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

by Pelonero, Catherine

“Why didn’t I report it to the police? Why should I? It probably would never happen again.”

  Edward Bieniewicz, the Mowbray superintendent, said he often thought about what had happened to Kitty that night. He repeated that his wife had told him to stay out of it, thinking it was a lovers’ quarrel. “It’s something you’d like to forget, but you can’t. I guess everybody tried to forget it. But for those who think, well, it doesn’t leave the mind that easy.”

  Samuel Koshkin’s wife said her husband had not spoken of the incident since the previous June when he had testified at the trial. He had since refused to discuss it and forbade anyone from mentioning it to him. “Mrs. Koshkin described the 35 minutes a year ago in which she and her husband watched the scene below, from Kitty’s first scream until the ambulance came. ‘My husband saw the girl stagger past the drugstore and heard her say: ‘Help me, I’ve been stabbed.’ He wanted to call the police . . . He wanted to go down to get the license number of the man’s car . . .’ ”

  Mrs. Koshkin said that if a similar situation were to occur in the future, she would still stop her husband from intervening, but she would call the police herself and not assume someone else had done so.

  The article did credit Sophie Farrar and Greta Schwartz for their bravery in going to Kitty’s aid. It quoted Sophie Farrar: “Now I have seen violence. There’s a terrible fear in me . . .” Sophie spoke of her fear that night in the hallway, wondering if the killer was still there. “Truthfully, if it were today, I really don’t know what I would do. It’s one thing for people to say you should help. But they never know what they would do until it happens. I don’t think I’d ever run the other way when trouble came. But now it’s a hard thing to say.”

  Andree Picq spoke of how she had tried to call the police that night but had been too frightened and excited to complete the call. Of her neighbors she said: “I still don’t think people want to get involved. They don’t want police standing outside their door asking questions.”

  Another resident commented: “You find such a lack of community spirit in a city the size of New York. Upstate, if someone is in trouble, everyone comes up and helps. Walk up the road with your wife, and people will say ‘Hello.’ Not here. And Kew Gardens is supposed to be a small community. I’ve been living here almost 20 years and I hardly know a soul. No one wants to know his neighbor.”

  The man finished by saying, “It’s in the nature of the human being not to give a damn about his fellow man.”

  Another resident told Sutton, “Nobody goes out here alone at night anymore. I wouldn’t walk in this neighborhood by myself.”

  MARTIN GANSBERG WROTE an anniversary follow-up article for the New York Times headlined, “MURDER STREET A YEAR LATER: WOULD RESIDENTS AID KITTY GENOVESE?”

  Gansberg briefly recounted the crime and interviewed several Kew Gardens residents. This time, he gave names. He wrote of how Kitty had called for Karl Ross by name and, briefly, of the rooftop drama that followed. “The people did not act a year ago, and they are not certain what they would do now. The witnesses say if it happened again, they would call the police. Their neighbors are doubtful.”

  He wrote of the resentment most of the community felt at the negative publicity. He noted the discrepancy between the number of attacks the killer had testified to in court and the three Gansberg had given in his first article, but wrote that Mrs. Koshkin still said she thought the killer had attacked three times.

  It made little difference, however, certainly no difference in the fate of Kitty Genovese, and whether a news account of two attacks instead of three would have cast the witnesses in a more positive light seems doubtful. Gansberg wrote of how some of the witnesses now insisted that they had not seen or heard anything. While he said that some residents credited him for having opened their eyes, others treated Gansberg with hostility or complained that their community had been singled out unjustly. Frank Facciola, a neighbor of Kitty’s in the Tudor building who said he had slept through the attacks, said: “These things happen every day all over the world. The stories were only giving us a black eye.” Facciola felt certain that if a similar incident were to happen, people would definitely call the police. “We all miss Kitty,” he added.

  Andree Picq reiterated that she would call the police if it happened again, but she did not think that her neighbors would. Robert Mozer, another trial witness, said that he and his neighbors would never let such a thing happen again. “I just couldn’t realize he was killing her,” Mozer said. “I thought they were some kids having fun.”

  Mrs. Koshkin insisted that people would now call the police, but Cleo Hagopian, a neighbor of hers in the West Virginia, said: “Things don’t change. If I looked out the window and saw that happening today, I’d get panicky. I don’t know if I’d call the police.”

