Speaker 1: Hey, San Francisco, we're coming out to see you. We
Speaker 1: got invited back to San Francisco Sketch Fest this year
Speaker 1: and we are pretty excited because we are doing a
Speaker 1: Sunday afternoon show for the first time, so considers a
Speaker 1: football game. We're gonna be uh January Sunday at one pm,
Speaker 1: and UH, get your tickets fast because they're definitely gonna
Speaker 1: sell out. Just go to s F sketch Fest dot
Speaker 1: com where you can google that junk and uh just
Speaker 1: follow the ticket links and there's lots of great shows,
Speaker 1: so I would recommend just making a weekend out of it.
Speaker 1: But check us out Sunday afternoon, January PM in San Francisco.
Speaker 1: Can't wait to see everybody there. Welcome to Stuff You
Speaker 1: Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W.
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry So this you Should Know
Speaker 1: podcast True Crime Edition. Actually yeah, but so much more
Speaker 1: than just a single crime agreed, a crime that echoed
Speaker 1: throughout a city, throughout the world, throughout decades. And it's true, man, Like,
Speaker 1: there are very few crimes you can point to that
Speaker 1: had more of an impact than the murder of Kitty
Speaker 1: GENEVESE agreed. Uh, and there are a lot of true
Speaker 1: crime podcast out there. We are not trying to become one. No,
Speaker 1: this is just something we do from time to time.
Speaker 1: I had somebody on Facebook, Oh, don't get me started
Speaker 1: on that on the hinter Kaife murders there, this is
Speaker 1: so played, everyone's done this. Who didn't know about this?
Speaker 1: A bunch of people were like, well, I haven't heard
Speaker 1: about it, but most counts I had never heard about it.
Speaker 1: I hadn't heard about it until like a year or
Speaker 1: two ago. So oh, it's so played. Oh and then
Speaker 1: of course later on all these people are like, man,
Speaker 1: what a jerk. He's like the the whole Uh. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry if anyone was offended. All I meant was
Speaker 1: is this has been well covered. I think that it
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with the way I said it.
Speaker 1: The two thousand sixteen election has proven that. Um, if
Speaker 1: you add if into your apology, it's not an actual apology. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. If you're offended, is not an apology. That's
Speaker 1: putting it back on the person. It's it's you, you,
Speaker 1: you worm, your piece of garbage. Oh yeah, yeah, man, sorry,
Speaker 1: Kitty Genevise and her family. I know, and you know what,
Speaker 1: as I researched this and as I watched did you
Speaker 1: watch The Witness the documentary recently on Netflix right now?
Speaker 1: It is HBO documentary, And um, I was disturbed and
Speaker 1: I'm glad it finally covered it in the documentary, but
Speaker 1: I was disturbed that Kitty Genevise and we'll get to
Speaker 1: her murder, but very quickly she was murdered and became
Speaker 1: the symbol for um people not helping out right what
Speaker 1: came to be known as bystander apathy or the bystander
Speaker 1: effect that the more people who are around, the less
Speaker 1: likely anyone is to help. Yeah, so she became such
Speaker 1: a symbol that me never hear about Kitty Genevise and
Speaker 1: who she was as a person. And that was one
Speaker 1: great thing about that document and there are multiple great
Speaker 1: things about that, but that it really talked about her
Speaker 1: and showed her and revived her spirit, which I was
Speaker 1: really looking for because even in researching online, it's hard
Speaker 1: to get a lot of information. So um, some things,
Speaker 1: some even contemporary articles still aren't mentioning that she was gay. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: her own brother who made the documentary didn't know that
Speaker 1: she was gay. No, it's true, but it's it's been
Speaker 1: out since I'm not sure when actually that came out.
Speaker 1: It was just this year, okay, so it was fairly
Speaker 1: new year. That was like in the last five years,
Speaker 1: maybe so. And honoring that, why don't we talk a
Speaker 1: minute about Catherine genevese Kitty Yeah. Born in Brooklyn, uh,
Speaker 1: to Vincent and Rene Leginovise Italian American parents. Um, and
Speaker 1: it's weird, I don't see. Oh. Yeah, Rachel was her
Speaker 1: mother's name. She was Rachel Petroley at first. So, um.
