Kitty Genovese: A True Account of a Public Murder and Its Private Consequences (26 page)

Rosenthal was correct about that. Gansberg did not mind. He was a reporter. He took the assignment.

He left Rosenthal’s office and started at the beginning: with a call to District Attorney Frank D. O’Connor.

O’Connor told Gansberg that police and his office were thoroughly investigating Moseley’s confession to Barbara Kralik’s murder but that in the meantime he opposed bail or parole for Alvin Mitchell. He stressed, however, that he wanted to be sure “we have the right man.”

As for the silent witnesses, O’Connor told him that sounded like the Kitty Genovese murder and suggested he give Inspector Fred Lussen a call.

IT WAS WEDNESDAY,
March 25, when Gansberg got to meet with Frederick Lussen. The DA had already held a press conference regarding the double confession in the Kralik case (Inspector Lussen had spoken at this press conference along with Frank O’Connor). Gansberg had reported on the Barbara Kralik matter in an article that had appeared in the
Times
the day before. Now he wished to speak with Inspector Lussen about the matter of the silent witnesses.

Lussen was a man who was neither talkative nor expressive. He was often described by the press and others in the NYPD alike as stern-faced, stoic, and silent, a commanding figure who never spoke a word he didn’t have to. As such, Martin Gansberg found himself struck by how much Inspector Lussen was talking now, how angry he seemed at the witnesses to the Kitty Genovese killing.

Gansberg’s curiosity was piqued. As a longtime newsman, however, he did not automatically take the word of the police as gospel. As a longtime law enforcement officer, Lussen knew this. He suggested that Gansberg speak with some of the detectives, and take a ride over to Kew Gardens with them. See for yourself.

GANSBERG IMMEDIATELY AGREED
with his detective escorts about one thing: Kew Gardens looked like a beautiful neighborhood, adorned with tall, graceful trees lining the streets; a quaint, old-fashioned train depot between the Tudor building and the West Virginia; tidy little shops; and clean apartment buildings. There was not a skyscraper or heap of garbage in sight.

Martin Gansberg—who lived with his family in Passaic, New Jersey—later said that he found Kew Gardens so attractive, so suburban in its look and atmosphere, that he kept thinking how he wouldn’t mind living there.

Though raised in New York City, Gansberg was not well acquainted with Queens. Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn were the city he knew. This neighborhood then was new territory for him. Initially he was struck by its beauty. This impression no doubt added to the jarring effect he felt when struck by the next thing: how easy it was to find people who had heard this murder that had happened twelve days before.

Gansberg was not a man prone to histrionics, particularly not when he was on the job. He kept his cool, of course. But he later told family and friends how stunned and disturbed he felt that first day.

The detectives pointed out locations, told him what had happened, and led him to a few people they had spoken to in the neighborhood. Even without their help, however, Gansberg’s own inquiries, made at the little shops on Austin Street and Lefferts Boulevard, yielded results. More than he would have imagined.
Yeah, he heard it . . . yeah, she saw the guy . . . we saw the girl . . . He heard it and so did he, and he, and she . . .

Like Inspector Lussen, the detectives Gansberg spoke to were angry. Gansberg was not there yet. At this point he was more startled.

The detectives, of course, were no longer shocked. They had been through it with these people already. The arrest of Winston Moseley had brought their mission in Kew Gardens to an end. They had neither a need to further question any of the witnesses nor any interest in finding new ones. Their investigation had concluded.

But Martin Gansberg’s had just begun.

“THERE’S MORE TO
this story. Much more,” Gansberg told his editors back at the newsroom that day. He described what he had seen, what he had heard from some of the neighbors.

The victim lived in the neighborhood. The murder had been drawn out and gruesome. The killer had retreated and returned—twice—to finish the job. There was no shortage of people aware of something
violent going on, but a complete dearth of people who had done anything about it.

The editors agreed it was a newsworthy story. They wanted him to go ahead and write it.

