Kitty and her roommate, a shy and pretty young blonde named Mary Ann, lived in the apartment across the hall from Sophie and she knew them well, particularly Kitty, who was the more outgoing of the two. The Farrars lived in the larger front apartment overlooking Austin Street. Kitty and Mary Ann, who had moved in just last spring, occupied the rear unit facing the railroad tracks. They shared a common entrance at street level in the rear of the Tudor. The address was 82-70 Austin Street.
And that was something—why was Kitty in the hallway at 82-62 Austin, down at the other end of the building? Karl Ross lived there. Kitty and Karl were friends, so maybe Kitty had been visiting him? Whatever the case, the only important thing was to find out what happened to Kitty.
Sophie rushed down the stairwell and out the street-level door, stepping into a biting blast of winter night air. Greta met her and they hurried down the walkway, shivering more with trepidation than from the near-freezing temperature. Only later did Sophie question whether she would have run outside had she known the situation, had she known she was dashing headlong into a bloody scene where a killer might still be lurking. As she later said, “I ran to help. It seemed the natural thing to do. I never thought of myself in danger.”
Reaching the entrance at 82-62 Austin, Sophie pushed the door open and stepped inside. Entering the gloom of the hallway, she heard a low moan and looked down.
Sophie Farrar, young mother and homemaker who had never known violence, let out a gasp.
Kitty lay flat on her back, her head facing the door, as if she had tried to climb the stairs and had fallen backwards. But even in the darkness it was obvious this was no accident. Kitty’s grey skirt was hiked up to her waist. Her shoes were off. Her legs were splayed and her blouse and undergarments torn apart.
Perhaps the motherly instinct in Sophie had become a reflex or perhaps she simply reacted to a friend in mortal distress; she dropped to her knees and slipped her arms around Kitty’s back and shoulder, cradling her as she would one of her children.
“Kitty! Kitty, what happened? What happened?”
Kitty instantly tensed at Sophie’s touch. Her hands came up in a weak pathetic flail of defense, still fighting off her attacker.
“Kitty, it’s Sophie . . . it’s Sophie! It’s me . . . I’m here . . .”
Kitty must have understood. She relaxed, the tenseness in her body subsiding. She moaned. Her mouth was agape, her narrowed eyes rolling, blinking. She moved slightly inward toward Sophie’s embrace, toward the last comforting human touch she would ever feel, and Sophie saw the holes in the back of her coat. Sharp slices in the fabric of the upper back.
“Kitty, who did this to you?” Sophie asked. Guttural noises came from Kitty, but nothing Sophie could distinguish as words. Kitty moved again, a slow-motion thrash from the warmth of Sophie toward the cold wall stained with her own wet blood. “That’s when I saw that her throat had been slashed,” Sophie later recalled. Slipping her arm from Kitty’s back, Sophie now saw blood, all over her own hands.
The shock, the sheer horror of it all, made it almost beyond belief, as if Sophie had somehow stepped not into a hallway in her own apartment building but into some strange macabre universe. Sophie may have vaguely wondered how she got here, to this nightmare, this unthinkable gruesome scene, with the freezing air swirling in and the warm blood soaking her, the sounds of Kitty’s moans and the plaintive muttering of Greta Schwartz, standing behind her saying, “That poor girl. That poor, poor girl . . .”
Sophie placed her hand behind Kitty’s head, holding her so that they faced each other, hoping Kitty could see her, hoping she would know someone was here, someone who wasn’t going to hurt her. “I’m here, Kitty, I’m here . . .”
It was then that a different fear washed over Sophie. Where was the man who did this? Where was he now? What if he came back?
And Sophie felt as Kitty surely had—vulnerable, scared, keenly aware of her own helplessness. What if the man came back now, while she was on her knees in this cramped hallway, alone with an elderly woman and another dying in her arms?
About this time the killer cruised along Hillside Avenue toward the Van Wyck Expressway, tossing certain items out of his car as he drove. Personal items, belonging to a woman whose name he did not know. He would check the newspaper tomorrow, find out her name, though their names never mattered to him. He’d find out if she lived or died. He got that kind of information from the newspapers, like everyone else.
He would not return to Kew Gardens. Not tonight. Not for a few more nights.
