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On Dec. 22, 1984, a white man shot four Black teenagers in a New York City subway car, later claiming he believed they were about to rob him. The man, Bernhard Goetz, was dubbed the 鈥渟ubway vigilante,鈥� and at a time of soaring crime rates, he received remarkable public support. Meanwhile, the teens 鈥� Barry Allen, Darrell Cabey, Troy Canty, and James Ramseur 鈥� were regarded not as victims but as thugs and predators.

Two excellent new books offer powerful yet distinct takes on the subway shootings. In 鈥淔ear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage,鈥� Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Heather Ann Thompson explores the episode鈥檚 roots in the period鈥檚 stark racial and economic divisions and argues that the incident has had a pernicious effect on our contemporary political culture. In 鈥淔ive Bullets: The Story of Bernie Goetz, New York鈥檚 Explosive 鈥�80s, and the Subway Vigilante Trial That Divided the Nation,鈥� Elliot Williams, a CNN legal analyst and former federal prosecutor, is primarily concerned with the case鈥檚 legal dimensions.

Both books are deeply researched, providing detailed accounts of the circumstances leading up to the violence, the shootings themselves, and their aftermath. They paint similar pictures of Goetz, a loner who, in Williams鈥� words, was long 鈥渇rustrated by what he regarded as the city鈥檚 failures to fight crime and mess.鈥� Both authors report that at a 1980 meeting of his building鈥檚 tenants鈥� association, Goetz shocked his neighbors by using racial epithets to blame Blacks and Hispanics for New York鈥檚 problems. After being mugged in 1981, he applied for, and was denied, a gun permit; he began illegally carrying a concealed weapon.

Thompson offers a sympathetic portrayal of the 18- and 19-year-old victims, describing their difficult lives in the face of gutted social services and the scourge of crack cocaine in their public housing development in the South Bronx. (For his part, Williams is critical of those who, over the years, have 鈥渟trained to defend鈥� Allen, Cabey, Canty, and Ramseur, each of whom had run-ins with the law before the shootings.) The four were on their way to steal quarters from a Manhattan video arcade by jimmying open the coin boxes with screwdrivers. They knew they would be less likely to arouse suspicion if they had some cash to spend on the arcade鈥檚 games.

After Goetz boarded the train, Canty asked him for $5. As Williams writes, 鈥淲hether the words said to Goetz were a question, a demand, a violent threat, an order, or just a casual statement, we will never know.鈥� Goetz immediately drew his gun and fired on the teenagers, leaving all of them injured and rendering Cabey permanently disabled.

Thompson calls the crime 鈥淐hristmas come early鈥� for New York City鈥檚 rival tabloids. She and Williams both cover the intense competition between the New York Daily News and the New York Post; the latter had been purchased by Rupert Murdoch in 1976. The papers fed their readers a steady stream of salacious 鈥� and often inaccurate 鈥� details in the case. They played an outsize role in shaping public opinion, even during the nine days before Goetz turned himself in, when many of the facts were unknown. (Within days, the Daily News had referred to the unidentified gunman as 鈥渁n instant hero.鈥�) Some media outlets falsely reported that the tools that two of the teenagers had been carrying in their pockets to rob the arcade were sharpened screwdrivers that they brandished at Goetz.

Goetz eventually stood trial on charges including attempted murder and reckless endangerment. The prosecution had strong evidence, including witnesses who reported that the teenagers on the subway were rowdy but not menacing. The jury also watched Goetz鈥檚 chilling videotaped confession.

Still, in the end, the overwhelmingly white jury was convinced by the defense鈥檚 portrayal of Goetz as, in Thompson鈥檚 words, 鈥渁 鈥榝ed up鈥� Everyman.鈥� As Williams writes, 鈥淭he jury saw themselves in Goetz.鈥� He was convicted only of a weapons charge and served eight months in prison. In 1996, a civil jury found Goetz liable for Cabey鈥檚 injuries. He was ordered to pay Cabey $43 million, but he declared bankruptcy.

Williams has a firm command of the case鈥檚 legal issues. He also observes that the law doesn鈥檛 exist in a vacuum, noting that politics and public opinion often affect the workings of the justice system. 鈥淚t is possible that Goetz鈥檚 acquittal on violent crime charges was legally defensible but not just; supported by law but not morality,鈥� he concludes.聽

Unlike Thompson, who based her account on archival materials, Williams interviewed most of the surviving major players 鈥� although not the two living victims of the four who were shot 鈥� including the attorneys, the judge, and, notably, Goetz himself. Goetz has remained unrepentant over the years.聽

As a historian, Thompson is interested in the long shadow of these events of four decades ago. She draws a line from Murdoch鈥檚 New York Post to Fox News, the crown of his media empire, arguing that Fox has provided a largely white conservative viewership 鈥渁 constant feedback loop of resentment.鈥澛�

Most significantly, Thompson posits that the shootings 鈥渦nleashed and normalized a new era of racialized rage.鈥� She sees the influence of the Goetz case in the spread of what are often called 鈥渟tand your ground鈥� state laws and in the actions of George Zimmerman, Kyle Rittenhouse, and Daniel Penny 鈥� all, in her words, 鈥渙rdinary men鈥� who 鈥淸meted] out extralegal punishment鈥� and were subsequently acquitted of most or all of the charges against them.聽

Finally, she sees echoes of the subway vigilante saga in the political success of Donald Trump, who was himself a prominent figure in 1980s New York. In fact, Thompson put aside another book she was working on in order to write about Goetz precisely because she saw the racial anxieties revealed by the case as key to understanding Trump鈥檚 return to power. Mentioning the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol and President Trump鈥檚 subsequent pardons of the rioters, Thompson suggests that taken to their extremes, fear and fury can threaten democracy itself.