Selects: The Kitty Genovese Story

Most people have heard of the story of Kitty Genovese. She was murdered near her apartment in 1964 and her neighbors didn't do much to help. It caused a nationwide outcry, but the story has often been misrepresented. In this classic episode, we set the record straight. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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  including barcode scanners, V-belts, and safety gear? Plus, Granger can help you get the products you need the same or next day, so you stay stocked and ready for whatever your operation demands. Call 1-800-GRanger, click Granger.com, or stop by. Granger, for the ones who get it done. Hey, everybody, it's me, Josh, and for this week's select, I've chosen our 2016 episode on the murder of Kitty Genovese. Her story is fairly famous. She was murdered while an entire apartment block of people watched and did nothing. But that's not exactly the real story. Like most things in life, there's more to it, and we explained what actually happened. We relied a lot on the excellent documentary, The Witness, for

• 1:32Josh Clark?

  this episode, and I highly recommend watching it. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this one.

• 1:41Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:51Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry. So this is Stuff You Should Know, the podcast. True Crime Edition, actually.

• 2:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:03Josh Clark?

  But so much more than just a single crime.

• 2:06Speaker 02

  Agreed.

• 2:07Josh Clark?

  A crime that echoed throughout a city, throughout the world, throughout decades. And it's true, man. Like, there are very few crimes you can point to that had more of an impact than the murder of Kitty Genovese.

• 2:22Speaker 02

  Agreed. And there are a lot of true crime podcasts out there. We are not trying to become one.

• 2:30Josh Clark?

  No.

• 2:30Speaker 02

  This is just something we do from time to time.

• 2:32Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 2:33Speaker 02

  As I researched this, and as I watched, did you watch The Witness?

• 2:37Josh Clark?

  Of course.

• 2:37Speaker 02

  The documentary recently.

• 2:39Josh Clark?

  On Netflix right now.

• 2:40Speaker 02

  It is, HBO documentary. And I was disturbed, and I'm glad it finally covered it in the documentary, but I was disturbed that Kitty Genovese, and we'll get to her murder, but very quickly, she was murdered and became the symbol for people not helping out.

• 3:00Josh Clark?

  Right. What came to be known as bystander apathy, or the bystander effect, that the more people who are around, the less likely anyone is to help.

• 3:09Speaker 02

  Yeah. So she became such a symbol that you never hear about Kitty Genovese and who she was as a person.

• 3:17Josh Clark?

  That was one great thing about that documentary. There are multiple great things about it. But that it really talked about her and showed her and revived her spirit.

• 3:27Speaker 02

  Which I was really looking for, because even in researching online, it's hard to get a lot of information. So...

• 3:33Josh Clark?

  Some things, some even contemporary articles, still aren't mentioning that she was gay.

• 3:39Speaker 02

  Well, yeah. Her own brother, who made the documentary, didn't know that she was gay.

• 3:43Josh Clark?

  No. It's true. But it's been out since, I'm not sure when, actually, that came out.

• 3:50Speaker 02

  It was just this year.

• 3:51Josh Clark?

  Oh, okay. So it was fairly new.

• 3:52Speaker 02

  This year, last year, yeah.

• 3:53Josh Clark?

  I thought it was in, like, in the last five years, maybe.

• 3:56Speaker 02

  So, in honoring that, why don't we talk a minute about Catherine Genovese? Kitty.

• 4:03Josh Clark?

  Yep.

• 4:04Speaker 02

  Born in nineteen thirty-five in Brooklyn to Vincent and René Leggenevis, Italian-American parents.

• 4:11Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:12Speaker 02

  Um, and it's weird. I don't see, oh, yeah, Rachel was her mother's name. She was Rachel Petrolle at first. So, um, they lived in Brooklyn and she was very well-loved in school.

• 4:24Josh Clark?

  Yeah, she was like the leader of her clique.

• 4:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, and she was apparently a lot of fun and a good mimic of her teachers and she was voted class cut-up in her senior year graduating class. She went to an all-girls school in Prospect Heights. And it was just, by all accounts, this vivacious, fun-loving, really sweet, sweet lady.

• 4:47Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 4:47Speaker 02

  Or girl at that point.

• 4:49Josh Clark?

  Her little brother, Bill, who ended up making the, or being featured in the documentary, The Witness.

• 4:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:56Josh Clark?

