Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's me Josh, and for this week's select
Speaker 1: I've chosen our twenty sixteen episode on the murder of
Speaker 1: Kitty Genevies. Her story is fairly famous. She was murdered
Speaker 1: while an entire apartment block of people watched and did nothing.
Speaker 1: But that's not exactly the real story. Like most things
Speaker 1: in life, there's more to it, and we explained what
Speaker 1: actually happened. We relied a lot on the excellent documentary
Speaker 1: The Witness for this episode, and I highly recommend watching it.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this one.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
Speaker 1: there's Charles w Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry So this
Speaker 1: is Stuff you Should Know podcast True Crime Edition. Actually yeah,
Speaker 1: but so much more than just a single crime. I agreed,
Speaker 1: a crime that echoed throughout a city, throughout the world,
Speaker 1: throughout decades. And it's true, man like, there are very
Speaker 1: few crimes you can point to that had more of
Speaker 1: an impact than the murder of Kitty Genovis.
Speaker 2: Agreed, And there are a lot of true crime podcasts
Speaker 2: out there. We are not trying to become one. No,
Speaker 2: this is just something we do from time to time. Sure,
Speaker 2: as I researched this, and as I watched did you
Speaker 2: watch The Witness the documentary recently.
Speaker 1: On Netflix right now?
Speaker 2: It is HBO documentary, And I was disturbed, And I'm
Speaker 2: glad it finally covered it in the documentary, But I
Speaker 2: was disturbed that Kitty Genevie's and we'll get to her murder,
Speaker 2: but very quickly she was murdered and became the symbol
Speaker 2: for people not helping out.
Speaker 1: Right, what came to be known as bystander apathy or
Speaker 1: the bystander effect that the more people people who are around,
Speaker 1: the less likely anyone is to help.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so she became such a symbol that you never
Speaker 2: hear about Kitty Genevie's and who she was as a person.
Speaker 1: That was one great thing about that documentary. There are
Speaker 1: multiple great things about it, Yeah, but that it really
Speaker 1: talked about her and showed her and yeah, revived her spirit.
Speaker 2: Which I was really looking for because even in researching online,
Speaker 2: it's hard to get a lot of information.
Speaker 1: So some things, some even contemporary articles still aren't mentioning
Speaker 1: that she was gay.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, her own brother who made the documentary didn't
Speaker 2: know that she was gay.
Speaker 1: No, it's true, but it's it's been out since. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure when actually that came out.
Speaker 2: It was just this year.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, so it was fairly new this year, last year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was like in the last five years maybe.
Speaker 2: So in honoring that, why don't we talk a minute
Speaker 2: about Catherine Genevieve's Kitty. Yeah, born in nineteen thirty five
Speaker 2: and Brooke to Vincent and renee Legendavise, Italian American parents.
Speaker 2: And it's weird, I don't see.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Rachel was her mother's name. She was Rachel Petroli
Speaker 2: at first. So they lived in Brooklyn, and she was
Speaker 2: very well loved in school.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she was like the leader of her clique.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And she was apparently a lot of fun and
Speaker 2: a good mimic of her teachers. And she was voted
Speaker 2: class cut up in her senior year. Graduating class. She
Speaker 2: was to an all girls school in Prospect Heights, and
Speaker 2: it was just, by all accounts, this vivacious, fun loving,
Speaker 2: really sweet sweet lady, yeah or girl at that point.
Speaker 1: Her little brother Bill, who ended up making the being
Speaker 1: featured in the documentary The Witness. Yeah, was just in
Speaker 1: love with her. She was just amazing.
Speaker 2: They had a very special relationship.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think she was about thirteen years older than him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: quite a bit, maybe twelve years older. I had a
Speaker 1: sister like that, and like there's a very special relationship.
Speaker 1: There's none of that sibling rivalry. Yeah, they're not old
Speaker 1: enough to be your mother. That's just a it's a
Speaker 1: unique situation to be a younger sibling and to be
Speaker 1: able to inherit like all that worldly wisdom. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: they're going through all their own things and their own
Speaker 1: struggles and their own travails. But to that thirteen year
Speaker 1: old younger brother, yeah, they know everything and they're the
Speaker 1: coolest person walking the planet, and they're the kindest person
Speaker 1: walking the planet because they've lived long enough to like
Speaker 1: figure out some of the major stuff, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, even my own sister is only six years older,
Speaker 2: and we very much had and still have that relationship
Speaker 2: where and she and my brother are great now too.