Speaker 1: They lived in Brooklyn, and she was very well loved
Speaker 1: in school. Yes, she was like the leader of her click. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And she was apparently a lot of fun and a
Speaker 1: good mimic of her teachers. And she was voted class
Speaker 1: cut up in her senior year graduating class. And she
Speaker 1: went to an all girls school and Prospect Heights, and
Speaker 1: it it was just, by all accounts, this vivacious, fun loving,
Speaker 1: really sweet sweet lady yeah or girl. At that point,
Speaker 1: her little brother Bill who and ended up making the
Speaker 1: being featured in the documentary, The witness was just in
Speaker 1: love with her she was just amazing to him and
Speaker 1: had a very special relationship. Yeah. I think she was
Speaker 1: about thirteen years older than him. Yeah, quite a bit,
Speaker 1: maybe twelve years older. Um, I had his sister like that,
Speaker 1: and like there's a very special relationship, none of that
Speaker 1: sibling rivalry. Um, they're not old enough to be your mother.
Speaker 1: That's just as it's a unique situation to be a
Speaker 1: younger sibling and to be able to inherit like all
Speaker 1: that worldly wisdom and they're they're going through all their
Speaker 1: own things and their own struggles and their own travails.
Speaker 1: But to that thirteen year old younger brother, they know
Speaker 1: everything and they're the coolest person walking the planet and
Speaker 1: they're the kindest person walking the planet because they've lived
Speaker 1: long enough to like figure out some of the major stuff.
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, even my own sister is only six
Speaker 1: years older, and we we very much had and still
Speaker 1: have that relationship where uh and she my brother are
Speaker 1: great now too. But you know, when you're two or
Speaker 1: three years apart, there can be a little bit of
Speaker 1: the knocking of heads. But by the time I came along,
Speaker 1: I was like, you know, my sister was six, It
Speaker 1: was perfect. I was a little baby doll for her right.
Speaker 1: Um So, anyway, that was very much the relationship that
Speaker 1: Kitty had with Bill, and it seemed like one of
Speaker 1: the old older brothers always had a little bit of it, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: she always liked him better. Yeah kind of attitude. It
Speaker 1: seems seemed like everybody kind of knew like she liked
Speaker 1: Bill the most. Yeah, which I kind of felt bad for.
Speaker 1: But that's just this family dynamics. Man. You know. The
Speaker 1: thing is when whenever you do start to kind of
Speaker 1: talk about somebody who's died, especially someone who's died violently
Speaker 1: and young, it's easy to um canonized, you know. He
Speaker 1: really put him up on a pedestal and forget their flaws.
Speaker 1: And of course I'm sure Kitty had tons of flaws,
Speaker 1: but she didn't seem to have any from from what
Speaker 1: I'm gathering, that were, you know, just terrible flaws or
Speaker 1: that made her like a bad person. She seemed like
Speaker 1: she was a like an overall above average great person. Yeah, agreed. So, um,
Speaker 1: New York was getting too dangerous for her family. They
Speaker 1: thought to have all these kids. Uh, So they moved
Speaker 1: when she graduated high school to New Canaan, Connecticut. And
Speaker 1: she said you know what, I'm staying here in New York.
Speaker 1: I'm eighteen now. I love it here. Um. She got
Speaker 1: married for a brief time, uh, to a guy was
Speaker 1: his named Rocco. I don't remember his name, it's either
Speaker 1: Rocky or Rocco. And Um. In the documentary, Bill tries
Speaker 1: to get in touch with him. He's like, I really
Speaker 1: because he found out she was gay and was like,
Speaker 1: you know, we didn't even know this. I think Rocco
Speaker 1: can help shed some light. And he very respectfully asked
Speaker 1: for his own privacy. He said, my relationship with Kitty
Speaker 1: will remain forever a mystery. Yeah, it's like, that's an
Speaker 1: odd spot it was. I think he just didn't want to.
Speaker 1: I mean, if she was a and they were married
Speaker 1: for a short time, he either didn't know and maybe
Speaker 1: felt the fool or he did know and was maybe
Speaker 1: trying to do right by her in some way. Either way,
Speaker 1: he didn't want to talk about it. But Um. She
Speaker 1: worked as a secretary for a little while. She was
Speaker 1: a waitress for a little while. Eventually she was a
Speaker 1: bar made bartender and then became bar manager at a
Speaker 1: place in Hollis Queen's called EVS Eleventh Hour well, and
Speaker 1: from all accounts, it was one of those wonderful neighborhood
Speaker 1: bars where the people are in there getting sauce pretty
Speaker 1: early in the days, and everyone knew everyone, and everyone
Speaker 1: loved Kitty, and she helped take care of everybody, but
Speaker 1: was very much an independent um kind of firecracker of
Speaker 1: a woman. Drove a red fiat. Her dad used to
Speaker 1: tease her about, like, when are you going to find
Speaker 1: the right guy. She's like, I make more money than
Speaker 1: any guy I would go out with. I don't need that,
Speaker 1: which is I guess night t sixties for dadam gay
Speaker 1: and I can't say it, but she did make pretty
Speaker 1: good dough as the bar manager. Um. And then in
Speaker 1: March ninete, she met a woman named Mary Anne Zlonko
Speaker 1: at Swing Rendezvous. It was an underground lesbian bar in
Speaker 1: the village, and they moved in together shortly thereafter. Yeh
Speaker 1: and Kitty actually used to bring um Maryanne home with
Speaker 1: her to visit, but her family was all like, well,
Speaker 1: they're just good friends and roommates. It's the sixties, the
Speaker 1: early sixties. Yeah, And there's an audio interview with her
Speaker 1: in that documentary that's really touching. She didn't want to
Speaker 1: be on camera, but Bill was able to speak to
Speaker 1: her and uh, I think, well, so compelling about this
Speaker 1: documentary was that he was there was a search of
Speaker 1: a man looking for closure. It's a harrowing, sometimes almost
Speaker 1: unbearable to watch. Yeah, sir, I mean like he's at
Speaker 1: odds with his family here there. Um he uh, he's
Speaker 1: just just doing things where if you if you watch
Speaker 1: it in the context of the documentary and you just
Speaker 1: follow along the documentary, it all makes uttering complete sense.
