The Wall Street bombing occurred at 12:01 p.m. on September 16, 1920, in the Financial District of New York City. Thirty-eight people were killed and 400 injured by the blast.[1] It was more deadly than the 1910 bombing of the Los Angeles Times building by the McNamara brothers and would remain the deadliest bomb attack on U.S. soil for nearly seven years, until the Bath School bombings in Bath Township, Michigan.

 

The case was investigated for over three years; in the end, the Bureau of Investigation was not able to identify the perpetrators.[4] Decades later the FBI said "the best evidence and analysis since that fateful day of September 16, 1920, suggests that the Bureau's initial thought was correct—that a small group of Italian Anarchists were to blame. But the mystery remains."[4]

Anarchists were suspected, especially the Galleanists, Italian anarchist followers of Luigi Galleani. The Galleanists had a motive for planning the bombing, because they were incensed over the indictment for murder of two of their colleagues, Sacco and Vanzetti. Discrimination against immigrants and resident aliens, especially those from Eastern Europe and Sicily, increased notably after the attack, bolstering flagging public support for the Palmer raids. Investigators searched hundreds of stables to determine who had purchased the horse and wagon, but nothing was uncovered. The note[which?] was analyzed and its language structure found similar to other 'bomb' leaflets left at the scene by the Galleanists, but this by itself was insufficient. Despite vows that the police would catch the perpetrators, no charges were ever filed. The FBI rendered the file inactive in 1940, and the crime remains officially unsolved.[7]

One Galleanist in particular, Mario Buda (1884 - 1963), an associate of Sacco and Vanzetti whose car led to the arrest of the latter for a separate robbery and murder, is alleged by some historians, including Paul Avrich, to have planted the bomb as revenge for the arrest and indictment of his fellow Galleanists.[8] Buda's involvement was confirmed by statements made by his nephew Frank Maffi and Charles Poggi, who interviewed Buda himself in Savignano, Italy, in 1955.[8] Buda (at that time known by the alias of Mike Boda) had just managed to elude authorities at the time of the arrests of Sacco and Vanzetti, was experienced in the use of dynamite and other explosives, and is believed to have constructed several of the largest package bombs for the Galleanists, including a large black powder bomb that killed ten persons {including nine policemen} in Milwaukee, Wisconsin November 24, 1917.[7][9][10][11][12][13] Moreover, Buda was in New York City at the time of the bombing. However, he was never arrested or questioned by police. Interestingly in the San Francisco Preparedness Day Bombing of July 22, 1916, a sash weight bomb had been used which killed 10 and wounded 40.