yeah?

• 2:49Josh Clark?

  Sure, in a roundabout way, but not really. I think you're being coy or fey.

• 2:54Speaker 02

  That's right. We're talking about Bernard Getz, the subway vigilante who shot four teenagers on a subway train in New York City in 1984, when I was 13 years old. I remember this very vividly. It was a very big deal.

• 3:10Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and we should probably come out and say, these were unarmed teenagers, too. And then I saw, so there's a book called Five Bullets by a legal correspondent named Elliot Ness.

• 3:25Speaker 02

  Ness? Smith?

• 3:29Josh Clark?

  Actually, it's Elliot Smith hyphen Ness. Good guess.

• 3:33Speaker 02

  Easton?

• 3:35Josh Clark?

  That's Sheena Easton you're thinking of. Thank you for helping me tap dance here.

• 3:39Speaker 02

  Elliot Easton of the Cars.

• 3:41Josh Clark?

  Well, anyway, I'll find his last name, but his first name's Elliot. He wrote a book called Five Bullets, and it's about this. And he was, I saw him being interviewed, and he was like, you know, were these kids? And he's like, yeah, that's, I think he said, that's a fair question. He said, they were teens, they were 18 or 19, but they were also like-

• 3:59Speaker 02

  Fully grown adults by then.

• 4:00Josh Clark?

  Exactly. They were, they were young men, for sure. So to call them kids, which a lot of people did, was incorrect. But to also say that they were armed, which a lot of people said is incorrect as well.

• 4:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, unless you count Screudriver.

• 4:13Josh Clark?

  Yes, but was that even them being armed?

• 4:17Speaker 02

  I know. Yeah, we'll get to all that. So I guess we should sort of just say quickly,

• 4:24Speaker 02

  the story, maybe?

• 4:26Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And by the way, I really, I liked your intro.

• 4:29Speaker 02

  Oh, thanks. We'll get into the details of it, but the overall story is that on the New York City subway train, on the two train in December of 1984, a guy named Bernard Getz, 37 years old, he was an electrical engineer, still is, still lives in the very same apartment, which is kind of crazy.

• 4:46Josh Clark?

  Really? In the West Village, right?

• 4:48Speaker 02

  I'm not even sure where it is.

• 4:49Josh Clark?

  I'm pretty sure it is.

• 4:51Speaker 02

  Okay. Well, I mean, I might have bumped into him one day. You never know. But yeah, he still lives in the same place, which is a little crazy because I've never heard him say one thing about New York City that he likes. All I've ever heard him, and I've listened to a lot of interviews, all I've ever heard him do is complain about everything about New York.

• 5:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah, he's apparently still complaining about how New York was in the 80s.

• 5:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe so. But anyway, he was 37 at the time, took a seat on the New York City subway. I think, what was it? The two train? And four 18 and 19 year olds got on Barry Allen, Troy Canty, Daryl Kaybee, and James Ramsure

• 5:30Speaker 02

  got on and were being like, you know, I've been on trains sort of back in the day. It doesn't happen a whole lot anymore where teenagers or even older teenagers get on and they start screwing around with people. They start being disruptive, maybe even veiled, veiledly, veiledly? Veiledly?

• 5:50Josh Clark?

  Veiledly.

• 5:51Speaker 02

  Veiledly threatening. And that's what was going on. And one of them, I believe it was Canty, approached Bernard Getz and either said, give me five bucks or can I have five bucks?

• 6:08Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 6:09Speaker 02

  And Bernard Getz pulled a gun out of his windbreaker and shot each of them one by one. Hitting, hit two of them in the back and then fired a second bullet at Daryl Kaybee, who was, you know, this is where it gets a little confusing as to how exactly it played out and we'll get to all those details, but he's the one that was, nobody was killed. He was the one that was injured the most. He ended up paralyzed and brain damaged because the bullet entered his spine.

• 6:34Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and it's worth saying that when he shot Daryl Kaybee that second time, Daryl Kaybee was cowering on a subway bench in fear of his life and again was not armed. So this is, um, this is such a, like a difficult case to talk about because in some ways you kind of have to provide context for Bernard Getz's mindset. He was, he was not some insane person necessarily, but the, when you find out more about him too, he becomes less and less sympathetic of a, of a person. And yet at the same time, the, the victims of this

• 7:14Josh Clark?

  were not just like, you know, angels, even if in this one particular incident, they weren't necessarily doing anything and they certainly weren't doing anything worth being shot and paralyzed for life over. So the whole thing, it's, it's just not cut and dried or black and white, which makes the whole thing, um, I guess real life essentially.

• 7:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, none other than Al Sharpton, back in the day even said like, hey, these guys are no angels.

• 7:40Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 7:41Speaker 02

  So like, no one was ever, and if, you know, Al Sharpton's on the scene and he's saying that kind of thing, like contemporaneously, then you know, like nobody was trying to paint these guys as like, you know, these nice kids who are just on their way home from the library or whatever.

• 7:55Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 7:56Speaker 02

  So yeah, we got to frame this a little bit and, and one of the ways we should start is probably by talking a little bit about New York City.

• 8:04Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 8:05Speaker 02

  In 1984 and the 1980s, which, you know, pretty infamously was, uh, down on its luck as a town and fairly riddled with crime. I think it's fair to say.

