Excerpt:
In the early afternoon of Dec. 22, 1984, four black teenagers were riding the subway in lower Manhattan when a thin and bespectacled man got on. The four had snuck onto a bus, jumped the turnstiles to enter the subway system and were on their way to rob a video arcade.
One of the teens approached the man and asked him for $5. The man, perceiving the four as a threat, pulled out an handgun and shot at each boy once, then shot at one of them, Darrell Cabey, a second time, leaving him paralyzed and with permanent brain damage. The man then checked on a woman who had fallen to the floor, to see if she was injured, before departing the train. He disappeared from the city for nine days amid a highly publicized manhunt. By the time he returned to New York, following a voluntary surrender in Concord, N.H., Bernhard Goetz had become one of the most controversial people in America.
Four decades have passed since the Goetz shooting, yet the incident continues to resonate. Now "Five Bullets," by Elliot Williams, and "Fear and Fury," by Heather Ann Thompson, retell the story.