No, Gansberg told them. Not yet. He wanted to go back there tomorrow, Thursday. Without the police. He wanted to speak with more people and he wanted to do so without the influence or intimidating presence of detectives. He wanted to know—as much for himself really as for a news article—just how many people who saw this thing happen would come out of the woodwork. No police guiding him, just him hoofing it up and down Austin Street, ringing doorbells, hearing for himself what people had to say.

He would, however, take a news photographer with him.

MARTIN GANSBERG RETURNED
to Kew Gardens the following day. He spent a good deal of time there. Some people did not want to talk, much as they had not wanted to speak with the police either. But others would. He spoke with a lot of people.

The detectives who had worked this case had done so with the sole purpose of catching the murderer. Though some had asked the witnesses why they had not called the police, they were not there to investigate bad Samaritanism. Nor was there time for any such thing in a homicide probe. As a reporter, however, their lack of action became the prime question of Martin Gansberg. He asked why. They answered.

“We thought it was a lovers’ quarrel.”

“Frankly, we were afraid.”

“I didn’t want my husband to get involved.”

“I don’t know.”

“I was tired. I went back to bed.”

Just as the detectives had before him, Gansberg felt strongly that some people who claimed to have neither seen nor heard anything were lying to him. For instance, a woman who lived in a first-floor apartment of the Mowbray (and who had given a different account to the police) told him she could not see what was going on because the
leaves on the trees blocked her vision. Gansberg could see for himself that the trees were winter barren.

Recalling these interviews at a later date, Gansberg would say, “I found myself dealing with intelligent, educated people who gave me sheepish, evasive answers or lied outright.”

Though some people expressed regret over their failure to act, Gansberg encountered others who relayed no such sentiment. Even more disturbing was the
affect
of some of these people. Here they were discussing the murder of a woman on their own street—and more pointedly, how they had done nothing to help—yet some of these people spoke of it, in Gansberg’s view, in a casual tone. Unconcerned. Uninvolved.

He began to understand why the police had used a certain word: “apathy.”

The photographer he brought with him was confused. Since when did the
New York Times
cover murders like this in Queens, with photos no less? Gansberg said little about it. He just asked him to take some pictures—the storefronts on Austin Street; the police call box on the corner; the side of the Tudor building; a long shot of the rear of the Tudor building; and most oddly, a photo of the corner of the Tudor building by the railroad parking lot, looking down from above, taken from a high floor in the ten-story Mowbray Apartments.

ON THURSDAY NIGHT,
March 26, Martin Gansberg’s story was edited and slated for publication.

The editors knew immediately what they had.

The story, with photos, would run the next day—Good Friday, incidentally—on page one of the
New York Times
, right below the fold.

There was one thorny issue the senior editors had to discuss: whether to print the names of the individuals to whom Gansberg had spoken.

The
New York Times
was not a publication that cited “unnamed sources” in their reportage, particularly not back in 1964. Gansberg had the names, but there were legal and moral questions involved.
The editors—Turner Catledge, Theodore Bernstein, Abe Rosenthal—anticipated the story would be big, not to mention inflammatory. They were also well aware that the accused, Winston Moseley, had not yet had a trial, nor would he for another couple of months. Printing the names of witnesses could not only be horribly embarrassing for those people, it could also potentially be dangerous. Little was known of Moseley; for all they knew he could have criminal associates who might try to harm the witnesses. In any event, exposing witnesses, some of whom might be called to testify in court, could also jeopardize the prosecution of a serious criminal case that was still in the early stages of preparation for trial.

It was thus decided that an exception would be made. The only persons identified in the article by name would be the victim, the accused, and police officials.

This suited reporter Martin Gansberg. The story was not about judging or embarrassing individuals. The story was not even about Kew Gardens, or New York City. It far transcended neighborhood, city, or even country.

On a purely basic level, Gansberg felt anger and disdain for the people he had spoken to, as had the detectives. But he also pondered the situation in a greater context.

