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The NY Subway Vigilante · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:11
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
0:13
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too. We're pretty sure and.
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Speaker 3: This is stuff you should know. That's right. Eighties History,
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Speaker 3: the New York City History edition.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, oh, it's definitely. I mean, not just like New
0:27
Speaker 2: York City history. This is one of the pivotal moments
0:30
Speaker 2: in the history of New York.
0:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, because everyone we are talking about somebody who,
0:37
Speaker 1: as far as pop culture goes, was on the cover
0:40
Speaker 1: of Time magazine. Somebody who has been in pop songs
0:44
Speaker 1: by Billy Joel, of course, lou Reid, none other than
0:48
Speaker 1: the Beastie Boys, has been a trivial pursuit answer, has
0:52
Speaker 1: been a question on Jeopardy, has been mentioned in an
0:56
Speaker 1: episode of Seinfeld even and of course here are we
0:59
Speaker 1: talking at Josh.
1:00
Speaker 2: Wow, Well, hold on, I can top your Time magazine.
1:04
Speaker 2: He was also in Mad magazine.
1:07
Speaker 3: Okay, also in Mad magazine.
1:08
Speaker 1: So this must have been some entertainer or some revered
1:12
Speaker 1: cultural icon.
1:14
Speaker 3: Yeah.
1:15
Speaker 2: Sure, in a roundabout way, but not really. I think
1:18
Speaker 2: you're being coy or fay.
1:20
Speaker 1: That's right, we're talking about Bernard Getz, the subway vigilante
1:24
Speaker 1: who shot four teenagers on a subway train in New
1:29
Speaker 1: York City and nineteen eighty four, when I was thirteen
1:32
Speaker 1: years old.
1:32
Speaker 3: I remember this very vividly. It was a very big deal.
1:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we should probably come out and say these
1:37
Speaker 2: were unarmed teenagers too. And then I saw so there's
1:41
Speaker 2: a book called Five Bullets by a legal correspondent named.
1:48
Speaker 3: Elliott ness Smith.
1:54
Speaker 2: Actually it's Elliott Smith, hyphen Nessess, good Guess Easton, that's
2:01
Speaker 2: Sheena Easton. You're thinking of, thank you for helping me
2:03
Speaker 2: tap dance.
2:04
Speaker 3: Here Elliott Easton of the cars.
2:06
Speaker 2: Well, anyway, i'll find his last name, but his first
2:09
Speaker 2: name's Elliott. He wrote a book called five Bullets, and
2:12
Speaker 2: it's about this, and he was I saw him being
2:14
Speaker 2: interviewed and he was like, you know, were these kids
2:17
Speaker 2: and he's like, yeah, that's I think. He said, that's
2:19
Speaker 2: a fair question. He said they were teens, they were
2:22
Speaker 2: eighteen or nineteen, but they.
2:24
Speaker 3: Were also like grown adults by then.
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Speaker 2: Exactly, they were young men for sure. Ye. So yeah,
2:29
Speaker 2: you call them kids, which a lot of people did,
2:30
Speaker 2: was incorrect. But to also say that they were armed,
2:33
Speaker 2: which a lot of people said was incorrect as well.
2:36
Speaker 3: Yeah, unless you count to screwdriver.
2:39
Speaker 2: Yes, but was that even them being armed?
2:42
Speaker 1: I know, yeah, we'll get to all that, so I
2:46
Speaker 1: guess we should sort of just say quickly.
2:49
Speaker 3: The story maybe.
2:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, And by the way, I really I liked your intro.
2:54
Speaker 3: Oh thanks.
2:55
Speaker 1: We'll get into the details of it, but the overall
2:57
Speaker 1: story is that on the New York City train, on
3:00
Speaker 1: the two train in December of nineteen eighty four, a
3:03
Speaker 1: guy named Bernard gets thirty seven years old. He's an
3:07
Speaker 1: electrical engineer. Still is still lives in the very same apartment,
3:10
Speaker 1: which is kind of crazy. Really in the West Village, right,
3:14
Speaker 1: I'm not even sure where it is.
3:15
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure it is.
3:16
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, I mean I might have bumped into him
3:18
Speaker 1: one day, you never know. But yeah, he still lives
3:20
Speaker 1: in the same place, which is a little crazy because
3:23
Speaker 1: I've never heard him say one thing about New York
3:25
Speaker 1: City that he likes. All I've ever heard him, and
3:27
Speaker 1: I've listened to a lot of interviews, all I've ever
3:29
Speaker 1: heard him do is complain about everything about New York.
3:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's apparently still complaining about how New York was
3:35
Speaker 2: in the eighties.
3:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe so. But anyway, he was thirty seven at
3:39
Speaker 1: the time. Took a seat on the New York City
3:42
Speaker 1: subway I think of what was it, the two train,
3:45
Speaker 1: and four eighteen and nineteen year olds got on. Barry Allen,
3:49
Speaker 1: Troy Canty, Darryl Caby, and James Ramsure got on, and
3:56
Speaker 1: we're being like, you know, I've been on trains sort
3:59
Speaker 1: of back in the day. It doesn't happen a whole
4:01
Speaker 1: lot anymore where teenagers or even older teenagers get on
4:06
Speaker 1: and they start screwing around with people. They start being disruptive,
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Speaker 1: maybe even veiled, veiledly failedly failedly validly threatening, And that's
4:20
Speaker 1: what was going on. And one of them, I believe
4:25
Speaker 1: it was Canti, approached Bernard Gets and either said give
4:31
Speaker 1: me five bucks or can I have five bucks? And
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Speaker 1: Bernard Gets pulled a gun out of his windbreaker and
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Speaker 1: shot each of them one by one, hitting two of
4:42
Speaker 1: them in the back, and then fired a second bullet
4:45
Speaker 1: at Darryl Kabe, who was you know, this is where
4:48
Speaker 1: it gets a little confusing as to how exactly it
4:50
Speaker 1: played out, and we'll get to all those details, but
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Speaker 1: he's the one that was. Nobody was killed. He was
4:54
Speaker 1: the one that was injured the most. He ended up
4:56
Speaker 1: paralyzed and brained image because the bullet entered his spine.
5:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's worth saying that when he shot Darryl
5:02
Speaker 2: KB that second time, Darryl KB was cowering on a
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Speaker 2: subway bench in fear of his life and again was
5:11
Speaker 2: not armed. So this is this is such a like
5:14
Speaker 2: a difficult case to talk about because in some ways
5:20
Speaker 2: you kind of have to provide context for Bernard Getz's mindset.
5:26
Speaker 2: He he was not some insane person necessarily, but when
5:31
Speaker 2: you find out more about him too, he becomes less
5:33
Speaker 2: and less sympathetic of a of a person. And yet
5:37
Speaker 2: at the same time, the victims of this were not
5:40
Speaker 2: just like, you know, angels, even if in this one
5:44
Speaker 2: particular incident they weren't necessarily doing anything and they certainly
5:47
Speaker 2: weren't doing anything worth being shot and paralyzed for life over.
5:52
Speaker 2: So the whole thing, it's it's just not cut and
5:54
Speaker 2: dried or black and white, which makes the whole thing,
5:57
Speaker 2: I guess real life essentially.
5:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, none other than Al Sharpton back in
6:02
Speaker 1: the day even said like, hey, these guys are no angels. Yeah,
6:07
Speaker 1: So like no one was ever and you know, Al
6:09
Speaker 1: Sharpton's on the scene and he's saying that kind of
6:12
Speaker 1: thing like contemporaneously. Then you know, like nobody who was
6:16
Speaker 1: trying to paint these guys is like, you know, these
6:18
Speaker 1: nice kids who are just on their way home from
6:20
Speaker 1: the library or whatever. Right, So, yeah, we got to
6:23
Speaker 1: frame this a little bit. And one of the ways
6:26
Speaker 1: we should start is probably by talking a little bit
6:28
Speaker 1: about New York City in nineteen eighty four. In the
6:31
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, which you know, pretty infamously was down on
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Speaker 1: its luck as a town and fairly riddled with crime.
6:42
Speaker 2: It's fair to say, for sure, it had almost gone
6:44
Speaker 2: bankrupt as a city in the seventies. I think it
6:47
Speaker 2: was bailed out by like City Bank and some of
6:49
Speaker 2: the other big banks and ODEM big time. And one
6:53
Speaker 2: other thing too about New York was that crime, including
6:57
Speaker 2: violent crime, was on the rise across the US, but
7:00
Speaker 2: in New York it was increasing at a rate sixty
7:03
Speaker 2: percent faster than any other big city. It was a
7:07
Speaker 2: it was a totally different town than it is today. Yeah, Like,
7:11
Speaker 2: for sure, all you have to do is look at
7:12
Speaker 2: a picture of the interior of a subway from nineteen
7:15
Speaker 2: eighty four. Yeah, and compare it to the interior of
7:17
Speaker 2: a subway today, and it will give you a really
7:19
Speaker 2: good idea of kind of the general lawlessness that was
7:23
Speaker 2: going on in New York at the time.
7:25
Speaker 3: Yeah.
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Speaker 1: I think there were thirty eight crimes a day just
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Speaker 1: on the subway in New York City. And you know
7:31
Speaker 1: I mentioned that last episode. I'm reading that Abel Ferrara book.
7:35
Speaker 1: He's a New York guy, and so some of these
7:37
Speaker 1: early stories from back then. He lived near Union Square,
7:40
Speaker 1: like you know Union Square, New York.
7:41
Speaker 2: Sure, I do have walked around in a circle, even
7:44
Speaker 2: it's quite lovely.
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Speaker 1: Not when he lived there, which was in the eighties,
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Speaker 1: he said that he literally would not go into Union
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Speaker 1: Square at night, and he was he was a pretty
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Speaker 1: tough guy. Yeah, and that at one point, like the phone,
7:56
Speaker 1: like New York City was in such bad shape, like
7:59
Speaker 1: ma Bell went down for I feel like months, like
8:03
Speaker 1: he said, nobody could call in or out from from
8:06
Speaker 1: my neighborhood near Union Square.
8:08
Speaker 2: That's like escape from New York type stuff.
8:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, Like he said, he used to pick
8:12
Speaker 1: up the phone every day just to see if there
8:14
Speaker 1: was a dial tone. And then finally one day there
8:16
Speaker 1: was and he was like, oh my god, I can
8:18
Speaker 1: I can call somebody.
8:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was so bad New York was back in
8:22
Speaker 2: this day that in Times Square people wouldn't go to
8:26
Speaker 2: the Planet Hollywood or TGI Fridays, and both of them
8:29
Speaker 2: almost went under.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, Bubba Gump Shrimp was really suffering.
8:33
Speaker 2: Yes, big time. So yeah, New York was a different place.
8:39
Speaker 2: And this is actually this will help explain the reaction
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Speaker 2: that Bernard Getz got when he, I guess turned himself
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Speaker 2: in and became known as the subway vigilante. But before
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Speaker 2: that he was an unknown person. This was an unknown
8:56
Speaker 2: perpetrator because after he shot Canty Alan kb Ramser, he
9:01
Speaker 2: took off. He jumped out of the stopped subway car,
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Speaker 2: ran down the tracks, and then I guess hit a
9:07
Speaker 2: platform and ran back up above ground and was on
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Speaker 2: the lamp for like seven or nine days, I think.
9:14
Speaker 3: Yeah.
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Speaker 1: The subway conductor actually confronted him and was like, are
9:18
Speaker 1: you a cop? And he said no, and he tried
9:21
Speaker 1: to get the gun from Bernie Getz, which was a
9:24
Speaker 1: Smith and Wesson thirty eight thirty eight caliber, and that's
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Speaker 1: that's when he took off and ran down the Chamber Street.
9:30
Speaker 1: But yeah, he packed a bag, rented a car and
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Speaker 1: drove to New Hampshire.
9:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think he passed through Vermont because I
9:36
Speaker 2: heard that he buried the gun there and he was
9:39
Speaker 2: really scared, like he was, I mean, as you would
9:42
Speaker 2: be after something like that. He said that in the
9:44
Speaker 2: moment he was totally out of control, but very quickly
9:47
Speaker 2: after that he got really scared. So he was running
9:50
Speaker 2: on the lamb because he was under the impression that
9:53
Speaker 2: when New York got their hands on him. I think
9:56
Speaker 2: he's he told a detective in New Hampshire, they're going
9:59
Speaker 2: to wipe the floor with me. And it turned out
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Speaker 2: that the essentially the exact opposite happened to Bernard Gets
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Speaker 2: when he turned himself in nine days after the shooting
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Speaker 2: in New Hampshire.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean the reaction generally from New York, I
10:16
Speaker 1: mean it was divided in a way. It's not like
10:18
Speaker 1: everyone felt this way, but there were enough people that
10:21
Speaker 1: were like, yeah, good for him. This city is a
10:24
Speaker 1: cesspool and somebody finally took up for themselves. That was
10:28
Speaker 1: a sentiment like across racial lines, and race would play
10:31
Speaker 1: a big part as we'll see, Like that's sort of
10:33
Speaker 1: one of the uncomfortable things we have to talk about,
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Speaker 1: because Bernard gets very unapologetically in interviews, countless interviews over
10:40
Speaker 1: the years, talked about you know, black men specifically is
10:43
Speaker 1: what he would say over and over again, and the
10:46
Speaker 1: violence and ruining the city. And I think you found
10:50
Speaker 1: statistics right that like a lot of the like, hey,
10:53
Speaker 1: we are on this guy side kind of crossed over
10:56
Speaker 1: racial lines too, right.
10:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, it wasn't. It was not the way that you
11:00
Speaker 2: would think of it. I think half of the Hispanic
11:03
Speaker 2: population of New York said they support him in a
11:07
Speaker 2: survey quickly afterward, and forty five percent of Black New
11:10
Speaker 2: Yorkers said that they supported him too. And again it's because,
11:14
Speaker 2: like you said, like a lot of these people had
11:16
Speaker 2: their own experience with like being mugged or maybe intimidated
11:20
Speaker 2: or something on the subway. So the idea of somebody
11:23
Speaker 2: stepping forward and doing something really kind of resonated with
11:27
Speaker 2: the people living in New York at the time, because
11:30
Speaker 2: I read they might not all have been living in
11:33
Speaker 2: constant fear like we'll see Bernard Getz was, but they
11:36
Speaker 2: were constantly on alert. You had to like really know
11:40
Speaker 2: what you were doing to live in New York or else.
11:42
Speaker 2: You were putting yourself in jeopardy if you were naive
11:46
Speaker 2: about that kind of thing. So the people were like, Yeah,
11:48
Speaker 2: that's great. I'm glad somebody finally stood up to him.
11:51
Speaker 2: The cops aren't doing anything, which was definitely a big
11:53
Speaker 2: criticism of the NYPD and the New York judicial system
11:56
Speaker 2: at the time, like a lot of crime was just
11:59
Speaker 2: being overlooked because the major crimes were so overwhelming to
12:03
Speaker 2: the cops in the courts.
12:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you said it best about just being alert,
12:08
Speaker 1: because like I think sometimes this period of New York
12:10
Speaker 1: gets painted as like, if you walk outside of your apartment,
12:14
Speaker 1: there's a fifty to fifty chance you're going to get
12:16
Speaker 1: mugged or murdered, right, And when you look at the stats,
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Speaker 1: it's shocking today to hear about like thirty eight literal
12:22
Speaker 1: crimes on the subway every single day, because it's just
12:25
Speaker 1: not like that now. But when you talk about how many,
12:28
Speaker 1: you know, tens of thousands of people ride the subway,
12:30
Speaker 1: it's still a low number, but it was high enough,
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Speaker 1: and everyone knew someone who knew someone who had had
12:36
Speaker 1: this happen. If it hadn't happened to them that like, yeah,
12:39
Speaker 1: it was a different time, but we just don't want
12:41
Speaker 1: to paint it as like, you know, the wild West,
12:45
Speaker 1: because it wasn't like that exactly.
12:47
Speaker 2: No, But when the news of the subway vigilanti came out,
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Speaker 2: one of the things that really shaped the public opinion too,
12:55
Speaker 2: and made it easier for people to be like, heck, yeah,
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Speaker 2: good for that guy. I love him. I think Joan
13:01
Speaker 2: Rivers sent him a telegram that said loving kisses and
13:04
Speaker 2: offered to help him with his bail money. People had
13:07
Speaker 2: t shirts. Did you see that T shirt I sent
13:08
Speaker 2: you that's available on eBay?
13:10
Speaker 3: Oh, I thought you sent it in the mail. You
13:12
Speaker 3: didn't buy me that.
13:13
Speaker 2: It said thug busters and it said it quit Bernard
13:16
Speaker 2: Getz has like I think a gun or something. No,
13:19
Speaker 2: it had a bad guy with a circle in a
13:21
Speaker 2: slash through like Ghostbusters.
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Speaker 3: I guess yeah.
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Speaker 1: I mean that was you know, that was the public sentiment.
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Speaker 1: And it also had to do with the way initially
13:29
Speaker 1: the press was being fed to them about this because
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Speaker 1: right all the information coming out was you know, hey,
13:36
Speaker 1: these guys had screwdrivers in their pockets, they were trying
13:39
Speaker 1: to mug him. They didn't focus on sort of the
13:42
Speaker 1: shooting aspect, like that he had hollow point bullets, which
13:45
Speaker 1: are of course even deadlier.
13:47
Speaker 3: M I guess non hollow bullets. What are those called.
13:53
Speaker 2: Regular bullet?
13:54
Speaker 3: Regular bullets?
13:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, sure, talking to two newvies here with that stuff,
13:59
Speaker 1: didn't talk about shooting them in the back. Initially in
14:02
Speaker 1: the press, they talked, you know, they talked to Kanti's
14:06
Speaker 1: brother and he was like, yeah, my brother free basis
14:08
Speaker 1: cocaine and he was high that day on the subway.
14:11
Speaker 1: So like all the stuff coming out in the news,
14:13
Speaker 1: you know, supported like a more benevolent view of Bernard
14:19
Speaker 1: Getz at first, at least.
14:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. So there were some people that spoke
14:26
Speaker 2: out against this. I think the columnist Jimmy Breslin was
14:31
Speaker 2: publicly repulsed that people were celebrating an incident that left
14:36
Speaker 2: a teenager in a wheelchair for life, and you know,
14:39
Speaker 2: he had something to say about that. Mary ed Koch
14:42
Speaker 2: was apparently the only public official who unconditionally condemned it.
14:47
Speaker 2: He was basically saying, we will not tolerate vigilanteism. That's
14:50
Speaker 2: the difference between the wild West and a civilized society.
14:54
Speaker 2: And he had a really good point, but for the
14:57
Speaker 2: most part, basically everybody. The loudest people were definitely the
15:02
Speaker 2: ones who were supporting him. That the few people who
15:05
Speaker 2: were like that was a hate crime, long before there
15:08
Speaker 2: were any federal laws against hate crimes, were speaking out,
15:12
Speaker 2: but they were in a minority. It seemed like. I
15:15
Speaker 2: found a quote from a guy named James Q. Wilson,
15:17
Speaker 2: who is a he's a I guess a public policy expert.
15:22
Speaker 2: I think he was a conservative. He said that it
15:26
Speaker 2: may be that there are no more liberals on the
15:28
Speaker 2: crime and law and order issue in New York because
15:31
Speaker 2: they've all been mugged, which I think kind of gets
15:33
Speaker 2: across the idea that like, there weren't a lot of
15:36
Speaker 2: people speaking out about this and against Bernard gets especially
15:39
Speaker 2: at first.
15:39
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, all right, I think we'd set the
15:41
Speaker 3: table pretty nicely.
15:43
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
15:43
Speaker 3: You eat from the outside in.
15:46
Speaker 2: Oh I've been doing it at the opposite my home.
15:50
Speaker 2: I've been eating from bottom.
15:51
Speaker 1: To toph No, no, no, that's not the way you
15:53
Speaker 1: do it. You got to set the table the right way,
15:55
Speaker 1: and we have done that. So we'll be right back
15:56
Speaker 1: with more on the subway vigilante Bernard Getz. All right, So,
16:19
Speaker 1: like we mentioned Bernard Getz hit the trail and a
16:22
Speaker 1: rental a rental car went to New Hampshire. A man
16:24
Speaker 1: hunt ensued, obviously. Uh, they put out a sketch of him,
16:27
Speaker 1: and I guess someone had called in like, hey, I
16:30
Speaker 1: think I might have seen this guy in New Hampshire.
16:32
Speaker 1: And I guess he felt like the walls were closing
16:35
Speaker 1: in because he turned himself in and to the Concord
16:38
Speaker 1: Police Department and was really just singing like a songbird
16:44
Speaker 1: like to the Concord police, and then when the NYPD
16:47
Speaker 1: got there, he was speaking voluntarily with him.
16:51
Speaker 3: Uh.
16:51
Speaker 1: He hated the NYPD. He hates the New York Times,
16:55
Speaker 1: Like I said, he has a lot of disdain for
16:56
Speaker 1: a lot.
16:57
Speaker 3: Of the things about New York.
16:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, but yeah, he was just you know, if you
17:02
Speaker 1: see these interviews, these are on videotape and you can
17:04
Speaker 1: watch them, he's just very unapologetic about the whole thing.
17:07
Speaker 3: And he still is.
17:09
Speaker 1: You know, we'll read some like more modern quotes, but
17:11
Speaker 1: he was always just like, yeah, this is how it happened.
17:13
Speaker 1: I shot these guys. I wish I had more bullets.
17:16
Speaker 1: And we'll read some quotes, you know, for sure.
17:18
Speaker 2: He said some really chilling things, but also some really
17:20
Speaker 2: contradictory stuff too. During that initial interview with the cops
17:23
Speaker 2: in New Hampshire, he said things like, you know, I
17:27
Speaker 2: wish it were a dream, you know, like he said,
17:30
Speaker 2: I'm I think like I'm disgusted with myself where I'm disgusted.
