| Murder of Kitty Genovese | |
|---|---|
 A 2019 view of the alleyway where Kitty Genovese was murdered | |
| Location | Kew Gardens,Queens,New York, U.S. |
| Coordinates | 40°42′34″N73°49′49″W / 40.70944°N 73.83028°W /40.70944; -73.83028 |
| Date | March 13, 1964 (1964-03-13) |
Attack type | Robbery,rape,murder bystabbing |
| Victim | Catherine "Kitty" Susan Genovese |
| Perpetrator | Winston Moseley |
| Motive | Femicide |
| Verdict | Guilty on all counts |
| Convictions |
|
| Trial | June 8–11, 1964 (1964-06-08 –1964-06-11) |
| Sentence | 1964:Death 1967:Commuted tolife imprisonment with the possibility ofparole (never granted)[1] |
In the early hours of March 13, 1964, Kitty Genovese, a 28-year-old bartender, wasraped and stabbed outside the apartment building where she lived in theKew Gardens neighborhood of theQueens borough ofNew York City, United States.[2][3][4] Two weeks after the murder,The New York Times published an article claiming that thirty-seven witnesses saw or heard the attack, and that none of them called the police or came to her aid.[5] However, subsequent investigations revealed that the extent of public apathy was exaggerated. While some neighbors heard her cries, many did not realize the severity of the situation.[6] The incident prompted inquiries into what became known as thebystander effect, or "Genovese syndrome",[7] and the murder became a staple of U.S.psychology textbooks for the next four decades.
Researchers have since uncovered major inaccuracies in theTimes article, and police interviews revealed that some witnesses had attempted to contact authorities. In 1964, reporters at a competing news organization discovered that theTimes article was inconsistent with the facts, but they were unwilling at the time to challengeTimes editorAbe Rosenthal. In 2007, an article in theAmerican Psychologist found "no evidence for the presence of 38 witnesses, or that witnesses observed the murder, or that witnesses remained inactive".[8] In 2016, theTimes called its own reporting "flawed", stating that the original story "grossly exaggerated the number of witnesses and what they had perceived".[9]
Winston Moseley, a 29-year-oldManhattan native, was arrested during a houseburglary six days after the murder. While in custody, he confessed to killing Genovese. At his trial, Moseley was found guilty of murder andsentenced to death. His sentence was later commuted tolife imprisonment. Moseley died in prison on March 28, 2016, at the age of 81, having served 52 years.[9]
Kitty Genovese | |
|---|---|
 Police mugshot taken after Genovese's 1961 arrest for bookmaking | |
| Born | Catherine Susan Genovese (1935-07-07)July 7, 1935 |
| Died | March 13, 1964(1964-03-13) (aged 28) |
| Cause of death | Murder (asphyxiation from stab to lung)[12] |
| Resting place | Lakeview Cemetery New Canaan,Connecticut, U.S. |
| Occupation | Bar manager |
Catherine Susan "Kitty" Genovese was born in theBrooklyn borough of New York on July 7, 1935,[10] the eldest of five children ofItalian-American parents Rachel (née Giordano) and Vincent Andronelle Genovese.[13][14] Genovese was raisedCatholic, living in a brownstone residence at 29 St. John's Place inPark Slope, a western Brooklyn neighborhood populated mainly by families of Italian andIrish heritage.[15]
In her teenage years, Genovese attended theall-girlProspect Heights High School, where she was recalled as being "self-assured beyond her years" and having a "sunny disposition".[16] In 1954, after her mother witnessed a murder, Genovese's family moved toNew Canaan,Connecticut, while Genovese, who had recently graduated from high school, remained in Brooklyn with her grandparents to prepare for her upcoming marriage. Later that year, the couple wed, but the marriage wasannulled near the end of 1954 due to Genovese's sexuality as alesbian.[16][17]
After moving into an apartment in Brooklyn, Genovese worked in clerical jobs, which she found unappealing. By the late 1950s, she had accepted a position as a bartender. In August 1961 she was briefly arrested forbookmaking, as she had been taking bets on horse races from bar patrons.[18] She and a friend, Dee Guarnieri, were fined $50 each (equivalent to $526 in 2024) and she lost her job.[19]
Genovese obtained another bartending position at Ev's Eleventh Hour Bar onJamaica Avenue and 193rd Street inHollis,Queens, and was soon managing the bar on behalf of its absentee owner.[20] By working double shifts she was able to save money, which she intended to use to open an Italian restaurant.[19] She shared her Kew Gardens apartment at 82–70 Austin Street with Mary Ann Zielonko, her girlfriend since 1963;[21][22] Zielonko died in 2024 at the age of 85.[23]
At approximately 2:30 a.m. on March 13, 1964, Genovese left Ev's Eleventh Hour Bar and began driving home in her redFiat. While waiting for a traffic light to change on Hoover Avenue, she was spotted by Winston Moseley, who was sitting in his parkedChevrolet Corvair. Genovese arrived home around 3:15 a.m. and parked her car in theKew Gardens Long Island Rail Road station parking lot, about 100 feet (30 m) from the door to her apartment, in an alleyway at the rear of the building.[24] As she walked toward the building, Moseley, who had followed her home, exited his vehicle, which he had parked at a corner bus stop on Austin Street. Armed with a hunting knife, he approached Genovese.[24]
