Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
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. That's right. Eighties History, the New York City History edition.
Yeah, oh, it's definitely. I mean, not just like New York City history. This is one of the pivotal moments in the history of New York.
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 Reid, 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 here are we talking at Josh.
Wow, Well, hold on, I can top your Time magazine. He was also in Mad magazine.
Okay, also in Mad magazine.
So this must have been some entertainer or some revered cultural icon.
Yeah.
Sure, in a roundabout way, but not really. I think you're being coy or fay.
That's right, we're talking about Bernard Getz, the subway vigilante who shot four teenagers on a subway train in New York City and nineteen eighty four, when I was thirteen years old.
I remember this very vividly. It was a very big deal.
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.
Elliott ness Smith.
Actually it's Elliott Smith, hyphen Nessess, good Guess Easton, that's Sheena Easton. You're thinking of, thank you for helping me tap dance.
Here Elliott Easton of the cars.
Well, anyway, i'll find his last name, but his first name's Elliott. 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 eighteen or nineteen, but they.
Were also like grown adults by then.
Exactly, they were young men for sure. Ye. So yeah, you 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 was incorrect as well.
Yeah, unless you count to screwdriver.
Yes, but was that even them being armed?
I know, yeah, we'll get to all that, so I guess we should sort of just say quickly.
The story maybe.
Yeah, And by the way, I really I liked your intro.
Oh thanks.
We'll get into the details of it, but the overall story is that on the New York City train, on the two train in December of nineteen eighty four, a guy named Bernard gets thirty seven years old. He's an electrical engineer. Still is still lives in the very same apartment, which is kind of crazy. Really in the West Village, right, I'm not even sure where it is.
I'm pretty sure it is.
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.
Yeah, he's apparently still complaining about how New York was in the eighties.
Yeah, maybe so. But anyway, he was thirty seven at the time. Took a seat on the New York City subway I think of what was it, the two train, and four eighteen and nineteen year olds got on. Barry Allen, Troy Canty, Darryl Caby, and James Ramsure got on, and we're 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 failedly failedly validly threatening, And that's what was going on. And one of them, I believe it was Canti, approached Bernard Gets and either said give
me five bucks or can I have five bucks? And Bernard Gets pulled a gun out of his windbreaker and shot each of them one by one, hitting two of them in the back, and then fired a second bullet at Darryl Kabe, 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 brained image because the bullet entered his spine.
Yeah, and it's worth saying that when he shot Darryl KB that second time, Darryl KB was cowering on a subway bench in fear of his life and again was not armed. So this is 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 he was not some insane person necessarily, but 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 victims of this 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, I guess real life essentially.
Yeah, I mean, none other than Al Sharpton back in the day even said like, hey, these guys are no angels. Yeah, So like no one was ever and you know, Al Sharpton's on the scene and he's saying that kind of thing like contemporaneously. Then you know, like nobody who was trying to paint these guys is like, you know, these nice kids who are just on their way home from the library or whatever. Right, So, yeah, we got to
frame this a little bit. And one of the ways we should start is probably by talking a little bit about New York City in nineteen eighty four. In the nineteen eighties, which you know, pretty infamously was down on its luck as a town and fairly riddled with crime.
It's fair to say, for sure, it had almost gone bankrupt as a city in the seventies. I think it was bailed out by like City Bank and some of the other big banks and ODEM 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 sixty percent faster than any other big city. It was a
it was a totally different town than it is today. Yeah, Like, for sure, all you have to do is look at a picture of the interior of a subway from nineteen eighty four. Yeah, 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.
Yeah.
I think there were thirty eight crimes a day just on the subway in New York City. And you know I mentioned that last episode. I'm reading that Abel Ferrara book. He's a New York guy, and so some of these early stories from back then. He lived near Union Square, like you know Union Square, New York.
Sure, I do have walked around in a circle, even it's quite lovely.
Not when he lived there, which was 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. Yeah, and that at one point, like the phone, like New York City was in such bad shape, like ma Bell went down for I feel like months, like he said, nobody could call in or out from from my neighborhood near Union Square.
That's like escape from New York type stuff.
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.
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.
Yeah, Bubba Gump Shrimp was really suffering.
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 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 Alan kb Ramser, 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 lamp for like seven or nine days, I think.
Yeah.
The subway conductor actually 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 thirty eight thirty eight caliber, and that's that's when he took off and ran down the Chamber Street. But yeah, he packed a bag, rented a car and drove to New Hampshire.
