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- [00:01]
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. There's a concept in psychology called the bystander effect. The more people there are during an emergency, the less likely any one of them is to act. It's one of the most replicated findings in the history of social science. It's taught in high schools and universities around the world. It's almost certainly true. It was also inspired by a lie. A lie that became a myth and the myth that became one of the most important psychological discoveries of the 20th century. Today, I'll tell you the story of behind that myth. A story about what happens when the wrong version gets told and how far it can travel before anyone bothers to check if it's true. 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 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 second of two episodes on the murder of 28 year old Kitty Genovese in New York City in 1964. Initially, the case didn't make much news outside of the Queens neighborhood where it happened. But everything changed when The New York Times reported that 38 people had witnessed the attack and done nothing to help save Kitty. Last time I introduced you to Kitty and her life in New York as a gay woman in the 1960s, a life that was tragically cut short when she was attacked on her way home from work. Within a week, investigators had identified her killer as Winston Moseley. Today I'll walk you through how the New York Times published the now infamous article about Kitty's murder. That article led to psychological studies, the development of the bystander effect theory, and decades of neighbors thinking they couldn't trust each other. But one question lingered through all of it. Had 38 people really stood by and done nothing while a young woman was murdered? Or did the story get twisted for a good headline? All that and more coming up. 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. You're actually seeing a medical provider who takes the time to understand what you're going through and build a personalized treatment plan. Plus, they accept major insurers, meaning you can use your existing insurance instead of paying massive out of network costs. Getting started is incredibly simple. You just complete a short online assessment, get matched with clinicians who fit your specific needs, and schedule your first virtual visit in days rather than months. Head to tokyetry.com mtcs to complete the short assessment and get matched with an in network psychiatrist in just a few minutes. That's talkietry.com/mtcs to get matched in minutes
- [05:41]
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- [06:47]
Carter Roy
In the early morning hours, March 13, 1964, 29 year old Winston Mosley brutally attacked 28 year old Kitty Genovese outside her apartment building in Kew Gardens, Queens. He stabbed her twice before fleeing the scene, then came back to finish the job. By the end, he'd stabbed her 13 times in total, raped her and left her dying in the vestibule of her own building. The attack unfolded over more than half an hour. Several neighbors heard it, but in the dark, in the middle of the night, many of them weren't sure what they were hearing. Some thought it was a couple fighting. Others figured it was some drunk stumbling home from the local pub after closing. Only a few people on the street tried to do anything about it, and by the time anyone reached Kitty, it was too late. The day after her murder, the New York Times wrote a quick blurb about the case, just four paragraphs buried inside the paper. As awful as Kitty's death was, it wasn't a gripping front page story. There would be 636 murders in New York City that year. As far as the news was concerned, she was just one of many. That wasn't how Kitty's family in New Canaan, Connecticut, saw it. They were devastated. Kitty's mother, Rachel, took the news especially hard. A year after the murder, she suffered a stroke. Friends would send her newspaper clippings of every article about the case, and Bill, then a teenager, would come home from school to find his mother crying at the kitchen table. Eventually, the family stopped doing interviews entirely, just to protect her. Back in the city, Kitty's girlfriend, Marianne Zilongo, was also reeling. For weeks after the murder, Marianne struggled to sleep in their apartment. She felt incredibly guilty for sleeping through Kitty's attack and often woke up screaming from nightmares. The days weren't much better. She was constantly hounded by reporters who wanted to know about her and Kitty's fast crowd. Fast crowd was 1960s code. The press had figured out that Marianne and Kitty had been more than roommates, but the word lesbian wasn't going to appear in the New York Times in 1964, so they hinted instead, and the hints worked Friends and neighbors started backing away from Mary Ann, afraid that being associated with her might out them too. In the span of a few weeks, she'd lost her partner and a lot of her community, too. Eventually, she couldn't take it any longer. She moved out of the apartment she'd shared with Kitty, hoping to start over somewhere quieter. But no matter where she went, the press kept finding her. And the media circus around Kitty was just getting started. Within days, one man, one lunch and one story would rewrite what the public believed had happened and put Kitty's case on the front page