[Editor's Note: The following is excerpted from: Jim Rasenberger, "Kitty, 40 Years Later", The New York Times, (Final Ed.) Sect. 14 , p. 1 , col. 2 (Feb. 8, 2004).]
A More Complex View
It was never the intention of Mr. De May, a 54-year-old maritime lawyer, to spend hundreds of hours analyzing a decades-old murder. Indeed, he had little interest in the subject of Kitty Genovese's death until two years ago. That is when he decided, as a hobby, to create a nostalgic Web site devoted to Kew Gardens, where he'd lived for almost 30 years. If he was going to delve into his neighborhood's past, he reasoned, he'd certainly have to consider its most notorious episode.
In the end, Mr. De May's conclusion about the murder is that, while the behavior of the witnesses was hardly beyond reproach, the common conception of exactly what occurred that night is not in fact what occurred. What did occur, he argues, is far more complex and far less damning to the residents of Kew Gardens.
"Yeah, there was a murder," Mr. De May said. "Yeah, people heard something. You can question how a few people behaved. But this wasn't 38 people watching a woman be slaughtered for 35 minutes and saying, 'Oh, I don't want to be involved.' "
Mr. De May began his research with the seminal Times article of March 27, 1964. "I remember reading through it, then putting it down and thinking, 'Well, this doesn't hang together at all,' " he said. "And then I read it again carefully. I knew the area. I knew the crime scene because I go by there every day."
Mr. De May soon found himself poring through legal documents related to the case, scouring books and articles, and interviewing neighbors. At one point, he even ran the route of Ms. Genovese's flight up Austin Street, timing it with a watch. He became convinced that his first impression was correct. "Here's something that everyone thinks happened," he said, "that isn't so."
His argument, made in full at oldkewgardens .com, boils down to two claims: that the great majority of the 38 so-called witnesses did not see any part of the actual killing; and that what most of them did see, or hear, was fleeting and vague.
To begin, he points out that there were two attacks on Kitty Genovese, not three, as The Times initially indicated. The newspaper later acknowledged the discrepancy - it was caused by confused police accounts - but three is still given as the number of attacks, recently in "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell and "New York: An Illustrated History" by Ric Burns and James Sanders. Since the extra attack was supposed to have occurred in full view of surrounding windows, it added to an impression of callous disregard by neighbors.
Of the two attacks that did occur, the first was on Austin Street, across from the Mowbray. Contrary to what some accounts imply, Mr. De May, citing courtroom testimony, contends that this first attack must have lasted only minutes before Mr. Moseley jogged off to his car. By the time most witnesses heard the screams and made it to their windows, Mr. De May argues, they saw just a young woman walking or stumbling alone down Austin Street toward the side of her building, then vanishing around the corner.
Every bit as significant as the brevity of the first attack, Mr. De May believes, was the location of the second, more sustained attack. This occurred in a narrow foyer at the back of Ms. Genovese's building, indoors and facing away from the Mowbray toward the railroad tracks. This is where Kitty had gone to seek safety, and where Mr. Moseley discovered her. Only one witness, a man who lived at the top of the stairs, could have seen what occurred in that foyer, Mr. De May said.
Charles Skoller, the former assistant district attorney, supports part of Mr. De May's conclusion. "I don't think 38 people witnessed it," said Mr. Skoller, now retired. "I don't know where that came from, the 38. I didn't count 38. We only found half a dozen that saw what was going on, that we could use."
But Mr. Skoller is far less willing than Mr. De May to forgive the neighbors. Even if not all saw the crime, Mr. Skoller is convinced they heard it. "I believe that many people heard the screams," he said. "It could have been more than 38. And anyone that heard the screams had to know there was a vicious crime taking place. There's no doubt in my mind about that."
Many witnesses claimed they thought it was a lovers' quarrel or a drunken argument spilling out of the Old Bailey. Mr. De May points out that a good number of the witnesses were elderly, and nearly all awoke from deep slumbers, their brains befogged, their windows shut to the cold. Furthermore, he raises the possibility that several witnesses did call the police after the first attack, but that their calls were ignored and never recorded.
A. M. Rosenthal, who went on to become executive editor of The Times, stands by the article he assigned to Mr. Gansberg 40 years ago, right down to the word "watched" in its opening sentence. This questioning of details, he said, is to be expected.
"In a story that gets a lot of attention, there's always somebody who's saying, 'Well, that's not really what it's supposed to be,' '' said Mr. Rosenthal, who is retired from The Times and now writes a column for The Daily News. There may have been minor inaccuracies, he allows, but none that alter the story's essential meaning. "There may have been 38, there may have been 39,'' he said, "but the whole picture, as I saw it, was very affecting."
