Crime Narratives,Dramatizations,and the Legacy of the Kitty Genovese Murder

Explosive Coverage

The Genovese story went viral by 1964 standards. Versions of the tale appeared in major newspapers and print outlets around the country and the world, including Life Magazine, the Los Angeles Free Press, and Rolling Stone magazine. The episode has been rehashed on every major anniversary of Kitty’s death and with each of Moseley’s unsuccessful petitions before the parole board. To commemorate the anniversaries of Kitty’s murder, Fordham University has sponsored several Catherine Genovese Memorial Conferences, spearheaded by Harold Takooshian, Professor of Psychology and Director of the Fordham Institute at Fordham University, who is determined to keep Kitty’s memory alive through his lectures, writings, and courses (Cook, 2014; Pelonero, 2014).

Marking the 50th anniversary of the Genovese murder (March 2014), two books present an in-depth and highly textured chronology of the incident, the arrest, and the conviction of Kitty’s killer, as well as the impact of her death on loved ones, the Kew Gardens community, social science research, and American culture. Kitty Genovese: The Murder, the Bystanders, the Crime That Changed America, by Kevin Cook, and Kitty Genovese: A True Account of a Public Murder and Its Private Consequences, by Catherine Pelonero, unravel the complicated and fascinating details of the histories of the victim and her murderer. Cook and Pelonero’s contextualization of the event differs, as do the style and dramaturgy of their prose (the latter is a playwright, the former is a journalist). However, both authors write in true-crime genre, poignantly portraying Kitty as “more than a name in a newspaper” (Cook, 2014, p. 4), and her murder as the “crime that lasted forever” (Cook, 2014, p. 3)

Genovese is limned as an ebullient, generous, and fiercely independent young woman. Moseley remains an enigmatic figure to the authors, as he was to everyone who knew him. He was a slightly built, intelligent, and unflappable young man who rarely raised his voice and never his hand in anger to his wife, children, or anyone else. Yet, he frequently burgled and robbed; he also raped at least four and killed at least two women, performing sexual acts on their mutilated and lifeless bodies (Cook, 2014; Pelonero, 2014).

Kitty and Moseley would likely never have crossed paths in everyday life. She was raised in a stable family; he was abandoned by his mother in childhood. She was a bar manager; he was a computer punch-card operator. She was White; he was Black. She was gay; he was straight. She was gregarious; he was taciturn. She was single; he was married and had children. She was an apartment dweller; he was a homeowner. She worked nights; he worked days. Nonetheless, they became inextricably and perennially linked by Kitty’s death. As if to further cement their pairing in perpetuity, the Genovese story is captured in full-length (Duffy, 1999) and made-for-TV movies (Cook, 2014), a graphic novel (Moore & Gibbons, 1986), innumerable psychology textbooks, and a “parable” that “provides a cautionary tale about dangers to neighborliness that result from the conditions of modern life” (Manning et al., 2007, p. 559).

The Apathy Narrative

The early versions of the Genovese case were quite consistent, and they resonated with the public’s emerging views on the perils of the urban landscape. In various iterations, the running theme was the precariousness and stark anonymity of urban life. A pall of dread descended on America in the months that followed the Kennedy assassination, coupled with the inchoate civil unrest that was poised to erupt across the country. The killing of Kitty at the hands of a violent predator—a complete stranger—evoked people’s worst fears and vulnerabilities. Although stranger-on-stranger homicide was exceedingly rare then and is still exceptional, the mere thought of an unexpected attack on a familiar street triggered primordial fears (Riedel, 1988).

Most powerful was the notion of the apparent, utter callousness and inhumanity of Kitty’s neighbors, who were uniformly disparaged by police investigators and the general public. In addition, they were roundly psychoanalyzed in subsequent news stories and television shows. Before the case spawned a plethora of social-psychological research, the “Genovese Syndrome” captured the dark and ugly side of the American psyche. Psychologists, sociologists, urbanologists—pop and otherwise—formed a chorus that loudly decried the heartlessness of Americans, who could literally turn their backs and close their windows on the cries of a woman being stabbed on the sidewalk in front of their apartment buildings.

The experts speculated about the seeming indifference, malign neglect, and selfishness of witnesses, epitomized by the clichéd excuse: “I didn’t want to get involved.” This declamation became a meme of the big city, especially in New York, where residents were supposedly so overwhelmed with the crowds, noise, garbage, and a variety of other urban incivilities that they were forced to turn inward and away from others as a stress-reduction mechanism (Milgram, 1970) or, as one sociologist coined it, “affect denial” (Rosenthal, 1964/2008, p. 80). Celebrated psychiatrist Dr. Karl Menninger opined that “public apathy is itself a manifestation of aggressiveness” (Rosenthal, 1964/2008, p. 80). Another psychiatrist speculated that “a confusion of fantasy with reality, fed by the endless stream of TV violence, was in part responsible for the fact that the witnesses to Miss Genovese’s murder had turned away” (Rosenthal, 1964/2008, p. 81).

