See Story with Illustrations Here
The article below was originally written by Martin Gansberg for the New York Times two weeks after the murder of Ms. Genovese and earned an award for excellence from the Newspaper Reporters Association of New York.
The reported events are true and took place on March 14, 1964.
The brutal murder of Kitty Genovese and the disturbing lack of action by her neighbors became emblematic in what many perceived as an evolving culture of violence and apathy in the United States. In fact, social scientists still debate the causes of what is now known as "the Genovese Syndrome".
At approximately 3:20 on the morning of March 13, 1064, twenty-eight-year-old Ms. Catherine (Kitty) Genovese was returning to her home in a nice middle-class area of Queens, NY, from her job as a bar manager. She parked her red Fiat in a nearby parking lot, turned-off the lights and started the walk to her second floor apartment [marker (2) in illustration (see drawings by clicking on link above)] some 35 yards away. She got as far as a streetlight when a man grabbed her. She screamed. Lights went on in the 10-floor apartment building nearby. She yelled, "Oh, my God, he stabbed me! Please help me!" Windows opened in the apartment building and a man's voice shouted, "Let that girl alone." The attacker looked up, shrugged and walked off down the street. Ms. Genovese struggled to get to her feet. Lights went back off in the apartments. The attacker came back and stabbed her again. She again cried out, "I'm dying! I'm dying!" And again the lights came on and windows opened in many of the nearby apartments. The assailant again left and got into his car and drove away. Ms. Genovese staggered to her feet as a city bus drove by. It was now 3:35 a.m. The attacker returned once again. He found her in a doorway at the foot of the stairs [marker (1) in illustration] and he stabbed her a third time - this time with a fatal consequence. It was 3:50 when the police received the first call. They responded quickly and within two minutes were at the scene. Ms. Genovese was already dead. The only person to call, a neighbor of Ms. Genovese, revealed that he had phoned only after much thought and an earlier phone call to a friend. He said, "I didn't want to get involved."
Later it was learned that there were 37 other witnesses to the stalking and stabbing over the half-hour period. Why did not one offer any help or call the police earlier when it might have helped? The story and question were front-page news across the country. Urban and moral decay, apathy, indifference were some of the many offered explanations.
For more than half an hour 38 respectable, law-abiding citizens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab a woman in three separate attacks in Kew Gardens.
Twice their chatter and the sudden glow of their bedroom lights interrupted him and frightened him off. Each time he returned, sought her out, and stabbed her again. Not one person telephoned the police during the assault; one witness called after the woman was dead.
That was two weeks ago today.
One of the case detectives and a veteran of 25 years of homicide investigations said he can give a matter-of-fact recitation on many murders. But the Kew Gardens slaying baffles him - not because it is a murder, but because the "good people" failed to call the police.
"As we have reconstructed the crime," he said, "the assailant had three chances to kill this woman during a 35-minute period. He returned twice to complete the job. If we had been called when he first attacked, the woman might not be dead now."
This is what the police say happened at 3:20 A.M. in the staid, middle-class, tree-lined Austin Street area:
Twenty-eight year ole Catherine Genovese, who was called Kitty by almost everyone in the neighborhood, was returning home from her job as manager of a bar in Hollis. She parked her red Fiat in the lot adjacent to the Kew Gardens Long Island Railroad Station, facing Mowbray Place. Like many residents of the neighborhood, she had parked there day after day since her arrival from Connecticut a year ago, although the railroad frowns on the practice. She turned off the lights of her car, locked the door, and started to walk the 100 feet to the entrance of her apartment at 82-70 Austin Street, which is in a Tudor building, with stores in the first floor and apartments on the second.
The entrance to the apartment is in the rear of the building because the front is rented to retail stores. At night the quiet neighborhood is shrouded in the slumbering darkness that marks most residential areas.
Miss Genovese noticed a man at the far end of the lot, near a seven-story apartment house at 82-40 Austin Street. She halted. Then, nervously, she headed up Austin Street toward Lefferts Boulevard, where there is a call box to 102nd Police Precinct in nearby Richmond Hill.
