November 22, 2016 • 38 mins
Most people have heard of the story of Kitty Genovese. She was murdered near her apartment in 1964 and her neighbors didn't do much to help. It caused a nationwide outcry, but the story has often been misrepresented. We'll set the record straight.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, San Francisco, we're coming out to see you. We
got invited back to San Francisco Sketch Fest this year
and we are pretty excited because we are doing a
Sunday afternoon show for the first time, so considers a
football game. We're gonna be uh January Sunday at one pm,
and UH, get your tickets fast because they're definitely gonna
(00:22):
sell out. Just go to s F sketch Fest dot
com where you can google that junk and uh just
follow the ticket links and there's lots of great shows,
so I would recommend just making a weekend out of it.
But check us out Sunday afternoon, January PM in San Francisco.
Can't wait to see everybody there. Welcome to Stuff You
(00:44):
Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and
welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W.
Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry So this you Should Know
podcast True Crime Edition. Actually yeah, but so much more
(01:06):
than just a single crime agreed, a crime that echoed
throughout a city, throughout the world, throughout decades. And it's true, man, Like,
there are very few crimes you can point to that
had more of an impact than the murder of Kitty
GENEVESE agreed. Uh, and there are a lot of true
(01:27):
crime podcast out there. We are not trying to become one. No,
this is just something we do from time to time.
I had somebody on Facebook, Oh, don't get me started
on that on the hinter Kaife murders there, this is
so played, everyone's done this. Who didn't know about this?
A bunch of people were like, well, I haven't heard
(01:47):
about it, but most counts I had never heard about it.
I hadn't heard about it until like a year or
two ago. So oh, it's so played. Oh and then
of course later on all these people are like, man,
what a jerk. He's like the the whole Uh. Well,
(02:09):
I'm sorry if anyone was offended. All I meant was
is this has been well covered. I think that it
has nothing to do with the way I said it.
The two thousand sixteen election has proven that. Um, if
you add if into your apology, it's not an actual apology. Yeah,
I'm sorry. If you're offended, is not an apology. That's
putting it back on the person. It's it's you, you,
(02:30):
you worm, your piece of garbage. Oh yeah, yeah, man, sorry,
Kitty Genevise and her family. I know, and you know what,
as I researched this and as I watched did you
watch The Witness the documentary recently on Netflix right now?
It is HBO documentary, And um, I was disturbed and
(02:52):
I'm glad it finally covered it in the documentary, but
I was disturbed that Kitty Genevise and we'll get to
her murder, but very quickly she was murdered and became
the symbol for um people not helping out right what
came to be known as bystander apathy or the bystander
effect that the more people who are around, the less
(03:14):
likely anyone is to help. Yeah, so she became such
a symbol that me never hear about Kitty Genevise and
who she was as a person. And that was one
great thing about that document and there are multiple great
things about that, but that it really talked about her
and showed her and revived her spirit, which I was
really looking for because even in researching online, it's hard
(03:36):
to get a lot of information. So um, some things,
some even contemporary articles still aren't mentioning that she was gay. Well, yeah,
her own brother who made the documentary didn't know that
she was gay. No, it's true, but it's it's been
out since I'm not sure when actually that came out.
It was just this year, okay, so it was fairly
(03:58):
new year. That was like in the last five years,
maybe so. And honoring that, why don't we talk a
minute about Catherine genevese Kitty Yeah. Born in Brooklyn, uh,
to Vincent and Rene Leginovise Italian American parents. Um, and
(04:19):
it's weird, I don't see. Oh. Yeah, Rachel was her
mother's name. She was Rachel Petroley at first. So, um.
They lived in Brooklyn, and she was very well loved
in school. Yes, she was like the leader of her click. Yeah.
And she was apparently a lot of fun and a
good mimic of her teachers. And she was voted class
(04:40):
cut up in her senior year graduating class. And she
went to an all girls school and Prospect Heights, and
it it was just, by all accounts, this vivacious, fun loving,
really sweet sweet lady yeah or girl. At that point,
her little brother Bill who and ended up making the
being featured in the documentary, The witness was just in
(05:03):
love with her she was just amazing to him and
had a very special relationship. Yeah. I think she was
about thirteen years older than him. Yeah, quite a bit,
maybe twelve years older. Um, I had his sister like that,
and like there's a very special relationship, none of that
sibling rivalry. Um, they're not old enough to be your mother.
(05:23):
That's just as it's a unique situation to be a
younger sibling and to be able to inherit like all
that worldly wisdom and they're they're going through all their
own things and their own struggles and their own travails.
But to that thirteen year old younger brother, they know
everything and they're the coolest person walking the planet and
(05:44):
they're the kindest person walking the planet because they've lived
long enough to like figure out some of the major stuff.
You know. Yeah, even my own sister is only six
years older, and we we very much had and still
have that relationship where uh and she my brother are
great now too. But you know, when you're two or
three years apart, there can be a little bit of
the knocking of heads. But by the time I came along,
(06:08):
I was like, you know, my sister was six, It
was perfect. I was a little baby doll for her right.
Um So, anyway, that was very much the relationship that
Kitty had with Bill, and it seemed like one of
the old older brothers always had a little bit of it, like, yeah,
she always liked him better. Yeah kind of attitude. It
seems seemed like everybody kind of knew like she liked
(06:28):
Bill the most. Yeah, which I kind of felt bad for.
But that's just this family dynamics. Man. You know. The
thing is when whenever you do start to kind of
talk about somebody who's died, especially someone who's died violently
and young, it's easy to um canonized, you know. He
really put him up on a pedestal and forget their flaws.
And of course I'm sure Kitty had tons of flaws,
(06:51):
but she didn't seem to have any from from what
I'm gathering, that were, you know, just terrible flaws or
that made her like a bad person. She seemed like
she was a like an overall above average great person. Yeah, agreed. So, um,
New York was getting too dangerous for her family. They
(07:12):
thought to have all these kids. Uh, So they moved
when she graduated high school to New Canaan, Connecticut. And
she said you know what, I'm staying here in New York.
I'm eighteen now. I love it here. Um. She got
married for a brief time, uh, to a guy was
his named Rocco. I don't remember his name, it's either
Rocky or Rocco. And Um. In the documentary, Bill tries
(07:36):
to get in touch with him. He's like, I really
because he found out she was gay and was like,
you know, we didn't even know this. I think Rocco
can help shed some light. And he very respectfully asked
for his own privacy. He said, my relationship with Kitty
will remain forever a mystery. Yeah, it's like, that's an
odd spot it was. I think he just didn't want to.
