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Carter Roy
Hi listeners. Before we dive into today's episode of Murder True Crime Stories, I want to take a brief moment to tell you about a show from Crime House's sister studio, Rewind, that I know you'll love. It's called Government that Doesn't Suck, hosted by Professors Lindsey Cormack and Greg Jackson from History that Doesn't Suck. Ever wonder how the weather forecast on your phone is so accurate? Or how your mail still gets across the country for less than a dollar? Or who actually built the highway you drove on this morning? Each episode tells the surprising story of an American institution that you'll never look at the same way again. Listen to and follow Government that Doesn't Suck every other Monday on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or watch video episodes on YouTube. This is crime house. If you heard a scream outside your window at 3am, what would you do? Maybe you think you'd act, that you'd call for help, step in. But what if you weren't sure what you heard? What if it stopped after a few seconds? If you knew other people were around, you might assume someone else had seen more than you, that they would have called the police already. Surely someone would have done something. So you go back to sleep and you almost forget you even heard anything. But at what point is uncertainty just an excuse to do nothing? When does hesitation become a death sentence? On March 13, 1964, those questions weren't hypothetical. They were real. And how a queen's neighborhood answered them or didn't would turn an ordinary murder case into one of the most famous and most misunderstood crime stories in American history. People's lives are like a story. There's a beginning, a middle and an end. But you don't always know which part you're on. Sometimes the final chapter arrives far too soon. And we don't always get to know the real ending. I'm Carter Roy and this is True Crime Stories, a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. New episodes come out every Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, with Friday's episodes covering the cases that deserve a deeper look. Thank you for being part of the Crime House community. Please rate, review and follow the show and for early ad free access to every episode, subscribe to Crime House plus you'll get part one and part two at the same time, plus exclusive bonus content. To join go to crimehouseplus.com or tap try free on the Murder True Crime Stories show page on Apple Podcasts. This is the first of two episodes on the murder of 28 year old Kitty Genovese in Queens New York in 1964. The case made national headlines after the New York Times reported that 38 witnesses had stood by and watched Kitty get stabbed and sexually assaulted, and none of them did anything to stop it. Today I'll introduce you to Kitty, the funny, fearless young woman building a life in New York as a gay woman in the 1960s. Then I'll walk you through the night she was killed, who really saw what, and how? A stalled investigation almost went nowhere until a lucky break gave detectives their suspect. Next time, I'll explain how that infamous New York Times article ended up on the front page and how it sent the entire city into a spiral. That story eventually gave us the term the bystander effect. But what if the whole theory behind it was based on a lie? All that and more coming up.
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Carter Roy
Before her name showed up in psychology textbooks, Kitty Genovese was just a young woman building a life in New York City. She was born Catherine Susan Genovese in July 1935 in Brooklyn, but everyone just called her Kitty. Her parents, Vincent and Rachel, were middle class Italian Americans, and after Kitty came into the picture, they went on to have four more kids. Kitty leaned into her role as big sister. She was fun, fiery, quick to laugh, and even quicker to push limits. Her younger siblings adored her, even when she teased them. I liked the time she dumped a plate of spaghetti on her brother's head because he refused to eat dinner. Her brother Billy probably wasn't laughing, but everybody else at the table definitely was. That was Kitty. She loved getting a reaction. She loved making people laugh. And it carried over to school, where she wasn't exactly a rule follower. She skipped class plenty of times, but when she did show up, she was the class clown. She had the room going even when she wasn't supposed to. Her senior year, her classmates voted her class cut up. That was 50s speak for jokester, and Kitty wore it proudly. She kept up the antics until she graduated in 1953, just two weeks shy of her 18th birthday. She couldn't wait to be out on her own. But before she could really get started, an unexpected act of violence would change things for her family. Just a few months after Kitty finished school, her