Someone else appeared in the hallway. Whether Karl Ross spoke or whether Sophie just heard him on the stairs is uncertain. Later it would be difficult to recall what was said in those frantic moments except Sophie’s three words to Karl: “Call the police!”
Finally, he did.
AT 3:50 A.M., the 102nd precinct of the New York City Police Department in Richmond Hill, Queens, received a call of an assault on a woman at 82-62 Austin Street in Kew Gardens. Patrolman Peter Volber responded to the scene at 3:52 a.m.
Officer Volber parked his patrol car in the railroad station lot next to a late model red sports car. The sports car—a 1963 Fiat—had been parked here less than forty minutes before by the victim he now approached. The walk from the parking lot to the spot where he found her was a mere fifty feet.
The police officer took one look at the mangled woman lying on the floor and immediately radioed back to his precinct. He reported a serious assault and requested an ambulance and assistance of duty detectives from the 102nd precinct. The desk dispatcher put him through to the second-floor squad room, and Officer Volber briefed Detective Mitchell Sang: white female, unconscious, apparent stab wounds sustained from a serious assault.
“How serious?” Sang asked.
“You might want to notify Homicide.”
AWAITING THE AMBULANCE, Sophie stayed with Kitty and spoke words of comfort that she could only hope were somehow registering. Greta Schwartz and Karl Ross stood shivering outside the door of 82-62 as Officer Volber asked the standard questions.
“What is her name?”
“Kitty Genovese.”
Officer Volber scribbled in his notebook and looked at the husky man who had answered. “And what are you doing here, sir?”
“I live here,” Ross pointed toward the brown door to the hallway. “Upstairs.”
He appeared very agitated. Considering the horrific scene in his hallway and that he obviously knew the victim, this was understandable. Ross began babbling about how he had heard cries for help.
Mitchell Sang and Bruno Pokstis, duty detectives, arrived in Kew Gardens at 4:05 a.m. Based on what Volber relayed in his call in to Sang, Sang had placed a call of his own to Detectives John Carroll and William “Jerry” Byrnes of the Queens Homicide Squad. He also notified his squad boss, Lieutenant Bernard Jacobs.
Mitch Sang was thirty-nine years old, a tall, powerful-looking man with a shaved head. He cut an imposing figure and looked like what he was—a tough, no-nonsense detective. Sang was a duty detective—a generalist, as opposed to his colleagues in the special Queens Homicide Squad. Known as a tireless investigator, he worked his cases with the tenacity and diligence that are the hallmarks of a good detective. Even if this did turn out to be a homicide, Sang would still consider it his case.
He felt this even more strongly when he looked down at the young woman lying in the hallway. Regardless of how long they’ve been on the job or how much brutality they’ve seen, few police officers ever become dispassionate about savagery done to women and children. Sang was no exception.
It looked like a sexual assault—an extraordinarily brutal one, heartless both in its violence and in the way the victim had been left, severely wounded, exposed, and helpless. On the floor next to her were falsies from her bra. A used sanitary napkin, presumably picked from between her legs during the assault, had been tossed aside. A crime not only savage, but bold. The hallway was separated from the sidewalk by o
nly a single door. The stairs led to the inner doors of two apartments just one floor above. Hardly a secluded location for what had obviously been a massive attack.
The victim was still alive when Detectives John Carroll and Jerry Byrnes of Homicide arrived at 4:20 a.m. The hallway was so narrow that the detectives had to be extra cautious stepping inside so as not to disturb the victim or the crime scene. They leaned in with scanning flashlights as Detective Carroll carefully knelt down to check for signs of life. Sang and Pokstis had already done this, but as the senior homicide investigator at the scene, John Carroll also examined the victim, making mental note of her as she had been found.
Carroll was a first-grade detective in the Homicide Squad, a man of intelligence and experience held in high esteem throughout the department. Noting the victim’s injuries—including that she could not speak, could not tell them what happened—Carroll stepped out. He wanted to speak with the people who could tell them what happened.
They allowed Sophie Farrar to remain with the victim until the ambulance arrived. The woman lying in the hallway of 82-62 Austin Street still clung to life, so it was not a homicide investigation yet. But these detectives, all seasoned responders to violent crime, had too much experience to believe it could turn out otherwise. They called for patrolmen to secure the scene and for technicians from the Police Laboratory and the Queens Photo Unit.
