Kitty Genovese’s 1964 murder became a cautionary tale about the bystander effect — but few are familiar with the story of her killer, Winston Moseley, who claimed he attacked her because he’d developed "an uncontrollable urge to kill."
Public DomainWinston Moseley, the killer of Kitty Genovese.
On March 13, 1964, a 28-year-old bartender named Kitty Genovese was brutally raped and stabbed to death outside her Queens apartment. At the time, it was falsely reported that 38 neighbors had witnessed the attack and did nothing to help her, sparking a national conversation about the bystander effect. But while Kitty Genovese became a household name in the years following her death, the story of her killer, Winston Moseley, is less widely known.
From the outside, Moseley seemed an unlikely culprit. At 29 years old, he was steadily employed, happily married, and owned his own home. He had three children and no criminal record.
But at some point in his 20s, Moseley developed a taste for violence — and it resulted in one of the most infamous murder cases in American history.
The Early Life Of Winston Moseley
Winston Moseley was born on March 2, 1935, in Manhattan. His mother, Fannie Moseley, did not tell her son that the man who raised him, Alphonse Moseley, was not his biological father until he was much older. Growing up, Winston watched as his parents became increasingly distant, in large part due to Fannie’s many extramarital affairs.
When Winston was nine, his mother sent him away to live with relatives in Michigan. For the rest of his childhood, he bounced around between different homes and only saw his mother a couple of times a year. But despite his turbulent relationship with Fannie, Winston fiercely defended her reputation, insisting that he felt his mother would always be there for him if he needed her.
Moseley was reportedly a smart, if troubled, child who possessed a curious fascination with ants. In his prison letters to writer Catherine Pelonero, Moseley divulged several intriguing anecdotes from his childhood. In one letter, he mentioned that he had once been knocked unconscious after getting hit in the head with a streetcar.
In 1954, Moseley married his first wife, Pauline, with whom he would have two children. By 1961, Moseley and Pauline had divorced and he married his second wife, Elizabeth Grant. They had another child together. While Elizabeth worked nights as a registered nurse, Moseley worked as a business machine operator.
Moseley seemingly led an ideal life. He had a devoted wife, three children, a home in New York City, and a steady job. But at some point in his adult life, the Daily News reported in 1964, he began developing “an uncontrollable urge to kill” — and decided to target women because “they were easier and didn’t fight back.”
Winston Moseley Begins His Crime Spree
Family PhotoWinston Moseley confessed to having murdered two other people before Genovese, citing his “uncontrollable urge to kill” as his motive.
Beginning in his twenties, Winston Moseley carried out a string of robberies across New York City. In total, Moseley admitted to conducting some 30 to 40 burglaries. And before long, he graduated to assault.
According to a 2016 New York Times obituary, Moseley confessed to murdering and assaulting at least two women and girls before his infamous attack on Kitty Genovese in 1964.
The first was 15-year-old Barbara Kralik. Moseley claimed that in 1963, he stabbed Kralik to death in her bedroom in Queens. The following year, he brutally murdered 24-year-old Annie Mae Johnson, shooting her and then burning her body.
But it was his third murder that would put his name in the history books.
The Murder Of Kitty Genovese
Wikimedia CommonsKitty Genovese, Winston Moseley’s most famous victim.
In the early morning hours of March 13, 1964, Winston Moseley prowled the streets of Queens, looking for a woman to kill. At about 3 a.m., he spotted 28-year-old Kitty Genovese in her red car as she was driving home from a shift at a nearby bar.
Genovese parked outside of her apartment in Kew Gardens, Queens, and reportedly started running once she saw Moseley following her. Moseley ran after her and attacked, stabbing her several times as she screamed for help.
At the sound of Genovese’s distress, a resident from a nearby apartment complex yelled out at Moseley to leave her alone. Spooked by this interruption, Moseley fled, leaving Genovese free to drag herself to her apartment building’s vestibule. But a few minutes later, Moseley returned to finish the job, raping her, stabbing her again, and stealing her money and brassiere.
