FIVE BULLETS

A fast-paced tale of one of New York City’s defining moments unfolds in the 1984 subway shooting of four Black youths by Bernhard Goetz.

Goetz, an eccentric loner who became an unlikely symbol of vigilante justice, claimed the four young men were attempting to mug him. The ensuing trial turned into a deeply polarizing media circus, exposing the city’s fraught tensions over race, crime, and public safety. Journalist and legal analyst Williams offers a vivid portrait of 1980s New York and the social and economic pressures that shaped the backdrop of the case. Through brisk, evocative prose, the author captures the complexities of a troubled city and the crime that mirrored its contradictions. He deftly weaves in the roles of figures such as Ed Koch, Rudolph Giuliani, Al Sharpton, and Rupert Murdoch in crafting the public narrative of the “Subway Vigilante.” Goetz, who fled the scene and vanished into a subway tunnel, was later urged to surrender by Murdoch’s right-leaning New York Post, which editorialized: “The editors and reporters of this newspaper understand your anger and frustration….We endure the same fear and anger that exploded in you on Saturday.” Williams frames the courtroom clash between defense attorney Barry Slotnick and prosecutor Gregory Waples as a window into the city’s struggles with racism, fear, and declining quality of life. The trial, he suggests, became a referendum on the public’s faith in authorities to keep them safe. Williams concludes, “There are few undeniable truths to Bernhard Goetz’s story. Two are that the media have tremendous power to create heroes and villains, and that they, more than anyone or anything else, created Bernhard Goetz.”

A lively and haunting account of five men linked by a shooting—echoing New York’s enduring tensions over fear and race.