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

by Pelonero, Catherine

  He also mentioned the benevolent act he had performed right after the murder. “I got to Hillside Avenue and as I stopped for the light, there was somebody else stopped for the light who was asleep behind the wheel. So I pulled past the light and got out of the car and came back and attempted to wake this person up. He was asleep, with the motor running. I woke him up.”

  Then what? The man thanked him and drove away. Moseley got back in his car and proceeded home.

  Why didn’t he kill him? He still had his hunting knife. “I did not feel that I wanted to kill that man in particular.”

  Why didn’t you hold him up, take whatever money he had? “Well, I didn’t particularly need his money. And I was finished with what I planned to do.”

  A CALL WAS placed to Lieutenant Bernard Jacobs at the 102nd precinct, letting him know of the breakthrough in the Kitty Genovese homicide. Lieutenant Jacobs would await Moseley’s transport to the 102nd for further questioning. Before sending him over there, John Tartaglia and Albert Seedman at the 114th had another very important question to ask Winston Moseley.

  Besides Kitty Genovese, who else had he killed?

  Moseley didn’t have to think long. The strange smile returned. “That woman over in Jamaica. Annie Mae Johnson.”

  Annie Mae Johnson, a twenty-four-year-old housewife, had been murdered at her South Ozone Park home two and a half weeks before, in the early morning hours of Saturday, February 29. Her husband had been cleared and the police had no other suspects in her homicide. Now Moseley claimed he had done it. If he had indeed killed Kitty Genovese, as it seemed he had, the crime fit his modus operandi. Except for one thing.

  “I shot her,” Moseley said.

  The detectives groaned, threw up their hands. That had to be a lie. The Medical Examiner had determined that Annie Mae Johnson had been stabbed repeatedly, not shot. The detectives were frustrated. He had so many details right about the Kitty Genovese case, but if he would lie about having killed Annie Mae Johnson he could be lying about the Genovese case as well.

  Moseley did not lose his composure when they called him a liar. Instead, he looked more content than ever. He kept his cool while the exasperated detectives lost theirs, shouting at him. Some of them left the room. After all that, Moseley was just a weird little thief with a wicked imagination.

  “Annie Mae Johnson wasn’t shot, Moseley,” Detective Tartaglia said to him. “She was stabbed.”

  The smile. The smooth confidence. “I read that in the papers too. They were wrong. I shot her.”

  Something about the way he said it. Something about him. They needed to hear what he had to say about it.

  As it turned out, he had quite a lot to say. And it was a good thing they listened.

  The urge to kill a woman had seized him on Friday, February 28, much as it would two weeks later when he hunted down Kitty Genovese. He had left his house in the dead of night, intent on finding a woman to rape and kill. Or kill and rape.

  The falling snow that night had kept him close to home, in his own neighborhood around South Ozone Park. Spotting the woman alone in her car—it was only later, from the newspapers, that he learned her name was Annie Mae Johnson—he followed her in his Corvair. He watched the young woman park her car on a residential street in front of 146-12 133rd Avenue. He thought it was about 3:00 or 3:30 in the morning. The woman got out of her car. As with Kitty Genovese, he had gotten out of his first. He was already close to her by the time she closed her car door.

  He held a single-shot .22 rifle by his side. He intended to kill her.

  There was another person on the street, a man down the block shoveling snow. It made no difference to Moseley. He followed the woman as she stepped onto her front porch. Hearing him behind her, she turned. He asked for her money and she handed it over. He raised the gun and shot her in the stomach.

  He reloaded and shot her in the stomach again.

  She slumped down into a sitting position on her porch. She asked him to take her into her house. She handed him her key, told him nobody was home. Leaving her on the porch, he entered the house and went upstairs.

  The woman had lied to him. There were people upstairs, asleep. He went back out to the porch and shot her four times in the back.

  What about the man down the block shoveling snow? “I never noticed what happened to him,” Moseley said. “I was standing right there, but I didn’t notice whether he got in the car or whether he went in the house.”

  After shooting her in the back, Moseley went back inside Annie Mae Johnson’s house. He went upstairs and found $100 in an empty bedroom. He took the money.

