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

by Pelonero, Catherine

  Assistant District Attorney John Santucci added, “These crimes aggravate the instincts of all decent people.”

  Moseley stood silently, looking down. He asked the court to appoint an attorney for him. Otherwise he said nothing. Judge Dubin assigned a young lawyer named Ed Webber to represent him.

  A reporter for the Long Island Press went to South Ozone Park to speak with some of the Moseleys’ neighbors. “Only one of the many neighbors of the accused killer admitted even a casual acquaintance with the family,” read the article published in the Press the following day. The neighbor was quoted: “I’ve seen them come and go but I’ve never talked to them. They seemed like quiet, hard-working folks who never gave anybody any trouble.”

  SIDNEY SPARROW HEARD of an arrest in the Kitty Genovese case the morning it was broadcast on the radio, just as he had heard the news of her murder the previous Friday. Sparrow was a well-known and very experienced criminal defense attorney in Queens. Both news items—the murder and the arrest—caught his attention. He had represented Kitty Genovese when she was arrested on the gambling charge in 1961. Sparrow later said that though he was never quite sure how he knew, he instantly had the feeling he would be assigned to defend the man accused of killing her.

  FRANK D. O’CONNOR was the district attorney of Queens County. At fifty-four years old, O’Connor had served as district attorney for the past seven years, since 1957. He had come to his current position as chief prosecutor in Queens after two stints as a New York State senator and more than twenty years of practicing law as a criminal defense attorney.

  O’Connor’s long experience working on the defendant’s side of the aisle had made him particularly strict in his adherence to prosecutorial ethics; as D.A., O’Connor did not ever want his office to make the mistake of prosecuting, much less convicting, an innocent person. His own personal experience as a defense attorney had taught him that the innocent are indeed sometimes tried for crimes they did not commit.

  In 1953, O’Connor had represented a defendant by the name of Christopher Emanuel Balestrero. Balestrero, a musician at the Stork Club in Manhattan, stood accused of two holdups in Queens, based on the positive identifications of three victims. O’Connor found more than a score of witnesses to back up Balestrero’s fervent claims of innocence. Shortly after, a man who closely resembled Balestrero was arrested and confessed to the crimes. The case attracted national attention, not the least of which came from director Alfred Hitchcock, whose 1956 film The Wrong Man was based on the Balestrero story. Frank O’Connor was prominently credited as a consultant in the film’s opening titles.

  O’Connor had built a sterling reputation during his long career in law and politics. Former political rivals had even remarked on his integrity. As a district attorney, Frank O’Connor referred to himself as “defense-conscious.” As such, he found his consciousness raised considerably on the morning of March 19. Hearing of Moseley’s admissions in the Annie Mae Johnson case and his confession to the murder of Barbara Kralik—not to mention the validity of his confession in the Kitty Genovese homicide—O’Connor had called for a meeting in his office that morning. In attendance were Bernard Patten, chief of the D.A.’s Homicide and Investigations Bureau; Frank Cacciatore, the D.A.’s Supreme Court Trial Bureau chief; and Phillip Chetta, the assistant DA who had taken Moseley’s statement hours earlier at the 102nd precinct.

  O’Connor listened. Decisions were made. The body of Annie Mae Johnson should be exhumed and re-examined as soon as possible. This would require a coordinated effort with an out-of-state jurisdiction, since she had been buried in South Carolina. If a second autopsy proved she had indeed been stabbed, as the assistant medical examiner in Queens had determined, Moseley’s confession to the Johnson murder could be discredited, thus casting doubt on his claims about the Kralik murder.

  Just the same, however, O’Connor directed Bernard Patten to proceed immediately with a reinvestigation of the Kralik case—an independent review by the D.A.’s office, not the police. If Alvin Mitchell was innocent, if the police investigation had been either botched or corrupt, O’Connor wanted to know. “I don’t want a second wrong-man case in Queens when I’m the prosecutor rather than the defense attorney.”

