Kitty Genovese: A True Account of a Public Murder and Its Private Consequences (13 page)

Michael Hoffman would one day become an officer in the NYPD, rising to the rank of lieutenant. Looking back on the events of that morning, in 2003 he made a sworn affidavit of his recollections of what he saw and heard in the dark hours of March 13, 1964, and what followed. In his own words:

“The night of the attack I was not quite fifteen years old. At the time, we lived in apartment 216 on the second floor of the Mowbray Apartments, 82-67 Austin Street in Kew Gardens. My bedroom was on an outside corner by the building entrance with one window facing the entrance courtyard and the other facing Austin Street. My Austin Street window was almost directly across the street from where Kitty was first attacked.

“The night Kitty was killed, I was awakened in the middle of the night by a commotion outside. What woke me up was yelling—not screams—but yelling voices, both male and female. Since my Austin Street window was only open about a half an inch (it was very cold that night), I could not make out what was being said, or by whom. I opened that window more and could still not make out what was being said.

“When I looked out, I saw a person on the ground and a man just standing over the person. I did not see that the man had a knife, I did not see any blood, and I did not realize that the person had been stabbed. This could be due to the low light. It was dark and under streetlamp lighting that was not very bright, and also, the person was already on the ground. Anyway, thinking it was just a fight or a lovers’ quarrel, and more angry than concerned (I was just awakened and I was a kid), I yelled to them in true New York fashion to ‘Shut the f*** up!’ This woke up my dad and everyone else in the apartment.

“The man then ran west on Austin Street towards the Long Island Railroad station. I moved to the courtyard window of my bedroom and watched him until he passed the benches in front of the station. Then I lost sight of him. I went back to the Austin Street window and saw the person slowly get up. I heard what I thought was crying or moaning loudly, a female voice, like she was hurt, but I could not make out any words. That’s when my dad came into my room.

“My father asked what was happening. I said, ‘This guy just beat up a lady and ran away!’ We both looked out the Austin Street window of my bedroom as Kitty slowly went around the corner of the two-story Tudor building across the street and disappeared from our sight. There was a drugstore on that corner at the time. (My father never did see the man, just Kitty getting up and going around the corner.) During that time we heard her make faint moaning sounds, but we never heard her scream, cry out or say anything. The way she walked made us think she was either drunk, or had been beaten up. She walked slowly, holding on to the building wall for support as she did. She staggered. Dad decided to call the police in case she was hurt badly and needed medical attention. Within about twenty seconds after Kitty disappeared around the corner where the drugstore was, we went to the telephone which was in another room not facing the street.

“In those days there was no ‘911.’ Dad had to dial the Operator and wait for the eventual connection to the police operator. Dispatchers were always busy as a rule and it took a bit to connect, so this did not seem out of the ordinary to us. While my father was on hold trying to get through to the police, I went back to look out my Austin Street bedroom window every minute or so, but I did not see or hear anything more. Eventually, dad got through to the police. He told the dispatcher what we had seen and heard—that a lady was ‘beat up, but got up and was staggering around.’ He told the dispatcher her location was ‘by the drugstore at the LIRR station,’ and that the lady walked away but appeared dazed. My father was on the phone at least five full minutes, most of it waiting to be connected to the police dispatcher.

“We then waited by the Austin Street window of my bedroom to see if the police or ambulance arrived so we could call out to them the direction she was headed in the last we saw her. After about two minutes, Dad said he was tired and he went back to bed. At this point everything was quiet and dark. Nothing was happening. My teenage curiosity wanted me to stay up, but my bed was at that window. I was on the bed and I propped my pillow up so I could see out the window for when the cops arrived. That’s the last I remember, which is why I missed them getting there. Dad woke me later that morning after he happened to look out the kitchen window and saw all the police activity. He told me that there must have been more happening than we saw. That’s when we went downstairs and talked to the police.

