Edition: U.S. / Global


Published: December 31, 1995

Bernie Goetz tried in vain to coax the chinchilla out of its hole. "Come on out here," he said, rattling one of the cages lining the hallway between the living room and bedroom. "Get out of here."

He scooped up the chinchilla, seemingly displeased and sleepy, in his hands. He held it aloft and then against his chest.

The rules are: if it's in there, I can't take it out," he said, explaining that on only one other recent occasion had the gray, furry rodent been plucked from its cage. "That's one of the reasons she's been antisocial lately. There are rules in this place. Very few. But that's one of them."

This place is Bernhard H. Goetz's Manhattan apartment where, on a recent afternoon, looking less like the harried figure that television cameras caught hurrying outside a Bronx court last month, he was in a seemingly talkative and reflective mood. Like the chinchilla, Mr. Goetz described himself as semi-sociable, rarely venturing outside his apartment where he listens to New Age music, watches cable television, reads up on Roman history and cooks vegetarian meals.

Eleven years after what he calls "my incident," he is still instantly recognized on the streets and in the subway, which he rides about six times a year. After all that has happened since he shot and wounded four young black men on a No. 2 train on Dec. 22, 1984, Mr. Goetz said he was surprised he was still alive today. He said he no longer carries a gun, but to ward off strangers he sometimes pretends that he may be concealing one. So why does he stay in New York?

"Where should I go?" he said. "Give me an alternative."

Indeed, in the same way the personalities of, say, Donald Trump or Edward I. Koch feed on their association with New York, it is perhaps hard to imagine Bernie Goetz remaining Bernie Goetz outside the city. While falling crime rates have changed the climate of New York, Mr. Goetz is a reminder of a time when subway cars were blanketed with graffiti and when many ordinary citizens found themselves fascinated with a seemingly meek and unremarkable electrical engineer turned overnight into the so-called subway vigilante.

Now the case is once again coming into the spotlight. Darrell Cabey, who is paralyzed and the most seriously injured of the four young men he shot, has an unresolved lawsuit against Mr. Goetz, who made a pretrial appearance in a Bronx courtroom last month. The trial is scheduled to begin in late March or early April.

For Mr. Goetz, now 48, the case has never faded. The shooting not only turned him into a walking symbol for the city's despair about crime, but to his detractors, the embodiment of its worst racist instincts.

To a much lesser degree than the paralyzed Mr. Cabey, Mr. Goetz continues to live with the aftereffects of that day on the No. 2 train. More than anything else, he said he mourns the loss of anonymity, the freedom to wander his neighborhood without being recognized, and the ability to ride the subway without drawing stares.

"I had a niche in the world, which I don't have anymore," he said. "Not only professionally, but to be able to disappear. I was able to function very effectively and efficiently in society."

Before the shooting, he had headed his building's tenants' committee at one point and joined a block association to fight against growing drug abuse and illegal peddlers. His notoriety now prevents him, he said, from doing things that are "constructive to the community."

Perhaps more significantly for an intellectually inclined man who studied nuclear and electrical engineering at New York University, and who says he always found it easier to work with machines instead of human beings, he now works little as an engineering consultant and earns "just enough to keep his head above water."

Before the shooting, he earned a comfortable living as one of a handful of independent consultants who serviced industrial electrical equipment. Now, in addition to losing many clients because of the shooting, he said that with the increasing efficiency of American manufacturing and its flight abroad, his skills are less in demand.

Mr. Goetz said he is searching for something else to do, "something productive, something I'd respect." Unlike a Joey Buttafuoco or others who have cashed in on their notoriety, Mr. Goetz has not written a book or appeared with Howard Stern. Legal fees, he said, ate up an inheritance from his father, who made millions developing homes in Florida in the 1960's and 1970's. Except for a sister he visits each year in California, he said he had little contact with his family.

Mr. Goetz's apartment, in a doorman building near Union Square, where he has lived since 1977, was clean but cluttered with electrical equipment one recent afternoon. In the living room, Mr. Goetz turned on a table lamp he had made from discarded computer circuit boards. His home was free of the color red, which he does not like. He shares the one-bedroom apartment with the chinchilla and a guinea pig. He did not give them names.