In his charge to the jury, Judge J. Irwin Shapiro gave detailed instructions on the points of law relevant to the case. He included an explanation of the four degrees of homicide (murder in the first or second degree, manslaughter in the first or second degree) and spoke at length on the definition of legal insanity.
The jury left the courtroom at 1:00 p.m.
At 10:30 p.m. that night, they returned a verdict on Winston Moseley: guilty as charged.
THE JURY RETURNED on Monday, June 15, for the sentencing hearing. Moseley could be sentenced to life imprisonment or the death penalty.
The prosecution called four of Moseley’s assault victims to testify. One by one, they told their stories of what Winston Moseley had done to them.
Sidney Sparrow wished to call Dr. Diamond and Dr. Winkler to give further testimony, but Judge Shapiro would not allow this. “This Court, this jury, has now determined that for all legal purposes, this defendant is not insane within the meaning of the law. I will not permit that issue to be re-litigated.”
In his summation, Sparrow made an impassioned plea for the jurors to spare Winston Moseley from the death penalty, urging the jury to evaluate his history and mental condition in their sentencing deliberations. Toward the end of his summation, Sidney Sparrow said something that would come back decades later to haunt him, the Queens County District Attorney’s Office, and the surviving family of Kitty Genovese. According to the transcript of the hearing, Sidney Sparrow said to the jurors, “I didn’t try this case involving Kitty Genovese objectively, calmly, just as a lawyer defending a client, because I knew Kitty Genovese, and represented her for years.”
Judge Shapiro interrupted, “We don’t know anything about that; that’s not in the record.”
“Well, I understood I’m allowed to make comments, sir, without the necessity of taking the stand.” Sparrow said.
“No, you are not.”
Sparrow said later that he had been about to say he knew Kitty Genovese and represented her four years ago, but Judge Shapiro had cut him off before he could finish.
In his summation for the People, Frank Cacciatore said, “You see, you have a choice of one of two things—imposition of the death penalty, or life imprisonment, so called. And the Court will explain to you what life imprisonment means. It isn’t life imprisonment at all. This monster can walk the streets of Queens County again.”
In his charge to the jury, Judge Shapiro explained the intricacies of a sentence of life imprisonment. With time off for good behavior, the defendant could be eligible for parole after serving a minimum of twenty-six years and nine months, though a parole board would not be obligated to release him early.
It took the jury less than an hour to come back with a recommendation of death.
Winston Moseley remained as impassive upon hearing his sentence as he had when hearing the verdict. Sidney Sparrow would forever remember the thundering applause and cheers that resounded within and outside the courthouse when the sentence was announced. As Loudon Wainwright later described it in his column for LIFE magazine, “The jury’s unanimous recommendation of death seemed fitting to many watchers in the courtroom. Like gleeful knitters at the guillotine, they burst into happy applause.” Fannie Moseley, clad in a black dress, wept and wailed her son’s name, “Winston . . . Winston . . .” Judge Shapiro angrily banged his gavel to restore order. The judge then turned to the jurors and said, “I don’t believe in capital punishment, but I must say I feel this may be improper when I see this monster. I wouldn’t hesitate to pull the switch on him myself.”
The defense asked for three weeks in which to prepare for formal imposition of the sentence before Judge Shapiro.
“No, there’s no reason for three weeks,” Shapiro said. “I know what I’m going to do with him now. June 22nd for sentence. The sooner we get him out of Queens County and into the death cell, the better. Maybe it will act as a deterrent for others, though I don’t believe in the deterrent provision myself.”
