Kitty Genovese: A True Account of a Public Murder and Its Private Consequences (22 page)

Detective John Tartaglia had remained at the 102nd precinct for Moseley’s questioning. Now he pulled one of his irate colleagues out of the interrogation room and into the hall. “Listen, you son of a bitch,” Tartaglia barked at him. “Everything else this guy has told us has been right. Let him talk.
Just shut the fuck up and let him talk!
”

Tartaglia turned away. Before stepping back into the squad room he added, “And call the goddamned DA. Tell him we’ve got to get the Johnson woman out of the ground.”

AROUND 9:00 P.M.,
Lieutenant Jacobs asked Winston Moseley what he wanted to eat. The suspect would be dining at the station house that
night in the company of detectives. He hadn’t asked for any food, but Jacobs figured he must be hungry by now. He had been in custody since late morning, answering nonstop questions posed to him by various detectives. Moseley accepted the offer of a meal, asking for a double hamburger, coffee, and a slice of apple pie. He specified that the burger should be very rare, the pie warm—obviously a man who liked things a certain way.

Jacobs offered to let him take a break from questioning, but Moseley declined. He didn’t mind talking while he ate. So Lieutenant Jacobs remained there as Moseley had dinner, discussing more details of murder, rape, and necrophilia between bites of food.

Jacobs studied Moseley for a moment. “I would imagine that you’re very happy that you got caught so that you can get all of this off your chest. Isn’t that so?”

“I am not happy I got caught,” Moseley replied, showing agitation for the first time. “I am sorry.”

“You are sorry?” Jacobs asked.

“Sure. What the hell do you think? You could go to the electric chair for what I have just done.”

HAVING BEEN NOTIFIED
of a confession in the Genovese homicide, Assistant District Attorney Phillip Chetta arrived at the 102nd precinct to take a formal statement from the suspect. Jacobs first spoke privately with Chetta to discuss Winston Moseley’s other, more problematic confessions. Problematic indeed, from the viewpoint of the assistant D.A., who was none too happy about the situation, particularly in regard to the Kralik homicide. The DA already had a case prepared against Alvin Mitchell, whose trial was set to begin April 20. Jacobs informed Phillip Chetta that the police doubted Moseley’s admissions to the Johnson and Kralik homicides, but the Genovese one seemed solid. For now at least, Chetta would confine his questioning of Moseley to the Kitty Genovese homicide only. They decided that after Chetta took the statement, Jacobs and his men would take Moseley over to the crime scenes in Kew Gardens. Chetta would accompany them.

Members of the press meanwhile had convened in the lobby of the 102nd precinct, having gotten word of an arrest in the Kitty Genovese killing. Cameras ready, they waited for a glimpse of the suspect. Aware of their presence, Lieutenant Jacobs asked Moseley if he had any objection to walking past the line of photographers downstairs. “Well, I have a father out there,” Moseley answered, indicating the room in back of which they were seated. “I also have a wife and this is a pretty shameful thing, or at least I’m ashamed of it. Would it be all right with you people if I covered up my face?”

“We have no objection to your doing anything you want to,” Jacobs told him. “Just walk in an orderly manner with the detectives that have you.”

Late that night—the early hours of Thursday, March 19, actually—in the custody of detectives, Lieutenant Bernard Jacobs, and Assistant DA Phillip Chetta, Winston Moseley was taken to Kew Gardens. He walked them through what he had done. He had the details right, down to where witnesses said the perpetrator had parked his car in front of the bus stop on Austin Street. Samuel Koshkin, a witness in the West Virginia Apartments who had watched the attacker move his car, then return to the scene and search around on the morning of March 13, now watched the police guide their handcuffed prisoner. Koshkin thought Moseley looked like the same man he had seen on the night in question.

On March 19, 1964, Detective Mitchell Sang made the official arrest of Winston Moseley for the murder of Kitty Genovese. Though not a homicide detective, Sang had first caught the case, and furthermore had worked it tirelessly. From the early morning of March 13 onward, Sang had spent several hours each day interviewing witnesses, running down leads. Mitchell Sang had involved himself deeply. He wanted justice for Kitty Genovese, whatever small measure of it could be had.

chapter 10

A SHORT TIME
after booking Moseley for murder, Detective Mitchell Sang appeared the same morning at 133-19 Sutter Avenue, the home of Winston Moseley, armed with a search warrant signed by a criminal court judge. The hunting knife was found in the toolbox, just as Moseley had said.

