On March 13th, 1964, one of one of the most infamous crimes in American history occurred in the Kew Gardens neighborhood of Queens, New York. At around 3 AM, 28-year-old Catherine "Kitty" Genovese was attacked, sexually assaulted, and murdered as she walked from her parked car. The assault lasted thirty-five minutes and occurred outside of an apartment building where a reported 38 witnesses either heard or saw the attack and did nothing to stop it. A front-page article in the New York Times sparked an avalanche of press and weeks of national soul searching. The case has lived on in plays, musicals, TV dramas -- it even spawned a whole new branch of psychology.

Joseph De May, a member of the Richmond Hill Historical Society dismantles by dissecting the New York Times article, what is not the epitome of public apathy, rather an example of gross media sensationalism.

What you think you know about the case might not be true.

Joseph De May

According to the March 27, 1964 New York Times:

"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.  Twice the sound of their voices 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."

The story became a cultural landmark, making infamous the phrase, "We didn't want to get involved."  However, the undisputed evidence from the killer's trial and other sources shows that the Times account is mostly wrong.

Kitty Genovese

Photo of crime scene

This Much Is Certain

At 3:20 AM on March 13, 1964, Winston Moseley attacked Catherine (Kitty) Genovese in front of a 2 story Tudor building on Austin Street in Kew Gardens, NY about 50 ft. from a bar known to generate loud, late night rowdiness. He stabbed her twice in the back. Her screams awakened some residents of the Mowbray Apartment House across the street, several of whom went to their windows.

There were 2 attacks not 3

Most people both in and out of the media believe that Kitty was attacked three times.  However, the undisputed evidence presented at the killer's trial by the district attorney shows that there were only two attacks, not three. Subsequent accounts in the media have also verified the number of attacks as two  - the most recent account being the February 8, 2004 New York Times. 

The first attack occurred on Austin Street in front of a 2 story Tudor building directly across from the Mowbray Apartment House where the overwhelming majority of the 38 witnesses lived. The second took place in a vestibule in the rear of the 2 story Tudor building.

In his famous book on the case, A.M. Rosenthal, the Times' Metropolitan Editor, also describes only those two attacks:

      "Lurking near the parking lot was a man. Miss Genovese saw him in the shadows, turned and walked toward a police box. The man pursued her, stabbed her. She screamed, "Oh my God, he stabbed me!  Please help me!  Please help me!
       Somebody threw open a window. A man called out, 'Let that girl alone!'  Other lights turned on, other windows were raised. The attacker got into a car and drove away. A bus passed.
       The attacker drove back, got out, searched out Miss Genovese in the back of an apartment building where she had crawled for safety, stabbed her again, drove away again."

In its June 10, 1964 edition, The New York Times explained the confusion surrounding the number of attacks. It said that initial police reports of 3 attacks were based on the investigators' misinterpretation of a statement given by a witness named Andree Picq.

The police were called after the first attack

One of the witnesses to the first attack on Kitty was a 15 year old boy named Michael Hoffman. Today in his mid-fifties, Hoffman has signed an affidavit sworn to under penalties of perjury in which he says that he awoke to see Moseley run away, and Kitty get up and stagger off. Since he did not see the stabbings, he thought Kitty was drunk or had been beaten. He told this to his father who immediately called the police.  

"Eventually, dad got through to the police. He told the dispatcher what we had seen and heard - that a lady was "beat up, but got up and was staggering around". He told the dispatcher her location was "by the drugstore at the LIRR station", and that the lady walked away but appeared dazed. My father was on the phone at least five full minutes, most of it waiting to be connected to the police dispatcher.

* * *

"I worked as a New York City policeman out of the 112nd Precinct although that was years after Kitty was killed. While stationed at the 112, I met an old timer (it’s been too many years to remember his name) who was almost ready to retire. He told me he was on duty in the 102nd Precinct that night and heard the first call go out as a simple assault. It wasn’t even put out as "in progress". The dispatcher sent out a second call escalating the situation after Kitty was found lying in the hallway."

If Hoffman's father called police, then it means other people may well have called, too. There is evidence to indicate that they did.