(07:58):
I mean, if she was a and they were married
for a short time, he either didn't know and maybe
felt the fool or he did know and was maybe
trying to do right by her in some way. Either way,
he didn't want to talk about it. But Um. She
worked as a secretary for a little while. She was
a waitress for a little while. Eventually she was a
(08:20):
bar made bartender and then became bar manager at a
place in Hollis Queen's called EVS Eleventh Hour well, and
from all accounts, it was one of those wonderful neighborhood
bars where the people are in there getting sauce pretty
early in the days, and everyone knew everyone, and everyone
(08:40):
loved Kitty, and she helped take care of everybody, but
was very much an independent um kind of firecracker of
a woman. Drove a red fiat. Her dad used to
tease her about, like, when are you going to find
the right guy. She's like, I make more money than
any guy I would go out with. I don't need that,
which is I guess night t sixties for dadam gay
(09:04):
and I can't say it, but she did make pretty
good dough as the bar manager. Um. And then in
March ninete, she met a woman named Mary Anne Zlonko
at Swing Rendezvous. It was an underground lesbian bar in
the village, and they moved in together shortly thereafter. Yeh
and Kitty actually used to bring um Maryanne home with
(09:28):
her to visit, but her family was all like, well,
they're just good friends and roommates. It's the sixties, the
early sixties. Yeah, And there's an audio interview with her
in that documentary that's really touching. She didn't want to
be on camera, but Bill was able to speak to
her and uh, I think, well, so compelling about this
(09:49):
documentary was that he was there was a search of
a man looking for closure. It's a harrowing, sometimes almost
unbearable to watch. Yeah, sir, I mean like he's at
odds with his family here there. Um he uh, he's
just just doing things where if you if you watch
(10:10):
it in the context of the documentary and you just
follow along the documentary, it all makes uttering complete sense.
But then if you stop and remove yourself long enough
to be like, this is a documentary, which means this
guy really did this stuff and there was a camera
following him along while he was doing it, I was like,
I I couldn't have done half of it, you know,
(10:30):
he really he just at one point he calls it
an obsession, but it's it's not. He doesn't come off
as obsessed, you know. All right, So let's detail the
crime and then we will take a break after that.
How does that sound? Yeah? Alright, So flash forward to
March thirteenth, nineteen sixty four. It's three fifteen in the
(10:53):
morning and Kitty genevese Is, as she often did, was
making her way home from work late at night as
a bar manager and was being trailed by a man,
a man by the name of Winston Moseley. Yes, who
was definitely the villain of this story, but is not
(11:15):
the only one that will turn out. So, um Kitty
was and at the time she was killed, and Winston
or killer was twenty nine, just turned twenty nine, I
think like a week or so before, And I think
he said, this is March nine. Yeah, he was married
with a couple of kids. Yeah, his wife, Elizabeth worked
(11:37):
the night shift. She was a hospital nurse, and um
Winston's mother stayed at home with the kids. So he
basically said, you know, on my own house. I've got
a great job operating computers. No one even knows what
I'm supposed to be doing with him yet, but I'm
making money doing it. Yeah, he's a smart guy, So
I'm gonna indulge myself. I'm gonna go out and stalk
(11:58):
women and murder them and my spare time, that's what
I'm gonna do. So that's what he was doing on
this night. He was cruising around looking for a woman
to um kill. Basically, Yeah, that was his direct quote
in questioning. Yeah, I was looking for a woman to kill. Yeah,
so he saw at I believe a red light, this
(12:19):
little red Fiat convertible caught his eye and there was
kitty driving. So he started a follower and she parked,
and she parked in the parking lot for the Long
Island Railway, which the parking lot went backed up to
the side of her apartment building, which is a two
story tutor job that had shops in the bottom and
(12:42):
apartments in the top. Right. Yeah, this was in Q
Gardens and Queens. So he followed her on foot. At
this point Um she sees him and knows that something
is going on. He has a knife in his hand,
so she starts uh running. He catches up to her
by outside of a bookstore and stabs her twice in
(13:04):
the back right off the bat with this knife. And
she had been running um toward a bar that she
thought would be open, but it turned out apparently there
was a new manager and the new manager had closed
down early, so when she stabbed twice in the back.
It's on this darkened street, but right across the street,
Austin Street, is a ten story apartment building with dozens
(13:27):
of windows looking out onto Austin Street. Where she's being
stabbed in the back, and she screamed, she cries out.
I think she said something like, oh God, he stabbed me,
helped me, help me, is what they They said, basically,
definitively is what she screamed. And people who were witnesses
to this recounted that one guy said that he was
(13:52):
I think a ten or eleven year old kid who
was inside one of the apartments in the Mobray apartment building,
and that he was awoke and awakened from a d sleep.
The scream was so loud, he said it was the
loudest thing he's ever heard. So she screams, and a
man living in the Mobrie apartment buildings opens his window.
(14:12):
What's his name, Yeah, Robert moser Um opened his window
and screamed out, hey, get out of there, what are
you doing? And uh, Mosley took off, took off, running away.
He's very frequently misquoted as having said like, let that
girl alone, but even by his own words in his
own testimony, he said, hey, get out of there. Yeah,
(14:35):
at any rate, he scared him away. Uh So, in
between that time, about thirty minutes passes. Kitty Um makes
her way around to the vestibule of her own building. Right, Yeah,
and um goes inside the vestibule and uh, like you
(14:57):
think the horror is over for her. She could probably
survive these wounds. Um is in shock, I would imagine.
And then Mosley went to his car, kind of checked
out the building, saw that some lights had gone on,
and reason to himself, no one's gonna do anything, puts
on a different hat and goes back, finds her in
(15:20):
the vestibule and finishes the job and the most horrific
ways you can imagine. Yeah, he uh, he stabbed her
at least twelve more times. They think at least she
was stabbed at least fourteen times. He said he doesn't
remember how many times he stabbed her. Um, but he
basically kept stabbing her until she stopped screaming. Um, she
was still alive. I saw that he attempted the raper.
(15:42):
I've also seen that he raped her. Yeah. I'm not
sure which one's correct, but at one point, and this
is really important here, as he's stabbing her and she's
screaming in the vestibule, there's a staircase that leads directly
up to a door, and behind that door lived a
man named Carl Ross. And Carl Ross opened his door
and looked down one single flight of stairs at Winston
(16:06):
Mosley stabbing um kitty Genevese, who is bloody. There was
no confusing what was going on. And he closed the
door and he called his girlfriend, and his girlfriend said,
you don't get involved. I'm worried for you. Just just
leave it alone. It's none of your business. And he did.
(16:26):
He didn't do anything at least for a little while,
all right. So that's a good place to break here,
and we're gonna come back and talk about who saw
and heard what and what they did about it right
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So at this point, um, Kitty Genevies is uh not
(17:58):
dead yet, but dying in the vestibule. Um, a woman
did come down and uh was with her. Her name
is Sophia Ferrar. She's still with us, and um, she
was a neighbor and friend of Kitty's. And so she
went down there and uh apparently was with her as
(18:19):
she passed away, tried to calm her down. Evidently did
calm her down, and likes to think that she at
least saw a friendly face and that she was being
cared for as she passed. Uh. The weird thing is
is that is not mentioned. I guess we gotta get
into the New York Times now. Yeah. So, so after
the murder um like the next day, the Times ran
(18:43):
four paragraphs on the Kitty Genovase murder. It was not
incredibly newsworthy at first because that year, there were six
d thirty six murders in New York City. Yeah, that
was just one of them, just one. But a couple
of weeks later, UM, the head the city editor of
the New York Times, a guy named A Rosenthal, who's
(19:03):
a legendary journalist, was having lunch with I believe, the
police commissioner of the NYPD. And the commissioner said, did
you hear about that Genevese murder? This one for the books.
Thirty eight people standing around watched the whole thing. Nobody
did it a thing about it. Now you've got a story.
