Above, the image that haunts all good people to this day. Catherine "Kitty" Genovese, as most of the world will always know her to appear, in the lovely and powerful photo portrait that became the visual icon of her tragic story.
40 Years After the Murder That Didn't Have to Be
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| Kitty Genovese, a young 28-year-old Kew Gardens, Queens resident, was murdered forty years ago, come this March 13th, before she could get from her parked car to her apartment house lobby. Back in 1964, brutal muggings, let alone sexually depraved assaults and murders, were not normal occurrences in this solid and stolid middle class neighborhood, which despite being an incorporated part of New York City, was still very much endowed with the atmosphere of the suburbs. Even given the shock and horror that such a murder as befell Catherine Genovese that early March 1964 morning, however, it is doubtful that the memory of her terrible demise could have remained as vivid through the years in public consciousness, indeed to be remembered at all, save for family and friends, the perpetrator...or witnesses. Yet it was due to those witnesses that nearly half a century later, Kitty Genovese stands out, not as a martyr to human depravity, but instead to the kind of apathy and cowardice that in a broader sense so easily led to Nazi Germany. What has kept Catherine Genovese alive, indelibly etched in the minds of not only New Yorkers living at that time, but people around the world of every generation, is the almost incomprehensible apathy, and, almost inescapably, cowardice, that led dozens of Ms. Genovese's awakened neighbors to do nothing to stop, or even summon help, in time to prevent her killer to return three times to the scene in order to finish what he had begun. |
Above, the image that haunts all good people to this day. Catherine "Kitty" Genovese, as most of the world will always know her to appear, in the lovely and powerful photo portrait that became the visual icon of her tragic story. |
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Now I, of course, never knew either Ms. Genovese, nor her family, nor did any of my family.
I was just shy of six-years-old when she was butchered by a beast named Winston Moseley, who was a year older than her. The sixties were not yet over, however, before I learned of the case.
I grew up two neighborhoods away to the west, in Rego Park, at the opposite end of Austin Street, which has a fairly long run for a relatively minor and narrow side road, stretching from Metropolitan Avenue in Richmond Hill to Eliot Avenue, just short of Woodhaven Boulevard, hard by the Rego Park, Elmhurst border.
The seminal local criminal event of my childhood, the one which tore away that childhood innocence and naivety, came in 1967 with the trial of Alice Crimmins, who had a pretty apt name for an eventual criminal. Alice was convicted of killing her two children.
The case was a real cause celeb in Queens while I was in third grade. It was that year that I first heard about rapes when a neighborhood man was arrested for such, although it would be a couple more years before I knew exactly what a rape was. That year our apartment was burglarized, along with the neighbor to our left.
Since the talk among adults regarding the Genovese murder had never faded too low, I suppose I picked up knowledge of it around then. I'm sure in the wake of a local case as notorious as the Crimmins affair, the most infamous local case previous to it, that of Genovese, must have been resurrected for comparisons sake.
She was born Catherine Genovese, but apparently was nicknamed Kitty by those who knew her, as I'm sure many Catherines are, the remainder getting by as Cathy, Cat, Katy, etc. Catherine is certainly one of the more nick-nameable names, and is also quite pliable, with probably half of all Catherines being spelled with a K. Kitty Genovese worked a few miles from her Kew Gardens apartment, in a lounge on Jamaica Avenue, where as far as I know, she was a bartender. Bar workers of course, tend to get home when most of us are sound asleep, and she arrived at the railroad station parking lot adjacent to her building at around 3:20 in the morning. She had been born in Brooklyn, but grew up in Connecticut, only to move back to Queens once she left to be on her own. Her apartment was in a two story building that was probably built together with the Long Island railroad station. It is an unusual structure in that all four sides are active, with stores all around and apartments above. To prove unfortunate for her, some of these apartments were accessible only from the side facing the railroad tracks, meaning those entrances were in what amounted to an alley between Lefferts Boulevard on the east and the station parking lot on the west. In daylight, off a busy commercial street like Lefferts, I'm sure that poses no problems, but at 3 in the morning, with all surrounding areas desolate of passersby, such an out-of-the-way entrance can be quite dangerous, especially for a single female. In the 1920's, when I'm sure this building went up, few, if anyone at all, considered such dangers. Street crimes of this nature would not have even been imagined by those living at that time in neighborhoods such as Kew Gardens. If anything, the isolated doorways and alleys lent an old world charm to the building and the station area. It still does, and the many Tudor style buildings that went up in those days were meant to do just that. Sadly, charm has its price in today's urban landscape. Countless apartment houses built in more innocent times have set-backs, courtyards, eaves, alcoves, niches, alleys and winding, twisting halls that seemed so quaint when they were designed, only to turn into muggers paradise and halls of horror for legions of vulnerable residents in the post-war years, especially elderly tenants, some of whom lived in their buildings for decades only to watch the mores of their society, which once, at least in ideal and intention, protected the female and the elderly, die with their generation. What happened from A to Z that early morning of March 13th, 1964, will probably never be known for sure. Saddest of all, the best