mom, Rachel, was walking through the city when a shooting happened right in front of her. She watched the victim collapse on the sidewalk and bleed out just a few feet away. Rachel had lived in New York for decades, but after that day, the city didn't feel safe to her anymore. She told Vincent the family needed to leave. Not long after Rachel, the Genovese packed up and moved to New Canaan, Connecticut. But Kitty didn't want to go to the suburbs. She stayed behind in the city, moved in with her grandparents for a few months, and started picking up work. First as a secretary, then a waitress, then a hostess at an Italian restaurant. And about a year after graduating, she got engaged to a military cadet. They were married right away, but something wasn't right. Kitty had been pushing down a part of herself for years, and eventually she had to face it. Even if she couldn't say it out loud to anyone else. She was gay. Once she admitted that to herself, she couldn't stay in the marriage. They'd only been married a few months, so Kitty and her husband had it annulled. Now Kitty was truly free to be whoever she wanted. The next stretch of Kitty's life is harder to pin down. She kept waitressing and hosting, and eventually she landed a job as a bartender. Her personality was the same. She was warm, she was funny. And even as an adult, she still loved goofing around and keeping things light. Then in 1961, she hit a bump. While trying to help her regulars, Kitty and a friend started taking horse race bets from customers at the bar. It was a tiny operation, but the cops got wind of it, and Kitty ended up arrested on a minor gambling charge. She had her mugshot taken, and while she didn't do any jail time, she and her friend were fined the equivalent of about $500 in today's money. She also lost her job. For most people, an arrest like that might have slowed them down or had them crawling home for help. Not Kitty. She bounced right back and found a new gig at a bar In Queens called EVs 11th hour. There was a jukebox, a couple of booths along the back wall and some uneven stools at the bar. One journalist described it as a shot in a beer kind of bar. It wasn't a glamorous place, but it was steady work, and that was enough for Kitty. Within a couple years, she was running the place, managing inventory, handling the books, opening and closing most nights of the week. The regulars knew her. They came in to see her as much as they came in for the drinks. And in a city that didn't always make a space for women like her, Kitty had carved out a Corner of it that felt like hers. In the summer of 1963, 27 year old Kitty went to a nightclub in Greenwich Village called Swing Rendezvous. It was an underground lesbian bar because in the 60s, being gay was still illegal in almost every state. At some point that night, Kitty took a break from dancing and headed to the bar. She lit a cigarette, leaned back against the wood and ran a hand through her hair. That's when she saw her 25 year old, Mary Ann Zilongko. Kitty made the first move, but Mary Ann was immediately interested. Mary Ann told Kitty her story. She said she'd run away from home at 15, after coming out to her parents and landed in New York. Here she found work as a clerk and started building a life on her own terms. Kitty and Marianne didn't go home together that night. But a week later, Marianne came home to find a note taped to her apartment door. It read, we'll call you at the street corner phone booth at seven. Signed Kitty G. That night they met up at Seven Steps, another local gay bar. Kitty told Marianne about her brief marriage, the one that had ended in an annulment. And she admitted she'd only been in a relationship with one other woman before. That was fine with Mary Ann. She had never been in a serious relationship with a woman. They didn't have much experience between them, but Kitty and Marianne just clicked. Marianne was quiet, more reserved. Kitty was the talker. She had no problem filling the silence. They balanced each other out. They also shared the same kinds of doubts. Kitty especially still wrestled with parts of herself. It made sense. She came from a close knit Catholic Italian American family and it was the 1960s. Being openly gay just wasn't something a woman like Kitty could do. That caused some tension between her and Mary Ann, but Mary Ann believed it would work itself out. She saw a future with Kitty and despite all the complications, they were happy and in love. Soon they had their own routine. On Monday nights they listened to folk music in the Village. On Wednesdays they went to a German restaurant they liked. And one day Kitty surprised Mary Ann with a miniature poodle. They named him Andrew. Before long, they decided to move in together because of the laws. Back then they told everyone they were just roommates. But they knew the truth. They found a second floor apartment in Kew Gardens, Queens. It was