Detectives Frank Collins and Donald Kenny had meanwhile made the trip to the Raygram Corporation at 144 East Kingsbridge Road in Mount Vernon, New York. There, in some bushes in the rear of the building, they recovered Kitty’s brown wallet along with some other items. It had been an easy search, as Moseley had told them precisely where to look: in the bushes at the edge of the parking lot, facing parking space number four.

Kitty’s keys and the falsie were also recovered in the dump locations Moseley had provided.

Mitchell Sang brought the knife back to the 102nd precinct and handed it over to Lieutenant Jacobs, who took it to the holding cell where Moseley was locked up in order to show it to him.

Moseley nodded. “That’s the knife I told you about.”

LATER THAT DAY,
on March 19, 1964, Winston Moseley made his first court appearance. Bettye stood behind him in the courtroom, listening in shock to the charges read against her husband. Moseley was
charged with homicide in the deaths of Kitty Genovese and Annie Mae Johnson. He was also charged with illegal possession of a gun and possession of pornography.

Judge Bernard Dubin—incidentally, the same judge before whom Karl Ross had appeared on his disorderly conduct charge—set a hearing for March 23, ordering Moseley to be held without bail until then. Judge Dubin was reported to have commented, “I can only say it’s lucky that our system provides for a trial for a monster like you. What you’ve done makes me want to vomit.”

Assistant District Attorney John Santucci added, “These crimes aggravate the instincts of all decent people.”

Moseley stood silently, looking down. He asked the court to appoint an attorney for him. Otherwise he said nothing. Judge Dubin assigned a young lawyer named Ed Webber to represent him.

A reporter for the
Long Island Press
went to South Ozone Park to speak with some of the Moseleys’ neighbors. “Only one of the many neighbors of the accused killer admitted even a casual acquaintance with the family,” read the article published in the
Press
the following day. The neighbor was quoted: “I’ve seen them come and go but I’ve never talked to them. They seemed like quiet, hard-working folks who never gave anybody any trouble.”

SIDNEY SPARROW HEARD
of an arrest in the Kitty Genovese case the morning it was broadcast on the radio, just as he had heard the news of her murder the previous Friday. Sparrow was a well-known and very experienced criminal defense attorney in Queens. Both news items—the murder and the arrest—caught his attention. He had represented Kitty Genovese when she was arrested on the gambling charge in 1961. Sparrow later said that though he was never quite sure how he knew, he instantly had the feeling he would be assigned to defend the man accused of killing her.

FRANK D. O’CONNOR
was the district attorney of Queens County. At fifty-four years old, O’Connor had served as district attorney for the past
seven years, since 1957. He had come to his current position as chief prosecutor in Queens after two stints as a New York State senator and more than twenty years of practicing law as a criminal defense attorney.

O’Connor’s long experience working on the defendant’s side of the aisle had made him particularly strict in his adherence to prosecutorial ethics; as D.A., O’Connor did not ever want his office to make the mistake of prosecuting, much less convicting, an innocent person. His own personal experience as a defense attorney had taught him that the innocent are indeed sometimes tried for crimes they did not commit.

In 1953, O’Connor had represented a defendant by the name of Christopher Emanuel Balestrero. Balestrero, a musician at the Stork Club in Manhattan, stood accused of two holdups in Queens, based on the positive identifications of three victims. O’Connor found more than a score of witnesses to back up Balestrero’s fervent claims of innocence. Shortly after, a man who closely resembled Balestrero was arrested and confessed to the crimes. The case attracted national attention, not the least of which came from director Alfred Hitchcock, whose 1956 film
The Wrong Man
was based on the Balestrero story. Frank O’Connor was prominently credited as a consultant in the film’s opening titles.