of the country's most powerful newspaper. Ten days after Kitty's murder, 41 year old Abe Rosenthal went downtown for lunch. Rosenthal was the New York Times new metropolitan editor. Part of the job was meeting up with the people who kept the city running. Politicians, commissioners, cops. That afternoon, he sat down at Emil's restaurant and bar in Lower Manhattan. Across from him was New York City's Police Commissioner, Michael Murphy. They weren't there to talk about Kitty. Most of the meal was spent on Murphy's bigger concern, the growing civil rights movement and the possibility that it would lead to more racial violence throughout the city. But as the plates were cleared, Rosenthal brought up something that had been on his mind. He'd heard that two men had confessed to the same crime, months apart. In July 1963, 15 year old Barbara Crolic had been murdered in her home in Queens. Detectives had narrowed in on 18 year old Alvin Mitchell as a suspect and he'd confessed to the killing. But then another man said that he was actually responsible. 29 year old Winston Mosley. Murphy waved off the double confession. He didn't seem to have an answer to that, only that detectives were sorting it out. But Winston Moseley had definitely committed another murder. The killing of Kitty Genovese. Murphy said that was an interesting case. Not because there was anything unusual about the crime itself, but because of the witnesses. Rosenthal leaned in. He had the sense that whatever Murphy was about to say would be good for the paper business. And he was right. Murphy told him that 38 people had witnessed the murder and done nothing. They'd heard Kitty screaming as Mosley attacked her for half an hour, but not one of them had called the police. Rosenthal leaned back and let out a low whistle. He was shocked. And if a story shocked him, a veteran newsman who'd spent years running foreign bureaus, then he knew it would shock Times readers, too. By the time he got back to the newsroom that afternoon, he'd already made up his mind. He was going to run with this, and he knew exactly which reporter he wanted on it. He assigned the story to a writer named Martin Ganzberg. He explicitly told Ganzberg to go at it from one angle. Apathetic witnesses. Ganzburg got to work. He interviewed police officers, Kitty's neighbors, and some of the so called witnesses. One of those was Carl Ross, the man who had opened his door, seen the second attack, and slammed the door shut again. He told Gansburg, quote, I didn't want to get involved. The moment Gansberg got that quote, he knew he had his story. Four days later, on March 27, 1964, Ganzberg's article was ready to go. Rosenthal signed off on it as editor. And just like that, it ran on the front page of the New York Times. The first line read. For more than half an hour, 38 respectable, law abiding citizens in Queensland watched a killer stalk and stab a woman in three separate attacks in Kew Gardens. Readers were horrified. It seemed impossible that so many people could hear a woman dying and do nothing. That seemed impossible, in part because it wasn't true. There were neighbors who tried to help. Robert Moser shouted from his seventh floor window during the first attack and scared Mosley off. Sophia Farrar, who lived across the hall from Kitty, ran down to the vestibule without knowing if the attacker was still there. She held Kitty in her arms until the ambulance arrived. At least two neighbors had called the police. Not 911, which didn't exist yet, but the local precinct directly. One man told the dispatcher a woman had been beaten outside. Another neighbor called after hearing Kitty's screams, only to be told they'd already received reports. None of that made it into the Times. The story wasn't entirely wrong. There were bystanders who did nothing. Carl Ross opened his door, saw the attack, and closed it again. He's the one the Times quoted. But one man's apathy was suddenly being pinned on the whole neighborhood. Ganzburg hadn't verified the commissioner's claim. Neither had Rosenthal. If either of them had done even basic due diligence, it would have become clear that the number 38 was exaggerated. So is the detail about three attacks. There were only two. Instead, the story ran in all its glory, arguing that the case was proof that cities had become alienated and dehumanizing, that anyone who lived there had grown indifferent to their neighbor's suffering. And because that version of the story ran in the New York Times, it became fact. Later that year, Rosenthal doubled down. He wrote a short book called 38 the Kitty Genovese Case. He never acknowledged that his paper had gotten anything wrong. The story had made his career, it would eventually help him become the Times executive editor, and he had no interest in revising it. So the myth held. Academics would soon design studies around it. Students would learn about Genovese syndrome in classrooms for years. An entire framework for understanding human behavior would be built on a story that was exaggerated from the start. All because an ambitious editor heard something sensational over lunch and never stopped to ask whether any of it was actually true.
- [16:55]
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- [18:15]
Professor Lindsey Cormack
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. Just got a new puppy or kitten. Congrats.
- [19:07]
Carter Roy
But also yikes.