quiet and felt safe. It was close to the bar Kitty now managed and not far from where Mary Ann worked. The only downside was Bailey's Pub on the corner, which could get rowdy after last call. There were occasional fights that spilled out into the street. But if that was the worst the neighborhood had to offer, Kitty and Mary Ann could live with that. Besides, they had some lovely neighbors like the Farrars, who lived across the hall. Sophia was a petite woman in her mid-30s who worked for the American Cancer Society. Her husband, Joe, was a sheet metal worker for the Long Island Railroad. They had two kids, Michael and Deborah. Sometimes Kitty drove Michael to school in her red Fiat. In return, Sophia helped take care of Kitty and Marianne's poodle. By March of 1964, Kitty and Mary Ann had settled into an easy rhythm. Mary Ann even met Kitty's parents on a visit to Connecticut. Officially, she was introduced as a friend. But Mary Ann suspected Kitty's mom knew the truth, even if she didn't want to. Acknowledge was an unspoken thing, the kind of arrangement gay couples often had to make in the 1960s. The family welcomed Mary Ann into their home. They fed her. They were kind to her. But there was a line nobody crossed and a word nobody said out loud. For Kitty, that meant living one version of her life in Queens and another version up in Connecticut. She was good at switching back and forth. She'd had practice. Despite the tension with her parents, Kitty had a pretty good life going for her Work, friends, love, a place that felt like home. It wasn't perfect, but it was hers. She had no way of knowing she was running out of time. Look, we all hit points in life where anxiety, depression or ADHD feel like a lot more than just a rough patch. I have been there, and honestly, sometimes standard self help tools or talk therapy aren't the total answer. We need a little more. If you need a deeper level of care, Talk Iatry connects you with real virtual psychiatry. This isn't a therapy app. It's a 100% online psychiatry practice providing comprehensive evaluations, diagnoses, and ongoing medication management for conditions like adhd, anxiety and more. 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Professor Lindsey Cormack
We all belong.
Carter Roy
We're drawn to nature. Whether it's the recorded sounds of the ocean we doze off to or the
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Carter Roy
In the early morning hours of March 13, 1964, 28 year old Kitty Genovese closed up at Ev's 11th hour, the bar she now managed. She'd worked a double shift. It had been a typical Thursday night, no sports on the tv, so it was a little slower than usual. But Kitty still had plenty to do behind the scenes, balancing the books, managing inventory, filling out order forms. The bar wasn't great for tips, but she made enough by working doubles. She brought home around $750 a month, about $8,000 in today's money. She was setting most of it aside for a down payment on her own restaurant, an Italian place she dreamed about opening someday. She thought she might call it Kitties or La Gatina, Italian for kitten. That night, the bar started winding down around midnight. A couple of regulars came in over the next two hours, but just before 3am Kitty and the other bartender locked up. Kitty said goodnight and stepped out into the cold air. She walked over to her car and turned on the engine. She was just six miles away from home and from Mary Ann, who was probably already asleep, back in her own neighborhood. Kitty parked her car down the street from her apartment, where she normally did. It was just after 3am she didn't think much of the hour. She'd come home late from the bar plenty of times before. But that night, as she got out of her car and started walking, she noticed someone behind her. A man she didn't recognize. He had a knit cap pulled down over his head. She picked up her pace. So did he. That was when she started running. He caught her on the sidewalk outside her building, under the streetlights, in full view of anyone looking out their window. He pulled out a hunting knife. He raised it and drove it into her back. Kitty screamed. She shouted for help. She literally yelled out that she'd been stabbed. One man from the building across the way. Her neighbor, Robert Moser, heard her cries and leaned out the window of his seventh floor apartment. He yelled at the attacker to leave her alone. Robert's shouts worked. The man ran off, leaving Kitty bleeding on the sidewalk, but alive. She got to her feet and stumbled around the corner of the building toward the back. From his window, Robert watched the man take off. He watched Kitty walk around the corner and disappear from view. He figured it had been some kind of domestic dispute, the kind of thing that sometimes spilled out from Bailey's publisher. The guy was gone. Kitty had stopped screaming. Robert assumed it was over. He went back to bed. He was wrong. Kitty limped and then crawled to the back of her apartment building. She made it inside the rear vestibule, but she couldn't make it up the stairs. 