Speaker 1: But then if you stop and remove yourself long enough
Speaker 1: to be like, this is a documentary, which means this
Speaker 1: guy really did this stuff and there was a camera
Speaker 1: following him along while he was doing it, I was like,
Speaker 1: I I couldn't have done half of it, you know,
Speaker 1: he really he just at one point he calls it
Speaker 1: an obsession, but it's it's not. He doesn't come off
Speaker 1: as obsessed, you know. All right, So let's detail the
Speaker 1: crime and then we will take a break after that.
Speaker 1: How does that sound? Yeah? Alright, So flash forward to
Speaker 1: March thirteenth, nineteen sixty four. It's three fifteen in the
Speaker 1: morning and Kitty genevese Is, as she often did, was
Speaker 1: making her way home from work late at night as
Speaker 1: a bar manager and was being trailed by a man,
Speaker 1: a man by the name of Winston Moseley. Yes, who
Speaker 1: was definitely the villain of this story, but is not
Speaker 1: the only one that will turn out. So, um Kitty
Speaker 1: was and at the time she was killed, and Winston
Speaker 1: or killer was twenty nine, just turned twenty nine, I
Speaker 1: think like a week or so before, And I think
Speaker 1: he said, this is March nine. Yeah, he was married
Speaker 1: with a couple of kids. Yeah, his wife, Elizabeth worked
Speaker 1: the night shift. She was a hospital nurse, and um
Speaker 1: Winston's mother stayed at home with the kids. So he
Speaker 1: basically said, you know, on my own house. I've got
Speaker 1: a great job operating computers. No one even knows what
Speaker 1: I'm supposed to be doing with him yet, but I'm
Speaker 1: making money doing it. Yeah, he's a smart guy, So
Speaker 1: I'm gonna indulge myself. I'm gonna go out and stalk
Speaker 1: women and murder them and my spare time, that's what
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do. So that's what he was doing on
Speaker 1: this night. He was cruising around looking for a woman
Speaker 1: to um kill. Basically, Yeah, that was his direct quote
Speaker 1: in questioning. Yeah, I was looking for a woman to kill. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he saw at I believe a red light, this
Speaker 1: little red Fiat convertible caught his eye and there was
Speaker 1: kitty driving. So he started a follower and she parked,
Speaker 1: and she parked in the parking lot for the Long
Speaker 1: Island Railway, which the parking lot went backed up to
Speaker 1: the side of her apartment building, which is a two
Speaker 1: story tutor job that had shops in the bottom and
Speaker 1: apartments in the top. Right. Yeah, this was in Q
Speaker 1: Gardens and Queens. So he followed her on foot. At
Speaker 1: this point Um she sees him and knows that something
Speaker 1: is going on. He has a knife in his hand,
Speaker 1: so she starts uh running. He catches up to her
Speaker 1: by outside of a bookstore and stabs her twice in
Speaker 1: the back right off the bat with this knife. And
Speaker 1: she had been running um toward a bar that she
Speaker 1: thought would be open, but it turned out apparently there
Speaker 1: was a new manager and the new manager had closed
Speaker 1: down early, so when she stabbed twice in the back.
Speaker 1: It's on this darkened street, but right across the street,
Speaker 1: Austin Street, is a ten story apartment building with dozens
Speaker 1: of windows looking out onto Austin Street. Where she's being
Speaker 1: stabbed in the back, and she screamed, she cries out.