A Rosenthal, legendary journalist, is like, uh, thank you for that.
(19:26):
Here's my diners Club card. I have to go now
and get this story done. So he did. He assigned
it out to a guy. What was the original reporter's name, Um,
his name was Martin Gainsberg, and they wrote on the
front page. I shouldn't say they wrote it was definitely
all Gainsberger, but he was assigned and definitely under the
(19:46):
direction of A Rosenthal, like, this is this is the story.
Thirty eight people stood around and did nothing. Yeah, the
title of the article was thirty seven. It was thirty
seven at a time thirty seven who saw a murder
didn't call the police, And basically the entire article and
the entire narrative from that moment forward for decades was
(20:09):
a not about this woman at all. Hardly she became
a symbol be not necessarily even about the crime, but
about the crime of uh, these people who didn't the
crime of apathy for these thirty seven or thirty eight people.
But it was very much misconstrued in the New York Times,
to the point where in two thousand four they all
(20:32):
but wrote a retraction with new information. Um, because the
original article they said, like these people witnessed it. That
is not true. Um. Maybe only a couple of people
might have actually seen anything with their eyeballs. The other
thirty five or thirty six may have heard someone screaming, uh.
(20:55):
They might have thought it was a drunken couple in
their neighborhood coming home from a bar. Uh. There might
have been some apathy involved, for sure for some of them.
But to characterize this as thirty seven or thirty eight
people witnessed this horrific crime and literally shut their doors
and windows to it was not accurate at all, they said. Um,
(21:18):
they said specifically. Well, the way that they put it
was that there were The way the story read was
that thirty eight people had watched this murder which took place.
They misreported that there were three attacks and that the
man had been chased off twice and came back two
more times. Um, But that this whole thing had taken
(21:39):
place over thirty minutes, this long, prolonged attack, and that
thirty eight people had just been sitting there watching it,
doing nothing, And that is definitely a mischaracterization of what
had happened, Like you're saying, for the most part, people
were ear witnesses, not eyewitnesses. There are certainly not thirty
eight eyewitnesses, and most people weren't in a position to
(22:00):
do much, if anything about it, certainly physically. But I
don't know if you could call it like a retraction
because the point that A Rosenthal he never apologized for whatever.
Even in the documentary he's interviewed, um he and he's like, I,
this is great, I'm glad that it did what it did. Yeah. Sure.
(22:20):
His The point is still there that there was apathy
in in that there were two people who could have
done something and they didn't. But then from what the
Other witnesses said the scream was pretty clearly not a
purse snatching and not a couple fighting drunkenly, that it
(22:41):
was a violent crime being committed on this woman. And
people still didn't do anything. Yeah, they misreported. Um, possibly
that no one called police. Apparently perhaps up to three
people called the police, although police logs showed only one
call came in. Um. And it may be a case
(23:01):
of these people now telling themselves like I called the
cops that did something when they may not have. Uh,
they did not report at all that Ms Ferrar had
gone down to be with her. She was not mentioned ever. UM.
So I kind of went from feeling like, yeah, you
know this bystander effect it had good. It led to
the being created apparently in some ways, and people study
(23:25):
this in class and it raised awareness. So you know,
if they stretched it a little bit, then it had
a good effect. That's what Abe basically, that was his position.
That still is his position. But oh did he finally
passed away? Um? And then I finally came around and
be like, no, you know, the truth is what you
should print. And if you're a reporter and you run
(23:47):
a story, you should print the truth and not some
sensationalized version of it to sell newspapers. No, no, absolutely,
I agree with you, And I think the one thing
that you can hang on a Rosenthal is that, Um,
that story was definitely fashioned in a manner to be
as sensational as possible, to shock and outrage the public
as much as possible. But I still think it's rooted
(24:10):
in in the basic fact that there was apathy involved
and that it possibly allowed Winston mostly to finish the
job that Kitty Jenneviez might have survived had somebody done
more than just sit up, look out the window and
go back to bed or not even bother to look
(24:30):
out the window. And like you said, Chuck, like this
had a lot of impact because this this story comes
out in nine and for forty years. It wasn't until
two thousand four that the time saw fit to like
go back and really reinvestigate, and they did. There was
a great, um, great article called Kitty four years later,
I think, um, and and the author goes through and
(24:54):
reinvestigates the case and really sets a lot of facts straight. Um.
But within that forty year period, the effects that this
murder had were just sweeping. It led to the establishment
of nine on one. It's a big one and it
it created this whole field of psychology that looks into
(25:15):
the psychology of crowds. You know, why we would just
stand around? What is this diffusion of responsibility? None of
that understanding existed until the Kidty Geneviez murder. Yeah, and weirdly,
why is someone Why is a solo witness more apt
to act than a group of people? One thing I
saw is that is called social influence, and that we
(25:36):
take our cues from others. So if inaction is basically
what is on the table right, then we're going to
be inactive as well. If people are starting to move
toward it, towards the problem, we'll probably join in too.
I could see that, or people thinking like either I'm
not someone else's better equipped to deal with this than me,
(25:58):
or I feel like someone else will do this so
I don't have to. Yeah, a lot goes into play.
It's pretty interesting. One of the less productive things that
came out of it, though, is this idea that when
you live in a city, in a big city, you
put enough people together, everybody stops caring about anybody else.
They're all out for number one and Q gardens became
the center of this or just such a symbolic example
(26:24):
of of urban care uncaring, I guess, and Kitty Jona
Viz became a symbol of of that as well. And
they need to do something to act out um, to
help other people when you see them need help. Alright,
So let's take another quick break here and we're going
(26:44):
to get back into what happened to uh Mr Mosley
and the further effects of this crime after this. So
(27:15):
a week after this murder, uh Mosley was breaking into
a house. He's not a good guy, No, he was
a terrible guy. He was um beyond being a sociopath
and a psychotic, was of just a burglar and he
would he was just straight up robbing a house one
day of a television and one of the neighbors saw
(27:38):
this called the cops. Cops came and arrested him. No, no, no, no,
that's not true. What the neighbor. Here's the thing, this
is the great ironic twist of the Kittie Jane v story.
He went to a different neighborhood. He was robbing a
house and the neighbors said, hey, what are you doing?
And he started to run from the house. The neighbor
chased him and tackled him and held him until the
cops came. Oh yeah, he called that's how he went
(28:01):
down intervention. Yeah yeah, yeah, but ampathy intervention a week later. Yes, okay,
So at any rate, he calls the cops, he gets arrested,
and very like, uh, matter of factly says that he
killed Kitty Genevise. And not only that, but he killed
supposedly two other women, a woman named Barbara Craylick. Uh.
(28:24):
Actually she was a girl, she's only fifteen, and then
a woman named Annie Mae Johnson. And apparently both of
them had been sexually assaulted. And he was never tried
for those But um he did plead not guilty by
reason of insanity, which did not work well. Sentenced to death,
and by luck of timing, was able to appeal. Uh.