10 minutes passed as she lay there, unable to move. Then her attacker returned. He ditched the knit cap and pulled a wide brimmed hat low over his face. He found Kitty writhing in pain and crying for help. He stabbed her again. And again. And again. She screamed over and over. But now she was out of sight. Neighbors went to their windows to check what was happening, but they couldn't see anything except for one person. Carl Ross lived in the apartment at the top of the stairs, closest to the vestibule. He'd heard the first attack and done nothing. He was drunk and didn't want to get involved. Now, hearing the second, he cracked his door open. Just a sliver through the narrow gap, he saw a man stabbing Kitty. He panicked and shut the door. He called a friend to ask what to do. The friend told him to stay out of it. So Carl called another neighbor in the building. That neighbor said to come over, but Carl was terrified of opening his door and running into the attacker. So instead, he climbed out his window, scrambled across the roof and dropped down into his neighbor's apartment. Anything to avoid passing the vestibule where Kitty was. There's another layer to Carl Ross's hesitation. He knew Kitty. He was drinking buddies with Marianne. And during the second attack, Kitty reportedly called out to him by name from the vestibule down the hall. But Carl himself was a closeted gay man. And in 1964 New York, calling the police didn't just mean getting Kitty help. It meant bringing men in uniform into a building where being gay was a crime under state law. So Carl didn't call the police. He called someone else. And from there, a game of telephone started. Carl told his neighbor what he'd seen. She called another resident in the building. That person called 36 year old Sophia Farrar, Kitty's neighbor across the hall. Sophia bolted awake when the phone rang. Her frantic neighbor told her Kitty was in the vestibule at the back of the building. She asked what they were supposed to do. Sophia sat up in bed and told her to call the police. Then, without thinking twice, she threw on some clothes, ran downstairs and headed out into the alley toward the rear entrance. The attacker was gone, but the door was jammed, blocked from the inside by Kitty's body. Sophia pushed against it until it finally gave way, opening just enough for her to squeeze through. Inside the vestibule, Kitty was lying in a pool of blood, barely consciousness, struggling to breathe. While her neighbors had been calling each other in a panic, Kitty's attacker had sexually assaulted her, stolen $49 from her wallet, and left her for dead. Sophia dropped aside Kitty and cradled her in her arms. She tried to keep Kitty awake, speaking softly, promising her that help was on the way. She yelled out for the neighbors to call the authorities. That was when Carl Ross finally called the police precinct. At the time, there was no 911. He had to call the individual precinct directly. Sophia stayed with Kitty until the ambulance arrived. But it was too late. Kitty died on the way to the hospital. At around 4am Officers knocked on the door of the apartment Kitty and Mary Ann shared. Mary Ann answered. She hadn't heard any of the commotion outside. The officers told her there had been a stabbing and Kitty, her roommate, was dead. Mary Ann went numb. Three hours later, Detective Mitchell Tsang arrived at the apartment. By then, Mary Ann was already drinking, trying to make sense of what had happened. Carl Ross was with her, sharing a bottle of vodka. Carl, the same neighbor who had witnessed part of the attack and said nothing. He still didn't mention it. Detective Sang had questions for both of them. Kitty's body had been found at the bottom of the stairs closest to Carl's apartment. And while Marianne was officially Kitty's roommate, the detectives already suspected the two women were more than that. Sang wanted to know what else Mary Ann might be hiding. Sang pressed her, but Karl kept interrupting. He inserted himself into the conversation and got on Tsang's nerves. Eventually, Tsang arrested him for disorderly conduct and got him out of there. Marianne's interrogation continued later that day when homicide detectives John Carroll and Jerry Burns took over. Carol and Burns zeroed in on Marianne's relationship with Kitty. By that point, they'd already spoken to neighbors who confirmed that Kitty and Marianne were a couple. Still, the detectives pushed Marianne to say it herself. Were they really just roommates or something more? The questions kept circling back to jealousy, motive, whether anything in the relationship had ever turned violent. The interrogation lasted six hours. Think about that. Just hours after learning the woman she Loved had been murdered. Marianne had to sit across from two homicide detectives, and those detectives wanted her to prove the existence of a relationship she'd spent her whole adult life hiding and convinced them she hadn't killed her partner. Underneath it all was something simpler. 