The mad bomber of New York City

George Metesky had a serious grudge. A Con Ed employee left permanently disabled in 1931 due to an on-the-job injury at an upper Manhattan plant, he was bitter and resentful because the utility refused to compensate him. 

A decade later, he decided to exact revenge by planting a couple of small bombs at Con Ed buildings in Manhattan. Both were duds.

Metesky had more in store, but he also deemed himself a patriotic kind of guy. So once World War II broke out, he sent the NYPD a note in block letters letting them know that he was suspending his bomb-making activity until the war was over.

He stuck to his word. In 1951 he planted his third bomb, near Grand Central’s Oyster Bar. The next exploded at the New York Public Library. All told, he was responsible for at least 37 bombs. No one was killed by them, but a men’s room attendant at Penn Station was seriously injured.

Arrested in 1957 after police tracked letters (like the one at left) he sent to the New York Journal-American, Metesky was found to be legally insane and incompetent to stand trial. He was committed to a mental hospital upstate but released in 1973, deemed not to be a danger to the public.

But old habits die hard, and in an interview with The New York Times upon his release, he indicated that he still felt slighted by Con Ed. The rest of Metesky’s life was quiet though, and he died in 1994 at age 90 in Connecticut.

Tags: 1950s New York City, Con Ed Mad Bomber, famous crimes in New York City, George Metesky, Mad Bomber of New York City, New York Journal-American, Oyster Bar Grand Central Station