The NY Subway Vigilante

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“Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I-Heart Radio.”

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. 80's history in 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 Reed, 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 "Sign Fill" even, and of course, here we're talking about 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, and around about way, but not really, I think you're being coy or fay.”

That's right. We're talking about Bernard Gets, the Subway vigilante who shot four teenagers on a Subway train in New York City in 1984 when I was 13 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, the Elliott. Ness? Smith? Huh?

Actually, it's Elliott Smith, hyphen, Ness. Good. Okay. Yes. Eastern?

That's Sheen at 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, where these kids, and he was like, yeah, that's, I think he said”

it's a fair question. He said, they were teens, they were 18 or 19, but they were also like on adults, right? Exactly. They were young men for sure, so they 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, is 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, quickly, the story, maybe? Yeah. And by the way, I really, I'd like to your intro. Oh, thanks.

We'll get into the details of it, but the overall story is that on the New York City, subway train on the two train in December of 1984, a guy named Bernard Gettz, 37 years old, he was a electrical engineer, 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.

Yeah, he's apparently still complaining about how New York was in the '80s.

Yeah, maybe so, but anyway, he was 37 at the time, took a seat on the New York City subway. I think it was at the two train, and for 18 to 19-year-olds got on Barry Allen, Troy and T. Darrell, K.B. and James Ramsure, got on, and we're being like, you know, I've been on trains sort of back in the day. It didn'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, veiledy, veiledy, veiledy, veiledly,

“threatening, and that's what was going on.”

And one of them, I believe it was candy, 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 Darrell, K.B., who is, 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's the one that was injured the most, he ended up paralyzed and brain damaged because the bullet entered his spine. Yeah, and it's, we're saying that when he shot Darrell K.B., that second time, Darrell K.B. was cowering on a subway bench in fear of his life, and again, it was not armed. So this is such a

“like a difficult case to talk about, because in some ways, you kind of have to provide context”

for Bernard Gets's mindset. He was not some insane person necessarily, but when you find out more about him too, he becomes less and less sympathetic 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 with being shot and paralyzed for life over. So the whole thing, 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 if, you know, Al Sharpton's on the scene, and he's saying that kind of thing, like, contemporaneously, then you know, like, nobody was trying to paint these guys, it's 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 1984 and the 1980s, which, you know, pretty infamously was down on its luck as a town, and fairly riddled with crime. That's fair to say. For sure, it had almost gone bankrupt as a city in the '70s. I think it was bailed out by, like, city bank and some of the other big banks and Odom 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 60% 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 1984 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 38 crimes a day just on the subway in New York City. And, you know, I mentioned that last episode, I'm reading that Abel for our book. He's in New York, and so some of these early stories from back then. He lived near Union Square.

Like, you know, Union Square in 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 80s. He said that he literally would not go into Union Square at night, and he was pretty tough guy. Yeah. And that at one point, like, the phone, like, New York City was in such bad shape. Like, Ma Bel 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 a scape 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 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 Friday. He's in both of them almost went under.

So, yeah, New York was a different place. And this is actually, this will help explain the reaction

that Bernard gets 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, Kante Allen, Kaby and Ramsey, he took off. He jumped out of the stop 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, nine days, I think. Yeah, the Subway conductor actually, like,”

confronted him and was like, are you a cop? And he said, no, and he tried to get the gun from Bernie Gates, which was a Smith in Weston 38, 38 caliber. And 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, 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 lamp because he was under the impression that when New York got their hands on him, he, I think he, he told a detective in New, 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, 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 sort of one of the uncomfortable things we have to talk about, because Bernard gets very unapologetically, and interviews countless interviews over the years. Yeah, 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 he 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 45% 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,

right, 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, I read, they might not all have been living in constant fear, like, well, see Bernard gets 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 cop 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 50/50 chance you're going to get mugged or murdered. And when you look at the stats, it's shocking today to hear about, like, 38 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, 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, when the news of the subway vigilante came out, one of the things that really shaped the public opinion too and made it easier for people to be like, "Hey, 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. Do you even buy me that? It said, "Full busters." Yeah. It said, "A quit Bernard Gets." It has, like, I think, a gun or something? No, I had a bad guy with a circle and a slashed shirt, like, ghost busters, 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 all the information coming out was,

They didn't focus on sort of the shooting aspect, like that he had hollow point bullets,

“which are, of course, even deadlier. I guess, non-hallow bullets. What are those called?”