(28:45):
And the death penalty had gone away from most crimes
in that time period, and he um was resentenced to
life in prison. Yes, supposedly the prosecution had withheld some
evidence about his mental state during his sentencing, so he
was able to get it reduced. So he was hanging
out during his time. Um, and he was in attica,
(29:08):
I believe and he had injured himself and was being
taken to the hospital, and on the way the way there,
he got the gun away from the guard who was
escorting him and took off and for I think five days,
he basically just the city of Buffalo was in mortal
fear of the fact that the guy who murdered Kitty
(29:30):
Geneviez was now on the loose in their town. And
they were afraid, rightfully, so he raped one woman. When
the cops closed in on him, he got ahold of
five people and held him hostage in a standoff that
lasted for a little while with the FBI before they
finally got to him. Um, he was bad dude. So
they sent him back to prison and uh, they said,
(29:52):
you're not getting out here ever. Yeah, he was later
a part of the Attica prison riots as well. And Um,
the one lady that he killed, he burned her alive,
like the family was upstairs, and he broke into her house,
raped her, killed her, and burned her alive in the
home and the house went up in flames. So it
(30:14):
sounded like he had no He sounded like a true sociopath,
like he had no Um, not, there's ever reason for
killing someone, but it was always just at random because
he wanted to do that. That's a lot what it
sounds like. It was a self indulgence. So in the documentary,
UM very powerful scene where the son I'm sorry, the
(30:38):
little brother of Kitty, who was told through his eyes,
interviews and sits down with one of the sons of
Mosley and it's just like, I mean, you cut the
tension with a knife. Obviously, it's just so like fraught
with tension, and um he had told his son that
(30:58):
she was yelling racial lers at him. He also said
that he was just a getaway driver um for some
mobster and the Genevese family was related to the crime
mob family, the Genevese family and none of this stuff
is true. And the brother was just like a no,
We're not related to that family at all. We have
(31:20):
nothing to do with that. And he just gives him
a look when he talks about the racial slurs, like,
come on, man, that's not what happened. So it was
a really really powerful scene of these two guys kind
of working it out in a way. I didn't see
them working anything out, oh see, which made it even
worse for me. I thought there was some between them.
(31:41):
They kind of came to a nice, nicer place than
where they started. Did not catch that at all. Maybe
you just skip forward or something. Maybe I was like,
I can't take this. Well. The sun was saying, like,
you know, I think it's you know, we need to
we need to move you know. The son of was
saying that they needed to move on from all this,
(32:01):
and then the brother was saying, I definitely don't you
know the sins of the father and the sins of
the sons. Yeah, he said that, so, um, you know,
I felt I felt like they were better off than
when they started for having that conversation. I honestly did
not catch that well regardless. Um Winston Mosley after I
guess after his second his first escape, the second little
(32:26):
crime spree in Buffalo, um he when he was captured,
he he apparently reformed himself. Where he claimed to be reformed.
He got a degree in prison. Um. He wrote an
editorial that The New York Times published where he basically said,
I'm a changed man. And everybody said, look at that.
It's just about the time your first parole hearing is
(32:46):
coming up. This is great timing. Uh. He went up
before the parole board and they said no. Uh. He
went up before the parole board again, they said no.
He went up eighteen times. Uh when eighteen times the
parole board said no. Yeah. I think the last one
was just a couple of years before he died. But
he died in two dozen sixteen, A d one in prison. Yeah,
(33:07):
and he Uh, the brother tried to get an interview
with him, and he said no, that he didn't want
to be exploited anymore. And you could just feel this
brother's pain of like really wanting to try and to
talk him into it again. Um. And that basically the
people that that were the go between like, yeah, you know,
(33:27):
you can try, we can't keep you, but uh, he's
not gonna change his mind. Right. So he never got
that interview. Uh, but I feel like he got. I
don't think he was looking for answers. I mean in
the documentary, he went back to many of these apartment
windows just to look at what their vantage point might
have been. He got an actress to recreate, um, what
(33:49):
the screaming would have sounded like, uh from down there
on the street, which was very chilling scene. And I
don't know that he was looking for like you said
he was at odds with his family. Of times you
could tell the one little brother was like, man, this
is hard on all of us, so you need to stop. UM.
But I don't think he was necessarily looking for the
closure in that I want to find out for sure
(34:11):
if these people could have stopped it. I think the
closure comes more in the journey of learning about his
sister and learning as much as he can about this case.
It's really interesting. It was very interesting, um the two
four Times article and then now this, this documentary has
definitely exonerated Q Gardens as a whole. They said, now
(34:34):
there's there's way more nuance to this, there's way more UM.
But two things to people that have um not been exonerated.
Our guy named Joseph Fink and a guy named Carl Ross.
Carl Ross was the guy who lived at the top
of the vestibule who opened his door. The ironic thing
about Carl Ross is, if you notice it says thirty
(34:54):
eight witnesses, thirty seven did nothing. The thirty that that
that last thirty eight witness that the Times was referring
to was Carl Ross. They said, he's the one who
called the police. He called the police, like long after
Kitty Genovese was dead. Yeah, so he was, Actually he
was actually, I don't want to say celebrated or whatever,
(35:15):
but he was exonerated initially by this Times article when
it turns out that he was one of the two
people who could have done something and didn't. The other
one was Joseph Fink, who saw the initial attack from
his vantage point in the elevator. He ran the elevator
in the Mowbray apartments across the street, and he um
apparently saw what was happening and left his his elevator
(35:35):
and went to bed and that was that. But again,
it seems like the overall feeling is okay. Other than
those two guys, everybody else is fine. I just disagree
with that. I think that there's a lot more that
people could have done that didn't, And I don't think
it's a I just don't think that everybody's off the
hook for that. Yep, you got anything else? No, man. Uh.
(36:01):
If you want to know more about Kitty Genevese, just
search the Internet. There's a lot about her, but be
careful what you read because it's all over the place. Frankly. Uh.
And since I said internet, It's time for a listener mail,
uh fish fraud follow up. Hey, guys, recently began began
a job as a marine fisheries observer for the Department
(36:25):
of Fishing, Game and the Bearing Sea, and just listen
to your fish fraud episode. Each season, a percentage of
vessels fish fishing here at least are randomly selected have
an observer on board to monitor the operations and buy
catch that come up in their pots or nets. The
presence of an observer is admittedly a bit of a
(36:46):
drag for this fisherman. We have to put up with
us skinny nerds ll L E type that uh. We
are generally a great deterrent of any mischief at sea.
But from what I have seen, most of the fishermen
are real, shar honest folks who know what they're doing.
Of course, this is only a small portion of all
the vessels on the water. Isn't going to solve that
(37:08):
problem by any means, But what you'd like to know
that there is some coverage on fishing, fishing, vessels and processors.
Thanks for all the laughs, my dudes. That is from
Kevin h Alexandra Witz in Olympia, Washington. It's a lot.
Kevin had no idea, did you that these people did that?
But there's basically like a sky Marshall program fighting fish
(37:32):
fraud on the high seas. Yeah, we talked about that,
we did. Yeah, I don't remember that. Yeah, we were
just like, it's just so infrequent and random that you know,
what's what good is it doing? And it sounds like
he agrees in some ways, but still have fun out
there on the high seas. Don't get seasick. Uh. If
you want to get in touch with this, like Kevin did,
(37:52):
you can tweet to us that that's y s K podcast.
