Elliot Williams with Errol Louis

Elliot Williams presents Five Bullets: The Story of Bernie Goetz, New York's Explosive '80s, and the Subway Vigilante Trial That Divided the Nation
In conversation with Errol Louis

CNN legal analyst Elliot Williams presents Five Bullets, a revelatory account of how one man, four teenagers, and a struggling city collided over race, vigilantism, and public safety, exposing the fault lines of a nation. On a dirty New York subway car on December 22, 1984, Bernhard Goetz shot Barry Allen, Darrell Cabey, Troy Canty, and James Ramseur, four teenagers from the Bronx, at point blank range. Goetz claimed they were going to mug him; the teens claim that one of them had simply asked for five dollars. In Five Bullets, Williams vaults back to gritty 1980s Manhattan to reexamine the "Subway Vigilante" saga that became the first major true-crime story of the cable news era and the origin of several larger-than-life figures: Al Sharpton, Rudy Giuliani, the NRA, and Rupert Murdoch. A shocking account of a pivotal moment in our history, Five Bullets demonstrates why, in order to understand today’s debates about race, crime, safety, and the media, it’s imperative to reflect on what went down in the subway four decades ago. As Williams’s powerful narrative reveals, it was not just Goetz on trial, but the conscience of a nation. Errol Louis, award-winning political anchor and host of Inside City Hall and You Decide, joins Williams for a discussion before an audience Q&A and signing.