Regular bullets? Regular bullets? Yeah, sure. Talking to newbies here with that stuff. Didn't talk about shooting them in the back initially in the press. They talked, you know, they talked to Kante's brother and he was like, "Yeah, my brother free-based is cocaine and he was high that day on the subway." So, like, all the stuff coming out on the news,

you know, supported, like a more benevolent view of Bernard Gets at first at least.

Yeah, for sure. So, there were some people that spoke out against this. I think the calmness Jimmy Breslin was publicly repulsed that people were celebrating and incident that left a teenager in a wheelchair for life. And, you know, he had something to say about that. Marrag 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 the Civilized Society. He had a really good point. But, for the most part, basically everybody, the loudest people were definitely the ones who were supporting him. The few people who were like, "That was a hate crime." Long before there were any federal laws against hate crimes, we're speaking out, but they were in a minority, it seemed like it. Yeah. I found a quote from guy named James Q. Wilson, who is 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 there weren't a lot of people speaking out about this and against the NARGETS, especially at first. Yeah, for sure. All right. I think we set the table pretty nicely. You eat from the outside in? Oh, I'm just doing it the opposite of my whole house. It's been a large menu. I've been eating from bottom to top. Oh, 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 for NARGETS.

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Alright so like we mentioned, Bernard gets hit the trail and a rented rental car went to New Hampshire a manhunt ensued obviously. 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 he I guess he felt like the walls”

were closing in because he turned himself in 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. 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 video tape and you can watch him. 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 dream you know like he he said I'm I think like I'm disgusted with myself or 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 the problem was a 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 no one I think ever accused him or suggested he was mentally ill except for a judge as we'll see but no like temporary insanity talk or anything nothing like that. Yeah 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 is this definitely set the the foundation for the mindset that

he had when he got on that subway in December 1984 for sure yeah and and set the ground work for his eventual defense in court because in 1981 he was mugged on he was violently mugged in a subway station by three men this is a 1981 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 you know 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 like he was held um 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 I think under normal circumstances we wouldn't point this out but I think because of how the effect that it had on Bernard Gets and how it helped transform him it's worth pointing our specifying that the three men who mugged him in 1981 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 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 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

demonstrate sufficient need he appealed that that got rejected so he bought a gun I think legally in Florida sorry about the 38 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 he was like I carry expensive equipment

“I'm at risk of being attacked 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 you know hated the New York City Bureau bureaucracy and he had no faith in any of them and in fact during that interview when he turned himself in in 1984 now or no I guess it was New York's even 1984

he was basically saying like if 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 they they the four guys had sharpened screwdrivers he had just shot at them and 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 police and the

courts and this was this guy who stood up for the rest of us like his every man who stood up and said enough and that's that was the support for him yeah I mean this is also in the heels of the death wish movies yeah so that kind of vigilante is almost you know celebrated in movie theaters with Chavez Bunsen yeah uh here's a quote from Gets in that interview he said I wanted to kill those guys I wanted to maim those guys wanted to make them suffer and 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 probably say revolver most”

people know what that is how how many bullets capable is that revolver there 10 well there some revolvers have eight bullets but the the standard is six so eventually he was indicted it kind of took a

meandering road to finally arrived there but he's eventually charged with attempted murder assault

reckless endangerment and a slew of firearms charges but at the end of January 85 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 it was up for reelection didn't you know Bernard Gets was very popular so he didn't want to like try too hard to bring serious charges so he didn't call victim to to testify or anything like that as the detail 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 and march of that year and made the case for murder assault reckless all you know all the charges he was eventually charged with and brought in at least cantion rams sure to