  Was just in love with her. She was just amazing to him.

• 4:59Speaker 02

  They had a very special relationship.

• 5:01Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I think she was about thirteen years older than him.

• 5:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, quite a bit.

• 5:04Josh Clark?

  Maybe twelve years older. I had a sister like that. Like, there's a very special relationship.

• 5:11Speaker 02

  I'm sure.

• 5:11Josh Clark?

  There's none of that sibling rivalry.

• 5:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:14Josh Clark?

  Um, they're not old enough to be your mother. It's just a, a, it's a unique situation to be a younger sibling and to be able to inherit like all that worldly wisdom.

• 5:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:27Josh Clark?

  And they're going through all their own things and their own struggles and their own travails, but to that thirteen-year-old, younger brother.

• 5:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:35Josh Clark?

  They know everything and they're the coolest person walking the planet and they're the kindest person walking the planet. Cause they've lived long enough to like figure out some of the major stuff, you know?

• 5:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, even my own sister is only six years older and we very much had and still have that relationship where, uh, and she and my brother are great now too, but you know, when you're two or three years apart, there can be a little bit of the knocking of heads.

• 5:59Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 6:00Speaker 02

  But by the time I came along, I was like, you know, my sister was six, it was perfect. I was a little baby doll for her. Um, so anyway, that was very much the relationship that Kitty had with Bill. And it seemed like one of the older brothers, uh, Always had a little bit of a like, yeah, she always liked him better.

• 6:18Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 6:18Speaker 02

  Kind of attitude.

• 6:19Josh Clark?

  It seemed like everybody kind of knew, like, she liked Bill the most.

• 6:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, which I kind of felt bad for, but that's just those family dynamics, man.

• 6:26Josh Clark?

  You know, the thing is, whenever you do start to kind of talk about somebody who's died, especially someone who's died violently and young, it's easy to canonize them.

• 6:38Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 6:39Josh Clark?

  You know?

• 6:39Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 6:39Josh Clark?

  Really put them up on a pedestal and forget their flaws. And of course, I'm sure Kitty had tons of flaws, but she didn't seem to have any, from what I'm gathering, that were, you know, just terrible flaws, or that made her like a bad person. She seemed like she was a...

• 6:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:57Josh Clark?

  Like, overall, above-average, great person.

• 7:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, agreed. So, um, New York was getting too dangerous for her family, they thought, to have all these kids. So they moved, when she graduated high school, to New Canaan, Connecticut. And she said, "You know what? I'm staying here in New York. I'm 18 now. I love it here." She got married, for a brief time, to a guy, what was his name, Rocco?

• 7:23Josh Clark?

  I don't remember his name.

• 7:24Speaker 02

  It's either Rocky or Rocco. And in the documentary, Bill tries to get in touch with him. He's like, "I really..." Because he found out she was gay and was like, "You know, we didn't even know this. I think Rocco can help shed some light." And he very respectfully asked for his own privacy.

• 7:41Josh Clark?

  He said, "My relationship with Kitty will remain forever a mystery."

• 7:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:46Josh Clark?

  It's like, that's an odd response.

• 7:49Speaker 02

  It was. I think he just didn't want to... I mean, if she was gay and they were married for a short time, he either didn't know and maybe felt the fool, or he did know and was maybe trying to do right by her in some way.

• 8:03Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 8:04Speaker 02

  Either way, he didn't want to talk about it.

• 8:05Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 8:06Speaker 02

  But um, she worked as a secretary for a little while. She was a waitress for a little while. Eventually, she was a barmaid bartender and then became bar manager at a place in Hollis Queens called Ev's 11th Hour.

• 8:20Josh Clark?

  That is a great bar name.

• 8:22Speaker 02

  Well, and from all accounts, it was one of those wonderful neighborhood bars.

• 8:27Josh Clark?

  Opened at 8 a.m.?

• 8:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, where the people were in there getting sauced pretty early in the day.

• 8:32Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 8:32Speaker 02

  And everyone knew everyone and everyone loved Kitty and she helped take care of everybody, but was very much an independent, um, kind of firecracker of a woman.

• 8:41Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 8:42Speaker 02

  She drove a red Fiat.

• 8:43Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm, convertible.