17:33
Speaker 2: It happened like he was of two minds, and then
17:36
Speaker 2: he'd switch to like, if I had had more bullets,
17:39
Speaker 2: I would have kept shooting, Like the problem was I
17:41
Speaker 2: ran out of bullets, like he said, all sorts of
17:44
Speaker 2: just different back and forth swinging stuff. But he was
17:47
Speaker 2: also very lucid too. He wasn't like, yeah, he wasn't
17:52
Speaker 2: knowing I think ever accused him or suggested he was
17:55
Speaker 2: mentally ill, except for a judge, as we'll see.
17:59
Speaker 3: But no, no temporary insanity talk or anything.
18:02
Speaker 2: Nothing like that. Now. But he's almost universally characterized when
18:07
Speaker 2: somebody writes a brief sketch of him as a loner. Yeah,
18:10
Speaker 2: he didn't have very many friends. He didn't have much family,
18:13
Speaker 2: if any, at that time. He was an electrical engineer
18:17
Speaker 2: by education and trade. He went to NYU and he
18:20
Speaker 2: had a business where he calibrated high end electrical equipment,
18:24
Speaker 2: and that actually led to that business, led to his
18:28
Speaker 2: first personal brush with violence in New York. And this
18:34
Speaker 2: definitely set the foundation for the mindset that he had
18:40
Speaker 2: when he got on that subway in December nineteen eighty four,
18:43
Speaker 2: for sure.
18:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, and set the groundwork for his eventual defense in court,
18:49
Speaker 1: because in nineteen eighty one, he was mugged. He was
18:53
Speaker 1: violently mugged in a subway station by three men.
18:57
Speaker 3: This is in nineteen eighty one.
18:58
Speaker 1: Like I said, this is why he decided he needed
19:02
Speaker 1: a gun.
19:03
Speaker 3: He was beat up pretty bad.
19:04
Speaker 1: They threw him into a plate glass window because he
19:07
Speaker 1: had like electronic equipment and they wanted that stuff. So
19:11
Speaker 1: apparently he suffered a permanent knee injury. Two of the
19:14
Speaker 1: guys were never caught, And this is what really really
19:17
Speaker 1: got him was the third guy was out of the
19:21
Speaker 1: police station in a couple of hours, and gets was
19:25
Speaker 1: there for like six hours. He was held, not held held,
19:30
Speaker 1: but you know, he was there telling his side of
19:32
Speaker 1: the story, and it took four hours longer for him
19:35
Speaker 1: to get out of the police station. And that really
19:37
Speaker 1: really stuck in his crawl.
19:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think ultimately that one guy that they
19:41
Speaker 2: did catch was only ever charged with criminal mischief, and
19:45
Speaker 2: I think under normal circumstances we wouldn't point this out,
19:48
Speaker 2: but I think because of how the effect that it
19:50
Speaker 2: had on Bernard Getz and how it helped transform him,
19:54
Speaker 2: it's worth pointing our specifying that the three men who
19:57
Speaker 2: mugged him in nineteen eighty one were all black.
20:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, that's where he got his at least,
20:04
Speaker 1: you know, I'm sure he had feelings like that before,
20:07
Speaker 1: but that's definitely what drilled it into him and got
20:11
Speaker 1: him sort of on that path of thinking that way.
20:14
Speaker 1: I guess about you know, all young black men in
20:16
Speaker 1: New York at the time. It's definitely what led him
20:18
Speaker 1: to get that gun. So had this not happened, I
20:22
Speaker 1: didn't see anything that led me to believe that he
20:24
Speaker 1: would have ever been the kind of guy to carry
20:26
Speaker 1: a gun around. So that put the gun in his hand.
20:30
Speaker 1: Was that mugging? He He applied for one legally in
20:33
Speaker 1: New York, saying like, hey, I was mugged before for
20:38
Speaker 1: this electronic equipment, and you know, sometimes I'm caring cash
20:41
Speaker 1: for my business. And they rejected that, saying he didn't
20:45
Speaker 1: demonstrate sufficient need. He appealed that that got rejected, so
20:49
Speaker 1: he bought a gun I think legally in Florida. Sorry
20:52
Speaker 1: about the thirty eight where his parents lived at the time.
20:55
Speaker 2: Right, So yeah, I just want to like specify he
21:00
Speaker 2: was turned down twice for a gun permit, and he
21:05
Speaker 2: was like, I carry expensive equipment. I'm at risk of
21:07
Speaker 2: being a tech It's already happened once. Yeah, And I
21:10
Speaker 2: think that, in addition to the mugger being let go
21:15
Speaker 2: hours before he was able to get out of the
21:17
Speaker 2: police station after being mugged, those two things together, like
21:21
Speaker 2: not only did he now hate the NYPD, he now
21:23
Speaker 2: hated the New York City bureaucracy and he had no
21:27
Speaker 2: faith in any of them. And in fact, during that
21:29
Speaker 2: interview when he turned himself in in nineteen eighty four
21:33
Speaker 2: now or no, I guess it was New Year's even
21:34
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty four, he was basically saying, like, if you
21:38
Speaker 2: stop protecting people, then you're in no position to pass
21:42
Speaker 2: moral judgment when they defend themselves in this, you know,
21:46
Speaker 2: in the face of crime or whatever. And I think
21:50
Speaker 2: that is essentially especially in that initial reporting where he
21:53
Speaker 2: was held up. The four guys had sharpened screwdrivers. He
21:58
Speaker 2: had just shot at him, like, you know, that was
22:00
Speaker 2: it that That is one of the reasons why so
22:04
Speaker 2: many people were like yes to that guy, you know, yeah,
22:08
Speaker 2: because they felt the same way. They felt like they've
22:10
Speaker 2: been abandoned by the by the police and the courts,
22:12
Speaker 2: and this was this guy who stood up for the
22:15
Speaker 2: rest of us, like this every man who stood up
22:17
Speaker 2: and said enough. And that's that was the support for him.
22:21
Speaker 3: Yeah.
22:22
Speaker 1: I mean this is also on the heels of the
22:23
Speaker 1: Death Wish movies. Yeah, so that kind of vigilantism was
22:27
Speaker 1: you know, celebrated in movie theaters with Chryls Bunsen. Here's
22:31
Speaker 1: a quote from Getz in that interview. He said, I
22:33
Speaker 1: wanted to kill those guys. I wanted to maim those guys.
22:36
Speaker 1: Wanted to make them suffer in every way I could.
22:38
Speaker 1: And you can't understand this because it's a realm of
22:40
Speaker 1: reality you're not familiar with. If I had more bullets,
22:43
Speaker 1: I would have shot them all again and again. My
22:46
Speaker 1: problem was I ran out of bullets. It should be
22:49
Speaker 1: noted he only had five bullets in a six bullet
22:53
Speaker 1: capable revolver.
22:55
Speaker 3: That's what they're probably just say revolver. Most people know
22:58
Speaker 3: what that is.
22:58
Speaker 2: How how many bullets came as that was a revolver
23:01
Speaker 2: there died.
23:02
Speaker 1: Well, there are some revolvers have eight bullets, but the
23:04
Speaker 1: standard is six. So eventually he was indicted. It kind
23:09
Speaker 1: of took a meandering road to finally arrive there, but
23:13
Speaker 1: he was eventually charged with attempted murder, assault, reckless endangerment,
23:17
Speaker 1: and a slew of firearms charges. But at the end
23:22
Speaker 1: of January eighty five was the first go round with
23:25
Speaker 1: a grand jury. They did not indict him except for
23:28
Speaker 1: illegal weapons possession. Apparently there was a DA at the
23:32
Speaker 1: time that was up for reelection, didn't you know. Bernard
23:35
Speaker 1: Getz was very popular, so he didn't want to like
23:38
Speaker 1: try too hard to bring serious charges, so he didn't
23:42
Speaker 1: call victims to testify or anything like that. As the
23:45
Speaker 1: details start leaking out, you know, and these quotes start
23:49
Speaker 1: coming out, the DA is kind of cornered to like, like,
23:52
Speaker 1: I have to really do this so they can mean.
