Crime and Apathy

Winston Moseley died last week in a New York prison, and in an unusual twist it was his victim’s name that people instantly remembered – not his. And his victim wasn’t even a celebrity.

Kitty Genovese was a 28-year-old bar manager in New York City and had just gotten off work early one morning in 1964 when Moseley was out prowling for a woman. He followed her, stabbed her and raped her in an attack that lasted roughly a half hour.

The crime and the victim’s name would have long ago faded away except a police official a few weeks after her murder mentioned to a New York Times editor that 38 people heard Genovese’s cries for help – and did nothing.

Eventually that would turn out to be an exaggeration. Some neighbors did call police. One neighbor did see the assault but didn’t want to get involved. The Kitty Genovese murder became an urban legend representing big city apathy and the bystander effect – the more people who witness a crime, the more likely they are to expect someone else to stop it.

As the legend would have it, her neighbors’ apathy murdered Genovese, not Moseley.

With Moseley’s death, the media once again revisited the urban legend and added its own contemporary spin. NPR replayed an old interview that even included a swipe at police and a reference to racial tensions.

In a New York Daily News opinion piece a few days after Moseley’s death, “Imagine a Black Kitty Genovese,” Catherine Pelonero showed sympathy towards the killer.

“Would anybody remember or care about Kitty Genovese if she had been black?” Moseley once wrote to Pelonero, author of “Kitty Genovese: A True Account of a Public Murder and Its Private Consequences.”

The issue of race was rarely explored in the immediate aftermath of Genovese’s murder. Moseley was black, and his victim was white. He only brought race into it when he was repeatedly denied parole.

What if Genovese had been as black as he was? Would her name and death have been quickly forgotten? After all, he also killed two black females before he killed Genovese. He was never prosecuted for the deaths of Barbara Kralik, 15, or Annie May Johnson, 24.

Pelonero describes the many letters she exchanged with Moseley beginning in 2009, “on topics ranging from his fluid memories and reflections on his crimes, to his feelings about his own family … to his favorite books, movies and movie stars.

“Moseley wasn’t terribly keen on me writing a book about Genovese. He told me as much in the first letter I received from him. It had been 45 years and he was bored by it all. … There was one area, however, where Moseley felt that racism had a pervasive and perpetual impact on his life as well as on the lives — and lost lives — of countless others…,” Pelonero writes.

“How many killings had happened since 1964, he asked me, and how many of the victims had been black women and children? Where was the decades-long outrage, remembrance and scrutiny for any of the innumerable black murder victims? For that matter, where was the outrage and remembrance for Moseley’s other victims, the women he raped or killed prior to Genovese, all of whom had been black?”

Murder victims are not very quotable. Kitty Genovese, Kralik and Johnson couldn’t exchange letters with Pelonero and talk about their favorite books and movie stars.

Even Pelonero admits in her opinion piece: “My interest has always been in the minds and hearts of people rather than in the mechanics of the crimes they commit.”

Notice how the actual raping and stabbing of another human being are brushed off as the “mechanics” of the crime.  Instead, we are supposed to consider “the minds and hearts” of the criminal.

This is how the murder of Kitty Genovese has evolved into more apathy. Her killer, coldly and calculatedly, was allowed to have his say and rewrite events.

In 1977, The New York Times gave Moseley op-ed space to apologize for killing Genovese. Clearly itching for parole, he didn’t mention race or the other two females he raped and killed. Instead he boasted of the B.A. in Sociology he had earned in prison and tried to find something positive in Genovese’s murder: The public was now aware of the problem of apathy.

In 1995, he demanded a new trial on the grounds that his trial attorney had a conflict of interest. Genovese’s brothers and sister sat through the court proceedings and watched as Moseley smiled and laughed with his current counsel. (Had Moseley been put to death like he should have, the Genovese family would have been spared this pain.)

When a new trial was denied, Moseley then made race the issue. Had he not died, Moseley would have been eligible for parole again next year. Had he finally succeeded in winning his freedom, the media likely would have cooperated by pointing out how old and harmless he had become, and how much continued incarceration was costing the taxpayers.

Forgotten would be the names of Barbara Kralik and Annie May Johnson (technically he was never prosecuted for killing them).

Forgotten would have been the rape and assault he committed in 1968 when he escaped from prison and held hostages before being recaptured. Also forgotten would have been his participation in the 1971 Attica uprising. (Had Moseley been executed, he wouldn’t have been alive to create more victims.)