• 8:45Speaker 02

  Her dad used to tease her about like, when are you gonna find the right guy? She was like, I make more money than any guy I would go out with. I don't need that. Which is, I guess, 1960s for dad, I'm gay.

• 8:56Josh Clark?

  I'm gay, yeah.

• 8:58Speaker 02

  And I can't say it. But she did make pretty good dough as the bar manager. Um, and then in March 1963, she met a woman named Mary Ann Zalonko at Swing Rendezvous. It was an underground lesbian bar in the Village and they moved in together shortly thereafter.

• 9:17Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and Kitty actually used to bring, um, Mary Ann home with her to visit, but her family was all like, well, they're just good friends and roommates.

• 9:26Speaker 02

  Right.

• 9:27Josh Clark?

  It's the 60s.

• 9:28Speaker 02

  Right.

• 9:29Josh Clark?

  The early 60s.

• 9:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, and there's an audio interview with her in that documentary that's really touching.

• 9:35Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:35Speaker 02

  Uh, she didn't want to be on camera, but, um, Bill was able to speak to her and, I think what was so compelling about this documentary was that he was, it was a search of a man looking for closure.

• 9:47Josh Clark?

  It's a harrowing, sometimes almost unbearable to watch.

• 9:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:53Josh Clark?

  Search.

• 9:54Speaker 02

  It was tough.

• 9:55Josh Clark?

  I mean, like, he's at odds with his family here or there.

• 9:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:58Josh Clark?

  Um, he, uh, he's just, just doing things where if you, if you watch it in the context of the documentary and you just follow along the documentary, it all makes utter and complete sense.

• 10:09Speaker 02

  Right.

• 10:09Josh Clark?

  But then if you stop and remove yourself long enough to be like, this is a documentary, which means this guy really did this stuff.

• 10:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:17Josh Clark?

  And there was a camera following him along while he was doing it. I was like, I couldn't have done half of it.

• 10:23Speaker 02

  Oh, I know.

• 10:24Josh Clark?

  You know, he really. He just, at one point, he calls it an obsession, but it's, it's not, he doesn't come off as obsessed.

• 10:32Speaker 02

  Right, agreed.

• 10:33Josh Clark?

  You know?

• 10:34Speaker 02

  All right, so let's detail the crime, and then we will take a break after that. How does that sound?

• 10:40Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 10:41Speaker 02

  All right, so flash forward to March 13th, 1964. It's 3:15 in the morning, and Kitty Genovese is, as she often did, was making her way home from work late at night as a bar manager.

• 10:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 10:56Speaker 02

  And was being trailed by a man, a man by the name of Winston Mosley.

• 11:03Josh Clark?

  Yes, who is definitely the villain of this story, but is not the only one, it will turn out.

• 11:10Speaker 02

  Right.

• 11:11Josh Clark?

  So Kitty was 28 at the time she was killed, and Winston, her killer, was 29, just turned 29, I think, like a week or so before. And I think he said this is March 13th?

• 11:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:25Josh Clark?

  1964?

• 11:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, he was married with a couple of kids.

• 11:29Josh Clark?

  Yeah, his wife, Elizabeth, worked the night shift. She was a hospital nurse. And Winston's mother stayed at home with the kids. So he basically said, you know, "I own my own house. I've got a great job operating computers. No one even knows what I'm supposed to be doing with them yet, but I'm making money doing it."

• 11:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, he was a smart guy.

• 11:49Josh Clark?

  "So I'm gonna indulge myself. I'm gonna go out and stalk women and murder them in my spare time. That's what I'm gonna do." So that's what he was doing on this night. He was cruising around looking for a woman to kill, basically.

• 12:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was his direct quote in questioning.

• 12:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 12:07Speaker 02

  "I was looking for a woman to kill."

• 12:08Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So he saw at, I believe, a red light. This little red Fiat convertible caught his eye, and there was Kitty driving. So he started to follow her. And she parked, and she parked in the parking lot for the Long Island Railway, which, the parking lot went backed up to the side of her apartment building, which is a two-story Tudor job that had shops in the bottom and apartments in the top, right?

• 12:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, this was in Kew Gardens in Queens. So he followed her on foot at this point. She sees him and knows that something is going on. He has a knife in his hand, so she starts running. He catches up to her by outside of a bookstore and stabs her twice in the back, right off the bat with his knife.

• 13:00Josh Clark?