• 8:17Josh Clark?

  For sure. It had almost gone bankrupt as a city in the seventies. I think it was bailed out by like Citibank and some of the other big banks and owed them big time. And one other thing too about New York was that crime, including violent crime was on the rise across the US, but in New York, it was increasing at a rate 60% faster than any other big city. It was a, it was a totally different town than it is today.

• 8:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure.

• 8:46Josh Clark?

  All you have to do is look at a picture of the interior of a subway from 1984.

• 8:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:50Josh Clark?

  And compare it to the interior of a subway today, and it will give you a really good idea of kind of the general lawlessness that was going on in New York at the time.

• 8:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think there were 38 crimes a day just on the subway in New York City. Uh, and you know, I mentioned that last episode, I'm reading that Abel Ferrara book. Uh, he's a New York guy. And so some of these early stories, uh, from back then, he lived near Union Square. Like, you know, Union Square, New York.

• 9:16Josh Clark?

  Sure, I do. I've walked around in a circle even.

• 9:18Speaker 02

  It's quite lovely. Uh, not when he lived there, which was, uh, in the eighties. He said that he literally would not go into Union Square at night and he was, he was a pretty tough guy.

• 9:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 9:27Speaker 02

  And that at one point, like, the phone, like, New York City was in such bad shape, like, my bell went down for, I feel like, months. Like, he said, nobody could call in or out from, from my neighborhood near Union Square.

• 9:42Josh Clark?

  That's like Escape from New York type stuff.

• 9:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. Like, he said he used to pick up the phone every day just to see if there was a dial tone. And then finally, one day there was, and he was like, oh, my God, I can, I can call somebody.

• 9:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it was so bad, New York was back in this day, that in Times Square, people wouldn't go to the Planet Hollywood or TGI Fridays, and both of them almost went under.

• 10:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, Bubba Gump, Bubba Gump's shrimp was really suffering.

• 10:08Josh Clark?

  Yes, big time. So, yeah, New York was a different place. And this is actually, this will help explain the reaction that Bernard Getz got. Um, when he, I guess, turned himself in and became known as the subway vigilante. But before that, he, um, was an unknown person. This was an unknown perpetrator because after he shot, uh, Canty, Allen, KB and Ram Sear, uh, he took off, he jumped out of the stopped subway car, ran down the tracks and then, I guess, hit a platform and ran back up above ground and, um, was on the lam for like seven or nine days, I think.

• 10:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, the subway conductor actually, like, confronted him and was like, are you a cop? And he said, no, and he tried to get the gun from Bernie Getz, which was a Smith and Wesson 38 caliber. And that's, that's when he took off and ran down to Chambers Street. But yeah, he packed a bag, rented a car and drove to New Hampshire.

• 11:08Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And I think he, he passed through Vermont because I heard that he buried the gun there. And he was really scared. Like he was, I mean, as you would be after something like that. He said that in the moment, he was totally out of control, but very quickly after that, he got really scared. So he was running on the lam because he was under the impression that when New York got their hands on him, he, I think he's, he told a detective in New, in New Hampshire, they're going to wipe the floor with me. And it turned out that the, essentially the exact opposite happened to Bernard Getz when he turned himself in nine days after the shooting in New Hampshire.

• 11:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, the reaction generally from New York, uh, I mean, it was, it was divided in a way. It's not like everyone felt this way, but there were enough people that were like, yeah, good for him. This city is a cesspool and somebody finally took up for themselves. Uh, that was a sentiment like across racial lines and, and race would play a big part as we'll see. Like that's sort of one of the uncomfortable things we have to talk about because Bernard Getz very unapologetically in interviews, countless interviews over the years, talked about, you know, black men specifically is what he would say over and over again, and the violence and ruining the city. And, uh, I think you found statistics, right? That like a lot of the like, hey, we're, we are on this guy's

• 12:29Speaker 02

  side kind of crossed over racial lines too, right?

• 12:32Josh Clark?

  Yeah. It wasn't, it was not the way that you would think of it. I think half of the Hispanic population of New York said they support him in a survey quickly afterward. And 45% of black New Yorkers said that they supported him too. And again, it's because, like you said, like a lot of these people had their own experience with like

• 12:52Speaker 02

  Right.

• 12:52Josh Clark?

  being mugged or maybe intimidated or something on the subway. So the idea of somebody stepping forward and doing something, um, really kind of resonated with the people living in New York at the time because. I read they might not all have been living in constant fear, like we'll see Bernard Getz was, but they were constantly on alert. You had to like really know what you were doing to live in New York or else you were putting yourself in jeopardy if you were naive about that kind of thing. So the people were like, yeah, that's great. I'm glad somebody finally stood up to him. The cops aren't doing anything, which was definitely a big criticism of the NYPD and the New York judicial system at the time. Like a lot of crime was just being overlooked because the major crimes were so

• 13:37Josh Clark?

  overwhelming to the cops in the courts.

• 13:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think you said it best about just being alert because like, I think sometimes this period of New York gets painted as like, if you walk outside of your apartment, there's a 50 50 chance you're going to get mugged or murdered.

