This is exactly right.

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He saw a shine in his eyes and a smile on his face and felt that he was being played with.

And because he's being played with like a cat, mouse, or whatever else, he needed to take action.

I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor in Austin, Texas.

I'm also the co-host of the podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right. And throughout my career, research for my many audio and book projects has taken me around the world. On Wicked Words, I sit down with the people I've met along the way,

amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers, and podcasters

who have investigated and reported on notorious true crime cases.

This is about the choices writers make, both good and bad,

and it's a deep dive into the unpublished details behind their

stories. We're talking about a very famous case this week. In 1984, Bernie Getz 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 Gets himself, the stories 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 Gets, New York's explosive 80s, and the subway vigilante

trial that divided the nation.

Give me context for where we are, what time period, and what is New York City like in this time

period.

No one can really comprehend today what 1980s and 1970s New York really looked like.

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