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

by Pelonero, Catherine

  Alphonso may have regretted making the revelation, especially in the way he did, but there it was. And of course it could not be undone.

  Winston went to Pittsburgh, and Alphonso went to New York. Over the next two years they kept in touch by writing. Winston continued calling him daddy, refusing to believe that Al was not his father. Whatever he was feeling, he kept it buried, as usual. He would always consider Alphonso Moseley his father.

  Winston finished high school in Pittsburgh. He had few friends there but he had his girlfriend Leora, who was fifteen when they met. The shy seventeen-year-old had struck up a friendship with her that led to a romance. In 1954, his first girlfriend became his first wife. He was nineteen by that time, she seventeen and pregnant with his child. Winston was happy at the thought of having a wife and child, a family of his own. Leora did not want to be a wife and mother at the age of seventeen, but under the circumstances her mother insisted she get married. Five months before their child was born, Winston and Leora wed. Leora cried throughout the ceremony.

  Winston took some menial jobs in Pittsburgh, first as a stock clerk in a grocery store, then setting up displays in store windows. With a wife to support and a child on the way, he needed to find a career and a better income. When Al wrote and suggested he come to New York with his wife and join Al in his business like they had originally planned, Winston agreed. They moved in with Al, and Winston went to work in his father’s repair shop on Northern Boulevard in Corona, Queens.

  Things did not go as Al had hoped. Winston did not seem to have the focus or maturity that partnering a business required. He could not seem to reconcile himself to staying in the store, preferring instead to spend all his time with his new wife. Al finally had to have a talk with Winston, telling him that he was a man with a wife to support and a child on the way, and he had to find himself steady work of some sort. In June of 1954, through an employment agency, Winston found an entry-level job at the Raygram Corporation, a company that distributed photographic equipment to dealers. His starting salary was $40 per week.

  After their son was born, Winston and Leora moved to their own apartment in Brooklyn. Their second child was born a year and a half later. Winston had a good job with potential for advancement, a home, and family of his own. Leora got a job at Gimbels department store and they found a woman to watch the babies during the day while she worked. Everything seemed to be on track, until 1957, when Leora became involved with another man.

  Their apartment sat above a bar. Leora, barely twenty years old, restless at home with two babies in a situation she felt she had misstepped into in the first place, had started spending time at the bar downstairs, chatting with the rugged bartender. He was a bit of a tough guy, an exciting swashbuckler type, or so it seemed to a naive girl from Pittsburgh, left in a small apartment all evening with the children while her husband put in a full day at the office and then rushed over to Queens to help or spend time with her fussy father-in-law.

  Almost any guy seemed tougher and more exciting than her quiet, moody husband. He did not like to socialize nor even make conversation. When he did talk it always seemed to be about the same old subjects over and over again. In his free time he liked to watch his ants in their aquarium, doing whatever it was that ants did. Aside from the two babies there was little liveliness in their home and even less adult companionship from Leora’s point of view. Winston had never been much of a social or dynamic type, but sweet Jesus, could they ever talk about something other than his rotten childhood, his parents’ problems, and the wonders of ants? Maybe go out once in a while, do something fun? Winston seemed content. Then again, it was hard to tell since he never shared his thoughts with her, at least not beyond what she considered his self-pity over being shuffledaround so much in his childhood. So, Leora sought companionship elsewhere. And like another woman central in Winston’s life, she became blatant about it.

  Leora’s youth, coupled with the fact that her husband expressed so little emotion, probably contributed to her callous treatment of him. It was easy to lose sight of someone’s feelings when he didn’t appear to have any in the first place. In any event, Leora did not conceal her dalliance and Winston became well aware of the time his wife spent with the bartender. They argued. The bartender didn’t seem to care he was cavorting with another man’s wife, even though the cuckolded husband lived right above the bar and could hear his wife downstairs, laughing and enjoying herself with the bartender and his buddies. Winston felt he had little recourse against the bartender and his pals. Aside from his nonassertive nature, Winston was a slight man, only five-foot eight-inches tall, weighing only 120 pounds—physically no match for the bartender and his cohorts. He passed by the bar each day on the way up to his apartment, keeping his silence while the laughter and fun went on.