  Frank O’Connor had standards. Moreover, he did not want any negative publicity. He had ambitions beyond the office of district attorney.

  Whatever the outcomes, O’Connor and his staff hoped they could resolve the matters promptly, definitively, and quietly, without premature speculation appearing in the newspapers.

  They were to be disappointed on all counts.

  Word leaked to the press almost immediately. By the weekend, Frank O’Connor was fielding questions from reporters on the double confession. The following week, many of the local newspapers would be filled with prominently placed stories on the stunning new twist in the Barbara Kralik case. Crime reporters would be consumed by this story—at least until the following Friday, when another shocking twist in another Queens murder caught their attention.

  chapter 11

  FOR THE PEOPLE closest to Kitty Genovese, the news that her alleged killer had been caught felt less remarkable than might be supposed by anyone who has not endured the uniquely horrific trauma of a loved one murdered. Despite somewhat fanciful portrayals in plays and TV dramas, of grieving loved ones instantly preoccupied with a quest for justice or retribution, such is rarely the case in real life. Visions of jurisprudence are not what haunt their every waking hour. In the first days following a sudden, devastating, irrevocable loss, those who loved the deceased are consumed by little other than pure pain. Revenge fantasies, when they intrude upon the mind at all, serve only as momentary distractions from the pulsing ache that comes from an ordinary conversation remembered, a once-happy memory recalled, a piece of minutia suddenly imbued with new meaning; when the eyes fall unexpectedly on a pair of shoes left under a bed, calling forth the now poignant recollection, I remember the last time she wore those . . .

  Kitty had been dead less than a week when Winston Moseley gave his dispassionate account of how he had butchered her on a sidewalk and in a dank hallway. So it was that no one who loved her was anywhere near ready to exult in his capture. No dramatic cries of relief, no exclamations of, “Ah! Now I can begin to heal. Now I will have closure.”

  In actuality, no one who suffers such a loss ever does this anyway, regardless of time passed or judicial justice rendered. Healing and “closure,” in the sense that they are ever completely free from pain, ever truly back to the way they once were, are whimsical concepts, as elusive to the aggrieved as the dear person forever lost to them. Even for those who by necessity must assume an active role in pressing for justice in the death of a loved one, conviction of the person who stole that beloved life is still the most meager consolation prize imaginable.

  Thanks to the astute work of the NYPD, none of the people left anguished by Kitty’s death had to wait endlessly for her killer to be brought to justice. The grief, however, would not be so quickly nor easily assuaged. Kitty’s parents would grieve for their firstborn child for all the years ahead that they had to live without her.

  For the Genovese family and Mary Ann Zielonko, the days immediately after Kitty’s murder were a time of unrelieved torment. Kitty’s siblings had one another to console, plus the mission of doing whatever they possibly could to support their mother in her heartbreak. Mary Ann had practically no one. Amid the police activity surrounding Kitty’s death, her friends had begun abandoning her almost immediately.

  Louise, the young woman Kitty had helped with a job and a place to stay, had given her statements to detectives and wanted no further part in a police investigation. She had packed up and moved out within days of Kitty’s murder. Mary Ann never heard from her again.

  Other friends—especially those who had been taken to the police station for questioning—felt similarly. One demanded that Mary Ann stop calling her, fearing Mary Ann’s phone might be tapped. Mary Ann told her this was
ridiculous. Why would the police tap her phone? She had already told them everything, more than she had ever imagined telling them, in fact. Still, her friends weren’t taking any chances.

  Mary Ann wasn’t stupid. She knew that “queers” got harassed by the cops—or worse. She knew it well. It happened all the time at places like the Swing Rendezvous and other lesbian bars in Greenwich Village. She had been there when the music would suddenly cut out, the frantic loud whisper from the bar, “The cops! The cops!” Everyone would suddenly stop, and wait, silently hoping they would not be singled out for attention, hoping the police would just take a payoff and leave them be. Homosexuality per se was not illegal in New York, but cross dressing, “impersonating the opposite gender,” and sodomy were. Even if the police did overstep their bounds—not that they had many legal bounds to begin with when it came to harassing gays—what recourse did they have? What respectable person was going to stand up for a queer?

