Wicked Words - A True Crime Talk Show with Kate Winkler Dawson

Elliot Williams: Five Bullets

2026-02-16

We’re talking about a very famous case this week. In 1984, Bernie Goetz shot four Black teenagers on a subway in Manhattan. He was hailed as a hero in the press, a man who stopped would-be robbers. But as the public learned more about the evidence, and about Goetz himself, the story seemed to shift. Elliot Williams is a CNN legal analyst and former federal prosecutor. And he wrote a book about the case called "Five Bullets: The Story of Bernie Goetz, New York's Explosive '80s, and the Subway Vigilante Trial That D...