23:54
Speaker 1: A new grand jury in March of that year and
23:58
Speaker 1: made the case for murder, assault, recored you know, all
24:01
Speaker 1: the charges he was eventually charged with and brought in
24:04
Speaker 1: at least Kanty and Rams sure to testify along with eyewitnesses.
24:08
Speaker 2: This time Yeah, So the grand jury indicted him, I think,
24:11
Speaker 2: on thirteen counts total, and very shortly after that all
24:16
Speaker 2: all thirteen counts got thrown out. The whole case got
24:18
Speaker 2: thrown out because the defense made a successful case that
24:23
Speaker 2: the I think the prosecutor had the DA had given
24:28
Speaker 2: poor instructions to the grand jury, and that Ramser and
24:32
Speaker 2: Canty had perjured themselves. Right, And so it looked like
24:36
Speaker 2: he was going to get off again. And then I
24:39
Speaker 2: think a few months later an appeals court said, no,
24:42
Speaker 2: get back in there, let's actually do this thing. So
24:45
Speaker 2: by the summer of nineteen eighty six, it looked like
24:49
Speaker 2: he was going to definitely be tried in a serious
24:52
Speaker 2: manner for some very serious charges.
24:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. He obviously pleaded not guilty. He claimed
24:58
Speaker 1: self defense and and I guess we should go into
25:02
Speaker 1: a little more detail about what happened on the train.
25:05
Speaker 1: You know, I mentioned these guys all four got on.
25:07
Speaker 1: They were being rude, they were being inconsiderate. You know, again,
25:12
Speaker 1: you've if you've been to New York City and ridden
25:14
Speaker 1: the subway, you've probably seen behavior kind of like this
25:16
Speaker 1: at some point.
25:17
Speaker 3: It makes everyone very uncomfortable.
25:19
Speaker 1: But you never know if it's like these days, you're
25:22
Speaker 1: probably like, it's not a real threat, let's just kind
25:24
Speaker 1: of ignore it.
25:25
Speaker 3: Back then, it probably seemed much more like a real threat.
25:29
Speaker 1: Apparently, Troy Canty went up to gets directly and said
25:33
Speaker 1: and his best as Joey Tribiani, how you doing, asked
25:37
Speaker 1: them a couple more questions, just like, you know, just
25:39
Speaker 1: kind of messing with them, small talk stuff, gets kind
25:42
Speaker 1: of answered briefly, and gets his you know, obviously getting
25:45
Speaker 1: kind of worked up at this point.
25:47
Speaker 3: This is a guy who had had enough.
25:49
Speaker 1: Barry Allen and Troy Canty approached him, and that is
25:51
Speaker 1: when the sort of controversial line of gimme five bucks
25:56
Speaker 1: or can I get five bucks happened. Either way, gimme
26:01
Speaker 1: five bucks doesn't sound like a mugging, like give me
26:05
Speaker 1: all your money, sucker.
26:07
Speaker 3: That sounds like a mugging to me.
26:10
Speaker 2: Or give me all your love and all your hugs
26:11
Speaker 2: and kisses too.
26:13
Speaker 3: That's right.
26:14
Speaker 1: But there's something about the specificity of the five bucks
26:17
Speaker 1: to me take some threat out of it. But this
26:19
Speaker 1: is just my dumb opinion all these years later.
26:22
Speaker 2: Well that's funny because I've read some I've read a
26:26
Speaker 2: few people who have said like five bucks is way
26:29
Speaker 2: different back then than it is today. Like, if you
26:32
Speaker 2: were panhandling, you asked for a quarter, which is essentially
26:35
Speaker 2: the same as asking somebody for a dollar today. Ask
26:38
Speaker 2: you for five bucks was like asking for fifteen bucks today.
26:41
Speaker 2: And I said, somebody say, like asking for a quarter's
26:44
Speaker 2: panhandling back then, asking for five dollars was robbery essentially,
26:49
Speaker 2: so that amount actually did make a have an impact
26:53
Speaker 2: on the criminal case.
26:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I'm talking about my opinion on the specificity,
26:57
Speaker 1: not the amount of money.
26:58
Speaker 2: Oh I got you.
26:59
Speaker 1: Sure, Like asking for a specific amount of money just
27:03
Speaker 1: to me feels less threatening than like, hey, give me
27:05
Speaker 1: everything in your wallet right now.
27:06
Speaker 2: Oh gotcha? Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. That's a really
27:09
Speaker 2: good point. I see it to me.
27:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's just me. But that's when he again
27:13
Speaker 1: unzipped his windbreaker, pulled out the gun. This whole thing
27:17
Speaker 1: was over in twenty seconds. Happened very quickly. Wow, he
27:20
Speaker 1: fired five shots in the subway car with I think
27:24
Speaker 1: there were like fifteen to twenty other people on the car.
27:26
Speaker 1: We should mention, which you know makes it obviously super
27:29
Speaker 1: dangerous thing to do.
27:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's that reckless endangerment thing.
27:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So he started with Canty hit him in
27:36
Speaker 1: the chest. All these guys are running for cover. Obviously
27:40
Speaker 1: Alan was hitting the back. Ram sure was hit in
27:43
Speaker 1: the arm, arms and chests. So I guess the single
27:46
Speaker 1: shot kind of, you know, did that magic bullet thing.
27:49
Speaker 1: And then this is where I got a little confused,
27:51
Speaker 1: because it was a little confusing as to whether the
27:54
Speaker 1: fourth or fifth bullet hit KB. Everything I've seen, I
27:58
Speaker 1: guess says that the fourth bullet miss them. And that's
28:01
Speaker 1: when Gets walked up to him when he was cowering
28:04
Speaker 1: the corner and either did or did not say something
28:07
Speaker 1: to him that was never completely established, but Get said
28:12
Speaker 1: himself that he told him you don't look too bad.
28:14
Speaker 1: Here's another and fired the fifth shot into his spine.
28:18
Speaker 1: But there was some contention because apparently no one else
28:21
Speaker 1: heard that, and Gets may have just been like kind
28:24
Speaker 1: of fantasizing that.
28:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's not clear. But everything up to that point
28:28
Speaker 2: where he allegedly walked over to KB and said that
28:33
Speaker 2: and shot him again, everybody basically like, yeah, that's what happened, right.
28:38
Speaker 2: There were some other points of contention though, too. In
28:42
Speaker 2: addition to walking over and shooting KB in the back
28:44
Speaker 2: at point blank range. One of them is were they
28:50
Speaker 2: trying to rob Bernard Gets?
28:51
Speaker 3: Right? Yeah.
28:52
Speaker 2: And the reason why that's so important in the difference
28:56
Speaker 2: between give me five bucks or can I have five bucks?
28:59
Speaker 2: The whole crime case hinged on that. Yeah, because in
29:03
Speaker 2: New York law at the time, I believe they probably
29:06
Speaker 2: changed it since the Bernard Gets case, it was okay
29:09
Speaker 2: for you to use deadly force if you reasonably believed
29:13
Speaker 2: that you were about to be robbed, even if the
29:16
Speaker 2: other people weren't threatening like bodily harm or deadly force.
