August 21, 2025 • 39 mins
A 1975 bombing at Manhattan’s historic Fraunces Tavern marks a deadly turn in domestic terrorism, sparking an evolution in how America confronts extremist violence at home.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
You're listening to Law and Order Criminal Justice System, a
production of Wolf Entertainment and iHeart podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
In the criminal justice system, landmark trials transcend the courtroom
to reshape the law. The brave many women who investigate
and prosecute these cases are part of a select group
that is defined American history. These are their stories. January first,
twenty twenty five, three fifteen am, Bourbon Street, New Orleans.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
The countdown had passed and New Orleans was still alive
with celebration.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
New Year's Eve was definitely insane. You could barely move
through the streets. The atmosphere it's just happy. Everybody's happy.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Jeremy Senske, fifty years old, in visiting from out of town,
had spent the night surrounded by thousands of other revelers.
Around three am, he set up towards his hotel in
his motorized wheelchair. But in seconds the festivities gave way
to mayhem.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
There was a very loud noise, very weird, windy noise.
There was like two or three people to my left
that were on the sidewalk. There was a bunch of
people to my right. We all heard the noise and
I looked over and they all had their mouths up
and like gasping.
Speaker 4 (01:26):
By the time I turned to the left, I was
just that was it.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
It was like an explosion, and I basically was just
like going through the air and smashed my face off
the sidewalk, and I was laying face first.
Speaker 4 (01:38):
And the other thing I saw was the truck, the
white truck.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
It had accelerated through the crowd near Bourbon Street, no honking,
no warning.
Speaker 4 (01:48):
I couldn't figure out what had happened.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
I didn't really think that I had been hit by
the truck because I was very confused.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
The truck crashed, the driver came out holding a weapon.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Gun started happening around me. I pulled with bricocheting off
the ground. I started hearing people screaming, people crying.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
He didn't know what to do.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
Started screaming help. No one acknowledged me.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Then out of the haze shapes began to emerge, dark figures, heavy, vast,
long rifles.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
I saw that the guys coming down the road with
machine guns.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
These were the good guys. The people that walked towards
the gunfire.
Speaker 4 (02:32):
Someone came up the truck.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Someone screamed at them not to open up the door
because there might be explosives in the door. So now
like screaming and help get me away from the truck.
It's gonna blow up. I'm thinking there's explosive in his truck.
My adrenaline kicked in because I was actually scared to death.
So I pushed myself somehow onto my back. I lifted
up my arm and my whole body had blot all
(02:55):
over it. I reached on to my right leg and
I picked it up. In my leg was a mush
like and a bunch of pieces, and I was holding
my leg on my chest, screaming because I couldn't feel
my legs.
Speaker 4 (03:07):
I didn't know what was wrong.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
What unfolded in the French Quarter that night wasn't random.
It was deliberate, an active terror, designed for maximum impact,
time to strike when the world was watching. And as
Jeremy lay there, it felt like time stood still.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
The first cough that came over to me, I said,
my legs, my legs, my legs.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
I screamed my legs, and I was like, what happened?
He said, we don't know.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
You were trying to assess this situation, and he just
looked at me and said, you're lucky to be alive.
Everyone around you is dead.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
I got a call get out to LaGuardia Airport. There's
been a bombing.
Speaker 5 (03:54):
There was a thirty two foot crater in front of
what was left of the building.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
I was trying to figure out, Am I dead? Am
I alive?
Speaker 5 (04:00):
Where?
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Alma? I'm Anethega Nicolazzi.
Speaker 6 (04:02):
That's why terrorism works. It doesn't care who you are.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
From Wolf Entertainment and iHeart Podcasts, this is Lawn Order
Criminal Justice System. In season one, we told the story
of law enforcement's battle against the mafia, fought in back rooms,
on wire taps, and in courtrooms. This season, we're turning
(04:29):
our focus to a threat that hides in plain sight,
that's harder to predict and even harder to stop. Terrorism
you'll hear from law enforcement on the front lines and
from survivors like Jeremy Sensky, ordinary people caught in the
path of extraordinary destruction. Because terrorism doesn't always look like war.
(04:52):
Sometimes it looks like Bourbon Street at three am, the
place where a forty two year old United States Army
veteran from Texas named shamsu Den Jabbar Rammed a rented
Ford F one fifty into the crowd, and then moments
later he opened fire on responding officers.
Speaker 7 (05:11):
Police now telling us at least ten people were killed
and thirty others injured. Authorities also investigating shots fired in
the area. We're hearing that the person driving that truck
then got out of the vehicle and started shooting. There
is some pretty disturbing video.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
The damage was devastating, at least fourteen lives lost, more
than fifty injured. We'll come back to Bourbon Street later
this season. That attack happened just months ago, and it
wasn't the only one since then. There have been others
Las Vegas, Palm Springs, Boulder. These aren't isolated events. They're
(05:50):
more reminders of our present reality. We're tracking how terrorism
transformed and had the United States was forced to change
with it. Terrorism doesn't sleep, neither do the people fighting it.
Before we get to the motives and manhunts, we need
to better understand what's led us to where we are today,
(06:13):
because this kind of violence didn't just appear. It wasn't
always gunfiring, crowds or trucks used as weapons. In decades past,
terrorism was aimed more at institutions rather than people, until
one day things changed. On a January afternoon in nineteen
seventy five, a bomb tore through a restaurant in Lower Manhattan,
(06:37):
killing innocent people. In this episode will take you inside
that attack, but first we have to understand how the
violence and the response to it evolved. The seventies a
decade defined by Vietnam, Watergate and by growing unrest at home.
(06:59):
America was divided and on edge. Cities like New York,
which we explored in season one, were gripped by crime.
Protesters clashed in the streets. It was a decade of
reckoning and reinvention and terrorism. It was beginning to take
root on American soil. Here is someone who can definitely
(07:19):
help break down its many complexities.
Speaker 8 (07:22):
My name is Michael Jensen. I'm the research director at
the START Center at the University of Maryland. I lead
a team at the center that looks at extremism in
the United States.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Michael's team is part of an organization known as START,
which stands for a mouthful. The National Consortium for the
Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism. START was launched
by the Department of Homeland Security in two thousand and five.
It tracks global terror trends and analyzes why people radicalize.
Speaker 8 (07:54):
When the START Center was founded, there was virtually no
data available on terrorism happening in the United States and
outside of the United States.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Today, it's home to the Global Terrorism Database, the world's
most comprehensive record of terror attacks, and trains the next
generation of national security experts. Michael's a scientist, a collector
of facts, but part of that search for understanding led
him back to a strange, almost forgotten chapter in US history.
Speaker 8 (08:24):
People often forget that in the late nineteen sixties through
about the mid nineteen seventies that terrorism in the United
States was really synonymous with left wing activism.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
At the time, the Vietnam War was tearing the country apart.
Cities were burning, the air thick with tear gas and rage.
Civil rights marches gave weight to violent clashes, and out
of the chaos, new groups emerged.
Speaker 8 (08:50):
There were a number of groups of movements dedicated to
social justice issues, civil rights issues, anti capitalist, Marxist issues,
even ethno national issues like Puerto Rican independents that were
the ones that were on the forefront of engaging in
crime and violence on behalf of their beliefs.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Groups like the Weather Underground and the Symbionese Liberation Army.
Speaker 9 (09:14):
People calling themselves members of the Weather Underground last Night
planted bombs and federal office buildings in Washington and Open California.
Speaker 8 (09:22):
What was key in these organizations, though, was that their
violence was largely symbolic. They weren't trying to hurt and
kill large numbers of individuals. They were trying to attack
iconic targets to draw attention to their cause.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
They often targeted symbols of power, banks, police stations, government offices,
and they were prolific.
