Part 14 (1/2)

The thirty-eight witnesses who watched Kitty Genovese's brutal murder come to mind. What's so puzzling about this case is how little altruism was required for someone to have called the police from the safety of his or her home. That's why the same question-how could those people have acted so horribly?-has lingered all these years.

But perhaps there's a better question: did they act so horribly?

The foundation for nearly everything ever written or said about Genovese's murder was that provocative New York Times article, which wasn't published until two weeks after the crime. It had been conceived at a lunch between two men: A.M. Rosenthal, the paper's metro editor, and Michael Joseph Murphy, the city's police commissioner.

Genovese's killer, Winston Moseley, was already under arrest and had confessed to the crime. The story wasn't big news, especially in the Times. It was just another murder, way out in Queens, not the kind of thing the paper of record gave much s.p.a.ce.

Strangely, though, Moseley also confessed to a second murder even though the police had already arrested a different man for that crime.

”What about that double confession out in Queens?” Rosenthal asked Murphy at lunch. ”What's that story all about anyway?”

Instead of answering, Murphy changed the subject.

”That Queens story is something else,” he said, and then told Rosenthal that thirty-eight people had watched Kitty Genovese be murdered without calling the police.

”Thirty-eight?” Rosenthal asked.

”Yes, thirty-eight,” Murphy said. ”I've been in this business a long time, but this beats everything.”

Rosenthal, as he later wrote, ”was sure that the Commissioner was exaggerating.” If so, Murphy may have had sufficient incentive. A story about two men arrested for the same murder clearly had the potential to embarra.s.s the police. Furthermore, given the prolonged and brutal nature of the Genovese murder, the police may have been touchy about who caught the blame. Why hadn't they been able to stop it?

Despite Rosenthal's skepticism, he sent Martin Gansberg, a longtime copy editor who'd recently become a reporter, to Kew Gardens. Four days later, one of the most indelible first sentences in newspaper history appeared on the Times's front page:

For more than half an hour 38 respectable, law-abiding citizens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab a woman in three separate attacks in Kew Gardens.

For a brand-new reporter like Gansberg and an ambitious editor like Rosenthal-he later wrote a book, Thirty-Eight Witnesses, about the case and became the Times's top editor-it was an unqualified blockbuster. It isn't often that a pair of lowly newspapermen can tell a tale that will set the public agenda, for decades hence, on a topic as heady as civic apathy. So they certainly had strong incentives to tell the story.

But was it true?

The best person to answer that question may be Joseph De May Jr., a sixty-year-old maritime lawyer who lives in Kew Gardens. He has an open face, thinning black hair, hazel eyes, and a hearty disposition. On a brisk Sunday morning not long ago, he gave us a tour of the neighborhood.

”Now the first attack occurred roughly in here,” he said, pausing on the sidewalk in front of a small shop on Austin Street. ”And Kitty parked her car over there, in the train station parking lot,” he said, gesturing to an area perhaps thirty-five yards away.

The neighborhood has changed little since the crime. The buildings, streets, sidewalks, and parking areas remain as they were. The Mowbray, a well-kept brick apartment house, still stands across the street from the scene of the first attack.

De May moved to the neighborhood in 1974, a decade after Genovese was killed. The murder wasn't something he thought about much. Several years ago, De May, a member of the local historical society, built a website devoted to Kew Gardens history. After a time, he felt he should add a section about the Genovese murder, since it was the only reason Kew Gardens was known to the outside world, if it was known at all.

As he gathered old photographs and news clippings, he began to find discrepancies with the official Genovese history. The more intently he reconstructed the crime, chasing down legal doc.u.ments and interviewing old-timers, the more convinced he became that the legendary story of the thirty-eight apathetic witnesses was-well, a bit too heavy on legend. Like the lawyer he is, De May dissected the Times article and identified six factual errors in the first paragraph alone.

The legend held that thirty-eight people ”remained at their windows in fascination” and ”watched a killer stalk and stab a woman in three separate attacks” but ”not one person telephoned the police during the a.s.sault.”

The real story, according to De May, went more like this:

The first attack occurred at about 3:20 A.M., when most people were asleep. Genovese cried out for help when Moseley stabbed her in the back. This awoke some Mowbray tenants, who rushed to their windows.

The sidewalk was not well lit, so it may have been hard to make sense of what was happening. As Moseley later testified, ”[I]t was late at night and I was pretty sure that n.o.body could see that well out of the window.” What someone likely would have seen at that point was a man standing over a woman on the ground.