1960s law enforcement's bias against gay people. The detectives believed that same sex relationships had more jealousy than straight ones, and that jealousy was a prime motive for murder. They also believed women were more possessive of their lovers than men. Men. None of it was based on actual evidence, but it shaped how they saw Marianne as a suspect. The truth was, Mary Ann had nothing to do with Kitty's death. She loved Kitty, and the fact that she hadn't heard her screaming that night would haunt her for the rest of her life. Part of her believed she should have been able to save Kitty somehow. Instead, while Kitty was dying outside their building, Mary Ann had been asleep, exhausted after a night of bowling with friends. It was a normal Thursday. She'd thrown a few frames, laughed with the people she loved, come home, and gone to bed. By the time Kitty pulled into the neighborhood, Mary Ann had been out for hours. All she felt now was numb, especially when police officers escorted her to the morgue, where she had to identify Kitty's body. An officer pulled the sheet back. Mary Ann looked down at the face she'd memorized, the woman she'd been laughing with two nights before, the woman she'd been planning a life with now. Still, she nodded. Yes, that was Kitty. It was one of the worst moments of her life. It seemed cruel that the police could look at Mary Ann and see anything but a grieving partner. But for the next week, she was the only suspect they had. Even as witnesses kept telling them Kitty's assailant had been a man. And they might have stayed focused on her if it hadn't been for an attack in another neighborhood, one where the residents didn't hesitate to act. They saw something, they said something, and they did something. And because of that, police were able to find their next suspect, the actual killer.
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The government gets a bad reputation, but did you know that? The roads under your feet, the forecast on your phone, the letter in your mailbox. That's all government too. I'm Professor Lindsay Cormack and I'm hosting a new podcast called Government that Doesn't Suck alongside Professor Greg Jackson, who you may know from the hit podcast History that Doesn't Suck. Each episode we dig into the surprising story of an American institution. From the origins of the Internet to the National Park Service to the GI Bill, and so much more. You'll hear the stories behind them, plus a conversation with an expert who knows it inside and out. This is the real history of how we built the country under your feet and you'll never look at any of it the same way again. Listen to and follow Government that Doesn't Suck. Available now wherever you get your podcasts.
Carter Roy
In the early morning hours of March 13, 1964, an unknown attacker brutally assaulted 28 year old Kitty Genovese outside her apartment building in Kew Gardens, Queens. He stabbed her 13 times, raped her and fled the scene. The whole Attack unfolded over more than half an hour. Several neighbors heard it. Only a couple of them tried to do anything. Eventually, one of those neighbors called the police. But it was too late for Kitty. She died on the way to the hospital. In the immediate aftermath, the authorities suspected that Kitty's partner, 25 year old Marianne Zilongo, was somehow involved. That cloud of suspicion lingered over Mary Ann as she grieved. A few days after Kitty was murdered, Marianne traveled to Kitty's family home in New Canaan, Connecticut, for the funeral. When she arrived, she saw that Kitty's mom, Rachel, could barely stand. Mary Ann wanted to comfort her, to say something, anything. But the Genovese family kept their distance. They didn't even let her sit with them in the front row. Instead, Mary Ann took a seat further back, watching the service for the woman she'd loved alongside strangers. She was, in every way that mattered, Kitty's widow. But she couldn't say that out loud. She couldn't grieve out loud. She couldn't even ask to hold Rachel's hand. Mary Ann figured word had gotten out that she and Kitty were lesbians. And the Genovese family wasn't going to let that be part of the story. So Mary Ann was left alone to process what had happened. As a gay woman, in a time where her sexuality was criminalized, she couldn't grieve openly, not in the way she would have liked. Instead, she isolated herself in her apartment, the one she'd shared with Kitty, and alternated between crying and drinking. She didn't know what else to do. And on top of everything else, she was probably worried she might still go to jail. Later that week, the police ruled Mary