In a wide?ranging interview with The Daily Signal, CNN legal analyst and author Elliot Williams revisits one of the most polarizing criminal cases in modern American history—the 1984 New York City subway shooting involving Bernhard Goetz.

Williams documents the story in his new book, “Five Bullets: The Story of Bernie Goetz, New York’s Explosive ’80s, and the Subway Vigilante Trial That Divided the Nation,” which was published this month.

The book examines how Goetz, widely dubbed the “subway vigilante,” shot four black teenagers on a New York City subway train. One victim was left paralyzed and brain?damaged. The incident ignited fierce national debates over crime, race, gun rights, media bias, and vigilantism—arguments that still resonate decades later.

Williams, a former Justice Department and Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorney, said the case drew his attention because of the many issues that endure today.

“Goetz’s story is remarkable in that it ties together so many issues—particularly ones I’ve thought about in some way or another for my entire career: race, crime, media bias, and violence,” he told The Daily Signal.

Williams places the shooting in the broader context of New York City in the 1980s, a period marked by soaring crime rates, fiscal instability, and a pervasive sense of fear.

“Pretty much the........

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