• 13:51Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 13:52Speaker 02

  Uh, and when you look at the stats, it's shocking today to hear about like 38 literal crimes on the subway every single day because it's just not like that now. But when you talk about how many, you know, tens of thousands of people ride the subway, it's still a low number, but it was high enough and everyone knew someone who knew someone who had had this happen if it hadn't happened to them that like, yeah, it was, it was a different time, but we just don't want to paint it as like, you know, the, the Wild West because it wasn't like that exactly.

• 14:21Josh Clark?

  No, but when, when it, the news of the subway vigilante came out, um, one of the things that really shaped the public opinion too, and made it easier for people to be like, heck, yeah, good for that guy. I love him. Um, I think Joan Rivers sent him a telegram that said loving kisses and offered to help him with his bail money. People had T-shirts. Did you see that T-shirt I sent you that's available on eBay?

• 14:45Speaker 02

  Oh, I thought you sent it in the mail. Do you even buy me that?

• 14:48Josh Clark?

  It said thugbusters. And it said it quit Bernard Getz has like, I think a gun or something. No, it had a bad guy with a circle and a slash through it like Ghostbusters, I guess.

• 14:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, that was, you know, That was the public sentiment and it also had to do with the way initially the press was being fed to them about this because

• 15:06Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 15:07Speaker 02

  All the information coming out was, you know, hey, these guys had screwdrivers in their pockets. They were trying to mug him. They didn't focus on sort of the shooting aspect, like that he had hollow point bullets, which are of course even deadlier.

• 15:23Speaker 02

  I guess, non hollow bullets. What are those called?

• 15:28Josh Clark?

  Regular bullets?

• 15:29Speaker 02

  Regular bullets, yeah.

• 15:29Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 15:30Speaker 02

  Talking to two newbies here with that stuff. Didn't talk about shooting them in the back initially in the press. They talked, you know, they talked to Canty's brother and he was like, yeah, my brother free bases cocaine and he was high that day on the subway. So like all the stuff coming out on the news, you know, supported

• 15:51Speaker 02

  like a more benevolent view of Bernard Getz, at first at least.

• 15:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure. So there were some people that spoke out against this. I think the columnist Jimmy Breslin was publicly repulsed that people were celebrating an incident that left a teenager in a wheelchair for life. And, you know, he had something to say about that. Mered Koch was apparently the only public official who unconditionally condemned it. He was basically saying, we will not tolerate vigilanteism. That's the difference between the Wild West and a civilized society. And he had a really good point.

• 16:31Josh Clark?

  But for the most part, basically, everybody, the loudest people were definitely the ones who were supporting him. The few people who were like, that was a hate crime, long before there were any federal laws against hate crimes,

• 16:46Josh Clark?

  were speaking out, but they were in a minority, it seemed like.

• 16:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:50Josh Clark?

  I found a quote from a guy named James Q. Wilson, who is a, he's a, I guess, a public policy expert. I think he was a conservative. He said that it may be that there are no more liberals on the crime and law and order issue in New York because they've all been mugged, which I think kind of gets across the idea that like, there weren't a lot of people speaking out about this and against Bernard Getz, especially at first.

• 17:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. All right. I think we've set the table pretty nicely. You eat from the outside in.

• 17:21Josh Clark?

  Oh, I've been doing it the opposite my whole

• 17:23Speaker 02

  Soup spoon, large spoon, yeah.

• 17:25Josh Clark?

  I've been eating from bottom to top.

• 17:26Speaker 02

  Oh, no, no, no. That's not the way you do it. You gotta set the table the right way. And we have done that. So we'll be right back with more on the Subway Vigilante Bernard Getz.

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• 20:44Speaker 02

  All right, so like we mentioned, Bernard Getz hit the trail and a rental car went to New Hampshire. A manhunt ensued, obviously. They put out a sketch of him and I guess someone had called in like, hey, I think I might have seen this guy in New Hampshire. And I guess he felt like the walls were closing in because he turned himself in to the Concord Police Department and was really just singing like a songbird, like to the Concord Police. And then when the NYPD got there, he was speaking voluntarily with him. He hated the NYPD. He hates the New York Times. Like I said, he has a lot of disdain for a lot of the things about New York.

• 21:24Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 21:25Speaker 02

  But yeah, he was just, you know, if you see these interviews, these are on videotape and you can watch them. He's just very unapologetic about the whole thing and he still is. You know, we'll read some like more modern quotes, but he was always just like, yeah, this is how it happened. I shot these guys. I wish I had more bullets. And we'll read some quotes, you know, for sure.

• 21:43Josh Clark?

  He said some really chilling things, but also some really contradictory stuff too during that initial interview with the cops in New Hampshire. He said things like, you know, I wish it were a dream, you know? Like he said, I'm disgusted with myself or I'm disgusted it happened. Like he was of two minds and then he'd switch to like, if I had had more bullets, I would have kept shooting. Like the problem was I ran out of bullets. Like he said, all sorts of. Just different back and forth swinging stuff. But he was also very lucid, too. He wasn't like.

• 22:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:16Josh Clark?

  He wasn't, no one, I think, ever accused him or suggested he was mentally ill, except for a judge, as we'll see.