Speaker 1: I think she said something like, oh God, he stabbed me,
Speaker 1: helped me, help me, is what they They said, basically,
Speaker 1: definitively is what she screamed. And people who were witnesses
Speaker 1: to this recounted that one guy said that he was
Speaker 1: I think a ten or eleven year old kid who
Speaker 1: was inside one of the apartments in the Mobray apartment building,
Speaker 1: and that he was awoke and awakened from a d sleep.
Speaker 1: The scream was so loud, he said it was the
Speaker 1: loudest thing he's ever heard. So she screams, and a
Speaker 1: man living in the Mobrie apartment buildings opens his window.
Speaker 1: What's his name, Yeah, Robert moser Um opened his window
Speaker 1: and screamed out, hey, get out of there, what are
Speaker 1: you doing? And uh, Mosley took off, took off, running away.
Speaker 1: He's very frequently misquoted as having said like, let that
Speaker 1: girl alone, but even by his own words in his
Speaker 1: own testimony, he said, hey, get out of there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: at any rate, he scared him away. Uh So, in
Speaker 1: between that time, about thirty minutes passes. Kitty Um makes
Speaker 1: her way around to the vestibule of her own building. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and um goes inside the vestibule and uh, like you
Speaker 1: think the horror is over for her. She could probably
Speaker 1: survive these wounds. Um is in shock, I would imagine.
Speaker 1: And then Mosley went to his car, kind of checked
Speaker 1: out the building, saw that some lights had gone on,
Speaker 1: and reason to himself, no one's gonna do anything, puts
Speaker 1: on a different hat and goes back, finds her in
Speaker 1: the vestibule and finishes the job and the most horrific
Speaker 1: ways you can imagine. Yeah, he uh, he stabbed her
Speaker 1: at least twelve more times. They think at least she
Speaker 1: was stabbed at least fourteen times. He said he doesn't
Speaker 1: remember how many times he stabbed her. Um, but he
Speaker 1: basically kept stabbing her until she stopped screaming. Um, she
Speaker 1: was still alive. I saw that he attempted the raper.
Speaker 1: I've also seen that he raped her. Yeah. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure which one's correct, but at one point, and this
Speaker 1: is really important here, as he's stabbing her and she's
Speaker 1: screaming in the vestibule, there's a staircase that leads directly
Speaker 1: up to a door, and behind that door lived a
Speaker 1: man named Carl Ross. And Carl Ross opened his door
Speaker 1: and looked down one single flight of stairs at Winston
Speaker 1: Mosley stabbing um kitty Genevese, who is bloody. There was
Speaker 1: no confusing what was going on. And he closed the
Speaker 1: door and he called his girlfriend, and his girlfriend said,
Speaker 1: you don't get involved. I'm worried for you. Just just
Speaker 1: leave it alone. It's none of your business. And he did.
Speaker 1: He didn't do anything at least for a little while,
Speaker 1: all right. So that's a good place to break here,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna come back and talk about who saw
Speaker 1: and heard what and what they did about it right
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Speaker 1: So at this point, um, Kitty Genevies is uh not
Speaker 1: dead yet, but dying in the vestibule. Um, a woman
Speaker 1: did come down and uh was with her. Her name
Speaker 1: is Sophia Ferrar. She's still with us, and um, she
Speaker 1: was a neighbor and friend of Kitty's. And so she
Speaker 1: went down there and uh apparently was with her as
Speaker 1: she passed away, tried to calm her down. Evidently did
Speaker 1: calm her down, and likes to think that she at
Speaker 1: least saw a friendly face and that she was being
Speaker 1: cared for as she passed. Uh. The weird thing is
Speaker 1: is that is not mentioned. I guess we gotta get
Speaker 1: into the New York Times now. Yeah. So, so after
Speaker 1: the murder um like the next day, the Times ran
Speaker 1: four paragraphs on the Kitty Genovase murder. It was not
Speaker 1: incredibly newsworthy at first because that year, there were six
Speaker 1: d thirty six murders in New York City. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was just one of them, just one. But a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks later, UM, the head the city editor of
Speaker 1: the New York Times, a guy named A Rosenthal, who's
Speaker 1: a legendary journalist, was having lunch with I believe, the
Speaker 1: police commissioner of the NYPD. And the commissioner said, did
Speaker 1: you hear about that Genevese murder? This one for the books.
Speaker 1: Thirty eight people standing around watched the whole thing. Nobody
Speaker 1: did it a thing about it. Now you've got a story.
Speaker 1: A Rosenthal, legendary journalist, is like, uh, thank you for that.
Speaker 1: Here's my diners Club card. I have to go now
Speaker 1: and get this story done. So he did. He assigned
Speaker 1: it out to a guy. What was the original reporter's name, Um,
Speaker 1: his name was Martin Gainsberg, and they wrote on the
Speaker 1: front page. I shouldn't say they wrote it was definitely
Speaker 1: all Gainsberger, but he was assigned and definitely under the
Speaker 1: direction of A Rosenthal, like, this is this is the story.