  Winston felt intimidated by, and eventually downright fearful of, these men. He bought a gun to defend himself. He never brandished the gun on the bartender, but one day he pointed it at Leora. He was sitting by a window in their apartment, watching her talk to a group of men outside. When she came upstairs he was still staring out the window. Leora approached and asked, “What’s the matter?” In reply he raised the gun, a rifle, pointing it outside. “See how easy it is just to shoot him?”

  Leora rushed over and pushed the barrel of the gun down. “Don’t do that! What’s wrong with you?”

  He raised the gun and aimed it toward his wife. “I could blow your brains out right now.”

  They stayed like that for a moment, he pointing the gun at Leora, she not flinching. Later neither would remember how long it lasted or what if anything they said, until finally he laid the gun on a table and walked away to the kitchen. He came back into the room a minute or so later to find Leora poised with rifle in hand, now pointing it at him.

  “How does it feel to have a gun put in your face?” she asked.

  “Kill me. I don’t care,” he told her. “It doesn’t make any difference anyway. I’m tired of all this aggravation.”

  Leora lowered the gun. She shoved it at him. “Here, just put it away.”

  He put the gun away, packed his clothes, and left. He went to his mother in Pittsburgh. But two weeks later he came back to New York and to Leora, telling her he had been wrong to leave, asking to reconcile. Leora took him back. She also continued seeing the bartender.

  They had become his parents.

  Perhaps he realized this, and having witnessed the futility of his parents’ situation, decided not to follow his father’s tortured path. After three weeks he left again. Shortly after he filed for divorce.

  It was now 1958. For the rest of the year and into the next, the constants in his life were his job at Raygram, where he was steadily moving up, and Alphonso, his father. He spent a lot of time at his father’s shop in Corona and it was in that area of Queens in 1960 that he met a young record store clerk named Bettye. He walked into the store one day and, uncharacteristically, introduced himself.

  Bettye was different than either Fannie or Leora. More focused, serious, not so restless. More mature perhaps, though she was only twenty years old. She worked days in the record store while taking night classes to become a registered nurse. Winston asked her out, and they hit it off from the start. Bettye was relaxing to be around. She didn’t demand that they go to nightclubs or out on the town. They went out, occasionally with friends, but Bettye didn’t need a constant party atmosphere. Her personality was much steadier, no surprises or erratic behavior, her goals and aspirations much better defined than other women he had known.

  Winston thought she was perfect. He would always feel that way about Bettye.

  For her part, what was not to like about this intelligent, mild-mannered young man? He had a failed marriage behind him, but he had made a clean break with his ex-wife and faithfully paid his child support. He was a kind man, introverted, and not terribly communicative, but also very steady, loyal, and responsible. And he loved Bettye.

  They lived together befo
re marrying at the beginning of 1961. Winston paid Bettye’s way through nursing school. They bought their house in South Ozone Park, a neighborhood largely settled by industrious, middle-class black couples like themselves, and in another year they had a son of their own. They rarely went out anymore, with both of them working full time and a new baby at home, but a quiet life together suited them. Bettye would make the same observation others had about Winston’s tendency to spend a lot of time in the private cocoon of his own thoughts, but there did not seem to be anything troubling about this. He seldom expressed any complaints or distress. By the time he met Bettye he had quit talking about his childhood or his parents, though the latter were still very much enmeshed in his life.

  Fannie had moved back to New York sometime in 1960 for another reunion with her husband. When this reconciliation fell apart, she moved in with Winston and Bettye. Winston fashioned a bedroom for her when they moved to the house on Sutter Avenue, where Fannie would sleep during the times she lived with them. After her return to New York she lived sometimes with her son, rarely with her husband. Other times she went to stay with a boyfriend. As usual, Al was aware of the other man in Fannie’s life, and bitterly unhappy about it. Bettye was of course aware of the situation between Al and Fannie, and she knew it must be a strain for her husband being perpetually pulled into it. But whenever she tried to discuss the situation with Winston he would dismiss it. “That’s just daddy,” he would tell her, or “That’s just mother.”