• 22:24Speaker 02

  But no, like, temporary insanity talk or anything like that?

• 22:27Josh Clark?

  Nothing like that, no. But he's almost universally characterized when somebody writes a brief sketch of him as a loner.

• 22:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:35Josh Clark?

  He didn't have very many friends. He didn't have much family, if any, at that time. He was an electrical engineer. By education and trade, he went to NYU. And he had a business where he calibrated high-end electrical equipment. And that actually led to, that business led to his first personal brush with violence in New York. And this is, this definitely set the, the foundation for the mindset that he had when he got on that subway in December 1984, for sure.

• 23:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, and, and set the groundwork for his eventual defense in court.

• 23:14Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 23:14Speaker 02

  Because in 1981, he was mugged, he was violently mugged in a subway station by three men. This is in 1981, like I said. This is why he decided he needed a gun. He was beat up pretty bad. They threw him into a plate glass window because he had like electronic equipment and they, you know, they wanted that stuff. So apparently he suffered a permanent knee injury. Two of the guys were never caught. And this is what really, really got him was the third guy was out of the police station in a couple of hours and Getz was there for like six hours. Like, he was held, not held held, but

• 23:56Speaker 02

  you know, he was there telling his side of the story and it took four hours longer for him to get out of the police station and that really, really stuck in his craw.

• 24:04Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and I think ultimately that one guy that they did catch was only ever charged with criminal mischief. And I think, under normal circumstances, we wouldn't point this out, but I think because of how the effect that it had on Bernard Getz and how it helped transform him, it's worth pointing our specifying that the three men who mugged him in 1981 were all black.

• 24:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, that's where he got his, or at least, you know, I'm sure he had feelings like that before, but that's definitely what drilled it into him and got him sort of on that path of thinking that way, I guess, about, you know, all young black men in New York at the time. It's definitely what led him to get that gun. So had this not happened, I didn't see anything that led me to believe that he would have ever been the kind of guy to carry a gun around. So that put the gun in his hand was that mugging. He, he applied for one legally in New York, saying like, hey, I was mugged before for this electronic equipment and, you know, sometimes I'm carrying cash for my business. And they rejected that,

• 25:09Speaker 02

  saying he didn't demonstrate sufficient need. He appealed that, that got rejected. So he bought a gun, I think legally in Florida, sorry, bought the 38 where his parents lived at the time.

• 25:20Josh Clark?

  Right. So, um, yeah, I just want to like specify, he was turned down twice for a gun permit. And he, he was like, I carry expensive equipment. I'm at risk of being attacked. It's already happened once.

• 25:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:35Josh Clark?

  And I think that, in addition to the mugger being let go hours before he was able to get out of the police station after being mugged, those two things together, like not only did he now hate the NYPD, he now hated the New York City bureaucracy. And he had no faith in any of them. And in fact, during that interview, when he turned himself in in 1984, now, or no, I guess it was New Year's Eve, 1984, he was basically saying like, if, if you stop protecting people, then you're in no position to pass moral judgment when they defend themselves in this, you know, in the face of crime or whatever. And I think that is essentially, especially in the initial reporting where he was held up,

• 26:20Josh Clark?

  they, the four guys had sharpened screwdrivers. He had just shot at them and like, you know, that was it. That, that is one of the reasons why so many people were like, yes, to that guy, you know?

• 26:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:33Josh Clark?

  Because they felt the same way. They felt like they'd been abandoned by the, by the police and the courts. And this was this guy who stood up for the rest of us, like this every man who stood up and said, enough. And that's, that was the support for him.

• 26:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, this is also on the heels of the Death Wish movies.

• 26:50Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 26:50Speaker 02

  So that kind of vigilanteism was, you know, celebrated in movie theaters with Charles Brunson.

• 26:55Josh Clark?

  Yep.

• 26:56Speaker 02

  Uh, here's a quote from Getz in that interview. He said, I wanted to kill those guys. I wanted to maim those guys. Wanted to make them suffer in every way I could. And you can't understand this because it's a realm of reality you're not familiar with. If I had more bullets, I would have shot them all again and again. My problem was I ran out of bullets. It should be noted, he only had five bullets in a, in a six bullet capable revolver.

• 27:20Josh Clark?

  That's what they're called.

• 27:21Speaker 02

  Probably just say revolver. Most people know what that is.

• 27:23Josh Clark?

  How, how many bullets capable is that revolver there, Ted?

• 27:27Speaker 02

  Well, there, some revolvers have eight bullets, but the, the standard is six. So eventually he was indicted. It kind of took a meandering road to finally arrive there. But he was eventually charged with attempted murder, assault, reckless endangerment, and a slew of firearms charges.

• 27:46Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm.

• 27:47Speaker 02

  But at the end of January 85 was the first go around with a grand jury. They did not indict him, except for illegal weapons possession. Apparently there was a DA at the time that was up for reelection. Didn't, you know, Bernard Getz was very popular, so he didn't want to like, try too hard to bring serious charges. So he didn't call victims to testify or anything like that. As the details start leaking out, uh, you know, and these quotes start coming out, the DA is kind of cornered to like, like, I have to really do this. So they convene a new grand jury in March of that year and maybe. The case for murder, assault, reckless, you know, all the charges he was eventually charged with and brought in. Um, at least Canty and Ramsure to testify.