  That was another key detail that Moseley had right; the $100 that Annie Mae’s husband had reported missing from the house after the murder had not been disclosed to the newspapers. Now he definitely had the attention of Detective Tartaglia and Albert Seedman, even with the stabbing versus shooting discrepancy. Obviously there was some mistake, but not necessarily on Moseley’s part.

  After pocketing the money—and leaving the persons sleeping upstairs undisturbed—Moseley went back outside where he found the woman lying on her stomach in the snow. He turned her over and saw that she was dead. “Then I decided, well, perhaps I’d rape her now that she was dead, so I took off all her clothes that she had right there in the snow.” He used a small pocketknife to cut off her bra. Once he had her undressed, however, he decided it was too cold to rape her out in the snow. He rolled her up the steps and into the house, right into the middle of the living room floor.

  First he “licked” her genitals. After that he attempted intercourse, but he was impotent. He laid on top of her and had an orgasm. “Then I decided I’d set the house on fire and leave.” Using newspapers, he started fires in two places in the living room. He took the scarf the woman had been wearing, placed it on her genitals, and set the scarf aflame as well. “After that I went outside, found that I had not brought part of her clothing inside, and I took that, put it in a garbage can that was sitting on the outside and got into the car and went home.”

  The details fit. All too well.

  Except the curious matter of Moseley insisting he shot Annie Mae. Then again, bullets from a small caliber single-shot like the .22 he claimed to have used could produce marks so slight they could be mistaken for the ice pick wounds the medical examiner reported he found on the body of Annie Mae Johnson.

  Exhuming the body was the only way to be sure. An exhumation was not something to be pursued lightly, however, without solid cause.

  DETECTIVES FROM THE Homicide Squad and the 102nd precinct were ready—eager—to book Moseley for the murder of Kitty Genovese. Satisfied they had their man, they wanted to take him back to the 102nd precinct.

  John Tartaglia could have made the arrest himself, right there at the 114th squad room, but protocol and Tartaglia’s personal code of ethics dictated that he turn the suspect over to the detectives who had so diligently worked the Genovese homicide. But there were many who worked on the case. Rather than choosing who should officially make the arrest, John Tartaglia and Albert Seedman took Moseley over to the 102nd station house themselves, delivering him to the custody of Lieutenant Bernard Jacobs. Lieutenant Jacobs could decide who should get the collar.

  At the 102nd precinct in Richmond Hill, Lieutenant Jacobs and the detectives continued questioning Moseley, going over the details of the Kitty Genovese homicide again. The story remained the same, as did the suspect’s eerily placid telling of it. Nevertheless, as time wore on, Jacobs detected cracks in Moseley’s previously calm exterior. Still, it was difficult if not impossible to gauge whatever this oddly stoic suspect might be feeling. He gave remarkably little indication of any emotion at all, no matter how morbid or incriminating the question. Jacobs asked him what he had done with the knife he used to kill Kitty Genovese. As he had earlier, Moseley stated that he had taken it home and washed it in the sink.

  “Was there blood on the knife at that time?” Jacobs asked.

  “Oh, ye
s, there was a lot of blood on the knife.”

  “What did you do with the knife after you had washed it?”

  “Well, I just dried it and put it in my toolbox, where I kept it.” The toolbox, he added, was in the pantry of his kitchen.

  A search warrant would have to be obtained for the Moseley home. Jacobs dispatched detectives to search the locations where Moseley claimed to have dumped the belongings of Kitty Genovese. They also planned to take the suspect to Kew Gardens that very night to show the detectives exactly where he claimed he had stalked Kitty Genovese, to point out where he had been, what he had done. First, however, detectives in other jurisdictions, having been informed of the capture of a man who admitted killing multiple women, had come to the 102nd precinct to ask Moseley about a few other open cases. This served a dual purpose. Not only were detectives trying to discern if Winston Moseley had committed any additional homicides, but they also wanted to see if he would confess to just any homicide—such as those he could not possibly have committed—particularly ones that had received a lot of publicity. Pending the results of the search warrant and recovery of Kitty Genovese’s stolen property, it was another way to test the veracity of Winston Moseley’s claims.

