Murder of Kitty Genovese
Kitty Genovese, a 28-year-old bartender, was raped and stabbed to death on March 13, 1964 outside the apartment building where she lived in the Kew Gardens neighborhood of the Queens borough of New York City, United States. 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. 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. The incident prompted inquiries into what became known as the bystander effect, or "Genovese syndrome," and the murder became present in U.S. psychology textbooks for the next four decades.
Researchers have since uncovered major inaccuracies in the Times article, and police interviews revealed that some witnesses had attempted to contact authorities. In 1964, reporters at a competing news organization discovered that the Times article was inconsistent with the facts, but they were unwilling at the time to challenge Times editor Abe Rosenthal. In 2007, an article in the American Psychologist found "no evidence for the presence of 38 witnesses, or that witnesses observed the murder, or that witnesses remained inactive". In 2016, the Times called its own reporting "flawed", stating that the original story "grossly exaggerated the number of witnesses and what they had perceived".
Winston Moseley, a 29-year-old Manhattan native, was arrested during a house burglary six days after the murder. While in custody, he confessed to killing Genovese. At his trial, Moseley was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. Moseley died in prison on March 28, 2016, at the age of 81, having served 52 years.
Victim
Catherine Susan "Kitty" Genovese was born in the Brooklyn borough of New York on July 7, 1935, the eldest of five children of Italian-American parents Rachel and Vincent Andronelle Genovese. Genovese was raised Catholic, living in a brownstone residence at 29 St. John's Place in Park Slope, a western Brooklyn neighborhood populated mainly by families of Italian and Irish heritage.In her teenage years, Genovese attended the all-girl Prospect Heights High School, where she was recalled as being "self-assured beyond her years" and having a "sunny disposition". In 1954, after her mother witnessed a murder, Genovese's family moved to New 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 was annulled near the end of 1954 due to Genovese's sexuality as a lesbian.
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 for bookmaking, as she had been taking bets on horse races from bar patrons. She and a friend, Dee Guarnieri, were fined $50 each and she lost her job.
Genovese obtained another bartending position at Ev's Eleventh Hour Bar on Jamaica Avenue and 193rd Street in Hollis, Queens, and was soon managing the bar on behalf of its absentee owner. By working double shifts she was able to save money, which she intended to use to open an Italian restaurant. She shared her Kew Gardens apartment at 82–70 Austin Street with Mary Ann Zielonko, her girlfriend since 1963; Zielonko died in 2024 at the age of 85.
Attack
At approximately 2:30 a.m. on March 13, 1964, Genovese left Ev's Eleventh Hour Bar and began driving home in her red Fiat. While waiting for a traffic light to change on Hoover Avenue, she was spotted by Winston Moseley, who was sitting in his parked Chevrolet Corvair. Genovese arrived home around 3:15 a.m. and parked her car in the Kew Gardens Long Island Rail Road station parking lot, about from the door to her apartment, in an alleyway at the rear of the building. 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.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!", Moseley ran away and Genovese slowly made her way toward the rear of the building, seriously injured and out of view of any witnesses.
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. 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 before raping her, stealing $49 from her and running away again. 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.
Records of the earliest calls to police are unclear, but the calls were not given a high priority; the incident occurred four years before New York City implemented the 9-1-1 emergency call system. 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". A few minutes after the second attack, another witness, Karl Ross, called friends for advice on what to do before calling the police. 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.
Police investigation
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.On March 19, 1964, six days after the stabbing, Moseley was arrested for suspected robbery in Ozone 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. 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 in South 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.
Murderer
Winston Moseley was 29 years old at the time he murdered Genovese. He was from Ozone Park, Queens, and worked at Remington Rand as a tab operator, preparing the punched cards used at that time mainly for data input for digital computers. Moseley was married with three children and had no criminal record.While in custody, Moseley confessed to killing Genovese. He detailed the attack, corroborating the physical 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.
Moseley saw Genovese on her way home and followed her to the parking lot before killing her. He also confessed to murdering and sexually assaulting two other women and to committing between thirty and forty burglaries. Subsequent psychiatric examinations suggested that Moseley was a necrophile.
Trial
Moseley was charged with the murder of Genovese but was not charged with the other two murders he had admitted to. For the police, a complicating factor was that another man, Alvin Mitchell, had also confessed to the murder of Barbara Kralik.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 to not guilty by reason of insanity. 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. On June 15, Moseley was sentenced 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."
On June 23, Moseley appeared as a defense witness in the trial of Alvin Mitchell for the murder of Barbara Kralik. After being granted immunity from prosecution, he testified that he had killed Kralik. The trial produced a hung jury, but Mitchell was convicted in a second trial.
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, and the sentence was reduced to life imprisonment.