ON JUNE 22, JUDGE Shapiro heard—and denied—the defense motion to set aside the verdict. The judge delayed the death penalty sentencing so that Moseley could be available to testify at the trial of Alvin Mitchell, which was currently underway (bringing Moseley to court as a witness after formal imposition of his sentence would have entailed “complicated legal steps,” according to an article in the New York Times.) Later the same day, Moseley was escorted under heavy guard to a Queens courtroom to testify as a defense witness in the Mitchell trial. To the dismay of Mitchell’s attorney, Herbert Lyon, Moseley refused to answer questions on the grounds of self-incrimination. Judge J. Irwin Shapiro—who was also presiding over the Mitchell trial—ruled that Moseley had the right to refuse to answer. Herbert Lyon told Judge Shapiro that Alphonso and Bettye Moseley had both expressed concern to him about the Mitchell trial; Lyon asked the judge to allow Moseley’s father as well as his wife to speak with Winston to see if they could persuade him to tell what, if anything, he knew about the Kralik murder. Lyon also requested that the district attorney grant Moseley immunity from prosecution in the Kralik case so that he could be free to testify. Frank O’Connor agreed, granting him immunity from both prosecution and perjury in the event his testimony in this trial conflicted with what he had given at his own.
The following day, June 23 (incidentally, Alvin Mitchell’s 19th birthday), Winston Moseley took the witness stand and said that he, not the defendant, had murdered Barbara Kralik. Mitchell had taken the stand in his own defense and recanted his confessions.
The Moseley confession and the Mitchell recantation were not enough to persuade all of the jurors from the evidence the state presented against Alvin Mitchell. On June 27, the jury in the Mitchell trial announced that they were hopelessly deadlocked. A mistrial was declared. Judge Shapiro scheduled a hearing to set a new trial date for Alvin Mitchell.
On July 6, 1964, the day before what would have been Kitty Genovese’s twenty-ninth birthday, Judge J. Irwin Shapiro formally sentenced Winston Moseley to die in the electric chair at Sing Sing.
chapter 16
THE SAME WEEK that Kitty would have turned twenty-nine and Moseley was sentenced to die for her murder, a small book titled Thirty-Eight Witnesses was published by McGraw-Hill. The book was only eighty-seven pages long. The author was A. M. Rosenthal, metropolitan editor of the New York Times.
Rosenthal had already written a lengthy article for the New York Times in May titled, “STUDY OF THE SICKNESS CALLED APATHY” in which he strenuously made the point that the tendency to ignore the sufferings of others was a prevalent human failing rather than a unique problem of a single community in Queens. He wrote that many of the residents in Kew Gardens resented the bad publicity, and that many felt they were being picked on unfairly. He included a quote from one female neighbor who said, “Let’s forget the whole thing. It is a quiet neighborhood, good to live in. What happened, happened.” Rosenthal ended his article: “There are, it seems to me, only two logical ways to look at the story of the murder of Catherine Genovese. One is the way of the neighbor on Austin Street—‘Let’s forget the whole thing.’ The other is to recognize that the bell tolls even on each man’s individual island, to recognize that every man must fear the witness in himself who whispers to close the window.”
In his book, Thirty-Eight Witnesses, Rosenthal reiterated and expanded on this. On the opening page, Rosenthal wrote that he had never met Catherine Genovese and knew nothing about her except her name, age, and the manner of her dying. She had touched his life, he wrote, as she did the lives of tens of thousands of others, he thought. His book was also about thirty-eight of her neighbors, though he had never met them either.
“A great many hard things have been said about these thirty-eight, and I am sure they are bewildered, and I know they are resentful. But it is important to say this—that what they did happens every night, in every city. The terror of the story of Catherine Genovese is simply that by happenstance all thirty-eight did that night what
each one alone might have done any night without the city having known, or cared. In my own mind, and I believe in the minds of others, this has presented a question that troubles and will not recede: is the ugliness in the number or is it in the act itself, and are thirty-eight sins truly more important than one?”
The book included a reprint of Martin Gansberg’s article along with photographs of the crime scenes that had appeared in the New York Times. It offered nothing new in terms of additional details about the murder, the victim, or the witnesses themselves (Rosenthal had not done any of the reportage himself), but instead focused largely on the author’s musings on the overall moral issues. He contended that the vast majority of decent, law-abiding people—himself included—regularly neglected to help others in distress.