O’Connor had built a sterling reputation during his long career in law and politics. Former political rivals had even remarked on his integrity. As a district attorney, Frank O’Connor referred to himself as “defense-conscious.” As such, he found his consciousness raised considerably on the morning of March 19. Hearing of Moseley’s admissions in the Annie Mae Johnson case and his confession to the murder of Barbara Kralik—not to mention the validity of his confession in the Kitty Genovese homicide—O’Connor had called for a meeting in his office that morning. In attendance were Bernard Patten, chief of the D.A.’s Homicide and Investigations Bureau; Frank Cacciatore, the D.A.’s Supreme Court Trial Bureau chief; and Phillip Chetta, the assistant DA who had taken Moseley’s statement hours earlier at the 102nd precinct.

O’Connor listened. Decisions were made. The body of Annie Mae Johnson should be exhumed and re-examined as soon as possible.
This would require a coordinated effort with an out-of-state jurisdiction, since she had been buried in South Carolina. If a second autopsy proved she had indeed been stabbed, as the assistant medical examiner in Queens had determined, Moseley’s confession to the Johnson murder could be discredited, thus casting doubt on his claims about the Kralik murder.

Just the same, however, O’Connor directed Bernard Patten to proceed immediately with a reinvestigation of the Kralik case—an independent review by the D.A.’s office, not the police. If Alvin Mitchell was innocent, if the police investigation had been either botched or corrupt, O’Connor wanted to know. “I don’t want a second wrong-man case in Queens when I’m the prosecutor rather than the defense attorney.”

Frank O’Connor had standards. Moreover, he did not want any negative publicity. He had ambitions beyond the office of district attorney.

Whatever the outcomes, O’Connor and his staff hoped they could resolve the matters promptly, definitively, and quietly, without premature speculation appearing in the newspapers.

They were to be disappointed on all counts.

Word leaked to the press almost immediately. By the weekend, Frank O’Connor was fielding questions from reporters on the double confession. The following week, many of the local newspapers would be filled with prominently placed stories on the stunning new twist in the Barbara Kralik case. Crime reporters would be consumed by this story—at least until the following Friday, when another shocking twist in another Queens murder caught their attention.

chapter 11

FOR THE PEOPLE
closest to Kitty Genovese, the news that her alleged killer had been caught felt less remarkable than might be supposed by anyone who has not endured the uniquely horrific trauma of a loved one murdered. Despite somewhat fanciful portrayals in plays and TV dramas, of grieving loved ones instantly preoccupied with a quest for justice or retribution, such is rarely the case in real life. Visions of jurisprudence are not what haunt their every waking hour. In the first days following a sudden, devastating, irrevocable loss, those who loved the deceased are consumed by little other than pure pain. Revenge fantasies, when they intrude upon the mind at all, serve only as momentary distractions from the pulsing ache that comes from an ordinary conversation remembered, a once-happy memory recalled, a piece of minutia suddenly imbued with new meaning; when the eyes fall unexpectedly on a pair of shoes left under a bed, calling forth the now poignant recollection,
I remember the last time she wore those . . .

Kitty had been dead less than a week when Winston Moseley gave his dispassionate account of how he had butchered her on a sidewalk and in a dank hallway. So it was that no one who loved her was anywhere near ready to exult in his capture. No dramatic cries of relief, no exclamations of, “Ah! Now I can begin to heal. Now I will have closure.”

In actuality, no one who suffers such a loss ever does this anyway, regardless of time passed or judicial justice rendered. Healing and “closure,” in the sense that they are ever completely free from pain,
ever truly back to the way they once were, are whimsical concepts, as elusive to the aggrieved as the dear person forever lost to them. Even for those who by necessity must assume an active role in pressing for justice in the death of a loved one, conviction of the person who stole that beloved life is still the most meager consolation prize imaginable.

Thanks to the astute work of the NYPD, none of the people left anguished by Kitty’s death had to wait endlessly for her killer to be brought to justice. The grief, however, would not be so quickly nor easily assuaged. Kitty’s parents would grieve for their firstborn child for all the years ahead that they had to live without her.

For the Genovese family and Mary Ann Zielonko, the days immediately after Kitty’s murder were a time of unrelieved torment. Kitty’s siblings had one another to console, plus the mission of doing whatever they possibly could to support their mother in her heartbreak. Mary Ann had practically no one. Amid the police activity surrounding Kitty’s death, her friends had begun abandoning her almost immediately.