out as a suspect, although they never actually told her that. But they still had a problem. There were no alternative suspects. Plenty of Kitty's neighbors had heard the attack, but not many had seen it happen. Their best potential lead was Carl Ross. He'd actually opened his door and watched part of the second attack happen. But when police questioned him, Carl said he'd only heard the screams. He never mentioned seeing the attacker, so all investigators knew was that the attacker was a man. A few residents reported seeing an unfamiliar white car in the neighborhood that night. But that was it. In 1964, DNA testing and modern forensic tools were still decades away. And without a lucky break, the case might have stalled right there. On March 19, six days after Kitty's murder, the police got a call about a suspected robbery. A man named Raul Cleary had spotted someone leaving his neighbor's house carrying a TV he watched the man loaded into a white Corvair. The man moved casually, like he belonged there. When Raul questioned him, the man claimed he was helping the neighbors move, then walked back inside. But something didn't sit right with Raul. He was familiar with his neighbors. He hadn't heard anything about them leaving. He called another neighbor who confirmed it. Nobody was moving, so they called the police. But they didn't stop there. Another neighbor named Jack Brown knew the police might not arrive in time. So he did something most people wouldn't have thought of. With the intruder still inside the house, Jack went out to the Corvair, opened the hood and removed the distributor cap. Then he closed the hood and went back inside to wait. Without that small piece of equipment, the engine wouldn't start. The car wasn't going anywhere. Before long, the man returned to his car and tried to drive off, but it wouldn't start. That was when two patrolmen arrived. They approached the man, who turned out to be 29 year old Winston Moseley. When they searched his vehicle, they found more than they were bargaining for. He didn't just have the stolen tv, but another television, several small appliances, and a stash of pornographic photos and magazines. He was arrested on the spot and taken in for questioning. Mosley was married, had three children and worked punching data cards for a computer company. He had no prior criminal record. From the outside, he was a man you'd pass on the sidewalk and never think twice about. But under interrogation, he admitted to routinely breaking into people's homes and stealing their appliances. By his own count, he'd done it dozens of times. That could have been the end of it, with Mosley getting charged for the robbery and nothing more. But Detective John Tartaglia noticed a connection to another case. Kitty Genoveses. He'd been reviewing her file and remembered that witnesses had reported seeing a white car in the area that night. Winston Mosley also drove a white car. Detective Tartaglia brought it up to Mosley, who didn't respond. Tartaglia thought that was suspicious. Detective Tartaglia called in the detectives working the Genovese case, Mitchell Tsang and Homicide Detective John Carroll, and asked them to come down to the station. When they saw Mosley, they noticed scabs on his hands. The kind of injuries that could have come from a struggle with someone trying to fight him off. So they accused him directly of killing Kitty. And pretty soon, Mosley confessed. He told them he'd spotted Kitty at a traffic light while sitting in his parked car. Then he followed her home. He offered no Clear motive, just that he'd been out looking for a victim. He described details of the attack that investigators believed only the real killer would know. The chilling part was how casually he talked about it. Detectives later described his demeanor as calm, almost businesslike. He didn't seem to feel anything about what he'd done. He said if it hadn't been her, it would have been someone else. Then came an even more shocking turn. Kitty wasn't his only victim. During the interrogation, Mosley confessed to two additional murders. The first was 24 year old Annie Mae Johnson. She'd been killed on February 29, 1964, less than two weeks before Kitty in a neighborhood close to Mosley's home. Her case was still unsolved. The coroner originally said the murder weapon was a screwdriver or a file. But Mosley insisted he'd shot her six times. His confession was so detailed and so confident that authorities exhumed Annie Mae's body and took new X rays. The X rays confirmed Mosley was telling the truth. The second victim Mosley named was 15 year old Barbara Crolic. She'd been murdered in her home the previous summer in July 1963. Once again, Mosley gave details that only the killer could have known. But that posed a problem for law enforcement. They'd already gotten a confession for Barbara's murder from Another suspect, an 18 year old named Alvin Mitchell. Despite