  Right. And she had been running toward a bar that she thought would be open, but it turned out apparently there was a new manager and the new manager had closed down early. So when she stabbed twice in the back, it's on this darkened street, but right across the street, Austin Street, is a 10-story apartment building with dozens of windows looking out onto Austin Street.

• 13:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:24Josh Clark?

  Where she's being stabbed in the back. And she screams, she cries out. I think she said something like, "Oh, God, he stabbed me. Help me, help me," is what they, they said basically definitively is what she screamed. And people who were witnesses to this recounted that one guy said that he was, I think, a 10 or 11-year-old kid who was inside one of the apartments in the Mowbray apartment building and that he was awoken, awakened from a deep sleep. The scream was so loud. He said it was the loudest thing he's ever heard.

• 13:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:59Josh Clark?

  So she screams and a man living in the Mowbray apartment buildings opens his window. What's his name?

• 14:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, Robert Moser opened his window and screamed out, "Hey, get out of there. What are you doing?" And Mosley took off.

• 14:17Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 14:17Speaker 02

  Took off running away.

• 14:18Josh Clark?

  He's very frequently misquoted as having said, like, "Let that girl alone." But even by his own words, in his own testimony, he said, "Hey, get out of there."

• 14:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, at any rate, he scared him away.

• 14:30Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 14:32Speaker 02

  So in between that time, about 30 minutes passes. Kitty makes her way around to the vestibule of her own building, right?

• 14:45Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 14:45Speaker 02

  And goes inside the vestibule and like you think the horror is over for her. She could probably survive these wounds.

• 14:56Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 14:56Speaker 02

  Um, is in shock, I would imagine. And then Mosley had went to his car, kind of checked out the building, saw that some lights had gone on and reasoned to himself, no one's going to do anything. Puts on a different hat and goes back, finds her in the vestibule and finishes the job in the most horrific ways you can imagine.

• 15:19Josh Clark?

  Yeah, he stabbed her at least 12 more times. They think at least she was stabbed at least 14 times. He said he doesn't remember how many times he stabbed her, but he basically kept stabbing her until she stopped screaming. She was still alive. I saw that he attempted to rape her. I've also seen that he raped her.

• 15:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:38Josh Clark?

  I'm not sure which one's correct.

• 15:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:40Josh Clark?

  But at one point, and this is really important here, as he's stabbing her and she's screaming, in the vestibule, there's a staircase that leads directly up to a door. And behind that door lived a man named Carl Ross. And Carl Ross opened his door and looked down, one single flight of stairs, at Winston Mosley stabbing Kitty Genovese, who was bloody. There was no confusing what was going on. And he closed the door and he called his girlfriend and his girlfriend said, don't get involved.

• 16:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:15Josh Clark?

  I'm worried for you. Just, just leave it alone. It's none of your business. And he did. He didn't do anything, at least for a little while.

• 16:23Speaker 02

  All right. So that's a good place to break here and we're going to come back and talk about who saw and heard what and what they did about it, right after this.

• 16:42Speaker 03

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• 20:01Speaker 02

  All right. So at this point, Kitty Genovese is not dead yet, but dying in the vestibule.

• 20:12Speaker 02

  A woman did come down and was with her. Her name is Sophia Farrar. She's still with us. And she was a neighbor and friend of Kitty's. And so she went down there and apparently was with her as she passed away, tried to calm her down, evidently did calm her down, and likes to think that she at least saw a friendly face and that she was being cared for as she passed.

• 20:41Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 20:42Speaker 02

  The weird thing is, is that is not mentioned. I guess we got to get into The New York Times now.

• 20:46Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So after the murder, like the next day, The Times ran four paragraphs on the Kitty Genovese murder. It was not incredibly newsworthy at first because that year, there were 636 murders in New York City.

• 21:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that was just one of them.

• 21:03Josh Clark?

  Just one. But a couple of weeks later, the head, the city editor of the New York Times, a guy named Abe Rosenthal, who's a legendary journalist, was having lunch with, I believe, the police commissioner of the NYPD. And the commissioner said, did you hear about that Genovese murder? That's one for the books. Thirty-eight people standing around, watched the whole thing. Nobody did a thing about it.

• 21:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, now you've got a story.

• 21:30Josh Clark?