  Gansberg also spoke with Max Heilbrunn, owner of the Interlude Coffee House that was located next door to the hallway where Kitty had fallen for the last time. “The articles, the publicity woke up the people,” Heilbrunn said, “but now it’s the same as it was. “Why, there was even talk a few weeks after the story was published about putting up a plaque at the spot where Kitty died, but nothing came of that.” Heilbrunn said that some of the people in the Tudor building who were closely involved had moved. “We don’t know where they’ve gone, but they left soon after the publicity.”

  Among those who had moved were Karl Ross and Mary Ann Zielonko.

  UNKNOWN TO MAX Heilbrunn at the time of that interview, the Interlude would be among those forced out of the Tudor building as a result of the negative publicity. Customers were replaced by gawkers who came for a glimpse of the infamous murder scene next door. As Arlene Heilbrunn, wife of the owner, recalled, “The death of Kitty Genovese affected the Interlude Coffee House and my family greatly. It became quite a crime scene for days. It was March and spring was on the horizon, and my husband was hopeful that business would pick up after a very slow winter. In this area of Kew Gardens lived many refugee Germans who loved to sit out in the fresh air and enjoy their coffee and pastry, and the Interlude did that for them. Some people came, but mostly to see [the murder scene]. Weekend folk musicals helped some, but business began to fade.”

  A musician who played regularly at the Interlude recalled people walking out of the café at night occasionally giving mock calls of “Help me! Somebody help me, I’m stabbed!”

  Before the end of 1965, the Interlude closed its doors permanently.

  The New York Times printed a separate article on the same day as Gansberg’s one-year retrospective with the headline, “POLICE REPORT SOME GAIN IN COOPERATION BY PUBLIC.” Deputy Commissioner Walter Arm was quoted, “There has been an increase in public concern because of the dramatic nature of the Genovese case,” but added that police officers arriving at the scene of a crime are told most often by the people they find there, “I didn’t see anything.” The article noted that a citywide emergency telephone number for the police, 440-1234, had been introduced the previous November, with mixed results. According to the article, some callers complained of bad experiences with rude police officers, and others claimed that it took the police too long to respond once a complaint had been phoned in to the citywide number.

  Detective Robert Roselle of the 102nd precinct in Richmond Hill, the precinct that had handled the Genovese investigation, said, “It’s still very difficult to get the people here to cooperate. You can only speculate on whether the people are any more willing to help us now. We’ve had cases since then where people told us they didn’t want to get involved.”

  IN MARCH OF 1965, Martin Gansberg received an award from the Newspaper Reporters Association of New York City for excellent feature treatment for his account of the Kitty Genovese murder. The following month, the Silurians, a society of present and former New York newspapermen, also honored his Kitty Genovese article, presenting him with their award for the best news story of the last year.

  “ONE WITNESS BETTER THAN 38 IN A CRISIS, STUDY HERE
SHOWS.” The article appeared in the New York Times on July 10, 1966, telling of a study undertaken as a result of the Kitty Genovese murder. Two college professors—Bibb Latané, an assistant professor of social psychology at Columbia University, and John M. Darley, an assistant professor of psychology at New York University—had conducted a two-year inquiry into how witnesses behaved in emergency situations. Their findings indicated that a victim of an attack had a greater chance of being helped if there was only one witness rather than several.

  Latané and Darley’s study would expand and continue over the coming years.

  KITTY’S BROTHER, BILL Genovese, who had been sixteen years old at the time of his sister’s murder, enlisted in the United States Marine Corps when he turned eighteen. Haunted by his sister’s death and the heartbreaking accounts of how no one had helped her, Bill had become obsessed with doing the right moral thing, vowing never to turn his back on anyone in peril. It was with this attitude that he frequently volunteered for hazardous missions in Vietnam. During one such mission, a landmine exploded as he attempted to disable it. The blast tore off both of his legs at the hip. The date was March 13, 1967, three years to the day after his sister’s murder.

  He returned to the United States as a decorated war hero, bound to a wheelchair for life.

