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Speaker 2: Aloha everyone, Welcome back to Facing Evil from Tenderfoot TV
Speaker 2: and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3: We are your hosts. I'm Roscha Piccuerero and I'm Evet
Speaker 3: Genteel and always we are here with our amazing producer,
Speaker 3: mister Trevor Young.
Speaker 1: Hey, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: So today we're talking about a case that involves an
Speaker 2: openly gay woman and she was out in the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 2: which was not the norm back then. This is pre Stonewall,
Speaker 2: and she, you know, unfortunately was murdered. And it just
Speaker 2: makes me feel being an out and proud lesbian in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two, how fortunate.
Speaker 4: How blessed, how privileged I am.
Speaker 2: I mean, this past weekend, I was on top of
Speaker 2: the Alaska Airlines Pride float, you know, dancing, and I
Speaker 2: was on television and celebrating being an out and proud lesbian,
Speaker 2: and Kitty didn't get to do that, and it just
Speaker 2: it breaks my heart that she didn't live long enough
Speaker 2: even to see stone Wall, and I think it could
Speaker 2: have been prevented. It was just, it was really, it
Speaker 2: was really humbling for me to be celebrating in Honoluluho
Speaker 2: VII and knowing there's so many people like Kitty who
Speaker 2: weren't able to right.
Speaker 3: So many people who didn't get to live out loud,
Speaker 3: you know, in the way that they would have liked.
Speaker 3: And with that being said, Trevor, will you please to
Speaker 3: us through titday's case.
Speaker 5: Kitty Genevieves was almost home when she heard a man's
Speaker 5: footsteps behind her. She ran, but the man caught up
Speaker 5: to her and stabbed her twice in the back. She screamed,
Speaker 5: oh God, I've been stabbed.
Speaker 3: Have mark surrounded near the chalk lined the outline and
Speaker 3: the yellow tape around the area.
Speaker 5: The idea that New Yorkers watched and did nothing, didn't
Speaker 5: lift a finger to help this poor dying girl stuck
Speaker 5: in the public mind.
Speaker 1: But it was a lot more complicated than that. Kitty
Speaker 1: Genovese was a twenty eight year old woman who was
Speaker 1: killed on the streets of Queens, New York in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty four. Late the night of March thirteenth, Kitty was
Speaker 1: walking back to her apartment when a man stabbed her repeatedly.
Speaker 1: He initially fled when a witness called out, but returned
Speaker 1: ten minutes later to finish the job. A New York
Speaker 1: Times story made Kitty Jenevez's story infamous with the headline
Speaker 1: quote thirty eight who saw murder, didn't call the police
Speaker 1: end quote. This story that neighbors witnessed the murder of
Speaker 1: a young woman but did nothing to help was so
Speaker 1: enduring that people began calling callous in action in the
Speaker 1: face of a stranger's peril quote Geneve syndrome or the
Speaker 1: bystander effect. But as it turns out, the real story
Speaker 1: of the life and death of Kitty Genove's is a
Speaker 1: lot more complicated. And so who was Kitty Jeneved's, how
Speaker 1: did her murder actually go down? And what does the
Speaker 1: story tell us about the so called bystander effect.
Speaker 2: So I'd say probably about a year ago or so,
Speaker 2: I was with my dear friend, mister David Hand in
Speaker 2: New York City, and I was talking to him about
Speaker 2: what Yvette and I were doing, and that was before
Speaker 2: we knew you were going to be with us, Trevor,
Speaker 2: and I asked if David could help, if he could
Speaker 2: tell me any stories in the LGBTQ plus community that
Speaker 2: he thought needed to be told, and Kitty Genovas was
Speaker 2: the one he told me I had to look into.
Speaker 2: And the more that Yvet and I have dove into it,
Speaker 2: the more my heart breaks when any life is taken,
Speaker 2: you know, But the way that she was treated, and
Speaker 2: even her partner was treated and all the things, it's
Speaker 2: just it's so much, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I had not heard about this story until
Speaker 3: you know, you mentioned it, and again I took a
Speaker 3: deep dive, and you know, I love my documentaries, so
Speaker 3: I watched The Witness and we'll get into that later on.
Speaker 3: But yeah, this is another yet sad story.