• 28:32Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 28:32Speaker 02

  Along with eyewitnesses this time.

• 28:34Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So the grand jury indicted him, I think on 13 counts total. And very shortly after that, all, uh, all 13 counts got thrown out, the whole case got thrown out because the defense, um, made a, a successful case that the, I think the prosecutor, um, had, the DA had given poor instructions to the grand jury and that Ramsor and, uh, Canty had perjured themselves.

• 29:00Speaker 02

  Right.

• 29:00Josh Clark?

  And, uh, so it looked like he was gonna get off again. And then I think a few months later, an appeals court said, no, get back in there. Let's actually do this thing. So by the summer of 1986, it looked like he was going to definitely be tried in a serious manner for some very serious charges.

• 29:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. Uh, he obviously pleaded not guilty. He claimed self-defense. And, um, I guess we should go into a little more detail about what happened on the train. You know, I mentioned these guys, all four got on. They were being rude. They were being inconsiderate. Uh, you know, again, you've, you've, if you've been to New York City and ridden the subway, you've probably seen behavior kind of like this at some point. It makes everyone very uncomfortable, but you never know if it's like, these days, you're probably like, it's not a real threat. Let's just kind of ignore it. Back then, it probably seemed much more like a real threat. Uh, apparently Troy Canty went up to Getz directly and said, in his best Joey Tribbiani, how you doing?

• 30:02Speaker 02

  Asked him a couple of more questions, just like, you know, just kind of messing with him, small talk stuff. Getz kind of answered briefly and Getz is, you know, obviously getting kind of worked up at this point. This is a guy who had had enough. Barry Allen and Troy Canty approached him and that is when, um, the sort of controversial line of, give me five bucks or can I get five bucks happened? Uh, either way, give me five bucks doesn't sound like a mugging, like, give me all your, your money sucker. That sounds like a mugging to me.

• 30:35Josh Clark?

  Or give me all your love and all your hugs and kisses too.

• 30:38Speaker 02

  That's right. But there's something about the specificity of the five bucks. To me, takes some threat out of it, but this is just my dumb opinion all these years later.

• 30:47Josh Clark?

  Well, that's funny because I've read some, um, some. I've read a few people who have said like, five bucks is way different back then than it is today. Like if you were panhandling, you ask for a quarter, which is essentially the same as asking somebody for a dollar today. Asking for five bucks is like asking for 15 bucks today. And I saw somebody say like, asking for a quarter is panhandling. Back then, asking for $5 was robbery essentially. So that that amount actually did make a have an impact on the criminal case.

• 31:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I'm talking about my opinion on the specificity, not the amount of money.

• 31:24Josh Clark?

  Oh, I got you. Sure.

• 31:25Speaker 02

  Like, asking for a specific amount of money to just to me feels less threatening than like, hey, give me everything in your wallet right now.

• 31:32Josh Clark?

  Oh, gotcha. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. That's a really good point. I see what you mean.

• 31:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, so that's that's just me. But that's when he, again, unzipped his windbreaker, pulled out the gun. This whole thing was over in 20 seconds. It happened very quickly.

• 31:44Josh Clark?

  Wow.

• 31:45Speaker 02

  He fired five shots in the subway car with, I think there were like 15 to 20 other people on the car, we should mention. Which, you know, makes it obviously a super dangerous thing to do.

• 31:56Josh Clark?

  Yeah, there's that reckless endangerment thing.

• 31:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. So he started with Canty, hit him in the chest. All these guys are running for cover, obviously. Allen was hit in the back. Ramsher was hit in the arm, arms and chest. So I guess the single shot kind of, you know, did that magic bullet thing. And then, this is where I got a little confused because it was a little confusing as to whether the fourth or fifth bullet hit KB. Everything I've seen, I guess, says that the fourth bullet missed him. And that's when Getz walked up to him when he was cowering in the corner and either did or did not say something to him. That was never completely established, but Getz said himself that he told him, you don't look too bad. Here's another, and fired the fifth shot into his spine.

• 32:44Speaker 02

  But there was some contention because apparently no one else heard that. And Getz may have just been like kind of fantasizing that.

• 32:51Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's not clear, but everything up to that point where he allegedly walked over to KB and and said that and shot him again, everybody's basically like, yeah, that's that's what happened, right? There were some other points of contention though, too, in addition to walking over and shooting KB in the back at point blank range.

• 33:13Josh Clark?

  One of them is were they trying to rob Bernard Getz?

• 33:16Speaker 02

  Right, yeah.

• 33:17Josh Clark?

  And the reason why that's so important and the difference between give me five bucks or can I have five bucks, the whole criminal case hinged on that.

• 33:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:27Josh Clark?

  Because in New York law at the time, I believe they probably changed it since the Bernard Getz case, it was okay for you to use deadly force if you reasonably believed that you were about to be robbed.

• 33:40Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 33:41Josh Clark?

  Even if the other people weren't threatening like bodily harm or deadly force, somebody came up to you and said, give me your wallet, you could just plug them full of holes and walk away with the self-defense like defense, right?

• 33:57Speaker 02

  The Charles Bronson rule.

