The NY Subway Vigilante

10:48Chuck Bryant:Yes, big time. So, yeah, New York was a different place. And this is actually, this will help explain the reaction that Bernard Goetz got when he, I guess, turned himself in and became known as the subway vigilante. But before that, he was an unknown person. This was an unknown perpetrator because after he shot Canty, Allen, KB, and Ramsur, 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 was on the lam for like seven, nine days, I think.

11:28Josh Clark: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 Goetz, which was a Smith & Wesson 38 caliber. And that's that's when he took off and ran down to Chamber Street. But yeah, he packed a bag, rented a car and drove to New Hampshire.

11:48Chuck Bryant:Yeah. And I think 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, I think he told a detective in New Hampshire, they're going to wipe the floor with me. And it turned out that essentially the exact opposite happened to Bernard Goetz when he turned himself in nine days after the shooting in New Hampshire.

12:26Josh Clark:Yeah, I mean, the reaction generally from New York, I mean, 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 gets 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.

13:05Josh Clark:That like a lot of the like, hey, we are on this guy's side kind of crossed over racial lines, too. Right.

13:12Chuck Bryant: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 percent 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 being mugged or maybe intimidated or something on the subway. So the idea of somebody stepping forward and doing something 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.

13:48Chuck Bryant:Like we'll see Bernard Goetz 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 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 overwhelming to the cops in the courts.

14:18Josh Clark: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.

14:31Chuck Bryant:Right.

14:32Josh Clark: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.

15:01Chuck Bryant:No, but when the news of the subway vigilante came out, 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. 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?

15:24Josh Clark:Oh, I thought you sent it in the mail. Did you even buy me that?

15:27Chuck Bryant:It said Thugbusters. Yeah. And it said, equip Bernard Goetz. It 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.

15:37Josh Clark: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. Right. Because all the information coming out was, you know, hey, these guys had screwdrivers in their pockets. they were trying to mug him uh they didn't focus on sort of the shooting aspect like that he had

15:58Chuck Bryant:hollow point bullets which are of course even deadlier uh i guess non-hollow bullets what are

16:05Josh Clark:those called uh uh regular bullets regular bullets yeah sure talking to two newbies here with that stuff uh didn't talk about shooting them in the back initially in the press um they talked you You know, they talked to Canty's brother and he was like, yeah, my brother freebases cocaine and he was high that day on the subway. So like all the stuff coming out on the news, you know, supported like a more benevolent view of Bernard Goetz at first, at least.

16:35Chuck Bryant: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. Marek 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. but for the most part basically everybody the loudest people were definitely the ones who were supporting him the yeah the few people who were like that was a hate crime long before there were any federal laws against hate crimes um were speaking out but they were in a minority it seemed like and yeah i found a quote from a guy named james q wilson who is a um he's a i guess a public policy expert.

17:37Chuck Bryant: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 Goetz, especially at first.

17:54Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. All right. I think we set the table pretty nicely. You eat from the outside in.

18:00Chuck Bryant:Oh, I've been doing it the opposite at my home.

18:03Josh Clark:Soup spoon, large spoon, yeah.

18:04Chuck Bryant:I've been eating from bottom to top.

18:06Josh Clark:Oh, no, no, no. That's not the way you do it. You've got to set the table the right way. And we have done that. So we'll be right back with more on the subway vigilante, Bernard Goetz.

18:25I turned off news altogether. I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything.

18:33Chuck Bryant:It's the rage bait. It feels like it's trying to divide people. We got clear facts. Maybe we can calm down a little. NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the facts. Let's move forward from there. NBC News, reporting for America. Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Jewel Osco. Ready to save? It's time for Cyber Deals. Kick off summer with fresh savings that brighten the season. You don't want to miss these exclusive week-long digital offers on your favorite products that are only available when you shop online. Save on eligible items from Gatorade, Oreo, Frito-Lay, and Doug. Only available now through June 16th on pickup or delivery orders only.

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20:03All right.

20:04Josh Clark: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 he I guess he felt like the walls were closing in because he turned himself in and 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.

20:43Josh Clark:yeah uh 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

21:02Chuck Bryant: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 um i wish it were a dream, you know, like he said, I'm, I'm, I think like 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, 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, yeah, he, he wasn't, no one I think ever accused him or suggested he was mentally ill except for a judge, as we'll see.

