Content Warning: murder, r*pe

When talking about New York City, someone is sure to mention the high levels of crime and perceived apathetic attitudes of residents. In March 1964, the murder of Kitty Genovese became front-page news in a New York Times article that claimed “37 Who Saw Murder Didn’t Call The Police.” At a time when America was rapidly urbanizing, Americans were starting to realize the dysfunctional NYC government policies along with high crime rates, but up until the publication of that article, few were actually talking about it. This breaking news gave not just NYC residents but all Americans a reason to accelerate the belief that cities were becoming more and more unsafe. The underlying discontent with city living festered into an exigence that motivated the immortalization of Kitty Genovese’s murder as a symbol for bystander and urban apathy.

Catherine “Kitty” Genovese was a 28-year-old bartender living in Kew Gardens in Queens, NY. During the early hours of March 13, 1964, she was followed by a man (known later as Winston Mosely) on her walk home from a late shift at the bar. In a dark alley, Mosely stabbed her with a knife, puncturing her lung. She stumbled in to a back hallway of her apartment building where Mosely found her ten minutes later, stabbed her several more times, and raped her.

There were several witnesses, but not 38 as the article led readers to believe. A few witnesses later said they heard screams but assumed it was a domestic fight, which was sadly not seen as severe or irregular in the 60s. One man mentioned his father did in fact call the police, and another man opened his window to yell “Let that girl alone!” during the first attack. When Kitty entered her building, her friend Karl Ross opened his door and saw the second stabbing, but he did not call the police right away. However, the original story left out that Ross was a gay man. He had a valid fear of interacting with law enforcement. Ross called a neighbor named Sophia Farrar who ran into the hallway, not knowing if it was fully safe to or not, and held Kitty in her final moments.

It is clear that the real events do not reflect an overall apathy of ordinary city residents and that there are several inaccuracies in the original article. The police controlled the narrative from the beginning as it was a chief commissioner who pitched the story to a NYT editor. The article left out that Kitty Genovese herself was a lesbian, despite the police’s harassment of Genovese’s girlfriend. The NYT writers were acutely aware of constraints such as the typical reader’s traditional values. It was a story that spoke to the growing uneasiness of city residents and motivated movement into the suburbs, thereby contributing to urban sprawl and the construction of our prevailing, unsustainable car-dependent infrastructure. Though cities tend to have higher crime rates due to a higher population density and exaggerated socioeconomic divides, the commonplace of the apathetic city resident is damaging. The original narrative of Kitty Genovese’s murder is still used today in textbooks to describe the bystander effect (not taking action if there are other people around out of an assumption that someone else will take care of the situation) and spread the overgeneralization of urban apathy. The NYT article is an example of dehumanizing someone to appeal to a commonplace regardless of the instances of the isolated scenario, and it serves as a reminder to write with integrity and encourage empathy.

References:

• https://open.spotify.com/episode/2KTiIAemXt87AmYyVQVSEI?si=HHPm5qYhQgGarMZDzv6xXw
• Remembering Kitty Genovese – The New York Times (nytimes.com)