On this point there seemed to be ample proof. In the weeks and months following the infamous story of Kitty’s murder—so widely read and discussed that even President Lyndon Johnson had publicly commented upon it—New York newspapers had been filled with “apathy” stories: reports of other crimes in which witnesses had averted their eyes or failed to answer cries for help. There seemed to be no shortage. The Kitty Genovese story, then, had not marked a new phenomenon, but rather a new awareness and acknowledgment of the pandemic existence of “apathy,” as it was generically labeled.
The story of Kitty’s murder—and the public reactions to Gansberg’s account—clearly struck deep and lasting chords within Abe Rosenthal, as it did in many others. “The story seemed to stick in the minds of people,” he wrote, “to irritate them more, I think, than any in which I ever have had a part. ‘What kind of animals live on that street?’ a friend asked me, and when I seemed startled at his vehemence he got even angrier. ‘Do you think this kind of behavior is normal?’ ”
Rosenthal did not believe it was normal behavior; at least not initially. But the hunt for a target bothered him—those “animals,” those thirty-eight witnesses—as gradually, through his own reflections, he succumbed to “the queasy belief that the target was in our own mirrors.”
The entire affair had inspired in him a good deal of candid introspection. In what was arguably the book’s most poignant statement, he wrote, “I find it difficult to make a clean and totally honest distinction between my interest in the story as a newspaperman and a peculiar, paradoxical feeling that there is in the tale of Catherine Genovese a revelation about the human condition so appalling to contemplate that only good can come from forcing oneself to confront the truth.”
Whatever the value of Rosenthal’s ruminations, Martin Gansberg was not pleased that Abe Rosenthal had glommed onto a story that Gansberg had found. The article, after all, had come to fruition as the result of Gansberg’s investigative work and reporting. Though Martin Gansberg did not seek the spotlight himself, he did not appreciate Abe Rosenthal turning the product of his labor into a quick book in which Rosenthal had not only overly insinuated himself, but had essentially cast the reporter who had actually produced the story in a diminished role, referring to Gansberg in the book as a “copy editor” and “new at reporting.”
Resentments notwithstanding, and true to his character, Martin Gansberg chose not to take issue. Gansberg had not researched and written the article as a means of promoting himself; it was by and for the New York Times. In later years he took pride in what he felt was the article’s greatest legacy: the emergence of the 911 emergency call system.
His article about Kitty’s murder had spurred numerous discussions, including one on the value of having a simple, uniform method by which citizens could contact the police directly (the options in New York City prior to 911 were to dial 0 for the operator and ask to be connected to the police; call an individual police precinct; or call the number for the police communications bureau. Each of the five boroughs had their own communications bureau phone number). Gansberg had written an article about the value of implementing a single, streamlined system within days of his now-famous account of the murder of Kitty Genovese. The idea had been considered before. Kitty’s plight had the public talking about street crime; the inevitable what-can-we-be-doing-better debates in officialdom followed. New York City implemented the 911 system for police on July 1, 1968 (later expanded to include all emergency services). Martin Gansberg did not credit himself for this, of course, but privately he expressed satisfaction that his famous story had played a part in helping launch such a crucial public resource.
IN JULY OF 1964, Time magazine published a letter it had received in response to an article, “A SAVAGE STALKS AT MIDNIGHT,” that had appeared in the magazine after the jury recommended the death penalty for Winston Moseley.
Sir: It was a great disappointment to me and those who knew my husband that the returned verdict was guilty of murder in the first degree instead of not guilty by reason of insanity. As members of his family, we did not expect the law to excuse his crimes, but to treat the condition that made him commit them. Winston Moseley for his 28 years has been quiet, shy and alone. He has been a devoted husband and father; then, it seemed, something snapped psychologically and made him commit antisocial acts. His behavior was called an “irresistible impulse” by psychiatrists, who explained that such people are unable to control themselves. This condition constitutes “medical insanity,” but because of an obsolete rule, he was not found legally insane. He is intelligent, but of course we know that sane persons do not behave in such a manner.