Genovese ran toward the front of the building, and Moseley ran after her, overtook her and stabbed her twice in the back. Genovese screamed, "Oh my God, he stabbed me! Help me!" Several neighbors heard her cry, but only a few of them recognized the sound as a cry for help. When Robert Mozer, one of the neighbors, shouted at the attacker, "Let that girl alone!",[25] Moseley ran away and Genovese slowly made her way toward the rear of the building,[8] seriously injured and out of view of any witnesses.[25]
Witnesses saw Moseley enter his car, drive away and return ten minutes later. Shadowing his face with a wide-brimmed hat, he systematically searched the parking lot, the train station and an apartment complex, eventually finding Genovese, who was barely conscious and lying in a hallway at the back of the building, where a locked door had prevented her from going inside.[12] Out of view of the street and of those who may have heard or seen any sign of the initial attack, Moseley stabbed Genovese several more times beforeraping her, stealing $49 from her and running away again.[25] The attacks spanned approximately half an hour, and knife wounds in Genovese's hands suggested that she attempted to defend herself. Her neighbor and close friend, Sophia Farrar, found Genovese shortly after the second attack and held her in her arms, whispering, "Help is on the way" until an ambulance arrived.[26][27]
Records of the earliest calls to police are unclear, but the calls were not given a high priority; the incident occurred four years beforeNew York City implemented the9-1-1 emergency call system.[28] One witness said his father called the police after the first attack and reported that a woman was "beat up, but got up and was staggering around".[29] A few minutes after the second attack, another witness, Karl Ross,[fn 1] called friends for advice on what to do before calling the police.[30] Genovese was picked up by an ambulance at 4:15 a.m., and died en route to the hospital. She was buried on March 16, 1964, in Lakeview Cemetery in New Canaan, Connecticut.[16]
Zielonko, Genovese's girlfriend, was questioned by Detective Mitchell Sang at 7:00 a.m. on the morning after the murder. She was later interrogated for six hours by two homicide detectives, John Carroll and Jerry Burns, whose questioning centered on her relationship with Genovese. This was also the police's focus when they questioned the couple's neighbors. Initially, Zielonko was considered to be a suspect.[31]
On March 19, 1964, six days after the stabbing,[5] Moseley was arrested for suspected robbery inOzone Park after a television set was discovered in the trunk of his car. The car was searched after a local man, Raoul Cleary, became suspicious when he saw Moseley removing the television from a neighbor's house. Cleary questioned Moseley, who claimed to be a removal worker. However, after consulting another neighbor, Jack Brown, who confirmed that the homeowners were not moving, Cleary called the police. Brown disabled Moseley's car to ensure he could not flee before police arrived.[32] A detective recalled that a white car similar to Moseley's had been reported by some of the witnesses to Genovese's murder, and he informed Detectives Carroll and Sang. During questioning, Moseley admitted to the murders of Genovese and two other women – Annie Mae Johnson, who had been shot and burned to death in her apartment inSouth Ozone Park a few weeks earlier; and 15-year-old Barbara Kralik, who had been killed in her parents'Springfield Gardens home the previous July.[9][31]
Winston Moseley | |
|---|---|
 Booking photograph (April 1, 1964) | |
| Born | March 2, 1935[33] |
| Died | (aged 81)[9] Clinton Correctional Facility,Dannemora, New York, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Remington Rand machine operator |
| Children | 3 |
| Motive | Femicide |
| Convictions |
|
| Criminal penalty | 1964:Death 1967:Commuted tolife imprisonment with the possibility ofparole plus 30 years |
| Details | |
| State | New York |
| Killed | 1 convicted 3 confessed |
Winston Moseley was 29 years old at the time he murdered Genovese. He was from Ozone Park, Queens, and worked atRemington Rand as a tab operator, preparing thepunched cards used at that time mainly for data input for digital computers.[34] Moseley was married with three children and had no criminal record.[16]
While in custody, Moseley confessed to killing Genovese. He detailed the attack, corroborating thephysical evidence at the scene. He said that his motive for the attack was simply "to kill a woman", saying he preferred to kill women because "they were easier and didn't fight back". Moseley stated that he got up that night around 2 a.m., while his wife was working nights as a registered nurse, and drove through Queens to find a victim.[35]
Moseley saw Genovese on her way home and followed her to the parking lot before killing her.[35] He also confessed to murdering andsexually assaulting two other women and to committing between thirty and fortyburglaries.[36] Subsequent psychiatric examinations suggested that Moseley was anecrophile.[37][38]
Moseley was charged with the murder of Genovese but was not charged with the other two murders he had admitted to.[9] For the police, a complicating factor was that another man, Alvin Mitchell, had also confessed to the murder of Barbara Kralik.[39]