29:23
Speaker 2: Somebody came up to you and said give me your wallet,
29:25
Speaker 2: you could just plug them full of holes and walk
29:27
Speaker 2: away with the self defense like defense, right, the Charles
29:32
Speaker 2: Bronson rule pretty much. Yeah, So all that the all
29:37
Speaker 2: the defense had to prove was that a reasonable person
29:40
Speaker 2: in Bernard Gets the situation would have believed that they
29:43
Speaker 2: were being robbed. That was the low bar that they
29:46
Speaker 2: had to overcome. And on the other side, the prosecution
29:50
Speaker 2: was like, no, man, we have to prove that he
29:52
Speaker 2: wanted to kill those kids, that his intent was murder,
29:55
Speaker 2: that it was reckless endangerment, all the other charges that
29:59
Speaker 2: were against All the defense had to do to get
30:01
Speaker 2: him acquitted. Was just proved that one part, because that
30:04
Speaker 2: use of deadly force then would have been authorized across
30:07
Speaker 2: the whole thing.
30:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. Other points of contention is they did
30:11
Speaker 1: have two screwdrivers. They said that they were going to
30:15
Speaker 1: break into arcade games and steal the money. They never
30:19
Speaker 1: like pulled out the screwdrivers and held them at his
30:21
Speaker 1: throat or anything like that. Get said that he could
30:24
Speaker 1: see the outline of the screwdrivers in their pockets. That's
30:28
Speaker 1: what he claimed to court at least. And one of
30:32
Speaker 1: the NYPD cops claimed that Canty had said to him,
30:37
Speaker 1: you know, when they were on the scene kind of
30:38
Speaker 1: talking about what was going on, said we were trying
30:40
Speaker 1: to rob the guy. Canty said, no, I never said that,
30:43
Speaker 1: And no one on the train, because they had eyewitnesses,
30:46
Speaker 1: could corroborate the officer's story. And then Jimmy Breslin you
30:50
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, the very famous New York City Beat reporter.
30:54
Speaker 1: He interviewed Kab in the hospital about a year afterward,
30:57
Speaker 1: and he claimed that Kaby acknowledged that they were going
31:00
Speaker 1: to rob him because he looked like quote, easy bait.
31:03
Speaker 1: But KB says, no, I never told him that and
31:06
Speaker 1: people are like, well, this guy had suffered brain damage
31:09
Speaker 1: at this point, so you know, who knows if that's
31:12
Speaker 1: reliable testimony or not testimony, but whatever.
31:14
Speaker 3: Jimmy Breslin wrote about.
31:16
Speaker 2: Right, and that robbing our Kide Games alibi actually definitely
31:21
Speaker 2: checked out, Like everybody believes that that's what they were
31:23
Speaker 2: going to do because they had a history of that
31:25
Speaker 2: and I think Troy Knty had been convicted for stealing
31:29
Speaker 2: fourteen dollars in quarters out of our Kade Games, So
31:33
Speaker 2: that's almost certainly what they were going to do, which
31:36
Speaker 2: really undermines the idea that they were robbing Bernard Gets right, then.
31:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. Then there was a contention of how that
31:45
Speaker 1: last shot went down. What was he doing right before
31:49
Speaker 1: he got shot in the back? Bernard Gets His attorney
31:52
Speaker 1: claimed that he was that Kaby was standing up when
31:55
Speaker 1: he was shot, but everybody there, like every single eyewitness
31:58
Speaker 1: and Gets said, no, he was seated, And people are like,
32:02
Speaker 1: he was sort of cowering in the corner of the
32:05
Speaker 1: subways in a seat, like yeah, kind of cornered, couldn't
32:08
Speaker 1: go anywhere, and you know, frightened out of his life,
32:11
Speaker 1: and so that's when he shot him.
32:13
Speaker 3: In the back.
32:14
Speaker 2: Even Gets in the interview in New Hampshire when he
32:17
Speaker 2: turned himself in, said that when he walked over to
32:20
Speaker 2: Darryl Kby, he saw like genuine fear in his eyes,
32:24
Speaker 2: and that's when things started to slow down. Like the
32:27
Speaker 2: adrenaline rush or whatever that was like he was operating
32:31
Speaker 2: on started to slow. In addition to his demonstrated bigotry,
32:36
Speaker 2: which we haven't really talked much about. That you did
32:38
Speaker 2: a little bit, but he had a history of publicly
32:42
Speaker 2: using racial slurs. His bigotry was just on full display
32:47
Speaker 2: pretty frequently, from what witnesses and other residents in his
32:51
Speaker 2: building would later say. In addition to that, like he
32:55
Speaker 2: went over and shot an unarmed kid cowering for his life,
32:59
Speaker 2: point blank, ring in the spine, and paralyzed him for life. So,
33:05
Speaker 2: no matter what you think about the rest of it,
33:07
Speaker 2: like that, those two things make it really really hard
33:10
Speaker 2: to sympathize with Bernard Getz. Even though I can still
33:15
Speaker 2: sympathize with anybody who is living in fear on a
33:19
Speaker 2: daily basis, I don't want that for anybody.
33:23
Speaker 1: All right, I think it's a good time for a break. Yeah, sure,
33:26
Speaker 1: all right, we'll be back, right after this with more
33:28
Speaker 1: than Bernard Getz.
33:49
Speaker 2: So the actual, real legitimate criminal trial got underway in
33:53
Speaker 2: December nineteen eighty six, ran all the way to June
33:55
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty seven, and it took them four months just
33:59
Speaker 2: to seat a jury. Yeah, because Bernard guests was. I mean,
34:03
Speaker 2: all you have to say is that he was in
34:04
Speaker 2: Mad magazine to get across like what a pop culture
34:09
Speaker 2: icon and this guy was I saw a folk hero
34:12
Speaker 2: used many times to describe him. Yeah, and just to
34:16
Speaker 2: find anybody who had not really heard of him or
34:19
Speaker 2: had claimed did not really form any opinion on the
34:21
Speaker 2: whole thing was very difficult in New York at the time.
34:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's still difficult probably.
34:26
Speaker 2: Sure.
34:27
Speaker 1: So they got you know, obviously they had all of
34:30
Speaker 1: those recordings when he was singing like a canary about himself,
34:33
Speaker 1: so they had that in court to play. They had
34:36
Speaker 1: victim testimony, like Troy Canty. Not all of them talked,
34:42
Speaker 1: but Troy Canty was granted immunity in exchange for his testimony.
34:46
Speaker 1: That's when he told them about you know, robbing the
34:48
Speaker 1: video games. That's when he claimed, you know, mister Kenna
34:52
Speaker 1: have five dollars and that he said, get said you
34:55
Speaker 1: can all have it like Charles Bronson and pulled out
34:58
Speaker 1: the gun. He said that he heard Kby's crying out,
35:02
Speaker 1: why did he shoot me? Why did he shoot me?
35:05
Speaker 1: Barry Allen pled the fifth. He was not granted immunity,
35:08
Speaker 1: so he did not. He pled the fifth for every question. Basically,
35:13
Speaker 1: James Ramser's involvement in the testimony was a little weird.
35:17
Speaker 1: We couldn't find it. I saw that he was granted immunity.
35:19
Speaker 1: Josh saw that he wasn't. So it's kind of hard
35:21
Speaker 1: to parse it out. But either way, he refused to
35:25
Speaker 1: take the stand. Judge found him in contempt and removed
35:29
Speaker 1: him from court initially, and we'll get to it, but
35:32
Speaker 1: he would later come back right.