In its July 23, 1995 edition, a Long Island, NY newspaper called Newsday reported at p. A3 that:

"In reports immediately following the [Kitty Genovese] crime, police admitted receiving several calls, but said the caller hung up before they got any information."

  Presumably the caller or callers gave at least some information about the attack, otherwise, the police would have had no way of knowing that the calls had anything to do with Kitty as the Newsday article suggests they did. Furthermore, the fact that the caller or callers hung up might have reflected more on police procedures than on the callers. Kitty's murder took place 40 years ago when there was no such thing as 911. [See sidebar.]  In his 1964 book on the case entitled, Thirty-eight witnesses, the Times Metropolitan Editor, A.M. Rosenthal wrote:

" ... the three most frequent complaints [against the New York City Police Department in 1964 included]: ... The necessity of having to answer personal questions before action was taken.

* * *

Another delay in New York [in 1964] results from the fact that policemen who handle incoming calls at the Communications Bureau usually ask for identification and other details before passing the information along to a radio room for relay to a radio car in the area.

* * *

  So, reading between the lines, the problem may not have been that no one called to report the first attack. Rather, it may well have been that whoever did call in did not want to identify themselves, and the police were slow to act upon anonymous complaints - especially when the complaints were not of a murder in progress, but of a simple assault in which the attacker had fled and the victim was seen to walk away.

In fairness to the police, the officers who had to field incoming calls had a different perspective. According to former Chief of Detectives, Albert A. Seedman:

"[As desk sergeant], you spent four hours at the switchboard, taking all calls that came in to the Precinct [including wasting] time talking to nuts, drunks, and lonely people who wanted to tell you either how great or how lousy you were doing your job."

There were not 38 eye witnesses

The headline and lead paragraph of the March 27, 1964 New York Times story say that there were 38 eye witnesses to Kitty's murder, and that is the number everyone remembers today. However, that number turns out to have been incorrect. Charles Skoller was one of the Assistant District Attorneys who prosecuted Moseley. He told the February 8, 2004 New York Times:

"I don't think 38 people witnessed it. I don't know where that came from, the 38. I didn't count 38. We only found half a dozen that saw what was going on, that we could use."

 In fact, Times' reports going as far back as 1964 also say that only some of the 38 witnesses saw anything (the precise number was never given or estimated). The rest only heard something. Several months after Kitty's death, A.M. Rosenthal, then Metropolitan Editor of the Times, wrote his famous book about the case in which he, too, said that not all of the 38 were eye witnesses. Rosenthal wrote:

"Of the thirty-eight [witnesses], about eighteen had witnessed or heard each of the attacks; the other twenty had heard or seen one - enough to make them witnesses in court."

Rosenthal gives no breakdown of the number of eye witnesses versus the number of ear witnesses. In fact, the way it is worded, Rosenthal's statement would be true even if there had been only 2 eye witnesses. At a Kitty Genovese Forum held at Fordham University on March 9, 2004, A.M. Rosenthal denied that he or any other reporter at his paper had ever said there were 38 eye witnesses.

In a brief submitted to the New York State Court of Appeals, Queens District Attorney Thomas Mackel mentioned only 3 eye witnesses.

Whatever the precise number, merely being "witnesses" does not necessarily mean that the 38 saw, heard or understood what was happening. For example, if a man were only half awakened by Kitty's screams and then immediately drifted back off to sleep not to remember that fact until the next morning, he would still be a "witness" although he heard little and saw or understood nothing.  So the real questions are, what did the 38 witnesses see or hear that night, and what did they think it meant?

Only 3 eye witnesses are known to have seen Kitty attacked

As to what the witnesses saw, only three people have ever been publicly identified as having seen either of the two attacks in progress.

                                         The First Attack

The first attack happened swiftly. Kitty got out of her car, saw Moseley, became frightened and started running along Austin Street. Moseley later said that he ran approximately 20 feet before he caught up with her and stabbed her twice in the back.  

