In the fall of 1940, an employ of the Consolidated Edison Company in Manhattan discovered a bomb in the company’s main offices, along with a note that read “Con Edison crooks – this is for you.” The bomb was discovered before it detonated and no one was harmed, but a year later the company received a second bomb, followed by a note to NYPD in which the bomber announced he would make no bombs for the duration of WWII, but would begin again as the war ended.As promised, a new series of bombings began across New York in the winter of 1951, beginning with an explosion at Grand Central Station. In the five years that followed, “The Mad Bomber,” as he would come to be known, would place explosives at some of New York’s most iconic locations including Radio City Music Hall, Penn Station, and the New York Public Library. The bombs were often followed by cryptic letters sent to the press, usually referencing the Consolidated Edison Company.Th Mad Bomber’s reign of terror finally came to an end with his capture in 1957, and neither the suspect nor his motives made much sense to the New Yorkers who’d lived in fear for five years.Thank you to the Incredible Dave White of Bring Me the Axe Podcast for research and Writing support!ReferencesAssociated Press. 1955. "The 'Mad Bomber' threatens Macy's." Buffalo News, May 5: 47.—. 1957. "'Bomber' sick but innocent, sisters say." Newsday, Janaury 22: 3.Baird, John, and Harry Schlegal. 1956. "Mad Bomber blast in B'klyn movie; 6 hurt." Daily News, December 3: 2.Berger, Meyer. 1957. "Bomber is booked; sent to Bellevue for mental tests." New York Times, January 23: 1.Demeusy, Gerald. 1981. "'Bomber' says life all broken dreams." Hartford Courant, November 16: 15.Greenburg, Michael M. 2011. The Mad Bomber of New York: The Extraordinary True Story of the Manhunt That Paralyzed a City. New York, NY: Union Square Press.Kaufman, Michael. 1973. "'Mad Bomber,' now 70, goes free." New York Times, December 13: 1.New York Times. 1957. "2d 'Bomber' note cites old injury." New York Times, January 16: 25.—. 1953. "A homemade bomb rips station locker." New York Times, May 7: 28.—. 1951. "Bomb blast in terminal: Homemade device explodes in Grand Central--no one is hurt." New York Times, March 30: 24.—. 1954. "Bomb in music hall injures 4 in crowd." New York Times, November 8: 1.—. 1951. "Bomb laid to prankster." New York Times, September 13: 33.—. 1957. "'Bomber' ordered to state hospital." New York Times, April 19: 44.—. 1957. "'Bomber' presses threat on utility." New York Times, January 11: 16.—. 1951. "Ex-Edison worker held in bomb case." New York Times, November 7: 32.—. 1966. "'Mad Bomber' to get hearing on sanity." New York Times, April 29: 17.—. 1957. "Metesky indicted on bomb charges." New York Times, January 31: 29.—. 1955. "Penn Station bomb blast is ignored by commuters." New York Times, Janaury 12: 11.—. 1951. "Police find bomb in Paramount Lounge; note spurs search for one at Penn Station." New York Times, October 23: 30.—. 1957. "Suspect is held as 'Mad Bomber'; he admits role." New York Times, January 22: 1.—. 1956. "The Mad Bomber." New York Times, December 30: B2.O'Kane, Lawrence. 1955. "Bomb left in Roxy; linked to 22 others." New York Times, August 12: 1.Parke, Richard. 1957. "Sisters shocked, loyal to brother." New York Times, January 23: 20.Sheridan, Mike. 1977. "Former Mad Bomber now a homebody." Hartford Courant, May 1: 22.Stay in the know - wondery.fm/morbid-wondery.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: What is the Mad Bomber of New York?
Hey weirdos, it's Ash. Before we dive into today's twisted tale, let me tell you about the spooky perks of Wondery Plus. It's like having a skeleton key that unlocks ad-free listening and early access to new episodes. So don't wait, try Wondery Plus today. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or in Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
You're listening to a Morbid Network podcast. Redacted Declassified Mysteries is a new podcast hosted by me, Luke LaManna. Each week I dive into the hidden truths behind the world's most powerful institutions. From covert government experiments to bizarre assassination attempts. Follow Redacted on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey weirdos, I'm Ash. And I'm Alina. And this is Morbid.
