History’s Worst Murders: Kitty Genovese
Wikimedia CommonsKitty Genovese, whose murder led to studies on the “bystander effect.”
The murder of Kitty Genovese, killed outside of her apartment while many of her own neighbors watched, shocked the public.
The young woman was murdered in cold blood, screaming for help, and the neighbors who heard her screams did nothing. Psychologists asked themselves: how could someone see an attack, or witness a crime take place, and do nothing?
They coined the term “bystander effect,” which now appears in virtually every psychology textbook.
Around 2:30 AM on March 13, 1964, Kitty Genovese left the bar she worked at in Hollis, Queens and drove home to her apartment in Kew Gardens. She didn’t notice the car that pulled out of a nearby parking lot and followed her all the way home.
Genovese parked her car at the railroad station and started the roughly 100-foot walk to her apartment building. That was when Winston Moseley attacked.
Genovese screamed as he stabbed her. It was 3:15 AM, but her cries for help were loud enough to wake her neighbors. But not one of them came to her aid.
Wikimedia CommonsWinston Moseley, the man who killed Kitty Genovese.
One man shouted: “Leave that girl alone!” It was enough to scare Moseley away, but even with him gone, nobody helped Genovese back to her feet. For ten minutes, she crawled across the ground, slowly bleeding out, no one helping her. And then Moseley came back.
He stabbed Genovese several more times, raped her, robbed her, and then ran off. Neighbors didn’t call the police until after 4 a.m., nearly an hour after she’d first been attacked. By then, it was too late. Genovese was already dying.
A few witnesses claimed that they called the police but that their calls weren’t given priority. Others simply stated that they assumed someone else would do it instead.
Genovese’s neighbors’ behavior cost the young woman her life and has since been grimly immortalized in psychology textbooks, as well as the history books.
After this look at famous murders, check out ten of history’s most famous psychopaths. After that, read about six of the most chilling unsolved murders in history.