Speaker 2: Have you ever heard about Kitty, Trevor, Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's interesting. The way that I learned about Kitty is
Speaker 1: actually the way that I think probably a lot of
Speaker 1: people inadvertently learned about Kitty, which was in a psychology
Speaker 1: class maybe in high school or college. So anybody who
Speaker 1: takes psych one oh one may actually read about her
Speaker 1: murder because of this so called bystander effect. Again, this
Speaker 1: is the idea of a group of people doing nothing
Speaker 1: to really help a stranger when there's a distressful situation
Speaker 1: because they assume that everybody else is going to help
Speaker 1: out right, like, oh, I'm not going to do anything
Speaker 1: because so and so will jump in. But then nobody
Speaker 1: jumps in because again they assume somebody else will do it,
Speaker 1: and as a result, the situation doesn't get solved. So
Speaker 1: this is actually an interesting case for human psychology that
Speaker 1: people have looked at over the years. So I actually
Speaker 1: did read about this case in college and when we
Speaker 1: started looking into it and researching, and I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember that. So it's an interesting idea. However, there's
Speaker 1: this kind of widespread no as a result of it
Speaker 1: being included in psychology classes that when Kitty was murdered,
Speaker 1: she was killed out on the street and nobody did
Speaker 1: anything to help that nobody chimed into stop. And that's
Speaker 1: actually not entirely true, which is something we'll get into.
Speaker 3: So let's get down to who Kitty Genovese really was
Speaker 3: and what really happened to her.
Speaker 2: Okay, so Kitty genoves like we said at the top,
Speaker 2: of the episode was an out lesbian. And I say
Speaker 2: that with a grain of salt, right, because it's not
Speaker 2: like you could be completely out in the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 2: I imagine, you know, just because doing so would have absolutely,
Speaker 2: you know, jeopardized maybe her job, her living situation. I
Speaker 2: mean you could be fired. I mean, you could be
Speaker 2: fired for being gay not that long ago. I mean,
Speaker 2: let's be real, so you know, most likely you were
Speaker 2: going to be ostracized just for being yourself. It was
Speaker 2: a very very different time back then, right.
Speaker 3: It's very true. You know, there are those people who
Speaker 3: were living out loud, but you still were hiding it
Speaker 3: most of the time.
Speaker 2: Right, you talk about your roommate quote unquote or sign
Speaker 2: of the times, I guess, yeah.
Speaker 1: And just a quick disclaimer before we get any further
Speaker 1: into the episode. You know, we have been mentioning the
Speaker 1: fact that Kitty was a gay woman, closeted or otherwise. However,
Speaker 1: there's no necessarily clear connection between her murder and her
Speaker 1: sexual orientation, So I just want to be careful that
Speaker 1: we're not drying a line between the fact that she
Speaker 1: was murdered because she is gay. I think that happens
Speaker 1: to be more a matter of circumstance that has, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe no connection, right. Yeah, So just just kind of
Speaker 1: pointing out who she was as a person is the
Speaker 1: value in talking about her being gay. Right, So let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit more about Kitty. She was born
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn, New York, the eldest of five kids in
Speaker 1: a Catholic family in the Park Slope neighborhood. She attended
Speaker 1: an all girls school, where she was described as quote
Speaker 1: mature with a good disposition, whatever that means. And in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty four, her mother moved the family to Connecticut,
Speaker 1: everyone except for Kitty, actually, and the reason that Kitty
Speaker 1: did not move is because she had actually witnessed a
Speaker 1: murder in the streets of New York and was incredibly
Speaker 1: concerned for her family safety.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's such an irony, right, It's just so crazy,
Speaker 3: because you know, her mother moved because of what she saw.
Speaker 3: And now the story that we're about to tell, and
Speaker 3: as we know, Kitty stayed behind.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, Like the idea there was to make the
Speaker 1: family more safe, but she ended up staying behind in
Speaker 1: a situation that was less safe.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, and the other thing is too, she was nineteen
Speaker 2: at the time that her family moved back to Connecticut.
Speaker 2: So she didn't really want to leave. I wouldn't want
Speaker 2: to leave either. It's you know, New York was her home.
Speaker 2: She didn't want to go anywhere.
Speaker 1: She's an adult.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're nineteen, right, You have so many friends, you
Speaker 3: have so many relationships that you've established. It's hard to
Speaker 3: just pack up and leave.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So Kitty's living in Queens, New York. She's working
Speaker 1: double shifts at a bar called EV's Eleventh Hour. She's
Speaker 1: actually managing it at the point of her murder, no
Speaker 1: longer just a bartender, and she's saving up money because
Speaker 1: she wants to eventually open up her own Italian restaurant.
Speaker 3: Reportedly, So, I mean, as you can tell, like, she's
Speaker 3: a go getter. And she's also living with a girlfriend
Speaker 3: at this point. Yes, I say had a girlfriend, but
Speaker 3: you know that was a risk at the time. But obviously,
Speaker 3: you know, people just assumed that they were roommates, right.
