Kitty Genovese: A True Account of a Public Murder and Its Private Consequences (43 page)

The pioneering work of Bibb Latané and John Darley became a standard entry in psychology textbooks around the world. Other researchers would follow in their footsteps, launching a new field of psychological study dubbed “prosocial behavior.” The terms “Genovese syndrome,” “bystander effect,” and “diffusion of responsibility” became part of the lexicon.

IN THE EARLY
1970s, Bettye Moseley divorced her husband. She took their son and left New York, moving across the country in search of anonymity and a fresh start for herself and the young boy. Before leaving, she went to see Winston at the prison and she brought their son with her. Winston later said that he didn’t blame Bettye for wanting to get on with her life.

IN MARCH OF
1974, Martin Gansberg wrote an article for the
New York Times
headlined, “KEW GARDENS SLAYING: A LOOK BACK.” Briefly recounting the crime, he again wrote that there had been three separate assaults on Kitty Genovese. The article focused more on the positive changes that had come about in the neighborhood in the ten years since the infamous murder: the formation of police auxiliary and
block watch groups. Gansberg quoted a police lieutenant at the 102nd precinct as saying that Kew Gardens residents were quick to call them now and that the work of the auxiliary patrol was very impressive. “They’re astute, good people there,” the lieutenant said.

Gansberg wrote that most of the witnesses to Kitty’s murder had since moved away or died. One of the few left was Andree Picq, who told Gansberg that soon after the murder she had bought a whistle, which she had since used to frighten off intruders. “I feel at least that I am doing something to help now. There are still too many old people here to expect anyone to give any real help.”

As in prior interviews over the years, residents were split on whether their neighbors would call the police if a similar incident happened now. People who had moved to Austin Street in the years after Kitty’s murder generally seemed to take a more optimistic view than those who had lived there at the time. A woman in the latter group said, “It’s the same now; no one would lend a hand.”

In reaction to Gansberg’s article, the
New York Times
received a letter to the editor from a man who owned a store on Lefferts Boulevard:

NINE MONTHS LATER,
on Christmas Day, 1974, a twenty-five-year-old woman named Sandra Zahler was beaten to death in her fifth-floor apartment at the Mowbray. Madeline Hartmann, a neighbor in an adjoining apartment, overheard the struggle. In an eerie coincidence,
Zahler had reportedly been attacked at 3:20 a.m., the same time as the attack on Kitty Genovese some ten years before. In an interview with the
New York Times
, Hartmann said she also recalled hearing the screams of Kitty Genovese. Of this latest murder she said she heard a man and a woman enter Zahler’s apartment. “About five minutes later I heard her shout loudly: ‘No! No! No!’ Then I heard the slapping sound as from a belt, three or four times.” Zahler had screamed after each of these slapping sounds, she said. “And finally, [Zahler] said loudly, ‘O.K.’ And then he apparently slapped her again.

“Later,” Hartmann continued, “there was a sharp crash as if a television set or something heavy fell to the floor, and then I heard the dog yelp as if being kicked.”

Police found Sandra Zahler’s small dog in the apartment with his deceased owner. The dog had a broken leg.

Madeline Hartmann also said she had heard water running from the kitchen tap and figured someone was cleaning up. She then heard someone with a “very heavy” step leave Zahler’s apartment. “I didn’t hear the door lock and this was strange because she was careful and usually locked it.” Mrs. Hartmann added that all had been quiet afterward.

Mrs. Hartmann admitted she had been “worried,” but said she had not called the police because she thought the building superintendent, who lived in a nearby apartment, must have overheard the commotion too, and she assumed that he would call. The superintendent had not called the police, nor had any of the neighbors. Sandra Zahler’s dead body had been found in her apartment later that day by her boyfriend.

ON JANUARY 8, 1977,
while still an inmate at Attica Prison, Winston Moseley received a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Niagara University. Moseley was among the first prisoners in New York to earn a degree through a new program in which the state provided a tuition grant for college teachers to provide instruction at the prison. In an article that appeared in the
Niagara Falls Gazette
, Moseley’s intellect was praised by the chairman of Niagara University’s sociology department. “He’s an extremely brilliant man,” the chairman
was quoted. “I’d venture to say his IQ is in the 150 range.” The chairman further said that Moseley was “very conscientious in his studies,” describing him as “the ideal student.” He also criticized the news media, saying it was unfair to keep bringing up the fact that Moseley was a convicted killer whose education had been financed with taxpayer funds. “The press has been very negative, as if all this has been a waste of taxpayers' money.”

In April of 1977, Moseley sent a long letter to the
New York Times,
which they printed on April 16. “I’ve been imprisoned many years now, and I’ve wished so many times that I could bring Kitty Genovese back to life, back to her family and friends.” Writing that his “perpetual torment and agony will not resurrect her,” he agreed that he should have been punished for the crime. “The crime was tragic, but it did serve society, urging it as it did to come to the aid of its members in distress or danger.”

He praised the media for heightening public awareness about apathy and the need to help others in the wake of Kitty’s murder. He then wrote, “Those sent to prison are ultimately society’s responsibility, too.”

The violent Attica prison rebellion of 1971 had “sickened” him, and he had vowed afterward to get back on track and make amends for his past. He wrote of the college degree he had earned and his positive role as an inmate liaison at Attica. Moseley claimed he had changed greatly. “The man who killed Kitty Genovese in Queens in 1964 is no more . . . . Another vastly different individual has emerged, a Winston Moseley intent and determined to do constructive, not destructive things.”