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 lamb because he was under the impression that when New York got their hands on him. I think he's he told a detective 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 Gets when he turned himself in nine days after the shooting in New Hampshire.
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. That was a sentiment like across racial lines, 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 I think you found statistics right that like a lot of the like, hey, we are on this guy side kind of crossed over racial lines too, right.
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 forty five 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 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 overwhelming to the cops in the courts.
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 fifty to fifty chance you're going to get mugged or murdered, right, And when you look at the stats, it's shocking today to hear about like thirty eight 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 a different time, but we just don't want to paint it as like, you know, the wild West, because it wasn't like that exactly.
No, But when the news of the subway vigilanti 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?
Oh, I thought you sent it in the mail. You didn't buy me that.
It said thug busters and it said it quit Bernard Getz has like I think a gun or something. No, it had a bad guy with a circle in a slash through like Ghostbusters.
I guess 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 right 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.
M I guess non hollow bullets. What are those called.
Regular bullet?
Regular bullets?
Yeah, sure, talking to two newvies here with that stuff, didn't talk about shooting them in the back. Initially in the press, they talked, you know, they talked to Kanti's brother and he was like, yeah, my brother free basis cocaine and he was high that day on the subway. So like all the stuff coming out in the news, you know, supported like a more benevolent view of Bernard Getz at first, at least.
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. Mary ed 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. That the few people who were like that was a hate crime, long before there were any federal laws against hate crimes, were speaking out, but they were in a minority. It seemed like. 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 gets especially at first.
Yeah, for sure, all right, I think we'd set the table pretty nicely.
Mm hmm.
You eat from the outside in.
Oh I've been doing it at the opposite my home. I've been eating from bottom.
To toph No, no, no, that's not the way you do it. You 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 Getz. All right, So, like we mentioned Bernard Getz hit the trail and a rental a rental car went to New Hampshire. A man hunt ensued, obviously. Uh, 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 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.
Uh.
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.
Yeah, 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.
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 I think like I'm disgusted with myself where 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, yeah, he wasn't knowing I think ever accused him or suggested he was mentally ill, except for a judge, as we'll see.
But no, no temporary insanity talk or anything.
Nothing like that. Now. 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 nineteen eighty four, for sure.
Yeah, and set the groundwork for his eventual defense in court, because in nineteen eighty one, he was mugged. He was violently mugged in a subway station by three men.
This is in nineteen eighty one.
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 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 gets was there for like six hours. 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. And that really really stuck in his crawl.
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 nineteen eighty one were all black.
Yeah, I mean, that's where he got his 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 caring 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 about the thirty eight where his parents lived at the time.
Right, So yeah, I just want to like specify he was turned down twice for a gun permit, and 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 nineteen eighty four now or no, I guess it was New Year's even nineteen eighty four, he was basically saying, like, 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 that initial reporting where he
was held up. The four guys had sharpened screwdrivers. He had just shot at him, 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, yeah, because they felt the same way. They felt like they've 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.
Yeah.
I mean this is also on the heels of the Death Wish movies. Yeah, so that kind of vigilantism was you know, celebrated in movie theaters with Chryls Bunsen. 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 six bullet capable revolver.
That's what they're probably just say revolver. Most people know what that is.
How how many bullets came as that was a revolver there died.
Well, there are 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 eighty five 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 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, 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 can mean.
A new grand jury in March of that year and made the case for murder, assault, recored you know, all the charges he was eventually charged with and brought in at least Kanty and Rams sure to testify along with eyewitnesses.
This time Yeah, So the grand jury indicted him, I think, on thirteen counts total, and very shortly after that all all thirteen 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 nineteen eighty six, it looked like he was going to definitely be tried in a serious manner for some very serious charges.
Yeah, for sure. He obviously pleaded not guilty. He claimed self defense and 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. You know, again, 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.
Apparently, Troy Canty went up to gets directly and said and his best as Joey Tribiani, how you doing, asked them a couple more questions, just like, you know, just kind of messing with them, small talk stuff, gets kind of answered briefly, and gets his 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 the sort of controversial line of gimme five bucks or can I get five bucks happened. Either way, gimme five bucks doesn't sound like a mugging, like give me all your money, sucker.
That sounds like a mugging to me.
Or give me all your love and all your hugs and kisses too.
That's right.