There does not seem to be any dispute that it was Kitty's screams after being stabbed in that initial attack that first awakened some residents of the Mowbray Apartments, bringing several of them to their windows - apparently too late to see the stabbings.  For example:

• Here's how the Queens District Attorney described the first attack in his brief to the New York Court of Appeals:

"After she parked her car, Katherine Genovese became frightened and ran when she saw Moseley. He ran after her for about twenty feet and stabbed her twice in the back, on the street. Her screams awakened several of her neighbors .."

 Notice that the D.A. clearly says that the witnesses awoke after the first stabbings.

• In his 1964 book on the case, Times Metropolitan Editor, A.M. Rosenthal, also said that the witnesses to the first attack got to their windows after Kitty had been stabbed:

    "Lurking near the parking lot was a man. Miss Genovese saw him in the shadows, turned and walked toward a police box. The man pursued her, stabbed her. She screamed, "Oh my God, he stabbed me! Please help me! Please help me!
      Somebody threw open a window. A man called out, 'Let that girl alone, ' Other lights turned on, other windows were raised. The attacker got into a car and drove away."

• In his chapter on the case, former New York City Chief of Detectives, Albert A. Seedman, describes Moseley's interrogation by the police. Here, according to Seedman, is how Moseley described his first attack on Kitty:

"I just jumped on her back and stabbed her. She fell down on her knees. She was screaming. I was looking for a place to drag her and shut her up when I noticed lights going on in some of the apartments. Then I heard someone shout down from a window."

Moseley's description of the first attack also indicates that the witnesses awoke and got to their windows after Kitty had been stabbed for the first time.

Actually, there are only two witnesses known to have seen the first attack in progress.

One was Joseph Fink, the assistant superintendent at the Mowbray Apartments across the street. He was on duty as the night elevator operator. In remarks delivered at a March 9, 2004 Forum on the Kitty Genovese case held at Fordham University, former Queens County Assistant District Attorney said that Fink saw the first stabbings and understood exactly what was happening.

The other witness was Andree Picq, and she testified at trial that she saw Kitty "laying down on the pavement . . . and a man was bending over her and beating her." Since there was no evidence that Moseley beat Kitty, what this witness must have seen were the first stabbings. However, whether due to the dim street lighting or disorientation from being suddenly awakened, Picq did not realize what it was she was seeing. That is not an uncommon phenomenon for eye witnesses to crimes, even when they are fully awake at the time.

                                   The Second Attack

There were only 2 attacks, not 3. The second attack took place 12 minutes later in a small hallway in the rear of the 2 story Tudor building where none of the residents of the Mowbray Apartment House could have seen it. Only one man saw part of that second attack. His name was Karl Ross and he lived in an apartment in the Tudor building up one flight of stairs from the hallway.

The witnesses saw Kitty leave and not come back

When Moseley drove off after the first attack, Kitty (who had been lying on the ground) got up "slowly". Trial witness, Robert Mozer testified that:

"She got up, stood up, and kind of looked around like that ... ."

Trial witness, Irene Frost testified that:

"Then it looked like she was reaching for her purse. She bent down again and picked something up. I don't know what it was ... ."

At this point, there was nothing in Kitty's body language to tell an unknowing onlooker who had not seen the stabbings that she was gravely wounded. Everyone agrees that Kitty then walked away, but there is disagreement as to the steadiness of her gait. Trial witness, Andree Picq, said that Kitty walked away "slowly". According to former New York City Chief of Detectives, Albert A. Seedman:

"[Kitty] was not staggering. If anything, her step was almost dreamlike."

The History Channel described her walk the same way.  If these accounts are correct, then there was still nothing about her body language that would put unknowing eye witnesses on notice that Kitty had been badly wounded. However, surviving witness, Michael Hoffman, and his father had perhaps the closest view of all. Hoffman describes her walk as more labored.

"The way she walked made us think she was either drunk, or had been beaten up. She walked slowly, holding on to the building wall for support as she did. She staggered."

Ordinarily, that kind of unsteady gait would be a sure sign to an onlooker that something was wrong even if it does not necessarily suggest the possibility of life threatening wounds. However, there was another factor that shaped the perceptions of witnesses who did not have Hoffman's view.

