Read Criminal Minds for Free Online

now in his fifties. Based on his neatly if oddly written notes, he was an orderly man with an exemplary work history. He had some education and was foreign-born. He was probably a former employee who believed that the company and the general public had done him harm. Most of his notes were written in block capital letters, but his W’s were oddly rounded, suggesting a pair of breasts. That, his slitting the undersides of theater seats with a knife (which suggested sexual penetration), and the phallic shape of his pipe bombs led Brussel to believe F.P. suffered from an unresolved Oedipal complex. He probably had lost his mother when he was young, was unmarried, and lived with a female relative.
    When the cops thought Brussel was done, they gathered their materials and prepared to leave. But Brussel, a man with more than a touch of the theatrical about him, wasn’t finished. “One more thing,” he said. “When you catch him—and I have no doubt you will—he’ll be wearing a double-breasted suit.” He paused, for dramatic effect. “And it will be buttoned,” Brussel finished.
    He suggested to the detectives that they publicize the profile and make the hunt for the bomber front-page news. With some reluctance, they did so. The expected onslaught of cranks and bad tips followed.
    In response, the Mad Bomber sent more letters. Somehow he got his hands on Brussel’s unlisted phone number and called him. “This is F.P. speaking,” he said. “Keep out of this or you’ll be sorry.”
    The New York Journal American published an open letter to the Mad Bomber, pleading with him to give up. He responded by mail, and the paper printed his response. In further correspondence, he went into more detail about his gripe against Con Ed.
    Finally, a Con Ed employee named Alice Kelly found a file from a smaller company that had merged into the giant utility company. In 1931, an employee named George Metesky had inhaled gushing gas, which he blamed for the tuberculosis he later developed. He hadn’t been able to prove his claim, and the company had refused to compensate him.
    Metesky fit the profile, and the specifics of his case matched what F.P. had written to the Journal American . Kelly took the file to her superiors, who referred it to the police. On January 21, 1957, the police knocked on the door of Metesky’s residence in Waterbury, Connecticut, where the fifty-four-year-old man lived with two older sisters. After he had been asked a few questions, he said, “I know why you fellows are here. You think I’m the Mad Bomber.”
    They did indeed, and he admitted it right away. They asked what F.P. stood for, and he told them it meant Fair Play. Metesky was in his pajamas and robe when the police came to the door at almost midnight, so he asked if he could get dressed before they took him in. They allowed him that, and he went upstairs. When he came back down, his hair was combed and he was wearing a double-breasted jacket—buttoned.
    Metesky was ruled insane in April 1957 and sentenced to New York’s Matteawan Hospital for the Criminally Insane. In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a mentally ill defendant could not be committed to a state hospital within the correctional system unless a jury had found him dangerous. Since Metesky had been committed without a jury trial, he was transferred in September 1973 to Creedmoor Psychiatric Center, a state hospital outside the correctional system. Here the doctors determined that Metesky was harmless, and because he had already served two-thirds of the twenty-five-year maximum sentence that he would have received at a trial, he was released in December 1973 on the condition that he make regular visits to a mental hygiene clinic near his home. He returned home to Waterbury, where he died in 1994.
    Brussel’s profile wasn’t right in every respect. He put the bomber in White Plains, not Waterbury. He suggested that the man would have a facial scar and work nights. Metesky had