“testify right along with eyewitnesses this time yes so the grand jury indicted him I think on”

13 counts total and very shortly after that all all 13 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 ramsur and a canti had perjured themselves right and so it looked like he was going to get off again and then I think a few months later and appeals court said no get back in there let's actually do this thing so by the summer of 1986

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 um 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 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 uh apparently Troy Canti went up to get directly and said and his best Joey tribiani how you doing um asked him a couple of more questions just like you know just kind of mess it with them small talk stuff gets kind of answered briefly and gets this you know

Troy Canti approached him and that is when um the sort of controversial line of give me five bucks

or can I get five bucks happened uh either way give me five bucks doesn't sound like a mugging like give me all your 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 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 paying handling you guess for a quarter which is essentially the same as asking somebody for a dollar today as sure five bucks was like asking for 15 bucks today and I said somebody say like asking for a quarter's paying handling back then asking for five dollars was robbery essentially so that 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 gotcha sure like asking for a specific amount of money to 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 that's just me but that's when he again unzipped as windbreaker pulled out the gun. This whole thing was over in 20 seconds have been very quickly. Wow he fired five shots in the

“subway car with I think there were like 15 to 20 other people on the car we should mention”

which you know makes it obviously super dangerous thing to do. Yeah there's that reckless and danger meant thing. Yeah exactly so he started with canti hit him in the chest all those of these guys are running for cover obviously. Allen was hitting the back. Ramster was hit in the arm arms and chest 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 missed him and that's when gets walked up to him when he was carrying 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 inspired the fifth shot into a 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 and said that and shot him again everybody basically like yeah that's that's what”

happened right there there were some other points of contention though it too in addition to walking over and shooting kb in the back at point blank range one of them is were were they trying to rob Bernard get right yeah and the reason why that's so important in the the difference between give me five bucks or can I have five bucks the whole criminal 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 believe that you were about to be robbed that's right even if the other people weren't threatening um like bodily harm or deadly force somebody came up to you and said give me your wallet you could just plug them for the holes and walk away with the self defense um like defense right the chart the Charles Bronson rule pretty much yeah yeah so um the all that the all the defense had proved 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 is intent was murder that um it was reckless endangerment all the other charges that were against them 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 uh other points of contention is they did have two screw drivers they said that they were going to break into arcade games and steal the money

they never like pulled out the screw drivers and held them at a stroller or anything like that

“get said that he could see the outline of the screwdriver 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 on on the train because they had eyewitnesses

famous NYPD reporter he interviewed Kaby 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 Kaby says no I never told him that um 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 Brezlin wrote about right and that robbing arcade games alibi actually

“definitely checked out like everybody basically believes that that's what they were going to do”

because they had a history of that and I think Troy Canty had been convicted for stealing 14 dollars and quarters out of arcade 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 uh what was he doing right before he got shot in the back um Bernard Gets is 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 were like he was sort of cowering in the corner of the subways in a seat like yeah kind of corner 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 Darrell Kaby he saw like genuine fear in his eyes and that that's when

things started to slow down like the adrenaline rush or whatever that was right 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 unfold display pretty frequently from from what witnesses and other residents and his building would later say um in addition to that like he went over in

shot in unarmed kid cowering for his life point blank range in the spine and paralyzed him for life so no matter what you think about the rest of it like that those those two things make it really really hard to sympathize with Bernard Gets even though you 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”

good time for a break yeah sure all right we'll be back right after this with more in Bernard Gets

joy is essential and it's also elusive you can't order it you can't borrow it or simply

hope it in the life but now there's a new and exciting way to start your journey toward a more joyful existence joy 101 it's a new podcast hosted by me how to copy together guys we'll have meaningful conversations with the world's most fascinating people and our tame legend sports icons wellness experts and everyday people will share how they find allow and experience joy and I'll offer some of my own tips and takes on seeking a more balanced and harmonious life if you're creating