The original March 27, 1964 Times article does not mention it, but the first attack occurred only a few feet from a bar called Old Bailey.  Loud early morning behavior outside of any bar is not unusual, and Old Bailey was no exception - a fact that residents had previously complained about.  Not having seen the first stabbing, many witnesses probably dismissed the commotion as alcohol related. So, the fact that Kitty got up and walked away at all - whether staggering or dreamlike - must have been falsely reassuring to onlookers who would have thought that everything was really all right, her initial screams notwithstanding.  

Irene Frost Testimony

The witnesses did not watch for half an hour

The original New York Times article reported in its opening sentence that witnesses watched Kitty being stalked and stabbed for more than half an hour. The Times version of the killing (which is the one everybody remembers) gave the impression that the stalking and stabbing lasted continuously for half an hour and that Kitty and her attacker were visible to the witnesses throughout that 30 minute period. That was not so.

                                          The Stabbings

As already explained, it appears (with one exception) that the first stabbings on Austin Street occurred before the witnesses awoke and got to their windows. After that first attack, the killer, Winston Moseley, ran to his car and drove away. Kitty then got up and slowly made her way around to the back of the 2 story Tudor building where none of the witnesses from the Mowbray Apartment House could have seen her. So most of the Mowbray witnesses could have watched Kitty for only the time it took her to get up and slowly walk the 40 feet or so from the front of the 2 story building on Austin Street to the corner drugstore store.

Once Kitty turned that near corner, they could no longer see her.  Anyone who lived in one of the 9 apartments at the southwest corner of the Mowbray Apartments could have continued to watch Kitty only until she turned the far corner at the back of the 2 story building some 60 feet further.  So none of the Mowbray witnesses could have seen Kitty for more than a few minutes - far less than the 30 minutes she is thought to have been visible to them. They certainly did not see the second (and last) attack in the hallway in the rear of the 2 story Tudor building.

                                         The Stalking

Moseley's "stalking" of Kitty lasted about 2 minutes - not 30 minutes, and Kitty was not visible to any of the witnesses while it was happening. It occurred about 10 minutes after Kitty had disappeared from the Mowbray witnesses line of sight and had entered a doorway in the rear of the 2 story Tudor building. Moseley, who had parked his car about 2 blocks away, came back to look for her. We know of 5 witnesses who saw him return. Former New York City Chief of Detectives Albert A. Seedman describes what happened:

"Ten minutes later the neighbors saw [Moseley] return. [Mrs. Robert Mozer] noticed that he was walking normally, as if he didn't have a care in the world. ... Three floors below, [Andree Picq] was surprised to see that, while before he had had on a stocking cap, now he was wearing a Tyrolean hat with a feather in the band. Walking slowly, looking from side to side, he peeked into the doorway of the [bookstore]. Nothing. He walked past the liquor store and the dry cleaner, and turned the corner. [Irene Frost] ran from one to another of her three windows facing Austin Street to keep him in view. He crossed the parking lot without even looking into [Kitty's] locked Fiat. He gave a push at the door of the waiting room of the Kew Gardens railroad station and found it open. He spent only a minute inside. [Samuel Koshkin] picked up the phone to call the police, but his wife ... said, 'Don't. Thirty people must have called by now.' [Koshkin] saw the man wearing the Tyrolean hat come out of the side door of the Long Island railroad waiting room and head for the rear walkway. He tried the first doorway, 82-60. Nothing. He went to the second, 82-62. [Koshkin] held his breath. It had been twelve minutes since the last scream. As the man pushed the door open, only a few neighbors could hear a low cry, too weak for a scream, as the door closed behind him."

Seedman does not say what Koshkin did after that. Leaving Koshkin aside, any failure by the other four witnesses to call the police at this point is probably attributable to the fact that they did not have Koshkin's view of the rear of the 2 story Tudor building. From their perspective on Austin Street, they had lost sight of Kitty 10 minutes earlier when she turned the corner of the 2 story Tudor building. As far as they knew, Kitty was long gone, so they probably had little idea of the mortal danger created by Moseley's return - especially if, as Mrs. Mozer said (above), "he was walking normally, as if he didn't have a care in the world".