This is morbid. I don't know. We had to run out of the, we literally just ran out of the house. We had to run out for a minute. And when we came back, Mikey had cleaned the entire studio and lit candles. And the vibe in here is just a zillion times better. So right.
It was like the greatest thing. in the entire world i feel so relaxed no i feel so much better i'm ordering panera as we speak and it's about this this vibe today is about to go crazy it's immaculate i'm immaculate i'm also feeling i'm feeling very much in the slasher summer vibe me too because i want to live in it I think it's been so like gloomy and a little bit chilly, which is nice. Oh yeah.
And you've been wearing, like we've all been wearing comfy sweatshirts and yeggings. We put our yeggs in our yeggings and it just feels spooky.
Yeah. And I keep getting, I mean, TikTok's always feeding me my, my vibes. Halfway to Halloween. The halfway to Halloween and, like, slasher summer kind of shit. I'm getting a lot of that. I think because you keep saying it in my presence. It's getting me in such a mood for it. Yeah. Like, I need it. I'm craving it. And now I want to watch all the things... Like the summer slasher things.
I want to read all the summer slasher things. I just watched a pretty good one actually at your recommendation. For Scream.
For Scream. We're going to be recording it today so it'll be out in like a couple weeks. But it's called Hell of a Summer. It was really good. It's the 2025 one. I think there's a couple movies that are called Hell of a Summer. It's brand new. But it just came out in April. It was funny. I thought it was fun. It looked fun when I saw it.
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Chapter 2: What happened with the first bomb discovered?
And you're just trying to get away from everybody. Yeah, you're just trying to take a minute away from your fucking job. And then you have a bomb on your shoulders. And then you're like, now I have to report a bomb. Yeah, that's a lot. I just wanted to have my egg salad sandwich. That sounds good. It does.
So when the man approached the toolbox, he saw that it contained a four and a half piece of iron pipe, which was capped in both ends, which like immediately not good. And when he looked closer at it, he found a small piece of paper wrapped around it. So this person unwrapped the paper. Damn, that's brave as fuck.
Pretty brave and like... Ballsy? Don't do that.
Yeah. Don't do that. If ever you find a strange looking wooden box. Don't touch it, just report it. And found on that piece of paper... He found that it was a note written in neat block print that read, Con Edison Crooks, this is for you. A second line of text underneath it, it was written in a coarse gray substance, apparently. And it read, there is no shortage of powder boys.
And the note was simply signed F.P.,
So was he saying powder boys or was he saying boys? There's no shortage of powder. I think powder boys. Powder boys.
So I think he's calling these bombs maybe powder boys. Oh. It's like a pipe bomb. Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. The implications of the note obviously sent the employee into a full panic and he carefully set the toolbox down on the windowsill because remember this man is now holding this pipe bomb. Fuck. And he ran, luckily it didn't detonate, and he ran to the phone and called the police.
Later, when the note was tested, it was discovered that the second line of text was written in gunpowder. Oh. Which was the same substance that was packed into the pipe. Hate that. Powder boys. At the time, though, the NYPD officers who responded to the call had no idea what they were actually dealing with here.
Although bombings or threats of bombings had kind of increased across the city throughout the first half of the 20th century, just with like advancement of people knowing how to make these things. Yeah. Those matters were handled by the bomb and forgery squad, obviously. There's like a specialized thing.
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Chapter 3: How did the Mad Bomber escalate his attacks?
It is remarkable. The Grand Central bomb was followed a few weeks later by another bomb. This one placed in a phone booth in the lobby of the Con Ed offices at 4 Irving Place. If that doesn't raise some eyebrows. Yeah.
The bomb exploded and caused some damage to the lobby, but because it was detonated at 6.15 a.m., the only person in the building was a night watchman, and he wasn't in the lobby when it went off. So it's missing like any person. It's like really remarkable.