- [19:09]
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- [19:31]
Carter Roy
Get a'llemonade.com pet your future self will thank you.
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Your pet won't. They don't know what insurance is.
- [19:42]
Carter Roy
Two weeks after the murder of 28 year old Kitty Genovese, the New York Times reported that 38 people had witnessed the attack and done nothing. They'd heard Kitty's screams for half an hour and not one of them had called the police. That wasn't exactly true, but the Times version was the one that stuck. And in an era before the Internet or social media, before anything could go viral at the click of a button, this story somehow did anyway. People from all walks of life suddenly knew Kitty's name. The details of the case were discussed at dinner tables, debated in newspaper columns, and worried over in church pews. Everyone had a theory about what kind of people could hear a woman dying and do nothing. But there was another question, one that fewer people wanted to grapple with. If they were in Kitty's neighbor's position, would they have done the same thing? That question found its way into the halls of academia, and it would change the field of psychology forever. Two of the people who couldn't shake the story were psychologists. In the mid-1960s, Bibb Latane had earned his PhD at the University of Minnesota and was teaching at Columbia. John Darley was an assistant professor at NYU who would finish his PhD at Harvard the following year. They were both horrified by what had happened in Queens. But while the rest of the country was busy being outraged about it, Latane and Darlie wanted to know why. Was what happened in Queens a symptom of some uniquely urban sickness? Or was there something, something more fundamental at play, something that could happen anywhere to anyone under the right circumstances. Like any good scientists, they figured there was only one way to find out. The first challenge was designing a study that could actually measure the thing they were looking for. They needed to create a real emergency, something frightening enough to produce a genuine response without putting anyone in actual danger. After some thought, they settled on a medical crisis, specifically a seizure. Here's how it they recruited college students and told them they'd be part of a group discussion about college life. To protect everyone's privacy, each participant was placed alone in a small room with a microphone and a pair of headphones. They were told they'd be speaking with other students in other rooms. Sometimes they were told it was just them and one other person, other times a group of four or five. What they weren't told was that those other voices weren't real. The other participants were just recordings playing back through the headset. The conversation would begin harmlessly enough, just students talking about school stress and city life. Then, partway through, one of the voices on the recording would start to sound stilted, as if the speaker were struggling. Then the sounds of someone slurring their words, choking and calling for help. And then silence. The question was simple. Would the participant in the room get up, open the door, and find someone to help? The answer depended entirely on how many people they thought were listening. When students believed they were the only ones who could hear the seizure, they reported the emergency 85% of the time. When they believed four other students could also hear it, that number dropped to a shocking 31%. The only thing that changed was how many people the participant thought were aware of the emergency. And yet just knowing that others were around cut the likelihood of helping by more than half. But Lataney and Darlie weren't done. They ran a second experiment, and this one was almost harder to believe. They asked participants to sit alone in a room and fill out a questionnaire. As they worked, smoke began pouring through a small vent in the wall. Within two minutes, 50% of participants spoke up. Within six minutes, 75% had. Then Latanet and Darlie ran a second version of the test. This time they added other people to the room. Actors who'd been instructed to notice the smoke shrug and go back to what they were doing in that situation. Only one out of every ten subjects reported the smoke. The other nine stayed in the room the entire time, coughing, rubbing their eyes, even opening a window, but never raising the alarm. Let that sink in. The room was filling with smoke. It was getting harder to breathe. And still nine out of 10 people looked at the person next to them saw them doing nothing and decided, I guess it's fine. What Latane and Darlie found was striking. The more witnesses there were at an emergency, the less likely any single person was to step in. And it wasn't just one thing causing it. Several forces were working together. They called the first one diffusion of responsibility. When you're alone and something goes wrong, the weight of that situation lands entirely on you. But add more people, 