Speaker 1: Thirty eight people stood around and did nothing. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: title of the article was thirty seven. It was thirty
Speaker 1: seven at a time thirty seven who saw a murder
Speaker 1: didn't call the police, And basically the entire article and
Speaker 1: the entire narrative from that moment forward for decades was
Speaker 1: a not about this woman at all. Hardly she became
Speaker 1: a symbol be not necessarily even about the crime, but
Speaker 1: about the crime of uh, these people who didn't the
Speaker 1: crime of apathy for these thirty seven or thirty eight people.
Speaker 1: But it was very much misconstrued in the New York Times,
Speaker 1: to the point where in two thousand four they all
Speaker 1: but wrote a retraction with new information. Um, because the
Speaker 1: original article they said, like these people witnessed it. That
Speaker 1: is not true. Um. Maybe only a couple of people
Speaker 1: might have actually seen anything with their eyeballs. The other
Speaker 1: thirty five or thirty six may have heard someone screaming, uh.
Speaker 1: They might have thought it was a drunken couple in
Speaker 1: their neighborhood coming home from a bar. Uh. There might
Speaker 1: have been some apathy involved, for sure for some of them.
Speaker 1: But to characterize this as thirty seven or thirty eight
Speaker 1: people witnessed this horrific crime and literally shut their doors
Speaker 1: and windows to it was not accurate at all, they said. Um,
Speaker 1: they said specifically. Well, the way that they put it
Speaker 1: was that there were The way the story read was
Speaker 1: that thirty eight people had watched this murder which took place.
Speaker 1: They misreported that there were three attacks and that the
Speaker 1: man had been chased off twice and came back two
Speaker 1: more times. Um, But that this whole thing had taken
Speaker 1: place over thirty minutes, this long, prolonged attack, and that
Speaker 1: thirty eight people had just been sitting there watching it,
Speaker 1: doing nothing, And that is definitely a mischaracterization of what
Speaker 1: had happened, Like you're saying, for the most part, people
Speaker 1: were ear witnesses, not eyewitnesses. There are certainly not thirty
Speaker 1: eight eyewitnesses, and most people weren't in a position to
Speaker 1: do much, if anything about it, certainly physically. But I
Speaker 1: don't know if you could call it like a retraction
Speaker 1: because the point that A Rosenthal he never apologized for whatever.
Speaker 1: Even in the documentary he's interviewed, um he and he's like, I,
Speaker 1: this is great, I'm glad that it did what it did. Yeah. Sure.
Speaker 1: His The point is still there that there was apathy
Speaker 1: in in that there were two people who could have
Speaker 1: done something and they didn't. But then from what the
Speaker 1: Other witnesses said the scream was pretty clearly not a
Speaker 1: purse snatching and not a couple fighting drunkenly, that it
Speaker 1: was a violent crime being committed on this woman. And
Speaker 1: people still didn't do anything. Yeah, they misreported. Um, possibly
Speaker 1: that no one called police. Apparently perhaps up to three
Speaker 1: people called the police, although police logs showed only one
Speaker 1: call came in. Um. And it may be a case
Speaker 1: of these people now telling themselves like I called the
Speaker 1: cops that did something when they may not have. Uh,
Speaker 1: they did not report at all that Ms Ferrar had
Speaker 1: gone down to be with her. She was not mentioned ever. UM.
Speaker 1: So I kind of went from feeling like, yeah, you
Speaker 1: know this bystander effect it had good. It led to
Speaker 1: the being created apparently in some ways, and people study
Speaker 1: this in class and it raised awareness. So you know,
Speaker 1: if they stretched it a little bit, then it had
Speaker 1: a good effect. That's what Abe basically, that was his position.
Speaker 1: That still is his position. But oh did he finally
Speaker 1: passed away? Um? And then I finally came around and
Speaker 1: be like, no, you know, the truth is what you
Speaker 1: should print. And if you're a reporter and you run
Speaker 1: a story, you should print the truth and not some
Speaker 1: sensationalized version of it to sell newspapers. No, no, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I agree with you, And I think the one thing
Speaker 1: that you can hang on a Rosenthal is that, Um,
Speaker 1: that story was definitely fashioned in a manner to be
Speaker 1: as sensational as possible, to shock and outrage the public
Speaker 1: as much as possible. But I still think it's rooted
Speaker 1: in in the basic fact that there was apathy involved
Speaker 1: and that it possibly allowed Winston mostly to finish the
Speaker 1: job that Kitty Jenneviez might have survived had somebody done
Speaker 1: more than just sit up, look out the window and
Speaker 1: go back to bed or not even bother to look
Speaker 1: out the window. And like you said, Chuck, like this
Speaker 1: had a lot of impact because this this story comes
Speaker 1: out in nine and for forty years. It wasn't until
Speaker 1: two thousand four that the time saw fit to like
Speaker 1: go back and really reinvestigate, and they did. There was
Speaker 1: a great, um, great article called Kitty four years later,
Speaker 1: I think, um, and and the author goes through and
Speaker 1: reinvestigates the case and really sets a lot of facts straight. Um.
