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

by Pelonero, Catherine

  “No.”

  “Didn’t you learn that she had children, from the newspaper accounts?”

  “It didn’t matter.”

  “If you had known that she had children beforehand, would you have killed her?”

  To this, Moseley replied, “I don’t know.”

  Sparrow brought him to the dark hours of March 13, 1964, asking what he intended when he left his house that night. Moseley answered, “This night, too, I had gone out with intent of finding a woman and killing her.”

  “Had you any specific color in mind?” Sparrow asked.

  “Well, I had intended to kill a white woman, yes.”

  “Is there any reason why you now intended to kill a white woman as distinguished from the two prior times that you thought you killed colored?”

  “No,” Moseley answered, “unless perhaps I might have been thinking there might have been some difference between them.”

  As he had previously done for the police, the assistant district attorney, and his own attorneys, Winston Moseley then gave a detailed, matter-of-fact recitation of how he had stalked, stabbed, and sexually assaulted Kitty Genovese. Though the medical examiner had testified that he found no injury in the victim’s vagina, Moseley insisted that he had inserted the hunting knife. “I put the knife in up to the handle and I pulled up, but, as I say, the bone stopped it from coming up.”

  Sidney Sparrow later said that he could sense the horror in the courtroom, as jurors, lawyers, and spectators alike listened in rapt silence to the horrific story told so dispassionately by this small, unassuming, soft-spoken man. At the time, Sparrow could only hope that the jurors would conclude, as he had, that Winston Moseley must be insane.

  When Moseley finished, Sparrow asked, “Did you think back about killing Kitty Genovese after doing it?”

  “I only read what was in the paper about it,” Moseley answered.

  “Did you feel sorry for her?”

  “No.”

  “Do you feel sorry for her today?”

  “No.”

  Nor did he feel sorry, he said, for any of the people he had killed or raped.

  “Why did you stab Kitty Genovese in the belly so many times?” Sparrow asked him.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why did you shoot Mrs. Johnson in the back four times after having shot her in the belly twice?”

  “I wanted to make sure she was dead.”

  “And why did you stab Barbara Kralik again and again in her belly and chest?”

  Charles Skoller objected to this last, saying there was no such testimony as to the location of the wounds. Judge Shapiro overruled the objection, after which Winston Moseley gave the answer, “I wanted to kill her and one blow was not enough.”

  Sparrow then had Moseley describe the circumstances of his arrest during the daylight burglary on March 18. Moseley said that when he first got to the police station, he was asked about burglaries only.

  “Were you afraid?” Sparrow asked.

  “I wasn’t afraid at first, no. I had told them that this was just the first burglary. Then I told them that I had committed a few burglaries and eventually they found the card of my father’s television shop and when they found that, they were sure that I had committed numerous burglaries. So they handcuffed me and took me to my father’s shop to point out to them the things that I had actually brought in there, which I did, which was about five or six things.”

  “What other conversation did you have with the police?”

  “Well, eventually, getting toward evening, they decided that I could have fit the description of the Catherine Genovese case.”

  “Why do you say that they thought that?” Sparrow asked.

  “There were two pictures in their office that looked very similar to me and they weren’t for that particular case; they were for the Wylie case.”

  “Did you do the Wylie killing?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Did you at any time tell any police officer that you did?”

  “No, I did not.”

  At first, he said, he had not planned to tell the police about any of the killings that he had done. Judge Shapiro asked, “Why weren’t you going to tell them, because you knew it was wrong?”

  “They had not arrested me for that,” Moseley answered.

  Judge Shapiro persisted. “Why weren’t you going to tell them?They hadn’t arrested you for the other burglaries either.”

  “They became a little persuasive after a while,” Moseley replied.

  “Why weren’t you going to tell them about the killings?” the judge asked again.

  “They had not asked me about it in the first place.” Moseley said that several detectives started coming in and asking him questions. “So I was perhaps frightened of what I thought they possibly could have done to me there in the police station, so I decided rather than go through something that I didn’t like, I’d tell them. So I did.”

  “Anybody threaten you?” Judge Shapiro asked.