Speaker 8 (09:47):
In nineteen seventy alone, there was well over one thousand
bombings that took place in the United States that were
committed by these groups. Most of them did not produce
fatalities or injuries. They were property crimes.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
The goal wasn't mass casualties. It was spectacle. These groups
wanted to shake the system, not very bodies, at least
not yet.
Speaker 10 (10:10):
You know, I always liked history as a child.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
That's John Fox, the FBI's official historian. He's been digging
into the bureau's past since he joined in nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 10 (10:23):
In the nineteen seventies, we saw the FBI primarily focusing
on what would be considered terrorist attacks here at home,
domestic terrorist.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Attacks, bombings, hijackings, shootouts. The Bureau wasn't even sure what
to call it. One group made their answer loud and clear.
Speaker 11 (10:44):
Police are intensifying their efforts since yesterday's incidents. They're distributing
this poster all over town. These four individuals are wanted
by the FBI and the police in connection with several
FALN bombings.
Speaker 10 (10:56):
The FALN was a group advocated revolution to separate Puerto
Rico from the United States.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
The FALN or Armed Forces of National Liberation in English,
a nationalist group with the cause, a manifesto, and a
bomb making playbook, and unlike some of the others, they
weren't just out to make noise. They wanted the government
to feel it.
Speaker 10 (11:22):
They engaged in a series of bombings and other illegal
activities to try and draw interest and concern about their
cause and ultimately to spark revolutionary activity.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
The FALN wasn't acting in a vacuum. Their campaign fit
into a much larger, older story, one that stretched back
more than a century.
Speaker 10 (11:46):
The rise of the Puerto Rican nationalist groups traces its
origins back to the mid eighteen hundreds and the rise
of anarchists and revolutionary communist ideologies. But over time it
broadens out as the more radical protest elements to use
violence to make their point.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
That history of political violence wasn't confined to Puerto Rico.
It mirrored a broader global pattern where ideology, identity, and
armed resistance converged. Here's Michael Jensen again, this.
Speaker 8 (12:21):
Is the era of anti colonial movements across the globe.
In places like Africa. We saw similar movements in the
nineteen sixties rising up to defeat colonial powers, and in
their view, they saw the United States as just that
it was a colonial power. Puerto Rico had been colonized,
and according to international law, they had the right to
(12:42):
defend themselves and to defeat colonizers by any means necessary,
including violence.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
The fal and picked up that threat and detonated it
in the heart of American cities, namely New York with
its large Puerto Rican community. The Big Apple became I'm
a focal point. Their bombs hit Wall Street offices, the Bronx,
even Middown Manhattan. Their cause Puerto Rican independence hadn't gone away,
(13:11):
and they had no interest in fading quietly. If anything,
their campaign was about to grow louder and deadlier. The
ideas were already in motion. The anger had been building.
(13:33):
Then came the moment it literally exploded. January twenty fourth,
nineteen seventy five, was a gray winter day in Manhattan.
That afternoon, an agent hurried into the squad room at
the Upper east Side headquarters of the FBI.
Speaker 5 (13:52):
He came out and he said, Hey, I got a
big bombing down in Lower Manhattan. Can you help out?
So we grabbed our bags and away we what.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
It soon became a day that FBI agent Richard Banteu
would never forget. Richard and his fellow agents drove through
traffic heading south at lightning speed. Nine one one calls
flooded the city's police stations to report that there'd been
an explosion.
Speaker 5 (14:18):
We pulled up I had never heard of from since Tavern.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
But the target of the blast wasn't a government building,
police station, or a bank. It was a quaint little
lunch spot. The place, even back then, was a throwback
red brick colonial charm, surrounded by the glass and steel
of the Financial district. But as the FBI agents arrived
that day, it wasn't business as usual.
Speaker 5 (14:43):
I just remember seeing an awful lot of grass within view.
It was mayhem there. But let me tell you, the
New York City Police had the area cording off maintained
in a crime scene.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Police pushed back the crowd and scanned for more bombs.
First responders locked down the scene. Medics moved fast, helping
the injured working triage on the sidewalk. The worst got
loaded into ambulances. First fire cruise check for structural damage.
What was chaos a moment ago became controlled. Nothing moved
(15:18):
unless it had to. Every fragment, every scorch mark was
potential evidence. That's where Richard came in. When he pulled
up to the corner of Pearl and Broad Street in
Lower Manhattan, he was hit with a signature sign of
a bombing.
Speaker 5 (15:32):
If you go to these things, I don't care where
it is, it's got to smell to it. Got to
get on your hands and knees and crawl around in
the dirt and the dust and see what you can find.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
That's where he uncovered a major clue.
Speaker 5 (15:46):
We started finding nails.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Not from the building, but from inside the bomb.
Speaker 5 (15:52):
I personally think if I was building a bomb, I
could have done a better job than nails, but that
was just simply shrapnel.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
The nails may have pointed to an amateur, but the bomb.
Speaker 5 (16:05):
That was not just a small bomb. That turned out
to be twenty two sticks of dynamite.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Richard continued to crawl through the torn out tavern.
Speaker 5 (16:15):
And we're collecting various items which would be appropriate for
starting a criminal investigation.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
That's when he happened upon something that will stay with
him forever.
Speaker 5 (16:27):
I was crawling around on the floor and I remember
distinctly finding something and I said to one of the investigators.
I picked it up. I said, what is this? And
they looked at it. They felt it. It was like sponge.
I would say, no more than an inch, but it
was all over. So we decided we were going to
(16:49):
put it in a container and we started collecting it,
and before it was over with, we had like a
shoe box filled with this material. We couldn't figure out
what it was, and it was dru happened a snutch.
So we sent it off to the FBI lab with
a big question mark.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
When they got the answer, it was something no one
wanted to hear, he says.
Speaker 5 (17:11):
We found out what it was, I said, what's that?
He says human remains. Whoever, the poor soul that was
standing there when this thing went off so much force
just totally took his torso and blew it to little
pieces like that.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
The attack killed four people and injured over sixty. Countless
more were impacted in ways that would stay with them forever, wives, husbands, friends, families, children.
Speaker 6 (17:44):
My name is Joe Connor, and my father was murdered
by the Faln Puerto Rican Marxist terrorists on January twenty fourth,
nineteen seventy five, at Francis Tavern.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
On the day of the bombing, Joe was just nine
years old. His father was Frank Connor. Frank was a
young banker who left his home in New Jersey every
day to go to his job in New York City's
financial district. In the evening, he'd return home to his
wife and to play with his two sons.
Speaker 6 (18:14):
My father was a New York City kid, the son.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Of immigrants in pursuit of the American dream.
Speaker 6 (18:21):
My grandmother got a job as a cleaning lady at
the old Morgan Bank Morgan Guarantee Trust Company, and she
worked nights so she could be home with my father
during the day.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
In high school, Frank's mom helped him get a job
at the bank. He started off as a clerk and
eventually worked his way up to assistant vice president. Frank
was nineteen when he first met his wife, Joe's mom,
at a dance in New York's Old City Center.
Speaker 6 (18:48):
She just saw the back of his head at first
and said, I want to dance with that guy. And
her friends are laughing at her, saying, you don't even
know what he looks like, and he turned around and
asked her to dance out of nowhere so she knew.
Speaker 12 (19:00):
Then.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
The two married and had three boys. The youngest son
passed away at a very young age, leaving the Connors
a family of four. The family moved to New Jersey.
Frank juggled night school, a day job, and together with
his wife, raising two boys, but he also found time
for some fun.
