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

by Pelonero, Catherine

  The beer, for one thing—he’d been drinking quite a lot of it these past couple of months. The refrigerator was crammed so full of it there was barely room for food. Often in the evenings, from the time he returned from his father’s shop at around 9:00 p.m. until Bettye left for work, Winston would sit, drinking beer, thinking. About what, he never told her. “Just thinking,” he’d answer flatly. It seemed he always had a beer in his hand these days, drinking and brooding in his waking hours.

  It wasn’t that he was getting drunk; on the contrary, his bearing never seemed to change. If Bettye hadn’t seen him drinking beer or had not seen the quantities of it he stocked in their refrigerator, she may never have known that he had had any alcohol. What bothered Bettye was the change. Why all of a sudden, over the past three months, had her husband begun drinking so much beer? And drinking alone—that was never a good sign.

  Then there were the changes in his personal habits. Winston had always been a man who prized cleanliness. He kept himself well groomed and their home immaculately clean. He had been even more particular than Bettye about keeping the house absolutely spotless, frequently washing walls, organizing cabinets, insisting that things be kept in order. He was never critical of Bettye’s housekeeping, but he took it upon himself to do a good deal of cleaning, just to make extra sure that things were as tidy as could be. Unusual for a man, especially one who already worked two jobs, but this was the way Winston had always wanted it. His fastidiousness in the way he kept their home was perhaps a rebuke to the emotional messiness of his parents’ lives. But lately he hadn’t shown any concern for either his own appearance or for the housework. He seemed to care less and less about either. He didn’t even go to the barber anymore. When Bettye suggested he get a haircut, he asked her to cut his hair. He had neverdone that before, so particular was he about his hair. In the past two weeks Bettye had even had to remind him to take a bath. A dramatic change for a man who had previously been well groomed to a fault.

  Bettye asked him what was wrong. Nothing, he’d tell her, when he answered at all. But of course she knew there must be some problem. Even Fannie, normally so consumed with her own affairs, had noticed something amiss with her son, but he wouldn’t tell her anything either. Bettye asked Alphonso if he knew what was bothering Winston, but he had no idea.

  Bettye Moseley had gone so far as to speak with a doctor about these recent odd behaviors in her husband and had then spoken to Winston, expressing her concern for him, suggesting he go and get checked by a physician. To this, Winston replied that there were a lot of people sicker than him on the outside.

  What did that mean?

  He would not elaborate, he would not tell her what occupied his mind, and he would not see a doctor. So Bettye Moseley was left staring helplessly at the silent, impenetrable shell her husband had become, dutifully cleaning up the beer cans he left all over the once spotless house, and hoping that whatever was wrong would become right again.

  There was little Bettye could do. Winston still went to work every day, both Raygram and his father’s shop; still behaved gently (if somewhat absently) with the children; still paid the bills, ate, drank, and slept. Technically he still functioned. But it was more like living with a docile zombie than a human being. Bettye could not figure out why these changes had come over her husband. While things between her in-laws were never good, they were at least at a low ebb, certainly better than the horrible time last summer, when everything seemed to be spiraling madly out of control.

  Perhaps if Fannie and Al could forge some sort of lasting truce, they could all finally have some peace. Maybe if Fannie would move back to Pittsburgh, where she had lived during Winston’s teen years and still owned a home, there could be peace. It seemed there were as many maybes in their life as there were empty beer cans, with the maybes holding about as much promise as the hollow cans. Where was the hope for Fannie and Alphonso settling their differences or moving on? If the past were any indication, their battle could rage on for another three decades.

  Unknown to any of the Moseleys at the moment, the war between Fannie and Alphonso would soon come to a permanent end. But neither they nor their son or his family would have peace.

  Fannie Burks was twenty years old when she met Alphonso Moseley, also twenty, in New York in early 1935. She was pretty, gregarious, and pregnant by another man. Just the same, Alphonso was smitten with Fannie, perhaps also feeling protective of her, a young woman who had come to New York City from Michigan, pregnant and alone in the big city. Whatever her other problems, Fannie was a very bright and engaging girl, quite charming when she chose to be.

  Alphonso had a more serious, reserved personality than his future wife, and that could have been part of the attraction for both of them. He seemed to find her enthusiasm intoxicating. As for Fannie, she may have been drawn to Al’s sober and responsible nature, not to mention his obvious interest in her. Al was a hard-working civil servant employed by the New York City public transportation system. He manned a ticket booth at one of the city’s subway stations.

  Fannie moved in with Al, and when she gave birth to a baby boy in Harlem Hospital on March 2, 1935, they decided to raise the boy as their son. They did not marry, however, until 1940. Nevertheless, they maintained a home together from before Winston’s birth until 1944, when he was nine years old. Those nine years would be remembered by their son forever after with great longing as the only happy time in his childhood, indeed the happiest time in his whole life.