  The highest profile unsolved case at the moment was perhaps the grisly double killing in Manhattan that the papers had dubbed the “Career Girls Murder.” In August of 1963, two young women named Janice Wylie and Emily Hoffert had been murdered in a savage sex slaying in the apartment they shared on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The murders had occurred during the day. Moseley instantly told them he knew nothing about it except what he had read in the papers. Plus, he said, his employer could verify that he had been at work at the time of the murders. Moseley denied involvement in other cases they brought up as well. Besides Kitty Genovese and Annie Mae Johnson, he said, he had only killed one other person: a girl by the name of Barbara Kralik.

  This last admission was a bombshell—primarily because an eighteen-year-old named Alvin Mitchell was set to go on trial next month for the murder of Barbara Kralik.

  Fifteen-year-old Barbara Kralik had been murdered in her bed on the night of July 20, 1963, at her family home at 174-17 140th Avenue in a section of Queens called Springfield Gardens. Police had arrested Alvin Mitchell, an acquaintance of the Kralik girl. Under questioning, Mitchell had confessed to entering the Kralik home through a first floor window in the dead of night while the family slept, entering Barbara’s room, and stabbing her with a pair of scissors. Mitchell had been indicted on a charge of murder in the first degree the previous September. Now Winston Moseley, an admitted predator who had so many of his facts straight in the Kitty Genovese case, and who further denied involvement in other homicides about which he was asked, said that he had snuck into the Kralik home that night, that he had stabbed Barbara Kralik with a small steak knife.

  Invading homes under cover of darkness and attacking women at random with weapons: both seemed to be Moseley’s forte. In addition, there was his compelling account of the Annie Mae Johnson murder. Despite the one troubling discrepancy about the mode of her death, Moseley had everything else correct, even down to the layout of the Johnson home and the places where the fires had been set. Moseley even made a sketch of the Johnson living room for them—an accurate one, showing the location of the stairs, couch, and a partition dividing the room. He had even included the position of the TV in the Johnson home, although in this case he had not taken it, apparently making necrophilia a priority over the acquisition of another television. Some detectives therefore felt it worth their while to listen to what he had to say about the murder of Barbara Kralik. Other detectives disagreed, however. Those who were convinced they already had the right man in the Kralik case—Alvin Mitchell—did not want to hear this new story about Barbara Kralik from Winston Moseley. Fucking liar, making all this up just to fuck with them.

  Detective John Tartaglia had remained at the 102nd precinct for Moseley’s questioning. Now he pulled one of his irate colleagues out of the interrogation room and into the hall. “Listen, you son of a bitch,” Tartaglia barked at him. “Everything else this guy has told us has been right. Let him talk. Just shut the fuck up and let him talk!”

  Tartaglia turned away. Before stepping back into the squad room he added, “And call the goddamned DA. Tell him we’ve got to get the Johnson woman out of the ground.”

  AROUND 9:00 P.M., Lieutenant Jacobs asked Winston Moseley what he wanted to eat. The suspect would be dining at the station house that night in the company of detectives. He hadn’t asked for any food, but Jacobs figured he must be hungry by now. He had been in custody since late morning, answering nonstop questions posed to him by various detectives. Moseley accepted the offer of a meal, asking for a double hamburger, coffee, and a slice of apple pie. He specified that the burger should be very rare, the pie warm—obviously a man who liked things a certain way.

  Jacobs offered to let him take a break from questioning, but Moseley declined. He didn’t mind talking while he ate. So Lieutenant Jacobs remained there as Moseley had dinner, discussing more details of murder, rape, and necrophilia between bites of food.

  Jacobs studied Moseley for a moment. “I would imagine that you’re very happy that you got caught so that you can get all of this off your chest. Isn’t that so?”

  “I am not happy I got caught,” Moseley replied, showing agitation for the first time. “I am sorry.”

  “You are sorry?” Jacobs asked.

  “Sure. What the hell do you think? You could go to the electric chair for what I have just done.”