Speaker 2: Right, quote unquote roommates. Yeah, yeah, that was the thing
Speaker 2: you said back then. Yeah, but her roommate aka girlfriend,
Speaker 2: her name was Mary Ann Zelonko, and the two of
Speaker 2: them shared an apartment in the neighborhood of Q Gardens
Speaker 2: in Queens, New York. And again it's the early nineteen sixties,
Speaker 2: so they do end up renting the apartment under the
Speaker 2: guise of being just platonic roommates.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I wanted to read something really quick from
Speaker 1: apiece the Chicago Tribune did in twenty seventeen where they
Speaker 1: interviewed Marianne Zelanko, and I think it gives us a
Speaker 1: small interesting peak into the kind of relationship they had.
Speaker 1: Quote now looking back at two young lovers through senior
Speaker 1: citizen eyes, Zelanko measures her adoration for Genevese in numerous ways.
Speaker 1: Love was their regular Monday night sojourns to Greets, a
Speaker 1: club where they would drink beer and listen to folk music.
Speaker 1: It was Wednesday evening meals at Hofbrow, the German restaurant
Speaker 1: down the block. It was the late night chats and
Speaker 1: the intimate kisses and the idea that here is a
Speaker 1: person you can spend your life with. End quote.
Speaker 2: It makes my gayheart so happy, like yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: just like all the way in twenty seventeen, you know,
Speaker 2: after she was murdered in the nineteen sixties, like there's
Speaker 2: still you know that love there it's just it's beautiful.
Speaker 2: Just to hear little simple moments like that is just
Speaker 2: really really sweet. And I love that Kitty had that
Speaker 2: with mary Anne.
Speaker 3: Right, it was a genuine love story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So moving on with the story here. On March
Speaker 1: thirteenth of nineteen sixty four, Kitty is bartending and her
Speaker 1: shift ends. She got into her red Fiat to drive
Speaker 1: home to the apartment where her girlfriend was sleeping. And
Speaker 1: that is the last time that anyone ever saw Kitty
Speaker 1: Genoves alive. And we'll discuss what happened right after we
Speaker 1: take a quick ad break.
Speaker 2: At around two thirty am on March thirteenth of nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty four, Kitty Genoves her bartending shift and headed home
Speaker 2: to the apartment that she shared with her girlfriend, Mary Anne.
Speaker 2: At a stoplight on Hoover Avenue, she was spotted by
Speaker 2: a man named Winston Moseley. He was sitting in his
Speaker 2: parked Chevy corvat. Moseley then began following Kitty home. So
Speaker 2: Kitty parked her car in the Kew Gardens Long Island
Speaker 2: Railroad station parking lot. And this wasn't very far from
Speaker 2: her apartment, right, Trevor.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's super close. So only about one hundred feet
Speaker 1: from the entrance to her apartment building and just next
Speaker 1: door to another building across the street that will come
Speaker 1: into play here in a minute. So you can actually
Speaker 1: find good maps of all this online. People have mapped
Speaker 1: it out so you can get a better understanding of
Speaker 1: how this went down. But really this was her block, right,
Speaker 1: she parks here all the time.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: In fact, I was texting with my friend David, who
Speaker 2: is the one that told us about this case, this morning,
Speaker 2: and he sent me a picture of the map where
Speaker 2: Kitty lived and where she was killed and where he
Speaker 2: currently lives, and it's literally a block apart, like he
Speaker 2: drew it for me, and I'm like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: I'm you know, her history is still very rich there,
Speaker 2: so needless to say with all of that, you know,
Speaker 2: she didn't have very far to go, Like she was
Speaker 2: literally one hundred feet to safety.
Speaker 3: She was on her block.
Speaker 2: She was on her block, She was at home. But
Speaker 2: when she got out of her car, she presumably noticed
Speaker 2: Moseley for the first time, so he had gotten out
Speaker 2: of his car at this point and was following her
Speaker 2: close behind, carrying a hunting knife.
Speaker 3: I can't even imagine that like the fear that she had,
Speaker 3: or that anybody would have. That's anybody's worst nightmare, that
Speaker 3: somebody is following you and they have a knife coming
Speaker 3: after you. That's terrifying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so terrifying. And so she immediately starts running, but
Speaker 2: Moseley quickly catches up, and it's at this time that
Speaker 2: he stabs her twice in the back. She of course
Speaker 2: screams and reports very on what she said exactly, but
Speaker 2: it's often been reported she was streaming something like quote,
Speaker 2: oh my god, he stabbed me. Help me end quote.
Speaker 2: So she was heard by bystanders.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's where a lot of I think misconceptions
Speaker 1: come from in this case. So the first person we
Speaker 1: know about who actually heard her was a neighbor named
Speaker 1: Robert Moser. So Mosher apparently sense that something was going on,
Speaker 1: some sort of kerfuffle or fight outside. He looked out
Speaker 1: of his window from the seventh floor, but according to him,
Speaker 1: he couldn't see anything that was happening. It was a
Speaker 1: very dark night by all reports, and he did, according
Speaker 1: to him, yell out of his window the words quote,
Speaker 1: leave that girl alone. So I guess he could deduce
Speaker 1: that there was a girl involved. In some sort of
Speaker 1: attack outside, and I guess maybe yelling was going to
Speaker 1: scare this gentleman.