As a student of philosophy, Martin Gansberg had contemplated fear of the stranger. On the eve of the publication of what would prove to be his most celebrated article—indeed one of the most pivotal news stories of the twentieth century, as it turned out—with the words and images of the people he had interviewed over the last two days fresh in his mind, he may have recalled the words of Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, a man who had experienced neither Kew Gardens nor the twentieth century:

“At the bottom of enmity between strangers lies indifference.”

PART TWO

TRIALS AND JUDGMENTS

The sound of screaming was repeated several times . . . then it abruptly ceased. The silence that followed, as the night suddenly stood still, seemed interminable. I wanted to run and yet didn’t move an inch. I was trembling, I believe from cold and shock. I told myself that I had to be quick and felt an irresistible weakness steal over me. I have forgotten what I thought then. “Too late, too far . . .” or something of the sort. I was still listening as I stood motionless. Then, slowly, in the rain, I went away. I told no one.

The Fall
by Albert Camus,1956

Are we different? Would anybody else, in any other community, have done differently?

Unidentified woman in Kew Gardens, quoted in the
Long Island Star-Journal
, March 28, 1964

chapter 13

IT HIT THE
newsstands two weeks to the day after Kitty’s murder. The morning of Friday, March 27, 1964. Good Friday.

On the front page of the
New York Times
, right below the fold, the headline blared: “37 WHO SAW MURDER DIDN’T CALL THE POLICE.” A smaller heading underneath read, “Apathy at Stabbing of Queens Woman Shocks Inspector.”

Written by Martin Gansberg, the opening paragraph read, “For more than half an hour 38 respectable, law-abiding citizens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab a woman in three separate attacks in Kew Gardens.” The story went on to describe how the assailant had been frightened off twice by the sound of neighbors’ voices and the glow of apartment lights snapping on. Gansberg had spoken to at least one neighbor who told him of an assault on the side of the Tudor building. Stating that no one had called police during the assault and only one witness had called after the woman was dead, the article described how shocked Inspector Frederick Lussen was over the “good people” failing to call. Lussen was quoted as saying that as the police had reconstructed the crime, “the assailant had three chances to kill this woman during a 35-minute period. He returned twice to complete the job. If we had been called when he first attacked, the woman might not be dead now.”

Ultimately the question of how many times Winston Moseley attacked Kitty would not be sorted out until the District Attorney’s
Office could interview witnesses and compare their statements against the claims of the killer, a process the D.A.’s office had not yet begun, overwhelmed as they were by the complications in the Barbara Kralik homicide. Reporter Martin Gansberg wrote what he was told by police and witnesses.

The article continued with an account of the crime attributed to the police, describing how Kitty Genovese had returned home to “the staid, middle-class, tree-lined Austin Street area” at 3:20 a.m., had been grabbed by the man underneath the streetlight in front of the bookstore, how she had screamed and lights had gone on in the tenstory building across the street. “Windows slid open and voices punctured the early-morning stillness.” The story mentioned that there was a police call box on the corner of Austin and Lefferts.

“Miss Genovese screamed: ‘Oh, my God, he stabbed me! Please help me! Please help me!’ ” It gave an account of a neighbor shouting from an upper window, the assailant retreating, and Kitty struggling to her feet. “Lights went out.” It stated that the killer returned and stabbed Kitty while she was trying to make her way around the side of the building, Kitty shrieking, “I’m dying! I’m dying!” The article described lights again going on and windows again opening, the attacker retreating and driving away in his car, and Kitty staggering to her feet again.

As it would later be determined, this attack did not happen. The description of it had come about as a result of confusion among witnesses. An account of a second attack—coming after the stabbing in front of the bookstore and before the gruesome finale in the hallway—no doubt raised the horror level of the story for readers.

The article attempted to guide the reader almost step-by-step through the victim’s harrowing journey to her death while highlighting the fact that much of it happened on the street, in public view. Mention was made that a city bus passed at 3:35 a.m. (“Q-10, the Lefferts Boulevard line to Kennedy International Airport”), although at that time, Kitty would have reached the back of the building and would no longer have been in view of anyone on the bus or the street.