Moseley's trial began on June 8, 1964, and was presided over by Judge J. Irwin Shapiro. Moseley initially pleaded not guilty, but his attorney later changed his plea tonot guilty by reason of insanity.[40] During his testimony, Moseley described the events on the night he murdered Genovese, along with the two other murders to which he had confessed and numerous other burglaries and rapes. The jury deliberated for seven hours before returning a guilty verdict at around 10:30 p.m on June 11.[33] On June 15, Moseley wassentenced to death for the murder of Genovese. When the jury foreman read the sentence, Moseley showed no emotion, while some spectators applauded and cheered. Shapiro added, "I don't believe in capital punishment, but when I see a monster like this, I wouldn't hesitate to pull the switch myself."[41]
On June 23, Moseley appeared as adefense witness in the trial of Alvin Mitchell for the murder of Barbara Kralik. After being grantedimmunity from prosecution, he testified that he had killed Kralik.[42] The trial produced ahung jury, but Mitchell was convicted in a second trial.[9]
On June 1, 1967, theNew York Court of Appeals found that Moseley should have been able to argue that he was medically insane at the sentencing hearing when the trial court found that he had been legally sane, and the sentence was reduced tolife imprisonment.[43]
On March 18, 1968, Moseley escaped while being transported back to prison from Meyer Memorial Hospital inBuffalo, where he had undergone minor surgery for a self-inflicted injury.[44][45] He hit the transportingcorrectional officer, stole his weapon and fled to a nearby vacant house owned by aGrand Island couple, Mr. and Mrs. Matthew Kulaga, where he stayed undetected for three days. On March 21, the Kulagas went to check on the house, where they encountered Moseley, who held them hostage for more than an hour, binding and gagging Mr. Kulaga and raping Mrs. Kulaga. He then took the couple's car and fled.[44][46]
Moseley traveled to Grand Island where, on March 22, he broke into another house and held a woman and her daughter hostage for two hours before releasing them unharmed. He surrendered to police shortly afterward[47] and was charged with escape and kidnapping, to which he pleaded guilty. Moseley was given two additional fifteen-year sentences to run concurrently with his life sentence.[48]
In September 1971, Moseley participated in theAttica Prison riot.[9][49] Later in the same decade, he obtained aBachelor of Arts insociology in prison fromNiagara University.[50] He became eligible forparole in 1984. During his first parole hearing, he told the parole board that the notoriety he faced due to his crimes made him a victim, stating, "For a victim outside, it's a one-time or one-hour or one-minute affair, but for the person who's caught, it's forever."[51] At the same hearing, Moseley claimed he never intended to kill Genovese and that he considered her murder to be amugging because "people do kill people when they mug them sometimes." The board denied his request for parole.[52]
Moseley returned for a parole hearing on March 13, 2008, the 44th anniversary of Genovese's murder. He continued to show little remorse for Genovese's murder,[51] and parole was again denied.[53] Genovese's brother Vincent was unaware of the 2008 hearing until he was contacted by reporters for the New YorkDaily News.[51] He has reportedly never recovered from his sister's murder.[51] "This brings back what happened to her," Vincent had said; "the whole family remembers".[51]
Moseley was denied parole an eighteenth time in November 2015[54] and died in prison on March 28, 2016,[9] at the age of 81. He had served 52 years, making him one of the longest-serving inmates in theNew York State prison system.[55]
The murder did not receive much immediate media attention. It took a remark fromNew York City Police CommissionerMichael J. Murphy toNew York Times metropolitan editorAbe Rosenthal over lunch – Rosenthal later quoted Murphy as saying, "That Queens story is one for the books" – to motivate theTimes into publishing an investigative report.[14][26] The article,[5] written by Martin Gansberg and published two weeks after the murder, claimed that thirty-eight witnesses saw the murder, but an error reduced the number of witnesses by one in the headline, "37 Who Saw Murder Didn't Call the Police". It has been quoted and reproduced since 1964 with a corrected headline of "Thirty-Eight Who Saw Murder Didn't Call the Police".[56] The public view of the story crystallized around a quote from the article by an unidentified neighbor who saw part of the attack but deliberated before finally getting another neighbor to call the police, saying, "I didn't want to get involved."[14] Many then saw the story of Genovese's murder as emblematic of the callousness or apathy of life in big cities, and New York in particular.[56]
Science-fiction author and culturalprovocateurHarlan Ellison stated that "thirty-eight people watched" Genovese "get knifed to death in a New York street".[57] His June 1988 article inThe Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (later reprinted in his bookHarlan Ellison's Watching) referred to the murder as "witnessed by thirty-eight neighbors, not one of whom made the slightest effort to save her, to scream at the killer, or even to call the police". He cited reports he claimed to have read that one man, "viewing the murder from his third-floor apartment window, stated later that he rushed to turn up his radio so he wouldn't hear the woman's screams".