Speaker 3: Away, right right, That is exactly what happened. But there
Speaker 3: were also other neighbors that heard this same commotion as well.
Speaker 3: But you know, again, they're right next to a bar
Speaker 3: and they're used to, you know, when the bar shuts
Speaker 3: down that kind of people are drunk and there's some
Speaker 3: kind of commotion going on. Some of these people just
Speaker 3: assumed it was that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And later when Sint Moseley testified that Robert Moser's
Speaker 2: yelling actually did scare him away, at least temporarily, Moseley
Speaker 2: ran back to his car and drove off. So, of course,
Speaker 2: Kitty was seriously injured by her two stab wounds, and
Speaker 2: she was able to crawl towards the back of the
Speaker 2: apartment building. And you know this this is significant because
Speaker 2: it was a place where you know, she couldn't be
Speaker 2: seen by any witnesses. So where she crawled the back
Speaker 2: of the building, yeah, yeah, nobody could see her.
Speaker 1: It was essentially an alleyway.
Speaker 3: Right right. They call it like a what is it
Speaker 3: called like a vestibule or something, Yeah, like a back alley.
Speaker 3: But you know, The thing about it is like when
Speaker 3: we were just talking earlier, and that scream when she
Speaker 3: got stabbed, like that is a blood curdling, curdling scream,
Speaker 3: you know. So for you know, the neighbors that said
Speaker 3: it was, you know, just some type of commotion. I
Speaker 3: think that scream.
Speaker 4: Alone should have set off all the bells and whistles.
Speaker 3: Should have like made everybody rush, you know, and called
Speaker 3: the police.
Speaker 2: So Mosley ends up coming back, and by this time
Speaker 2: she's gotten into an entrance around the back of the building,
Speaker 2: but of course she's severely injured from the stab wounds,
Speaker 2: and she did get to a door, but it was locked,
Speaker 2: so she could not get inside to safety. And it
Speaker 2: was at this point that Mosley stabbed her several more times.
Speaker 2: He raped her, and then he took all of the
Speaker 2: money in her wallet.
Speaker 1: What's a I guess peculiar to me about this is
Speaker 1: that he seemed to be on the prowl for Kitty
Speaker 1: in particular. I don't know if that's true, but the
Speaker 1: way that the story has been told is that he
Speaker 1: was sitting in his car and then the second that
Speaker 1: she got out and started walking to her apartment, you know,
Speaker 1: just a block away he got out and started you know,
Speaker 1: following her and tracking her down. So I'm curious if
Speaker 1: he knew kitty. Yeah, what was his intended goal? Initially
Speaker 1: it was this something like a robbery got wrong. Was
Speaker 1: he looking for any woman that night? Yeah, it's all
Speaker 1: very mysterious to me.
Speaker 3: It's so true, Trevor. I put my hat on, you know,
Speaker 3: like my crime hat on, trying to figure that out
Speaker 3: as well, because you think about when the first act
Speaker 3: happened and the guy yelled at him, right, you would
Speaker 3: think that if it was just some random person like
Speaker 3: they would just they would run off and they wouldn't
Speaker 3: come back, but to wait ten more minutes and then
Speaker 3: come back right and viciously do this to her. Like again,
Speaker 3: those questions go through your head. Did he know her?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 3: Was it a hit or something? You know, like your
Speaker 3: mind just starts to wonder of what was the motive
Speaker 3: behind it?
Speaker 1: Are Yeah, Yeah, the coming back to finish the job
Speaker 1: angle is very unusual. It's not often that you hear
Speaker 1: see people do that, right, So he was dedicated enough
Speaker 1: that you know, he was willing to risk being you know,
Speaker 1: attacked or intervened or having the cops called on him
Speaker 1: to come finish this job. Yeah, so you know, after
Speaker 1: he does this, he leaves, and this is the point
Speaker 1: at which her neighbors finally come to her. Aid. So,
Speaker 1: there was a woman named Sophie Ferrar who lived across
Speaker 1: the hall from Kitty and Mary Anne, and apparently at
Speaker 1: three am she got a frantic phone call from a
Speaker 1: neighbor in another building who knew that Kitty was in
Speaker 1: some kind of distress. I don't know how they knew this,
Speaker 1: but they did so. Anyways, Sophie Farrar leaps up, races downstairs,
Speaker 1: and she goes through this alleyway to reach the back entrance,
Speaker 1: just as mosely as lee the scene.