An ambulance pulled up on Austin Street at 4:25 a.m. Kitty Genovese, unconscious but alive, was lifted onto a stretcher. A shaken Sophie Farrar watched as they carried her friend away.
After the stretcher had been placed in the back of the vehicle, the attendant closed the door and took his place inside. Per the standards of the time, the ambulance was not equipped with any medical devices or supplies (not beyond what could be found in the average person’s medicine cabinet). Even if it had been, there was no one aboard to render treatment. The function of the ambulance was to transport the injured. Emergency medical technicians would not become standard personnel in New York City ambulances until the 1970s.
The commotion brought residents out of the warmth of their homes and into the bitter cold of Austin Street. In the ambulance now, Kitty remained isolated from her neighbors. She was no longer crying for their help, no longer sobbing and groping her way down their peaceful tree-lined street. Alone in the back of an ambulance, Kitty Genovese left Kew Gardens for the last time.
LIEUTENANT BERNARD JACOBS, twenty-one-year veteran of the NYPD and commander of the 102nd Detective Squad, arrived in Kew Gardens at 4:30 a.m. As the highest-ranking officer present, Jacobs was in charge of the investigation. He took one look at the size of the apartment buildings surrounding the crime scene and immediately called for the assistance of duty detectives from the thirteen other Queens squads. As with all crimes, particularly of a violent nature, police began canvassing the area right away, knocking on doors and speaking with passersby in search of witnesses. It did not appear there had been anyone passing by, given the time of night, but there were many doors on which to knock. Lieutenant Jacobs told them to start with the Mowbray, that big apartment building across the street.
The onlookers who had come outside to gape at the red lights of the ambulance and the gray barricades going up around the parking lot represented only the start of the work that lay ahead. In an area so densely populated, it was possible there were witnesses who had not ventured out—nor would, willingly.
But Kew Gardens was one of the good neighborhoods. Detectives and officers who worked the area knew this. Despite its considerable population, which had jumped dramatically over the past two decades, and though only a twenty-minute train ride from Manhattan, Kew Gardens looked more suburban than big city, with its clean streets, the absence of graffiti, and the upscale architecture. You could tell just by looking around that a good class of people lived here. Detectives and officers knew that Kew Gardens wasn’t like some of the crime-ridden ghettos up in the Bronx, Brooklyn, or parts of Manhattan. A murder here was an unusual thing, let alone one like this, a brutal knife slaying of a girl. In this city, there were bad neighborhoods where the police wouldn’t get any cooperation. Half the residents were criminals themselves, for God’s sake, the others too scared to talk. Some might even be hiding the perpetrator.
Not here though. Not only were the police sure that the attacker was long gone, they were also sure that if anyone heard or saw anything, they would say so. The good people lived here, the law-abiding citizens—the ones who paid taxes, sent their kids to school, and kept their homes looking nice. They were clean and decent folks. They would step up to the plate. They would cooperate.
That’s what the police thought before sunrise on March 13, 1964.
IN BACK OF the Tudor, Mitch Sang and his colleagues were taking information from Kitty’s three neighbors who had been present when they arrived. Sophie Farrar had told them her story. Detectives would speak with her again, but for now they let the distraught woman go inside to get cleaned up.
The older woman, Greta Schwartz, appeared similarly upset. Like Sophie, she was thin and petite. Her age made her seem all the more fragile.
Mrs. Schwartz explained that she had not heard any screams, that she had been alerted by a phone call. She told them how she had come down and found Kitty, how at first she thought that Kitty had fallen. “Poor Kitty,” she wailed. “That poor girl!”
Indeed. And poor Mrs. Schwartz, having walked unaware into a scene like that.
Detectives were far less moved by the jumpy young man Karl Ross. Ross was thirty-one years old, short, husky, with thinning hair. Ross had called the police. He knew the victim and she had been attacked in his hallway. They had questions for him.
Getting him to talk was not a problem, but getting him to say anything of substance was another matter.
