The Press: Bombs Away

Bombs Away The “Mad Bomber” who has been busily planting homemade bombs around New York (TIME, Jan. 7) has given the city’s newspapers one of the best homemade stories in years. No paper has matched the space or the big, black headlines that Hearst’s Journal-American has given the case. But last week, after the Journal received a surprisingly frank letter from the bomber and had the chance to score the most sensational beat on the story to date, Scripps-Howard’s World-Telegram and Sun snatched the story away.

When the Journal received the crudely printed letter (signature: F.P.), it decided to withhold the story from police and aim for the jackpot: the bomber’s surrender. Instead of printing the letter, the Journal ran a wily item in its Personals column intimating that it would “help” the bomber if he gave himself up. The ad caught the eye of World-Telegram Managing Editor Richard Starnes, who guessed immediately that the Journal had received a letter from the bomber, checked out his hunch, and broke a Page One story on the bomber’s “new letter to a New York newspaper, hinting that he may declare at least a temporary truce.” Three days later, when most other New York papers had printed the story, the Journal-American’s account finally appeared under an eight-column banner.

The Mad Bomber’s letter contained more clues to his identity than police had unearthed in years. Among the disclosures: he had spent “most of my adult life in bed”; two of the bombs he had deposited last year had not yet been found; he named three former New York

State officials who, he said, would “know all.” The Journal gave the bomber’s letter to police, who were able to eliminate hundreds of questioned signatures and narrow the search—as the press noted proudly—down to “42 suspects who are being followed night and day.” But at week’s end the bomber was still at large—or in bed.