• 33:59Josh Clark?

  Pretty much, yeah.

• 33:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:00Josh Clark?

  So the all that the all the defense had to prove was that a reasonable person in Bernard Getz's situation would have believed that they were being robbed. That was the low bar that they had to overcome. And on the other side, the prosecution was like, no, man, we have to prove that he wanted to kill those kids, that his intent was murder, that it was reckless endangerment. All the other charges that were against him, all the defense had to do to get him acquitted was just prove that one part because that use of deadly force then would have been authorized across the whole thing.

• 34:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. Other points of contention is they did have two screwdrivers. They said that they were going to break into arcade games and steal the money. They never like pulled out the screwdrivers and held them at his throat or anything like that. Getz said that he could see the outline of the screwdriver in their pockets. That's what he claimed to court at least. And one of the NYPD cops claimed that Canty had said to him, you know, when they were on the scene, kind of talking about what was going on, said, we were trying to rob the guy. Canty said, no, I never said that. And no one on the train, because they had eyewitnesses, could corroborate the officer's story. And then Jimmy Breslin, who you mentioned earlier, the very famous New York City beat

• 35:18Speaker 02

  reporter, he interviewed KB in the hospital about a year afterward. And he claimed that KB acknowledged that they were going to rob him because he looked like, quote, easy bait. But KB says, no, I never told him that. And people are like, well, this guy had suffered brain damage at this point. So, you know, who knows if that's reliable testimony or not testimony, but whatever Jimmy Breslin wrote about.

• 35:41Josh Clark?

  Right. And that robbing arcade games alibi actually definitely checked out. Like, everybody basically believes that that's what they were going to do because they had a history of that. And I think Troy Canty had been convicted for stealing $14 and quarters out of arcade games. So that's almost certainly what they were going to do, which really undermines the idea that they were robbing Bernard Getz right then.

• 36:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. Then there was a contention of how that last shot went down. What was he doing right before he got shot in the back? Bernard Getz's attorney claimed that he was, that KB was standing up when he was shot. But everybody there, like every single eyewitness, and Getz, said, no, he was seated. And people were like, he was sort of cowering in the corner of the subway in a seat, like, kind of cornered, couldn't go anywhere, and, you know, frightened out of his life. And so that's when he shot him in the back.

• 36:39Josh Clark?

  Even Getz in the interview in New Hampshire, when he turned himself in, said that when he walked over to Daryl KB, he saw like genuine fear in his eyes. And that that's when things started to slow down, like the adrenaline rush or whatever that was, like, he was operating on, started to slow. In addition to his demonstrated bigotry, which we haven't really talked much about, but you did a little bit, but he had a history of publicly using racial slurs.

• 37:10Josh Clark?

  His bigotry was just on full display pretty frequently from, from what witnesses and other residents in his building would later say. In addition to that, like, he went over and shot an unarmed kid cowering for his life, point blank range in the spine, and paralyzed him for life. So no matter what you think about the rest of it, like that, those, those two things make it really, really hard to sympathize with Bernard Getz, even though you, I can still sympathize with anybody who is living in fear on a daily basis. I don't want that for anybody.

• 37:48Speaker 02

  All right. I think it's a good time for a break. Yeah?

• 37:51Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 37:51Speaker 02

  All right. We'll be back right after this with more on Bernard Getz.

• 38:08Josh Clark?

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• 38:44Josh Clark?

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• 39:00Josh Clark?

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• 40:40Josh Clark?

  So the actual, real, legitimate criminal trial got underway in December of 1986, ran all the way to June 1987. And it took them four months just to seat a jury.

• 40:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:51Josh Clark?

  Because Bernard Getz was, I mean, all you have to say is that he was in Mad Magazine to get across, like, what a pop culture icon this guy was. I saw a folk hero used many times to describe him.

• 41:05Speaker 02

  Oh, sure.

• 41:05Josh Clark?

  And just to find anybody who had not really heard of him or had claimed to not really form any opinion on the whole thing was very difficult in New York at the time.

• 41:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, it's still difficult, probably.

• 41:17Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 41:19Speaker 02

  So they got, you know, obviously, they had all of those recordings when he was singing "Like a Canary" about himself. So they had that in court to play. They had victim testimony, like Troy Canty. Not all of them talked, but Troy Canty was granted immunity in exchange for his testimony. That's when he told them about, you know, robbing the video games. That's when he claimed, you know, "Mr. Can I Have $5?" And he said, Getz said, "You can all have it."

• 41:47Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 41:47Speaker 02

  Like Charles Bronson, and pulled out the gun. He said that he heard KB's crying out, "Why did he shoot me? Why did he shoot me?" Barry Allen pled the Fifth. He was not granted immunity, so he did not... He pled the fifth for every question, basically. James Ramsey's involvement in the testimony was a little weird. We couldn't find, I saw that he was granted immunity. Josh saw that he wasn't, so it's kind of hard to parse it out. But either way, he refused to take the stand. Judge found him in contempt and removed him from court initially. But, and we'll get to it, but he would later come back.

• 42:24Josh Clark?