  ON JUNE 1, 1967, the Court of Appeals reduced Winston Moseley’s sentence from death to life in prison. The Court unanimously agreed with the contention made by Sidney Sparrow on appeal that the trial court had committed “substantial error” in not allowing testimony of medical insanity at the sentencing hearing.

  New York State had abolished the death penalty in 1965, except for the killing of a police officer or a murder committed in prison by a convict serving a life sentence. The Queens District Attorney’s Office had argued that the new law should not be applied retroactively to those already under a sentence of death, although Governor Nelson Rockefeller, in May of 1966, had already advised that the sentences of those in the death house at Sing Sing would be commuted to life in prison.

  The ruling of the appeals court now made it a moot point for Winston Moseley. He would not be put to death.

  chapter 17

  AS HE WOULD later say, Winston Moseley knew he could not escape from Attica Prison.

  After the commutation of his sentence, Moseley had been transferred from Sing Sing to Attica, the fortress-like maximum security prison located in the western part of New York State. Since its construction in the 1930s, Attica had housed some of the most dangerous and notorious criminals of the twentieth century. The prison sat amid the rolling hills of rural Wyoming County, about forty miles east of Buffalo.

  On Monday, March 18, 1968, the fourth anniversary of his arrest, Winston Moseley was at Meyer Memorial Hospital in the city of Buffalo, recovering from minor surgery performed a few days before. He had injured his rectum with a juice can, necessitating the surgery. On this afternoon of March 18, he was scheduled for discharge and transport back to Attica.

  As he said later, Moseley had inflicted the injury on himself knowing that he would need treatment beyond what could be done in the prison infirmary. He may have hoped they would take him to one of the small suburban hospitals in the vicinity of the prison rather than into the city.

  Corrections officer Herman Spencer escorted the limping Moseley through the hospital corridors, leading him to the vehicle that would return him to Attica. When they reached the lobby, Moseley, who was not handcuffed, assaulted Spencer. Turning suddenly with catlike reflexes, Moseley punched his guard in the face, then fled out the front door of the hospital. The corrections officer managed to fire one shot at the escapee. He missed.

  It had all happened in an instant.

  By the time Herman Spencer recovered and the shocked staff in the hospital lobby had time to react, Winston Moseley, clad in a gray prison shirt and slacks and moving rapidly despite a limp, had disappeared into the streets of Buffalo.

  Law enforcement launched a massive manhunt. Trains and buses were stopped and searched. Federal authorities issued a sixteen-state alarm for the fugitive. Guards at the nearby Canadian border were put on high alert. Buffalo Police notified their counterparts in New York City to keep a close watch on the home of Moseley’s wife. Bettye was still married to Winston and still lived in the house in South Ozone Park. New York City newspapers, including the New York Times, ran articles on Moseley’s escape. Martin Gansberg wrote an account for the Times headlined, “GENOVESE KILLER IS HUNTED WIDELY.” Photographs of the fugitive appeared in newspapers and on television. Leon Vincent, deputy warden at Attica Correctional Facility, said, “Up to now, he had a clean prison record.”

  Despite the immediate response by police and the simultaneous, widespread media coverage of the escape, the fugitive remained at large as night fell on March 18.

  It was the beginning of three days of terror.

  ON WEDNESDAY MORNING, March 20, an employment service in Buffalo received a phone call from a man who identified himself as Matthew Kulaga. He asked that a cleaning woman be sent to 278 Dewey Avenue, a single-family home on the east side of Buffalo.

  There was nothing unusual in the request. The agency had sent housekeepers to this address before. The home at 278 Dewey was owned by an elderly woman, but the owner’s daughter and son-in-law, Janet and Matthew Kulaga, who lived in the Buffalo suburb of Grand Island, usually took care of such maintenance arrangements. Later that day, the agency telephoned Janet Kulaga at her home in Grand Island to ask if the cleaning woman’s services had been satisfactory.

  Mrs. Kulaga said that they had made no such request for a cleaning woman that day. But the agency insisted they had sent a cleaning woman, a twenty-two-year-old married mother of three, to the Dewey Avenue address.