  LIFE magazine, arguably the most popular mainstream weekly photographic news journal of the time, was in fact busy preparing a major exposé on the menace of homosexuality. Published on June 26, 1964, a feature titled “HOMOSEXUALITY IN AMERICA” graced the widely read pages of LIFE. The article began with the subheading, “A secret world grows open and bolder. Society is forced to look at it—and try to understand it.”

  Written as a cautionary report, the introduction read, “Homosexuality shears across the spectrum of American life . . . But today, especially in big cities, homosexuals are discarding their furtive ways and openly admitting, even flaunting, their deviation.” It said that homosexuals had their own drinking places, assignation streets, and even their own organizations. The article then warned, “And for every obvious homosexual, there are probably nine nearly impossible to detect. This social disorder, which society tries to suppress, has forced itself into the public eye because it does present a problem—and parents especially are concerned. The myth and misconception with which homosexuality has so long been clothed must be cleared away, not to condone it but to cope with it.”

  The article, complete with photographs (including a full-page photo captioned, “Two fluffy-sweatered young men stroll in New York City, ignoring the stare of a ‘straight’ couple. Flagrant homosexuals are unabashed by reactions of shock, perplexity, disgust.”), focused at length on the efforts of law enforcement in major cities to crack down on the problem. “Homosexuals everywhere fear arrest—and the public exposure that may go with it. In Los Angeles, where homosexuals are particularly apparent on city streets, police drives are regular and relentless.”

  There were no laws in California or any other state against being a homosexual, the story said, but police relied on laws that “make it a crime for two people to engage in any sex activity which could not result in procreation.” There was of course no mention of these laws being applied to heterosexuals who engaged in such non-procreative behavior. “In many cases a conviction results in a homosexual being registered as a ‘sex offender’ (along with rapists) . . .”

  Using Los Angeles as a model of enforcement, a blow-by-blow account was given of an undercover police sting (“a typical arrest effort”) designed to trap offenders. The operation consisted of a plainclothes officer loitering in suspect areas in hope of being propositioned by a gay man. An offer of money—soliciting prostitution—was not a factor; a willing suggestion was enough to warrant an arrest.

  The decoy officers apparently came well prepared to the assignment. “As part of its antihomosexual drive the Los Angeles police force has compiled an ‘educational’ pamphlet for law enforcement officers entitled ‘Some Characteristics of the Homosexual.’ The strongly opinionated pamphlet includes the warning that what the homosexuals really want is ‘a fruit world.’ ”

  The story said that the police response in Los Angeles mirrored that of other cities.

  Though arrest efforts, according to the article, concentrated primarily on gay men, mention was made that there are women homosexuals too, though they apparently were not perceived as quite as much of a threat to society as their male counterparts. “There are also women homosexuals, of course, but the number is much smaller—by the estimate of the Institute for Sex Research, perhaps only a third or a quarter as high as the figure for men, which was anywhere from 2.3 million to 1.2 million ‘confirmed homosexuals.’ ”

  “One reason, some analysts have suggested, is that it is far easier for a woman who is afraid of men to perform adequately in marriage than it is for a man who is afraid of women.” Intense fear of the opposite sex, some doctors theorized, could be a possible cause of the affliction. “At any rate women homosexuals are not nearly so numerous, promiscuous or conspicuous as their male counterparts, and the various studies have largely ignored them.”

  Yet that was not to say that lesbians were any less “ill” than gay men, or less subject to being removed from their jobs if their deviance were discovered. The Civil Service Commission, for one, banned homosexuals from employment, due to their potential for being a “disruptive influence” combined with the fear that such a person in a position of power might be likely to bring other homosexuals on board. Any who managed to slip through were fired for “immoral conduct.”