You can join us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff
you Should Know, Uh, you can send us any all
the Stuff podcast at houstuffworks dot com and there's always
join us ter home on the web. Stuff you Should
Know dot Com from all listen thousands of other topics
(38:14):
is a house toff works dot com
Hey, San Francisco, we're coming out to see you. We
got invited back to San Francisco Sketch Fest this year
and we are pretty excited because we are doing a
Sunday afternoon show for the first time, so considers a
football game. We're gonna be uh January Sunday at one pm,
and UH, get your tickets fast because they're definitely gonna
(00:22):
sell out. Just go to s F sketch Fest dot
com where you can google that junk and uh just
follow the ticket links and there's lots of great shows,
so I would recommend just making a weekend out of it.
But check us out Sunday afternoon, January PM in San Francisco.
Can't wait to see everybody there. Welcome to Stuff You
(00:44):
Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and
welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W.
Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry So this you Should Know
podcast True Crime Edition. Actually yeah, but so much more
(01:06):
than just a single crime agreed, a crime that echoed
throughout a city, throughout the world, throughout decades. And it's true, man, Like,
there are very few crimes you can point to that
had more of an impact than the murder of Kitty
GENEVESE agreed. Uh, and there are a lot of true
(01:27):
crime podcast out there. We are not trying to become one. No,
this is just something we do from time to time.
I had somebody on Facebook, Oh, don't get me started
on that on the hinter Kaife murders there, this is
so played, everyone's done this. Who didn't know about this?
A bunch of people were like, well, I haven't heard
(01:47):
about it, but most counts I had never heard about it.
I hadn't heard about it until like a year or
two ago. So oh, it's so played. Oh and then
of course later on all these people are like, man,
what a jerk. He's like the the whole Uh. Well,
(02:09):
I'm sorry if anyone was offended. All I meant was
is this has been well covered. I think that it
has nothing to do with the way I said it.
The two thousand sixteen election has proven that. Um, if
you add if into your apology, it's not an actual apology. Yeah,
I'm sorry. If you're offended, is not an apology. That's
putting it back on the person. It's it's you, you,
(02:30):
you worm, your piece of garbage. Oh yeah, yeah, man, sorry,
Kitty Genevise and her family. I know, and you know what,
as I researched this and as I watched did you
watch The Witness the documentary recently on Netflix right now?
It is HBO documentary, And um, I was disturbed and
(02:52):
I'm glad it finally covered it in the documentary, but
I was disturbed that Kitty Genevise and we'll get to
her murder, but very quickly she was murdered and became
the symbol for um people not helping out right what
came to be known as bystander apathy or the bystander
effect that the more people who are around, the less
(03:14):
likely anyone is to help. Yeah, so she became such
a symbol that me never hear about Kitty Genevise and
who she was as a person. And that was one
great thing about that document and there are multiple great
things about that, but that it really talked about her
and showed her and revived her spirit, which I was
really looking for because even in researching online, it's hard
(03:36):
to get a lot of information. So um, some things,
some even contemporary articles still aren't mentioning that she was gay. Well, yeah,
her own brother who made the documentary didn't know that
she was gay. No, it's true, but it's it's been
out since I'm not sure when actually that came out.
It was just this year, okay, so it was fairly
(03:58):
new year. That was like in the last five years,
maybe so. And honoring that, why don't we talk a
minute about Catherine genevese Kitty Yeah. Born in Brooklyn, uh,
to Vincent and Rene Leginovise Italian American parents. Um, and
(04:19):
it's weird, I don't see. Oh. Yeah, Rachel was her
mother's name. She was Rachel Petroley at first. So, um.
They lived in Brooklyn, and she was very well loved
in school. Yes, she was like the leader of her click. Yeah.
And she was apparently a lot of fun and a
good mimic of her teachers. And she was voted class
(04:40):
cut up in her senior year graduating class. And she
went to an all girls school and Prospect Heights, and
it it was just, by all accounts, this vivacious, fun loving,
really sweet sweet lady yeah or girl. At that point,
her little brother Bill who and ended up making the
being featured in the documentary, The witness was just in
(05:03):
love with her she was just amazing to him and
had a very special relationship. Yeah. I think she was
about thirteen years older than him. Yeah, quite a bit,
maybe twelve years older. Um, I had his sister like that,
and like there's a very special relationship, none of that
sibling rivalry. Um, they're not old enough to be your mother.
(05:23):
That's just as it's a unique situation to be a
younger sibling and to be able to inherit like all
that worldly wisdom and they're they're going through all their
own things and their own struggles and their own travails.
But to that thirteen year old younger brother, they know
everything and they're the coolest person walking the planet and
(05:44):
they're the kindest person walking the planet because they've lived
long enough to like figure out some of the major stuff.
You know. Yeah, even my own sister is only six
years older, and we we very much had and still
have that relationship where uh and she my brother are
great now too. But you know, when you're two or
three years apart, there can be a little bit of
the knocking of heads. But by the time I came along,
(06:08):
I was like, you know, my sister was six, It
was perfect. I was a little baby doll for her right.
Um So, anyway, that was very much the relationship that
Kitty had with Bill, and it seemed like one of
the old older brothers always had a little bit of it, like, yeah,
she always liked him better. Yeah kind of attitude. It
seems seemed like everybody kind of knew like she liked
(06:28):
Bill the most. Yeah, which I kind of felt bad for.
But that's just this family dynamics. Man. You know. The
thing is when whenever you do start to kind of
talk about somebody who's died, especially someone who's died violently
and young, it's easy to um canonized, you know. He
really put him up on a pedestal and forget their flaws.
And of course I'm sure Kitty had tons of flaws,
(06:51):
but she didn't seem to have any from from what
I'm gathering, that were, you know, just terrible flaws or
that made her like a bad person. She seemed like
she was a like an overall above average great person. Yeah, agreed. So, um,
New York was getting too dangerous for her family. They
(07:12):
thought to have all these kids. Uh, So they moved
when she graduated high school to New Canaan, Connecticut. And
she said you know what, I'm staying here in New York.
I'm eighteen now. I love it here. Um. She got
married for a brief time, uh, to a guy was
his named Rocco. I don't remember his name, it's either
Rocky or Rocco. And Um. In the documentary, Bill tries
(07:36):
to get in touch with him. He's like, I really
because he found out she was gay and was like,
you know, we didn't even know this. I think Rocco
can help shed some light. And he very respectfully asked
for his own privacy. He said, my relationship with Kitty
will remain forever a mystery. Yeah, it's like, that's an
odd spot it was. I think he just didn't want to.