  Abe Rosenthal, legendary journalist, is like, uh, thank you for that. Here's my Diners Club card. I have to go now and get this story done. So he did. He assigned it out to a guy. What was the original reporter's name? His name was Martin Gansberg. And they wrote on the front page, I shouldn't say they wrote, it was definitely all Gansberg, but he was assigned and definitely under the direction of Abe Rosenthal, like, this is, this is the story. Thirty-eight people stood around and did nothing.

• 22:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, the, the title of the article was thirty-seven, it was thirty-seven at the time, thirty-seven who saw murder, didn't call the police. And basically, the entire article and the entire narrative from that moment forward for decades was, A, not about this woman at all, hardly.

• 22:21Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 22:22Speaker 02

  She became a symbol. B, not necessarily even about the crime, but about the crime of these people who didn't, the crime of apathy.

• 22:31Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 22:31Speaker 02

  For these thirty-seven or thirty-eight people. But it was very much misconstrued in the New York Times, to the point where in 2004, they all but wrote a retraction with new information. Because the original article, they said, like, these people witnessed it. That is not true. Maybe only a couple of people might have actually seen anything with their eyeballs. The other thirty-five or thirty-six may have heard someone screaming. They might have thought it was a drunken couple in their neighborhood coming home from a bar. There might have been some apathy involved, for sure, for some of them. But

• 23:14Speaker 02

  to characterize this as thirty-seven or thirty-eight people witnessed this horrific crime and literally shut their doors and windows to it was not accurate at all.

• 23:24Josh Clark?

  Right. They said, they said specifically, well, the way that they put it was that there were

• 23:34Josh Clark?

  The way the story read was that thirty-eight people had watched this murder, which took place, they misreported that there were three attacks.

• 23:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:41Josh Clark?

  And that the man had been chased off twice and came back two more times.

• 23:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:47Josh Clark?

  But that this whole thing had taken place over thirty minutes, this long, prolonged attack, and that thirty-eight people had just been sitting there watching it, doing nothing. And it is definitely a mischaracterization of what had happened, like you're saying. For the most part, people were ear witnesses, not eyewitnesses, there were certainly not thirty-eight eyewitnesses to it.

• 24:07Speaker 02

  Right.

• 24:07Josh Clark?

  And most people weren't in a position to do much, if anything, about it, certainly physically. But I don't know if you could call it like a retraction, because the point that Abe Rosenthal, he never apologized for it, ever. Even in the documentary, he's interviewed.

• 24:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:24Josh Clark?

  And he's like, I, this is great, I'm glad that it did what it did.

• 24:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure.

• 24:29Josh Clark?

  The point is still there, that there was apathy in that there were two people who could have done something, and they didn't. But then, from what the other witnesses said, the scream was pretty clearly not a purse snatching, and not a couple fighting drunkenly.

• 24:50Speaker 02

  Right.

• 24:50Josh Clark?

  That it was a violent crime being committed on this woman, and people still didn't do anything.

• 24:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, they misreported, possibly, that no one called police. Apparently, perhaps up to three people called the police, although police logs showed only one call came in. And it may be a case of these people now telling themselves, like, I called the cops, I did something.

• 25:15Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 25:15Speaker 02

  When they may not have. They did not report at all that Ms. Farrar had gone down to be with her, she was not mentioned ever. So I kind of went from feeling like, yeah, you know, this bystander effect, it had good, it led to the 911 being created, apparently, in some ways. And people studied this in class, and it raised awareness, so, you know, if they stretched it a little bit, then it had a good effect, that's what Abe, basically.

• 25:42Josh Clark?

  That was his position.

• 25:44Speaker 02

  That still is his position, but...

• 25:45Josh Clark?

  Well, he's dead now.

• 25:46Speaker 02

  Oh, did he finally pass away?

• 25:47Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 25:49Speaker 02

  And then I finally came around and be like, no, you know, the truth is what you should print. And if you're a reporter and you run a story,

• 25:57Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 25:58Speaker 02

  you should print the truth and not some sensationalized version of it to sell newspapers.

• 26:02Josh Clark?

  No, no, absolutely. I agree with you. And I think the one thing that you can hang on Abe Rosenthal is that that story was definitely fashioned in a manner to be as sensational as possible, to shock and outrage the public as much as possible.

• 26:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:18Josh Clark?