10, 20, 38, and suddenly that weight gets divided. Each person carries a smaller share, and the smaller your piece, the easier it is to convince yourself that someone else will handle it. The second force was social influence. In an unknown situation, humans look to each other for cues. Is this serious? Should I be worried? If everyone around you seems calm, your brain registers that as information and decides that everyone else must know something you don't. The technical term is pluralistic ignorance. Essentially, it's a kind of collective delusion. Even if everyone privately thinks something is wrong, they don't act like it publicly. And in doing so, they all begin to believe that everything really is fine. A third factor was evaluation, apprehension, or the fear of embarrassment. If no one else is jumping up to help, then will it seem like an overreaction if you do it? What if you're wrong and make a scene over nothing? Lazanet and Darli argued that these weren't signs of moral failure. They were proof that people were human. They were simply caught in what the researchers called a matrix of indecision. They called the phenomenon the bystander effect. The bystander effect became one of the most famous studies in the history of social psychology. It appeared in every major textbook. It was taught in high schools and lecture halls across the country. And it gave a name to something people had always sensed, but never quite understood. That a crowd can make you safer. But it can also make you feel more alone than ever. We see the bystander effect play out in small ways all the time. Someone faints on a sidewalk and the people around them hesitate to help. But it's also shown up in actual crimes, including two that made headlines about 30 years after Kitty's death. In 1993, two 10 year old boys abducted 2 year old James Bulger from a shopping center near Liverpool, England. They walked him about two and a half miles across the city before torturing and murdering him near a railway line. That walk took about two hours. Plenty of people saw them. In an eerie coincidence, 38 people reportedly saw them, but almost no one stepped in. One woman did stop to ask if everything was okay. But the older boys told her James was their little brother, and she believed them. Two years later, another case made headlines, this time in Detroit. In August 1995, a 19 year old man named Martell Welch Jr. Ran 33 year old Deletha Word's car off the road on Bell Island Bridge. After a minor traffic accident. He dragged her out of the car, beat her and tore off her clothes in front of a crowd of around 40 onlookers. Ward was terrified. She climbed onto the railing of the bridge and jumped into the Detroit river to get away from him. Two men eventually jumped in to try to save her, but it was too late. She had drowned. This happened on a public bridge in front of the dozens of people, and almost no one moved exactly like Latane and Darlie had predicted. But back in the late 1960s, decades before either of these cases, researchers, lawmakers and ordinary citizens were already looking for ways to counteract the bystander effect. One answer was a legal one. A few jurisdictions had already started passing what were called good Samaritan laws, but a lot of other places adopted them in the wake of Kitty's murder. The idea was simple. Before these laws, if a bystander tried to save someone's life and made an honest mistake, like breaking a rib while performing cpr, they could be sued for it. The legal system actually punished good intentions. Good Samaritan laws fixed that. Now, if a doctor stopped at an accident scene to help, they couldn't be sued as long as they acted reasonably. The whole idea was to take away the legal piece of evaluation apprehension to tell people they wouldn't be punished for trying to help. The other solution was infrastructural. When Kitty Genovese was attacked, there was no anyone who wanted to call for help had to either look up the nearest police precinct's number or dial a local operator. The system was slow, confusing, and in a crisis, often too late. In the years following Kitty's murder, pressure mounted for something easier. A single universal number anyone, anywhere could dial without thinking. In January 1968, after years of study and debate and presidential commissions, the FCC and AT&T announced 911 as the national emergency number. It was chosen because it was simple, easy to remember, and hadn't been used as an area code yet. Today, an estimated 240 million calls are made to 911 every year. Most people never think twice about where it came from. But every one of those calls is in some small way a consequence of what happened to Kitty Genovese. A lot of good came from her story becoming so famous, there's no denying that. But there was still more work to be done, and decades later, one of Kitty's siblings would team up with a group of journalists to pick the original story apart piece by piece. But myths don't die easily, and by the time the truth came out, an entire generation had already learned the L.