(07:58):
I mean, if she was a and they were married
for a short time, he either didn't know and maybe
felt the fool or he did know and was maybe
trying to do right by her in some way. Either way,
he didn't want to talk about it. But Um. She
worked as a secretary for a little while. She was
a waitress for a little while. Eventually she was a
(08:20):
bar made bartender and then became bar manager at a
place in Hollis Queen's called EVS Eleventh Hour well, and
from all accounts, it was one of those wonderful neighborhood
bars where the people are in there getting sauce pretty
early in the days, and everyone knew everyone, and everyone
(08:40):
loved Kitty, and she helped take care of everybody, but
was very much an independent um kind of firecracker of
a woman. Drove a red fiat. Her dad used to
tease her about, like, when are you going to find
the right guy. She's like, I make more money than
any guy I would go out with. I don't need that,
which is I guess night t sixties for dadam gay
(09:04):
and I can't say it, but she did make pretty
good dough as the bar manager. Um. And then in
March ninete, she met a woman named Mary Anne Zlonko
at Swing Rendezvous. It was an underground lesbian bar in
the village, and they moved in together shortly thereafter. Yeh
and Kitty actually used to bring um Maryanne home with
(09:28):
her to visit, but her family was all like, well,
they're just good friends and roommates. It's the sixties, the
early sixties. Yeah, And there's an audio interview with her
in that documentary that's really touching. She didn't want to
be on camera, but Bill was able to speak to
her and uh, I think, well, so compelling about this
(09:49):
documentary was that he was there was a search of
a man looking for closure. It's a harrowing, sometimes almost
unbearable to watch. Yeah, sir, I mean like he's at
odds with his family here there. Um he uh, he's
just just doing things where if you if you watch
(10:10):
it in the context of the documentary and you just
follow along the documentary, it all makes uttering complete sense.
But then if you stop and remove yourself long enough
to be like, this is a documentary, which means this
guy really did this stuff and there was a camera
following him along while he was doing it, I was like,
I I couldn't have done half of it, you know,
(10:30):
he really he just at one point he calls it
an obsession, but it's it's not. He doesn't come off
as obsessed, you know. All right, So let's detail the
crime and then we will take a break after that.
How does that sound? Yeah? Alright, So flash forward to
March thirteenth, nineteen sixty four. It's three fifteen in the
(10:53):
morning and Kitty genevese Is, as she often did, was
making her way home from work late at night as
a bar manager and was being trailed by a man,
a man by the name of Winston Moseley. Yes, who
was definitely the villain of this story, but is not
(11:15):
the only one that will turn out. So, um Kitty
was and at the time she was killed, and Winston
or killer was twenty nine, just turned twenty nine, I
think like a week or so before, And I think
he said, this is March nine. Yeah, he was married
with a couple of kids. Yeah, his wife, Elizabeth worked
(11:37):
the night shift. She was a hospital nurse, and um
Winston's mother stayed at home with the kids. So he
basically said, you know, on my own house. I've got
a great job operating computers. No one even knows what
I'm supposed to be doing with him yet, but I'm
making money doing it. Yeah, he's a smart guy, So
I'm gonna indulge myself. I'm gonna go out and stalk
(11:58):
women and murder them and my spare time, that's what
I'm gonna do. So that's what he was doing on
this night. He was cruising around looking for a woman
to um kill. Basically, Yeah, that was his direct quote
in questioning. Yeah, I was looking for a woman to kill. Yeah,
so he saw at I believe a red light, this
(12:19):
little red Fiat convertible caught his eye and there was
kitty driving. So he started a follower and she parked,
and she parked in the parking lot for the Long
Island Railway, which the parking lot went backed up to
the side of her apartment building, which is a two
story tutor job that had shops in the bottom and
(12:42):
apartments in the top. Right. Yeah, this was in Q
Gardens and Queens. So he followed her on foot. At
this point Um she sees him and knows that something
is going on. He has a knife in his hand,
so she starts uh running. He catches up to her
by outside of a bookstore and stabs her twice in
(13:04):
the back right off the bat with this knife. And
she had been running um toward a bar that she
thought would be open, but it turned out apparently there
was a new manager and the new manager had closed
down early, so when she stabbed twice in the back.
It's on this darkened street, but right across the street,
Austin Street, is a ten story apartment building with dozens
(13:27):
of windows looking out onto Austin Street. Where she's being
stabbed in the back, and she screamed, she cries out.
I think she said something like, oh God, he stabbed me,
helped me, help me, is what they They said, basically,
definitively is what she screamed. And people who were witnesses
to this recounted that one guy said that he was
(13:52):
I think a ten or eleven year old kid who
was inside one of the apartments in the Mobray apartment building,
and that he was awoke and awakened from a d sleep.
The scream was so loud, he said it was the
loudest thing he's ever heard. So she screams, and a
man living in the Mobrie apartment buildings opens his window.
(14:12):
What's his name, Yeah, Robert moser Um opened his window
and screamed out, hey, get out of there, what are
you doing? And uh, Mosley took off, took off, running away.
He's very frequently misquoted as having said like, let that
girl alone, but even by his own words in his
own testimony, he said, hey, get out of there. Yeah,
(14:35):
at any rate, he scared him away. Uh So, in
between that time, about thirty minutes passes. Kitty Um makes
her way around to the vestibule of her own building. Right, Yeah,
and um goes inside the vestibule and uh, like you
(14:57):
think the horror is over for her. She could probably
survive these wounds. Um is in shock, I would imagine.
And then Mosley went to his car, kind of checked
out the building, saw that some lights had gone on,
and reason to himself, no one's gonna do anything, puts
on a different hat and goes back, finds her in
(15:20):
the vestibule and finishes the job and the most horrific
ways you can imagine. Yeah, he uh, he stabbed her
at least twelve more times. They think at least she
was stabbed at least fourteen times. He said he doesn't
remember how many times he stabbed her. Um, but he
basically kept stabbing her until she stopped screaming. Um, she
was still alive. I saw that he attempted the raper.
(15:42):
I've also seen that he raped her. Yeah. I'm not
sure which one's correct, but at one point, and this
is really important here, as he's stabbing her and she's
screaming in the vestibule, there's a staircase that leads directly
up to a door, and behind that door lived a
man named Carl Ross. And Carl Ross opened his door
and looked down one single flight of stairs at Winston
(16:06):
Mosley stabbing um kitty Genevese, who is bloody. There was
no confusing what was going on. And he closed the
door and he called his girlfriend, and his girlfriend said,
you don't get involved. I'm worried for you. Just just
leave it alone. It's none of your business. And he did.
(16:26):
He didn't do anything at least for a little while,
all right. So that's a good place to break here,
and we're gonna come back and talk about who saw
and heard what and what they did about it right
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So at this point, um, Kitty Genevies is uh not
(17:58):
dead yet, but dying in the vestibule. Um, a woman
did come down and uh was with her. Her name
is Sophia Ferrar. She's still with us, and um, she
was a neighbor and friend of Kitty's. And so she
went down there and uh apparently was with her as
(18:19):
she passed away, tried to calm her down. Evidently did
calm her down, and likes to think that she at
least saw a friendly face and that she was being
cared for as she passed. Uh. The weird thing is
is that is not mentioned. I guess we gotta get
into the New York Times now. Yeah. So, so after
the murder um like the next day, the Times ran
(18:43):
four paragraphs on the Kitty Genovase murder. It was not
incredibly newsworthy at first because that year, there were six
d thirty six murders in New York City. Yeah, that
was just one of them, just one. But a couple
of weeks later, UM, the head the city editor of
the New York Times, a guy named A Rosenthal, who's
(19:03):
a legendary journalist, was having lunch with I believe, the
police commissioner of the NYPD. And the commissioner said, did
you hear about that Genevese murder? This one for the books.
Thirty eight people standing around watched the whole thing. Nobody
did it a thing about it. Now you've got a story.
A Rosenthal, legendary journalist, is like, uh, thank you for that.
