http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitty_Genovese
Life
Born in New York City, Genovese was the oldest of five children in a middle class Italian American family and was raised in Brooklyn. After her mother witnessed a murder in the city, the family chose to move to Connecticut in 1954. Genovese, however, 19 at the time, chose to remain in the city, where she lived for ten years. Kitty eventually took a job as a bar manager at Ev's 11th Hour Sports bar on Jamaica Avenue in Hollis, Queens. At the time of her murder, she lived in a Queens apartment she shared with her girlfriend, Mary Ann Zielonko. The two lived a quiet life together.
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Attack
Genovese had driven home in the early morning of March 13, 1964. Arriving home at about 3:15 a.m. and parking about 100 feet (30 m) from her apartment's door, she was approached by a man named Winston Moseley. Moseley ran after her and quickly overtook her, stabbing her twice in the back. When Genovese screamed out, her cries were heard by several neighbors; but on a cold night with the windows closed only a few of them recognized the sound as a cry for help. When one of the neighbors shouted at the attacker, "Let that girl alone!", Moseley ran away and Genovese slowly made her way towards her own apartment around the end of the building. She was seriously injured but now out of view of those few who may have had reason to believe she was in need of help.
Records of the earliest calls to police are unclear and were certainly not given a high priority by the police. One witness said his father called police after the initial attack and reported that a woman was "beat up, but got up and was staggering around."
Other witnesses observed Moseley enter his car and drive away, only to return ten minutes later. He systematically searched the parking lot, train station, and small apartment complex, ultimately finding Genovese, who was lying, barely conscious, in a hallway at the back of the building. Out of view of the street and of those who may have heard or seen any sign of the original attack, he proceeded to further attack her, stabbing her several more times. Knife wounds in her hands suggested that she attempted to defend herself from him. While she lay dying he attempted to rape her. He stole about $49.00 from her and left her dying in the hallway. The attacks spanned approximately half an hour.
A few minutes after the final attack a witness, Karl Ross, called the police. Police and medical personnel arrived within minutes of Ross's call; Genovese was taken away by ambulance and died en route to the hospital. Later investigation revealed that 38 individuals nearby had heard or observed portions of the attack, though none could have seen or been aware of the entire incident. Only one witness (Joseph Fink) was aware she 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 was in progress; some thought that what they saw or heard was a lover's quarrel or a drunken brawl or a group of friends leaving the bar outside which Moseley first approached Genovese.
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Perpetrator
Winston Moseley, a business machine operator, was later apprehended in connection with another crime; he confessed not only to the murder of Kitty Genovese, but to two other murders as well, both involving sexual assaults. Subsequent psychiatric examinations suggested that Moseley was a necrophiliac. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to death.
Moseley gave a confession to the police where he detailed the attack, corroborating the physical evidence at the scene. His motive for the attack was simply "to kill a woman." Moseley stated that he got up that night around 2:00 a.m., leaving his wife asleep at home, and drove around to find a victim. He spied Genovese and followed her to the parking lot.
Moseley also testified at his own trial where he further described the attack, leaving no question that he was the killer.
This sentence was reduced to an indeterminate sentence of 20 years to life imprisonment on June 1, 1967. The New 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.
In 1968, during a trip to a Buffalo, New York hospital for surgery, Moseley overpowered a guard and beat him up to the point that his eyes were bloody. He then took a bat and swung it at the closest person to him and took five hostages, sexually assaulting one of them, before he was recaptured alive. He remained in prison after being denied parole a twelfth time on February 3, 2006. A previous parole hearing included his defense that "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."[1] He will be eligible for parole again in 2008.
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Public reaction
The story of Genovese's murder became an almost-instant parable about the supposed callousness, or at least apathy to others' plight, of either New York City, urban America, or humanity in general. Much of this framing of the event came in reaction to an investigative article [2] in the New York Times written by Martin Gansberg and published on March 27, two weeks after the murder. The article bore the thrilling headline "Thirty-Eight Who Saw Murder Didn't Call the Police"; the public view of the story crystallized around a quote from the article, from an unidentified neighbor who saw part of the attack but deliberated, before finally getting another neighbor to call the police: "I didn't want to get involved".
While Genovese's neighbors were vilified by the article, in truth "38 onlookers who did nothing" is a misleading conception. The article begins:
For more than half an hour thirty-eight respectable, law-abiding citizens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab a woman in three separate attacks in Kew Gardens.
This lead is dramatic and factually inaccurate. None of the witnesses observed the attacks in their entirety. Because of the layout of the complex and the fact that each attack took place in a different location as Genovese attempted to flee her attacker, it would have been physically impossible for a witness to have seen the entire attack. Most only heard portions of the incident without realizing its seriousness, a few saw only small portions of the initial assault, and no witnesses directly saw the final rape and attack in an exterior hallway which resulted in Genovese's death.
Nevertheless, media attention to the Genovese murder led to reform of the NYPD's telephone reporting system; the system in place at the murder was often inefficient and directed individuals to the incorrect department. The melodramatic press coverage also led to serious investigation of the bystander effect by academic psychologists. In addition, some communities organized Neighborhood Watch programs and the equivalent for apartment buildings to aid people in distress.
To this day the story of Kitty Genovese remains a rallying point for advocates of self-defense awareness.