Speaker 6 (19:21):
He had tons of friends, more than I've ever had, really, Like,
they moved to New Jersey and the next thing you know,
they have a bar in the basement, and you know,
it was like the early seventies and people like seem
to have a lot of fun, and there was always
people around, and he was good to be.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Around, even with the long hours in full house. Frank
always made room for what mattered most time with his boys.
Speaker 6 (19:45):
My brother's two years older, so whenever we would like
as a family do stuff like together, so we might
go down and play basketball whatever, it was always Tom
and my mom on the same team and me and
my dad because I was the youngest, so it was
always us two on the same team. So I always
felt like, yeah, you know, he's my teammate to me,
you know, he could do anything.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
To Frank's boys, he was their hero.
Speaker 6 (20:08):
My brother had just made his communion and my dad
was going to take his communion money and spend it
on a tent because we want to go camping. So
we were at the sporting good store and I saw
Tom sever Mit autographed by Tom sever and you know,
anyone who lived around here in the early seventies, my god,
Tom sever So that's what I wanted, but he was
like looking at me, like, you know, we can't afford that.
(20:29):
So I went home and I didn't get my Mit.
And a couple of days later, I guess I was
hanging out down at the park and Tom came down
and said, Dad wants to see and I'm like, oh god,
what did I do now? So I rode my bike
home and when I got home, there.
Speaker 10 (20:42):
Was the mit.
Speaker 6 (20:44):
That was something I'll never forget and I'll always treasure
because he didn't have to get that for me.
Speaker 10 (20:49):
He didn't.
Speaker 6 (20:50):
It wasn't my birthday or.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
Anything, but there would soon come a birthday that will
stick with Joe forever. January twenty fourth, eighteen seventy five
was planned to be a special day.
Speaker 6 (21:03):
We were going to be celebrating my ninth birthday, which
was January twentieth. On my brother's eleventh, They'd.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Already celebrated with friends, so this Friday was just going
to be family. The brothers went to school, their mom
stayed home preparing their favorite dinner. Frank went to work
in downtown New York City, as he always did. That day,
Frank had lunch plans with two clients. At the last minute,
the location of their lunch moved to a different restaurant.
Speaker 6 (21:31):
There was a problem with the reservation, so they decided
they would walk down to Frances, which is right around
the block.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
The men sat down at a table in the tavern,
ordered their food and talked while they ate.
Speaker 6 (21:44):
They were getting to the end of their meal, and
I think the check had just come. One of the guys,
Charlie Murray, talked about seeing a guy come in that
kind of looked out of place with a knapsack, set
it on a stair behind their table where they were sitting,
and I think I was scruffy looking.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
This was Wall Street in nineteen seventy five. People dressed
to impress, sharp suits, crisp white shirts, and polus shoes,
business formal with a hint of swagger, not scruff so
someone like.
Speaker 6 (22:17):
This guy would look very out of place. He dropped
his package and walked out, and within a couple of
minutes it detonated.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
The blast tore through the restaurant, shattering windows and collapsing walls.
Speaker 6 (22:32):
It was about twenty five pounds of explosives and shrapnel,
absolutely intended to inflict as much death as it could.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Word of the attack hadn't yet traveled the seventeen miles
northwest to te Neeck, New Jersey.
Speaker 6 (22:46):
Tom and I went to school and came home and
went out to play.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
Then Joe heard his mother scream, and the afternoon warped
from a day of soon to be birthday celebrations into
something surreal.
Speaker 6 (23:00):
She called us in from playing and she said there
had been an explosion downtown and she told us my
dad was there.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
At first, Joe assumed the best a child's instinct to
believe that their parent is invincible.
Speaker 6 (23:15):
I remember thinking, well, he's probably injured. He was my dad, right,
He's indestructible.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
His mother's intuition said otherwise.
Speaker 6 (23:26):
She had called him at work and someone else picked up,
and she said she knew immediately that he was killed.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Nine year old Joe still held on to hope.
Speaker 6 (23:39):
I remember thinking, well, he's probably like buried under debris,
you know, bricks or rock or something. The fireman will
will get them, you know, they'll find them and it'll
be okay.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
But as people began arriving at the house, family friends, coworkers,
the silence was telling.
Speaker 6 (23:58):
We got the news a few hours later.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
That night, the young boys crawled into bed with their mom,
the three of them huddled together in grief, still in
shock and trying to make sense of what happened.
Speaker 6 (24:11):
I remember asking, my mom, is Grandma's still our grandmother?
And you know my mom was great? She said, well, absolutely,
in very strong terms, which was very reassuring, because then
I kind of knew that the family'd be kept together.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
In that moment, Joe Connor wasn't thinking about terrorism, or politics,
or his decades of advocacy that would follow. He was
just a child who lost his father, confused about what
happens to families when someone dies, not wanting his to
fall apart.
Speaker 6 (24:46):
It was devastating to go one minute from celebrating your
ninth birthday with your dad to him being dead for
no reason.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
Trying to move through such trauma and grief is unthinking
doable to most people, let alone for a child, But
human beings often proved to be remarkably resilient even in
the wake of incredible tragedy.
Speaker 6 (25:11):
As mc Grandma Conor would say, we just did the
best we could.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
In the days following the January nineteen seventy five bombing
at New York City's Francis Tavern, the Connor family soon
learned who was responsible.
Speaker 6 (25:34):
They left a communic kee around the corner from Frances
in a phone booth. For those of you old enough
to know what a phone booth is, it left words
to the effect that this was an attack by the
Faln Armed Forces for Puerto Rican Independence, who hit reactionary
corporate executives is the terms that they used, and that's
(25:56):
a very Marxist type language.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Michael Jensen says that message was rooted in retaliation.
Speaker 8 (26:05):
The reason that they did this is because there had
been a bombing that occurred in Puerto Rico in which
a couple of young independence activists had been killed. The
group blamed the CIA for orchestrating this bombing, and the
Francis Tavern bombing was their response to it.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
And the location of the attack wasn't chosen at random.
Here again is John Fox.
Speaker 10 (26:29):
The Francis Tavern traces back to our revolutionary days and
was a key meeting place for some of the planning
and peoples who were involved in our revolution back in
the mid seventeen seventies.
Speaker 6 (26:43):
You know, it's where George Washington bade farewell to his
officers after the revolutionary war. It's really historic and significant place.
It's where Alexander Hamilton and the Sons of Liberty met.
It was chosen for that very reason as a target.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
By bombing it, the the FALN sent a calculated message
they weren't just fighting for Puerto Rican independence, they were
striking at the very foundations of the American identity. But
this wasn't just cryptic symbolism. As Michael Jensen puts it,
it was a turning point.
Speaker 8 (27:17):
It was really like a departure for the organization in
its level of violence. The fla in actually went out
of their way to commit attack in which they knew
people would be hurt and killed.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
Until then, most domestic bombings were late night blasts, empty offices, statements,
without bloodshed. France's tavern was different. This wasn't an accident.
John Fox says, it was a shift in tactics.
Speaker 10 (27:44):
The bombings claimed by the FALN were aimed at at
least some civilian casualties. Placed and detonated around the lunch hour,
obviously meant to be a more high pro file and
populated event.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Francis Tavern marked a pivot to deadly force. The bomb
was timed and placed for maximum civilian impact. It wasn't
aimed at anyone in particular, but that was exactly the point.
The explosion was meant to kill whoever happened to be
there at that very moment.
Speaker 6 (28:21):
My father moved his table. If he didn't, we wouldn't
be having this conversation, might be talking to somebody else.
That's why terrorism works. That's why terrorism works as a
political tool because it's random and it's indiscriminate. It doesn't
care who you are. Anyone can die at any point.
(28:41):
I think people really need to understand that that no
one's immune from this crap, and you don't have to
go around your life worrying about it, but you do
kind of have to understand that it can happen. It
could happen to anybody.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Unfortunately, this is how we understand terrorism to work today.