Speaker 2: But you know, when you're two or three years apart,
Speaker 2: there can be a little bit of the knocking of heads.
Speaker 2: But by the time I came along, I was like,
Speaker 2: you know, my sister was six. It was perfect. I
Speaker 2: was a little baby doll for her. So anyway, that
Speaker 2: was very much the relationship that Kitty had with Bill,
Speaker 2: And it seemed like one of the old older brothers
Speaker 2: always had a little bit of a like, yeah, she
Speaker 2: always liked him better, Yeah, kind of attitude.
Speaker 1: Seemed like everybody kind of knew like she liked Bill
Speaker 1: the most.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which I kind of felt bad for. But that's
Speaker 2: just those family dynamics, man.
Speaker 1: You know. The thing is, whenever you do start to
Speaker 1: kind of talk about somebody who's died, especially someone who's
Speaker 1: died violently and young, it's easy to canonize. Sure, you know,
Speaker 1: I really put them up on a pedestal and forget
Speaker 1: their flaws. And of course I'm sure Kitty had tons
Speaker 1: of flaws, but she didn't seem to have any from
Speaker 1: from what I'm gathering, that were, you know, just terrible
Speaker 1: flaws or that made her like a bad person. She
Speaker 1: seemed like she was a like a overall above average,
Speaker 1: great person.
Speaker 2: Yeah, agreed. So New York was getting too dangerous for
Speaker 2: her family they thought to have all these kids, so
Speaker 2: they moved when she graduated high school to New Canaan, Connecticut.
Speaker 2: And she said, you know what, I'm staying here in
Speaker 2: New York. I'm eighteen now I love it here. She
Speaker 2: got married for a brief time to a guy. Was
Speaker 2: his name Rocco.
Speaker 1: I don't remember his name, it's either.
Speaker 2: Rocky or Roco. And in the documentary Bill tries to
Speaker 2: get in touch with him. He's like, I really because
Speaker 2: he found out she was gay and was like, you know,
Speaker 2: we didn't even know this. I think Rocco can help
Speaker 2: shed some light. And he very respectfully asked for his
Speaker 2: own privacy.
Speaker 1: He said, my relationship with Kitty will remain forever a mystery. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like, that's an oddson it was. I think he
Speaker 1: just didn't want to. I mean, if she was gay
Speaker 1: and they were married for a short time, he either
Speaker 1: didn't know and maybe felt the fool or he did
Speaker 1: know and was maybe trying to do right by her
Speaker 1: in some way. Sure, either way, he didn't want to
Speaker 1: talk about it. Right But she worked as a secretary
Speaker 1: for a little while. She was a waitress for.
Speaker 2: A little while. Eventually she was a bar made bartender
Speaker 2: and then became bar manager at a place in Hollis
Speaker 2: Queen's called EV's Eleventh Hour. That is a great barn well,
Speaker 2: and from all accounts it was one of those wonderful
Speaker 2: neighborhood bars a yeah, where the people were in there
Speaker 2: getting sauced pretty early in the day, and everyone knew everyone,
Speaker 2: and everyone loved Kitty and she helped take care of everybody,
Speaker 2: but was very much an independent kind of firecracker of
Speaker 2: a woman. Drove a red Fiat. Her dad used to
Speaker 2: tease her about, like when you're going to find the
Speaker 2: right guy. She was like, I make more money than
Speaker 2: any guy I would go out with. I don't need that,
Speaker 2: which is I guess nineteen sixties for dadam gay?
Speaker 1: I'm gay?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I can't say it. But she did make
Speaker 2: pretty good doe as the bar manager. And then in
Speaker 2: March nineteen sixty three she met a woman named Marianne
Speaker 2: Zelonko at Swing Rendezvous. It was an underground lesbian bar
Speaker 2: in the village, and they moved in together shortly thereafter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Kitty actually used to bring mary Anne home
Speaker 1: with her to visit, but her family was all like, well,
Speaker 1: they're just good friends and roommates, right, It's the sixties, right,
Speaker 1: the early sixties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And there's an audio interview with her in that documentary.
