Brian Garfield: Target Manhattan

Your name, please?

Yes sir. William J. O’Brien, Sergeant, New York Police Department. Assigned to Special Investigations Squad of the First Division, Manhattan.

Do you have a prepared statement, Sergeant?

No, sir. Captain Grofeld told me there was a formal statement coming in from the PC’s office. He told me to just answer your questions to the best of my ability.

We’ve been told you were sent to the Merchants Trust on the morning of May twenty-second, and you arrived there with two other officers at a few minutes after eleven. Is that correct?

Yes, sir.

What did you find when you got there?

Two uniformed patrolmen had the suspect in custody. That was in the bank president’s office.

Who was present when you arrived?

Do you mind if I consult my notes, sir?

Not at all.

Well, those present when we arrived were as follows: Mr. Paul Maitland, president of the bank. Mr. Ira Rabinowitz, security officer for the bank. Mrs. Leslie Villiers, who is Mr. Maitland’s secretary-she let us in, but she didn’t stay in the office. I assume she went back to her desk in the outer office. Uniformed patrolman Salvatore Criscola. Uniformed patrolman Lester Weinstein. And the suspect, of course. He gave his name as Willard Roberts, but later we found out his name was Charles Ryterband.

No one else was present at that time?

Not inside the main office, no, sir. There were a couple of bank security guards posted in the outer office. I believe Mr. Rabinowitz had stationed them there to prevent the suspect from trying to get away.

Had you been advised in advance of the nature of the case?

Lieutenant O’Hara had told me there was a nut down there who was threatening to blow up the city unless the bank paid him a fortune in cash. I’d put in a call to the bomb squad from the cruiser when we were on our way to the bank. The bomb-squad fellows arrived about five minutes after us, but of course there wasn’t anything for them to do there. They hung around, on my orders, in case any questions came up that they might be able to answer-about the bombs in the airplane, you know.

When did the FBI come into it?

Not until after I’d tried to interview the suspect, and reported back to headquarters by telephone. Then I believe Captain Grofeld consulted with the Deputy PC, and they decided to call in the federal officers. The FBI agents, two of them, arrived at the bank at approximately twelve fifteen, and about twenty minutes later the FBI District Director showed up.

That was more than an hour after you reached the scene, then.

It didn’t take that much time to establish that the threat was authentic, but there were a lot of phone calls to the lieutenant and the captain and the Deputy PC before they rang through to the federal people. It couldn’t be helped, you know. Things were a little confused.

I can readily understand that, Sergeant. Now let’s get back to the point where you first arrived. What did you do?

I asked Patrolman Criscola to report. He filled me in, as much as he could. He didn’t know much more than we did at that point. Ryterband hadn’t said much to him-just given him the name Willard Roberts.

What was Ryterband’s general attitude at that point?

I’d have to call it stubborn nervousness, sir. He was scared, but he was smug at the same time. He knew he had us over a barrel.

Did he seem perturbed that the banker had called in the police?

Not particularly, no, sir. He seemed to have expected it.

Then he hadn’t told Maitland or Rabinowitz to keep the police out of it?

Not to my knowledge.

Isn’t that a bit curious?

He probably knew there was no way to avoid having us brought in.

Why not?

Because he was asking for such a tremendous amount of money. He must have known the bank would have to go outside its own resources to raise that much cash. The word was bound to get around. He figured things would go faster if the authorities were in on it right from the beginning. They had a fairly foolproof scheme, sir. At least that was the way it looked to us.

How quickly did you form that opinion, Sergeant?

Pretty fast, to tell you the truth. Criscola brought me up to date as soon as I walked into the room. It happened that the B-17 was making a pass over the Wall Street area just then. I could see it from the window, going overhead. It was right down on the deck. Maybe fifteen hundred feet above sea level. You could just about count the rivets in its belly. I doubt he was clearing the World Trade Center and the Empire State Building by more than a few hundred feet. If he had armed bombs in the plane there was no way to get him down without blowing something up.

You know something about airplanes, then?

I was a bombardier in the Eighth Air Force, sir. On B-24s, but it comes to the same thing.

Then it would appear you were the right man at the right place at the right time.

Just coincidence, sir. And it turned out there wasn’t much I could do about it. Having a knowledge of old bombardment aircraft didn’t do me much good-it just confirmed in my mind that the suspect’s threats had real teeth in them.

Who suggested calling in the Air Force?

I did, sir.

At what time did you make that suggestion, and to whom?

My first telephone report to Lieutenant O’Hara. That was at approximately eleven twenty.

Then it was no more than fifteen minutes between the time you arrived at the scene and the time you made your first report back to the lieutenant?

Yes, sir. It took us that long to get a coherent story. Everybody was trying to talk at once, you know how it is. I stuck to Criscola until I had the outlines of the thing. Then I talked briefly with Ryterband. He didn’t add anything new-only repeated his threat and his demands. Then I called the lieutenant, reported in, told him about the situation, told him I’d actually seen the airplane up there. He said he’d seen it too, of course. It was flying back and forth, the length of Manhattan. I suppose most everybody had seen it by that time. A few people I’ve talked to thought, it was some kind of publicity stunt or somebody making a movie.

In fact, that was the department’s official explanation at the time, wasn’t it?

It was until the explosions, yes, sir. I mean the damn thing was there in plain sight of anybody in New York. Anybody over forty would recognize the plane from the war, and a lot of younger people had seen movies and TV shows like Twelve o’clock High. I mean, at that altitude nearly everybody on the street recognized it for what it was, and naturally there were a lot of telephone inquiries. The news media were particularly curious, but then that’s understandable. We had to tell them something. I mean the department had to. I don’t know who dreamed it up, but the official line that was given out was that they were making a movie. Naturally a gang of reporters kept after us to tell them what movie and what producer and what studio and who was the star. I don’t know how the department shunted those questions off, but I gather they did. Of course you know New Yorkers-everybody had their own theory. All kinds of street-corner superstitions and wise-ass ideas. Some middle-aged German immigrant had a heart attack on Forty-third Street. Turned out he’d been in Dresden during the war.

So you suggested to the lieutenant that they ought to bring in the Air Force?

Yes, sir. Somebody who might be able to figure out how to handle the situation. He agreed right away.

But it was quite some time before anybody from the Air Force actually entered the case, wasn’t it?

Yes, sir, it was.

Your name, please?

Jack Harris.

Is that your full name?