Kitty Genovese: A True Account of a Public Murder and Its Private Consequences

by Pelonero, Catherine

  “What happened then?” Detective Mahoney asked.

  “I went back to bed.”

  IRENE FROST’S ACCOUNT of Kitty Genovese having first been attacked around the corner from where police found her matched what other residents were telling detectives. The forensic evidence backed it up; bloodstains were found on the pavement in front of 82-64 Austin Street, the address of the Austin Book Shop. Long before the first light of dawn on that Friday morning, detectives knew they were dealing not with a single crime scene but with an expanse that stretched from the front of Austin Street to around the block and into a rear entryway of the Tudor building. A young woman’s bloody death march.

  Detective Frank Frezza of the Queens Photo Unit was a sixteen-year veteran of the NYPD. Detective Frezza was an accomplished photographer in his own right, having learned his trade in the U.S. Navy Photo Unit during World War II. Like many of his colleagues in the detective bureau, Frezza had joined the force after his return from military service. After photographing the hallway, Detective Frezza went around to the front of Austin Street. The bloodstains on the pavement in front of the bookstore were parallel to the main entry of the Mowbray across the street. Noting the large bay window at the Mowbray entrance, and having learned that the Mowbray employed round-the-clock elevator operators stationed in the lobby, detectives were eager to speak with the man on duty. He, however, was not eager to speak with them. As Detective Frezza recalled, the elevator man refused to give any information to police. He wouldn’t even tell them his name. Lieutenant Jacobs tried to talk sense to him, pointing out the severity of the crime and that the least bit of information could be useful, but the man remained as stony as the building. He didn’t see anything, he didn’t know anything, and he had nothing to say. And by the way, he was still on duty till 8:00 a.m. and couldn’t talk to them anymore. He had a job to do. What if somebody needed to use the elevator?

  “I want you to come down to the precinct as soon as your shift is over,” Jacobs told him.

  “No.” He was resolute. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Jacobs had now had it with this man. He ordered his officers to take him to the 102nd precinct immediately for questioning.

  “We never did get his name that morning,” Detective Frezza recalled. “Not even when they hauled him off to the station.”

  The elevator man sat in the police station for hours before giving his name: Joseph Fink. When Fink finally started talking, detectives were angry, but their disgust was not confined to him. By that time, they were wondering what the hell was going on with the people in Kew Gardens.

  AROUND THE SAME time the elevator man was denying he had seen Kitty on the street, Mary Ann Zielonko saw her on a steel table. Kitty had never made it to the emergency room. Upon arrival at Queens General Hospital, a doctor by the name of Alquiros had pronounced her dead in the ambulance. She had been taken directly to the hospital morgue.

  Detectives had brought Mary Ann with them to Queens General Hospital. A relative would need to make the identification official, but as the victim’s roommate, Mary Ann’s ID would suffice until a family member could be contacted.

  In the echoing tomb of the large and impersonal Queens County Mortuary, a white sheet was pulled back to reveal the face of a dead woman.

  “Yes. That’s Kitty.”

  Still it did not seem real. None of it. The detectives. The morgue. Kitty, lying motionless under a white sheet. Kitty Genovese, the most truly alive person she had ever known. Kitty gone? Her mind rejected the idea. Kitty would never leave her like this.

  A detective led Mary Ann out of the room and to a bench in the hallway. How long she sat there waiting she could not recall, but when the detectives returned and told her it was time to go, she calmly, reflexively told them, “No, I’ll wait for her.” As if Kitty had just stepped out to run an errand and would be right back.

  BACK IN KEW Gardens, detectives canvassed apartments and private homes, took measurements and photos, and dusted the hallway for fingerprints. Some residents watched the action while others anxiously pondered what, if anything, they would tell the police.

  chapter 3

  THE REPORTS MADE by New York City detectives during an investigation are called DD5s. By necessity the information contained on a DD5 is typically clinical and spare, brief accounts of the facts as the reporting officer has observed and recorded them; statements given, evidence gathered, actions taken. Except for the medical and forensic details of injuries inflicted on the victim, they contain no accounts of human damage. No mention of grief, sorrow. No indication of the suffering or sudden, unalterable change visited on the lives of those to whom the victim is more than just a name in a report or a newspaper article.