In closing he wrote, “Today I’m a man who wants to be an asset to society, not a liability to it.”

Two years later, in a televised interview on ABC-TV’s
20/20
news program, Moseley claimed he had killed Kitty Genovese because she had used a racial slur. Attorney Sidney Sparrow dismissed this new claim, saying that the allegation of a racial slur “had never reared its ugly head before.” Moseley also told
20/20
that sex had not been a motive in his attack on Kitty.

In his quest for freedom, Moseley was apparently willing to throw as much at the wall as possible in the hope that something might stick. Two decades later, something did.

chapter 19

THE LAST LEGAL
phase of the Kitty Genovese saga occurred in 1995. On June 16 of that year, Judge Frederic Block of the US District Court in Brooklyn heard arguments from Barry Rhodes, Moseley’s courtappointed attorney, and John Castellano, a Queens assistant district attorney. Rhodes argued that Winston Moseley’s 1964 conviction should be set aside on the grounds that Sidney Sparrow had a conflict of interest at the time he represented Moseley since Sparrow had also once represented the victim, Kitty Genovese.

Moseley had made this same appeal to a New York State court in 1989, to no avail. In the same year, he also sent a letter to the
Buffalo News
in which he asked for forgiveness for the crimes he had committed in Buffalo in 1968. He wrote that he could not fault people who were still inclined to characterize him as villainous, admitting that at the time he had been a “desperate man who was indeed criminal in thought and action.” The letter then read:

HE CLOSED BY
asking forgiveness from the people he hurt or traumatized as well as from the people of Buffalo as a whole for his transgressions against the city. The apology, however, had not won him release at subsequent parole hearings, nor had his complaints about his legal representation in 1964 earned him a hearing in state court.

Sidney Sparrow had said himself at the 1964 trial that he knew the victim. His controversial words appeared in the trial transcript: “I didn’t try this case involving Kitty Genovese objectively, calmly, just as a lawyer defends a client, because I knew Kitty Genovese and represented her for years.” According to Moseley’s new attorney, Sparrow in years past had also represented members of the Genovese crime family; mafia members whom—Rhodes/Moseley claimed—were related to victim Kitty Genovese.

Assistant DA Castellano argued that Judge Block should give no credence to these claims and throw the matter out of court, noting that Moseley had made this same appeal in 1989, which a state court had rejected at that time.

This current action had come about as a result of years of letterwriting from Winston Moseley in which he continued to assert on several different grounds that he had not received adequate representation from Sidney Sparrow. Moseley, sixty years old, had been incarcerated now for thirty-one years and was serving his time in Green Haven prison. He had been turned down for parole six times since 1984.

Moseley wanted his conviction set aside and he wanted a new trial. After the rejection in state court, he had filed suit in federal court in
1990. The case had sluggishly wound its way through the system until ending up on the docket of Judge Frederic Block in 1995.

Naturally enough, the District Attorney’s Office was not eager to re-try a case that was now thirty-one years old. Judge J. Irwin Shapiro was dead, as was prosecutor Frank Cacciatore and District Attorney Frank O’Connor. Surely some of the witnesses must be as well.

Sidney Sparrow, however, was alive and well. The eighty-two-year-old Sparrow still practiced law in Queens. He sat as a spectator in the Brooklyn courtroom as Rhodes and Castellano argued before Judge Block.

After hearing both sides, Judge Block decided that there might be constitutional issues involved in Moseley’s claims. “I have a responsibility as a Federal judge not to sweep it under the rug,” he said. Judge Block set a hearing for July 24 in which he would hear testimony from Sidney Sparrow and Winston Moseley.

“NOBODY HELPED HER
THEN, AND HER KILLER WANTS OUT NOW,” read the headline in the
New York Times
that told of Judge Block’s decision to grant a hearing.

Kitty’s parents had both passed away by 1995. Her three brothers and her sister, all middle-aged now, decided to attend the hearing. For the first time, they would see their sister’s murderer in the flesh as he sought to have his conviction thrown out. They would also speak with the press. As Kitty’s brother, Frank, said to a
New York Times
reporter on July 24, the day of the hearing, “We have lived with this for 31 years, through movies and books and newspapers. We had chosen to live it alone, removed. But now, we are here, with the gloves off, because we will not let her be the victim again.”

Frank Genovese had been only twelve years old at the time of his sister’s murder. He had to read about her death in textbooks in high school and college.

As much as they had tried to avoid exposure, none of Kitty’s family had been able to escape the widespread, persistent publicity that continued unabated after her murder. Catherine Genovese had been yanked from anonymity as an ordinary human being and thrust into the posthumous role of iconic—and dehumanized—public figure:
“Kitty Genovese.” Cultural catchphrase, comic book heroine, cautionary tale. A perennial victim whose death was cited by scholars, thoughtlessly mocked on occasion by people who stopped on Austin Street to wail, “Help me! I’m stabbed!” and laugh at the wit of it all.

People generally failed to recognize that she had once been a living, feeling human being, loved and forever mourned by other living, feeling human beings.

Kitty’s brother, Vincent, told of how he and the family had read the gruesome descriptions in newspapers of what had happened to her that night. They had all tried to shelter their mother from the gory details. When Rachel Genovese passed away, they found articles about the murder tucked away in a drawer of her desk.