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what you know is somebody coming after me Jacob told Levant you're ruining my life listen to kingdom of fraud on the iHeart Radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts your husband is not who you think he is your body is not what you saw it was your identity is

i'll be exploring the 14th season of family secrets just then we felt the plain turn in the air

“so much so that the bags are under people's seats just kind of flew into the aisle each week”

we don't have headfirst into the complex power of secrecy how it shapes our identities and

relationships and how it ultimately can reveal to us our twist selves my daughter she's pretending she

doesn't know but is trying to cook and feed me and keep me alive because i wasn't eating anything and me pretending like everything was fine he kind of showed me out of the way and said move and he went help the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off and that was the last time i saw him listen to season 14 a family secrets on the iHeart Radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts so that's the actual real legitimate criminal trial got

underway in December 1986 ran all the way to June 1987 and it took them four months just to

“seat a jury yeah because Bernard gets was i mean all you have to say is that he was in man magazine”

to get across like what a pop culture icon 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 it's claimed to 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 those recordings when he was seeing like a canary about himself so they had that in court to play they had victim testimony like Troy canty not all of them uh it's 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 uh that's when he claimed you know mister can i have five dollars and that he said get said you can all have it yeah like Charles Bronson and pulled out the gun um he said that he heard kb's crying out why did he shoot me why did he shoot me uh Barry Allen played the fifth he was

not granted immunity so he did not um he played the fifth for every question basically uh James

Ramchers involvement in the testimony was 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 you know parse it out but uh either way he refused to take the stand um judge found him in contempt and removed him from court initially but uh and we'll get to it but he would later come back right and then don't forget the eyewitnesses who were um recklessly endangered by the shooting too uh on the subway car one was

a man a man to Gilbert who was trying to um 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 Darrell kb said i didn't do anything he shot me for nothing um and that had i'm sure in effect on the jury but the judge is like that's here say so throw out that testimony that's right uh Victor Flores was another eyewitness

“he said the shots all came in uh quick succession which i think most people agree on um he said”

the kids were frightened backing off trying to get away there was no reason to shoot them um and he's one of the ones it said gets did not speak to kb before he shot him um but then there was a Christopher uh either boucher or bouche i'm not sure i pronounced it b o c h b o u c a g r uh he was near kb when that fish shot happened and he was the the back and forth on the stand um what did the person who was sitting down due at the moment the shot was fired

uh 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 mr. gets 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 not really good as far as the defense goes uh 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 um for the the prosecution because um we had mentioned before that you know even now sharpdom was like these guys are no angels it wasn't because they robbed video games that was that would be a stupid thing to say um the reason people say that kind of things because five months after the shooting James Ramser was um indicted for participating in a brutal violent rape

and robbery uh and I think in his own building so I mean they had much deeper criminal records than

particular uh he was I guess cited for contempt you said the second time he basically did the same

thing he was like I 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 he that his behavior and court reflected on the other four two and I I'm sure a lot of the members of the jury were just looking for a reason to not sympathize 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 um they brought in some expert uh expert testimony basically um one guy who's a neuropsychiatrist

name Bernard Udvitz and he he basically threw out a fighter 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 he that that adrenaline doesn't come down till afterward and he can then consider what's happening um and they happened so quickly if he was like it was basically like one thing happened um and then he had a bullet expert a ballistic guy named Joseph Quark 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 uh entered a spine and threw him backward into the seat I think”

kind of instantly paralyzing him um and then you know they they did a reenactment with the guardian angels playing you know they got the the biggest baddest roughest looking guardian angels they could right to play these guys uh they took a field trip to a subway car and you know took the jury out there when it was like you know imagine what it was like and and sitting in this car and you know they were kind of pulling out all the stops yeah and supposedly the subway car to a really kind of

solidified things for the jury because they said later that they could see how gets or would have felt trapped so out of the 13 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 uh apparently like you know they're reading each account now they do individually and when the count against Darrell KB like who was

sitting in there in a wheelchair came out yeah apparently like there were audible gasps in the court room uh and they said yeah it was self defense uh he was not trying to kill these guys is what they said