“We learned her identity from the police, and that Kitty had gone around to the back of the building across the street, which is where she lived, and that the guy came back to finish her off. That part we didn’t see or hear since it happened in a hallway in the rear of that building. Even though my father gave his name, phone number, and address, the police did not seem to have any notes that we had called the police dispatcher, but they did listen to us. Several of my neighbors were being interviewed at that time and the detectives seemed to not have more time to listen to what we had to say. They did take our statements, but told us that since we didn’t see anything of substance (to them), it would be doubtful that we were needed in the future. I remember my
dad telling the police that if they had come when we called them, she’d probably still be alive. For that he got a dirty look from the detective.

“The newspapers said that a few minutes after the first attack on Austin Street, Kitty was attacked again on the parking lot side of the two-story Tudor building, and that she screamed for help. Although we could not see her on that side of the building, we probably would have heard her if she screamed again from that location. We did not hear anything once she turned the corner by the drugstore. At the time, neither my dad nor I ever thought for a second that this was an attempted murder, or that the man I saw run away would return, find Kitty, and kill her.

“I have been told that the neighborhood residents at the time said that a lot of early morning noise came out of the Old Bailey bar
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which was a few doors down Austin Street from where Kitty was first attacked. Personally, nothing from the Old Bailey ever woke me. Once in a while, in the late evening before I went to sleep, there would be a drunk or two merrily singing in the street, but I never was awakened by any problem drunks. But I was only living there a short time. I don’t know what problems there were before or after.

“I worked as a New York City policeman out of the 112th precinct, although that was years after Kitty was killed. While stationed at the 112, I met an old timer (it’s been way too many years to remember his name) who was almost ready to retire. He told me he was on duty in the 102nd precinct that night and heard the first call go out as a simple assault. It wasn’t even put out as ‘in progress.’ The dispatcher sent out a second call escalating the situation after Kitty was found lying in the hallway.

“I am told that in his book,
Chief!
, former New York City Chief of Detectives, Albert A. Seedman, wrote that at the time Kitty Genovese was murdered, the West Virginia Apartments (located at 82-60 Austin Street alongside the Long Island Railroad parking lot) had an allnight elevator operator who would have seen the killer pull up almost directly in front of his door. However, the West Virginia never had a
manned elevator that I knew of, and I had been in that building as early as the late 1950s with my cousins visiting friends. I’d been in all of the buildings on Austin Street, and the only building I knew with an operator in 1964 was mine, the Mowbray. The rest were automatic, that I remember. But in any event, the Mowbray was a manned elevator, and it was until at least 1967.
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“I have been told that one of the people interviewed for a 1999 History Channel special on the Kitty Genovese case was a Queens County assistant district attorney who mentioned that there was a night elevator operator in the Mowbray who saw everything from a bay window, but instead of calling the police, he simply went downstairs and went to bed. In my opinion, the idea that the Mowbray night elevator man heard or saw anything is wrong. I knew the night man well, and while I don’t remember his name after almost forty years, I remember enough about him to know if he did indeed see or hear anything, he would have gone out there and got involved.

“Furthermore, when idle, the elevator man was supposed to sit in a chair in the lobby next to the elevator, even in the wee hours of the morning. It had to be attended all night long since people did come and go periodically in the middle of the night. There was a chair as well in the basement next to the elevator, and I suppose they did use that as well if they wanted to ‘coop’ and not get caught. ‘Going downstairs and going to bed’ does not fit. Napping in a chair, maybe. Since [the Assistant D.A.] mentioned that he ‘went downstairs and went to bed,’ I put forth the theory that it’s where he was to begin with—napping in the chair in the basement—and did not see or hear a thing. If in the basement, even gunshots on Austin Street would not have been heard there!

“Also, the front entrance to the Mowbray Apartments was not even [flush] with the public sidewalk. It was back at the end of an entrance courtyard. There was a real nice older door and bay windows
looking out into the courtyard. But even if the night elevator operator was in the lobby, I doubt that he could have seen anything from there unless he went outside and walked several yards towards the street. The entry courtyard was not well lit, but the lobby was. Seeing out that window was very difficult due to the lighting contrast, and I can attest to this of my own experience. In addition, he would not have a clear view due to the cars parked on both sides of the street. In 1964, parking was allowed on both sides.
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During my observations of the attack, I did look out my open window facing the courtyard several times, and I did not see or hear anyone in the courtyard.