  Things went from bad to utterly mad in the summer of 1963, when Fannie told Winston that Al had threatened her with a gun, swearing he was going to kill her. Even Winston could not remain calm this time, not when he found his father waiting outside his house on Sutter Avenue, hoping to make good on his threat. Sometimes Al would drive by, other times Winston would find him sitting outside in the mornings when he left for work, or late at night when Winston let his dogs out, waiting for any sign of Fannie, ready to end his torment once and for all. Winston finally went to his father’s shop one day to have a talk with him. He insisted his father close the store while they went out back to discuss things. After listening to Alphonso rant on the reasons he had decided to kill his wife, Winston spoke to him at length. He told his father that he would lose his business and everything else if he committed murder. “You know Mother is not going to stay,” he told him. “She owns a home in Pittsburgh. She is not going to stay.” He also pointed out that Fannie would not remain with the other man either. Finally he told his daddy, “She is not going to stay with you, so destroying her this way will do you no good. Let me do it.”

  Then he asked his father to give him the gun.

  Alphonso got up and walked back into the shop. He did not give him the gun.

  Despite what he said, Winston did not harm his mother. But two changes occurred after this conversation between father and son.

  Alphonso stopped stalking his wife. Winston started burglarizing homes.

  On a night shortly after in that summer of 1963, Winston left his house after the children were in bed. He went to a bar, and after spending some time there drinking by himself, he left around 2:00 a.m. On the way home he spotted a house with an open window. He crawled through the window and stepped inside. Noiselessly he crept through the house. He could hear the sleep-heavy breathing of people in bedrooms. He may have stolen something this first night; he may just have wandered around the darkened house for a time. Later, with everything else that happened, it would be difficult to remember exactly. One thing that did happen this night is certain; the timid man who hated confrontation discovered how easy it was to intrude on others in the dead of night.

  The night stalking went on from that point forward, evolving in frequency, intensity, and purpose. Like an over-weighted damn that had finally sprung a small silent leak, the unattended cracks continued to widen.

  Ideas would pop into his head. He would forever claim that he did not know how or why these ideas, as he called them, came to him, only that once seized by one he would act on it whenever possible.

  He left his house at 2:00 a.m. on March 13, a Friday, and drove his car through the dark streets, cruising around a neighborhood in Queens called Hollis. He was familiar with the Hollis area. It wasn’t far from his own neighborhood of South Ozone Park. His mother worked in Hollis, though she would not have been there at night. Whether her connection to this area drew him there that night, albeit subconsciously, can only be speculated. What is certain is that after driving around for close to an hour, he saw Kitty Genovese get into her car alone.

  Winston Moseley left for work at the usual time on Friday, March 13. He kissed his wife and got into his car. He had become so lax about cleanliness that he barely took note of the bloodstains on the front seat.

  He drove to Mount Vernon and parked his car in his usual space in the lot behind Raygram. There was only a slight change in his routine this morning: before entering the building, he threw a brown wallet into the bushes in front of his parking space. Somehow he also dropped a business card along with it. The business card was for Al’s TV & Radio Repair in Corona.

  chapter 6

  FOR KEW GARDENS residents in the vicinity of Austin Street and Lefferts Boulevard, the start of the workday on March 13 was anything but routine. Detectives had descended on the community, notepads in hand, knocking on doors, waiting in the lobbies of the apartment buildings to speak with anyone going in or out. Children walking to P.S. 99 passed by the unfamiliar sight of police barricades and uniformed officers stationed up and down the street. Shopkeepers arriving to open their businesses were shocked to find Austin Street filled with police vehicles and a portion of the sidewalk closed to pedestrian traffic. Of all the proprietors in the area, none encountered a more ghoulish sight than the owner of the Austin Book Shop, Bernard Titowsky. The bloodstains on the pavement were in front of the entrance to his store. More blood stained the door frame and windows. After all was said and done, he would be the one to wash it away.