Because it's not like he's doing that on purpose. The first one when he came back again was high traffic time. He's putting them in phone booths. It's not like he's going out of his way to. Yeah, that's the thing. He's also putting shrapnel in them. So obviously he does want to hurt people.
Yeah.
So yeah, in fact, the damage had been so minimal and mostly confined to the phone booth, the night watchman didn't even bother to call the police right away and waited several hours before even reporting it. Okay, that's a bad plan because there could be more. Yeah, that's wild. Where there's one bomb, as we find out, there's many. So the bombs all were pretty similar in their construction.
So one investigator or a few investigators were believing that they probably were constructed and placed by the same individual. Yeah. But because the bombs at Grand Central, the public library, and Con Ed appeared to have been detonated at a time when they were like... Because that's the thing. It's like he put them in places where people would be.
But he detonates them at times where people won't be there. Or not a lot of people will be there. Like 6.15 a.m. But what about the high traffic one? That's the one. It's like that one, you know... That stands out. Yeah, that one stands out. But a few of the other ones...
It almost looked like they were almost put to cause, because there's like conflicting ideas here because it's like there's shrapnel in them. It looks like there's clearly a, they're wanting to hurt someone. But then the times that a lot of them are placed or detonated, I should say, are interesting. Okay. You know? Yeah. Because it is crazy that they're not getting anyone. Right.
Like they're not hurting anyone. Investigators assumed because of this that maybe it was like a prank and they were detonating it on purpose when people wouldn't be there to cause damage and like chaos but not hurt anyone. Okay.
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Chapter 4: What threats did the bomber make during WWII?
You should just have more people on the full moon all the time. It'd just be crazy.
People would be wild on the full moon.
We're a huge percent water.
It's true. There you go. We're a huge percent water.
We're a huge percent water. It's like 86 or something.
I don't know. It's pretty impressive.
It's huge. It's pretty impressive how water we are, you know? We do be a lot of water.
Are we the ocean? I don't know. The tide we're within. While they seemed willing to entertain any theory, At this point, regardless of how serious it seemed, investigators in the NYPD and on the bomb squad knew the type of panic that a serial bomber was going to instill in the public. Yeah.
And they just wanted to stop him because now people are, it's going to be hard for people to live their lives normally here. Especially in New York City. And they didn't care what the method was. They just wanted to stop this guy. That's not great.
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Chapter 5: How did authorities respond to the bombings?
And it's shocking that they haven't hurt anybody else. Yeah. The minimal press coverage was an offense to the bomber, too. And it's like they should have thought of that. Oh, to the bomber. That this guy is looking for attention, clearly. And I know that it's like, it's a hard line to walk. That's the thing. It's kind of like, you know, Zodiac and, you know, Jack the Ripper.
It's like when they're looking for the attention, you don't want to give it to them. But you also don't want to set it off anymore. So it's like... I can't say that I would know how to handle this, you know, as like an investigator and what to tell the press. And especially, again, during this time period. Exactly.
This is a very new type of mind they're dealing with.
Yeah, exactly. And so he started sending outraged letters to the editorial departments of the city's major papers. That's scary. In a letter to the editor and staff of New York Herald Tribune, unless sloppy or no reporting is corrected about bombings, public will get information by way of Moscow. Get this into your heads. The Consolidated Edison Company will be brought to justice.
All of my physical, mental, and financial sufferings will be paid for in full. You know that bombs are getting bigger. So far, the hand of God has spared everyone from death or serious injury. Believe me, I know. In the press, now and then, I am called a bad name. Just what name fits you people who denied me the purchase of space to tell my story?
You who are too yellow to print the facts which concern the safety of so many, I'm bewildered by your attitude. I can only respond with more and larger bombs. Every day that passes means a day closer to another bomb.
Yikes.
he's scary it's very scary and upping the ante and again is not telling anyone what the fuck happened and how they can fix it yeah and he's literally saying like the hand of god has spared people from not getting hurt that wasn't my intention right which like he was kind of alluding not to that before but now he's just being like oh that's just happenstance yeah
Which is scary. And it almost sounds like he went to them and tried to get his story about what happened at the con place out and they said no. Yeah, which is like strange.
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