21:44Josh Clark:But no, like temporary insanity talk or anything like that? Nothing

21:47Chuck Bryant:like that, no. But he's almost universally characterized when somebody writes a brief sketch of him as a loner. Yeah. 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 definitely set the foundation for the mindset that he had when he got on that subway in December 1984, for sure.

22:29Josh Clark:Yeah, and set the groundwork for his eventual defense in court. Because in 1981, 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, 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.

23:22Josh Clark:And that really, really stuck in his crawl.

23:24Chuck Bryant: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 gets and how it helped transform him, it's worth pointing out or specifying that the three men who mugged him in 1981 were all black.

23:45Josh Clark: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 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 applied for one legally in New York saying like, hey, I was mugged before for this electronic equipment.

24:24Josh Clark:And, you know, sometimes I'm carrying cash for my business. And they rejected that saying he didn't demonstrate sufficient need. He appealed that. That got rejected. So he bought a gun, I think, legally in Florida. Sorry, he bought the 38 where his parents lived at the time.

24:40Chuck Bryant:Right. So, 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 a tech. It's already happened once. Yeah. 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.

25:21Chuck Bryant: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. The four guys had sharpened screwdrivers. He had just shot at them and like, you know, that was it. That is one of the reasons why so many people were like, yes, to that guy, you know, because they felt the same way. They felt like they'd been abandoned by the police and the courts. And this was this guy who stood up for the rest of us, like just every man who stood up and said enough.

26:04Chuck Bryant:And that was the support for him. Yeah.

26:07Josh Clark:I mean, this is also in the heels of the Death Wish movies. So that kind of vigilanteism was celebrated in movie theaters with Charles Brunson. Here's a quote from Goetz in that interview. He said, I wanted to kill those guys. I wanted to maim those guys. I 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 and a six-bullet-capable revolver.

26:39Chuck Bryant:That's what they're called.

26:41Josh Clark:Probably just say revolver. Most people know what that is. How many bullets capable is that revolver there, Ted? Well, some revolvers have eight bullets, but 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. But at the end of January 85 was the first go-round 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 re-election. Bernard Getz was very popular, so he didn't want to try too hard to bring serious charges.

27:25Josh Clark:So he didn't call victims to testify or anything like that. As the details start leaking out, 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 convened a new grand jury in March of that year and made the case for murder, assault, you know, all the charges he was eventually charged with and brought in at least Canty and Ramsher to testify along with eyewitnesses this time.

27:54Chuck Bryant:Yeah, so the grand jury indicted him, I think on 13 counts total. And very shortly after that, All 13 counts got thrown out. The whole case got thrown out because the defense made a successful case that the, I think the prosecutor had, the DA had given poor instructions to the grand jury and that Ramser and Canty had perjured themselves. Right. And so it looked like he was going to 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.

28:40Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. He obviously pleaded not guilty. He claimed self-defense. And 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. And, you know, again, 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.

29:14Josh Clark:Apparently, Troy Canty went up to Getz directly and said, and as best as Joey Tribbiani, how you doing? asked him a couple more questions just like you know just kind of messing with them small talk stuff gets kind of answered briefly and gets is you know obviously getting kind of worked up at this point this is a guy who had had enough um 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. Either way, give me five bucks doesn't sound like a mugging. Like, give me all your money, sucker. That sounds like a mugging to me.

29:54Chuck Bryant:Or give me all your love and all your hugs and kisses, too. That's right.

29:59Josh Clark: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.

30:06Chuck Bryant:Well, that's funny because 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 could ask for a quarter, which is essentially the same as asking somebody for a dollar today. Asking for five bucks was like asking for 15 bucks today. And I saw somebody say like asking for a quarter is panhandling. Back then asking for five dollars was robbery essentially. So that that amount actually did make a have an impact on the criminal case.

30:39Josh Clark:Yeah. Yeah. I'm talking about my opinion on the specificity, not the amount of money.

30:43Chuck Bryant:Oh, I got you.

30:44Josh Clark:Sure. 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.

30:52Chuck Bryant:Oh, gotcha. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. That's a really good point. I see what you mean.

30:56Josh Clark: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.

31:04Chuck Bryant:Wow.

31:05Josh Clark: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 super dangerous thing to do.

31:16Chuck Bryant:Yeah, there's that reckless endangerment thing.

31:18Josh Clark: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. Ramshur was hit in the 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 the corner and either did or did not say something to him. That was never completely established.