Hint of an Urban Legend

The Genovese case had an enormous influence on our cultural beliefs about crime and helping behavior despite (or because of) the misreporting of the event (Manning et al., 2007). Based on an actual case and perpetuated by print and electronic media, the Genovese murder nonetheless has the hyperbolic quality of an urban legend or myth (Brunvand, 1981). Indeed, the reportage was rife with inaccuracies (Manning et al., 2007). Cook underscores these, whereas Pelonero downplays them. Kitty’s horrific ordeal was replayed in the media, innumerable introductory and social psychology textbooks, and Rosenthal’s (1964/2008) subsequent book, Thirty-Eight Witnesses: The Kitty Genovese Case. With each rendition, the most resounding (and inaccurate) aspects were emphasized for dramatic effect. To a large extent, Pelonero (2014) continues the tradition of the Genovese murder as a lurid morality tale, whereas Cook (2014) recounts the history of the case absent an indignant or judgmental tone.

The recurrent inaccuracies in the media and in psychology textbooks have shaped the widely embraced, prevailing view of the encounter. For example, perhaps only five witnesses (not 38!) really saw or heard much of the event. Furthermore, through their closed apartment windows, only a few could have clearly interpreted the encounter as a serious criminal victimization (Cook, 2014). One yelled at the perpetrator, “Let that girl alone!” (Gansberg, 1964, p. 2). Moseley then scurried away, merely to return a short time later to attack his target for the second, not the third, time, as was broadly reported. No one could have seen the entire sequence of actions. The initial attack on the street lasted for only a few minutes. Seriously wounded, Kitty walked away and around the corner (and mostly out of the public eye). She lay dying in a narrow foyer of the apartment building next door to her own (completely out of the public eye). In contrast, the Genovese parable recounts that she died on the street while her unfeeling neighbors stared intently as she was repeatedly attacked for “over a grisly half hour of stabbing and screaming” (Lemann, 2014, p. 2)

The police investigation revealed that two people could have actually intervened to possibly save Kitty’s life: the janitor in the apartment building across the street (Joseph Fink), who did nothing, and Kitty’s “friend” (Karl Ross), who watched her being stabbed in the stairwell and belatedly ran to a neighbor’s apartment to summon the police. At least a few other people also called the police (Taylor, 1995), bringing officers and an ambulance to the scene (Rosenthal, 1964/2008). Kitty died (nearly) in the arms of a beloved neighbor (Sophia Farrar), not alone on the sidewalk, and not on New York’s most dangerous streets, but in the city’s safest borough (Cook, 2014), “[a] neighborhood [that was] quiet and well kept, its streets shaded by tall oaks and bordered by handsome red-brick and wood-frame houses” (Rasenberger, 2004, p. 1). Again, Cook makes a stronger point of underscoring the falsehoods (he is a Genovese revisionist) than does Pelonero (she is a staunch non-Genovese revisionist), who still holds Kew Gardens residents and their indifference responsible for Kitty’s death. Cook is more deliberate than Pelonero in contemporizing the murder, with references throughout his book to early 1960s art, literature, politics, television, music, and evolving social movements and change. Pelonero is more somber, reverent, and visceral in her treatment of Kitty’s life and death.

The Genovese case could serve as one of the earliest narrative precursors to the culture of fear era in America (Glassner, 1999), which has persisted despite steady declines in crime since the early 1990s (Zimring, 2011). Fear generally exceeds the actual the risk of victimization (Ferraro, 1995) and is fueled by media reports of crime, especially episodes of unusual violence that are replayed in print or on the airwaves (Miller, 1998). Kitty’s murder was somewhat unusual. The Kew Gardens neighborhood of Queens was safe and quiet, and it was inhabited by “respectable, law-abiding citizens” (Gansberg, 1964, p. 1), a fact that increased the perceived vulnerability of the residents and led to the closure of formerly thriving businesses proximal to the crime scene. This fear reverberated throughout the city (Cook, 2014; Pelonero, 2014). The Genovese case is an early example of how vicarious victimization and fear mongering—through media portrayals of crime incidents and the politicization of the crime problem—can elevate perceived risks of victimization (Lee, 2007). Through the availability heuristic, the Genovese case was certainly an easily recounted instance of urban desolation and mayhem (Kahneman & Tversky, 1974), and it came to instantiate the schema of the violent and uncaring big city: “The real Kitty Genovese syndrome [had] to do with our susceptibility to narratives that echo our preconceptions and anxieties” (Lemann, 2014, p. 2).