She got as far as a street light in front of a bookstore before the man grabbed her. She screamed. Lights went on in the 10-story apartment house at 82-67 Austin Street, which faces the bookstore. Windows slid open and voices punctuated the early-morning stillness.
Miss Genovese screamed: "Oh, my God, he stabbed me! Please help me! Please help me!"
From one of the upper windows in the apartment house, a man called down: "Let that girl alone!"
The assailant looked up at him, shrugged, and walked down Austin Street toward a white sedan parked a short distance away. Miss Genovese struggled to her feet.
Lights went out. The killer returned to Miss Genovese, now trying to make her way around the side of the building by the parking lot to get to her apartment. The assailant stabbed her again.
"I'm dying!" she shrieked. "I'm dying!"
Windows were opened again, and lights went on in many apartments. The assailant got into his car and drove away. Miss Genovese staggered to her feet. A city bus, 0-10, the Lefferts Boulevard line to Kennedy International Airport, passed. It was 3:35 A.M.
The assailant returned. By then, Miss Genovese had crawled to the back of the building, where the freshly painted brown doors to the apartment house held out hope for safety. The killer tried the first door; she wasn't there. At the second door, 82-62 Austin Street, he saw her slumped on the floor at the foot of the stairs. He stabbed her a third time -- fatally.
It was 3:50 by the time the police received their first call, from a man who was a neighbor of Miss Genovese. In two minutes they were at the scene. The neighbor, a 70-year-old woman, and another woman were the only persons on the street. Nobody else came forward.
The man explained that he had called the police after much deliberation. He had phoned a friend in Nassau County for advice and then he had crossed the roof of the building to the apartment of the elderly woman to get her to make the call.
"I didn't want to get involved," he sheepishly told police.
Six days later, the police arrested Winston Moseley, a 29-year-old business machine operator, and charged him with homicide. Moseley had no previous record. He is married, has two children and owns a home at 133-19 Sutter Avenue, South Ozone Park, Queens. On Wednesday, a court committed him to Kings County Hospital for psychiatric observation.
When questioned by the police, Moseley also said he had slain Mrs. Annie May Johnson, 24, of 146-12 133rd Avenue, Jamaica, on Feb. 29 and Barbara Kralik, 15, of 174-17 140th Avenue, Springfield Gardens, last July. In the Kralik case, the police are holding Alvin L. Mitchell, who is said to have confessed to that slaying.
The police stressed how simple it would have been to have gotten in touch with them. "A phone call," said one of the detectives, "would have done it". The police may be reached by dialing "0" for operator or SPring 7-3100.
Today witnesses from the neighborhood, which is made up of one-family homes in the $35,000 to $60,000 range with the exception of the two apartment houses near the railroad station, find it difficult to explain why they didn't call the police.
A housewife, knowingly if quite casually, said, "We thought it was a lovers' quarrel." A husband and wife both said, "Frankly, we were afraid." They seemed aware of the fact that events might have been different. A distraught woman, wiping her hands in her apron, said, "I didn't want my husband to get involved."
One couple, now willing to talk about that night, said they heard the first screams. The husband looked thoughtfully at the bookstore where the killer first grabbed Miss Genovese.
"We went to the window to see what was happening," he said, "but the light from our bedroom made it difficult to see the street." The wife, still apprehensive, added: "I put out the light and we were able to see better."
Asked why they hadn't called the police, she shrugged and replied: "I don't know."
A man peeked out from a slight opening in the doorway to his apartment and rattled off an account of the killer's second attack. Why hadn't he called the police at the time? "I was tired," he said without emotion. "I went back to bed."
It was 4:25 A.M. when the ambulance arrived to take the body of Miss Genovese. It drove off. "Then," a solemn police detective said, "the people came out."
Two social psychologists, Bibb Latane and John Darley, unsatisfied with the above explanations, began a series of research studies to identify the situational factors that influence why people may be reluctant to come to the aid of others. Their explanation has been called diffusion of responsibility or the bystander effect and holds that an individual is less likely to provide assistance as the number of bystanders increases.
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