31:55Josh Clark: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. But there was some contention because apparently no one else heard that. And Getz may have just been like kind of fantasizing that.

32:11Chuck Bryant:Yeah, that's not clear. But everything up to that point where he allegedly walked over to KB and said that and shot him again, everybody basically like, yeah, 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. One of them is, were they trying to rob Bernard Goetz? Right, yeah. 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. Yeah. Because in New York law at the time, I believe they probably changed it since the Bernard Goetz case, it was okay for you to use deadly force if you reasonably believed that you were about to be robbed.

33:00Josh Clark:That's right.

33:01Chuck Bryant:Even if the other people weren't threatening 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 defense, right? The Charles Bronson rule. Pretty much, yeah. Yeah. So 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.

33:42Chuck Bryant:All the other charges that were against them, 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.

33:53Josh Clark: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. But Get said that he could see the outline of the screwdriver in their pockets. That's what he claimed in 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.

34:34Josh Clark:And then Jimmy Breslin, who you mentioned earlier, the very famous New York City beat 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.

35:01Chuck Bryant:Right. 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 in 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 Goetz right then.

35:26Josh Clark: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 subways 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.

35:59Chuck Bryant:Even Getz in the interview in New Hampshire when he turned himself in said that when he walked over to Daryl Kaby, 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, that you did a little bit, but he had a history of publicly using racial slurs. His bigotry was just on full display pretty frequently 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.

36:48Chuck Bryant:So no matter what you think about the rest of it, like that, those two things make it really, really hard to sympathize with Bernard Goetz, even though I can still sympathize with anybody who is living in fear on a daily basis. I don't want that for anybody.

37:08Josh Clark:All right, I think it's a good time for a break, yeah? Sure. All right, we'll be back right after this with more on Bernard Goetz.

37:18I'm in shock.

37:25I turned off news altogether. I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything. It's the rage bait. It feels like it's trying to divide people. We got clear facts. Maybe we can calm down a little. NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the facts. Let's move forward from there. NBC News, reporting for America. Hi, I'm Cindy Crawford, and I'm the founder of Meaningful Beauty. When Dr. Sabah and I decided to do a skincare line together, he said to me, we are going to give women meaningful beauty. And I said, that's exactly right. We want to give women meaningful beauty, which means each and every product is meaningful.

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39:37Chuck Bryant: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 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. 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. Yeah.

40:13Josh Clark:I mean, it's still difficult, probably.

40:15Chuck Bryant:Sure.

40:16Josh Clark: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 five dollars? And he said, get said, you can all have it 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.

40:55Josh Clark: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 it. 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. Right.

41:22Chuck Bryant: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 Daryl Cabe 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. me.

41:51Josh Clark: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. But then there was Christopher either Boucher or Boucher. I'm not sure how you pronounced it. B-O-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.

42:33Josh Clark: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.

42:47Chuck Bryant:Yeah. So not really good as far as the defense goes. After that, the prosecution was like, we need to get James Ramsey 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 would be a stupid thing to say. The reason people say that kind of thing is because five months after the shooting, James Ramser was indicted for participating in a brutal, violent rape and robbery, I think in his own building.

43:34Chuck Bryant:So, I mean, they had much deeper criminal records than stealing from video games. That's why we said that at the outset. And James Ramsey 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. Yeah. 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.

44:18Chuck Bryant:You know what I mean? Yeah, for sure. To try to figure out a way for Bernard gets to get off. And James Ramsey definitely made it easier on them with his testimony. Yeah.

44:27Josh Clark:And, you know, they did some they brought in some expert expert testimony, basically. One guy who's a neuropsychiatrist named Bernard Yudvitz. And he he basically threw out a fight or flight response and a journal adrenaline response that like once that kicks in, he said he was on autopilot and that all of those shots like it was a single act like he that that adrenaline doesn't come down. until afterward and he can then consider what's happening. Um, and they happened so quickly. It was like, it was basically like one thing happened. Um, and then he had a bullet expert, a ballistics guy named Joseph, uh, Quirk who testified that KB was shot actually by the fourth bullet when he was standing up, not by the fifth while he was seated.

45:14Josh Clark:And that, uh, entered his spine and threw him backward into the seat, I think kind of instantly paralyzing him. Um, And then, you know, they did a reenactment with the Guardian Angels playing, you know, they got the biggest, baddest, roughest looking Guardian Angels they could 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 sitting in this car. And, you know, they were kind of pulling out all the stops.