“Each of the elevator operators brought a little radio with them to work to listen to when bored. In the quiet of the night (and it was always quiet), the sound of the radio had a gentle but strong sound, that echoed even stronger in the large, marble lobby. You could hear (but not offensively) the radio throughout all the hallways of the building. I never heard anyone complain because it was not seeping into apartments, even the ones on the first floor right off the lobby, and they played soft, classical, and symphony-type music. So if someone did scream across the street, I would find it difficult to believe that the elevator man heard anything unless he was standing outside to begin with, possibly getting some fresh air.”

DESPITE MICHAEL HOFFMAN’S
feelings to the contrary (and the possibility he did not know which operator had been on duty that night, as the Mowbray employed four different elevator operators as well as a building superintendent), night elevator man Joseph Fink did eventually admit, albeit reluctantly, to police and later to the Queens District Attorney’s Office that he had witnessed the first attack on Kitty Genovese. But first, determined to deny it, he told them something else.

After stubbornly sitting in silence for several hours at the 102nd precinct—and perhaps realizing that the detectives were willing to wait out his stubbornness—Fink told Detective Charles Prestia that though he had been on duty in the lobby of the Mowbray, he did not hear any screams or noises on the street. How could that be, detectives wondered, considering his proximity to the attack and the fact that the victim’s screams had been loud enough to awaken scores of people out of their sleep, when Fink had been wide awake at the time? He then told detectives that he had taken the elevator down to the basement at around 3:00 a.m. to get some coffee or water, he didn’t remember which. He claimed he must have been in the basement when it all happened.

Detectives weren’t buying it. Fink’s belligerence from the start coupled with his attitude during questioning indicated, as Detective Prestia wrote in his report, “that he did not want to become involved in this case.”

Police were baffled by Joseph Fink’s unwillingness to cooperate. Clearly he was not a suspect. Clearly he was also lying about not having seen or heard a thing. But why? Detectives knew he was holding back.
He
knew detectives knew he was holding back. Still, he kept his silence for an incredibly long time, then plied them with the implausible very-long-coffee-break-in-the-basement story.

Fink was in his late 30s, a fit-looking man who spoke with a German accent. Figuring there had to be some reason he was so loathe to talk to them, detectives asked Joseph Fink if he had any previous arrests. Detective Prestia recorded he “was evasive relative to an assault he had committed on a female.” However, when the police ran a check, they found no arrests of any kind for Joseph Fink.

In the time before lightning-fast computer networks linked law enforcement databases and made information available in seconds, it was possible that Fink had been arrested in a jurisdiction outside of New York, and this was the reason they could find no records on him. With Fink’s caginess, it was impossible to be sure.

When finally he relented, telling them what he had seen and heard of the matter at hand, they had to be satisfied with that.

Joseph Fink spent the better part of March 13 at the 102nd precinct before giving a more credible version of events. Alerted by Kitty’s screams, he had looked outside to see the man catch her on the sidewalk. He saw the knife, he saw the man stab Kitty in the back, and he saw her collapse to the pavement. He heard the yelling from the windows, saw the man flee, watched Kitty struggle to her feet and limp away. His description of the assailant, when he was finally willing to give it, was the most detailed and would prove to be the most accurate.

Fink still claimed he had gone down to the basement, but admitted that he had done so after the attack, not before.

The mystery of Joseph Fink—why he failed to either help or summon help for Kitty Genovese, why he adamantly refused to aid in the investigation—would never have a definitive answer. Fink never explained himself to the police, nor to anyone else as far as is known. His identity was not made public at the time, but decades later he was mentioned by name by former Queens County Assistant District Attorney Charles Skoller during a discussion of the case. The revelation stirred the curiosity of a woman who lived in another area of Queens, not far from Kew Gardens.