account we'll ever have is that of the beastly Winston Moseley, who gave a fairly elaborate confession. Apparently Ms. Genovese, upon exiting her car, spotted Moseley loitering at the edge of the station parking lot, which she had to cross to get to the alley leading to her door. She needed no further warning of danger than his surging forth to accost her. She fled the lot, down Austin Street hoping to reach a bar near the corner of Austin and Lefferts, where she probably expected to find patrons to help in either stopping or driving off her stalker. Unfortunately, the bar had closed earlier than its normal 4am shut down and she never made it that far anyway, as Moseley tackled her mid block. He proceeded to stab her several times, but left after at least one tenant in the high rise apartment house across Austin Street yelled out a window for him to leave her alone. Still, despite this momentary respite, nobody came down to help as Kitty Genovese struggled to her feet, badly wounded, fuzzy and most certainly in shock. Moseley allegedly came back and continued his assault as she turned the corner, back along the edge of the parking lot, heading south along the west side of her building towards her alleyway entrance. Again, Moseley got spooked by witnesses, and again he left the scene, and again nobody came out to assist Ms. Genovese, who very likely at this point was mortally wounded, and yes, again, the police still were not notified. Just as Kitty Genovese was determined, in her shock induced stupor, to get to the imagined safety of her home, her killer was equally determined to finish what he set out to accomplish. Moseley returned yet a third time, and under the watchful gaze of witnesses overlooking the parking lot, he strode into the alley and tried every doorway until he struck pay-dirt, finding Genovese collapsed in the vestibule neighboring her own, where she'd apparently crept after being unable to unlock her own front entrance. There, despite a very aware witness on the second floor above, Moseley not only finished Ms. Genovese off, but savagely molested her dead or dying body. Having sex with live women just didn't do it for him anymore. The upstairs resident who did nothing until it no longer mattered, was a young guy who probably could have given Moseley a tough fight, and at least, just by appearing in the hallway would certainly have scared this cowardly butcher away. He later said he didn't want to get involved because he was drunk, and apparently imagined the cops might give him a hard time. But a lot of others stayed silent and passive while the Genovese murder played itself out around two corners and three sides of her building, overseen by two adjacent apartment towers and overheard by over three dozen folks that the police later knew of, never mind who knows how many more that never owned up to hearing or seeing anything. To this day, Moseley sits in prison, nearing 70 and will hopefully die there, preferably in agony through some wasting illness. He was originally sentenced to death, but some bleeding heart no-account judge ruled he hadn't been adequately tested for mental illness and during the transfer to a mental facility in 1968, he escaped. Before being recaptured, he would rape another woman. A recent visitor to this page has informed me that Winston Moseley (May he disintegrate like a lit Winston cigarette), may actually be up for parole in time for the fortieth anniversary of his mindless atrocity. If he ever does get released, Moseley should be sent to live in this quaint little corner of Kew Gardens. In my worst moments, I can't help but feel that at the very least, that part of Kew Gardens adjacent to the railroad station deserves him, forever cursed, as it were, by the the martyred blood, and haunted by the forever stunned and shocked visage, of one Catherine Kitty Genovese, 28-years-old then, who should by rights have lived to be 68-years-old today, who couldn't count on even one lousy phone call to an operator, a simple dialing of "0", from over three dozen known among her own next door neighbors. I knew some put forth a defense of the witnesses on account of the fact that the corner bar, when open, was often the scene of loud disturbances and spats, but I just don't buy it. I don't believe there was any doubt in the minds of those overlooking and overhearing the initial attacks, that the young woman below was being viciously attacked, and that they weren't watching some sodden bar babe getting smacked around by her man. Especially if you're used to hearing typical barfly disturbances, you know when the noise you're hearing is different than the norm. No, none of the witnesses from the other buildings could have seen the final attack, as it was beyond their view, but it never had to get that far, had at least one of them come down, or called the cops in a timely fashion. If they ask why others have to keep dredging this story up, even forty years after the fact, all I can say is those who wish to erase history are doomed to repeat it. Evil flourished that early March morning because supposedly good people chose to do nothing. |
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Above, overlooking the Long Island Railroad Kew Gardens Station next to which Kitty Genovese lived...and died. Her apartment, and place of death was in a two story semi commercial Tudor style building dating from most probably the 1920's, located just beyond the station building on the left. The short building bridging the tracks fronts on Lefferts Boulevard. Austin Street is off-camera to the left. The station parking lot where Ms. Genovese parked her Fiat that fateful early morning is to the left of the station between it and Austin Street. Screened from view by the chain link fence and trees is the six story apartment house, the West Virginia, where sixth floor tenants watched Winston Moseley return for the final time to track Kitty Genovese down where she collapsed inside the vestibule neighboring that of her apartment. "Don't call," the man's incomprehensible wife said, insisting that thirty others must have already called the police. |
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© 2004, Jeff Saltzman. All rights reserved.