But there's something about the specificity of the five bucks to me take some threat out of it. But this is just my dumb opinion all these years later.
Well that's funny because I've read 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 asked for a quarter, which is essentially the same as asking somebody for a dollar today. Ask you for five bucks was like asking for fifteen bucks today.
And I said, somebody say, like asking for a quarter's panhandling back then, asking for five dollars was robbery essentially, so that amount actually did make a have an impact on the criminal case.
Yeah, yeah, I'm talking about my opinion on the specificity, not the amount of money.
Oh I got you.
Sure, Like asking for a specific amount of money just to me feels less threatening than like, hey, give me everything in your wallet right now.
Oh gotcha? Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. That's a really good point. I see it to me.
Yeah, so that's just me. But that's when he again unzipped his windbreaker, pulled out the gun. This whole thing was over in twenty seconds. Happened very quickly. Wow, he fired five shots in the subway car with I think there were like fifteen to twenty other people on the car. We should mention, which you know makes it obviously super dangerous thing to do.
Yeah, there's that reckless endangerment thing.
Yeah, exactly. So he started with Canty hit him in the chest. All these guys are running for cover. Obviously Alan was hitting the back. Ram sure was hit in the arm, arms and chests. 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 miss them. And that's when Gets 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, but Get 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 Gets may have just been like kind of fantasizing that.
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 Gets?
Right? Yeah.
And the reason why that's so important in the difference between give me five bucks or can I have five bucks? The whole crime case hinged on that. Yeah, because in New York law at the time, I believe they probably changed it since the Bernard Gets case, it was okay for you to use deadly force if you reasonably believed that you were about to be robbed, 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, the Charles Bronson rule pretty much. Yeah, So all that the all the defense had to prove was that a reasonable person in Bernard Gets the 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 All the defense had to do to get him acquitted. Was just proved that one part, because that use of deadly force then would have been authorized across the whole thing.
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. Get said that he could see the outline of the screwdrivers 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 you mentioned earlier, the very famous New York City Beat reporter.
He interviewed Kab in the hospital about a year afterward, and he claimed that Kaby 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.
Right, and that robbing our Kide Games alibi actually definitely checked out, Like everybody believes that that's what they were going to do because they had a history of that and I think Troy Knty had been convicted for stealing fourteen dollars in quarters out of our Kade Games, So that's almost certainly what they were going to do, which really undermines the idea that they were robbing Bernard Gets right, then.
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 Gets His attorney claimed that he was that Kaby was standing up when he was shot, but everybody there, like every single eyewitness and Gets said, no, he was seated, And people are like, he was sort of cowering in the corner of the subways in a seat, like yeah, 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.
Even Gets in the interview in New Hampshire when he turned himself in, said that when he walked over to Darryl Kby, he saw like genuine fear in his eyes, and 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, ring in the spine, and paralyzed him for life. 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 Getz. Even though I can still sympathize with anybody who is living in fear on a daily basis, I don't want that for anybody.
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 than Bernard Getz.
So the actual, real legitimate criminal trial got underway in December nineteen eighty six, ran all the way to June nineteen eighty seven, and it took them four months just to seat a jury. Yeah, because Bernard guests was. I mean, all you have to say is that he was in Mad magazine to get across like what a pop culture icon and this guy was I saw a folk hero
used many times to describe him. Yeah, and just to find anybody who had not really heard of him or had claimed did not really form any opinion on the whole thing was very difficult in New York at the time.
Yeah, I mean it's still difficult probably.
Sure.
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, mister Kenna have five dollars and that he said, get said you can all have it like Charles Bronson and pulled out
the gun. He said that he heard Kby'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 Ramser'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, and we'll get to it, but he would later come back 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 here, so throw out that testimony.
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 Bouchet, I'm not sure how he pronounced it bo bo u c h R. He was near kV when that fish 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 mister 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 is your eyesight? It's perfect?
Yeah, so not really good as far as the defense goes. After that, the prosecution was like, we need to get James Ramser 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 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 said that at the outset, and James rams Are 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 his behavior in court reflected on the other four two And I'm sure a lot of the members of the jury were just looking for a reason to not sympathize with the four victims, you know what I mean, Yeah, for sure, to try to figure out a way for Bernard Gets
to get off. And James Ramser definitely made it easier on them with his testimony.