Speaker 1: But within that forty year period, the effects that this
Speaker 1: murder had were just sweeping. It led to the establishment
Speaker 1: of nine on one. It's a big one and it
Speaker 1: it created this whole field of psychology that looks into
Speaker 1: the psychology of crowds. You know, why we would just
Speaker 1: stand around? What is this diffusion of responsibility? None of
Speaker 1: that understanding existed until the Kidty Geneviez murder. Yeah, and weirdly,
Speaker 1: why is someone Why is a solo witness more apt
Speaker 1: to act than a group of people? One thing I
Speaker 1: saw is that is called social influence, and that we
Speaker 1: take our cues from others. So if inaction is basically
Speaker 1: what is on the table right, then we're going to
Speaker 1: be inactive as well. If people are starting to move
Speaker 1: toward it, towards the problem, we'll probably join in too.
Speaker 1: I could see that, or people thinking like either I'm
Speaker 1: not someone else's better equipped to deal with this than me,
Speaker 1: or I feel like someone else will do this so
Speaker 1: I don't have to. Yeah, a lot goes into play.
Speaker 1: It's pretty interesting. One of the less productive things that
Speaker 1: came out of it, though, is this idea that when
Speaker 1: you live in a city, in a big city, you
Speaker 1: put enough people together, everybody stops caring about anybody else.
Speaker 1: They're all out for number one and Q gardens became
Speaker 1: the center of this or just such a symbolic example
Speaker 1: of of urban care uncaring, I guess, and Kitty Jona
Speaker 1: Viz became a symbol of of that as well. And
Speaker 1: they need to do something to act out um, to
Speaker 1: help other people when you see them need help. Alright,
Speaker 1: So let's take another quick break here and we're going
Speaker 1: to get back into what happened to uh Mr Mosley
Speaker 1: and the further effects of this crime after this. So
Speaker 1: a week after this murder, uh Mosley was breaking into
Speaker 1: a house. He's not a good guy, No, he was
Speaker 1: a terrible guy. He was um beyond being a sociopath
Speaker 1: and a psychotic, was of just a burglar and he
Speaker 1: would he was just straight up robbing a house one
Speaker 1: day of a television and one of the neighbors saw
Speaker 1: this called the cops. Cops came and arrested him. No, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: that's not true. What the neighbor. Here's the thing, this
Speaker 1: is the great ironic twist of the Kittie Jane v story.
Speaker 1: He went to a different neighborhood. He was robbing a
Speaker 1: house and the neighbors said, hey, what are you doing?
Speaker 1: And he started to run from the house. The neighbor
Speaker 1: chased him and tackled him and held him until the
Speaker 1: cops came. Oh yeah, he called that's how he went
Speaker 1: down intervention. Yeah yeah, yeah, but ampathy intervention a week later. Yes, okay,
Speaker 1: So at any rate, he calls the cops, he gets arrested,
Speaker 1: and very like, uh, matter of factly says that he
Speaker 1: killed Kitty Genevise. And not only that, but he killed
Speaker 1: supposedly two other women, a woman named Barbara Craylick. Uh.