  Among the DD5s filed in criminal complaint #13372 was a very brief one affirming a crucial procedure, necessarily stark and superficial:

  SUBJECT: Kitty GENOVESE of 82-70 Austin St., Queens, F-W 28 yrs.

  1.3/13/64 Request transmitted to notify Vincent GENOVESE that his daughter Kitty is dead at Queens General Morgue.

  2.Reply received—Vincent Genovese notified and is en route to Queens General Hospital.

  It was 6:00 a.m., still dark out as the policeman walked to the front door of a suburban home. He was neither a detective nor a member of the NYPD. He was an officer in the leafy, tranquil town of New Canaan, Connecticut, approaching the home of a local family on an errand all policemen dread.

  Rachel Genovese, mother of five children ranging in age from twenty-eight to thirteen, was a slight, dark-haired woman who looked younger than her fifty-one years. Rachel and Vincent, her husband of thirty years, had both grown up in Brooklyn, New York, where they had remained for the first twenty years of their marriage, raising their family in the Park Slope section until ten years ago, in 1954, when they had moved across the state line to Connecticut. Four of their five children had moved with them. Catherine, their oldest, nineteen at the time, had stayed behind in Brooklyn.

  Catherine, whose friends all called her Kitty, loved living in the city. She had tried New Canaan but found it too small a town for her tastes, far too sedate and much less inspiring than the rapid pace of New York.

  Despite the fact that she had grown up in the city, her parents worried about her living there. As smart and capable as Catherine was, New York could be a dangerous place for a young woman on her own. The city had changed a great deal in the past decade, and not for the better. The family’s move to suburban Connecticut had been prompted by Rachel witnessing a street shooting in their old neighborhood, a place that had once felt so secure.

  Catherine had moved from Brooklyn some years ago. She now shared an apartment with another girl in what appeared to be a nice neighborhood in Queens. It certainly wasn’t New Canaan, where Rachel and Vincent wished their daughter lived, but at least she wasn’t living alone.

  Still, danger lurked in the city. Her parents could not help harboring fears for their daughter’s safety.

  Rachel Genovese answered her front door on the morning of Friday, March 13, 1964, to face her worst fear realized. Her husband and four children awoke to the sound of her shriek.

  Bill Genovese, sixteen years old at the time, recalled the scene this way: “The officer said, ‘You have a daughter named Catherine who lives in New York City? She was hurt in the city. She’s been injured.’ He was trying to delay the inevitable. Finally he said, ‘We believe this is your daughter, and we believe she is dead.’ ”

  There was more, of course—the name and phone number of a detective in New York for them to contact, a request for someone from the family to go to Queens General Hospital as soon as possible. But the words that mattered most, the ones that hung in the air like a great unmovable black cloud, were the officer’s somber declaration: We believe this is your daughter, and we believe she is dead.

  Rachel had always been very close to her eldest child. Now she was inconsolable. Later that day she would be sedated in an attempt to give her some small measure of r
elief. Vincent Genovese, unable to bear the thought of identifying his daughter’s body, called his brother to accompany him on the grim ride to Queens. The four siblings of Catherine Genovese—brothers Vincent, Bill, Frank, and sister Susan—sat staring at one another in a state of shock. Stunned by the news, numb with grief, there were no words to express the loss they were feeling. The death of their vivacious older sister seemed more than the close-knit Genovese family could fathom.

  Catherine had always seemed the very quintessence of life—bubbly, dynamic, constantly on the go, and full of plans for the future, but never too busy for them. Catherine drove to Connecticut every weekend, hopping out of her sporty new Fiat to greet them, telling them all about her life in the city, inquiring about their lives, and interested in whatever was happening. She was not merely a dutiful sister, but genuinely involved.