Speaker 2: That's really touching.
Speaker 1: Hm.
Speaker 2: She didn't want to be on camera, but Bill was
Speaker 2: able to speak to her. And I think what was
Speaker 2: so compelling about this documentary was that he was It
Speaker 2: was a search of a man looking for closure.
Speaker 1: It's a harrowing sometimes almost unbearable to watch.
Speaker 2: Yeah, search. It was tough.
Speaker 1: I mean, like he's had odds with his family here there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he he's just just doing things where if you watch
Speaker 1: it in the context of the documentary and you follow
Speaker 1: along the documentary, it all makes utter and complete sense. Right,
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. Yeah, and there was a
Speaker 1: camera following him along while he was doing it. I
Speaker 1: was like, I couldn't have done half of it. Oh,
Speaker 1: I know, you know, he really he just at one
Speaker 1: point he calls it an obsession, but it's not. He
Speaker 1: doesn't come off as.
Speaker 2: Obsessed, right, agreed, you know? All right, So let's detail
Speaker 2: the crime and then we will take a break after that.
Speaker 2: How does that sound?
Speaker 1: Yeah? All right?
Speaker 2: So flash forward to March thirteenth, nineteen sixty four. It's
Speaker 2: three point fifteen in the morning, and Kitty geneviez Is,
Speaker 2: as she often did, was making her way home from
Speaker 2: work late at night as a bar manager, and was
Speaker 2: being trailed by a man, a man by the name
Speaker 2: of Winston Moseley.
Speaker 1: Yes, who is definitely the villain of this story, but
Speaker 1: is not the only one. It will turn out, right.
Speaker 1: So Kitty was twenty eight and at the time she
Speaker 1: was killed, and Winston, her killer, was twenty nine, just
Speaker 1: turned twenty nine, I think like a week or so before.
Speaker 1: And I think he said this is March thirteenth, Yeah,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was married with a couple of kids.
Speaker 1: Yeah, his wife, Elizabeth worked the night shift. She was
Speaker 1: a hospital nurse, and Winston's mother stayed at home with
Speaker 1: the kids. So he basically said, you know, oh, my
Speaker 1: own house. I've got a great job operating computers. No
Speaker 1: one even knows what I'm supposed to be doing with
Speaker 1: him yet, but I'm making money doing it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He was a smart guy.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna indulge myself. I'm gonna go out and
Speaker 1: stalk women and murder them in my spare time. That's
Speaker 1: what I'm gonna do. So that's what he was doing
Speaker 1: on this night. He was cruising around looking for a
Speaker 1: woman to kill.
Speaker 2: Basically, Yeah, that was his direct quote in question. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I was looking for a woman to kill.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So he saw at a believe a red light,
Speaker 1: this little red Fiat convertible caught his eye and there
Speaker 1: was Kittie driving. So he started to follow her and
Speaker 1: she parked, and she parked in the parking lot for
Speaker 1: the Long Island Railway, which the parking lot went backed
Speaker 1: up to the side of her apartment building, which is
Speaker 1: a two story tutor job that had shops in the
Speaker 1: bottom and apartments in the top. Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this was in Q Gardens and Queen's. So he
Speaker 2: followed her on foot. At this point she sees him
Speaker 2: and knows that something is going on. He has a
Speaker 2: knife in his hand, so she starts running. He catches
Speaker 2: up to her by outside of a bookstore and stabs
Speaker 2: her twice in the back right off the bat with
Speaker 2: this knife.
Speaker 1: Right. And she had been running toward a bar that
Speaker 1: she thought would be open, but it turned out apparently
Speaker 1: there was a new manager and the new manager had
Speaker 1: closed 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 said, basically, definitively
Speaker 1: is what she screamed. And people who were witnesses to
Speaker 1: this recounted that one guy said that he was I
Speaker 1: think a ten or eleven year old kid who was
Speaker 1: inside one of the apartments in the Mowbray apartment building
Speaker 1: and that he was awoke and awakened from a deep 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 Mowbray apartment buildings window, what's his name?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Robert Moser opened his window and screamed out, hey,
Speaker 2: get out of there. What are you doing? And Mosley
Speaker 2: took off, Yeah, he 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.