Speaker 3: This is definitely a different story than the popular myth
Speaker 3: right that no one helped Kitty. That this article right
Speaker 3: that came out right this moment right here completely changes
Speaker 3: everything because she wasn't alone and someone did come to
Speaker 3: help her.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess the sad reality is that it wasn't
Speaker 1: soon enough, right, that somebody probably should have come and
Speaker 1: helped sooner, as you guys were saying, as that first
Speaker 1: blood curdling scream came out, that should have been you know,
Speaker 1: right when somebody jumped on this had somebody gotten there
Speaker 1: sooner before you know, Mosley made the decision that it
Speaker 1: was safe enough to come back ten minutes later and
Speaker 1: finish the job. Yeah, you know, maybe this wouldn't have happened.
Speaker 1: Maybe after those first two stab wounds, she would have
Speaker 1: been fine after some initial medical attention, right. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that's I think probably the real tragedy here. But according
Speaker 1: to Fararar here, they were awoken earlier by kitty screams.
Speaker 1: But according to them, it was three in the morning.
Speaker 1: Many had been asleep, of course, and they were super disoriented.
Speaker 1: It was very dark, like I said earlier, so the
Speaker 1: Ferrara said they looked out the window, but they didn't
Speaker 1: see anything, so they went back to sleep, and it
Speaker 1: wasn't until they got this phone call from a neighbor
Speaker 1: a few minutes later that they finally decided to take action.
Speaker 1: So I think you can't look at this case in
Speaker 1: a vacuum and just say that people knew this was
Speaker 1: happening and didn't do anything. You have to take into
Speaker 1: account the fact that it was three in the morning
Speaker 1: and most people were sleeping through this, the fact that
Speaker 1: it was like a bar area in New York City
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties. I'm sure you heard stuff like
Speaker 1: this often. There are other factors to consider as to
Speaker 1: why people didn't respond to this. You know, I'm not
Speaker 1: saying it's okay, and I do say, of course, that
Speaker 1: had people actually responded sooner, again, this might not have happened.
Speaker 1: But you know, the reality is that who knows, we
Speaker 1: might have done the same thing if this was happening
Speaker 1: at three am outside our house, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it is definitely something to consider. So Sophie
Speaker 2: Ferrar ended up getting to the scene having run through
Speaker 2: those back alleyways, but was This is the part that's
Speaker 2: super super sad to me. She was further delayed in
Speaker 2: actually getting to Kitty because Kitty's body was blocking the door.
Speaker 2: She was slumped up against the door on the inside,
Speaker 2: so she couldn't open it because her body was lying there.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: When she finally got the door open, she saw Kitty,
Speaker 3: you know, sitting there and in all of the blood,
Speaker 3: and she immediately yelled, you know, for another neighbor to
Speaker 3: call the police. And that's when she just cradled her
Speaker 3: and she, I mean as best as she could. She
Speaker 3: tried to comfort her, you know, in the last minutes
Speaker 3: of her life.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's so sad.
Speaker 2: You know, an ambulance ended up arriving, but you know,
Speaker 2: she ended up dying on the way to the hospital,
Speaker 2: you know. And that's where the story of Kitty Genove's
Speaker 2: life ends, and sadly, that's when the myth is born, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So there's some aftermath here to talk about, and
Speaker 1: we will do that after we take another quick break.
Speaker 3: Around four a m. The morning of March sixteenth, nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty four, mary Anne Zelonko is awoken from her sleep
Speaker 3: by two police officers knocking on her door. She you know,
Speaker 3: actually had heard none of the commotion outside the apartment building,
Speaker 3: but years later she told reporters she was in complete
Speaker 3: and utter shock when that not came and she had
Speaker 3: to go and identify her girlfriend's body.
Speaker 2: So this part of the story is what breaks my
Speaker 2: heart even more, right, And mary Anne was offered little
Speaker 2: to no comfort by the officers and they ended up
Speaker 2: taking her to the police station and Marianne was questioned
Speaker 2: for six hours. According to one report quote, she was
Speaker 2: grilled by at least three different detectives during that time,
Speaker 2: and the questioning took an inappropriate turn, focusing on their
Speaker 2: sex life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess I wish this was more surprising, but
Speaker 1: I think this kind of approach to a case like
Speaker 1: this was probably pretty common at the time unfortunately. And
Speaker 1: I know the questioning of the neighbors and the days
Speaker 1: that followed also were centered on the fact that this
Speaker 1: was a lesbian couple and that that was somehow relevant
Speaker 1: to the fact that she was murdered, which I think, again,
Speaker 1: as we said at the beginning of the episode, has
Speaker 1: no relevance. Yeah, so it's the nineteen sixties, that right,
Speaker 1: So it's probably the first thing they're thinking about, yep, Like.
Speaker 2: Are they questioning her because they think she had something
Speaker 2: to do with it, or that Kitty was murdered for
Speaker 2: being a lesbian?