Leans meant not only to destroy, but also to shock,
spread fear, and force attention. But in nineteen seventy five
that idea hadn't fully taken hold. It was a lesson
being learned in real time. As this new brutal reality
(29:15):
became clear, law enforcement also needed to pivot to try
and tackle it, and as the bombs kept exploding, they
would need to make a plan and fast. The bombing
at Francis Tavern sent shockwaves through New York City. The
FBI quickly ramped up its surveillance and cracked down of
(29:35):
the Faln.
Speaker 6 (29:37):
They never left the news cycle, and they couldn't catch them.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Despite the pressure and urgency, the fal In seemingly stayed
one step ahead. They vanished into safe houses and silence,
leaving investigators with little left to track. But over time
law enforcement did make headway.
Speaker 9 (29:57):
There was an unnumbered, undated Communica's that body fail and
logo that used the rhetoric that has become quite common
in their communic cayse.
Speaker 10 (30:10):
There were a number of FALN members arrested over the
coming years. Several of them were associated with the frances
tavern bombing.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Arrest trickled and slowly, some tied to bomb plots, others
to weapons stockpiles, and some suspected in the France's tavern attack.
Speaker 6 (30:31):
These guys were extremely disciplined. They left one fingerprint in
there one hundred and thirty bombings, but other than that,
they were absolutely clean in the way that they went
about their business. They were Cuban trained, financed to a
large degree the art of spycraft through the Cuban intelligence services.
(30:52):
So the FBI and the MPD really didn't know what
they were up against with these guys.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
And at the center of the f ALN's destruction was
still out there as dedicated to the cause as he'd
ever been. Here's Michael Jensen again.
Speaker 8 (31:09):
William Morales was the f ALNS chief bomb maker, and
he was discovered in nineteen seventy eight because he accidentally
detonated an explosive device in which he severely injured himself
and disfigured himself. That's how the authorities came to identify
and to nab him.
Speaker 11 (31:30):
When the bomb exploded yesterday, it blew up in the
hands and face of William Morales. Today police told us
that they've known for some time of Morales's link to
f ALN suspect Carlos Alberto Torres.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
He'd been building bombs in a secret apartment in Queens
and you may know the saying, if you play with fire,
eventually you get burned.
Speaker 6 (31:52):
On what would have been by dad's thirty seventh birthday,
July twelfth, nineteen seventy eight, William Morales was torking a
pipe bomb when it exploded. There must have been some
of the explosive got caught in the treads and when
he torqued, it blew up and blew off nine of
his fingers, one of his eyes, and ripped through the
Queen's bomb factory.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
But even mangled and half blind, his self declared mission
came first.
Speaker 6 (32:20):
He immediately turned on the gas in the place and
went into the bathroom to try to shred evidence.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
While severely injured, Morales survived.
Speaker 8 (32:32):
He was arrested, He was charged and convicted, sentenced to
eighty nine ninety years in prison. He actually ended up
escaping from a prison ward out of Bellevue Hospital, and
he eventually made his way to Cuba and Castro gave
him safe haven there.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
Instead of serving out his sentence, Morales has remained in Cuba,
avoiding accountability. And for Joe, it felt like a second
kind of trauma, a betrayal.
Speaker 6 (33:03):
This is a guy with one finger and one eye
being that dedicated to his cause. That event woke us up.
That was jarring, and to me, Morales became the face
of the faln in my head. And you know, faln
and ev il felt like they were the same word
to me.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
For decades, Joe fought to bring Morales back to the
United States.
Speaker 6 (33:29):
I started writing letters to the State Department, to the
Justice Department, to Secretary of State and warn Christopher. I
think was at the time, because I wanted Morales return.
That was before we even had emails, so these were
letters and I still have some of them. They you know,
were sent back and forth where the you know, they
acknowledged that, you know, he's Morales is there, he's a terrorist,
(33:49):
but we have no extradition treaty with Cuba, which as
it turns out, isn't exactly true. So I really kind
of pushed that, and.
Speaker 8 (33:56):
To this day there are still demands for him to
be extradited back to the United States to serve out
his sentence.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
There's obviously much more to this story and many more
layers to go, and we'll get to some of that,
but for right now, this is the point to remember.
Speaker 6 (34:15):
No one was held accountable, specifically for my dad's murder.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
It's another type of wound that remains open for the victims,
the survivors, and those impacted by the blast. No justice
for the four who were murdered by that bomb.
Speaker 6 (34:31):
It was my dad, Alejandro Berger, and Jim Gezork.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
And the fourth victim, Harold Sherburn, succumbed to his wounds
at the hospital. For the ones who made it out alive.
Speaker 6 (34:46):
Bill Newhall was at the table and he survived and
he's still passing shrapnel. He still has hearing issues. He
says this will eventually kill him. Just didn't happen that day.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
Each tragedy affects not only the actual victims, It goes
many more layers deep.
Speaker 6 (35:05):
My kids even are affected by it, and they never
met their grandfather. I mean, my poor kids. They had
nothing to do with any of this, but they've suffered
because of when had happened, and probably from my fighting it.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
As the survivors of the Francis tavern bombing continued to reel,
law enforcements scrambled to tackle this growing threat, and they
were building the system while under fire. While threats multiplied
in the shadows, from separatists and nationalists to far left radicals,
the blueprint on how to carry out these attacks was
spreading faster than their response, and as the enemy evolved,
(35:42):
America's defenses looked for new ways to meet the threat.
Speaker 10 (35:47):
In the nineteen seventies, the assignment of responsibility and even
the definitions of crimes related to such things weren't always cleared,
and often in times the state or local police would
take precedence.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
It was a patchwork response to a national problem. Departments
agencies both local and national continued to respond, but the
one thing they lacked was an actual integrated system. While
they shared, there was no real time intelligence sharing. They
worked together, yet not as a unified front. Federal agents,
(36:26):
bomb squads, arson units all working parallel cases rather than
lock and step. And as the dust was still settling
from the Francis Tavern bombing, terror struck again, we had
to up the.
Speaker 12 (36:39):
Jane juppet program to bring you this further update in
connection with the tragic disaster at LaGuardia Airport tonight, in
which a powerful bomb explosion that devastated the baggage area
in the main terminal at the airport killed at least
twelve persons and injured at least seventy five others.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
Next time on Law and Order Criminal Justice System.
Speaker 5 (37:10):
R Ricola switchboard, saying there's been a bombing at the
TWA terminal.
Speaker 12 (37:14):
The explosion actually impelled building material, metal glad bodies inside.
Speaker 4 (37:21):
There was an extensive fire.
Speaker 8 (37:23):
This really was the era of mass bombing campaigns, and
the FBI had a very very long list of usual
suspects to go through to try to figure out who
did this.
Speaker 10 (37:32):
Some suspected fal and others suspected Croatian nationalists.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
Law and Order Criminal Justice System is a production of
Wolf Entertainment and iHeart Podcasts. Our host is Anna Sega Nicolazzi.
The show was written by Cooper Mall, Executive produced by
Dick Wolf, Elliot Wolf and Even Michael at Wolf Entertainment
on behalf of iHeart Podcasts. Executive producers Trevor Young and
(38:07):
Matt Frederick, with supervising producer Chandler Mays and producer Jesse Funk.
This season is executive produced by Anna Sega Nicolazzi. Our
researchers are Luke Stantz and Carolyn Tolmage. Editing and sound
designed by Trevor Young and Jesse Funk. Original music by
(38:28):
John O'Hara, original theme by Mike Post with additional music
by Steve Moore and additional voice over by me Steve Zernkelton.