Speaker 2: Yeah, at any rate, he scared him away.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So in between that time, about thirty minutes passes, Kitty
Speaker 2: makes her way around to the vestibule of her own building,
Speaker 2: right yeah, and goes inside the vestibule, and like you think,
Speaker 2: the horror is over for her. She could probably survive
Speaker 2: these wounds, right, is in shock, I would imagine. And
Speaker 2: then Mosley had went to his car, kind of checked
Speaker 2: out the building, saw that some lights had gone on,
Speaker 2: and reasoned to himself, no one's going to do anything,
Speaker 2: puts on a different hat, and goes back, finds her
Speaker 2: in the vestibule and finishes the job in the most
Speaker 2: horrific ways you can imagine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he stabbed her at least twelve more times. They
Speaker 1: think at least she was stabbed at least fourteen times.
Speaker 1: He said he doesn't remember how many times he stabbed her,
Speaker 1: but he basically kept stabbing her until she stopped screaming.
Speaker 1: She was still alive. I saw that he attempted to
Speaker 1: rape her. I've also seen that he raped her. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure which one's correct, but at one point,
Speaker 1: and this is really important here, as he's stabbing her
Speaker 1: and she's screaming, in the vestibule, there's a staircase that
Speaker 1: leads directly up to a door, and behind that door
Speaker 1: lived a man named Carl Ross. And Carl Ross opened
Speaker 1: his door and looked down one single flight of stairs
Speaker 1: at Winston Moseley stabbing Kitty Geneviez, who was bloody. There's
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: don't get involved. Yeah, I'm worried for you. Just leave
Speaker 1: it alone. It's none in your business. And he did.
Speaker 1: He didn't do anything, at least for a little while.
Speaker 2: All right. So that's a good place to break here,
Speaker 2: and we're going to come back and talk about who
Speaker 2: saw and heard what and what they did about it
Speaker 2: right after this, all right. So at this point, Kitty
Speaker 2: Genevies is not dead yet, but dying in the vestibule.
Speaker 2: A woman did come down and was with her. Her
Speaker 2: name is Sophia Ferrar. She's still with us, and she
Speaker 2: was a neighbor and friend of Kitty's. And so she
Speaker 2: went down there and apparently was with her as she
Speaker 2: passed away, tried to calm her down. Evidently did calm
Speaker 2: her down, and likes to think that she at least
Speaker 2: saw a friendly face and that she was being cared
Speaker 2: for as she passed. The weird thing is is that
Speaker 2: is not mentioned. I guess we got to get into
Speaker 2: the New York Times now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so after the murder, like the next day, the
Speaker 1: Times ran four paragraphs on the kitty Geneva's murder. It
Speaker 1: was not incredibly newsworthy at first, because that year there
Speaker 1: was six hundred and thirty six murders in New York City.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that was just one of them, just one.
Speaker 1: But a couple weeks later, the head the city editor
Speaker 1: of the New York Times, a guy named ab Rosenthal,
Speaker 1: who's a legendary journalist, was having lunch with I believe,
Speaker 1: the police commissioner of the NYPD. And the commissioner said,
Speaker 1: did you hear about that Genevieve's murder. That's one for
Speaker 1: the books. Thirty eight people standing around watch the whole thing.
Speaker 1: Nobody did a thing about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now you've got a story.
Speaker 1: Abrosenthal, legendary journalist, is like, uh, thank you for that. Yeh,
Speaker 1: here's my diner's 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.
Speaker 1: His name was Martin Gansberg, and they wrote on the
Speaker 1: front page, I shouldn't say they wrote it was definitely
Speaker 1: all Gansburg, but he was assigned and definitely under the
Speaker 1: direction of Abrosenthal, like this, this is the story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thirty eight people stood around and did nothing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the title of the article was thirty seven. It
Speaker 2: was thirty seven at the time. Thirty seven who saw
Speaker 2: murder didn't call the police. And basically the entire article
Speaker 2: and the entire narrative from that moment forward for decades
Speaker 2: was a not about this woman at all. Hardly she
Speaker 2: became a symbol a b not necessarily even about the crime,
Speaker 2: but about the crime of these people who didn't the
Speaker 2: crime of apathy for these thirty seven or thirty eight people.