Only one witness is known to have heard Kitty say she had been stabbed  

THE NEW YORK TIMES, March 27, 1964, p. 38.

At approximately 3:20 on the morning of March 13, 1964, 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 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 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."

When first attacked, Kitty screamed that she had been stabbed.  That fact has been accurately reported in the press - leaving readers to assume that all of the witnesses heard her say that. However, only 1 of the 5 trial witnesses heard those words. If anyone else heard them, they have never been identified. There is no doubt that when Kitty screamed, witnesses heard her voice. However, that does not necessarily mean that they understood her words since it was those very outcries that had awakened them at 3:20 AM in the middle of a very cold winter night. According to the July 25, 1995 edition of The New York Times:

"... several residents who were alive at the time of the attack maintained yesterday that the screams were not that easy to hear ... ."

In my experience, it can be difficult to make out the words of people speaking or shouting outside on a city street through closed windows, even though their voices might be clearly audible. Furthermore, there is evidence to suggest that the acoustics of Austin Street would have added to that difficulty. After Kitty had been stabbed for the first time and fell to the ground, one witness opened his seventh floor window and called down to Moseley to leave her alone.  Moseley, who was fully awake at the time, heard the man, but could not make out what he said. 

If there was difficulty in being understood from an open window by someone wide awake, there would have been even greater difficulty in being understood through closed windows by people who were sleeping or just being awakened - and we know that the witnesses had their windows closed to protect against the cold night air. Further evidence of the difficulty in hearing Kitty's words can be found in the affidavit of surviving witness, Michael Hoffman, who writes:

"Since my Austin Street window was only open about a half an inch (it was very cold that night), I could not make out what was being said, or by whom. I opened that window more and could still not make out what was being said. "

Kitty did not scream for half an hour

Although the original March 27, 1964 New York Times article does not say so, it was reported or implied in subsequent press accounts that Kitty screamed continuously throughout all or most of her 30 minute ordeal.  If that were true, then it did not matter whether witnesses saw the stabbings or heard her say she had been stabbed. That kind of screaming would have been an unambiguous signal to the witnesses that Kitty was in desperate trouble. However, the belief that Kitty screamed for anything close to that length of time is mistaken.

                             The Killer's Interrogation

During his police interrogation, Winston Moseley told the officers what he did immediately after his first attack on Kitty.

"It seemed like I better get the car out of there right away. So I ran back and put it in reverse and backed around the corner of the next block. It was quiet. I didn't hear anybody coming out or doors slamming. I waited ten minutes. It was still quiet."

So, for 10 minutes after the first attack, the killer heard nothing and it was that very silence which convinced him it was safe to return and continue the attack.

                             The Seedman Account

Albert A. Seedman was the Deputy Police Inspector who conducted the interrogation of Winston Moseley on the day he was captured. He went on the become Chief of Detectives. According to Seedman, Kitty did not scream during the 12 minutes that elapsed between the end of the first attack on Austin Street and the beginning of the second attack in the rear hallway of the 2 story Tudor building.  Furthermore, Seedman described her one cry in the hallway as "low" and "too weak for a scream". The New York Daily News called it "just the faintest of cries". Only a few neighbors heard that final faint cry.  Moseley quickly stabbed Kitty in the throat to silence her. 

                                     What it Means

Kitty's failure to scream after the first attack ended and Moseley had fled is not surprising. She had been stabbed in the back at least twice with a hunting knife.  She was gravely wounded and probably in shock. In any case, when Kitty got up and slowly walked away after the first attack without making any further cry for help - no matter whether she staggered or walked dreamlike  - witnesses must have assumed she was really all right, despite her initial outcry. The fact that the first attack occurred only about 50 feet away from a bar known to have generated a lot of late night rowdiness would have reinforced that assumption. 

An argument can be made that:

1. There is a discernable difference between the loud scream of a woman who is infuriated or carousing and the terrified scream of a woman whose life is in mortal danger. And,
   
   
2. In the case of Kitty Genovese, that difference had to have been apparent to the witnesses.

Although the argument is a reasonable one, it does not prove the case against the 38 witnesses for a number of reasons.