ELIZABETH MOSELEY, South Ozone Park, N.Y.
FOR SEVEN MONTHS after Kitty’s death, Mary Ann Zielonko took refuge in the apartment she and Kitty had shared in Kew Gardens. She remained largely isolated, using alcohol to numb her pain. One day in October of 1964, Mary Ann decided to rescue herself. She took her clothes and she took Andrew, her dog, but little else, and she left Kew Gardens. She moved to Brooklyn. Working again as a teletype operator, she enrolled in night classes at Brooklyn College.
At Thanksgiving, Andrew ran away. He got out and never returned home. Mary Ann always wondered if he had gone to search for Kitty.
ON MARCH 3, 1965, Winston Moseley took the witness stand at the second trial of Alvin Mitchell. Subpoenaed by Herbert Lyon, Mitchell’s defense attorney, Moseley had been brought to the Queens courtroom from Sing Sing prison under heavy guard. His testimony at this trial was markedly different, however.
On the witness stand, Moseley placidly but insistently refused to answer. To the first question put to him by Herbert Lyon, Moseley responded: “I didn’t do it and I don’t intend to go into any explanation why.” The startled defense attorney continued questioning him, but Moseley stuck to the stubborn reply, “I refuse to answer.” Judge Edward Thompson cited him five times for contempt, but since Moseley was under a sentence of death, this hardly proved a threat.
The judge allowed Herbert Lyon to read aloud to the jury Moseley’s entire testimony from Mitchell’s first trial the previous June. As Richard J. H. Johnston reported it in the New York Times, “Mr. Lyon read the testimony into the record while Moseley, with his three attorneys arrayed behind him, lolled in the witness chair, smirking from time to time.”
Nine days later, the jury found Alvin Mitchell guilty of first-degree manslaughter in the death of Barbara Kralik.
ON MARCH 11, 1965, the New York Journal-American ran a full page, one year anniversary article with the headline, “KITTY GENOVESE—ONE YEAR LATER.” A subheading asked, “Would It Be Different Today With The Same Cast?” In a journalistic stunt of questionable taste,staff writer Helen Sutton had “re-enacted” the murder. With photographers in tow, Sutton had shown up in Kew Gardens at 2:45 a.m. and flung herself down on the Austin Street sidewalk where Kitty had first been attacked. The article included two large photos, one showing the reporter sprawled in front of the Austin Book Shop, the other showing her in a similar pose in back of the Tudor building. “The scene is lighted brighter than day by the photographer’s flash,” Sutton wrote. “I fall to the sidewalk feigning the death throes of the stricken Kitty Genovese.
“Two women watch from nearby windows, but no one gives an alarm. No one comes to help me. For the better part of half an hour, while more flash bulbs popped, I lay on the ground depicting the way Kitty died.”
Skipping the question of why anyone would come to help a person so obviously besieged by nothing more than her own tasteless behavior, Sutton quoted several Kew Gardens residents whom she interviewed (presumably at a different hour than the one in which she conducted her re-enactment spectacle).
“I did not call the police then, and I would not call the police now,” said Paula Rubenstein. “The people in this neighborhood are just not attuned to calling police.” The article recounted how Rubenstein had watched Kitty stagger to her feet and make her way around the corner, thinking she was drunk. “I’m the type of person who has never called the police in my life. Let me give you an example. About two months ago, I was home alone. It was a cold, windy night, and I heard someone on the stairs of the private street entrance that opens into our living room. For two hours all I could hear was the heavy breathing of someone lying outside. I barricaded the door with a clothes tree and a chair. Finally, I went into the lobby through another door and got the elevator man. With another tenant he went outside and found a drunk sleeping by the street door. They chased him away.
Kitty Genovese: A True Account of a Public Murder and Its Private Consequences Page 30