Tragedy Spurs Research and Social Change

Kitty’s murder and the ensuing publicity promoted social psychologists John Darley and Bibb Latané to launch a series of investigations into the “bystander intervention effect.” In one of the most well-established and replicated lines of research in social psychology, the investigators identified three primary factors that explain the purported indifference and inaction of the Kew Gardens residents (Latané & Nida, 1981). The first factor is audience inhibition. The circumstances surrounding Kitty’s initial stabbing were fleeting and somewhat ambiguous “. . . [as] the light from [the] bedroom made it difficult to see the street” (Rosenthal, 1964/2008, p. 74). The residents reported that they believed the couple was having an argument—“a lovers’ quarrel” (Pelonero, 2014, p. 172). In the 1960s, people were most certainly hesitant to interfere in domestic conflicts (Shotland & Straw, 1976).

Other witnesses believed that Kitty was intoxicated, as evidenced by her uneven gait and her need to hold on to the side of buildings for support as she staggered away from the scene of her first encounter with Moseley (Pelonero, 2014). The neighbors were accustomed to boisterousness and fisticuffs on the block when the Old Bailey bar would close and intoxicants would spill out onto the sidewalk (Rosenthal, 1964/2008). Hence, the witnesses might have been hesitant to respond for fear of being embarrassed because they had misread the situation, leading to a state of collective inaction (Manning et al., 2007).

The second factor is social influence. Seeing no one else act in an emergency leads others to presume that no action is required. In Genovese’s case, onlookers concluded from their neighbors’ apparent inaction (no one ran out to assist Kitty) that their own help was unnecessary. When alone, individuals are responsible for deciding how to respond appropriately in an emergency situation. However, in the presence of others, witnesses seek guidance from the behavior of the group, especially when an unusual or novel event is occurring (such as an emergency). The misreading of a situation can cause individual bystanders to assume that nothing needs to be done, thereby fueling the inaction of others in a vicious cycle referred to as pluralistic ignorance (Latané & Nida, 1981).

The third factor is diffusion of responsibility. The attack occurred across from two large apartment buildings. Kitty lived on a densely populated block, and, in fact, witnesses indicated to the police that their inaction was based on the assumption that someone else would have already called the police and therefore obviated the need for them to do so (Cook, 2014). Numerous studies have shown that bystanders are less likely to intervene in an emergency when others are available as potential witnesses or helpers. In a social influence process known as diffusion of responsibility, the probability of assistance is inversely related to the number of bystanders, as the presence of others removes personal responsibility for responding to events; each additional person lowers the chances of any assistance. In other words, the greater the number of bystanders, the less likely any one of them will help (Latané & Nida, 1981).

Apart from triggering a wealth of psychological research, the Genovese case spurred the creation of a nationwide 911 system for emergency responders. In addition, the rights of crime victims began their assent to the forefront of the criminal justice process, and Good Samaritan laws were enacted to protect altruistic bystanders from lawsuits (Cook, 2014; Pelonero, 2014). The case also spurred a young Curtis Sliwa to form a group that became the forerunner to the Guardian Angels (Cook, 2014).

Conclusion

The story of Kitty Genovese’s tragic death was a watershed that altered people’s perceptions of urban dwellings and heralded the beginning of the devolution of the concepts of safety and solidarity in neighborhoods. Jointly spun by a Police Commissioner who wished to avoid tough questions about a homicide case and a New York Times editor who was searching for attention-grabbing headlines, the Genovese case has contributed to the formation of the regnant image of the apathetic American. In his last years, Rosenthal publicly admitted that his compassion for Kitty’s suffering stemmed from the death of his young sister, who had run home from school in a storm to escape a sexual predator who had exposed himself to her; she later succumbed to a fulminant respiratory infection. Rosenthal blamed his sister’s fate on the sex offender (Cook, 2014). He subsequently stumbled on the Genovese case, and he used it as a soapbox to rail against an apathetic public.

In the revisionist model, Rosenthal has been chided for his shoddy journalism and alarmist rhetoric (e.g., Lemann, 2014). In the years that followed, bystander intervention research and a careful reanalysis of the police reports, court documents, and other information have vindicated Kew Gardens residents and have also diminished the stereotype of the uncaring American. Nonetheless, the parable of the 38 witnesses will likely continue to be taught to psychology undergraduates and used as justification to spur people into action, with both good and bad consequences (Lee, 2007; Manning et al., 2007).

In conclusion, the Kitty Genovese story has entered into the American consciousness and onto the pages of undergraduate psychology textbooks worldwide. Featured prominently in popular media, Kitty’s story fueled the pernicious stereotype of the disengaged American, in general, and the callous New Yorker, in particular. Both Cook and Pelonero commemorate the Genovese murder and humanize the principals whereas Pelonero alone continues to excoriate the residents of Kew Gardens. The interesting psychological dynamics that have perpetuated the myths surrounding the episode and created the “cult of Kitty” should be further examined to elucidate how and why the story resonates 50 years later. The processes that “construct reality” and incite moral panics (mostly media driven) are also worthy of continued study. Finally, the Genovese murder should encourage an exploration of continually evolving collective obligations (social, cultural, and ethical) to create and preserve safe and navigable public spaces.