Speaker 3: Like I think it's a little bit of both if
Speaker 3: you think about it, you know, because they always suspect
Speaker 3: you know, whoever's close right to the victim at first,
Speaker 3: so I'm sure that was in the back of their minds.
Speaker 3: And then on top of them probably not approving, you know,
Speaker 3: of her lifestyle.
Speaker 1: M Yeah, I mean, if nothing else, it reveals that
Speaker 1: the police were, you know, more concerned with her fringe
Speaker 1: lifestyle than they were with solving her murder perhaps, so
Speaker 1: that's maybe where her sexuality plays a contextual purpose in
Speaker 1: this case, right. So Unfortunately it didn't really end there.
Speaker 1: Mary Anne went to Kitty's funeral only to have her family,
Speaker 1: that is, Kitty's family, just refused to acknowledge her Mary Anne.
Speaker 1: And then a few days later, Winston Moseley was arrested
Speaker 1: as he tried to steal a television set from a
Speaker 1: nearby neighborhood. After this arrest, he apparently confessed to Kitty's murder,
Speaker 1: which is surprising. Yeah, so a little bit about Winston Mosley.
Speaker 1: He was a twenty nine year old man who lived
Speaker 1: in Ozone Park, which is basically the same neighborhood where
Speaker 1: he was arrested. He was married with three children, and
Speaker 1: he worked as a tab operator, which means that he
Speaker 1: would punch tabs in cards which are used in computers
Speaker 1: at the time, and he actually didn't have a criminal
Speaker 1: record before this point. Still, he told police that he
Speaker 1: had committed thirty to forty robberies along with the murders
Speaker 1: he had confessed to already, so in addition to Kitty's murder,
Speaker 1: he had also killed a woman named Annie May Johnson
Speaker 1: a few weeks before by shooting her and setting her
Speaker 1: on fire, like.
Speaker 3: This is just you know, beyond I mean, we go
Speaker 3: back to psychopath, right, and I just point out that
Speaker 3: Annie May Johnson was black. You know, so Kitty was
Speaker 3: Italian American. Annie May Johnson was African American. He also
Speaker 3: had an IQ of one thirty five, and he was
Speaker 3: a very like small frame.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 3: I go back to thinking about George Odell and just
Speaker 3: doctor Jekyll, mister Hyde.
Speaker 1: It's interesting that he supposedly has gotten away with thirty
Speaker 1: to forty crimes and or murders without ever being discovered
Speaker 1: up until this point, right, Like, to me, that suggests
Speaker 1: somebody who is very probably cunning, knows what they're doing,
Speaker 1: knows how to calculate tricks, very calculated exactly. So it
Speaker 1: could be this was like a low key serial killer
Speaker 1: that was hiding in the shadows this whole time. And
Speaker 1: for sure of that, you know, as you were alluding to,
Speaker 1: it could be he had some sort of target on
Speaker 1: marginalized people. I don't know that for sure. I'm just speculating,
Speaker 1: but you know, based on the track record that you
Speaker 1: were laying out, it's very possible and that very much
Speaker 1: falls in line with them of a lot of serial
Speaker 1: killers at the time, right, So I don't know, maybe
Speaker 1: there's something more to look at there in the future.
Speaker 1: Moving forward with his track record, he also confessed to
Speaker 1: the murder of a fifteen year old named Barbara Kralik,
Speaker 1: whose murder he was not charged with, incidentally, because apparently
Speaker 1: somebody else had already confessed to that crime. Right.
Speaker 3: And this is just this is so odd to me
Speaker 3: because he's just confessing to all of these crimes. But
Speaker 3: like you just said, right, he's never been convicted. It's
Speaker 3: so bizarre on so many levels.
Speaker 4: He wants the credit.
Speaker 1: Maybe again, that's another serial killer trait, right. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you guys have ever read the writings of
Speaker 1: John Douglas, the famous FBI profialer, but he finds that
Speaker 1: that is something that is very common in serial killers
Speaker 1: of the sixties and seventies. So anyhow, on June eighth,
Speaker 1: Mosley's trial begins and he played it not guilty by
Speaker 1: a reason of insanity. Not the first time we've seen this, right,
Speaker 1: And then after seven hours of deliberation, the jury returned,
Speaker 1: of course, with a pretty straightforward guilty verdict.
Speaker 2: Needless to say, it is good that he is convicted,
Speaker 2: and a few days later, Mosely is sentenced to death.
Speaker 2: Mosley doesn't even react to this, but the audience in
Speaker 2: the courtroom collapse in cheers. The judge ends up ordering
Speaker 2: them to remain calm, but he also says, and this
Speaker 2: is a quote from the judge, although I do not
Speaker 2: believe in capital punishment. When I see a monster like this,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't hesitate to pull the switch myself.
