PhiloPsycho Freedom

The Attack

Kitty Genovese was an average 28 year old girl who worked as a bar manager in Queens. One night, she closed the bar, drove home and parked about 30m from the building at about 3:15am. She walked around the building to the back entrance where she saw Winston Moseley, who ran after and quickly overtook her. He stabbed her in the back twice times with a knife. Genovese let out a scream "Oh God, he stabbed me! Help me!", which was heard by a few neighbours, and fewer of them recognized it as a call for help. As (bad) luck would have it, it was a cold night and most of the buildings' windows were shut. One neighbour added their contribution, yelling "Let that girl alone!" at the attacker, to which Moseley ran away from.

Genovese slowly made her way to the rear entrance of the apartment building. She managed to get to the building, but was seriously injured and out of the view of the people who realized that she needed help.

Witnesses reported observing the attacker enter his car, drive away, and return only 10 minutes later. In his car, he put on a wide-brimmed hat (to obscure his face, presumably), and searched several areas before he located the injured Genovese, who was laying, barely conscious, at a locked door inside the building that prevented her from entering further. In this relatively 'safe' location, Moseley proceeded to continue his attack, stabbing her several times more. As she lay dying, he raped her and took what little money he could find on her ($49), leaving her to die on her own shortly after his departure. The happenings took approximately an hour to unfold.

The Response

Police records of the event are relatively unclear, and the calls were not given high priority by the police. One witness's father called the police after the initial attack, telling them that a woman had been beaten up, was able to walk, and was staggering around.

A few minutes after the final attack, a witness called the police, who finally acknowledged the call and arrived within minutes. Genovese was taken to the hospital at 4:15am and died en route. There were varying reports on exactly how many wintesses there were (~12 revealed in court, but the Times cited 38), none of which saw the entire incident. Many witnesses thought they were witnessing a lovers quarrel, a drunken brawl, or a group of friends leaving, but obviously some recognized it to be an assault of sorts.

Reactions

This senseless murder spurred research into explaining why more witnesses didn`t do something about what they heard or saw. The findings, headed by social psychologists John Darley and Bibb Latané, reported that as group size goes up, the chance of a bystander helping a victim goes down proportionately, which was/is contrary to common expectations (known as the Bystander Effect). The explanation for this is that bystanders see that no one else is helping, so they feel relieved of any responsibility; they feel insecure about their abilities and think someone else will know how to help better; they aren't confident enough to 'perform' in front of an 'audience'; they see the massive number of people and expect them to do something (more prevalent when there is an assumed audience (e.g. a power outtage in a neighborhood that no one calls in)).

The reported story that spurred the research was actually rather exagerated; As previously mentioned, the Times reported that there were 38 observers, when the court could only find approximately 12. Despite the catalyst of this research being flawed, the results still stand. The exagerated story continues to pervade academia as a sort of parable, some think, because it makes for a much more engaging story for students to listen to.

Anyway, that's the skinny on that. Tell me what you think about the more fact-based setup.

P.S. For those of you who wonder, Moseley was convicted of murder and sentenced to death, which was later reduced to an indefinite sentence. Moseley is still in jail today, having been denied parole a 13th time on March 11, 2008. His defense was: "For a victim outside, it's a one-time or one-hour or one-minute affair, but for the person who's caught, it's forever." implying that he doesn't deserve to be in jail for so long. Warped.