First, while witnesses who were awake and listening could probably have made that distinction, these witnesses were not awake and listening. It was Kitty's screams that awakened them at 3:20 in the morning. In my experience, people do not always hear or fully comprehend loud noises that waken them from their sleep. For example, we have sworn statements from six witnesses as to what they heard that night. Two of them say they were awakened by the first attack, but never heard any screams. 

Second, anyone on that block who heard Kitty scream would also have heard witness Robert Mozer when he, "hollered" from his seventh floor apartment, "Hey, get out of there" or "What are you doing?"  In fact, witness Mozer's was likely the last outcry the witnesses would have heard. The killer, Winston Moseley, then ran to his car and drove off, after which Kitty left the scene without making any further outcry or plea for help. So, those witnesses who could not see what was happening would have heard:

• Kitty screaming, then
• One of their neighbors warn someone off, and then
• A car driving off and windows shutting, but no more screams.

Under the circumstances, those witnesses would naturally have assumed that Mozer's warning had solved whatever problem there was.

Third, The New York Times reported that after Moseley fled from the first attack, "Lights went out" - suggesting that the eye witnesses went back to bed.  That fact has to mean that they did not understand what was happening. Human nature being what it is, I have to believe they would have remained glued to their windows if they had known.

Finally, former Chief of Detectives, Albert A. Seedman, suggests that a large number of witnesses watched Kitty leave the scene of the first attack walking in a manner that he described as "dreamlike" and "not staggering".  Even if we accept that Kitty's screams were louder than anything the witnesses ever heard coming from the bar and that the witnesses understood Kitty's outcries to be calls for help,  the fact that Moseley then drove away, and Kitty then left under her own power (whether dreamlike or staggering) without any further calls for help could well have caused them to think that the crisis (and Kitty's need for help) had passed. That may have been bad judgment on the part of the witnesses, but bad judgment is a far less egregious failing than the one they have been accused of.

There came a time when Kitty was no longer screaming for when her assailant returned she started screaming again.

EXCERPTS FROM THE CONFESSION OF WINSTON MOSELEY TO THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY'S OFFICE

Kitty might not have been saved by a phone call  

In his book on the case, the Times A. M. Rosenthal stated what has remained one of the most widely held beliefs about the Kitty Genovese murder:

"If any one of the witnesses had put in a call while Miss Genovese was being attacked, the chances are that she would have been saved, for when the call did come the police arrived within a matter of a few minutes."

Let's assume that no one called the police after the first attack. If the telephone call Rosenthal envisioned had been made by Joseph Fink who witnessed the first stabbings and realized what was happening, chances are the second attack would have been thwarted. Apart from Fink, however, there are a number of problems with Rosenthal's theory.

First, because the initial attack was over with so quickly, none of the witnesses could have telephoned while it was still ongoing, as Rosenthal contemplated. The calls would had to have been made after Moseley had fled. 

Second, apart from Fink, it is not certain how many other witness saw or heard enough to be able to convince the police that a patrol car was needed. Imagine for example that the following two witnesses had reported what they saw and heard to the police (the quotes are real):

WITNESS NO. 1
"I heard something that sounded like two people talking loud. That's all. I looked down [from the 5th floor] and I saw two heads." 

WITNESS NO. 2
"I didn't hear anything. My husband thought he heard someone screaming, but when he looked out no one was there." 

Third, to get the kind of urgent police response that Rosenthal envisioned, the first attack needed to be reported as an attempted homicide in progress. The police would have given such a call their highest priority (which is why they responded so quickly when Kitty was discovered dying of multiple stab wounds). However, none of the witnesses had any reason to think it was that. They saw Kitty for only a few moments. Once again, except for Joseph Fink, they did not see the stabbings, and they did not see blood or a knife. So at most, the incident would have been called in as an assault - and not even an assault in progress, but one in which the assailant had been seen to drive off and the victim to walk away. (In these days before 911, callers had to identify themselves and give details of the crime they were reporting. See, sidebar.) That would have made the matter a much less urgent one and drawn a slower police response than a homicide in progress - perhaps too slow a response to have saved Kitty. `In fact, surviving witness (and, later, New York City Police Officer), Michael Hoffman, says that that is exactly what happened. 

