The Murder of Kitty Genovese Notes:

Episode Photo by Lacie Slezak on Unsplash

In the early hours of March 13, 1964, 28-year-old Kitty Genovese was stabbed outside the apartment building across the street from where she lived, in an apartment above a row of shops on Austin Street, in the Kew Gardens neighborhood of Queens in New York City. Two weeks after the murder, The New York Timespublished an article claiming that 38 witnesses saw or heard the attack, and that none of them called the police or came to her aid.

The incident prompted inquiries into what became known as the bystander effect or "Genovese syndrome", and the murder became a staple of U.S. psychology textbooks for the next four decades. However, researchers have since uncovered major inaccuracies in the New York Times article. Police interviews revealed that witnesses either attempted to call the police or were afraid to intervene.

Reporters at a competing news organization discovered in 1964 that the article was inconsistent with the facts, but they were unwilling at the time to challenge New York Times editor Abe Rosenthal. In 2007, an article in the American Psychologist found "no evidence for the presence of 38 witnesses, or that witnesses observed the murder, or that witnesses remained inactive". In 2016, The New York Times called its own reporting "flawed", stating that the original story "grossly exaggerated the number of witnesses and what they had perceived".

Winston Moseley, a 29-year-old Manhattan native, was arrested during a house burglary six days after the murder. While in custody, he confessed to killing Genovese. At his trial, Moseley was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death; this sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment. Moseley died in prison on March 28, 2016, at the age of 81, having served 52 years.

Article Source : Wikipedia