Speaker 3: End quote.
Speaker 1: So he's sentenced and sent to prism. But then three
Speaker 1: years later, in nineteen sixty seven, a court ruled that
Speaker 1: Moseley should have had the chance to argue that he
Speaker 1: was medically insane, and his sentence was then reduced to
Speaker 1: life in prison. So then things take another bad turn.
Speaker 1: As he was being escorted back to prison from a
Speaker 1: hospital in Buffalo where he was being treated for a
Speaker 1: self inflicted injury, he actually escaped, so he beat a
Speaker 1: corrections officer, stole their weapon, and was able to flee.
Speaker 4: And do so much more damage.
Speaker 1: So he ends up going into a vacant house owned
Speaker 1: by an older woman. Three days later, her son Matthew
Speaker 1: and his wife visit the house and Mosley takes them hostage.
Speaker 1: He binds them, and he gags them, and he rapes
Speaker 1: Matthew's wife. He stayed for another hour before fleeing again
Speaker 1: to another home, where he held a mother and daughter
Speaker 1: hostage for a couple hours before he was finally arrested again. Sheez.
Speaker 3: I mean, we can obviously say he is not a
Speaker 3: sympathetic person. It just seems like nothing phases this guy,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, He's just like cold. I
Speaker 3: read something recently and something that Winston Moseley said in
Speaker 3: one of the parorole hearings, and this was years later.
Speaker 3: This is a quote he says, for a victim outside
Speaker 3: a one time or a one hour or a one
Speaker 3: minute affair, but for the person who's caught, it's forever.
Speaker 3: Like it's forever for the victims and their families.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just a type of delusional, psychopathic thinking, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think he probably has some chemical and I don't
Speaker 1: know much about his upbringing, but you know, some sort
Speaker 1: of chemical imbalance that leads his thinking to again lean
Speaker 1: towards psychopathy. I think I think it's more of that coldness,
Speaker 1: you know. I think this person has you know, very
Speaker 1: violent leanings and clearly lacks any empathy whatsoever towards other humans.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like you escape prison and you'd think you'd like
Speaker 2: flee to Mexico and like ghost like live on a
Speaker 2: beach the rest of your life or something. But he
Speaker 2: breaks out and he hurts multiple people.
Speaker 3: He was denied parole and and he died in prison
Speaker 3: at you know, the age of eighty one.
Speaker 2: So meanwhile, what does live on is this myth about
Speaker 2: the murder of Kitty Genovese. What was genuinely, you know,
Speaker 2: so sad at the time is that people came, but
Speaker 2: they came too late, but they did come.
Speaker 4: Her neighbors did.
Speaker 2: Try to help her, as we've gone over during this episode.
Speaker 2: So why did we all learn this myth that thirty
Speaker 2: eight people looked on but didn't help Kitty.
Speaker 1: Well, I think, like most things, it's all about the
Speaker 1: way the message is portrayed by the media right to
Speaker 1: people in the republic. So most of this came from
Speaker 1: a New York Times story published two weeks after the murder,
Speaker 1: and the literal headline was quote thirty eight who saw murder,
Speaker 1: didn't call police end quote. And of course this article
Speaker 1: was riddled with inaccuracies. For example, the piece claimed quote
Speaker 1: for more than half an hour, thirty eight respectable law
Speaker 1: abiding citizens and queens watched a killer stock and stab
Speaker 1: a woman in three separate attacks in Q gardens. Not
Speaker 1: one person telephoned the police during the assault. One witness
Speaker 1: called after the woman was dead. So, as we've said
Speaker 1: this whole episode, very few of those things are true.
Speaker 3: Right, Yes, the thing that really sticks with me about
Speaker 3: this case is when that article was written in the
Speaker 3: New York Times about the thirty eight bystanders that consciously
Speaker 3: affected the masses of people.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: Yes, there are people who don't want to get involved,
Speaker 3: but most importantly people do want to get involved. People
Speaker 3: do want to help their neighbors, and that that is
Speaker 3: the disservice that that particular article led for the masses.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I will say as a trained journalist, obviously getting
Speaker 1: things accurate is in credit important to me, and you know,
Speaker 1: like any journalist, it would bug me when I discover
Speaker 1: in accuracies in well known publications. You know. That said,
Speaker 1: there is a bit of a maybe unintended silver lining
Speaker 1: that was pretty common with media in the mid century
Speaker 1: American publications, which is that they would over dramatize certain
Speaker 1: issues for the sake of scaring people into being better.
Speaker 1: So although this was inaccurate, it did have the effect
Speaker 1: of exposing this kind of issue to people. Even if
Speaker 1: the issue is not this black and white, it can
Speaker 1: certainly be an issue, right that a group of bystanders
Speaker 1: don't do anything because they assume everybody else is going
Speaker 1: to do something. Like again, that's in psychology books. That
Speaker 1: is a thing, right, So now everybody knows about that
Speaker 1: as a thing, and now more people are cautious about that.