Speaker 2: But it was very much misconstrued in the New York Times,
Speaker 2: to the point where in two thousand and four they
Speaker 2: all but wrote a retraction with new information because the
Speaker 2: original article they said, like these people witnessed it. That
Speaker 2: is not true. Maybe only a couple of people might
Speaker 2: have actually seen anything with their eyeballs. The other thirty
Speaker 2: five or thirty six may have heard someone screaming. They
Speaker 2: might have thought it was a drunken couple in their
Speaker 2: neighborhood coming home from a bar. There might have been
Speaker 2: some apathy involved for sure for some of them. But
Speaker 2: to characterize this as thirty seven or thirty eight people
Speaker 2: witnessed this horrific crime and literally shut their doors and
Speaker 2: windows to it was not accurate at all.
Speaker 1: Right, they said, they said specifically, Well, the way that
Speaker 1: they put it was that there were The way the
Speaker 1: story read was that thirty eight people had watched this
Speaker 1: murder which took place. They misreported that there were three attacks,
Speaker 1: and that the man had been chased off twice and
Speaker 1: came back two more times, but that this whole thing
Speaker 1: had taken place over thirty minutes, this long, prolonged attack,
Speaker 1: and that thirty eight people had just been sitting there
Speaker 1: watching it, doing nothing, And that is definitely a mischaracterization
Speaker 1: of what had happened, Like you're saying, for the most part,
Speaker 1: people were earwitnesses, not eyewitnesses. There were certainly not thirty
Speaker 1: eight eyewitnesses, and most people weren't in a position to
Speaker 1: do much, if anything about it physically. But I don't
Speaker 1: know if you could call it like a retraction because
Speaker 1: the point that ab Rosenthal he never apologized for whatever.
Speaker 1: Even in the documentary he's interviewed, Yeah, and he's like,
Speaker 1: this is great, I'm glad that it did what it did.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Sure, The point is still there that there was apathy
Speaker 1: in that there were two people who could have done
Speaker 1: something and they didn't. But then from what the other
Speaker 1: witnesses said, the scream was pretty clearly not a purse
Speaker 1: snatching and not a couple fighting drunkenly that it was
Speaker 1: a violent crime being committed on this woman. And people
Speaker 1: still didn't do anything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they misreported, possibly that no one called police. Apparently
Speaker 2: perhaps up to three people called the police, although police
Speaker 2: logs showed only one call came in. And it may
Speaker 2: be a case of these people now telling themselves like
Speaker 2: I called the cops that did something, sure, when they
Speaker 2: may not have. They did not report at all that Ms.
Speaker 2: Farrar had gone down to be with her. She was
Speaker 2: not mentioned ever. So I kind of went from feeling like, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know this bystander effect it had good. It led
Speaker 2: to the nine to one one being created apparently in
Speaker 2: some ways, and people study this in class and it
Speaker 2: raised awareness. So you know, if they stretched it a
Speaker 2: little bit, then it had a good effect. That's what
Speaker 2: Abe basically, that was his position, That still is his position.
Speaker 1: But well he's dead now.
Speaker 2: Oh did he finally pass away? Yeah? And then I
Speaker 2: finally came around and be like, no, you know, the
Speaker 2: truth is what you should print. And if you're a
Speaker 2: reporter and you run a story, you should print the
Speaker 2: truth and not some sensationalized version of it to sell newspapers.
Speaker 1: No, no, absolutely, I agree with you, And I think
Speaker 1: the one thing that you can hang on, ab Rosenthal
Speaker 1: is that that story was definitely fashioned in a manner
Speaker 1: to be as sensational as possible, as shock and outrage
Speaker 1: the public as much as possible. But I still think
Speaker 1: it's rooted in the basic fact that there was apathy
Speaker 1: involved and that it possibly allowed Winston Mosley to finish
Speaker 1: the job that Kitty Genevie's might have survived had somebody
Speaker 1: done more than just sit up, look out their window
Speaker 1: and go back to bed or not even bother to
Speaker 1: look out the window. And like you said, Chuck, like
Speaker 1: this had a lot of impact because the story comes
Speaker 1: out in nineteen sixty four and for forty years, it
Speaker 1: wasn't until two thousand and four that the time saw
Speaker 1: fit to like go back and really reinvestigate, and they did.