  But I still think it's rooted in the basic fact that there was apathy involved and that it possibly allowed Winston Mosley to finish the job, that Kitty Genovese might have survived had somebody done more than just sit up, look out their window and go back to bed.

• 26:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:38Josh Clark?

  Or not even bother to look out the window. And like you said, Chuck, like this had a lot of impact because this, the story comes out in 1964. And for 40 years, it wasn't until 2004 that the Times saw fit to like, go back and really reinvestigate.

• 26:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:55Josh Clark?

  And they did. There was a great, great article called Kitty 40 Years Later, I think. And, and the author goes through and reinvestigates the case and really sets a lot of facts straight. But within that 40-year period, the effects that this murder had were just sweeping. It led to the establishment of 911.

• 27:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:18Josh Clark?

  It's a big one.

• 27:19Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 27:19Josh Clark?

  And it created this whole field of psychology that looks into the, the psychology of crowds, you know, and why we would just stand around. What is this diffusion of responsibility? None of that understanding existed until the Kitty Genovese murder.

• 27:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. And weirdly, why is someone, why is a solo witness more apt to act than a group of people?

• 27:43Josh Clark?

  One thing I saw is that it's called social influence and that we take our cues from others. So if inaction is basically what is on the table right then, we're going to be inactive as well. If people are starting to move toward it, toward the, the problem, we'll probably join in too.

• 28:00Speaker 02

  I could see that, or people thinking like, Either I'm not, someone else is better equipped to deal with this than me, or I feel like someone else will do this.

• 28:10Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 28:11Speaker 02

  So I don't have to.

• 28:12Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 28:12Speaker 02

  A lot goes into play. It's pretty interesting.

• 28:14Josh Clark?

  One of the less productive things that came out of it, though, is this idea that when you live in a city, in a big city, you put enough people together, everybody stops caring about anybody else. They're all out for number one.

• 28:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:25Josh Clark?

  And Kew Gardens became the center of this, or just such a symbolic example of urban uncaring, I guess.

• 28:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:38Josh Clark?

  And Kitty Joan of Ese became a symbol of that as well, and the need to do something, to act out, to help other people when you see them need help.

• 28:50Speaker 02

  All right, so let's take another quick break here, and we're gonna get back into what happened to Mr. Mosley and the further effects of this crime after this.

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• 31:36Speaker 02

  So, a week after this murder, Mosley was breaking into a house. He's not a good guy.

• 31:45Josh Clark?

  No, he was a terrible guy.

• 31:46Speaker 02

  He was, beyond being a sociopath and a psychotic, was just a burglar. And he was just straight up robbing a house one day of a television. And one of the neighbors saw this, called the cops. Cops came and arrested him.

• 32:02Josh Clark?

  No, no, no. No, that's not true.

• 32:05Speaker 02

  What?

• 32:05Josh Clark?

  The neighbor... Here's the thing. This is the great ironic twist of the Kitty Genovese story. He went to a different neighborhood. He was robbing a house and the neighbor said, "Hey, what are you doing?" And he started to run from the house. The neighbor chased him and tackled him and held him until the cops came.

• 32:21Speaker 02

  Oh, well, yeah, he called the cops.

• 32:22Josh Clark?

  That's how he went down. Intervention.

• 32:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 32:25Josh Clark?

  Not apathy, intervention.

• 32:27Speaker 02

  Right.

• 32:27Josh Clark?

  A week later.

• 32:28Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 32:29Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 32:29Speaker 02

  So at any rate, he calls the cops, he gets arrested and very like, uh, matter-of-factly says that he killed Kitty Genovese. And not only that, but he killed supposedly two other women. A woman named Barbara Kralik. Uh, well, actually, she was a girl. She's only 15. And then a woman named Annie Mae Johnson. And apparently both of them had been sexually assaulted. And he was never tried for those, but um, he did plead not guilty by reason of insanity, which did not work. Was sentenced to death. And by luck of timing, was able to appeal. And the death penalty had gone away for most crimes.

• 33:09Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 33:10Speaker 02

  In that time period. And he um, was re-sentenced to life in prison.

• 33:15Josh Clark?

  Yeah, supposedly the prosecution had withheld some evidence about his mental state during his sentencing. So he was able to get it reduced. So he was hanging out, doing his time.

• 33:28Josh Clark?