  HAVING BEEN NOTIFIED of a confession in the Genovese homicide, Assistant District Attorney Phillip Chetta arrived at the 102nd precinct to take a formal statement from the suspect. Jacobs first spoke privately with Chetta to discuss Winston Moseley’s other, more problematic confessions. Problematic indeed, from the viewpoint of the assistant D.A., who was none too happy about the situation, particularly in regard to the Kralik homicide. The DA already had a case prepared against Alvin Mitchell, whose trial was set to begin April 20. Jacobs informed Phillip Chetta that the police doubted Moseley’s admissions to the Johnson and Kralik homicides, but the Genovese one seemed solid. For now at least, Chetta would confine his questioning of Moseley to the Kitty Genovese homicide only. They decided that after Chetta took the statement, Jacobs and his men would take Moseley over to the crime scenes in Kew Gardens. Chetta would accompany them.

  Members of the press meanwhile had convened in the lobby of the 102nd precinct, having gotten word of an arrest in the Kitty Genovese killing. Cameras ready, they waited for a glimpse of the suspect. Aware of their presence, Lieutenant Jacobs asked Moseley if he had any objection to walking past the line of photographers downstairs. “Well, I have a father out there,” Moseley answered, indicating the room in back of which they were seated. “I also have a wife and this is a pretty shameful thing, or at least I’m ashamed of it. Would it be all right with you people if I covered up my face?”

  “We have no objection to your doing anything you want to,” Jacobs told him. “Just walk in an orderly manner with the detectives that have you.”

  Late that night—the early hours of Thursday, March 19, actually—in the custody of detectives, Lieutenant Bernard Jacobs, and Assistant DA Phillip Chetta, Winston Moseley was taken to Kew Gardens. He walked them through what he had done. He had the details right, down to where witnesses said the perpetrator had parked his car in front of the bus stop on Austin Street. Samuel Koshkin, a witness in the West Virginia Apartments who had watched the attacker move his car, then return to the scene and search around on the morning of March 13, now watched the police guide their handcuffed prisoner. Koshkin thought Moseley looked like the same man he had seen on the night in question.

  On March 19, 1964, Detective Mitchell Sang made the official arrest of Winston Moseley for the murder of Kitty Genovese. Though not a homicide detective, Sang had first caught the case, and furthermore had worked it tirele
ssly. From the early morning of March 13 onward, Sang had spent several hours each day interviewing witnesses, running down leads. Mitchell Sang had involved himself deeply. He wanted justice for Kitty Genovese, whatever small measure of it could be had.

  chapter 10

  A SHORT TIME after booking Moseley for murder, Detective Mitchell Sang appeared the same morning at 133-19 Sutter Avenue, the home of Winston Moseley, armed with a search warrant signed by a criminal court judge. The hunting knife was found in the toolbox, just as Moseley had said.

  Detectives Frank Collins and Donald Kenny had meanwhile made the trip to the Raygram Corporation at 144 East Kingsbridge Road in Mount Vernon, New York. There, in some bushes in the rear of the building, they recovered Kitty’s brown wallet along with some other items. It had been an easy search, as Moseley had told them precisely where to look: in the bushes at the edge of the parking lot, facing parking space number four.

  Kitty’s keys and the falsie were also recovered in the dump locations Moseley had provided.

  Mitchell Sang brought the knife back to the 102nd precinct and handed it over to Lieutenant Jacobs, who took it to the holding cell where Moseley was locked up in order to show it to him.

  Moseley nodded. “That’s the knife I told you about.”

  LATER THAT DAY, on March 19, 1964, Winston Moseley made his first court appearance. Bettye stood behind him in the courtroom, listening in shock to the charges read against her husband. Moseley was charged with homicide in the deaths of Kitty Genovese and Annie Mae Johnson. He was also charged with illegal possession of a gun and possession of pornography.

  Judge Bernard Dubin—incidentally, the same judge before whom Karl Ross had appeared on his disorderly conduct charge—set a hearing for March 23, ordering Moseley to be held without bail until then. Judge Dubin was reported to have commented, “I can only say it’s lucky that our system provides for a trial for a monster like you. What you’ve done makes me want to vomit.”