Five Bullets - by Elliot Williams (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2026 by The New York Times and The Washington Post

"Read this book to understand human nature." (Preet Bharara) - "An amazing story, well told." (Anderson Cooper) - "A masterful telling." (Dahlia Lithwick)

From CNN legal analyst Elliot Williams, a revelatory account of how one man, four teenagers, and a struggling city collided over race, vigilantism, and public safety . . . exposing the fault lines of a nation

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.

Review Quotes

"Elliot Williams does a brilliant job of re-creating the atmosphere of the 1980s, including the trial of Goetz, dubbed the 'Subway Vigilante' by the press, that resulted in his being acquitted of attempted murder but guilty of criminal possession of a weapon. He served eight months in jail. Five Bullets has a cast of characters--Al Sharpton, Ed Koch, Curtis Sliwa, Rupert Murdoch, Rudy Giuliani--that would make Ryan Murphy salivate, but Williams smartly stays focused on the five main characters and the legal questions raised during the trial. Four of the five men are still alive, and in a fascinating interview with the author, Goetz remains as unrepentant as ever." --Air Mail

"[Williams is] good at giving the reader mini law-school lessons, clarifying for example the significant difference between motive and intent. He's also Black and from Brooklyn and works in TV, which likely accounts for his well-tuned antennae for the overheated madness that was the 1980s New York City news environment. In those years, a miserable and extensive roster of racially inflected deaths, from the Central Park jogger and the Exonerated Five to so many more, dominated local news programs and the tabloids, especially Rupert Murdoch's Post. Five Bullets is a brisk journalistic trip through that history." --Curbed

"Five Bullets, by the CNN legal analyst Elliot Williams, is a carefully wrought account . . . Williams closes with an interview with Goetz, who is allowed to emerge, if not exactly sympathetically, then at least as a three-dimensional figure." --Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker

"Five Bullets presents a deeply researched, richly detailed portrait of how a racially divided city came to excuse potentially deadly white-on-Black violence." --Columbia Magazine

"Outstanding account . . . Williams's book is well written, deeply researched, and presents important questions about race, fear, media bias, and the purpose of criminal law." --Library Journal (starred review)

"In this engrossing account of the Bernie Goetz vigilante subway shooting and subsequent trial, CNN investigative reporter Williams effectively recreates the media-fueled perception of 1980s New York City as a lawless dystopia . . . Comparisons between these forty-year-old events and today's social and political realities become apparent, shockingly punctuated by Williams' chilling epilogue detailing recent conversations with an unrepentant Goetz. Williams' careful inclusion of multiple viewpoints and balanced, thoughtful commentary go far beyond typical true-crime accounts, elevating this to relevant social commentary." --Booklist (starred review)

"A fast-paced tale of one of New York City's defining moments unfolds in the 1984 subway shooting of four Black youths by Bernhard Goetz . . . Journalist and legal analyst Williams offers a vivid portrait of 1980s New York and the social and economic pressures that shaped the backdrop of the case. Through brisk, evocative prose, the author captures the complexities of a troubled city and the crime that mirrored its contradictions. He deftly weaves in the roles of figures such as Ed Koch, Rudolph Giuliani, Al Sharpton, and Rupert Murdoch in crafting the public narrative of the 'Subway Vigilante' . . . A lively and haunting account of five men linked by a shooting--echoing New York's enduring tensions over fear and race." --Kirkus

"CNN legal analyst Williams debuts with a thorough reassessment of the 1984 subway vigilante shooting, when white 37-year-old Bernhard Goetz shot four Black teenagers on a New York City subway after one of the victims asked him for $5 . . . Williams explores how the central legal argument of the case--the 'reasonableness' of Goetz's fear--still resonates today. It amounts to a sharp look at a touchstone moment in American conceptions of race, self-defense, and who "has a right to feel safe." --Publishers Weekly

"Never has a book about the 1980s felt more like current events than Elliot Williams's journey back to one of America's most notorious shootings, when Bernie Goetz opened fire in a crowded New York City subway. Deeply researched and carefully crafted, Five Bullets is a haunting examination of our nation's complicated fascination with vigilantes and the politics of crime--one that, given today's headlines, will feel all too close to home." --Garrett M. Graff, author of the Pulitzer Prize Finalist Watergate: A New History

"In his striking retelling of the story of Bernie Goetz, the so-called 'Subway Vigilante, ' Elliot Williams manages to make sense of a complex and notorious case that transfixed and frightened an entire city. Even as he takes us back in time, Williams grounds us in the present, identifying all the hot button issues that are arguably just as hot or hotter today: race, violent crime, prosecutorial discretion, the right of self-defense, and media bias. Read this book to understand human nature and how shocking events can have a lasting impact on society even more than 40 years later." --Preet Bharara, former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York

"Elliot Williams's Five Bullets is a masterful telling of the characters, the currents, and the media madness surrounding the 1984 shooting by Bernhard Goetz of four young Black men in a New York City subway car. As a meditation on fear and fame, rubbernecking and vigilantism, it soars as a riveting piece of legal history, gorgeously told. But as a cheat code to the present moment, this headlong dive into the racial divisions, policing anxieties, and institutional mistrust that pervaded Manhattan in the mid-1980's, perfectly presages our discourse and politics. Four decades later, we are all of us still on that train with Goetz and his gun, still trying to understand how much violence is necessary to make us feel safe." --Dahlia Lithwick, New York Times bestselling author of Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America

"Five Bullets illuminates how a few pivotal minutes in a New York City subway car would go on to expose America's uneasy tensions around race, crime, fear, and justice. Elliot Williams asks who gets to be afraid in America, and who will be cast as the victim, the threat, and the hero. Brimming with new details about the case of the Subway Vigilante-and its decades-long impact on our country-and written with a delicate touch, this book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how the media, politics, and public perception shape America's justice system. More than forty years later, we're still living the same headlines, and Williams masterfully holds a mirror up to America, urging us to recognize that in order to move towards the vision of America we hope to be, we must first confront who we still are." --Van Jones, CNN host and founder, Dream Machine Innovation Lab

"Wow, what a ride back to New York in the 1980s, and the case that captivated the country! Elliot Williams's Five Bullets is an amazing story, well told." --Anderson Cooper

"Elliot Williams's Five Bullets is a wise and sane guide to a great moment of 1980s madness - Bernie Goetz's attack against (or is it defense against?) four Black teenagers in a New York City subway car. Williams weaves the personal, the political and the legal into a compelling and highly relevant story about the way we lived then and still live today." --Jeffrey Toobin, author of The Pardon: The Politics of Presidential Mercy

About the Author

Elliot Williams is a CNN legal analyst and regular guest host on SiriusXM and WAMU, NPR's Washington, DC, station. He has spent his career thinking about law, crime, and politics, serving as a federal prosecutor and later as a senior official at the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security. A Brooklyn-born son of Jamaican immigrants, he grew up in New Jersey and vividly recalls the powder keg that was 1980s New York. He now lives in Washington, DC, with his wife and two children.