Yes, he knew Kitty. They were friends. They talked all the time, had a drink together once in a while. What time did he hear screams? He didn’t know. What did he see? Nothing, nothing at all, until he heard something—calls for help it sounded like—in the hallway. Then he opened his door and saw Kitty lying there. Was she alone at that time? Yes. Probably. He thought so. Hard to say, it was dark.
He told them Kitty works at a bar over in Hollis called Ev’s Eleventh Hour. She lives in this building, four doors down. Her family lives in Connecticut. Kitty moved here about a year ago with her roommate, Mary Ann Zielonko . . .
He talked fast and freely, about everything except for what happened in the last hour, as if he could drown the detectives in a disingenuous flood of details about Kitty that would wash away their questions about what he had seen and heard of her this night. He was maddeningly vague, evasive in spite of his rapid outpouring of words. He mentioned he was a professional poodle trimmer and that he had a pet grooming salon right around the corner on Lefferts Boulevard. He even sold Kitty a dog! Last Christmas. Kitty wanted a dog as a gift for her roommate and he found her just the one she wanted, a miniature poodle.
Fantastic. But what had he done for her when she was laying at the bottom of his stairs?
Detective Sang had more to ask Karl Ross, but there was something he had to do first.
ON THIS DAY, which she would remember forever after as the worst of her life, Mary Ann Zielonko awoke to the sound of loud rapping at her door.
Mary Ann was a shy, soft-spoken twenty-five-year-old barmaid who worked the day shift at Club Chris in nearby Springfield Gardens. Blonde and willowy, she was an attractive woman with a delicate look that mirrored the gentle and vulnerable soul within. An assistant district attorney would later describe her as bearing a striking resemblance to movie star Kim Novak.
In a sleepy haze, Mary Ann made her way through the small apartment and opened her front door to face two men she had never seen before. Detective Sang showed her his gold shield. Mary Ann listened as he spoke, but the words were incomprehensible. She wondered if she was still asleep. In her confusion she thought at first he was looking for Kitty. But Kitty was not hom
e, nor had Mary Ann expected her home tonight. Kitty had plans for dinner and drinks with a friend and then planned to stay the night with another friend, Bessie Thompson, who lived above the bar where Kitty worked. What this stranger was telling Mary Ann did not make sense. And it felt surreal, this detective telling her to get dressed and come with him to the hospital.
Mary Ann did not scream. She did not break down. She did not believe. Not yet.
THE RESPONSE TO Lieutenant Jacobs’s call for assistance had been swift. By 5:00 a.m. teams of detectives and patrolmen from neighboring precincts in Queens were already fanned out around the vicinity of Austin Street. Detective John Mahoney was one of those assigned to canvass the Mowbray Apartments.
“3:20 a.m.,” the woman said. “That’s when I first heard her scream. I know because I turned on my bedroom light and looked at the clock.” The woman spoke bluntly and with an air of certainty. Her name was Irene Frost, and she lived in a corner apartment on the second floor of the Mowbray, directly across the street from the Tudor building and the train station. Her windows faced Austin Street, giving her a view of both the storefronts along the Tudor and the side of the Tudor building adjacent to the parking lot.
Irene Frost was blonde and in early middle age. She was not a demure woman, nor one to mince words. Detective Mahoney was glad to have found her.
After repeating that she was certain of the time the screams woke her she said that she went to her bedroom window. Looking out across Austin Street, she saw a man and a woman standing in front of the bookstore. Nothing seemed to be happening, so she returned to her bed. But a minute later she heard a woman scream, “Please help me, God! Please help me! I’ve been stabbed!”
This brought Irene Frost to her window once again, where she saw the man run down Austin Street and past the train station before losing sight of him. Going then to her other bedroom window, which was closer to the site of the bookstore across the street, Irene saw the woman on her knees on the pavement, between the bookstore and liquor store. The woman got up, bent over to pick something up from the sidewalk—her pocketbook, Irene thought—and she then walked down Austin Street toward the train station parking lot, the same direction the man had run. Unlike the man who had run by, it took the woman a while to make it down the street. Irene watched her turn the corner by the drugstore. Switching windows once again, to the one with a view of the parking lot, Irene watched the woman walk along the side of the Tudor building and turn the far corner by the coffee shop. Once the woman turned that corner, Irene could no longer see her.
Kitty Genovese: A True Account of a Public Murder and Its Private Consequences Page 3