45:41Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and supposedly the subway car tour really kind of solidified things for the jury because they said later that they could see how Getz 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.

46:09Josh Clark:yeah uh apparently like you know they're reading each account and how they do individually and when the count against daryl kaby like who was sitting in there in a wheelchair came out yeah apparently like there were audible gasps in the courtroom uh and they said yeah it was self-defense uh he was not trying to kill these guys is what they said and they found that reasonable doubt um And I think the adrenaline response weighed in. The self-defense of the New York law at the time, like you were talking about, there was enough reasonable doubt, at least as far as the jury was concerned, to not convict him.

46:47Chuck Bryant: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 Goetz. He just went back to life for a while. And then 10 years later, Daryl Cabe 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. For sure. And that was definitely reflected in the outcome, which found in Daryl Kaby's favor.

47:33Josh Clark:Yeah. Goetz 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 KB. The officer that testified that can't, he 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 them.

48:14Josh Clark:um daryl kaby's mom would have been better off if she would have uh not gone through with that pregnancy um i was trying to get as many of them as i could so he was he didn't care at this point

48:26Chuck Bryant:i think no then like you said he's still saying stuff like that too right there's no remorse or i saw no self-reflection like he feels the exact same way now that he did back then which was awful.

48:38Josh Clark:Yeah. I got a quote from, I mean, I read a New York Times article from January of this year because I think there's a couple of books that came out this year.

48:46Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

48:47Josh Clark:And he said, you know, the important thing is, is that I shot the right guys and no innocent bystanders were hurt.

48:53Chuck Bryant:Yeah. That one of those books was five bullets and the author's name is Elliot Williams.

48:59Josh Clark:That's right.

49:00Chuck Bryant:So, um, yeah, the, I think the jury found in favor of Daryl Cabe 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, Daryl Cavy's never seen a penny of that money.

49:19Josh Clark:Yeah. Getz, you know, again, is in that same apartment still. I guess he's got a pretty sweet rent control situation would be my guess.

49:26Chuck Bryant:Sounds like it.

49:27Josh Clark:But he ran for mayor in New York in 2001, pushing, he's a vegetarian, pushing vegetarian menus. Apparently he works in squirrel rescue and rehabilitation.

49:39Chuck Bryant:Oh, yeah, that's right.

49:40Josh Clark: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.

49:57Chuck Bryant:I saw that in 2001, not only Bernard Goetz ran for mayor, but so did the real Kramer, Kenny Kramer.

50:04Josh Clark:uh gets was also arrested himself later for dealing drugs in 2013 um or at least trying to sell drugs to an undercover uh officer yeah he became a huge pro pot advocate apparently too

50:16Chuck Bryant:which is a pretty surprising outcome so um as for the uh the four victims daryl kaby um again he was paralyzed for life from the abdomen down and uh it suffered brain damage um allen 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 one charge of faking his own kidnapping. And then he died in 2011, I think 27 years to the day of the subway shooting in 1984, of an overdose that is widely suspected to have been purposeful.

51:01Josh Clark:Yeah, he had he served 25 years in prison total 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 has been sitting in the inbox for a long time. Yeah. Yeah. So big thanks to Julia for putting this together.

51:16Chuck Bryant:Yeah. Thanks, Julia. If you want to know more about Bernard Goetz, you could start with those two books that came out recently that Chuck just mentioned. Five Bullets by Elliot Williams and Fear and Fury, colon, The Reagan 80s, The Bernard Getz Shootings, and The Rebirth of White Rage by Heather Ann Thompson.

51:37Josh Clark:My inclination is to go with five bullets because of no colon.

51:40Chuck Bryant:Okay. Well, since Chuck cited a preference for no colons, it's time for Listener Mail.

51:48Josh Clark:That's right. 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 confessed 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.

52:20Josh Clark:Anyway, thought you might find this amusing. I did, Rachel. Thank you for 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 both went to Texas or, you know, with your first answer, then there's got to be something to it.

52:41Chuck Bryant:Sure. They're from a different timeline.

52:44Josh Clark:Yeah, I would say look within yourself. All right.

52:47Chuck Bryant:And find Texas. That's right. If you want to be like Rachel, was it? That's right. 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 stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com.

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