Kitty Genovese: A True Account of a Public Murder and Its Private Consequences (12 page)

Lieutenant Bernard Jacobs’s order to flood the area with detectives had produced some fast results. By the time her unknown killer tossed her wallet into the bushes in Mount Vernon that morning, police had reconstructed the stalking of Kitty Genovese in significant detail, thanks to those who had watched it unfold.

Clearly she had been attacked on Austin Street at about 3:20 a.m. Her screams and pleas for help had roused scores of residents in at least four separate apartment buildings and a couple of the private homes.

Kitty had begun screaming before the assailant stabbed her, from about the time she set foot on the corner of Austin by the railroad parking lot, calling for help during her frantic dash from her pursuer. She screamed for help as he chased her to where he caught up with her in front of the bookstore. Some neighbors then, roused by her first screams, had looked out their windows in time to see victim and attacker on the street together. Others, due to angles and the time they reached their windows, had seen only Kitty alone, or the man fleeing, or nothing at all.

With its location directly across the street from the site of the first attack, the Mowbray yielded some important witnesses. In addition to Irene Frost on the second floor, the woman who looked at her clock and pegged the time at 3:20 a.m., there were others who had seen or heard things.

Directly below Irene Frost, in the corner apartment on the first floor, Paula Rubenstein saw the assailant flee down Austin Street, then the woman lurching along the Tudor building. Mrs. Rubenstein told police she thought the woman was drunk and paid no further attention, closing her window and returning to bed. She would later say, ruefully, “I had no idea it was Kitty.”

All of the apartments on the first floor facing Austin Street were canvassed. According to the report of Detective John F. Mahoney, one occupant stated: heard screams, “Help! Help! They’re killing me!” and saw a girl in high heels turn into train station.

Another said: heard girl scream “Help! Help!” but didn’t go to window.

Another heard screams but “is nearsighted, didn’t see anything.”

Residents in two different apartments on the second floor heard screams but said they saw nothing.

Detective Mahoney questioned a few other Mowbray residents as they left the building, noting what each told him. One resident claimed to have heard screams but saw nothing. Another saw a woman dressed in a fur coat screaming, “Help” in front of the dry cleaner, no male present.

Another said she heard screams about 3:30 a.m., saw the girl walking down the street. Her husband saw the man but could give no description other than “tall.”

Another claimed to have heard screams of “Help me, help me,” and then saw a male run up the left side of Austin Street past the train station. The description given of the male was white, in his 20s.

One person told of hearing “noise” about 3:30 a.m., but saw nothing.

Two others questioned by Detective Mahoney on their way out of the building said they heard nothing.

Detectives Robert Monroe and Robert Klotzsche canvassed the upper floors of the Mowbray. Of the many apartment doors they knocked on that day, they listed twenty-four as “Not home.” Occupants in seven other apartments said they heard screams but saw nothing. But their initial canvass that morning did produce two good witnesses.

Andree Picq lived in apartment 403, directly across from the bookstore. She worked as an airline stewardess at nearby Kennedy Airport and her hours therefore were not the conventional 9:00 to 5:00. She had been awake when she heard the first screams for help. Looking out her window, she saw the victim on the pavement and the man bending over her, striking her repeatedly. Her description of the assailant held some valuable details. She described a thin male, not very tall, about twenty-five years old wearing a dark hat, dark pants, and a lighter colored three-quarter length coat. She heard a neighbor upstairs shout at the attacker, who then ran down Austin Street toward the train station. Andree watched the victim get to her feet, after which Andree thought she heard her call out, “George” and a moment later, “Help!”

Andree remained at her window as the victim slowly made her way back down Austin Street. After the woman turned the corner by the drugstore, Andree could no longer see her. But some minutes later, still at her window, she did see the man return, only now he was wearing a different hat, a fedora. She watched him search the doorways of the shops in the Tudor building. Then he walked to the parking lot and looked around there. Finally he went around to the back of the Tudor.
Andree could no longer see him after that, but a moment later she heard two last screams of, “Help me! Help me!”