Speaker 1: Actually she was a girl, she's only fifteen, and then
Speaker 1: a woman named Annie Mae Johnson. And apparently both of
Speaker 1: them had been sexually assaulted. And he was never tried
Speaker 1: for those But um he did plead not guilty by
Speaker 1: reason of insanity, which did not work well. Sentenced to death,
Speaker 1: and by luck of timing, was able to appeal. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the death penalty had gone away from most crimes
Speaker 1: in that time period, and he um was resentenced to
Speaker 1: life in prison. Yes, supposedly the prosecution had withheld some
Speaker 1: evidence about his mental state during his sentencing, so he
Speaker 1: was able to get it reduced. So he was hanging
Speaker 1: out during his time. Um, and he was in attica,
Speaker 1: I believe and he had injured himself and was being
Speaker 1: taken to the hospital, and on the way the way there,
Speaker 1: he got the gun away from the guard who was
Speaker 1: escorting him and took off and for I think five days,
Speaker 1: he basically just the city of Buffalo was in mortal
Speaker 1: fear of the fact that the guy who murdered Kitty
Speaker 1: Geneviez was now on the loose in their town. And
Speaker 1: they were afraid, rightfully, so he raped one woman. When
Speaker 1: the cops closed in on him, he got ahold of
Speaker 1: five people and held him hostage in a standoff that
Speaker 1: lasted for a little while with the FBI before they
Speaker 1: finally got to him. Um, he was bad dude. So
Speaker 1: they sent him back to prison and uh, they said,
Speaker 1: you're not getting out here ever. Yeah, he was later
Speaker 1: a part of the Attica prison riots as well. And Um,
Speaker 1: the one lady that he killed, he burned her alive,
Speaker 1: like the family was upstairs, and he broke into her house,
Speaker 1: raped her, killed her, and burned her alive in the
Speaker 1: home and the house went up in flames. So it
Speaker 1: sounded like he had no He sounded like a true sociopath,
Speaker 1: like he had no Um, not, there's ever reason for
Speaker 1: killing someone, but it was always just at random because
Speaker 1: he wanted to do that. That's a lot what it
Speaker 1: sounds like. It was a self indulgence. So in the documentary,
Speaker 1: UM very powerful scene where the son I'm sorry, the
Speaker 1: little brother of Kitty, who was told through his eyes,
Speaker 1: interviews and sits down with one of the sons of
Speaker 1: Mosley and it's just like, I mean, you cut the
Speaker 1: tension with a knife. Obviously, it's just so like fraught
Speaker 1: with tension, and um he had told his son that
Speaker 1: she was yelling racial lers at him. He also said
Speaker 1: that he was just a getaway driver um for some
Speaker 1: mobster and the Genevese family was related to the crime
Speaker 1: mob family, the Genevese family and none of this stuff
Speaker 1: is true. And the brother was just like a no,
Speaker 1: We're not related to that family at all. We have
Speaker 1: nothing to do with that. And he just gives him
Speaker 1: a look when he talks about the racial slurs, like,
Speaker 1: come on, man, that's not what happened. So it was
Speaker 1: a really really powerful scene of these two guys kind
Speaker 1: of working it out in a way. I didn't see
Speaker 1: them working anything out, oh see, which made it even
Speaker 1: worse for me. I thought there was some between them.
Speaker 1: They kind of came to a nice, nicer place than
Speaker 1: where they started. Did not catch that at all. Maybe
Speaker 1: you just skip forward or something. Maybe I was like,
Speaker 1: I can't take this. Well. The sun was saying, like,
Speaker 1: you know, I think it's you know, we need to
Speaker 1: we need to move you know. The son of was
Speaker 1: saying that they needed to move on from all this,
Speaker 1: and then the brother was saying, I definitely don't you
Speaker 1: know the sins of the father and the sins of
Speaker 1: the sons. Yeah, he said that, so, um, you know,
Speaker 1: I felt I felt like they were better off than
Speaker 1: when they started for having that conversation. I honestly did
Speaker 1: not catch that well regardless. Um Winston Mosley after I
Speaker 1: guess after his second his first escape, the second little
Speaker 1: crime spree in Buffalo, um he when he was captured,
Speaker 1: he he apparently reformed himself. Where he claimed to be reformed.
Speaker 1: He got a degree in prison. Um. He wrote an
Speaker 1: editorial that The New York Times published where he basically said,
Speaker 1: I'm a changed man. And everybody said, look at that.
Speaker 1: It's just about the time your first parole hearing is
Speaker 1: coming up. This is great timing. Uh. He went up
Speaker 1: before the parole board and they said no. Uh. He
Speaker 1: went up before the parole board again, they said no.
Speaker 1: He went up eighteen times. Uh when eighteen times the
Speaker 1: parole board said no. Yeah. I think the last one
Speaker 1: was just a couple of years before he died. But
Speaker 1: he died in two dozen sixteen, A d one in prison. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he Uh, the brother tried to get an interview
Speaker 1: with him, and he said no, that he didn't want
Speaker 1: to be exploited anymore. And you could just feel this
Speaker 1: brother's pain of like really wanting to try and to
Speaker 1: talk him into it again. Um. And that basically the
Speaker 1: people that that were the go between like, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: you can try, we can't keep you, but uh, he's
Speaker 1: not gonna change his mind. Right. So he never got
Speaker 1: that interview. Uh, but I feel like he got. I
Speaker 1: don't think he was looking for answers. I mean in
Speaker 1: the documentary, he went back to many of these apartment
Speaker 1: windows just to look at what their vantage point might
Speaker 1: have been. He got an actress to recreate, um, what
Speaker 1: the screaming would have sounded like, uh from down there
Speaker 1: on the street, which was very chilling scene. And I
Speaker 1: don't know that he was looking for like you said
Speaker 1: he was at odds with his family. Of times you
Speaker 1: could tell the one little brother was like, man, this
Speaker 1: is hard on all of us, so you need to stop. UM.
