Join Michael in his conversation with Elliot Williams about his new book Five Bullets, The Story of Bernie Goetz, New York’s Explosive ’80s, and the Subway Vigilante Trial that Divided the Nation which explores the riveting events surrounding the shooting of four Black teenagers by a white man on a NY subway car.

Elliot Williams was a Deputy Assistant Attorney General for legislative affairs at the U.S. Department of Justice from 2013-2017. Prior to that, he served as Assistant Director for congressional relations at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and as a counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary.

He began his legal career by clerking for Judges Donald M. Middlebrooks of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida and Charles R. Wilson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. He was then accepted into the Attorney General’s Honors Program, where he served as a trial attorney in the Domestic Security Section of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division.

Elliot earned a law degree and master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University and a bachelor’s degree cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania. He was also a Spring 2022 Fellow at Georgetown University’s Institute of Politics and Public Service.

Bio

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliot_Williams

Book description

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 one of them had simply asked for five dollars.

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 “Subway Vigilante” saga had become a global sensation, and New Yorkers across race and class were 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 also tells the origin stories of larger-than-life figures: Al Sharpton, a polarizing young local activist rocketing to national prominence; Rudy Giuliani, a rising-star prosecutor with an important decision to make; the NRA, which needed a poster boy for its transition 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 today’s debates about race, crime, safety, and the media, it’s imperative to reflect on what went down in the subway four decades ago. As Williams’s powerful narrative reveals, it was not just Goetz on trial, but the conscience of a nation.

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Elliot Williams | Five Bullets