(19:26):
Here's my diners Club card. I have to go now
and get this story done. So he did. He assigned
it out to a guy. What was the original reporter's name, Um,
his name was Martin Gainsberg, and they wrote on the
front page. I shouldn't say they wrote it was definitely
all Gainsberger, but he was assigned and definitely under the
(19:46):
direction of A Rosenthal, like, this is this is the story.
Thirty eight people stood around and did nothing. Yeah, the
title of the article was thirty seven. It was thirty
seven at a time thirty seven who saw a murder
didn't call the police, And basically the entire article and
the entire narrative from that moment forward for decades was
(20:09):
a not about this woman at all. Hardly she became
a symbol be not necessarily even about the crime, but
about the crime of uh, these people who didn't the
crime of apathy for these thirty seven or thirty eight people.
But it was very much misconstrued in the New York Times,
to the point where in two thousand four they all
(20:32):
but wrote a retraction with new information. Um, because the
original article they said, like these people witnessed it. That
is not true. Um. Maybe only a couple of people
might have actually seen anything with their eyeballs. The other
thirty five or thirty six may have heard someone screaming, uh.
(20:55):
They might have thought it was a drunken couple in
their neighborhood coming home from a bar. Uh. There might
have been some apathy involved, for sure for some of them.
But to characterize this as thirty seven or thirty eight
people witnessed this horrific crime and literally shut their doors
and windows to it was not accurate at all, they said. Um,
(21:18):
they said specifically. Well, the way that they put it
was that there were The way the story read was
that thirty eight people had watched this murder which took place.
They misreported that there were three attacks and that the
man had been chased off twice and came back two
more times. Um, But that this whole thing had taken
(21:39):
place over thirty minutes, this long, prolonged attack, and that
thirty eight people had just been sitting there watching it,
doing nothing, And that is definitely a mischaracterization of what
had happened, Like you're saying, for the most part, people
were ear witnesses, not eyewitnesses. There are certainly not thirty
eight eyewitnesses, and most people weren't in a position to
(22:00):
do much, if anything about it, certainly physically. But I
don't know if you could call it like a retraction
because the point that A Rosenthal he never apologized for whatever.
Even in the documentary he's interviewed, um he and he's like, I,
this is great, I'm glad that it did what it did. Yeah. Sure.
(22:20):
His The point is still there that there was apathy
in in that there were two people who could have
done something and they didn't. But then from what the
Other witnesses said the scream was pretty clearly not a
purse snatching and not a couple fighting drunkenly, that it
(22:41):
was a violent crime being committed on this woman. And
people still didn't do anything. Yeah, they misreported. Um, possibly
that no one called police. Apparently perhaps up to three
people called the police, although police logs showed only one
call came in. Um. And it may be a case
(23:01):
of these people now telling themselves like I called the
cops that did something when they may not have. Uh,
they did not report at all that Ms Ferrar had
gone down to be with her. She was not mentioned ever. UM.
So I kind of went from feeling like, yeah, you
know this bystander effect it had good. It led to
the being created apparently in some ways, and people study
(23:25):
this in class and it raised awareness. So you know,
if they stretched it a little bit, then it had
a good effect. That's what Abe basically, that was his position.
That still is his position. But oh did he finally
passed away? Um? And then I finally came around and
be like, no, you know, the truth is what you
should print. And if you're a reporter and you run
(23:47):
a story, you should print the truth and not some
sensationalized version of it to sell newspapers. No, no, absolutely,
I agree with you, And I think the one thing
that you can hang on a Rosenthal is that, Um,
that story was definitely fashioned in a manner to be
as sensational as possible, to shock and outrage the public
as much as possible. But I still think it's rooted
(24:10):
in in the basic fact that there was apathy involved
and that it possibly allowed Winston mostly to finish the
job that Kitty Jenneviez might have survived had somebody done
more than just sit up, look out the window and
go back to bed or not even bother to look
(24:30):
out the window. And like you said, Chuck, like this
had a lot of impact because this this story comes
out in nine and for forty years. It wasn't until
two thousand four that the time saw fit to like
go back and really reinvestigate, and they did. There was
a great, um, great article called Kitty four years later,
I think, um, and and the author goes through and
(24:54):
reinvestigates the case and really sets a lot of facts straight. Um.
But within that forty year period, the effects that this
murder had were just sweeping. It led to the establishment
of nine on one. It's a big one and it
it created this whole field of psychology that looks into
(25:15):
the psychology of crowds. You know, why we would just
stand around? What is this diffusion of responsibility? None of
that understanding existed until the Kidty Geneviez murder. Yeah, and weirdly,
why is someone Why is a solo witness more apt
to act than a group of people? One thing I
saw is that is called social influence, and that we
(25:36):
take our cues from others. So if inaction is basically
what is on the table right, then we're going to
be inactive as well. If people are starting to move
toward it, towards the problem, we'll probably join in too.
I could see that, or people thinking like either I'm
not someone else's better equipped to deal with this than me,
(25:58):
or I feel like someone else will do this so
I don't have to. Yeah, a lot goes into play.
It's pretty interesting. One of the less productive things that
came out of it, though, is this idea that when
you live in a city, in a big city, you
put enough people together, everybody stops caring about anybody else.
They're all out for number one and Q gardens became
the center of this or just such a symbolic example
(26:24):
of of urban care uncaring, I guess, and Kitty Jona
Viz became a symbol of of that as well. And
they need to do something to act out um, to
help other people when you see them need help. Alright,
So let's take another quick break here and we're going
(26:44):
to get back into what happened to uh Mr Mosley
and the further effects of this crime after this. So
(27:15):
a week after this murder, uh Mosley was breaking into
a house. He's not a good guy, No, he was
a terrible guy. He was um beyond being a sociopath
and a psychotic, was of just a burglar and he
would he was just straight up robbing a house one
day of a television and one of the neighbors saw
(27:38):
this called the cops. Cops came and arrested him. No, no, no, no,
that's not true. What the neighbor. Here's the thing, this
is the great ironic twist of the Kittie Jane v story.
He went to a different neighborhood. He was robbing a
house and the neighbors said, hey, what are you doing?
And he started to run from the house. The neighbor
chased him and tackled him and held him until the
cops came. Oh yeah, he called that's how he went
(28:01):
down intervention. Yeah yeah, yeah, but ampathy intervention a week later. Yes, okay,
So at any rate, he calls the cops, he gets arrested,
and very like, uh, matter of factly says that he
killed Kitty Genevise. And not only that, but he killed
supposedly two other women, a woman named Barbara Craylick. Uh.
(28:24):
Actually she was a girl, she's only fifteen, and then
a woman named Annie Mae Johnson. And apparently both of
them had been sexually assaulted. And he was never tried
for those But um he did plead not guilty by
reason of insanity, which did not work well. Sentenced to death,
and by luck of timing, was able to appeal. Uh.