Here is the real apathy, and it rests with the media:

The initial story on the murder of Kitty Genovese ran all of four paragraphs on Page 26, next to the classifieds. Her death was one of 636 murders in the city that year. It was only when an editor saw a fresh hook – respectable citizens doing nothing – that the newspaper heard Genovese’s cries. Otherwise, her murder would have been just another killing. Just another news brief. Moseley would have had his parole years ago.

Now the same newspaper that made Kitty Genovese a rarity – a known crime victim – editorializes regularly on the rights, wants and needs of convicted felons. Less than a week after Moseley died, the Times ran still another editorial, this time calling for more housing opportunities for felons.

Winston Moseley, who lived to be 81, would have loved it.

– Pamela Fitzsimmons

Related:

Questions for the Living

4 Comments

  • Anonymous JD wrote:

    You should’ve mentioned Bill Clinton’s regrets over signing the crime bill. The crime bill black Congressional leaders pushed for because crime was so bad.

    There’s nothing the Clintons won’t do to get back in the White House. It’s a calculated apathy. Some lives are worth sacrificing

  • I wonder what regrets President Obama will have in the years ahead.

    Your reference to sacrificing reminded me of something I wrote after an author’s visit at Powell’s books. The author, Raymond Bonner, was a death penalty opponent and author of “Anatomy of Injustice.”

    During the Q-and-A a young man declared that we shouldn’t go after “small fry” who kill individuals but should go after powerful politicians and corporations. This guy thought the killers were “small fry.” He didn’t see that the people being treated like “small fry” are victims.

    http://www.heldtoanswer.com/2012/08/sacrificing-the-small-fry/

  • My earliest recollection of crime beyond Marquette, Speck, and Charles Whitman was of the Genovese murder.

    I used to teach “37 Who Saw Murder Didn’t Call the Police” by Martin Gansbergmarch to college freshman and sophomores. That’s some nice storytelling. It was a surprise to find that it is of a piece with the contemporary journalism rationale, “the narrative is right but the facts were wrong.” Left unsaid is “print it anyway.”

    It has some parallels, too with the Bush senior perma-stain for the Willie Horton criminality. While Horton was serving life without the possibility parole he was given furlough. I read a very close account of his holiday: it was a nightmare. He terrorized and beat the couple and after repeatedly raping the woman stole the man’s car. Perhaps Bush and Atwater beat Dukakis to death with Horton (perhaps he deserved it), but the left has certainly kept it alive and weaponized. Indeed, Willie has come very close to becoming the real victim to some minds.

    Murderous necrophilia as “mechanics,” well, there’s a thought. Rather like Mumia’s cold blooded execution of the Philly police officer, there are larger issues at stake here (by gum). For heaven’s sake, take race into consideration.

    Had Moseley committed the Genovese murder more recently he might have gotten a boulevard in France named after him or ala Tookie Williams gotten submitted for the Nobel Peace Prize.

    Your observation on compounded apathy is on the mark, too. “How many killings had happened since … Where was the decades-long outrage, remembrance and scrutiny for any of the innumerable black murder victims?” I’d say ask the president and Black Lies Matter.

    When I used regularly to go to jail I noticed (as nearly all who go do) that everyone seem to be innocent or feel punished too harshly. My understanding is that just about all on death row got there the old fashioned way: they earned it. But, like those boys who raped and damaged the Central Park Jogger, you change the narrative and get the media and voila! martyred heroes. And, every nation needs heroes.

  • Willie Horton as a victim — you’re right, Larry.

    Tonight I went to a meeting of the Community Oversight Advisory Board (COAB) — the group appointed by the mayor to oversee Portland police reform as ordered by the U.S. Dept. of Justice. Usually these meetings consist of presentations by invited guests/experts and discussion and voting by board members on various recommendations.

    Usually observers like me sit in the audience, but tonight it was a special meeting. There were 10 round tables set up. Board members, plus a police officer sat at each table and did “community outreach” with the citizens seated with them. At my table, there was a black COAB member, a white female cop, a young black woman, and a retired, white Portland man. The first question we were supposed to ponder was, “What do we want the relationship between the police and the community to look like?”

    The white man jumped right in: “We need to stop sending African-Americans to prison — period.” Later, he suggested that convicts become cops.

    In that man’s world, Willie Horton undoubtedly is a victim and possibly a hero.

    Portland’s white guilt is in a class by itself.

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