Worldwide Mysteries. Bombing.

Wall Street Bombing of 1920

During the lunch rush on Wall Street on a September day in 1920, a non-descript man driving a cart pressed an old horse forward in front of the U.S. Assay Office, across from the J. P. Morgan building. He stopped his cart, got down, and immediately disappeared into the crowd.

Minutes later, the cart exploded into a hail of metal fragments, immediately killing more than 30 people and injuring 300. The aftermath was horrific, and the death toll rose as the day wore on and more victims succumbed to their injuries. In the beginning, it wasn’t obvious that the explosion was an intentional act of terrorism, it was viewed as simply an accident. Maintenance crews cleaned up the damage overnight plus throwing away any physical evidence would be crucial to identifying the perpetrator. By the next morning, Wall Street was back in business.

Conspiracy theories were abundant, but the New York Police and Fire Departments, the Bureau of Investigation (the FBI’s predecessor), and the U.S. Secret Service were on the job to find out the truth. Each lead was actively pursued and the Bureau interviewed hundreds of people who had been around that area before, during, and after the attack but collected very little information. The few recollections of the driver and wagon were vague and useless. The NYPD was able to reconstruct the bomb and its fuse mechanism, but there was much debate about the nature of the explosive.

However, the most promising lead had actually come prior to the explosion. A mailman had found four crudely spelled and printed flyers in the Wall Street area from a group calling itself the “American Anarchist Fighters” that demanded the release of political prisoners. The letters seemed similar to ones used the previous year in two bombing campaigns which were led by Italian Anarchists. The Bureau investigated up and down the East Coast, to trace the printing of these flyers, but they were unsuccessful.

Based on bomb attacks over the previous decade, the Bureau initially suspected followers of the Italian Anarchist Luigi Galleani had committed the crime. But the case couldn’t be proved, and Galleani had already fled the country. Over the next three years, hot leads turned cold and promising trails turned into dead ends. In the end, the bombers were not identified.