Speaker 1: You know, even if their understanding of the issue is flawed, right,
Speaker 1: at least they're to some degree conscious of it. And
Speaker 1: you know, maybe next time that that happens in their neighborhood,
Speaker 1: now that they've read this New York Times article, they
Speaker 1: would know to do something and they wouldn't want to
Speaker 1: be like the people they read about in that news article.
Speaker 1: So I don't know, like it's kind of a double
Speaker 1: edged sword, right, it serves some purpose and then you know,
Speaker 1: kind of flounders on the other side of the coin.
Speaker 1: So just something to consider, right, yep.
Speaker 2: One huge positive thing that came out of this crime.
Speaker 2: And this is exactly why when I was speaking to David,
Speaker 2: my beautiful friend, I knew we had to do this
Speaker 2: story because Kitty Genovese was murdered.
Speaker 4: That actually led to the creation.
Speaker 2: Of what we all now know today as nine to
Speaker 2: one one that didn't exist back then, you know, like
Speaker 2: the New York Times article stated how the thirty eight
Speaker 2: people you know didn't come to her aid, but two
Speaker 2: people did call.
Speaker 4: The police, you know.
Speaker 2: And maybe if we would have had nine one one
Speaker 2: back then, maybe Kitty would have made it.
Speaker 4: Maybe she would have lived.
Speaker 1: Strange to imagine a world without nine one one.
Speaker 2: But yeah, one person who remembered Kitty Genovas before she
Speaker 2: was a victim was really the love of her life
Speaker 2: at the time, her girlfriend, mary Anne Zelanko. In two
Speaker 2: thousand and four, Mary Anne spoke to the like I
Speaker 2: said the Chicago Tribune, and I'm going to quote that
Speaker 2: piece here in trying to do it without tears.
Speaker 4: To Zelonko, Jeno Vase is alive. She is still.
Speaker 2: Standing there in the Manhattan bar where her two first
Speaker 2: met on an early spring day in nineteen sixty three,
Speaker 2: running a hand through her short brown hair while taking
Speaker 2: a drag from the end of a camel cigarette. Jenovas
Speaker 2: was a talkative woman with big brown eyes and infectious
Speaker 2: giggle and a tiny gap but the tip of her
Speaker 2: two front teeth, and the twenty five year old Celanco
Speaker 2: was smitten.
Speaker 3: And this brings us to our Emua always our message
Speaker 3: of hope and healing. And I really think about my
Speaker 3: mom right now, because my mom, I should say. Our
Speaker 3: mom would always say to look for the helpers. So
Speaker 3: our Emua goes out to the good neighbors among us.
Speaker 4: We see you, yes we do.
Speaker 2: And Sophie Ferrar was Kitty Jenno Vese's neighbor. Sophie risked
Speaker 2: her own life by rushing in to save Kitty's life,
Speaker 2: and she cradled the dying woman's head in her lap,
Speaker 2: trying to comfort her in what would be her final
Speaker 2: moments on this earth.
Speaker 3: We can make the largest difference in someone's life alone,
Speaker 3: life saving difference simply by noticing a neighbor helping them
Speaker 3: taking action. That action may be simple, It might just
Speaker 3: be a conversation, just asking someone how are you, how
Speaker 3: is your day? But such kindness, whether it be large
Speaker 3: or small, it makes a big difference.
Speaker 2: And if you are someone who has showed up for
Speaker 2: a neighbor or been kind of a stranger, we see you.
Speaker 3: And we thank you onward and upward emua Ema. Well,
Speaker 3: that is our show for today. We'd love to hear
Speaker 3: what you thought about today's discussion and if there is
Speaker 3: a case that you would like us to cover, find
Speaker 3: us on social media or Facing Evil Pod or email
Speaker 3: us at Facing Evil Pod at Tenderfoot dot tv.
Speaker 2: And one request, if you haven't already, please find us
Speaker 2: on iTunes and give us a review and good rating.
Speaker 2: If you like what we do, your support is always cherished.
Speaker 4: Until next time, Aloha.
Speaker 1: Facing Evil is a production of iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV.
Speaker 1: The show is hosted by Russia Pacuerero in a Vetchentile.
Speaker 1: Matt Frederick and Alex Williams our executive producers on behalf
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio, with producers Trevor Young and Jesse Funk, Donald
Speaker 1: Albright and Payne Lindsay our executive producers on behalf of
Speaker 1: Tenderfoot TV, alongside producer Tracy Kaplan. Our researcher is Claudia Dafrico.
Speaker 1: Original music by Makeup and Vanity Set. Find us on
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