  Mrs. Kulaga was perplexed. Neither she nor her husband had called for a cleaning woman. Her mother’s home in Buffalo, though still fully furnished, was unoccupied, since Mrs. Kulaga’s mother was staying with them in Grand Island. Concerned, Mrs. Kulaga called a neighbor on Dewey Avenue that evening to ask if the neighbor had seen anything suspicious at her mother’s house.

  The neighbor told her that the house looked fine. The only thing unusual she had noticed was a cleaning woman entering the house on Wednesday morning and leaving in the afternoon.

  As the Kulagas wondered what might be going on over at Dewey Avenue, Mrs. Kulaga received another very unusual phone call that night. The caller was a woman. The voice was not familiar. The woman did not give her name, but gave Janet Kulaga a desperate, cryptic warning: “Stay away from the house on Dewey Avenue!”

  EARLY ON THURSDAY morning, Matthew and Janet Kulaga drove to 278 Dewey Avenue. Mrs. Kulaga had called the Buffalo Police the day before and asked them to check on her mother’s vacant house. The police had found the house apparently intact, the front door locked. Because of the two odd phone calls they had received, however, the Kulagas wanted to check for themselves.

  The Kulagas pulled up in their 1962 white Comet shortly before 8:00 a.m. Before entering the house, Matthew Kulaga armed himself with a crowbar. There had been a series of break-ins around the neighborhood, and the house had been sitting empty, making it a potential target for burglary. Mr. Kulaga thought it wise to have a weapon in hand, just in case they encountered a trespasser inside. Unfortunately for the Kulagas, the crowbar at Matthew’s side was no match for the .32 revolver that Winston Moseley pointed at them when they entered the living room.

  AT 9:45 A.M., a monotone call went out from a Buffalo police dispatcher: “Hold-up at 278 Dewey Avenue.”

  Minutes later, the police car that had responded to the call radioed back an urgent, excited reply: “The man says it was Moseley and he has his car!”

  Within minutes of the announcement, 278 Dewey Avenue and the surrounding area were inundated by police. Patrolmen, plainclothes, and even some off-duty officers rushed to the scene. Radio and television stations interrupted their programming with the announcement that the fugitive murderer ha
d been spotted on the east side of Buffalo but was still at large, thought to be driving a white 1962 Comet belonging to his latest victims.

  Moseley had left Matthew and Janet Kulaga tied up and traumatized, but alive. At gunpoint, he had ordered the Kulagas to an upstairs bedroom. He forced Mrs. Kulaga to tie her husband’s hands and feet with clothesline. She had complied. Moseley tightened his bonds, then tied Mrs. Kulaga’s hands behind her back. He left Mrs. Kulaga beside her husband and exited the bedroom. He had returned moments later, however, and took Mrs. Kulaga into another bedroom. There he had removed some of her clothing, slashed her undergarments open, and molested her. Afterward he returned her to the bedroom with her husband. He then forced Matthew Kulaga to undress.

  Moseley dressed himself in Mr. Kulaga’s clothing. He checked to make sure their bonds were tight, then stuffed material into the mouths of both victims to keep them silent. He took Mr. Kulaga’s wallet and car keys. Before leaving, he had said to them, “I don’t want to hurt anybody. I just want to get away.”

  The Kulagas had managed to free themselves and call police. They had been rushed to Meyer Memorial Hospital, a stone’s throw from where it had all begun three days earlier.

  THE FBI, NEW York State Police, and the Erie County Sheriff’s Office joined the Buffalo Police Department in the hunt for Winston Moseley. Residents were in a panic. Police switchboards were flooded with calls from people claiming to have seen him.

  Buffalo Police Commissioner Frank Felicetta was an exceptionally dynamic, hands-on chief. Felicetta had joined the force in 1929. Though he had since risen through the ranks to become the department’s top commander, at heart he remained a police officer, pure and simple. When the alarm had gone out, he had responded like any other police officer: he hastened to 278 Dewey Avenue. He was not there to supervise, but rather to physically take part in the search for a dangerous fugitive. Canvassing homes in the vicinity, the sixty-one-year-old police commissioner climbed into darkened attics, checked basements, and strode into garages alone. He walked through a nearby lot, peering in the windows of parked cars. A reporter tailing Felicetta noted the police commissioner’s doggedness. The reporter wrote that Felicetta kept saying of the fugitive, “I want him . . . . I want him . . . .”