  “They are persuasive is more the word I would use,” Moseley answered. He denied having made any statement to the effect that he was glad he got caught, or any mention of the electric chair.

  “Didn’t you feel that you were doing something wrong when you did these things?” Sparrow asked.

  “No, I did not.”

  Judge Shapiro asked Moseley, “Did you ever feel sorry for anybody?”

  “I feel sorry for my family because they have to go through this, yes.”

  FRANK CACCIATORE’S CROSS-EXAMINATION did not prove illuminating, at least insofar as any additional details or admissions were concerned. With a defendant who had already unhesitatingly given such a frank account of his commission of the crime, Cacciatore focused rather on the normal aspects and routines of Moseley’s life. He kept Moseley talking, asking about basic details of his education, finance, job history, and relationships with co-workers. Anything to show the jury that the defendant was an alert, conscious, intelligent man who functioned well in life—except when he chose to do evil.

  Asking the defendant how he came to the decision to go out with the intent of killing a woman, Moseley explained, “Well, it would be an idea that would come into my mind like an idea might come into your mind that you might just say, ‘Well, I wouldn’t do a thing like that,’ but I’d get an idea in my mind and it would stay there until I did it.”

  Judge Shapiro asked him, “As you sit there now, did you, when you started out on these various escapades, intend to rob and rape and kill?”

  “I don’t know whether I intended to do any more than to kill them.”

  TOWARD THE END of his cross-examination, Cacciatore asked Moseley if he loved his children, his wife, and his parents. He replied that he did. Of his wife, Bettye, he said, “I thought she was perfect.” The prosecutor further asked if he would want to see any harm come to anyone in his family. Moseley responded that he would not want to see anyone in his family hurt, and that he would be resentful if anybody were to hurt them.

  “It is true, isn’t it,” Cacciatore asked, “that Mr. Sparrow told you that the only defense you had to these crimes was to plead insanity?”

  “That’s true.”

  “And isn’t it true that you went along with the idea that you should plead insanity?”

  “I’ve come to believe that that is probably what is wrong with me.”

  “After it was suggested to you?”

  “No. After thinking about it,” Moseley said.

  “Well, do you feel that you are insane really?”

  “I never had really thought that I was insane, but after listening, for instance, to your summation of what I have done, it doesn’t sound like something an ordinary person would do.”

  “You mean you rationalize it so that you feel whatever you did must have been done by some kind of nut, hah?” Cacciatore said.

  “No, I don’t say that. I just don’t feel that it was something normal, as you call normal.”
<
br />   FOLLOWING THE LUNCH recess, the afternoon was devoted to psychiatric testimony. Dr. Oscar Diamond, a noted psychiatrist and neurologist who was currently the director of the Manhattan State Hospital on Ward’s Island, took the stand for the defense. His testimony was lengthy, interrupted by frequent objections from the prosecution. Based on his personal examinations of Winston Moseley and his reading of the defendant’s examination reports from Kings County Hospital, Dr. Diamond concluded that Moseley knew the nature and quality of his acts, but that at the time of the commission of such acts, “he was suffering from such a defect of reason as to be unable to know the act was wrong.”

  Dr. Diamond pinpointed traumatic incidents from the defendant’s past—his mother’s exit from his life at a tender age; the ongoing strife between mother and father; his first wife’s flagrant infidelity—as the sparks of his mental degeneration. Moseley had admitted to Dr. Diamond that he had cheated on his first wife “but at the same time feels that she may not have known about it and would not be hurt in the same way that he was hurt by her open and purposeful actions with the bartender.” According to what he had told Dr. Diamond, Moseley empathized with his father in the great anguish his father had suffered as a result of his mother’s repeated infidelity. Addressing Moseley’s crimes, the murder of Barbara Kralik had not been premeditated but had occurred during the perpetration of a burglary. After the rapes he had committed early in 1964, and prior to the Johnson and Genovese murders, Moseley had said that he felt that his mind was deteriorating and he tried desperately to think differently.