Speaker 1: But I don't think he was necessarily looking for the
Speaker 1: closure in that I want to find out for sure
Speaker 1: if these people could have stopped it. I think the
Speaker 1: closure comes more in the journey of learning about his
Speaker 1: sister and learning as much as he can about this case.
Speaker 1: It's really interesting. It was very interesting, um the two
Speaker 1: four Times article and then now this, this documentary has
Speaker 1: definitely exonerated Q Gardens as a whole. They said, now
Speaker 1: there's there's way more nuance to this, there's way more UM.
Speaker 1: But two things to people that have um not been exonerated.
Speaker 1: Our guy named Joseph Fink and a guy named Carl Ross.
Speaker 1: Carl Ross was the guy who lived at the top
Speaker 1: of the vestibule who opened his door. The ironic thing
Speaker 1: about Carl Ross is, if you notice it says thirty
Speaker 1: eight witnesses, thirty seven did nothing. The thirty that that
Speaker 1: that last thirty eight witness that the Times was referring
Speaker 1: to was Carl Ross. They said, he's the one who
Speaker 1: called the police. He called the police, like long after
Speaker 1: Kitty Genovese was dead. Yeah, so he was, Actually he
Speaker 1: was actually, I don't want to say celebrated or whatever,
Speaker 1: but he was exonerated initially by this Times article when
Speaker 1: it turns out that he was one of the two
Speaker 1: people who could have done something and didn't. The other
Speaker 1: one was Joseph Fink, who saw the initial attack from
Speaker 1: his vantage point in the elevator. He ran the elevator
Speaker 1: in the Mowbray apartments across the street, and he um
Speaker 1: apparently saw what was happening and left his his elevator
Speaker 1: and went to bed and that was that. But again,
Speaker 1: it seems like the overall feeling is okay. Other than
Speaker 1: those two guys, everybody else is fine. I just disagree
Speaker 1: with that. I think that there's a lot more that
Speaker 1: people could have done that didn't, And I don't think
Speaker 1: it's a I just don't think that everybody's off the
Speaker 1: hook for that. Yep, you got anything else? No, man. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about Kitty Genevese, just
Speaker 1: search the Internet. There's a lot about her, but be
Speaker 1: careful what you read because it's all over the place. Frankly. Uh.
Speaker 1: And since I said internet, It's time for a listener mail,
Speaker 1: uh fish fraud follow up. Hey, guys, recently began began
Speaker 1: a job as a marine fisheries observer for the Department
Speaker 1: of Fishing, Game and the Bearing Sea, and just listen
Speaker 1: to your fish fraud episode. Each season, a percentage of
Speaker 1: vessels fish fishing here at least are randomly selected have
Speaker 1: an observer on board to monitor the operations and buy
Speaker 1: catch that come up in their pots or nets. The
Speaker 1: presence of an observer is admittedly a bit of a
Speaker 1: drag for this fisherman. We have to put up with
Speaker 1: us skinny nerds ll L E type that uh. We
Speaker 1: are generally a great deterrent of any mischief at sea.
Speaker 1: But from what I have seen, most of the fishermen
Speaker 1: are real, shar honest folks who know what they're doing.
Speaker 1: Of course, this is only a small portion of all
Speaker 1: the vessels on the water. Isn't going to solve that
Speaker 1: problem by any means, But what you'd like to know
Speaker 1: that there is some coverage on fishing, fishing, vessels and processors.
Speaker 1: Thanks for all the laughs, my dudes. That is from
Speaker 1: Kevin h Alexandra Witz in Olympia, Washington. It's a lot.
Speaker 1: Kevin had no idea, did you that these people did that?
Speaker 1: But there's basically like a sky Marshall program fighting fish
Speaker 1: fraud on the high seas. Yeah, we talked about that,
Speaker 1: we did. Yeah, I don't remember that. Yeah, we were
Speaker 1: just like, it's just so infrequent and random that you know,
Speaker 1: what's what good is it doing? And it sounds like
Speaker 1: he agrees in some ways, but still have fun out
Speaker 1: there on the high seas. Don't get seasick. Uh. If
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with this, like Kevin did,
Speaker 1: you can tweet to us that that's y s K podcast.
Speaker 1: You can join us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know, Uh, you can send us any all
Speaker 1: the Stuff podcast at houstuffworks dot com and there's always
Speaker 1: join us ter home on the web. Stuff you Should
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