Joan Rivers sent a LOVE AND KISSES telegram offering to help out with the bail money. "Thug Buster" T shirts began to appear on the streets of New York City, and an aspiring rock group wrote a song in his honor ("I'm not going to give you my pay/ Try and take it away/ Come on, make my day/ They call him the vigilante"). The red-bereted Guardian Angels jingled canisters in front of subway straphangers, collecting for his defense. But Bernhard Hugo Goetz, the 37-year-old electronics expert who shot four black teen-agers in a New York City subway car last month, refused to cooperate with the makers of his blossoming legend. Spurning all offers of financial aid, he gave a single, halting interview to the New York Post last week. "I'm amazed at this celebrity status," he said. "I want to remain anonymous."
After six days in jail, charged with attempted murder and possession of a weapon, Goetz made bail with $50,000 of his own money. Stopping in at his cluttered downtown apartment, he asked a handyman to remove a WELCOME HOME BERNIE banner and a collection box for his defense fund that had been installed in the building's lobby by his fellow tenants. Pursued by several reporters and photographers, Goetz drove through the Holland Tunnel to a shopping center in Union, N.J.
At a diner he was gawked at; customers and workers cast sideways glances at the celebrity in their midst and spoke approvingly of his violent act. Waitress Irene Wienckoski asked for his autograph, and Goetz responded with a cryptically high-toned message: "To Irene--To be trusted is a better compliment than to be loved." Across the street he stopped at a Toys "R" Us store to buy a toy fire engine, just as he did in December when he fled Manhattan, driving north through New England, before turning himself in to police in Concord, N.H. Dashing hopes that the mysterious fire engine might turn out to be a revelatory, memory-jogging "Rosebud" in his case, Goetz explained that the toy was a gift he had promised to a young boy: the previous fire engine had been confiscated by overzealous police.
Goetz began his leap from anonymity on the afternoon of Dec. 22, when he was riding in a seedy subway car in lower Manhattan along with some 20 other passengers. The four youths, according to witnesses, were acting in a rowdy, intimidating manner. When they approached Goetz and asked him for $5, he replied, "I have $5 for each of you," and fired five bullets from a nonlicensed .38-cal. handgun, wounding all four and shooting two in the back. Then he fled. According to the prosecution, Goetz intended to kill the teen- agers, although he did not consider himself to be in a life-threatening situation. One of the four, Darryl Cabey, 19, who was shot in the spine and is paralyzed from the waist down, slipped into a coma at the hospital last week and was listed in critical condition. Goetz is due in court this week to learn if he will be indicted. District Attorney Robert Morgenthau has refused to grant immunity to Goetz or to the youths in exchange for testimony. As a result, both the shooter and his victims have refused to appear before a grand jury.