  Dr. Diamond testified that during his two examinations with Winston Moseley, Moseley at no time showed what would be considered appropriate emotional reactions. His emotions were flat. “He informed me that he knew that if he were caught, he would be punished legally but stressed the fact that he did not consider this to be wrong any more than it was wrong to kill a fly, who happened to come within reach of a fly swatter. He felt that these women happened to come within his reach, so he killed them.” Dr. Diamond noted that any hostile ideas Moseley had were not directed against men.

  “He informed me that throughout his life he has felt as an outsider, looking in. He informed me that on occasions he seemed to see himself as an expressionless, unfeeling person,” Dr. Diamond testified. “Those were his words, sir, ‘expressionless and unfeeling.’ He informed me that there were occasions when he felt that he was outside of his body, observing his body performing certain acts which he himself was not part of. When questioned as to whether he felt tense or nervous as his trial was approaching, he said he did not feel it.”

  After further detailing the defendant’s habits and persona as a withdrawn, seclusive young man, Judge Shapiro asked Dr. Diamond if there was a medical name for what he had described.

  “Yes, sir. Schizophrenia.” Dr. Diamond explained, “Schizophrenia is a disease which starts fairly early in life and it is characterized by withdrawal, seclusiveness, and inability to establish firm, personal interrelationships, and inability to enjoy life . . . I felt that he was suffering from a catatonic type of schizophrenia.”

  Moseley’s schizophrenia, in Dr. Diamond’s opinion, had been triggered by the traumatic episodes in his past. Stating that Moseley had “a marked hostility toward women,” the psychiatrist explained that he had mutilated the breasts and genitals of his victims because of their representation of femininity, and “that his prime target was the abdomen because I think that this is where the hostility, that inner drive was centered on.” As for the necrophilia, Dr. Diamond explained, “That was his only way to show affection which could not be rejected.” Judge Shapiro asked about the women Moseley claimed he had raped but had not killed. Dr. Diamond answered, “They were not dead and he admits, sir, that he did this, but he did not get a thrill out of it, sir.”

  Dr. Diamond further stated that the defendant preferred to consort with his pets rather than with people because the animals could not hurt him. As for why Moseley had murdered women, Dr. Diamond said he could determine no reason why other than his admitted drive to kill. The psychiatrist described a drive as differing from an impulse in that “a drive is something which comes from within which is not necessarily recognized, the reasons therefore rarely being recognized except on long, involved psychiatric probing.”

  Judge Shapiro asked why, on the occasions Moseley said he was unable to find a woman alone, he had thus abandoned his plans to kill.

  “It means that he was unable to fulfill his drive,” Dr. Diamond answered.

  “It means that he was able to control them?” the judge asked.

  “No, unable to fulfill them. Not because he couldn’t control it, sir, or could control it; it’s just he did not find anybody to kill.”

  “Why didn’t he come home and kill his wife then?”

  “I don’t know.”

  DR. EMIL WINKLER, CHIEF of Psychiatric Prison Service at Kings County Hospital, took the stand next. Interestingly, Dr. Winkler had been the psychiatrist who had determined that Winston Moseley was fit to stand trial. He now testified to having had four lengthy interviews with Winston Moseley. Dr. Winkler concurred with Dr. Diamond that Moseley knew the nature and quality of his act. As for whether Moseley knew it was wrong to kill Kitty Genovese, Dr. Winkler said, “Partially he knew that it was wrong because he tried everything to escape detection. However, he had a mental illness which definitely caused a defect of reasoning and made it impossible for him to know that the act was wrong.” Dr. Winkler was not asked for a formal diagnosis. He gave his opinion that the defendant’s capacity to distinguish between right and wrong “is severely impaired.”

  Though Sparrow had originally intended to call a third psychiatrist, he rested this phase of his case with the testimony of Dr. Diamond and Dr. Winkler.

  The prosecution called Dr. Frank Cassino, chief psychiatrist at Wyckoff Heights General Hospital, as their sole rebuttal witness. Dr. Cassino admitted that he had never interviewed or examined Winston Moseley; his testimony was based on the reports he had read from Kings County Hospital and from observing the defendant in the courtroom the past two days.

