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

On a dirty New York subway car on December 22, 1984, Bernhard Goetz shot and seriously wounded Barry Allen, Darrell Cabey, Troy Canty, and James Ramseur, four teenagers from the Bronx. Goetz claimed they were trying to mug him; the teens claim that one had merely asked him for five dollars.

Crime was at an all-time high in the city. So was racial tension. Was Goetz, who was white, a hero who finally fought back? Or a bigot whose itchy trigger finger wounded three unarmed Black teenagers and condemned a fourth to irreversible brain damage? By the time Goetz went on trial for quadruple attempted murder, the saga of the “Subway Vigilante” had become a global sensation, and New Yorkers were almost equally split over whether the city owed him 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 illuminates American divides and tells the origin stories of larger-than-life national figures: Al Sharpton, a young local activist beginning his path to national stardom; Rudy Giuliani, an rising star prosecutor with a polarizing decision to make; the NRA, which needed a poster boy as it transitioned from hunting club to political juggernaut; and Rupert Murdoch, whose new purchase, the New York Post, made hay by keeping a scary story in the headlines.

A sweeping and shocking account of a pivotal moment in our history, FIVE BULLETS demonstrates why in order to understand the debates that continue to this day about race, crime, and safety, it’s imperative to reflect on what went down in the subway more than forty years ago. As Williams’s powerful narrative reveals, it was not just Goetz on trial, but the conscience of a nation.