Special thanks to Fox five in New York for providing
archival material for the show. For more podcasts from iHeart
in Wolf Entertainment, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
(38:51):
wherever you get your favorite shows. Thanks for listening.
You're listening to Law and Order Criminal Justice System, a
production of Wolf Entertainment and iHeart podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
In the criminal justice system, landmark trials transcend the courtroom
to reshape the law. The brave many women who investigate
and prosecute these cases are part of a select group
that is defined American history. These are their stories. January first,
twenty twenty five, three fifteen am, Bourbon Street, New Orleans.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
The countdown had passed and New Orleans was still alive
with celebration.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
New Year's Eve was definitely insane. You could barely move
through the streets. The atmosphere it's just happy. Everybody's happy.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Jeremy Senske, fifty years old, in visiting from out of town,
had spent the night surrounded by thousands of other revelers.
Around three am, he set up towards his hotel in
his motorized wheelchair. But in seconds the festivities gave way
to mayhem.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
There was a very loud noise, very weird, windy noise.
There was like two or three people to my left
that were on the sidewalk. There was a bunch of
people to my right. We all heard the noise and
I looked over and they all had their mouths up
and like gasping.
Speaker 4 (01:26):
By the time I turned to the left, I was
just that was it.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
It was like an explosion, and I basically was just
like going through the air and smashed my face off
the sidewalk, and I was laying face first.
Speaker 4 (01:38):
And the other thing I saw was the truck, the
white truck.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
It had accelerated through the crowd near Bourbon Street, no honking,
no warning.
Speaker 4 (01:48):
I couldn't figure out what had happened.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
I didn't really think that I had been hit by
the truck because I was very confused.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
The truck crashed, the driver came out holding a weapon.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Gun started happening around me. I pulled with bricocheting off
the ground. I started hearing people screaming, people crying.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
He didn't know what to do.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
Started screaming help. No one acknowledged me.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Then out of the haze shapes began to emerge, dark figures, heavy, vast,
long rifles.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
I saw that the guys coming down the road with
machine guns.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
These were the good guys. The people that walked towards
the gunfire.
Speaker 4 (02:32):
Someone came up the truck.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Someone screamed at them not to open up the door
because there might be explosives in the door. So now
like screaming and help get me away from the truck.
It's gonna blow up. I'm thinking there's explosive in his truck.
My adrenaline kicked in because I was actually scared to death.
So I pushed myself somehow onto my back. I lifted
up my arm and my whole body had blot all
(02:55):
over it. I reached on to my right leg and
I picked it up. In my leg was a mush
like and a bunch of pieces, and I was holding
my leg on my chest, screaming because I couldn't feel
my legs.
Speaker 4 (03:07):
I didn't know what was wrong.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
What unfolded in the French Quarter that night wasn't random.
It was deliberate, an active terror, designed for maximum impact,
time to strike when the world was watching. And as
Jeremy lay there, it felt like time stood still.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
The first cough that came over to me, I said,
my legs, my legs, my legs.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
I screamed my legs, and I was like, what happened?
He said, we don't know.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
You were trying to assess this situation, and he just
looked at me and said, you're lucky to be alive.
Everyone around you is dead.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
I got a call get out to LaGuardia Airport. There's
been a bombing.
Speaker 5 (03:54):
There was a thirty two foot crater in front of
what was left of the building.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
I was trying to figure out, Am I dead? Am
I alive?
Speaker 5 (04:00):
Where?
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Alma? I'm Anethega Nicolazzi.
Speaker 6 (04:02):
That's why terrorism works. It doesn't care who you are.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
From Wolf Entertainment and iHeart Podcasts, this is Lawn Order
Criminal Justice System. In season one, we told the story
of law enforcement's battle against the mafia, fought in back rooms,
on wire taps, and in courtrooms. This season, we're turning
(04:29):
our focus to a threat that hides in plain sight,
that's harder to predict and even harder to stop. Terrorism
you'll hear from law enforcement on the front lines and
from survivors like Jeremy Sensky, ordinary people caught in the
path of extraordinary destruction. Because terrorism doesn't always look like war.
(04:52):
Sometimes it looks like Bourbon Street at three am, the
place where a forty two year old United States Army
veteran from Texas named shamsu Den Jabbar Rammed a rented
Ford F one fifty into the crowd, and then moments
later he opened fire on responding officers.
Speaker 7 (05:11):
Police now telling us at least ten people were killed
and thirty others injured. Authorities also investigating shots fired in
the area. We're hearing that the person driving that truck
then got out of the vehicle and started shooting. There
is some pretty disturbing video.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
The damage was devastating, at least fourteen lives lost, more
than fifty injured. We'll come back to Bourbon Street later
this season. That attack happened just months ago, and it
wasn't the only one since then. There have been others
Las Vegas, Palm Springs, Boulder. These aren't isolated events. They're
(05:50):
more reminders of our present reality. We're tracking how terrorism
transformed and had the United States was forced to change
with it. Terrorism doesn't sleep, neither do the people fighting it.
Before we get to the motives and manhunts, we need
to better understand what's led us to where we are today,
(06:13):
because this kind of violence didn't just appear. It wasn't
always gunfiring, crowds or trucks used as weapons. In decades past,
terrorism was aimed more at institutions rather than people, until
one day things changed. On a January afternoon in nineteen
seventy five, a bomb tore through a restaurant in Lower Manhattan,
(06:37):
killing innocent people. In this episode will take you inside
that attack, but first we have to understand how the
violence and the response to it evolved. The seventies a
decade defined by Vietnam, Watergate and by growing unrest at home.
(06:59):
America was divided and on edge. Cities like New York,
which we explored in season one, were gripped by crime.
Protesters clashed in the streets. It was a decade of
reckoning and reinvention and terrorism. It was beginning to take
root on American soil. Here is someone who can definitely
(07:19):
help break down its many complexities.
Speaker 8 (07:22):
My name is Michael Jensen. I'm the research director at
the START Center at the University of Maryland. I lead
a team at the center that looks at extremism in
the United States.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Michael's team is part of an organization known as START,
which stands for a mouthful. The National Consortium for the
Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism. START was launched
by the Department of Homeland Security in two thousand and five.
It tracks global terror trends and analyzes why people radicalize.
Speaker 8 (07:54):
When the START Center was founded, there was virtually no
data available on terrorism happening in the United States and
outside of the United States.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Today, it's home to the Global Terrorism Database, the world's
most comprehensive record of terror attacks, and trains the next
generation of national security experts. Michael's a scientist, a collector
of facts, but part of that search for understanding led
him back to a strange, almost forgotten chapter in US history.
Speaker 8 (08:24):
People often forget that in the late nineteen sixties through
about the mid nineteen seventies that terrorism in the United
States was really synonymous with left wing activism.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
At the time, the Vietnam War was tearing the country apart.
Cities were burning, the air thick with tear gas and rage.
Civil rights marches gave weight to violent clashes, and out
of the chaos, new groups emerged.
Speaker 8 (08:50):
There were a number of groups of movements dedicated to
social justice issues, civil rights issues, anti capitalist, Marxist issues,
even ethno national issues like Puerto Rican independents that were
the ones that were on the forefront of engaging in
crime and violence on behalf of their beliefs.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Groups like the Weather Underground and the Symbionese Liberation Army.
Speaker 9 (09:14):
People calling themselves members of the Weather Underground last Night
planted bombs and federal office buildings in Washington and Open California.
Speaker 8 (09:22):
What was key in these organizations, though, was that their
violence was largely symbolic. They weren't trying to hurt and
kill large numbers of individuals. They were trying to attack
iconic targets to draw attention to their cause.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
They often targeted symbols of power, banks, police stations, government offices,
and they were prolific.