  Dr. Cassino gave his opinion that the defendant knew the nature and quality of his acts and was able to distinguish between right and wrong. On cross-examination, Sidney Sparrow emphasized that Dr. Cassino had never personally spoken with the defendant. At the conclusion of Dr. Cassino’s testimony, Judge Shapiro recessed court for the day.

  The following morning, June 11, the trial resumed with the defense summation from Sidney Sparrow. Sparrow gave an intelligent, eloquent closing argument in which he carefully reviewed the details of Moseley’s crimes, stating that he had not cross-examined most of the prosecution witnesses because there was no question that Winston Moseley had killed Catherine Genovese. “I tell you this is a sick, diseased mind,” Sparrow said of the defendant, “a malfunctioning mind, a mind that could know what it was ordering, know the nature and quality of the steps it was doing, even know the consequences, yet not know that it was wrong.”

  Sparrow spoke at some length about the complexities of the human mind. “Cancer is a disease, an illness. So is mental disease.” Indicating the defendant, Sparrow said, “I don’t ask you to feel sorry for him, although you can’t help feeling sorry for any sick person.”

  Sparrow discussed the supporting psychiatric testimony from Dr. Diamond and Dr. Winkler. He then unleashed his wrath on Dr. Cassino, the prosecution’s psychiatric witness who testified that Moseley knew right from wrong though he had never personally met or spoken with him: “I say this was an insult to your intelligence. This was an insult to his own proud profession. How he had the unmitigated gall to come into this courtroom, get up on that witness stand and say to you on an issue so vital as a man’s lifetime or life, that he tells you that he knew, just on the basis of what he had seen here—it frightens me. It really frightens me.

  “If your life or your son’s life depended upon an opinion, would you listen and accept
what Dr. Cassino said to you yesterday afternoon as being any more worthy than the air that it dissolved into afterwards?”

  Discussing the troubled life of the defendant, Sparrow referred to the relationship Moseley had with his current, faithful wife, saying that maybe if Bettye had been his mother or his first wife, “this wouldn’t be.” In closing, Sidney Sparrow said to the jury, “I ask that we realize that the criminal insane be dealt with, not punished. They don’t belong in jails to rot or in electric chairs to die. Insane persons belong in the care of those who are qualified and trained to care for or treat them.”

  Before launching into his summation of the People’s case, Frank Cacciatore apologized in advance for how loud he intended to be.

  Cacciatore went over all the points in the case that gave credence to the prosecution argument that Winston Moseley had shown premeditation, clear thought processes, and acute awareness of circumstances and consequences. Referring to Moseley as a beast roaming the streets of Queens, he talked about Moseley’s first attack on Kitty and his retreat after a witness shouted at him. “So he figures it out in his mind,” Cacciatore said, “people are apathetic, people really don’t care. At 3:00 in the morning you hear a scream in the street. You’re going to then go downstairs? From the security of your apartment, or your home, are you going to go downstairs to find out if somebody is getting killed? You might pick up the phone and call the police, maybe, if you’re that much interested, or you might just turn around and go to bed. He knows this.

  “He knows this,” Cacciatore continued. “This is the fellow that doesn’t know that what he’s doing is wrong? He knows this. He figures it out.”

  Cacciatore scoffed at the testimony about the defendant’s distressed childhood, ridiculed the psychiatric opinions of Dr. Diamond. “Catatonia—oh, brother—catatonia. I don’t think anybody knew what catatonia was. I thought it was some kind of island in the South Pacific.”

  The judge admonished the prosecutor to refrain from such comments. Cacciatore, however, continued to inject notes of sarcasm into his scathing closing argument. He finished with insistent declarations that the defendant had known that his actions were wrong. “The law recognizes only one thing—criminal responsibility. I say to you that the People have proven, first, that Winston Moseley killed Catherine Genovese beyond any shadow of a doubt; the People have proven Winston Moseley criminally responsible under the law. He did know the nature of his act. He absolutely did know that what he was doing was wrong according to any concept, according to any concept at all.” He asked the jurors to bring back “the only verdict justified under the law and the evidence in this case, and that is guilty as charged—murder in the first degree.”