Speaker 1: There was a great, great article called Kitty forty years later,
Speaker 1: I think, and the author goes through and reinvestigates the
Speaker 1: case and really sets a lot of facts straight. But
Speaker 1: within that forty year period, the effects that this murder
Speaker 1: had were just sweeping. It led to the establishment of
Speaker 1: nine to one one. Yeah, it's a big one, sure,
Speaker 1: and it created this whole field of psychology that looks
Speaker 1: into the psychology of crowds, you know, and why we
Speaker 1: would just stand around? What is this diffusion of responsibility?
Speaker 1: None of that understanding existed until the kid Eachenevie's murder.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and weirdly, why is someone Why is a solo
Speaker 2: witness more apt to act than a group of people.
Speaker 1: One thing I saw is that it's called social influence,
Speaker 1: and that we take our cues from others. So if
Speaker 1: inaction is basically what is on the table right, then
Speaker 1: we're going to be inactive as well. If people are
Speaker 1: starting to move toward it, toward the problem, we'll probably
Speaker 1: join in too.
Speaker 2: I could see that or people thinking like, either I'm
Speaker 2: not someone else's better equipped to deal with this than me,
Speaker 2: or I feel like someone else will do this right,
Speaker 2: so I don't have to. Yeah, a lot goes into play.
Speaker 2: It's pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: One of the less productive things that came out of it, though,
Speaker 1: is this idea that when you live in a city,
Speaker 1: in a big city, you put enough people together, everybody
Speaker 1: stops caring about anybody else. They're all out for number one.
Speaker 1: And Q Gardens became the center of this or just
Speaker 1: such a symbolic example of urban care uncaring, I guess yeah.
Speaker 1: And Kitty Jenaviez became a symbol of that as well,
Speaker 1: and the need to do something, to act out to
Speaker 1: help other people when you see them need help.
Speaker 2: All right, So let's take another quick break here and
Speaker 2: we're going to get back into what happened to mister
Speaker 2: Moseley and the further effects of this crime after this.
Speaker 2: So a week after this murder, Mosley was breaking into
Speaker 2: a house. He's not a good.
Speaker 1: Guy, No, he was a terrible guy.
Speaker 2: He was beyond being a sociopath and a psychotic. Was
Speaker 2: just a burglar and he would he was just straight
Speaker 2: up robbing a house one day of a television and
Speaker 2: one of the neighbors saw this called the cops. Cops
Speaker 2: came and arrested them.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, that's not true. What the neighbor.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing, This is the great ironic twist of
Speaker 1: the kiddie Jenavie's story. He went to a different neighborhood.
Speaker 1: He was robbing a house and the neighbors said, hey,
Speaker 1: what are you doing? And he started to run from
Speaker 1: the house. The neighbor chased him and tackled him and
Speaker 1: held him until the cops came.
Speaker 2: Oh well, yeah, he called.
Speaker 1: That's how he went down. Intervention. Yeah yeah, yeah, but
Speaker 1: not apathy intervention right a week later?
Speaker 2: Yes, okay, So at any rate, he calls the cops.
Speaker 2: He gets arrested, and very like matter of factly, says
Speaker 2: that he killed Kitty Genevies. And not only that, but
Speaker 2: he killed supposedly two other women, a woman named Barbara Kralik,
Speaker 2: well actually she was a girl, she's only fifteen, and
Speaker 2: then a woman named Annie Mae Johnson. And apparently both
Speaker 2: of them had been sexually assaulted. And he was never
Speaker 2: tried for those, but he did plead not guilty by
Speaker 2: reason of insanity, which did not work. Was sentenced to death,
Speaker 2: and by luck of timing was able to appeal and
Speaker 2: the death penalty had gone away for most crimes in
Speaker 2: that time period, and he was resentenced to life in prison.