Speaker 8 (09:47):
In nineteen seventy alone, there was well over one thousand
bombings that took place in the United States that were
committed by these groups. Most of them did not produce
fatalities or injuries. They were property crimes.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
The goal wasn't mass casualties. It was spectacle. These groups
wanted to shake the system, not very bodies, at least
not yet.
Speaker 10 (10:10):
You know, I always liked history as a child.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
That's John Fox, the FBI's official historian. He's been digging
into the bureau's past since he joined in nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 10 (10:23):
In the nineteen seventies, we saw the FBI primarily focusing
on what would be considered terrorist attacks here at home,
domestic terrorist.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Attacks, bombings, hijackings, shootouts. The Bureau wasn't even sure what
to call it. One group made their answer loud and clear.
Speaker 11 (10:44):
Police are intensifying their efforts since yesterday's incidents. They're distributing
this poster all over town. These four individuals are wanted
by the FBI and the police in connection with several
FALN bombings.
Speaker 10 (10:56):
The FALN was a group advocated revolution to separate Puerto
Rico from the United States.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
The FALN or Armed Forces of National Liberation in English,
a nationalist group with the cause, a manifesto, and a
bomb making playbook, and unlike some of the others, they
weren't just out to make noise. They wanted the government
to feel it.
Speaker 10 (11:22):
They engaged in a series of bombings and other illegal
activities to try and draw interest and concern about their
cause and ultimately to spark revolutionary activity.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
The FALN wasn't acting in a vacuum. Their campaign fit
into a much larger, older story, one that stretched back
more than a century.
Speaker 10 (11:46):
The rise of the Puerto Rican nationalist groups traces its
origins back to the mid eighteen hundreds and the rise
of anarchists and revolutionary communist ideologies. But over time it
broadens out as the more radical protest elements to use
violence to make their point.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
That history of political violence wasn't confined to Puerto Rico.
It mirrored a broader global pattern where ideology, identity, and
armed resistance converged. Here's Michael Jensen again, this.
Speaker 8 (12:21):
Is the era of anti colonial movements across the globe.
In places like Africa. We saw similar movements in the
nineteen sixties rising up to defeat colonial powers, and in
their view, they saw the United States as just that
it was a colonial power. Puerto Rico had been colonized,
and according to international law, they had the right to
(12:42):
defend themselves and to defeat colonizers by any means necessary,
including violence.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
The fal and picked up that threat and detonated it
in the heart of American cities, namely New York with
its large Puerto Rican community. The Big Apple became I'm
a focal point. Their bombs hit Wall Street offices, the Bronx,
even Middown Manhattan. Their cause Puerto Rican independence hadn't gone away,
(13:11):
and they had no interest in fading quietly. If anything,
their campaign was about to grow louder and deadlier. The
ideas were already in motion. The anger had been building.
(13:33):
Then came the moment it literally exploded. January twenty fourth,
nineteen seventy five, was a gray winter day in Manhattan.
That afternoon, an agent hurried into the squad room at
the Upper east Side headquarters of the FBI.
Speaker 5 (13:52):
He came out and he said, Hey, I got a
big bombing down in Lower Manhattan. Can you help out?
So we grabbed our bags and away we what.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
It soon became a day that FBI agent Richard Banteu
would never forget. Richard and his fellow agents drove through
traffic heading south at lightning speed. Nine one one calls
flooded the city's police stations to report that there'd been
an explosion.
Speaker 5 (14:18):
We pulled up I had never heard of from since Tavern.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
But the target of the blast wasn't a government building,
police station, or a bank. It was a quaint little
lunch spot. The place, even back then, was a throwback
red brick colonial charm, surrounded by the glass and steel
of the Financial district. But as the FBI agents arrived
that day, it wasn't business as usual.
Speaker 5 (14:43):
I just remember seeing an awful lot of grass within view.
It was mayhem there. But let me tell you, the
New York City Police had the area cording off maintained
in a crime scene.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Police pushed back the crowd and scanned for more bombs.
First responders locked down the scene. Medics moved fast, helping
the injured working triage on the sidewalk. The worst got
loaded into ambulances. First fire cruise check for structural damage.
What was chaos a moment ago became controlled. Nothing moved
(15:18):
unless it had to. Every fragment, every scorch mark was
potential evidence. That's where Richard came in. When he pulled
up to the corner of Pearl and Broad Street in
Lower Manhattan, he was hit with a signature sign of
a bombing.
Speaker 5 (15:32):
If you go to these things, I don't care where
it is, it's got to smell to it. Got to
get on your hands and knees and crawl around in
the dirt and the dust and see what you can find.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
That's where he uncovered a major clue.
Speaker 5 (15:46):
We started finding nails.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Not from the building, but from inside the bomb.
Speaker 5 (15:52):
I personally think if I was building a bomb, I
could have done a better job than nails, but that
was just simply shrapnel.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
The nails may have pointed to an amateur, but the bomb.
Speaker 5 (16:05):
That was not just a small bomb. That turned out
to be twenty two sticks of dynamite.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Richard continued to crawl through the torn out tavern.
Speaker 5 (16:15):
And we're collecting various items which would be appropriate for
starting a criminal investigation.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
That's when he happened upon something that will stay with
him forever.
Speaker 5 (16:27):
I was crawling around on the floor and I remember
distinctly finding something and I said to one of the investigators.
I picked it up. I said, what is this? And
they looked at it. They felt it. It was like sponge.
I would say, no more than an inch, but it
was all over. So we decided we were going to
(16:49):
put it in a container and we started collecting it,
and before it was over with, we had like a
shoe box filled with this material. We couldn't figure out
what it was, and it was dru happened a snutch.
So we sent it off to the FBI lab with
a big question mark.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
When they got the answer, it was something no one
wanted to hear, he says.
Speaker 5 (17:11):
We found out what it was, I said, what's that?
He says human remains. Whoever, the poor soul that was
standing there when this thing went off so much force
just totally took his torso and blew it to little
pieces like that.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
The attack killed four people and injured over sixty. Countless
more were impacted in ways that would stay with them forever, wives, husbands, friends, families, children.
Speaker 6 (17:44):
My name is Joe Connor, and my father was murdered
by the Faln Puerto Rican Marxist terrorists on January twenty fourth,
nineteen seventy five, at Francis Tavern.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
On the day of the bombing, Joe was just nine
years old. His father was Frank Connor. Frank was a
young banker who left his home in New Jersey every
day to go to his job in New York City's
financial district. In the evening, he'd return home to his
wife and to play with his two sons.
Speaker 6 (18:14):
My father was a New York City kid, the son.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Of immigrants in pursuit of the American dream.
Speaker 6 (18:21):
My grandmother got a job as a cleaning lady at
the old Morgan Bank Morgan Guarantee Trust Company, and she
worked nights so she could be home with my father
during the day.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
In high school, Frank's mom helped him get a job
at the bank. He started off as a clerk and
eventually worked his way up to assistant vice president. Frank
was nineteen when he first met his wife, Joe's mom,
at a dance in New York's Old City Center.
Speaker 6 (18:48):
She just saw the back of his head at first
and said, I want to dance with that guy. And
her friends are laughing at her, saying, you don't even
know what he looks like, and he turned around and
asked her to dance out of nowhere so she knew.
Speaker 12 (19:00):
Then.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
The two married and had three boys. The youngest son
passed away at a very young age, leaving the Connors
a family of four. The family moved to New Jersey.
Frank juggled night school, a day job, and together with
his wife, raising two boys, but he also found time
for some fun.
Speaker 6 (19:21):
He had tons of friends, more than I've ever had, really, Like,
they moved to New Jersey and the next thing you know,
they have a bar in the basement, and you know,
it was like the early seventies and people like seem
to have a lot of fun, and there was always
people around, and he was good to be.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Around, even with the long hours in full house. Frank
always made room for what mattered most time with his boys.