Then silence.

Andree Picq, a young woman from France who spoke with a French accent, explained that she had called the police but had hung up as soon as the officer answered, too frightened to speak after witnessing what she had.

A detective took Miss Picq to the 102nd precinct for further questioning. Meanwhile Detectives Monroe and Klotzsche had located the neighbor who had yelled down at the assailant.

Robert Mozer and his family lived on the seventh floor of the Mowbray. Mozer had been asleep near his window overlooking Austin Street. Awakened by the woman’s screams, he went to the window and saw the shrieking woman on the ground with the man standing hunched over her. It looked like the man might have been holding her throat or was reaching for her in some way. The woman was crying for help. Robert Mozer had opened his window, which had no screen, and called out. He couldn’t recall his exact words, but it was something like, “What’s going on down there?” After a split second pause, “Leave that girl alone!” He described how the man had then run off, how the woman had gotten to her feet and walked slowly down Austin Street in the same direction. She turned the corner and he could no longer see her. Mrs. Mozer had joined her husband at the window. They saw the man return, looking around, trying doors of the shops in the Tudor building.

The Mozers gave a description of him that fit the one Andree Picq had given: slim build, dark clothes. Like Andree Picq, they thought the man was white. Irene Frost and a couple of others thought he was black.

Detectives Klotzsche and Monroe also located a man in a private home across from the train station who gave a description of the man and was also able to see where he had run. His statement read: “states he heard screams, looked out window and saw a male, white, 25 to 30 years, wearing dark clothes, run north on Austin Street and get into an auto, a light grey or white with a flat grill (possibly a 1960
Rambler) and said auto was parked in a bus stop in front of 82-40 Austin Street.” This meant the suspect’s car had been parked in front of the West Virginia Apartments, a seven-story building on the same side of Austin Street as the Tudor. The railroad parking lot lay between the West Virginia and the Tudor. The witness further stated that the suspect got into the car and backed it up Austin toward 82nd Road, heading away from the train station.

Another man in a private home across from the station had also looked out to see the car backing down Austin but thought the car was of a type similar to a 1959 Studebaker, color possibly white or cream, with the same large grill work. Due to the foliage in front of his window he could not be positive of the make of the car or its color.

At least one person mentioned that the car was a Chevy Corvair, apparently with such certainty that Detective Gasper DeSimone and two colleagues were dispatched later that day to Ev’s Eleventh Hour, the victim’s place of employment, to survey the area in the vicinity of the bar for a white Corvair. They found one. After questioning the owner, who told them his car had been parked the night of March 12–13 in back of a plant in Farmingdale where he worked the night shift, they searched the vehicle for any signs of a struggle, or blood, or for any other physical evidence—with no results.

Meanwhile the questioning continued on Austin Street. Detectives Joseph Parrino and R. C. Hudson had found a man who saw the car, the man, the victim, as well as a sequence of events that residents of the Mowbray could not have seen.

Samuel Koshkin and his wife lived in a corner apartment on the 6th floor of the West Virginia Apartments. The entrance to the West Virginia faced the private homes across the street from which witnesses had seen the suspect’s car. Three different windows in the Koshkins’ apartment gave them views of Austin Street, the parking lot, and the walkway behind the Tudor building.

Mr. Koshkin pegged the time at around 3:00 a.m. that he heard a woman screaming, “Help! Somebody help me!” a pause, “I have been stabbed!” Going to his window that overlooked Austin Street, Koshkin saw a male he described as being in his early 20s, could have been a
light negro or white, wearing a three-quarter-length dark tan coat and what looked like a knitted cap, dark tan. Dark slim pants, 5’8” or 9”, slim build, about 140 pounds. Mr. Koshkin saw the man run to a white compact-type car, could have been a Chevrolet Z-11 or a Corvette, color white, car had a square-type back, late model.