  Homosexuals fared little better in the realm of mental health, with professionals frustrated by their lack of ability to cure them. A companion piece looked extensively at the puzzling question of homosexuality from a medical point of view. Though it was noted that Sigmund Freud had not believed it was a mental defect, having once written to a concerned mother, “Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation. It cannot be classified as an illness,” there were contemporary psychologists who disagreed with the father of psychoanalysis. The story quoted an unnamed but “well-known psychologist and sexologist” beginning an address to the Mattachine Society, an early homophile organization, by saying, “I used to think that all homosexuals were neurotic. I now believe that homosexuals in most instances are borderline psychotics.”

  The primary article mentioned some fledgling decriminalization efforts (based on privacy laws and pity for those suffering from “psychological disturbance”), but they weren’t making much ground, even though the US Supreme Court had recently agreed to hear the case of a man denied a civil service job on the basis of homosexuality. The man, who had passed tests for three personnel and management positions, made a legal challenge to the decision of the Civil Service Commission not to hire him because of his sexuality. He had the cautious backing of the ACLU, though its chairman stated that the organization was not taking a position on homosexuality.

  Though stating it was the first time the Supreme Court had agreed to hear such a case, the tone of the article suggested this was not a particularly important development. “But no legal procedures are likely to change society’s basic repugnance to homosexuality as an immoral and disruptive force that should somehow be removed.”

  Even without reading a lengthy feature in LIFE, Mary Ann knew the attitudes, the dangers. She also knew she needed her friends now more than ever. How could they drop her like this? They had been Kitty’s friends too.

  Karl even seemed jittery, especially since the police had arrested a man for Kitty’s murder. Maybe he was concerned about the effect a trial would have on Mary Ann.

  The apartment had been cleared of many of Kitty’s belongings, first by the police, who had taken her personal papers and photographs while searching for possible clues to her murderer. These items would be released to the family, who had legal claim to and responsibility for the disposition of items from the small estate of the late Kitty Genovese. All Mary Ann basically had left as a connection to Kitty was Andrew, the miniature poodle Kitty had given her last Christmas.

  The only friend who stood by Mary Ann, besides Andrew of course, was Sammy, the man Kitty helped out here and there. Sammy moved into the apartment with Mary Ann for a while. He apparently had not forgotten how good Kitty had
been to him. Then again, Sammy needed a place to live, and the apartment of a murdered friend was presumably more comfortable than his car.

  Regardless, Mary Ann felt grateful for the company. Whatever Sammy’s motivation—and in truth, Mary Ann thought Sammy more loyal friend than opportunist, one of the few they seemed to have apparently—she had no desire to examine whatever cause might lay behind his kindness. Like a miner trapped in the dark, suffocating collapse of a tunnel, she’d follow whatever small bits of light appeared.

  Her main companion these days was alcohol, a numbing comfort. She drank alone most of the time, though she knew it wasn’t wise. It seemed her only escape from the constant pain, the only way to get any sleep. There was really no one around to tell her not to do so. In a way it seemed better to drink alone, the quiet, loosening effect of the alcohol helping her retreat into her memories of Kitty—alive, instead of dead on that steel table or lying in a coffin in that spectral white dress. Despite what she had given up to the police—what they had forced from her—there were sweet things she had kept to herself, for herself: images, events dear to her that she would not allow to be sullied by sharing them with those who would likely react with disgust or perplexity.

  Mary Ann Zielonko was a teenager with a turbulent childhood behind her when she came from New Hampshire to live in New York City. She spent time in Greenwich Village, and there she found a measure of acceptance among people who shared something dangerous in common with her.

  She met Kitty at a place on Houston Street called Seven Steps, a lesbian bar. It was March of 1963. Mary Ann worked as a teletype operator for Western Union and lived in a rooming house at 79th and Broadway in Manhattan. Kitty had smiled and approached her, striking up a conversation. They possibly would not have met otherwise, as Mary Ann was far too shy to just start talking to someone she didn’t know.