“and they found that reasonable doubt um you know that the I think the adrenaline response”

weighed in the self defense of you know like the New York lot 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 them yeah so he got off with I think 250 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 Gettzi just went back to life for a while and then 10 years later Darrell KB filed a civil

case against him and this one was the by 1996 New York was a different place then it was in 1986 like dramatically different and so a jury would not have had the same experience that the jury in 1986 would have had from living in New York for sure and that that was definitely reflected in the outcome which found in Darrell KB's favor yeah uh Gettzi didn't really offer much

“defense at all in the civil trial I 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 um I think they the defense did call some people they call Jimmy Breslin to testify about KB um the officer that testified that Kanti told them they were trying to rob him they called him in that was it basically except the one big change this time was that Gettzi took the stand to testify and said things like you know I thought about gouging out their eyes with keys after I shot him Darrell KB'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 didn't like he 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 in

came out this year yeah um 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 in the

“author's name is Elliott Williams that's right so um yeah that I think the jury found in favor”

of Darrell KB and said that Gettzi would have 43 million dollars and Gettzi like you said I

guess he knew that he was never going to pay the immediately filed bankruptcy and still to the

state Darrell KB's never seen a penny of that money yeah Gettzi you know again as in that same apartment still I guess he's got a pretty sweet rent control situation would be my guess sounds like it but he ran for mayor in New York in 2001 pushing he's a vegetarian pushing vegetarian many as apparently he works in squirrel rescue and rehabilitation and also still runs his electronics business out of his apartment and he then ran in 2005 for a public advocate on the

platform against circumcision and in favor of power naps for New York City workers. I saw that in 2001 not only Bernard Gettzi ran for mayor but started the real Cramer Kenny Cramer. Gettzi was also arrested himself later for dealing drugs in 2013 or at least trying to sell drugs to an undercover officer. Yeah he became a huge propot advocate apparently too which is a pretty surprising outcome so as for the the four victims Darrell KB again he was paralyzed for life from

the abdomen down and it's suffer brain damage. Allen Barry Allen and Troy Canti were both in prison back in 1996 during the civil trial and James Ramsey had been in and out of prison including one charge of drinking and faking his own kidnapping and then he died in 2011 I think 27 years to the day of the subway shooting in 1984 of an overdose that is widely suspected to have been purposeful. Yeah he had he sort of 28 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 for a while this has been sitting in the inbox for a long time. Yeah so 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 80s the Bernard Gets shootings and the rebirth of white rage by Heather Ann Thompson. My inclination is go with five bullets because of no colon. Okay well since Chuck cited a preference for no colon. That's right. I don't even know why I picked this one to read. I just thought it was going to funny. Hey guys just listening to the camp David episode and was shocked to learn

that camp David is in Maryland. That 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 may be wonder why we both 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, 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're in a New York 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. In fine Texas that's right.

“If you want to be like Rachel was it? That's right. In Send us a greedy mill 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 [email protected]. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my heart radio visit the iHeart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Joy is essential and it's also elusive but now there's a new and exciting way to

start your journey toward a more joyful existence. Joy 101. It's a new podcast hosted by me how to copy. If you're craving inspiration support and useful tools to maximize your joy

Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.

Things are getting eerie this week on snafu with at Helms.

My favorite murder hosts Karen Kilgareff and Georgia Hardstark join me for the unsolved

“kidnapping of William Morgan. It's a great true crime story filled with secret society intrigue”

and murder. Karen you just birthed a conspiracy and I'm here for it.

Listen to snafu on the iHeart Radio app. Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you thought it was. Your

“identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro and these are just a few of the stunning”

stories I'll be exploring the 14th season of family secrets. He kind of showed me out of the way and said move and he went help the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off and that was

“the last time I saw him. Listen to season 14 of family secrets on the iHeart Radio app. Apple podcasts”

or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart podcast.