  His earliest memory was of an apartment on 145th Street and later, right before the end, on 124th Street. These were the years of an intact and reasonably happy family, at least from the young son’s point of view. Though Fannie and Al would both later claim their marriage was fraught with arguments from the beginning, the family lived together during these years. Both also recalled Winston Moseley as a quiet soul even then, a shy boy who did not misbehave or cause any fuss, a rather easy child to raise, with a calm demeanor and interests tending toward things of a more subdued nature. He did not make friends easily, always tending to be rather introverted and bashful, and was not someone who enjoyed groups of people. If he made a friend at all, he tended to prefer having just one rather than many.

  Never a terribly active or athletic boy, his main interest in childhood was animals. He liked watching them, learning about them, caring for them. Early on he begged his parents not for a go-cart or a catcher’s mitt, but for pets. He would grow to love animals of all kinds, including mice, rabbits, insects, and especially dogs.

  Though in adulthood he would claim no fondness for cats—capricious creatures prone to wander off, and they might suddenly scratch you no matter how well you treated them—one of his first pets was a kitten named Princess. Winston and his mother both doted on the fluffy little cat. When Princess disappeared from their apartment one day and could not be found, Fannie and Winston wept. Princess the kitten was the first female to suddenly walk out of Winston’s life, but she would hardly be the last.

  Al and Fannie’s problems came to a head in early 1944. While there were a myriad of complaints, all of them basically stemmed from the same source: Fannie had never taken to monogamy, nor to the duties of motherhood really, at least not in a traditional sense. This caused a great strain on the marriage, Al being a conventional man who expected his wife to remain faithful to him and put their son’s needs ahead of her own whims. Suspicions became accusations that led to constant fights. Fannie’s attempts to hide her extramarital activities seemed feeble at best, and it seems Al tried to look the other way, at least for a time. But the fighting reached a fever pitch when Al, acting on his suspicions, rushed home on his lunch hour (which happened to be in the middle of the night, as he was working the 11:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. shift at the subway token booth) and found young Winston home alone. This happened more than once, continuing even after Al angrily confronted his wife about it. According to Al, it reached the point that Fannie was never there when he’d come to check. Feari
ng for the boy’s safety, he eventually installed a double lock on the front door, locking Winston inside when he left for work to keep him as safe as possible during the night.

  Fannie meanwhile had grown as irritated with her husband’s attempts to control her as he was with her philandering. She could not seem to understand his point of view, or why he had to be so serious all the time. Life was for more than work or chores. Fannie was a grown woman and she worked too. Wasn’t she entitled to some freedom, a little fun? She always came home to him in the end, so what difference did it make?

  Apparently it made a lot of difference to Al, and so came the fights, the recriminations, he venting his anger and hurt, Fannie reaching her wit’s end as Al nattered on about fidelity and motherly duty. The fights grew increasingly volatile and sometimes physical, though at that time such things were considered strictly family matters rather than situations for police intervention. No one yelled at or physically harmed Winston, but he overheard his parents’ virulent quarrels.

  Alphonso could not reconcile himself to his wife’s behavior, but he would not leave her, nor did he want her to leave him. Both Al and Fannie seemed to think they could be happy together. If only Fannie would stop running around with other men. If only Al would quit trying to control her and stop being so erratic, as she called it.

  Very big “if onlys” to be sure, in which there seemed to be little room for compromise on either side.

  Fannie finally left. To make sure her husband would not interfere, she had two police officers accompany her when she moved her belongings out of the apartment on 124th Street. Among the things she left behind was her nine-year-old son. She returned two weeks later, however, after a doctor informed her that she had a stomach tumor and needed an operation. Fannie moved back into the apartment with her husband and son and immediately summoned her mother in Michigan to come stay with them in New York to look after Winston while Fannie underwent surgery.

  Fannie explained to her son that she needed to go to the hospital so the doctors could cut a tumor out of her stomach. How much of this explanation the young boy actually grasped is uncertain, but the memory of his mother leaving home to go have an operation seemed to stay with him as a particularly troubling event, likely because it marked the end of life as he had known it.

  Fannie had the surgery and remained in the hospital for two weeks. Upon her release she returned to the apartment on 124th Street where her husband, mother, and son were waiting for her. Right after his mother came home, Winston was told he was going to Michigan to stay with his grandmother until his mother got better. The boy left with Fannie’s mother shortly after. He would never return to the apartment on 124th Street. Neither would Fannie, who moved out after her son left for Michigan.

  Winston remained at his grandmother’s farm in Holly, Michigan, the rest of the spring and into the summer of 1944. It was a rustic home with no indoor plumbing, situated in a rural community with a one-room schoolhouse, at which he was enrolled. Quite an abrupt change of lifestyle for a boy who had just turned nine and had lived those nine years in New York City. He felt lonely. He missed his mother and father, his home, and his pets (two chickens he kept in a cage in theapartment). No one told him who was taking care of his pets. No one told him much of anything. As the weeks passed he wondered where his mother was and when she was coming to get him, but he was too timid to ask. His grandmother treated him kindly, but she did not say much about his mother. There was little the boy could do but wait out the days in the solitude of this strange, isolated place.

  There were animals on his grandmother’s farm, but he felt that none of them belonged to him. Walking along the desolate dirt roads of rural Michigan with no sound other than the crunching of his own feet on the thawing earth beneath him and nothing ahead except a ramshackle schoolhouse, he felt as if nothing belonged to him. When he finally left his grandmother’s home that summer, it was his father who came to retrieve him.