  For her siblings, there had never been a time when Catherine was not an important part of their lives. On her weekly visits they often stayed up late into the night talking about everything from movies to politics to medieval history. Catherine kept up on current events, knew a great deal about a great many subjects, and could discuss the most profound topics with ease. She loved to spark a good conversation or play the role of confidant, ready to listen or give advice when asked. In every way, Catherine had always been there for them. Now she had been killed in the city. Murdered. It seemed not only unthinkable, but unendurable.

  As their mother sobbed and their father undertook what needed to be done, the young siblings of Catherine Genovese sat dumbfounded, unable to grasp that the next time they would see their sister would not be for a late night chat in the living room, but in the parlor of a funeral home.

  A KEY ELEMENT of a homicide investigation is an examination of the victim’s life—background, habits, friends, lovers—anything that could possibly shed light on how or why the crime occurred or lead to a suspect. The New York detectives would need to speak with the grieving Genovese family to learn more about their daughter’s life and character. For now they had her roommate.

  Having brought Mary Ann Zielonko back home from Queens General Hospital, Mitch Sang stood in her small apartment at 7:00 a.m. getting some information from her. Or trying to. The poor girl—who did not strike Sang as a particularly talkative type to begin with—had the look and manner of someone whose shocked senses have carried her far inward to a place of silent internalized sorrow and private thoughts. Obviously stunned by what had happened to her friend, Mary Ann’s brief answers came slowly, as if filtered through a narrow tube that constricted her words, reducing them to a series of dull clipped responses. Sang understood. This could not be easy for her, although it might be easier for both of them if Karl Ross were not present.

  From the start, Sang had suspected that Karl Ross knew more than he was telling about the assaults on Kitty Genovese, particularly the attack at the bottom of his stairs. Now here he was in the victim’s apartment just a couple hours later, cocktail glass in hand, ostensibly comforting her roommate, actually just boozing and interrupting Sang’s questioning. Detective Sang had had enough of Karl Ross. He asked him to leave. Ross refused, indignant. This was Mary Ann’s apartment, he told Sang, and he could stay as long as she said it was okay. Mary Ann didn’t say anything, oblivious to the presence of Karl Ross and his ministrations of comfort as she was to everything else. Detective Sang told Ross he needed to finish speaking with Mary Ann alone. Without waiting for a response, he took Ross by the arm and led him out the front door and down the stairs.

  Sang had not even made his way back up to the apartment before he heard Ross shouting curses behind him, followed by the sound of a violent crack. Detective Sang turned and looked down the stairwell. The son of a bitch had kicked in the bottom panel of the street-level door. Mitch Sang flew down the stairs, handcuffed Karl Ross, and hauled him off to the 102nd precinct on a charge of disorderly conduct.

  Mary Ann sat in her apartment, barely noting Karl’s departure or the melee that ensued. Feeling perhaps more alone and isolated than she ever had before, Mary Ann could not express her grief. Even in solitary moments it was difficult for her to fully vent her emotions, so accustomed was she to the suppression of them. Indeed, she feared the police finding out the nature and depth of her loss. If speaking of Kitty’s death—about which she knew nothing except what she’d been told—filled her with horror, the idea of speaking about Kitty’s life, their life, brought on feelings of true terror.

  She had no idea what to do, what to say. What not to say. Their private life had nothing to do with Kitty’s death, but still—could the police do something to her if they knew? Mary Ann did not know. She only knew what had happened to others.

  The one person who would know what to do was Kitty. But Kitty was truly gone. In spite of the shock, the desperate denial, the reality had already begun sinking in, affirming what Mary Ann had at some level feared all along: her life with Kitty had been too good to be true. Nothing more than a year-long dream from which she had now awakened, roused by the stark figure of a homicide detective.

  As the morning light dawned, Mary Ann Zielonko, alone in the world, sat at her kitchen table and poured herself a stiff drink.