  And he was in Attica, I believe. And he had injured himself and was being taken to the hospital. And on the way there, he got the gun away from the guard who was escorting him and took off. And for, I think, five days, he basically just the city of Buffalo was in mortal fear of the fact that the guy who murdered Kitty Genovese was now on the loose in their town. And they were afraid, rightfully so. He raped one woman. When the cops closed in on him, he uh, got a hold of five people and held them hostage in a standoff. That lasted for a little while with the FBI before they finally got to him. He was a bad dude.

• 34:10Josh Clark?

  So they sent him back to prison and uh, they said, "You're not getting out of here, ever."

• 34:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, he was later a part of the Attica prison riots as well and um, the one lady that he killed, he, he Burned her alive, like, the family was upstairs.

• 34:28Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 34:28Speaker 02

  And he broke into her house, raped her, killed her, and burned her alive in the home, and the house went up in flames.

• 34:34Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 34:35Speaker 02

  So, it sounded like he had no... He sounded like a true sociopath, like, he had no... Not that there was ever a reason for killing someone, but it was always just at random because he wanted to do that.

• 34:48Josh Clark?

  That's a lot what it sounds like. It was a self-indulgence.

• 34:52Speaker 02

  So, in the documentary, very powerful scene where the son of... I'm sorry, the little brother of Kitty, it was told through his eyes, interviews and sits down with one of the sons of Mosley. And it's just like... I mean, you cut the tension with a knife, obviously. It's just so fraught with tension. And he had told his son that she was yelling racial slurs at him. He also said that he was just a getaway driver for some mobster, and the Genovese family was related to the crime mob family, the Genovese family. And none of this stuff is true.

• 35:36Speaker 02

  And the brother was just like, "A, no, we're not related to that family at all. We have nothing to do with that."

• 35:42Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 35:42Speaker 02

  And he just gives him a look when he talks about the racial slurs, like, "Come on, man, that's not what happened." So, it was a really, really powerful scene of... These two guys kind of working it out in a way.

• 35:55Josh Clark?

  I didn't see them working anything out.

• 35:57Speaker 02

  Oh, see, I did.

• 35:58Josh Clark?

  Which made it even worse for me.

• 36:00Speaker 02

  I thought there was some... Between them, they kind of came to a nicer place.

• 36:04Josh Clark?

  Oh, really?

• 36:04Speaker 02

  Than where they'd started.

• 36:05Josh Clark?

  I did not catch that at all.

• 36:06Speaker 02

  Maybe you skipped forward or something.

• 36:08Josh Clark?

  Maybe.

• 36:12Josh Clark?

  I was like, "I can't take this. Kind of fast forward."

• 36:14Speaker 02

  Well, the son was saying, like, you know, I think, you know...

• 36:16Josh Clark?

  The brother.

• 36:17Speaker 02

  We need to...

• 36:18Josh Clark?

  Bill.

• 36:18Speaker 02

  No, the son of Winston Mosley.

• 36:20Josh Clark?

  Oh, oh, gotcha.

• 36:20Speaker 02

  Was saying that they needed to move on from all this. And then the brother was saying, "I definitely don't, you know, the sins of the father aren't the sins of the sons."

• 36:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah, he said that.

• 36:28Speaker 02

  So, you know, I felt like they were better off than when they started for having that conversation.

• 36:33Josh Clark?

  I honestly did not catch that.

• 36:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:36Josh Clark?

  Well, regardless, Winston Mosley, after...

• 36:42Josh Clark?

  I guess after his second, his first escape, his second little crime spree in Buffalo, he, when he was captured, he, he apparently reformed himself, or he claimed to be reformed. He got a, a degree in prison. He wrote an editorial that the New York Times published where he basically said, "I'm a changed man."

• 37:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:04Josh Clark?

  And everybody said, "Oh, look at that. It's just about the time your first parole hearing's coming up. This is great timing." He went up before the parole board and they said, "No."

• 37:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:14Josh Clark?

  He went up before the parole board again. They said, "No." He went up 18 times, uh, when 18 times the parole board said, "No."

• 37:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:22Josh Clark?

  I think the last one was just a couple of years before he died, but he died in 2016 at age 81 in prison.

• 37:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, and he, uh, the brother tried to get an interview with him and he said, "No," that he didn't want to be exploited anymore. And you could just feel this brother's pain of like really wanting to try and to talk him into it again. And the, basically the people that, that were the go-between were like, "Yeah, you know, you can try. We can't keep you, but, uh, he's not going to change his mind."

