‘Intention Was to Murder,’ Goetz Confessed

A jury today listened to a tape of a nervous, stuttering Bernhard Goetz telling police that “my intention was to murder” four youths who had confronted him on a New York City subway.

The two-hour confession, taking up four reels of tape, was played during the third day of Goetz’s attempted murder trial in state Supreme Court.

The defense maintains that Goetz, 39, acted out of self-defense when he wounded four young men aboard the subway on Dec. 22, 1984, after at least one of them approached him and asked him for $5.

Shot Four People

“OK, I, I, I shot four people in the subway,” he said in the confession he begged to give police in Concord, N.H., on New Year’s Eve, 1984, waiving his right to have a lawyer present.

Goetz told how the four victims had approached him on the train and how he had perceived a threat by their “body language.”

When one of the victims asked him for money, he said, he felt “that they wanted to play with me, you know, it’s kind of like a cat plays with a mouse . . . it’s horrible.”

Goetz said he was not a fighter but said people had to think in a “cold-blooded way” in New York.

Making Them Suffer

“When I saw what they intended for me, my intention was, was worse than shooting. My intention was to, to anything I could do to hurt them. My intention, you know, I know this sounds horrible but my intention was to murder them, to hurt them, to make them suffer as much as possible,” he said on the tape.

“The facts are so cold and horrible, it’s disgusting,” he said in a voice occasionally choking with emotion.

The packed courtroom was silent as the tape was played over the loudspeaker, with Goetz occasionally smiling as he heard his voice recount the events that brought him to trial.