- [32:28]
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- [34:21]
Carter Roy
For 40 years, the New York Times version of Kitty Genovese's murder was gospel. It was repeated in classrooms and cited in journals. Malcolm Gladwell even put it in his bestseller the tipping point. By 2005, all 10 of the most popular social psychology textbooks in America included the Genovese case. All 10 repeated the same claim about the 38 witnesses who did nothing. Now, legends aren't always true, but they have staying power because they say something about our world. And this one confirmed people's darkest fears. That cities were cold, that strangers couldn't be trusted. That when the moment came, you would be on your own. But for one family, Kitty's murder was never a story. It was simply the worst thing that had ever happened to them. Bill Genovese was 16 years old when his sister was killed. Kitty was 12 years older than him. So he didn't just lose a sister. Kitty had been like a second mother to him. From the time Bill was little, she'd been the one who, who took him on adventures, who made him laugh, who looked out for him. Losing her was unbearable. It was even worse watching how the grief ate away at his actual mother, Rachel. The whole family was so shaken that they didn't even show up to Winston Moseley's trial. And the proceedings began in June 1964, three months after Kitty's murder. His attorney tried to argue and insist insanity defense, but the jury didn't buy it. Mosley was convicted and sentenced to death. The crowd that had gathered to watch erupted in cheers. The public had been desperate for that outcome. The judge called for order, then added his own comments. He said he was a staunch opponent of capital punishment, but in this particular case, he wouldn't hesitate to pull the switch himself. That was the kind of effect Mosley's crime had left on the courtroom. That same year, Mosley testified for the defense in the Barbara Crick murder trial. He maintained that he had killed her, not Alvin Mitchell. But the prosecution stuck with its initial investigation, going after Mitchell as their prime suspect. Mitchell's first trial ended in a hung jury. They tried again the next year. This time when Mosley was called to testify, he recanted his confession. Without Mosley's testimony, the defense struggled and Mitchell was convicted of first degree manslaughter. Moseley never gave any explanation for why he recanted or why he'd confessed in the first place, if he truly had lied. As for Mosley himself, his death sentence was eventually commuted to life in prison. But the decades that followed weren't quiet ones. In March of 1968, four years after he killed Kitty, Mosley faked a self inflicted injury serious enough to get him transferred to a hospital in Buffalo. On the trip back to prison, he overpowered a guard, stole his gun and disappeared into the surrounding fields. Then he went on a three day crime spree across western New York. He broke into a Buffalo home and took the residents hostage, sexually assaulting one of the women. Then he stole a car, drove to grand island, and took two more women and a baby hostage in an apartment complex. The standoff only ended when an FBI agent talked him into surrendering. Mosley got two additional 15 year sentences out of it. Then, in 1977, the New York Times did something even more remarkable. It gave him space in its op ed pages. On April 11th of that year, the same paper that had turned Kitty's death into a national symbol published a four column piece by her killer titled today I'm a man who wants to be an asset. Mosley wrote, quote, the crime was tragic, but it did serve society, urging it as it did to come to the aid of its members in distress or danger. He was claiming credit for the bystander effect research itself. Then he turned to his own transformation, writing that he had changed. It wasn't enough to get him out. He applied for parole 18 times and was denied every time. The Genovese family had hoped that once Mosley went to prison and the case was settled, people would stop bringing it up. But of course, things didn't work out that way. Kitty's story kept resurfacing in newspaper articles, in academic papers, in the latest research studies on the bystander effect. Bill and his siblings did their best to keep it all away from their mother. And Bill himself refused to engage with any of it. He felt like he already knew what happened and didn't need to pry for more details. But two years after Kitty's death, he made a decision that would shape the rest of his life. In 1966, Bill enlisted in the Marines. Part of what drove him was the story the New York Times had told the one about 38 people who'd heard his sister scream and done nothing. He didn't want to fall into that trap. He wanted to be someone who ran toward danger if it meant helping others. He shipped out to Vietnam, and at 19, while working as a field intelligence scout south of Da Nang, he stepped on a booby trap. He survived, but lost both of his legs. A story that wasn't true had sent a teenager to war. Bill's mother passed away in 1992, and when she was gone, he finally felt like he could look into what had really happened to Kitty. Not the myth, the truth. He started knocking on doors. He went to Kew Gardens, the neighborhood he'd avoided for decades, and sat down with witnesses who were still alive. He pulled police reports and trial transcripts, and eventually he tried to visit Winston Mosley in prison. Mosley refused to see him face to face. But he did write Bill a letter. It was rambling and bizarre. Mosley claimed he'd just been the getaway driver for the real killer, who he said was a mobster. Bill didn't believe a word of it, but the letter told him something anyway. Even half a century later, the man who killed his sister wasn't going to give him a straight answer about anything. Bill would have to do the work himself. But in the meantime, the academic and journalistic record was starting to crack on its own. In 2004, 40 years after the murder, a writer named Jim Rasenberger published a piece in the New York Times, the very paper that had built up the exaggerated story in the first place. In it, Rasenberger raised serious doubts about the original reporting. Some of the most damaging evidence he dug up came from Charles Scholar, the former assistant district attorney who had prosecuted Winston Moseley. Scholars said that in his estimate, only about half a dozen people had actually seen anything they could have testified to in court, not 38. 