(28:45):
And the death penalty had gone away from most crimes
in that time period, and he um was resentenced to
life in prison. Yes, supposedly the prosecution had withheld some
evidence about his mental state during his sentencing, so he
was able to get it reduced. So he was hanging
out during his time. Um, and he was in attica,
(29:08):
I believe and he had injured himself and was being
taken to the hospital, and on the way the way there,
he got the gun away from the guard who was
escorting him and took off and for I think five days,
he basically just the city of Buffalo was in mortal
fear of the fact that the guy who murdered Kitty
(29:30):
Geneviez was now on the loose in their town. And
they were afraid, rightfully, so he raped one woman. When
the cops closed in on him, he got ahold of
five people and held him hostage in a standoff that
lasted for a little while with the FBI before they
finally got to him. Um, he was bad dude. So
they sent him back to prison and uh, they said,
(29:52):
you're not getting out here ever. Yeah, he was later
a part of the Attica prison riots as well. And Um,
the one lady that he killed, he burned her alive,
like the family was upstairs, and he broke into her house,
raped her, killed her, and burned her alive in the
home and the house went up in flames. So it
(30:14):
sounded like he had no He sounded like a true sociopath,
like he had no Um, not, there's ever reason for
killing someone, but it was always just at random because
he wanted to do that. That's a lot what it
sounds like. It was a self indulgence. So in the documentary,
UM very powerful scene where the son I'm sorry, the
(30:38):
little brother of Kitty, who was told through his eyes,
interviews and sits down with one of the sons of
Mosley and it's just like, I mean, you cut the
tension with a knife. Obviously, it's just so like fraught
with tension, and um he had told his son that
(30:58):
she was yelling racial lers at him. He also said
that he was just a getaway driver um for some
mobster and the Genevese family was related to the crime
mob family, the Genevese family and none of this stuff
is true. And the brother was just like a no,
We're not related to that family at all. We have
(31:20):
nothing to do with that. And he just gives him
a look when he talks about the racial slurs, like,
come on, man, that's not what happened. So it was
a really really powerful scene of these two guys kind
of working it out in a way. I didn't see
them working anything out, oh see, which made it even
worse for me. I thought there was some between them.
(31:41):
They kind of came to a nice, nicer place than
where they started. Did not catch that at all. Maybe
you just skip forward or something. Maybe I was like,
I can't take this. Well. The sun was saying, like,
you know, I think it's you know, we need to
we need to move you know. The son of was
saying that they needed to move on from all this,
(32:01):
and then the brother was saying, I definitely don't you
know the sins of the father and the sins of
the sons. Yeah, he said that, so, um, you know,
I felt I felt like they were better off than
when they started for having that conversation. I honestly did
not catch that well regardless. Um Winston Mosley after I
guess after his second his first escape, the second little
(32:26):
crime spree in Buffalo, um he when he was captured,
he he apparently reformed himself. Where he claimed to be reformed.
He got a degree in prison. Um. He wrote an
editorial that The New York Times published where he basically said,
I'm a changed man. And everybody said, look at that.
It's just about the time your first parole hearing is
(32:46):
coming up. This is great timing. Uh. He went up
before the parole board and they said no. Uh. He
went up before the parole board again, they said no.
He went up eighteen times. Uh when eighteen times the
parole board said no. Yeah. I think the last one
was just a couple of years before he died. But
he died in two dozen sixteen, A d one in prison. Yeah,
(33:07):
and he Uh, the brother tried to get an interview
with him, and he said no, that he didn't want
to be exploited anymore. And you could just feel this
brother's pain of like really wanting to try and to
talk him into it again. Um. And that basically the
people that that were the go between like, yeah, you know,
(33:27):
you can try, we can't keep you, but uh, he's
not gonna change his mind. Right. So he never got
that interview. Uh, but I feel like he got. I
don't think he was looking for answers. I mean in
the documentary, he went back to many of these apartment
windows just to look at what their vantage point might
have been. He got an actress to recreate, um, what
(33:49):
the screaming would have sounded like, uh from down there
on the street, which was very chilling scene. And I
don't know that he was looking for like you said
he was at odds with his family. Of times you
could tell the one little brother was like, man, this
is hard on all of us, so you need to stop. UM.
But I don't think he was necessarily looking for the
closure in that I want to find out for sure
(34:11):
if these people could have stopped it. I think the
closure comes more in the journey of learning about his
sister and learning as much as he can about this case.
It's really interesting. It was very interesting, um the two
four Times article and then now this, this documentary has
definitely exonerated Q Gardens as a whole. They said, now
(34:34):
there's there's way more nuance to this, there's way more UM.
But two things to people that have um not been exonerated.
Our guy named Joseph Fink and a guy named Carl Ross.
Carl Ross was the guy who lived at the top
of the vestibule who opened his door. The ironic thing
about Carl Ross is, if you notice it says thirty
(34:54):
eight witnesses, thirty seven did nothing. The thirty that that
that last thirty eight witness that the Times was referring
to was Carl Ross. They said, he's the one who
called the police. He called the police, like long after
Kitty Genovese was dead. Yeah, so he was, Actually he
was actually, I don't want to say celebrated or whatever,
(35:15):
but he was exonerated initially by this Times article when
it turns out that he was one of the two
people who could have done something and didn't. The other
one was Joseph Fink, who saw the initial attack from
his vantage point in the elevator. He ran the elevator
in the Mowbray apartments across the street, and he um
apparently saw what was happening and left his his elevator
(35:35):
and went to bed and that was that. But again,
it seems like the overall feeling is okay. Other than
those two guys, everybody else is fine. I just disagree
with that. I think that there's a lot more that
people could have done that didn't, And I don't think
it's a I just don't think that everybody's off the
hook for that. Yep, you got anything else? No, man. Uh.
(36:01):
If you want to know more about Kitty Genevese, just
search the Internet. There's a lot about her, but be
careful what you read because it's all over the place. Frankly. Uh.
And since I said internet, It's time for a listener mail,
uh fish fraud follow up. Hey, guys, recently began began
a job as a marine fisheries observer for the Department
(36:25):
of Fishing, Game and the Bearing Sea, and just listen
to your fish fraud episode. Each season, a percentage of
vessels fish fishing here at least are randomly selected have
an observer on board to monitor the operations and buy
catch that come up in their pots or nets. The
presence of an observer is admittedly a bit of a
(36:46):
drag for this fisherman. We have to put up with
us skinny nerds ll L E type that uh. We
are generally a great deterrent of any mischief at sea.
But from what I have seen, most of the fishermen
are real, shar honest folks who know what they're doing.
Of course, this is only a small portion of all
the vessels on the water. Isn't going to solve that
(37:08):
problem by any means, But what you'd like to know
that there is some coverage on fishing, fishing, vessels and processors.
Thanks for all the laughs, my dudes. That is from
Kevin h Alexandra Witz in Olympia, Washington. It's a lot.
Kevin had no idea, did you that these people did that?
But there's basically like a sky Marshall program fighting fish
(37:32):
fraud on the high seas. Yeah, we talked about that,
we did. Yeah, I don't remember that. Yeah, we were
just like, it's just so infrequent and random that you know,
what's what good is it doing? And it sounds like
he agrees in some ways, but still have fun out
there on the high seas. Don't get seasick. Uh. If
you want to get in touch with this, like Kevin did,
(37:52):
you can tweet to us that that's y s K podcast.
You can join us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff
you Should Know, Uh, you can send us any all
the Stuff podcast at houstuffworks dot com and there's always
join us ter home on the web. Stuff you Should
Know dot Com from all listen thousands of other topics
(38:14):
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