Saturday Night Bombings

The botched blowup in Times Square over the weekend brought back memories of a different Saturday night bombing 35 years ago.

Gilda and I were living in Seymour, Conn. I was a reporter for The New Haven Register. The nearby city of Shelton was my beat.

We had just settled into bed when the phone rang shortly after 11:35 pm., March 1, 1975. My boss was calling, asking why I was going to sleep when half of downtown Shelton was on the verge of being wiped off the face of the earth. Bombs had exploded inside the 475,000-sq.ft. Shelton Sponge Rubber Products Co. Plant 4 along the Housatonic River. It was, and possibly still is, the largest case of industrial arson in the United States.

I quickly dressed and drove the several miles to Shelton. Firemen and equipment, most from volunteer fire departments, converged on Canal Street from more than 20 neighboring towns. As the two-city-block-long factory burnt to a crisp shell, rumors started circulating. It was the work of radical Weathermen, it was said. Turned out the arsonists had kidnapped three plant employees and while tying them up safely in a woods in an adjoining town, one said they were part of the Weather Underground. It didn’t make sense. The plant was not vital to the Vietnam War effort. It made pillows and mattresses and other foam rubber products. But the reference to the Weathermen brought the FBI into the investigatory mix.

Within days authorities traced the suspects to a rented yellow Ryder van used to transport 500 pounds of dynamite and 24 55-gallon drums of gasoline into the factory. Among the 10 arrested were Charles D. Moeller, president of the company, and David D. Bubar, a Baptist minister and self-proclaimed psychic who counseled Moeller. The government alleged Moeller’s purchase of the plant from B.F. Goodrich the year before had financially strapped him. To relieve the burden, Moeller, under Bubar’s influence, had financed the arson, it was charged.

Moeller twice beat the rap, in federal and state court, though a civil trial found him responsible (much like the OJ Simpson situation), thus absolving his insurance company from any requirement to pay $68 million in damages on the building and its contents. Bubar, on the other hand, was found guilty of second degree arson. He served six and one-half years of a 20-year sentence. Seven other defendants also served time. The tenth was acquitted.

As spectacular as the fire was, the real tragedy of that night 35 years ago was the impact it had on the lives of the plant’s 900 workers and their families. The business never came back. The site was turned into a park. Other plants along the river either closed down or relocated. From being a once vibrant factory town, Shelton has evolved into a bedroom community for New Haven, Bridgeport and even New York, where another vehicle, an SUV, might prove vital in revealing who was behind the attempt to blow a hole in the middle of the crossroads of the world.