• 37:52Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 37:53Speaker 02

  So he never got that interview. But I feel like he got, I don't think he was looking for answers. I mean, in the documentary, he went back to many of these apartment windows just to look at what their vantage point might have been. He got an actress to recreate, um, what the screaming would have sounded like, uh, from down there on the street, which was very chilling, uh, scene. And I don't know that he was looking for, like you said, he was at odds with his family at times. You could tell the one little brother was like, "Man, this is hard on all of us. So you need to stop."

• 38:26Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 38:28Speaker 02

  But I don't think he was necessarily looking for the closure in that, "I want to find out for sure if these people could have stopped it." I think the closure comes more in the journey of learning about his sister and learning as much as he can about this case.

• 38:42Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 38:43Speaker 02

  It was really interesting.

• 38:44Josh Clark?

  It was very interesting. That 2004 Times article, and then now this documentary, has definitely exonerated Q Gardens as a whole. They've said, "Now, there's way more nuance to this. There's way more."

• 38:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:59Josh Clark?

  But two things, two people that have not been exonerated, are a guy named Joseph Fink and a guy named Carl Ross. Carl Ross was the guy who lived at the top of the vestibule, who opened his door.

• 39:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:13Josh Clark?

  The ironic thing about Carl Ross is, if you notice, it says 38 witnesses, 37 did nothing. The 30, that last 38th witness that the Times is referring to was Carl Ross. They said, "He's the one who called the police." They called the police like long after Kitty Genovese was dead.

• 39:30Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 39:30Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So, he was actually, I don't want to say celebrated or whatever, but he was exonerated initially by this Times article, when it turns out that he was one of the two people who could have done something and didn't. The other one was Joseph Fink, who saw the initial attack from his vantage point in the elevator. He ran the elevator in the Mowbray Apartments across the street. And he apparently saw what was happening and left his elevator and went to bed.

• 39:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:58Josh Clark?

  And that was that. But again, it seems like the overall feeling is, okay, other than those two guys, everybody else is fine. I just disagree with that. I think that there's a lot more that people could have done that didn't. And I don't think it's a, I just don't think that everybody's off the hook for that.

• 40:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:18Josh Clark?

  Yep.

• 40:19Speaker 02

  You got anything else?

• 40:21Josh Clark?

  No, man. If you want to know more about Kitty Genovese, just search the internet. There's a lot about her. But be careful what you read, because it's all over the place, frankly. And since I said internet, it's time for listener mail.

• 40:38Speaker 02

  Fish fraud follow-up. Hey, guys. I recently began a job as a marine fisheries observer.

• 40:46Josh Clark?

  Nice.

• 40:46Speaker 02

  For the Department of Fish and Game in the Bering Sea. And I just listened to your fish fraud episode. Each season, a percentage of vessels, fishing here at least, are randomly selected. They have an observer on board to monitor the operations and bycatch that come up in their pots or nets. The presence of an observer is admittedly a bit of a drag for this fisherman who have to put up with us skinny nerds. LOL. He typed that. We are generally a great deterrent of any mischief at sea, but from what I have seen, most of the fishermen are real sharp, honest folks who know what they're doing. Of course, this is only a small portion of all the vessels on the water, and it isn't going to solve that problem by any means.

• 41:30Speaker 02

  But I'd like to know that there is some coverage on fishing vessels and processors. Thanks for all the laughs, my dudes. And that is from Kevin Alexandrowitz in Olympia, Washington.

• 41:44Josh Clark?

  Thanks a lot, Kevin. Had no idea. Did you?

• 41:48Speaker 02

  That these people did that?

• 41:49Josh Clark?

  That there's basically like a sky marshal program fighting fish fraud on the high seas.

• 41:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, we talked about that.

• 41:56Josh Clark?

  We did?

• 41:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:58Josh Clark?

  I don't remember that.

• 41:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, we were just like, it's just so infrequent and random that, you know, what's, what good is it doing? And it sounds like he agrees in some ways.

• 42:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I guess so. But still, have fun out there on the high seas. Don't get seasick. If you want to get in touch with us, like Kevin did, you can send us an email to [email protected]. And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com.

• 42:24Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 42:39Josh Clark?

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