Five Bullets: The Story of Bernie Goetz, New York's Explosive '80s, and the Subway Vigilante Trial That Divided the Nation
Elliot Williams
Feb 2026 · Penguin
Ebook
384
Pages
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About this ebook
From CNN legal analyst Elliot Williams, a revelatory account of how one man, four teenagers, and a struggling city collided over race, vigilantism, and self-defense . . . and exposed the fault lines of a nation
On a dirty New York subway car on December 22, 1984, Bernhard Goetz shot Barry Allen, Darrell Cabey, Troy Canty, and James Ramseur, four teenagers from the Bronx, at point blank range. Goetz claimed they were going to mug him; the teens claim that they were just panhandling.
Crime was at an all-time high. So was racial tension. Was Goetz, who was white, a hero who finally fought back? Or a bigot whose itchy trigger finger seriously wounded three unarmed black kids and condemned a fourth to irreversible brain damage? By the time Goetz went on trial for quadruple attempted murder, the saga of the “Subway Vigilante” had become a global sensation, and New Yorkers across race and class were almost equally split over whether he deserved decades in prison or a medal.
In Five Bullets, Elliot Williams vaults back to gritty 1980s Manhattan and reexamines the first major true-crime story of the cable news era. Drawing on archives and interviews with many main characters, including Goetz, Williams presents a masterful and vivid tale that illuminates American divides and tells the origin stories of larger-than-life figures: Al Sharpton, a young local activist beginning his path to national stardom; Rudy Giuliani, a rising-star prosecutor with a polarizing decision to make; the NRA, which needed a poster boy as it transitioned from hunting club to political juggernaut; and Rupert Murdoch, whose new purchase, the New York Post, grew his empire by keeping a scary story in the headlines.
A shocking account of a pivotal moment in our history, Five Bullets demonstrates why in order to understand debates that continue to this day about race, crime, the media, and safety, it’s imperative to reflect on what went down in the subway more than forty years ago. As Williams’s powerful narrative reveals, it was not just Goetz on trial, but the conscience of a nation.
On a dirty New York subway car on December 22, 1984, Bernhard Goetz shot Barry Allen, Darrell Cabey, Troy Canty, and James Ramseur, four teenagers from the Bronx, at point blank range. Goetz claimed they were going to mug him; the teens claim that they were just panhandling.
Crime was at an all-time high. So was racial tension. Was Goetz, who was white, a hero who finally fought back? Or a bigot whose itchy trigger finger seriously wounded three unarmed black kids and condemned a fourth to irreversible brain damage? By the time Goetz went on trial for quadruple attempted murder, the saga of the “Subway Vigilante” had become a global sensation, and New Yorkers across race and class were almost equally split over whether he deserved decades in prison or a medal.
In Five Bullets, Elliot Williams vaults back to gritty 1980s Manhattan and reexamines the first major true-crime story of the cable news era. Drawing on archives and interviews with many main characters, including Goetz, Williams presents a masterful and vivid tale that illuminates American divides and tells the origin stories of larger-than-life figures: Al Sharpton, a young local activist beginning his path to national stardom; Rudy Giuliani, a rising-star prosecutor with a polarizing decision to make; the NRA, which needed a poster boy as it transitioned from hunting club to political juggernaut; and Rupert Murdoch, whose new purchase, the New York Post, grew his empire by keeping a scary story in the headlines.
A shocking account of a pivotal moment in our history, Five Bullets demonstrates why in order to understand debates that continue to this day about race, crime, the media, and safety, it’s imperative to reflect on what went down in the subway more than forty years ago. As Williams’s powerful narrative reveals, it was not just Goetz on trial, but the conscience of a nation.
About the author
Elliot Williams is a CNN legal analyst and regular guest host on SiriusXM and WAMU, NPR’s Washington, DC, station. He has spent his career thinking about law, crime, and politics, serving as a federal prosecutor and later as a senior official at the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security. A Brooklyn-born son of Jamaican immigrants, he grew up in New Jersey and vividly recalls the powder keg that was 1980s New York. He now lives in Washington, DC, with his wife and two children.
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