Furthermore, when a patrol did show up, it would have gone to where the attack had reportedly taken place - Austin Street in front of the 2 story Tudor Building. However, Kitty would not have been there anymore. She had gone into a small hallway in the rear of the building. If the officers had found nothing but peace and quiet on an empty street, they would have had little reason to get out of their car and search the area since the call was of a simple mugging whose victim had walked away.

The problem was not apathy

I sometimes wonder whether the 38 witnesses would be as notorious as they are today if they had been participants in Kitty's murder rather than just witnesses. Consider this. As recently as the early 20th Century, lynchings were not an uncommon occurrence in the United States, even outside of the south. Often racially motivated, the victims included women and teenage girls.  Photographs of such events survive today, and many of them show otherwise law abiding members of the community looking on with approval if in fact they did not actually participate.  Yet, the stories of these bystanders are mostly forgotten while the story of the 38 witnesses remains timeless.

The reason can be summed up in one word: "apathy". While the lynch mob mentality was widely known and understood 40 years ago, no one in March of 1964 could understand how onlookers not poisoned by anger or motivated by racial animosity could have turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to Kitty's plight. It was the supposed indifference to Kitty's ordeal on the part of the 38 witnesses that shocked everyone. It led The New York Times to wonder, "What Kind of People Are We?" and A.M. Rosenthal to write about a "Sickness Called Apathy".

Yet, if any aspect of the Kitty Genovese story is open to question, it is that the witnesses were simply apathetic or that their reactions that night were somehow a departure from the norm. In a series of experiments conducted as a result of the controversy surrounding Kitty's death, psychologists, Bibb Latané and John Darley, discovered what was called the "Bystander Effect". Simply put, their findings were that the more bystanders there are who witness an emergency, the less likely any of them are to help the victim. They attributed the Bystander Effect to a pair of mindsets they called:

• Pluralistic Ignorance (i.e., Each bystander thinks, "If no one else is helping, does this person really need help?"), and
  
  
• Diffusion of Responsibility (i.e., Each bystander thinks, "Only one person needs to call the police and certainly someone else will.")

 Writing in 1985, Psychology Professor R. Lance Shotland of Pennsylvania University concluded:

"After close to 20 years of research, the evidence indicates that 'the bystander effect,' as it has come to be called, holds for all types of emergencies, medical or criminal."

 According to The New York Times:

"A raft of behavioral studies performed over the last 40 years suggests that Ms. Genovese's neighbors reacted as they reportedly did not because they were apathetic or cold-hearted, but because they were confused, uncertain and afraid. 'Where others might have seen them as villains,' Professor Takooshian [professor of urban psychology at Fordham University] said, 'psychologists see these people as normal.'"

However, Latané, Darley and others apparently assumed that the popular account of Kitty's death was true, so they believed that the witnesses saw, heard and understood more than I think they did. My take on it is a bit different. I believe that most of the 38 witnesses did not see or hear enough to understand what was happening.  I think that others who could have or should have known that something was wrong either froze or went into denial. That seems understandable. Not only did they live in a neighborhood that was virtually crime free, but they were awakened suddenly in the middle of the night (when no one's powers of judgment or observation would be 100%) to a situation they did not fully witness and for which they were completely unprepared.

The events of September 11, 2001 provide an example of the psychological ability of humans to deny the obvious. At 8:48 AM on a clear, sunny, cloudless day, a plane flew directly into the north tower of the World Trade Center which - tall as it was - was still far below normal air traffic lanes. The evidence that the crash was intentional could not have been clearer.  Yet, until the second plane hit some 18 minutes later, how many people thought to themselves, "It must have been an accident"?

"We didn't want to get involved"

The 1964 Times article reports that two witnesses explained their inaction by saying they didn't want to get involved. Everyone assumes that theirs was the attitude of all the other witnesses.

However, according to the Times' A. M. Rosenthal, when asked why they didn't call the police, those who cited a fear of involvement were a distinct minority. Apparently, most witnesses said they didn't know why.