Mosley's detailed admission, Mitchell was still prosecuted. His first trial ended in a hung jury. But during his second trial, Mosley recanted his confession and Mitchell was convicted. Today, we're still not sure who actually killed Barbara, but there's not much debate about Annie Mae Johnson. Mosley is widely accepted as her killer, even though he was never officially charged for it. As for Kitty's murder, authorities at the time were pretty sure Mosley was telling the truth about that one. A week after the killing, he was charged. At first, the news barely made waves. It was a brutal attack. But in a city that would see 636 murders that year, it was just one among many. The killer had been caught. He'd confessed. From the outside, the case looked closed. A bartender from Queens had been murdered by a stranger and the stranger was now sitting in a jail cell. Tragic. Common, done. But that was all about to change. About a week after Mosley's arrest, the New York Times ran a front page story that would become infamous. It turned Kitty's killing from a local murder case into a nationwide phenomenon. And after the story ran, Kitty Genovese would never be remembered. The same way again. Thanks so much for listening. I'm Carter Roy and this is True Crime Stories. Come back next time for part two on the murder of Kitty Genovese and all the people it affected. Murder Traffic True Crime Stories is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. Here at Crime House, we want to thank each and every one of you for your support. If you like what you heard today, reach out on social media, Rimehouse on TikTok and Instagram. Don't forget to rate, review and follow True Crime Stories wherever you get your podcasts. Your feedback truly makes a difference and to enhance your Murder True Crime Stories listening experience, subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. You'll get both parts of every story dropped on Tuesday completely ad free. No waiting for part two plus ad free and early access to every show across Crime House and bonus episodes every month. To join, go to crimehouseplus.com or if you listen on Apple Podcasts, type try free at the top of the the Murder True Crime Stories page. We'll be back on Thursday. True Crime Stories is hosted by me, Carter Roy and is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. This episode was brought to life by the Murder True Crime Stories team. Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benedon, Natalie Pertovsky, Alyssa Fox, Alex Burns, Cassidy Dillon and Robert Russell Nash. Thank you for listening.
Host: Carter Roy
Air Date: July 7, 2026
This episode launches a two-part deep dive into the murder of Kitty Genovese, a 28-year-old bartender whose 1964 slaying in Queens, NY, became one of America’s most mythologized crime stories. Carter Roy sets out to unravel the misunderstood events of that night, explore Kitty’s largely overlooked personal life, the culture and prejudices of the time, and show how flawed reporting and societal bias sparked a national debate about the so-called "bystander effect." The story puts human faces to a case too often reduced to a morality tale.
On collective inaction:
“At what point is uncertainty just an excuse to do nothing? When does hesitation become a death sentence?” – Carter Roy (02:19)
On Kitty’s personality:
“She was warm, she was funny. And even as an adult, she still loved goofing around and keeping things light.” – Carter Roy (07:56)
On the investigation’s bias:
“...Mary Ann had to sit across from two homicide detectives...convince them she hadn’t killed her partner. Underneath it all was something simpler. 1960s law enforcement’s bias against gay people.” – Carter Roy (26:13–26:50)
On Mary Ann’s grief and isolation:
“She was, in every way that mattered, Kitty’s widow. But she couldn’t say that out loud. She couldn’t grieve out loud. She couldn’t even ask to hold Rachel’s hand.” – Carter Roy (34:02)
On Mosley’s confession:
“He told them he’d spotted Kitty at a traffic light while sitting in his parked car. Then he followed her home. He offered no clear motive, just that he’d been out looking for a victim…He didn’t seem to feel anything about what he’d done.” – Carter Roy (36:37)
Carter Roy maintains a respectful, narratively rich, and empathetic tone, balancing a storyteller’s empathy with critical insights. The episode leans into human details—Kitty’s dreams, quirks, and relationships—to counter the tendency to reduce her story to a symbol or statistic.
This first part transforms the familiar “38 witnesses did nothing” legend into a nuanced, human story about tragedy, fear, prejudice, and collective misunderstanding. By foregrounding Kitty Genovese’s life—not just her death—Roy restores her humanity, and by showing how systems and assumptions failed her (and Mary Ann), the episode promises a deeper, truer version of how this story changed America forever.