35:34
Speaker 2: And then don't forget the eyewitnesses who were recklessly endangered
35:38
Speaker 2: by the shooting too. On the subway car. One was
35:42
Speaker 2: Amanda Gilbert who was trying to render aid to one
35:46
Speaker 2: of the I don't know who it was, but one
35:48
Speaker 2: of them said, miss I've been shot through the heart
35:50
Speaker 2: and I'm dying. And then Darryl Kaby said, I didn't
35:53
Speaker 2: do anything. He shot me for nothing, and that had
35:56
Speaker 2: I'm sure an effect on the jury. But the judge
35:59
Speaker 2: was like, that's here, so throw out that testimony.
36:02
Speaker 3: That's right.
36:04
Speaker 1: Victor Flores was another eyewitness. He said the shots all
36:07
Speaker 1: came in quick succession, which I think most people agree on.
36:11
Speaker 1: He said the kids were frightened, backing off, trying to
36:13
Speaker 1: get away. There was no reason to shoot them. And
36:16
Speaker 1: he's one of the ones that said Getz did not
36:18
Speaker 1: speak to KB before he shot him. But then there
36:22
Speaker 1: was Christopher either Boucher or Bouchet, I'm not sure how
36:26
Speaker 1: he pronounced it bo bo u c h R. He
36:31
Speaker 1: was near kV when that fish shot happened. And here
36:34
Speaker 1: was the back and forth on the stand. What did
36:38
Speaker 1: the person who was sitting down do at the moment
36:40
Speaker 1: the shot was fired. Well, he was sitting grasping the
36:43
Speaker 1: bench and he was just frightened. Did you ever see
36:45
Speaker 1: that person try to get out of the seat. No,
36:47
Speaker 1: did you ever see him threatening mister Getz?
36:49
Speaker 3: No? Did he have anything in his hand that you saw? No?
36:52
Speaker 3: Any doubt you saw a person sitting in that seat
36:54
Speaker 3: when he was shot and fired, No, no doubt. How
36:57
Speaker 3: is your eyesight? It's perfect?
36:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, so not really good as far as the defense goes.
37:04
Speaker 2: After that, the prosecution was like, we need to get
37:08
Speaker 2: James Ramser up there. He was one of the victims.
37:10
Speaker 2: He obviously is a witness, so we need to find
37:13
Speaker 2: out what he has to say. And that was a
37:15
Speaker 2: really bad move for the prosecution because we had mentioned
37:22
Speaker 2: before that, you know, even Al Sharpton was like, these
37:25
Speaker 2: guys are no angels. It wasn't because they robbed video games.
37:29
Speaker 2: That would be a stupid thing to say. The reason
37:32
Speaker 2: people say that kind of thing is because five months
37:34
Speaker 2: after the shooting, James Ramser was indicted for participating in
37:40
Speaker 2: a brutal, violent rape and robbery and I think in
37:44
Speaker 2: his own building. So I mean they had much deeper
37:48
Speaker 2: criminal records than stealing from from video games. That's why
37:51
Speaker 2: we said that at the outset, and James rams Are
37:54
Speaker 2: in particular, he was, I guess cited for contempt. You
37:58
Speaker 2: said the second time he basically did the same thing.
38:01
Speaker 2: He was like, he wouldn't answer questions. He was the
38:04
Speaker 2: definition of a hostile witness. And that alone, even though
38:10
Speaker 2: all of that was thrown out by the judge, the
38:12
Speaker 2: jury saw that too. Yeah, and that definitely his behavior
38:19
Speaker 2: in court reflected on the other four two And I'm
38:23
Speaker 2: sure a lot of the members of the jury were
38:26
Speaker 2: just looking for a reason to not sympathize with the
38:29
Speaker 2: four victims, you know what I mean, Yeah, for sure,
38:31
Speaker 2: to try to figure out a way for Bernard Gets
38:33
Speaker 2: to get off. And James Ramser definitely made it easier
38:36
Speaker 2: on them with his testimony.
38:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you know, they did some They brought in
38:41
Speaker 1: some expert expert testimony. Basically one guy who was a
38:46
Speaker 1: neuropsychiatrist named Bernard Yudwitz, and he basically threw out a
38:52
Speaker 1: fight or flight response and a journal adrenaline response that
38:56
Speaker 1: like once that kicks in, he said he was on
38:58
Speaker 1: autopilot and that all of those shots, like he it
39:04
Speaker 1: was a single act like that adrenaline doesn't come down
39:07
Speaker 1: until afterward and he can then consider what's happening, and
39:11
Speaker 1: they happened so quickly.
39:12
Speaker 3: He was like, it was basically like one thing happened.
39:15
Speaker 1: And then he had a bullet expert, a ballistics guy
39:17
Speaker 1: named Joseph Quirk who testified that KB was shot actually
39:21
Speaker 1: by the fourth bullet when he was standing up, not
39:24
Speaker 1: by the fifth while he was seated, and that entered
39:27
Speaker 1: his spine and threw him backward into the seat. I
39:30
Speaker 1: think kind of instantly paralyzing him. And then you know,
39:34
Speaker 1: they did a re enactment with the Guardian Angels playing.
39:37
Speaker 1: You know, they got the biggest, baddest, roughest looking Guardian
39:40
Speaker 1: Angels they could to play these guys. They took a
39:43
Speaker 1: field trip to a subway car and you know, took
39:46
Speaker 1: the jury out there and was like, you know, imagine
39:48
Speaker 1: what it was like and sitting in this car and
39:51
Speaker 1: you know, they were kind of pulling out all the stops.
39:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, and supposedly the subway car tour really kind of
39:57
Speaker 2: solidified things for the jury because they said later that
40:00
Speaker 2: they could see how Guts would have felt trapped. So,
40:04
Speaker 2: out of the thirteen counts that he was indicted and
40:07
Speaker 2: tried for, he was only found guilty on one. Everything
40:12
Speaker 2: the murder attempts, the assault, the reckless endangerment, all of
40:15
Speaker 2: it he was found not guilty on. The only guilty
40:18
Speaker 2: charge was the illegal firearm charge.
40:21
Speaker 3: Yeah.
40:22
Speaker 1: Apparently, like you know, they're reading each account how they
40:25
Speaker 1: do individually, And when the count against Darryl KB, like
40:28
Speaker 1: who was sitting in there in a wheelchair, came out, Yeah, apparently,
40:31
Speaker 1: like there were audible gasps in the courtroom and they said, yeah,
40:35
Speaker 1: it was self defense. He was not trying to kill
40:38
Speaker 1: these guys, is what they said. And they found that
40:41
Speaker 1: reasonable doubt. You know that the I think the adrenaline
40:47
Speaker 1: response weighed in the self defense of you know, like
40:51
Speaker 1: the New York law at the time, like you were
40:53
Speaker 1: talking about, like there was enough reasonable doubt at least
40:56
Speaker 1: as far as the jury.
40:57
Speaker 3: Was concerned to not convict him.
40:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, So he got off with I think two hundred
41:03
Speaker 2: and fifty days in prison. I don't think he had
41:06
Speaker 2: any community service, even he was initially going to have
41:09
Speaker 2: five years probation and they revoked that. So that was
41:12
Speaker 2: it for Bernard Getz. He just went back to life
41:15
Speaker 2: for a while. And then ten years later Darryl Cabe
41:18
Speaker 2: filed a civil case against him, And this one was
41:23
Speaker 2: by nineteen ninety six, New York was a different place, yeah,
41:25
Speaker 2: than it was in nineteen eighty six, like dramatically different,
41:29
Speaker 2: and so a jury would not have had the same
41:33
Speaker 2: experience that the jury in nineteen eighty six would have
41:36
Speaker 2: had from living in New York for sure, And that
41:39
Speaker 2: was definitely reflected in the outcome, which found in Daryl
41:42
Speaker 2: Caby's favor.
41:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, gets didn't really offer much defense at all in
41:47
Speaker 1: the civil trial. I think probably because he was a
41:50
Speaker 1: private guy. He wanted to put all this behind him,
41:52
Speaker 1: and he knew he would never pay anything anyway, So
41:55
Speaker 1: the jury never heard about him being mugged that first time.
41:59
Speaker 1: I think they the defense did call some people. They
42:01
Speaker 1: called Jimmy Breslin to testify about KB, the officer that
42:06
Speaker 1: testified that Canty told him they were trying to rob him.
42:09
Speaker 3: They called him in.
42:11
Speaker 1: That was it, basically, except the one big change this
42:15
Speaker 1: time was that Gets took the stand to testify and
42:19
Speaker 1: said things like, you know, I thought about gouging out
42:22
Speaker 1: their eyes with keys after I shot them. Darryl CABE's
42:26
Speaker 1: mom would have been better off if she would have
42:29
Speaker 1: not gone through with that pregnancy. I was trying to
42:32
Speaker 1: get as many of them as I could, so he
42:35
Speaker 1: was he didn't care at this point, I think.
42:38
Speaker 2: No, And like you said, he's still saying stuff like
42:40
Speaker 2: that too. Right, there's no remorse or I saw no
42:43
Speaker 2: self reflection, like he feels the exact same way now
42:47
Speaker 2: that he did back then, which was awful.
42:50
Speaker 3: Yeah.
42:50
Speaker 1: I got a quote from I mean, I read a
42:52
Speaker 1: New York Times article from January this year. Yeah, because
42:55
Speaker 1: I think there's a couple of books that came out
42:57
Speaker 1: this year. Yeah, and he said, you know, the important
43:00
Speaker 1: thing is is that I shot the right guys and
43:02
Speaker 1: no innocent bystanders were heard.
43:04
Speaker 2: Yeah. That one of those books was Five Bullets and
43:07
Speaker 2: the author's name is Elliott Williams.
43:11
Speaker 3: That's right.
43:11
Speaker 2: So yeah, I think the jury found in favor of
43:16
Speaker 2: Darryl Kaby and said that gets owed him forty three
43:19
Speaker 2: million dollars and gets like you said, I guess he
43:23
Speaker 2: knew that he was never going to pay it, immediately
43:25
Speaker 2: file bankruptcy and still to this day, Daryl Caby's never
43:28
Speaker 2: seen a penny of that money.
43:30
Speaker 1: Yeah. Gets you know again, it's in that same apartment.
43:34
Speaker 3: Still.
43:34
Speaker 1: I guess he's got a pretty sweet rent control situation,
43:36
Speaker 1: would be my guest. Sounds like Kent, but he ran
43:40
Speaker 1: for mayor in New York in two thousand and one
43:44
Speaker 1: pushing he's a vegetarian, pushing vegetarian minus.
43:47
Speaker 3: Apparently he works in squirrel rescue and rehabilitation.
43:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, and also still runs his electronics business
43:54
Speaker 1: out of his apartment. And he then ran in two
43:58
Speaker 1: thousand and five for public Advocate on the platform against
44:02
Speaker 1: circumcision and in favor of power naps for New York
44:06
Speaker 1: City workers.
44:08
Speaker 2: I saw that in two thousand and one, not only
44:10
Speaker 2: Bernard gets ran for Mary, but so did the real
44:12
Speaker 2: Kramer Kenny Kramer.
44:16
Speaker 1: Gets Is also arrested himself later for dealing drugs in
44:19
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen, or at least trying to sell drugs to
44:23
Speaker 1: an undercover officer.
44:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, he became a huge pro pot advocate apparently too,
44:28
Speaker 2: which is a pretty surprising outcome. So as for the
44:32
Speaker 2: four victims, Darryl Kby again he was paralyzed for life
44:37
Speaker 2: from the abdomen down and it suffered brain damage. Alan
44:42
Speaker 2: Barry Allen and Troy Canty were both in prison back
44:46
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety six during the civil trial, and James
44:50
Speaker 2: Ramser had been in and out of prison, including one
44:54
Speaker 2: charge of trying faking his own kidnapping, and then he
44:59
Speaker 2: died in twenty eleven, I think, twenty seven years to
45:04
Speaker 2: the day of the subway shooting in nineteen eighty four,
45:07
Speaker 2: of an overdose that is widely suspected to have been purposeful.
45:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, he had He's sort of twenty five years in
45:15
Speaker 1: prison total after that shooting, so he had a rough
45:20
Speaker 1: go of it and that is. I've been wanting to
45:23
Speaker 1: do this in for a while. This one's been sitting
45:24
Speaker 1: in the inbox for a long time.
45:25
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, it's a big thanks to Julia for putting
45:27
Speaker 3: this together.
45:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks Julia. If you want to know more about
45:31
Speaker 2: Bernard Gets, you could start with those two books that
45:34
Speaker 2: came out recently that Chuck just mentioned, Five Bullets by
45:39
Speaker 2: Elliott Williams and Fear and Fury colon the Reagan Eighties,
45:43
Speaker 2: The Bernard Gets Shootings and The Rebirth of White Rage
45:46
Speaker 2: by Heather Ann Thompson.
45:49
Speaker 3: My inclination is goes by bullets because of no colon.
45:52
Speaker 2: Okay, well, since Chuck cited a preference for no colon's,
45:56
Speaker 2: it's time for listener now.
46:00
Speaker 3: That's right. I don't even know why I picked this
46:02
Speaker 3: one to read. I just thought it was kind of funny.
46:04
Speaker 1: Hey, guys, just listening to the Camp David episode and
46:06
Speaker 1: was shocked to learn that Camp David is in Maryland.
46:08
Speaker 1: I thought it was in Texas for some reason, and
46:11
Speaker 1: I sheepishly went to my fiance to talk to him
46:14
Speaker 1: about it. Before I confess my embarrassing mistake, I said, Hey,
46:17
Speaker 1: by the way, you know Camp David, where do you
46:20
Speaker 1: think it is, and he said Texas. So it made
46:23
Speaker 1: me wonder why we both thought thought Camp David was
46:25
Speaker 1: in Texas. Perhaps it's a millennial thing. I'm very curious
46:29
Speaker 1: if any of your listeners thought the same. Anyway, I
46:31
Speaker 1: thought you might find this amusing.
46:33
Speaker 3: I did. Rachel, thank you.
46:34
Speaker 1: For a great work and for being my weekly companions
46:38
Speaker 1: for more than a decade. And that is Rachel and Raleigh,
46:41
Speaker 1: North Carolina and Rachel. We did not hear from anyone
46:43
Speaker 1: else about Texas. But hey, if you and your fiance
46:47
Speaker 1: both went to Texas or you know with your first answer,
46:51
Speaker 1: then there's got to be something to it.
46:52
Speaker 2: Sure they're from a different timeline.
46:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say look within yourself, all.
46:57
Speaker 2: Right and find Texas.
47:00
Speaker 3: That's right.
47:01
Speaker 2: If you want to be like Rachel, was it, that's right?
47:05
Speaker 2: And send us a great email where you confess some
47:07
Speaker 2: strange belief that only you and your fiance have. We
47:11
Speaker 2: would love to hear it. You can send it off
47:13
Speaker 2: to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
47:20
Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
47:23
Speaker 3: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
47:28
Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,