  The light of day revealed the facades of Kew Gardens. The Tudor building, in which Kitty lived and in a rear hallway of which she had been found, was considerably smaller than the surrounding apartment dwellings, looking also more world-weary than the rest. Dwarfing the Tudor in both size and prestige, the other apartment buildings in the area all had names—the Mowbray, the Texas, the West Virginia, the Roger Williams—whereas the modest Tudor had no official denotation. No elevator, no lobby, no superintendent. There were some in the community who considered the Tudor building somewhat of an eyesore in a neighborhood with an otherwise upscale look, although it is possible that this perception, or at the least the vocalization of it, came about after, and as a result of, the siege of bad publicity shortly to hit the community.

  The Tudor ran the length of the block on Austin Street from Lefferts Boulevard to the parking lot of the Long Island Railroad. It was bordered in the rear by train tracks that ran parallel to the building and were situated only twenty yards behind it. A rectangular patch of grass and the cement walkway down which Kitty had taken her final steps were all that stood between the back of the building and the railroad tracks.

  The Tudor’s decorative exterior was tinged by exhaust from the passing trains and the cars on well-traveled Austin Street, separated from the Tudor’s facade by a sidewalk and tall trees that sprouted through the cement at evenly spaced intervals. The outer stuccoed walls were a pale wash of color somewhere between beige and yellow, relieved at points by half-timbering and soot-darkened patterned brick that framed the doors and windows in a decorative if somewhat haphazard manner. Overall the building had a look of slight neglect, like an ornate dollhouse stored away in an attic untouched, unloved for years; still attractive beneath the wear and tear, managing to look both charming and shabby in the way certain nostalgic structures often do.

  The sixteen apartments on the Tudor’s second floor were referred to in the parlance of the time as “taxpayers,” meaning modest units expected to generate
only enough rent to cover the cost of property taxes. The units were divided as front or rear, the former with windows facing out on Austin Street, the latter with windows overlooking the train tracks.

  Detectives noted the string of businesses on the first floor. The far south corner of the building by Lefferts Boulevard was occupied by a dentist’s office. At the opposite end adjacent to the train station lot, two businesses occupied the corner—a small drugstore in front facing Austin Street and a coffee shop in the rear called the Interlude. In between the dental office and the railroad parking lot, heading south from the corner drugstore toward Lefferts Boulevard, the building housed Kew Dairy & Grocery, Better Way French Cleaners, Austin Book Shop, Regent Wine & Liquor, Televex TV & Radio Service, the upholstery shop called Fairchild Decorators, and the Austin Bar & Grill.

  The largest building in the vicinity of the crime scene was the ten story Mowbray Apartments at 82-67 Austin Street, a towering brick and stone edifice. The Mowbray had originally been designed as luxury living quarters and had been the tallest apartment house in Queens at the time of its construction in the 1920s. Though it retained a majestic and well-kept look, its occupants now were a mix of working families and singles, along with a sizeable number of elderly residents, many of whom had fled Europe during or after World War II, some of them survivors of the Holocaust. The Mowbray stood directly across the street from the Tudor, its commanding presence perhaps adding to the Tudor’s demure look. Though far taller and deeper, the length of the Mowbray nearly matched that of the Tudor, extending from the corner of Austin at Mowbray Drive (opposite the train station) to Lefferts Boulevard.

  Because of their proximity to the crime, police concentrated immediately, though not exclusively, on the Mowbray and the Tudor. They obtained a list of every occupant in the Mowbray. Teams of detectives spread out through the neighborhood to question the residents while others scoured the area for physical evidence, looking in particular for a discarded knife left behind by the assailant. The parking lot, train tracks, sidewalks, and sewers were searched. A list was made of every vehicle parked in the area.