Speaker 6 (19:45):
My brother's two years older, so whenever we would like
as a family do stuff like together, so we might
go down and play basketball whatever, it was always Tom
and my mom on the same team and me and
my dad because I was the youngest, so it was
always us two on the same team. So I always
felt like, yeah, you know, he's my teammate to me,
you know, he could do anything.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
To Frank's boys, he was their hero.
Speaker 6 (20:08):
My brother had just made his communion and my dad
was going to take his communion money and spend it
on a tent because we want to go camping. So
we were at the sporting good store and I saw
Tom sever Mit autographed by Tom sever and you know,
anyone who lived around here in the early seventies, my god,
Tom sever So that's what I wanted, but he was
like looking at me, like, you know, we can't afford that.
(20:29):
So I went home and I didn't get my Mit.
And a couple of days later, I guess I was
hanging out down at the park and Tom came down
and said, Dad wants to see and I'm like, oh god,
what did I do now? So I rode my bike
home and when I got home, there.
Speaker 10 (20:42):
Was the mit.
Speaker 6 (20:44):
That was something I'll never forget and I'll always treasure
because he didn't have to get that for me.
Speaker 10 (20:49):
He didn't.
Speaker 6 (20:50):
It wasn't my birthday or.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
Anything, but there would soon come a birthday that will
stick with Joe forever. January twenty fourth, eighteen seventy five
was planned to be a special day.
Speaker 6 (21:03):
We were going to be celebrating my ninth birthday, which
was January twentieth. On my brother's eleventh, They'd.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Already celebrated with friends, so this Friday was just going
to be family. The brothers went to school, their mom
stayed home preparing their favorite dinner. Frank went to work
in downtown New York City, as he always did. That day,
Frank had lunch plans with two clients. At the last minute,
the location of their lunch moved to a different restaurant.
Speaker 6 (21:31):
There was a problem with the reservation, so they decided
they would walk down to Frances, which is right around
the block.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
The men sat down at a table in the tavern,
ordered their food and talked while they ate.
Speaker 6 (21:44):
They were getting to the end of their meal, and
I think the check had just come. One of the guys,
Charlie Murray, talked about seeing a guy come in that
kind of looked out of place with a knapsack, set
it on a stair behind their table where they were sitting,
and I think I was scruffy looking.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
This was Wall Street in nineteen seventy five. People dressed
to impress, sharp suits, crisp white shirts, and polus shoes,
business formal with a hint of swagger, not scruff so
someone like.
Speaker 6 (22:17):
This guy would look very out of place. He dropped
his package and walked out, and within a couple of
minutes it detonated.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
The blast tore through the restaurant, shattering windows and collapsing walls.
Speaker 6 (22:32):
It was about twenty five pounds of explosives and shrapnel,
absolutely intended to inflict as much death as it could.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Word of the attack hadn't yet traveled the seventeen miles
northwest to te Neeck, New Jersey.
Speaker 6 (22:46):
Tom and I went to school and came home and
went out to play.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
Then Joe heard his mother scream, and the afternoon warped
from a day of soon to be birthday celebrations into
something surreal.
Speaker 6 (23:00):
She called us in from playing and she said there
had been an explosion downtown and she told us my
dad was there.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
At first, Joe assumed the best a child's instinct to
believe that their parent is invincible.
Speaker 6 (23:15):
I remember thinking, well, he's probably injured. He was my dad, right,
He's indestructible.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
His mother's intuition said otherwise.
Speaker 6 (23:26):
She had called him at work and someone else picked up,
and she said she knew immediately that he was killed.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Nine year old Joe still held on to hope.
Speaker 6 (23:39):
I remember thinking, well, he's probably like buried under debris,
you know, bricks or rock or something. The fireman will
will get them, you know, they'll find them and it'll
be okay.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
But as people began arriving at the house, family friends, coworkers,
the silence was telling.
Speaker 6 (23:58):
We got the news a few hours later.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
That night, the young boys crawled into bed with their mom,
the three of them huddled together in grief, still in
shock and trying to make sense of what happened.
Speaker 6 (24:11):
I remember asking, my mom, is Grandma's still our grandmother?
And you know my mom was great? She said, well, absolutely,
in very strong terms, which was very reassuring, because then
I kind of knew that the family'd be kept together.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
In that moment, Joe Connor wasn't thinking about terrorism, or politics,
or his decades of advocacy that would follow. He was
just a child who lost his father, confused about what
happens to families when someone dies, not wanting his to
fall apart.
Speaker 6 (24:46):
It was devastating to go one minute from celebrating your
ninth birthday with your dad to him being dead for
no reason.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
Trying to move through such trauma and grief is unthinking
doable to most people, let alone for a child, But
human beings often proved to be remarkably resilient even in
the wake of incredible tragedy.
Speaker 6 (25:11):
As mc Grandma Conor would say, we just did the
best we could.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
In the days following the January nineteen seventy five bombing
at New York City's Francis Tavern, the Connor family soon
learned who was responsible.
Speaker 6 (25:34):
They left a communic kee around the corner from Frances
in a phone booth. For those of you old enough
to know what a phone booth is, it left words
to the effect that this was an attack by the
Faln Armed Forces for Puerto Rican Independence, who hit reactionary
corporate executives is the terms that they used, and that's
(25:56):
a very Marxist type language.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Michael Jensen says that message was rooted in retaliation.
Speaker 8 (26:05):
The reason that they did this is because there had
been a bombing that occurred in Puerto Rico in which
a couple of young independence activists had been killed. The
group blamed the CIA for orchestrating this bombing, and the
Francis Tavern bombing was their response to it.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
And the location of the attack wasn't chosen at random.
Here again is John Fox.
Speaker 10 (26:29):
The Francis Tavern traces back to our revolutionary days and
was a key meeting place for some of the planning
and peoples who were involved in our revolution back in
the mid seventeen seventies.
Speaker 6 (26:43):
You know, it's where George Washington bade farewell to his
officers after the revolutionary war. It's really historic and significant place.
It's where Alexander Hamilton and the Sons of Liberty met.
It was chosen for that very reason as a target.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
By bombing it, the the FALN sent a calculated message
they weren't just fighting for Puerto Rican independence, they were
striking at the very foundations of the American identity. But
this wasn't just cryptic symbolism. As Michael Jensen puts it,
it was a turning point.
Speaker 8 (27:17):
It was really like a departure for the organization in
its level of violence. The fla in actually went out
of their way to commit attack in which they knew
people would be hurt and killed.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
Until then, most domestic bombings were late night blasts, empty offices, statements,
without bloodshed. France's tavern was different. This wasn't an accident.
John Fox says, it was a shift in tactics.
Speaker 10 (27:44):
The bombings claimed by the FALN were aimed at at
least some civilian casualties. Placed and detonated around the lunch hour,
obviously meant to be a more high pro file and
populated event.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Francis Tavern marked a pivot to deadly force. The bomb
was timed and placed for maximum civilian impact. It wasn't
aimed at anyone in particular, but that was exactly the point.
The explosion was meant to kill whoever happened to be
there at that very moment.
Speaker 6 (28:21):
My father moved his table. If he didn't, we wouldn't
be having this conversation, might be talking to somebody else.
That's why terrorism works. That's why terrorism works as a
political tool because it's random and it's indiscriminate. It doesn't
care who you are. Anyone can die at any point.
(28:41):
I think people really need to understand that that no
one's immune from this crap, and you don't have to
go around your life worrying about it, but you do
kind of have to understand that it can happen. It
could happen to anybody.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Unfortunately, this is how we understand terrorism to work today.