“As soon as she saw me, she started screaming,” Moseley later testified, according to court documents. “So I stabbed her a few other times to stop her from screaming, and I had stabbed her once in the neck…. [S]he only moaned after that.”
Despite news outlets reporting at the time that 38 neighbors had witnessed the attack and failed to intervene, this wasn’t exactly true. Unfortunately, New York City had not yet implemented the 911 system, so witnesses often spent more time trying to contact the police than is common today. And many of the alleged “witnesses” were unaware the stabbing had even taken place.
What’s more, at least two neighbors did call the police during the attack, and one woman cradled Genovese until the ambulance arrived.
Tragically, Kitty Genovese died en route to the hospital. And when the police finally reported to the scene, her killer was nowhere in sight.
Winston Moseley Goes On Trial For Murder
Getty ImagesThe alleyway where Winston Moseley attacked Kitty Genovese.
As New York City fell into an uproar following the brutal murder of Kitty Genovese, the New York Police Department began searching for the man who killed her. Then, less than a week after the murder, police arrested Winston Moseley on an unrelated burglary charge.
During questioning, NYPD officers realized that Moseley’s car bore remarkable similarities to a car witnesses had reported seeing at the scene of Genovese’s murder. And for some reason, when officers interrogated Moseley about his involvement in the attack, Moseley opened up like a book. He not only confessed to the murder of Kitty Genovese, but also to the murder of two other women and girls, the rape of several others, and numerous burglaries.
Moseley’s trial for Genovese’s murder began on June 8, 1964. He pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity; however, psychiatric evaluations found him to be legally sane.
He was ultimately convicted of the first-degree murder of Kitty Genovese and sentenced to death. In 1967, his sentence was reduced to life in prison after New York State changed its laws around the death penalty.
But Winston Moseley’s story didn’t end there.
Moseley’s Escape From Prison And Subsequent Recapture
Winston Moseley spent just four years behind bars before he made a daring escape on March 18, 1968.
During a brief hospital visit in Buffalo, New York, Moseley attacked a guard, stole his gun, and made a break for it. He managed to flee to an empty house owned by a couple named Mr. and Mrs. Kulaga. When the Kulagas arrived at the house three days later, Moseley held the couple hostage and sexually assaulted Mrs. Kulaga at gunpoint.
Afterward, he stole the couple’s car and drove to Grand Island, New York, where he held a mother and her young daughter hostage. By this time, however, the police were on his tail; they caught up to Moseley and forced him to surrender before any harm came to the mother and daughter. Moseley received two additional 15-year sentences for the escape.
His Final Years In Prison
The next time Winston Moseley made headlines was in 1971, when he participated in the infamous Attica Prison uprising which left 43 men dead. Afterward, he began exchanging letters with a woman named Dr. Melody McCloud, who had seen him on television as he advocated for the inmates’ rights.
Dr. Melody McCloudWhile Moseley initially claimed he had attacked Kitty Genovese simply because he had wanted to kill a woman, he told Dr. Melody McCloud he killed her in a fit of rage after she called him racial slurs.
Before long, however, he began showing his dark side, even going so far as to threaten his pen pal when she stopped writing to him as frequently.
“How can you be so busy you can’t write?” He wrote in a letter in the 1970s, according to the Saturday Evening Post. “You better be careful!”
Over the years, Moseley applied for parole several times, claiming he had come to see the harm he had caused by his actions. He was denied each time.
“It is never too late to try to make amends,” Moseley wrote in 1989, according to Oxygen. “So should the day come when I am released from prison, and I pray to God that day will come, I will do all in my power to atone for the sins of my past.”
But those prayers were ultimately in vain. Winston Moseley would die behind bars at the age of 81 on March 28, 2016. At the time of his death, he was one of the longest-serving inmates in New York State history.
After reading the story of Winston Moseley, dive into the story of the Son of Sam, the man who terrorized New York City in the 1970s. Then, read about Joel Rifkin, the man who became the most prolific serial killer in New York State history.