Public reaction to murders happening in the neighborhood supposedly did not change. According to aTimes article dated December 27, 1974, ten years after Genovese's murder, 25-year-old Sandra Zahler was beaten to death early Christmas morning in an apartment within a building that overlooked the site of the Genovese attack. Neighbors again said they heard screams and "fierce struggles" but did nothing.[58]
In an interview onNPR on March 3, 2014, Kevin Cook, author ofKitty Genovese: The Murder, the Bystanders, the Crime That Changed America, said:
Thirty-eight witnesses – that was the story that came from the police. And it really is what made the story stick. Over the course of many months of research, I wound up finding a document that was a collection of the first interviews. Oddly enough, there were 49 witnesses. I was puzzled by that until I added up the entries themselves. Some of them were interviews with two or three people [who] lived in the same apartment. I believe that some harried civil servant gave that number to the police commissioner who gave it to Rosenthal, and it entered the modern history of America after that.[59]
Two decades after the murder, theChicago Tribune began an article titled "Justice in the wrong hands"[60] by saying:
Twenty years later, in the same city, a man known in headlines as the "subway vigilante" and the "Death Wish gunman"shoots four teenage boys on a subway and a disturbing number of voices express delight... Miss Genovese screamed for more than a half-hour ... the public reaction is ... disbelief that law enforcement authorities will protect people against street crime, and in its display of belief that the rule of force is all that is left."
Harold Takooshian, writing inPsychology Today, stated that:
In his book, Rosenthal asked a series of behavioral scientists to explain why people do or do not help a victim and he found none could offer an evidence-based answer. How ironic that this same question was answered separately by a non-scientist. When the killer was apprehended, and Chief of DetectivesAlbert Seedman asked him how he dared to attack a woman in front of so many witnesses, the psychopath calmly replied, 'I knew they wouldn't do anything, people never do'
— Seedman & Hellman, 1974, p. 100.[61]
Psychologist Frances Cherry has suggested the interpretation of the murder as an issue of bystander intervention is incomplete.[62] She has pointed to additional research such as that of Borofsky[63] and Shotland[64] demonstrating that people, especially at that time, were unlikely to intervene if they believed a man was attacking his wife or girlfriend. She has suggested that the issue might be better understood in terms of male/female power relations.[62]
The apparent lack of reaction by numerous neighbors purported to have watched the scene or to have heard Genovese's cries for help, although erroneously reported, prompted research intodiffusion of responsibility and thebystander effect. Social psychologistsJohn M. Darley andBibb Latané started this line of research, showing that contrary to common expectations, larger numbers of bystanders decrease the likelihood that someone will step forward and help a victim.[65] The reasons include the fact that onlookers see that others are not helping either, that onlookers believe others will know better how to help, and that onlookers feel uncertain about helping while others are watching. The Genovese case thus became a classic feature ofsocial psychology textbooks in the United States and the United Kingdom.[8]
In September 2007,American Psychologist published an examination of the factual basis of coverage of the Genovese murder in psychology textbooks. The three authors concluded that the story was moreparable than fact, largely because of inaccurate newspaper coverage at the time of the incident.[8] According to the authors, "despite this absence of evidence, the story continues to inhabit our introductory social psychology textbooks (and thus the minds of future social psychologists)." A survey of ten leading undergraduate psychology textbooks found the Genovese case in all ten of them, with eight textbooks suggesting that witnesses watched from their windows as Genovese was murdered, and two textbooks stating that some or most of the witnesses heard but could not see the attack.[66][67]
More recent investigations have questioned the original version of events.[59][26][68] A 2004 article in theTimes byJim Rasenberger, published on the fortieth anniversary of Genovese's murder, raised numerous questions about claims in the originalTimes article. A 2007 study (confirmed in 2014[26]) found many of the purported facts about the murder to be unfounded, stating there was "no evidence for the presence of 38 witnesses, or that witnesses observed the murder, or that witnesses remained inactive".[8] After Moseley's death in March 2016, theTimes called their second story "flawed", stating:[9]
While there was no question that the attack occurred, and that some neighbors ignored cries for help, the portrayal of 38 witnesses as fully aware and unresponsive was erroneous. The article grossly exaggerated the number of witnesses and what they had perceived. None saw the attack in its entirety. Only a few had glimpsed parts of it, or recognized the cries for help. Many thought they had heard lovers or drunks quarreling. There were two attacks, not three. And afterward, two people did call the police. A 70-year-old[fn 2] woman ventured out and cradled the dying victim in her arms until they arrived. Ms. Genovese died on the way to a hospital.