Leans meant not only to destroy, but also to shock,
spread fear, and force attention. But in nineteen seventy five
that idea hadn't fully taken hold. It was a lesson
being learned in real time. As this new brutal reality
(29:15):
became clear, law enforcement also needed to pivot to try
and tackle it, and as the bombs kept exploding, they
would need to make a plan and fast. The bombing
at Francis Tavern sent shockwaves through New York City. The
FBI quickly ramped up its surveillance and cracked down of
(29:35):
the Faln.
Speaker 6 (29:37):
They never left the news cycle, and they couldn't catch them.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Despite the pressure and urgency, the fal In seemingly stayed
one step ahead. They vanished into safe houses and silence,
leaving investigators with little left to track. But over time
law enforcement did make headway.
Speaker 9 (29:57):
There was an unnumbered, undated Communica's that body fail and
logo that used the rhetoric that has become quite common
in their communic cayse.
Speaker 10 (30:10):
There were a number of FALN members arrested over the
coming years. Several of them were associated with the frances
tavern bombing.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Arrest trickled and slowly, some tied to bomb plots, others
to weapons stockpiles, and some suspected in the France's tavern attack.
Speaker 6 (30:31):
These guys were extremely disciplined. They left one fingerprint in
there one hundred and thirty bombings, but other than that,
they were absolutely clean in the way that they went
about their business. They were Cuban trained, financed to a
large degree the art of spycraft through the Cuban intelligence services.
(30:52):
So the FBI and the MPD really didn't know what
they were up against with these guys.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
And at the center of the f ALN's destruction was
still out there as dedicated to the cause as he'd
ever been. Here's Michael Jensen again.
Speaker 8 (31:09):
William Morales was the f ALNS chief bomb maker, and
he was discovered in nineteen seventy eight because he accidentally
detonated an explosive device in which he severely injured himself
and disfigured himself. That's how the authorities came to identify
and to nab him.
Speaker 11 (31:30):
When the bomb exploded yesterday, it blew up in the
hands and face of William Morales. Today police told us
that they've known for some time of Morales's link to
f ALN suspect Carlos Alberto Torres.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
He'd been building bombs in a secret apartment in Queens
and you may know the saying, if you play with fire,
eventually you get burned.
Speaker 6 (31:52):
On what would have been by dad's thirty seventh birthday,
July twelfth, nineteen seventy eight, William Morales was torking a
pipe bomb when it exploded. There must have been some
of the explosive got caught in the treads and when
he torqued, it blew up and blew off nine of
his fingers, one of his eyes, and ripped through the
Queen's bomb factory.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
But even mangled and half blind, his self declared mission
came first.
Speaker 6 (32:20):
He immediately turned on the gas in the place and
went into the bathroom to try to shred evidence.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
While severely injured, Morales survived.
Speaker 8 (32:32):
He was arrested, He was charged and convicted, sentenced to
eighty nine ninety years in prison. He actually ended up
escaping from a prison ward out of Bellevue Hospital, and
he eventually made his way to Cuba and Castro gave
him safe haven there.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
Instead of serving out his sentence, Morales has remained in Cuba,
avoiding accountability. And for Joe, it felt like a second
kind of trauma, a betrayal.
Speaker 6 (33:03):
This is a guy with one finger and one eye
being that dedicated to his cause. That event woke us up.
That was jarring, and to me, Morales became the face
of the faln in my head. And you know, faln
and ev il felt like they were the same word
to me.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
For decades, Joe fought to bring Morales back to the
United States.
Speaker 6 (33:29):
I started writing letters to the State Department, to the
Justice Department, to Secretary of State and warn Christopher. I
think was at the time, because I wanted Morales return.
That was before we even had emails, so these were
letters and I still have some of them. They you know,
were sent back and forth where the you know, they
acknowledged that, you know, he's Morales is there, he's a terrorist,
(33:49):
but we have no extradition treaty with Cuba, which as
it turns out, isn't exactly true. So I really kind
of pushed that, and.
Speaker 8 (33:56):
To this day there are still demands for him to
be extradited back to the United States to serve out
his sentence.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
There's obviously much more to this story and many more
layers to go, and we'll get to some of that,
but for right now, this is the point to remember.
Speaker 6 (34:15):
No one was held accountable, specifically for my dad's murder.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
It's another type of wound that remains open for the victims,
the survivors, and those impacted by the blast. No justice
for the four who were murdered by that bomb.
Speaker 6 (34:31):
It was my dad, Alejandro Berger, and Jim Gezork.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
And the fourth victim, Harold Sherburn, succumbed to his wounds
at the hospital. For the ones who made it out alive.
Speaker 6 (34:46):
Bill Newhall was at the table and he survived and
he's still passing shrapnel. He still has hearing issues. He
says this will eventually kill him. Just didn't happen that day.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
Each tragedy affects not only the actual victims, It goes
many more layers deep.
Speaker 6 (35:05):
My kids even are affected by it, and they never
met their grandfather. I mean, my poor kids. They had
nothing to do with any of this, but they've suffered
because of when had happened, and probably from my fighting it.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
As the survivors of the Francis tavern bombing continued to reel,
law enforcements scrambled to tackle this growing threat, and they
were building the system while under fire. While threats multiplied
in the shadows, from separatists and nationalists to far left radicals,
the blueprint on how to carry out these attacks was
spreading faster than their response, and as the enemy evolved,
(35:42):
America's defenses looked for new ways to meet the threat.
Speaker 10 (35:47):
In the nineteen seventies, the assignment of responsibility and even
the definitions of crimes related to such things weren't always cleared,
and often in times the state or local police would
take precedence.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
It was a patchwork response to a national problem. Departments
agencies both local and national continued to respond, but the
one thing they lacked was an actual integrated system. While
they shared, there was no real time intelligence sharing. They
worked together, yet not as a unified front. Federal agents,
(36:26):
bomb squads, arson units all working parallel cases rather than
lock and step. And as the dust was still settling
from the Francis Tavern bombing, terror struck again, we had
to up the.
Speaker 12 (36:39):
Jane juppet program to bring you this further update in
connection with the tragic disaster at LaGuardia Airport tonight, in
which a powerful bomb explosion that devastated the baggage area
in the main terminal at the airport killed at least
twelve persons and injured at least seventy five others.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
Next time on Law and Order Criminal Justice System.
Speaker 5 (37:10):
R Ricola switchboard, saying there's been a bombing at the
TWA terminal.
Speaker 12 (37:14):
The explosion actually impelled building material, metal glad bodies inside.
Speaker 4 (37:21):
There was an extensive fire.
Speaker 8 (37:23):
This really was the era of mass bombing campaigns, and
the FBI had a very very long list of usual
suspects to go through to try to figure out who
did this.
Speaker 10 (37:32):
Some suspected fal and others suspected Croatian nationalists.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
Law and Order Criminal Justice System is a production of
Wolf Entertainment and iHeart Podcasts. Our host is Anna Sega Nicolazzi.
The show was written by Cooper Mall, Executive produced by
Dick Wolf, Elliot Wolf and Even Michael at Wolf Entertainment
on behalf of iHeart Podcasts. Executive producers Trevor Young and
(38:07):
Matt Frederick, with supervising producer Chandler Mays and producer Jesse Funk.
This season is executive produced by Anna Sega Nicolazzi. Our
researchers are Luke Stantz and Carolyn Tolmage. Editing and sound
designed by Trevor Young and Jesse Funk. Original music by
(38:28):
John O'Hara, original theme by Mike Post with additional music
by Steve Moore and additional voice over by me Steve Zernkelton.
Special thanks to Fox five in New York for providing
archival material for the show. For more podcasts from iHeart
in Wolf Entertainment, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
(38:51):
wherever you get your favorite shows. Thanks for listening.
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