  "'I didn't want my husband to get involved,' a housewife said.
  'We thought it was a lovers' quarrel,' said another woman. 'I went back to bed.'
  'I was tired,' said a man.
  'I don't know,' said another man.
  'I don't know,' said still another .
  'I don't know,' said others."

Rosenthal concluded:

"Nobody can say why the thirty-eight did not lift the phone while Miss Genovese was being attacked, since they cannot say themselves."

Although Rosenthal interpreted all the "I don't know" responses as indicating a fear of involvement, I think it was more likely to be the response of someone who genuinely misread what was happening to Kitty. That seems to have been the case with the following witness described by Life Magazine as "plainly depressed and disappointed at his own failure".

"Every time I look out here now, it's like looking at a nightmare. How could so many of us have had the idea that we didn't need to do anything?"

Notice the witness's reference to "so many of us", indicating that there were a lot of witnesses that night who did not understand what was happening.

In the case of those witnesses who did cite a fear of involvement, this seems, with one exception, to be a classic case of quoting people out of context. I think what those witnesses wanted to avoid getting involved in was a drunken quarrel - which seems to be what many thought it was. Those witnesses may not have realized the need to make that distinction clear. They made their statements before they knew that their reaction to the events of that night was to become the focus of the Kitty Genovese story. 

The two exceptions appear to be witnesses, Joseph Fink and Karl Ross. Other witnesses seem to have been tarred with their brush.

Joseph Fink did not call the police despite witnessing the first stabbings and realizing what was happening. If he ever explained his behavior, that explanation has not been published. The only mitigating circumstance apparent is that, having witnessed the first attack, he would also have seen Kitty get up and leave the scene under her own power without making any further outcries for help.

The second witness was Karl Ross, who is said to have called the police after it was too late. Ross's apartment was located up a flight of stairs from the hallway in which Kitty was attacked for the last time. Although Ross saw at least part of that attack, he delayed calling for help because he was intoxicated and did not want to deal with the police.  Former Chief of Detectives, Albert A. Seedman, writes that at 7 o'clock in the morning - a little more than 3 hours after the attacks on Kitty ended, Ross was "swilling vodka and acting obnoxious". He was booked for disorderly conduct after he interfered with a detective's interview of Kitty's roommate and exchanged words with the officer.

Doubts  

In another article for the Daily News' Queens Edition, John Melia again doubted the 38 witnesses.  Here are excerpts from that article which was entitled "Stigma from Genovese case remains".

"Then we started to hear rumblings - rumblings from reporters who had covered the murder of Kitty Genovese and the trial of Winston Moseley discounting the claims that 39 otherwise ordinary and law-abiding citizens watched a slaughter and did nothing.

We heard a story of one reporter, sent out by his editor to find these witnesses, who came back literally begging that the story not run because there was nothing there. He told his editor that the witnesses did not exist in the numbers claimed. But it was too late, the people of Austin Street in Kew Gardens had been stamped with the indelible mark of Cain - the story ran, full of the appropriate outrage and horror.
* * * In retracing the final steps of Kitty Genovese, we began to have doubts, too, as to the number of people who saw something that night. Did the people of Kew Gardens get a bad rap when Kitty Genovese was killed? We have our doubts. You decide."

What has made the Kitty Genovese story resonate over 4 decades are the very aspects of it that appear to have been so badly exaggerated: that 38 people reportedly watched or listened for a full 30 minutes and - seeing or knowing that a woman was stabbed to death, - refused to call the police because they did not want to get involved. As far as I can tell, that scenario did not take place.

Could the residents of Austin Street have reacted better than they did that night?  Of course they could have. Anytime humans are involved in anything, the answer to the question, "Could they have done better?", will always be "Yes". The real issue is whether the witnesses' response fell so far short of perfection as to be worthy of the kind of attention and condemnation that they have drawn for over four decades. I don't think it did. For all these years, the 38 witnesses have been portrayed as freaks who displayed a depraved indifference to human life and suffering. If my take on the case is correct, then the truth is far less sensational. At worst, they were just 38 ordinary people who fumbled.