  Alphonso had a sister who lived in Detroit, Michigan. With his wife living elsewhere in New York and his son living in Michigan, Al decided to move to Detroit and open a business. He could start fresh, reclaim his son and, he hoped, his wife. He collected Winston from his grandmother’s farm in Holly and took him to live in Detroit, where they moved in with Al’s sister, Winston’s aunt. Al leased a space across the street from his sister’s home and opened a repair shop. Winston had some cousins to play with here and his aunt and uncle were kind to him, although at times he did overhear his aunt criticizing his mother and this bothered him. His uncle tossed a baseball around with him once in a while, trying to encourage the shy boy to take an interest. Winston did develop a mild fondness for baseball, but his chief interest remained animals. His father let him have some pets of his own, and it was around this time he developed a fascination with ants. They made good pets for a thoughtful boy who did not like noise or commotion; they were silent, required little care, and were of course free for the taking.

  His father built an aquarium so he could keep them. Winston found their little societies intriguing. Such a smooth and flawless operation. Self-contained. Organized.

  As father and son settled into their new life in Detroit, Al assured Winston that his mother would be joining them before long. But the boy knew. Somehow he just knew. Though he wasn’t one to argue, he spoke up one day after they’d been in Detroit a few weeks and told his father, who continued to make plans for his wife’s arrival, “No, daddy, she’s not coming back. She’s not ever coming back.”

  But Fannie in fact did come to Detroit about six months after her surgery. She moved in with Al and Winston and the family was together again. The couple fought, but at least they were all together. For about a year, until Fannie left again. She stayed away for some time, during which Alphonso alternately expressed anguish and anger. Outwardly Winston expressed little, retreating to the haven of his pets, schoolwork, and his private thoughts. Fannie returned the following Christmas, when Winston was eleven years old. Al sent Winston to the movies so he and Fannie could have a talk. When Winston returned, Fannie had a swollen eye. She walked out of Al’s shop and out of their lives once again.

  This time Al was more forthcoming with his son about why his mother had left. He told Winston that Fannie had taken up with another man. Al suspected the man had followed her to Detroit and was staying across the street from his shop while Fannie spent time with them. Al had not given up hope of another reconciliation and he was hurt and enraged that his wife had brought her boyfriend along, or allowed him to follow her, whatever the case. Winston now knew the reason for Fannie staying away, but why she was gone was almost immaterial. Except for making him feel a little closer to his father (as well as feeling sorry for him, as Al, unlike his son, did not keep his distress to himself), the reasons were secondary to the plain, painful fact that she was not there with them. He missed his mother, longed for her, but he quietly accepted, or at least realized, despite his father’s continued expectations to the contrary, that she would never come back to stay. He did not want to talk about it, either. Whenever his father broached the subject the boy told him, “Let’s talk about something else, daddy.”

  Fannie came to visit Winston. Every few months she’d breeze in for a weekend visit, ever her carefree, ebullient self, greeting him as if she’d only been away a few days on a little vacation, then cheerily going on her way with a promise that she’d see him again next time, though never promising exactly when the next time might be. He’d see her for these weekend visits at his grandmother’s farm. While there he’d collect small animals—mice, snakes, a chipmunk. He’d return to Detroit with a few new pets, but never with his mother.

  Things went on this way until Winston was seventeen years old. Fannie Moseley would later tell a jury that her relationship with her son during these years had been a very happy one. Even in hindsight, with her adult son on trial for murder, she seemed oblivious to the fact that her brief appearances in his childhood may not have constituted a
very happy relationship for him.

  By Winston’s senior year of high school, even Alphonso had accepted that Fannie would not be coming to live with them in Detroit. He decided to return to New York and open a TV and radio repair shop there. He would teach Winston the business and they could run it together as father and son. Al went ahead to New York to make the arrangements while Winston went to spend his summer vacation with his mother, who was now living in Pittsburgh.

  Winston was now eighteen. He had a small frame and was still very thin and not very tall, just as he had been as a growing boy. He remained shy, soft-spoken, and reserved. He was lighter skinned than either of his parents and had an angular though not unattractive face. His brown eyes were wide set, perched above high cheekbones. He had a slender nose that was perfectly straight, lips that were full though not abundant. On the rare occasions that he smiled, he could be considered good-looking.

  When Al returned to Detroit, Winston came back as well, but he told his father that he had decided to move to Pittsburgh to live with his mother.

  An anguished argument ensued between father and son. Al could not believe that Winston would choose to move to Pittsburgh with his mother, particularly since she was living there with another man. How could he do such a thing? Hadn’t it been the two of them for all these years? Winston did not want to hurt his father but he wanted this chance to finally be with Fannie again. He had also met a girl in Pittsburgh, a girl he liked quite a lot. His first girlfriend; he was eager to get back there to see her. Winston hoped his father would understand. He assured Al that of course he loved him dearly, but he loved his mother too. He was moving to Pittsburgh; his decision was final. In a flash of anger and hurt, Alphonso told Winston that he was not his real father. And so the argument ended with tears running down the faces of both men.