Because of the layout of the apartment building and the fact that the attacks took place in different locations, no witness saw the entire sequence of events. Investigation by police and prosecutors showed that approximately a dozen individuals had heard or seen portions of the attack, though none saw or were aware of the entire incident.[69] Only one witness, Joseph Fink, was aware Genovese was stabbed in the first attack, and only Karl Ross was aware of it in the second attack. Many were entirely unaware that an assault or homicide had taken place; some thought what they saw or heard was a domestic quarrel, a drunken brawl or a group of friends leaving the bar when Moseley first approached Genovese.[8] After the initial attack punctured her lungs, leading to her eventual death fromasphyxiation, it is unlikely that Genovese was able to scream at any volume.[70]
A 2015 documentary titledThe Witness, featuring Genovese's brother William, discovered that other crime reporters knew of many problems with the story even in 1964. Immediately after the story broke,WNBC police reporter Danny Meehan discovered many inconsistencies in the originalTimes article, asking Gansberg why his article failed to reveal that witnesses did not feel that a murder was happening. Gansberg replied, "It would have ruined the story." Not wishing to jeopardize his career by attacking a powerful figure like Rosenthal, Meehan kept his findings secret and passed his notes to fellow WNBC reporterGabe Pressman. As a journalism instructor, Pressman taught a course in which some of his students called Rosenthal and confronted him with the evidence. Rosenthal was irate that his editorial decisions were being questioned by journalism students and angrily berated Pressman in a phone call.[71]
On October 12, 2016, theTimes appended an Editor's Note to the online version of its 1964 article, stating that, "Later reporting by The Times and others has called into question significant elements of this account."[5]
New York radio stationWNYC, looking back in 2014, reported on how "An Iconic Murder Helped Create the9-1-1 System."[72][73][74]
A confirmingPBS report wrote how "papers and media outlets ran with the story;" they also added "nearly a dozen books" and when it came to film, mentioned "James Solomon's filmThe Witness" more than once.[fn 3] The report's "The Genesis of 911" section noted that "Up until the late 1960s, there was no centralized number for people to call in case of an emergency."[75]
The story of the witnesses who did nothing "is taught in every introduction-to-psychology textbook in the United States and Britain, and in many other countries and has been made popularly known through television programs and books,"[66] and songs. It also now appears that the Kitty Genovese investigation and story was linked to false confessions in other cases.[76]
WNYC,[72] PBS[75] andThe New York Times[4] lookback articles referenced in particular one film (The Witness) and have noted the cumulative impact of the murder to the development of the 911 system.[3][fn 4]
She parked her car and started walking towards her apartment building, when she noticed a man standing at the corner end of the parking lot. Genovese nervously kept walking. Moseley had caught up to her, close to her apartment building, when he took his first stab.
When Ms. Genovese, 28, was raped and murdered on her way home to her apartment.
:Brooke Gladstone: Wasn't she screaming during the second attack? :Joseph de May: The wounds that she apparently suffered during the first attack, the two to four stabs in the back, caused her lungs to be punctured, and the testimony given at trial is that she died not from bleeding to death but from asphyxiation. The air from her lungs leaked into herthoracic cavity, compressing the lungs, making it impossible for her to breathe. I am not a doctor, but as a layman my question is, if someone suffers that type of lung damage, are they even physically capable of screaming for a solid half hour?
On March 13, 1964, Kitty Genovese was raped and stabbed to death outside her apartment in Queens, with 38 people allegedly ignoring her