  Right, and then don't forget the eyewitnesses who were recklessly endangered by the shooting too on the subway car. One was Amanda Gilbert, who was trying to render aid to one of the, I don't know who it was, but one of them said, "Miss, I've been shot through the heart and I'm dying." And then Darryl Kaby said, "I didn't do anything. He shot me for nothing." And that had, I'm sure, an effect on the jury, but the judge was like, "That's hearsay. So throw out that testimony."

• 42:53Speaker 02

  That's right. Victor Flores was another eyewitness. He said the shots all came in quick succession, which I think most people agree on. He said the kids were frightened, backing off, trying to get away. There was no reason to shoot them. And he's one of the ones that said Getz did not speak to KB before he shot him.

• 43:13Speaker 02

  But then there was Christopher, either Boucher or Boucher, I'm not sure how you pronounced it. B O C H, B O U C H E R. He was near KB when that fifth shot happened, and here was the back and forth on the stand. What did the person who was sitting down do at the moment the shot was fired? Well, he was sitting, grasping the bench, and he was just frightened. Did you ever see that person try to get out of the seat? No. Did you ever see him threatening Mr. Getz? No. Did he have anything in his hand that you saw? No. Any doubt you saw a person sitting in that seat when he was shot and fired? No, no doubt. How was your eyesight? It's perfect.

• 43:50Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So not, not really good as far as the defense goes. After that, the prosecution was like, we need to get James Ramsor up there. He was one of the victims. He obviously is a witness, so we need to find out what he has to say. And that was a really bad move for the prosecution. Because we had mentioned before that, you know, even Al Sharpton was like, these guys are no angels. It wasn't because they robbed video games. That was, that would be a stupid thing to say. The reason people say that kind of thing is because five months after the shooting, James Ramsor was indicted for participating in a brutal, violent rape and robbery.

• 44:35Josh Clark?

  And I think in his own building. So, I mean, they had much deeper criminal records than stealing from, from video games. That's why we, we said that at the outset. And James Ramsor in particular, he was, I guess, cited for contempt, you said. The second time, he basically did the same thing. He was like, he wouldn't answer questions. He was the definition of a hostile witness. And that alone, even though all of that was thrown out by the judge, the jury saw that too.

• 45:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:05Josh Clark?

  And that definitely, he, his behavior in court reflected on the other four too. And I, I'm sure a lot of the members of the jury were just looking for a reason to, to not sympathize with the four victims. You know what I mean?

• 45:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure.

• 45:22Josh Clark?

  To try to figure out a way for Bernard Getz to get off. And James Ramsor definitely made it easier on them with his testimony.

• 45:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, and you know, they did some, they brought in some expert, expert testimony, basically. One guy, he was a neuropsychiatrist named Bernard Yudwitz. And he, he basically threw out a fight or flight response, an adrenal, adrenaline response, that like, once that kicks in, he said he was on autopilot. And that all of those shots, like he, it was a single act. Like he, that, that adrenaline doesn't come down till afterward. And he can then consider what's happening. And they happened so quickly. It was like, it was basically like one thing happened. And then he had a bullet expert, a ballistics guy named Joseph Quirk.

• 46:10Speaker 02

  Who testified that KB was shot actually by the fourth bullet when he was standing up, not by the fifth while he was seated. And that entered his spine and threw him backward into the seat. I think kind of instantly paralyzing him. And then, you know, they, they did a reenactment with the guardian angels playing, you know, they got the, the biggest, baddest, roughest looking guardian angels they could.

• 46:32Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 46:32Speaker 02

  To play these guys. They took a field trip to a subway car and, you know, took the jury out there and was like, you know, imagine what it was like and, and sitting in this car and, you know, they were kind of pulling out all the stops.

• 46:44Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And supposedly the subway car tour really kind of solidified things for the jury because they said later that they could see how Guts would have felt trapped. So out of the 13 counts that he was indicted and tried for, he was only found guilty on one. Everything, the murder attempts, the assault, reckless endangerment, all of it, he was found not guilty on. The only guilty charge was the illegal firearm charge.

• 47:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. Apparently like, you know, they're reading each account and how they do individually. And when the count against Daryl KB, like who was sitting in there in a wheelchair came out.

• 47:21Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 47:22Speaker 02

  Apparently like there were audible gasps in the courtroom. And they said, yeah, it was self-defense. He was not trying to kill these guys is what they said. And they found that reasonable doubt. You know, the, the, I think the adrenaline response weighed in.

• 47:40Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 47:40Speaker 02

  The self-defense of, you know, like the New York law at the time, like you were talking about, like there was enough reasonable doubt, at least as far as the jury was concerned to, to not convict him.

• 47:49Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So he got off with, I think 250 days in prison. I don't think he had any community service even. He was initially going to have five years probation and they revoked that. So that was it for Bernard Guts. He just went back to life for a while. And then 10 years later, Darryl Caby filed a civil case against him. And this one was, by 1996, New York was a different place than it was in 1986, like dramatically different. And so a jury would not have had the same experience that the jury in 1986 would have had from living in New York.

• 48:29Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 48:29Josh Clark?

  And that was definitely reflected in the outcome, which found in Darryl Caby's favor.