6. Geography explained part of it. The second attack, the longer fatal one, had happened in the vestibule at the back of Kitty's building, not out in the street. Anyone looking out a front window wouldn't have seen a thing, and they might have heard something that night. But hearing a sound and understanding what it means are two different things, a distinction the original Times story had never made. Three years after Rasenberger's piece, the field of psychology weighed in. In 2007, three researchers, Rachel Manning, Mark Levine, and Alan Collins, published a paper in American Psychologist, the field's flagship journal. They went through trial transcripts and other archival material, and what they found was damning. There was no evidence for the presence of 38 witnesses, no evidence that anyone had actually seen the murder happen, and no evidence that the people who'd heard something failed to act. They called the Kitty Genovese case a kind of modern parable, the antonym of the parable of the Good Samaritan. 43 years after the case had birthed the bystander effect, psychology was finally acknowledging that the story at its center didn't hold up. Around 2014, journalist Kevin Cook tracked down a man named Michael Hoffman, who'd been a teenager living in a building across the street the night of the attack. Hoffman said his father had called the police that night and been ignored. A year later, in the 2015 documentary, The Witness, a woman named Hattie Grund, said the same thing. She had called the dispatcher that night and told them a woman was screaming for help, only to be told they'd already received reports the calls had been made. It was the system that had failed to respond. The witness was made by filmmaker James Solomon, but the driving force behind it was Bill Genovese, who was finally ready to speak out after a decade of digging into his sister's story. Story in the process of making the film, Bill discovered something he'd never known in the more than 40 years since his sister's death. Sophia Farrar, the neighbor who'd run down to the vestibule that night without knowing if Mosley was still there, had held Kitty in her arms in her final moments. Kitty hadn't died alone on a cold floor while her neighbors watched from behind curtained windows. Windows. Someone had come. Someone had held her until the ambulance arrived. Bill wished his parents had known that. He thought it would have brought them some kind of peace. In 2016, the New York Times finally added an editor's note to the original 1964 story. It read simply, later reporting by the Times and others has called into question significant elements of this account. By 2020, the paper had gone further, stating plainly that no witnesses had seen the crime in full. And that year, when Sophia Farrar died of pneumonia at her home in New Jersey at the age of 92, the New York Times wrote her an obituary. Unlike the 1964 article, which hadn't even mentioned her, the paper detailed Sophia's efforts and painted her as what she'd always been. A hero. Here's the thing about this case. The bystander effect is real. Lataney and Darley's research has been replicated dozens of times and held up under scrutiny. What wasn't real was the story that inspired it. The 38 witnesses who did nothing was a police commissioner's offhand claim, picked up by an ambitious editor and printed on the front page of the world's most powerful newspaper. It had the ring of truth because it confirmed what people already feared about themselves and each other. But Kitty Genovese wasn't a myth. She was a real woman, 28 years old, the manager of a bar in Queensland with a miniature poodle named Andrew. She lived with her girlfriend, Marianne Zilongo, in the second floor apartment in Kew Gardens. She was loved by Marianne, by her brother Bill, by the regulars at her bar, by her family. And she was brave. When her mom witnessed a murder and uprooted the family to Connecticut, Kitty stayed behind in the city. She built a life on her own terms, managing the bar, saving money, dreaming of opening her own Italian restaurant someday. She lived openly and honestly in ways that took real courage in 1964. Her family didn't always approve, but she never let that stop her. She was killed for 19, no apparent reason, on a sidewalk she'd walked a hundred times before. She deserved better. Better from Winston Mosley, better from the newspapers that used her death to sell papers, and better from every textbook that reduced her to a parable without ever asking who she really was. Her neighbors didn't all look away. Some tried to help. Robert Moser shouted from his seventh floor window and scared the attacker off the first time. Sophia Farrar ran into the dark, not knowing what she'd find. And it was Sophia who held Kitty as she died. That's the story that should have been on the front page.
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Carter Roy
thanks so much for listening. I'm Carter Roy and this is Murder True Crime Stories. Come back next time for the story of a new murder and all the people it affected. Murder 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 at crime house on TikTok and Instagram. Don't forget to rate, review and follow Murder 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, tap try free at the top of the Murder True Crime Stories page. We'll be back on Friday. Murder True Crime 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 Pertofsky, Alyssa Fox, Alex Burns, Cassidy Dillon and Russell Nash. Thank you for listening.