Speaker 1: Yees. Supposedly the prosecution had withheld some evidence about his
Speaker 1: mental state during his sentencing, so he was able to
Speaker 1: get it reduced. So he was hanging out during his time,
Speaker 1: and he was in Attica, I believe, and he had
Speaker 1: injured himself and was being taken to the hospital, and
Speaker 1: on the way there he got the gun away from
Speaker 1: the guard who was escorting him and took off and
Speaker 1: for I think five days, he basically just the city
Speaker 1: of Buffalo was in mortal fear of the fact that
Speaker 1: the guy who murdered Kitty Genovie's was now on the
Speaker 1: loose in their town, and they were afraid, rightfully, so
Speaker 1: he raped one woman. When the cops closed in on him,
Speaker 1: he got a hold of five people and held him
Speaker 1: hostage in a standoff that lasted for a little while
Speaker 1: with the FBI before they finally got to him. He
Speaker 1: was a bad dude, so they sent him back to
Speaker 1: prison and they said you're not getting out here ever.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He was later a part of the Attica prison
Speaker 2: riots as well, and the one lady that he killed,
Speaker 2: he he burned her alive like the family was upstairs. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and he broke into her house, raped her, killed her,
Speaker 2: and burned her alive in the home and the house
Speaker 2: went up in flames. So it sounded like he had
Speaker 2: no He sounded like a true sociopath, like he had
Speaker 2: no not there's every reason for killing someone, but it
Speaker 2: was always just at random because he wanted to do that.
Speaker 1: That's a lot what it sounds like. It was a
Speaker 1: self indulgence.
Speaker 2: So in the documentary very powerful scene where the son
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, the little brother of Kitty who was told
Speaker 2: through his eyes interviews and sits down with one of
Speaker 2: the sons of Moseley and it's just like, I mean,
Speaker 2: you cut the tension with a knife. Obviously, it's just
Speaker 2: so like fraught with tension. And he had told his
Speaker 2: son that she was yelling racial slurs at him. So
Speaker 2: said that he was just a getaway driver for some
Speaker 2: mobster and the Genovese family was related to the crime
Speaker 2: mob family, the Genovese family and none of this stuff
Speaker 2: is true. And the brother was just like aid, no,
Speaker 2: we're not related to that family at all. We have
Speaker 2: nothing to do with that, and he just gives him
Speaker 2: a look when he talks about the racial slurs, like,
Speaker 2: come on, man, that's not what happened. So it was
Speaker 2: a really really powerful scene of these two guys kind
Speaker 2: of working it out in a way.
Speaker 1: I didn't see them working anything out.
Speaker 2: Oh see, I did, which made it even worse for me.
Speaker 2: I thought there was some between them. They kind of
Speaker 2: came to a nice, nicer place than where they'd started.
Speaker 1: I did not catch that at all.
Speaker 2: Well, maybe you skipped forward or something.
Speaker 1: Maybe I was like, I can't take this kind of
Speaker 1: fest forward.
Speaker 2: Well, the Sun was saying, like, you know, I think
Speaker 2: you know, we need to know the son of was
Speaker 2: saying that they needed to move on from all this,
Speaker 2: and and then the brother was saying, I definitely don't
Speaker 2: you know the sins of the father and the sins
Speaker 2: of the sons. Yeah, he said that, So you know,
Speaker 2: I felt like they were better off than when they
Speaker 2: started for having that conversation.
Speaker 1: I honestly did not catch that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, regardless, Winston Mosley, after I guess after his second
Speaker 1: his first escape, the second little crime spree in Buffalo,
Speaker 1: when he was captured, he apparently reformed himself for he
Speaker 1: claimed to be reformed. He got a degree in prison.
Speaker 1: He wrote an editorial that The New York Times published
Speaker 1: where he basically said, I'm a changed man. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: everybody said, oh, look at that. It's just about the
Speaker 1: time your first parole hearings coming up. This is great timing.
Speaker 1: He went up before the parole board and they said no.
Speaker 1: He went up before the parole board again, they said no.
Speaker 1: He went up eighteen times, when eighteen times the parole
Speaker 1: board said no.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think the last one was just a couple of
Speaker 1: years before he died. But he died in twenty sixteen
Speaker 1: at age eighty one in prison.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And he the brother tried to get an interview
Speaker 2: with him, and he said no, that he didn't want
Speaker 2: to be exploited anymore. And you could just feel this
Speaker 2: brother's pain of like really wanting to try and to
Speaker 2: talk him into it again. And the basically the people
Speaker 2: that were the go between like, yeah, you know, you
Speaker 2: can try, we can't keep you, but he's not going
Speaker 2: to change his mind.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So he never got that interview, but I feel like
Speaker 2: he got I don't think he was looking for answers.