Yeah, And you know, they did some They brought in some expert expert testimony. Basically one guy who was a neuropsychiatrist named Bernard Yudwitz, and 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 he it was a single act like that adrenaline doesn't come down until afterward and he can then consider what's happening, and they happened so quickly.
He was like, it was basically like one thing happened.
And then he had a bullet expert, a ballistics guy named Joseph 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, and that entered his spine and threw him backward into the seat. I think kind of instantly paralyzing him. And then you know, they did a re enactment 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.
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 thirteen counts that he was indicted and tried for, he was only found guilty on one. Everything the murder attempts, the assault, the reckless endangerment, all of it he was found not guilty on. The only guilty charge was the illegal firearm charge.
Yeah.
Apparently, like you know, they're reading each account how they do individually, And when the count against Darryl KB, like who was sitting in there in a wheelchair, came out, Yeah, 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 that the I think the adrenaline response weighed in 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 not convict him.
Yeah, So he got off with I think two hundred and fifty 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 Getz. He just went back to life
for a while. And then ten years later Darryl Cabe filed a civil case against him, And this one was by nineteen ninety six, New York was a different place, yeah, than it was in nineteen eighty six, like dramatically different, and so a jury would not have had the same experience that the jury in nineteen eighty six would have had from living in New York for sure, And that was definitely reflected in the outcome, which found in Daryl Caby's favor.
Yeah, gets 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 they the defense did call some people. They called Jimmy Breslin to testify about KB, the officer that testified that Canty told him they were trying to rob him.
They called him in.
That was it, basically, except the one big change this time was that Gets took the stand to testify and said things like, you know, I thought about gouging out their eyes with keys after I shot them. Darryl CABE'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.
No, And 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.
Yeah.
I got a quote from I mean, I read a New York Times article from January this year. Yeah, because I think there's a couple of books that came out this year. Yeah, and he said, you know, the important thing is is that I shot the right guys and no innocent bystanders were heard.
Yeah. That one of those books was Five Bullets and the author's name is Elliott Williams.
That's right.
So yeah, I think the jury found in favor of Darryl Kaby and said that gets owed him forty three million dollars and gets like you said, I guess he knew that he was never going to pay it, immediately file bankruptcy and still to this day, Daryl Caby's never seen a penny of that money.
Yeah. Gets you know again, it's in that same apartment.
Still.
I guess he's got a pretty sweet rent control situation, would be my guest. Sounds like Kent, but he ran for mayor in New York in two thousand and one pushing he's a vegetarian, pushing vegetarian minus.
Apparently he works in squirrel rescue and rehabilitation.
Yeah, that's right, and also still runs his electronics business out of his apartment. And he then ran in two thousand and five for public Advocate on the platform against circumcision and in favor of power naps for New York City workers.
I saw that in two thousand and one, not only Bernard gets ran for Mary, but so did the real Kramer Kenny Kramer.
Gets Is also arrested himself later for dealing drugs in twenty thirteen, or at least trying to sell drugs to an undercover officer.
Yeah, he became a huge pro pot advocate apparently too, which is a pretty surprising outcome. So as for the four victims, Darryl Kby again he was paralyzed for life
from the abdomen down and it suffered brain damage. Alan Barry Allen and Troy Canty were both in prison back in nineteen ninety six during the civil trial, and James Ramser had been in and out of prison, including one charge of trying faking his own kidnapping, and then he died in twenty eleven, I think, twenty seven years to the day of the subway shooting in nineteen eighty four, of an overdose that is widely suspected to have been purposeful.
Yeah, he had He's sort of twenty five years in prison total after that shooting, so he had a rough go of it and that is. I've been wanting to do this in for a while. This one's been sitting in the inbox for a long time.
Yeah. Yeah, it's a big thanks to Julia for putting this together.
Yeah, thanks Julia. If you want to know more about Bernard Gets, you could start with those two books that came out recently that Chuck just mentioned, Five Bullets by Elliott Williams and Fear and Fury colon the Reagan Eighties, The Bernard Gets Shootings and The Rebirth of White Rage by Heather Ann Thompson.
My inclination is goes by bullets because of no colon.
Okay, well, since Chuck cited a preference for no colon's, it's time for listener now.
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 listening 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 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, I thought you might find this amusing.
I did. Rachel, thank you.
For a great work and for being my weekly companions for more than a decade. And that is Rachel and 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.
Sure they're from a different timeline.
Yeah, I would say look within yourself, all.
Right 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 Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
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