• 48:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, Getz didn't really offer much defense at all in the civil trial. I think probably because he was a private guy. He wanted to put all this behind him and he knew he would never pay anything anyway. So the jury never heard about him being mugged that first time. I think the defense did call some people. They called Jimmy Breslin to testify about Caby. The officer that testified at Canty told them they were trying to rob him. They called him in. That was it basically, except the one big change this time was that Getz took the stand to testify and said things like, you know, I thought about gouging out their eyes with keys after I shot him.

• 49:17Speaker 02

  Darryl Caby's mom would have been better off if she would have not gone through with that pregnancy. I was trying to get as many of them as I could. So he was, he didn't care at this point, I think.

• 49:29Josh Clark?

  No, and like you said, he's still saying stuff like that too, right? There's no remorse or no self-reflection. Like he feels the exact same way now that he did back then, which was awful.

• 49:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I got a quote from, I mean, I read a New York Times article from January of this year. Cause I think there's a couple of books that came out this year.

• 49:48Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 49:50Speaker 02

  And he said, you know, the important thing is, is that I shot the right guys and no innocent bystanders were hurt.

• 49:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that, one of those books was Five Bullets and the author's name is Elliot Williams.

• 50:02Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 50:02Josh Clark?

  So, um, yeah, the, I think the jury found in favor of Darryl Kaybee and said that Getz owed him $43 million. And Getz, like you said, I guess he knew that he was never going to pay it. He immediately filed bankruptcy and still to this day, Darryl Kaybee's never seen a penny of that money.

• 50:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, uh, Gets, you know, again, is in that same apartment still. I guess he's got a pretty sweet rent control situation would be my guess.

• 50:28Josh Clark?

  Sounds like it.

• 50:29Speaker 02

  But he ran for mayor in New York, uh, in 2001, uh, pushing, uh, he's a vegetarian, pushing vegetarian menus. Apparently he works in squirrel rescue and rehabilitation.

• 50:41Josh Clark?

  Oh yeah, that's right.

• 50:43Speaker 02

  And also still runs his electronics business out of his apartment. And he then ran in 2005 for a public advocate on the platform against circumcision and in favor of power naps for New York City workers.

• 51:00Josh Clark?

  I saw that in 2001, not only Bernard Getz ran for mayor, but so did the real Kramer, Kenny Kramer.

• 51:07Speaker 02

  Uh, Getz was also arrested himself later for dealing drugs in 2013, um, or at least trying to sell drugs to an undercover, uh, officer.

• 51:16Josh Clark?

  Yeah, he became a huge pro pot advocate apparently too, which is a pretty surprising outcome. So, um, as for the, uh, the four victims, Darryl Kaybee, um, again, he was paralyzed for life from the abdomen down and, uh, it suffered brain damage.

• 51:33Josh Clark?

  Alan, Barry Allen and Troy Canty were both in prison back in 1996 during the civil trial. And James Ramser had been in and out of prison, including, uh, one charge of trying, faking his own kidnapping. And then he died in 2011, uh, I think 27 years to the day of the subway shooting in 1984 of an overdose that is widely suspected to have been, um, purposeful.

• 52:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, he had, uh, he served 25 years in prison total, uh, after that shooting. So he had a. He had a rough go of it, and that is, I've been wanting to do this one for a while. This one's been sitting in the inbox for a long time.

• 52:16Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 52:17Speaker 02

  So, big thanks to Julia for putting this together.

• 52:19Josh Clark?

  Yeah, thanks, Julia. If you want to know more about Bernard Getz, you could start with those two books that came out recently that Chuck just mentioned. Five Bullets by Elliot Williams and Fear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, The Bernard Getz Shootings, and The Rebirth of White Rage by Heather Ann Thompson.

• 52:40Speaker 02

  My inclination is to go with Five Bullets because of no colon.

• 52:43Josh Clark?

  Okay, well, since Chuck cited a preference for no colons, it's time for listener mail.

• 52:51Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 52:53Speaker 02

  I don't even know why I picked this one to read. I just thought it was kind of funny. Hey, guys, just listened to the Camp David episode and was shocked to learn that Camp David is in Maryland. I thought it was in Texas for some reason, and I sheepishly went to my fiance to talk to him about it. Before I confess my embarrassing mistake, I said, hey, by the way, you know Camp David? Where do you think it is? And he said Texas. So, it made me wonder why we both thought Camp David was in Texas. Perhaps it's a millennial thing. I'm very curious if any of your listeners thought the same. Anyway, thought you might find this amusing. I did, Rachel. Thank you for your great work and for being my weekly companions for more than a decade, and that is Rachel in Raleigh, North Carolina. And Rachel, we did not hear from anyone else about Texas, but hey, if you and your fiance

• 53:38Speaker 02

  both went to Texas, or, you know, with your first answer, then there's got to be something to it.

• 53:44Josh Clark?

  Sure. They're from a different timeline.

• 53:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, I would say look within yourself.

• 53:48Josh Clark?

  Right. And find Texas.

• 53:51Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 53:52Josh Clark?

  If you want to be like Rachel, was it?

• 53:55Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 53:56Josh Clark?

  And send us a great email where you confess some strange belief that only you and your fiance have, we would love to hear it. You can send it off to [email protected].

• 54:11Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 54:27Josh Clark?

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• 55:09Josh Clark?

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