Speaker 2: I mean, in the documentary he went back to many
Speaker 2: of these apartment windows just to look at what their
Speaker 2: vantage point might have been. He got an actress to
Speaker 2: recreate what the screaming would have sounded like from down
Speaker 2: there on the street, which was very chilling scene. And
Speaker 2: I don't know that he was looking for Like you said,
Speaker 2: he was at odds with his family at times. You
Speaker 2: could tell the one little brother was like, man, this
Speaker 2: is hard on all of us, so you need to stop.
Speaker 2: But I don't think he was necessarily looking for the
Speaker 2: closure in that I want to find out for sure
Speaker 2: if these people could have stopped it. I think the
Speaker 2: closure comes more in the journey of learning about his
Speaker 2: sister and learning as much as he can about this case.
Speaker 2: It's really interesting.
Speaker 1: It was very interesting that two thousand and four Times
Speaker 1: article and then now this, this documentary has definitely exonerated
Speaker 1: Q Gardens as a whole. They've said, now there's there's
Speaker 1: way more nuance to this, there's way more. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: two things. Two people that have not been exonerated are
Speaker 1: 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. Yeah, The ironic
Speaker 1: thing about Carl Ross is if you notice it says
Speaker 1: thirty eight witnesses, thirty seven did nothing. The thirty that
Speaker 1: that last thirty eighth witness that the Times was referring
Speaker 1: to was Carl Ross. They said, he's the one who
Speaker 1: called the police. They called the police like long after
Speaker 1: Kitty Genovits 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 apparently
Speaker 1: saw what was happening and left his elevator and went
Speaker 1: to bed. Yeah that was that. But again, it seems
Speaker 1: like the overall feeling is okay. Other than those two guys,
Speaker 1: everybody else is fine. I just disagree with that. I
Speaker 1: think that there's a lot more that people could have
Speaker 1: done that didn't, and I don't think it's a I
Speaker 1: just don't think that everybody's off the hook for that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yep, you got anything else?
Speaker 1: No, man, If you want to know more about Kitty Genovise,
Speaker 1: just search the Internet. There's a lot about her, but
Speaker 1: be careful what you read because it's all over the place. Frankly,
Speaker 1: and since I said Internet, it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 2: Fish fraud follow up. Hey guys, I recently began began
Speaker 2: a job as a marine fisheries observer for the Department
Speaker 2: of Fish and Game and the Bearing Sea, And just
Speaker 2: listen to your fish fraud episode. Each season, a percentage
Speaker 2: of vessels fishing here at least are randomly selected to
Speaker 2: have an observer on board to monitor the operations and
Speaker 2: bycatch that come up in their pots or nets. The
Speaker 2: presence of an observer is admittedly a bit of a
Speaker 2: drag for this fishermen. We have to put up with
Speaker 2: us skinny nerds. Ll He typed that we are generally
Speaker 2: a great deterrent of any mischief at sea, But from
Speaker 2: what I have seen, most of the fishermen are real sharp,
Speaker 2: honest folks who know what they're doing. Of course, this
Speaker 2: is only a small portion of all the vessels on
Speaker 2: the water, and it isn't going to solve that problem
Speaker 2: by any means, but you'd like to know that there
Speaker 2: is some coverage on fishing vessels and processors. Thanks for
Speaker 2: all the laughs, my dudes. That is from Kevin Alexandrowitz
Speaker 2: in Olympia, Washington.
Speaker 1: It's a lot. Kevin had no.
Speaker 2: Idea, did you that these people did that.
Speaker 1: That there's basically like a sky Marshall program fighting fish
Speaker 1: fraud on the high seas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we talked about that, we did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't remember that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we were just like it's just so infrequent and
Speaker 2: random that you know, what's what good is it doing?
Speaker 2: And sounds like he agrees in some ways, but.
Speaker 1: Still have fun out there on the high seas, don't
Speaker 1: get seasick. If you want to get in touch with us,
Speaker 1: like Kevin did, you can send us an email the
Speaker 1: Stuff podcast at House Stuff Works dot com and as always,
Speaker 1: joined us at our home on the web. Stuff you
Speaker 1: Should Know dot Com.
Speaker 2: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.