The auto was parked at the bus stop directly beneath the Koshkins’ Austin Street window. Samuel Koshkin had not been able to see the plate number, but he did see the car back up and drive, in reverse, up 82nd Road, out of sight. When he could no longer see the car, Mr. Koshkin went to his window that gave him a view of the woman walking down Austin Street. As others had described, the woman turned the corner by the drugstore, proceeding slowly along the side of the Tudor building.

Switching windows once again, to one that overlooked the train depot and the alley behind the Tudor, the Koshkins watched her progress along the side of the building, turn the next corner by the coffeehouse, walk a little farther, and enter a door in back of the building. Mr. Koshkin estimated it was about five minutes later that he saw the man return on foot. The man now wore a fedora rather than a stocking cap, but Koshkin was sure it was the same man he had earlier seen jump into the car and back away. As other neighbors had also stated, the man walked first down to the stores fronting Austin Street, then to the parking lot. He seemed to be looking for something or someone. Mr. Koshkin noted that as the man looked around the parking lot, he put his hand in his mouth, as if he were sucking or biting his fingers, the way a person might if he had cut himself.

The man walked down the rear alley the same way the victim had gone. He entered the building. And that was the last the Koshkins saw of him.

Mrs. Koshkin had advised her husband not to call the police. “The first scream was fifteen minutes ago,” she told him. “Thirty people must have called by now.”

Her husband had put on his coat, telling his wife he was going downstairs to see if he could find the car and get the license plate. Once again she had stopped him, fearing for his safety. The girl had
screamed about being stabbed. That meant the man had a weapon. It could be dangerous.

MULTIPLE WITNESSES TO
an event, particularly an incident that is sudden and shocking, often translates into differing details and conflicting accounts. Considering the high number of eye and ear witnesses in this instance, the information given to the police was, for the most part, rather remarkably consistent. However, in addition to the uncertainty about the suspect’s race, there was one key discrepancy spawned in the early investigation, concerning the number of times the killer had attacked and retreated.

At least two witnesses, including Robert Mozer in the Mowbray, told police they thought the man had intercepted Kitty Genovese on the side of the Tudor building adjacent to the parking lot, attacking her there. Since she had been found in the hallway at 82-62 Austin in back of the Tudor and police knew she had first been attacked in front of the bookstore, another assault on the side of the building would have totaled three attacks, meaning her killer had retreated twice and returned twice.

It would later be determined that Kitty had been attacked twice: first on Austin Street in front of the bookstore, the second time in the narrow hallway in back of the Tudor. The confusion about a purported third attack likely came as a result of witnesses hearing her scream during the attack in the hallway, mistakenly thinking Kitty was still outside rather than inside the hall. From Andree Picq, investigators knew that Kitty had screamed loud enough while in back of the building to be heard by Ms. Picq all the way around the block in the Mowbray. Her throat could not have been cut during the first attack on Austin Street; too many people had heard her scream or speak afterward, which she could not have done had the massive gash in her throat been inflicted at the time.

As they would in any investigation, police recorded statements from all the witnesses, then undertook the task of sifting through the information in search of the facts.

There were some details or discrepancies that would never be resolved. More than one witness claimed to have heard Kitty cry out, “George.” Yet another thought she heard her say “Paul.” This would lead detectives on a search for any persons Kitty may have known by the names of George or Paul.

Irene Frost was the only witness who claimed that when she first looked outside she saw the attacker and victim “standing close together, not fighting or anything.” Her statements were otherwise consistent with those of other witnesses.

In addition to calls of
Help!
and shrill wordless screams, accounts of other things Kitty cried out during her struggle to reach safety included:

“He’s got me! He’s got me!”

“God please help me, I’m stabbed!”

“They’re killing me!”

And perhaps the most wrenching:

“I’m dying. Oh God, please, somebody help me . . .”

THE HOFFMAN FAMILY
lived on the second floor of the Mowbray. The bedroom window of their fourteen-year-old son, Michael, faced Austin Street directly across from the bookstore. Michael had been awakened in the early morning hours, and he had also yelled at the assailant.