  THE POLICE HAD some basic information on the victim. They knew where Kitty Genovese had ended up at 3:50 a.m. From witnesses they knew where she had been at 3:20 a.m. as well as that long half-hour in between. Now they had to work backward to trace where she had been before that, and with whom. They headed for an area of Queens about four miles directly east of Kew Gardens.

  chapter 4

  EV’S ELEVENTH HOUR was the type of neighborhood bar that all small tavern owners dream of: ideally located, always busy, trouble free. It was not a big place, but just the right size for a homey pub catering to the same customers day after day. The location was Jamaica Avenue at 193rd Street in the Hollis section of Queens, a working-class area in the best sense of the term. The roster of regulars, mostly homegrown and ever loyal to their neighborhood joints, accounted for the steady business and congenial atmosphere. A row of tankards with the names or nicknames of the regular customers written on them—Paddy, Tommy B., Hungry for Gold—hung above the bar, a testament to the familiarity between the bartenders at Ev’s and their clientele.

  Victor Horan worked behind the bar as Thursday night became the wee hours of Friday, March 13, 1964. Even then, and even though it was a weekday night/morning, Ev’s still had a few patrons sitting at tables or leaning against the thick polished wood of the bar, drinking their beer and sharing a few laughs as the jukebox played in the background and cigarette smoke swirled above.

  It was a cold night, barely above 30 degrees, but the light snow that had fallen on Thursday morning had melted away hours before, leaving the streets clear. Not that driving conditions really mattered much anyway since most of the customers lived within walking distance, some even within the three-story yellow brick building that housed Ev’s Eleventh Hour on its ground floor.

  It had been an unremarkable, ordinary night, with nothing much new for the regulars and barkeeps to talk about. They chatted about the same things as usual—work, the upcoming softball season (Ev’s had its own softball team that played against teams from other taverns in the area), the horse races at Roosevelt. Familiar voices discussed familiar topics, with never a hint that their conversations the next day would be hushed and serious, dominated by a single, extraordinary subject.

  As Victor Horan recalled, Kitty Genovese walked in the front door of Ev’s sometime after 2:00 a.m. Though Kitty was the day manager at Ev’s and had in fact worked her normal 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. shift on Thursday, her appearance at this time was not unusual. She had been expected.

  The place always lit up when Kitty walked in, as if she had an energy around her that instantly lifted spirits. She entered to a barrage of smiles and familiar greetings, “Hey, there she is!” and calls of “Hi, Kitty!”

  Victor, noticing the door close behind her with no one following,
asked, “Where’s Jack?”

  “He dropped me off. I told him I had to call it a night. I guess he went home.”

  “This early?” Vic replied. “That’d be a first.”

  Kitty shrugged and smiled. The others laughed. Jack Timmins, a local and devoted regular at Ev’s, did not have a reputation for being an early bird. Jack was an affable guy, one of the neighborhood favorites. A longshoreman by trade, he loved a stiff drink or two, good company, and a good laugh. Jack had picked Kitty up at Ev’s when her shift ended the prior evening and they had gone on a planned night out for dinner and drinks at the home of Jack’s brother Teddy over in Brooklyn. Kitty and the Timmins brothers were friends, but this was the first time she and Jack had been out together. Vic wondered how it went, but before he could inquire, Kitty asked, “How was your birthday?”

  “Eh, I spent most of it here, you know?” Vic answered. He had turned twenty-nine the day before, March 12. Kitty had greeted him with happy birthday wishes earlier that night, when he had come in at 6:00 p.m. to relieve her at the bar. Though Vic did not care much about his birthday one way or the other, he appreciated Kitty remembering. She was considerate that way, thoughtful of others. That’s why, last November, when the call had come that Victor’s wife had given birth to their fourth child, a girl, he was grateful but not surprised when Kitty had immediately said, “Come on, let’s go see your wife. I’ll take you to the hospital.” And she had driven him to Flushing Hospital and accompanied him inside to congratulate his wife and admire their new baby girl.