Debunking the myth of Kitty Genovese

New York Post ^ | February 16, 2014

[SMGFan]

The murder of Kitty Genovese shifted from crime to legend a few weeks later, when The New York Times erroneously reported that 38 of her neighbors had seen the attack and watched it unfold without calling for help.

[SMGFan]

And now we know the rest of the story. New York Times always gargbage. Walter Duranty & the reporting on famine in Soviet Ukraine.

[skinkinthegrass]

yeah..all news/propaganda,
WE need to print, if it's all cr@p

[wideawake]

The Genovese story was propaganda from the start. It is especially obvious how ridiculous the original story was if you have actually seen the apartment buildings in the Forest Hills/Rego Park area of Queens where she was murdered.

[high info voter]

Expecting journalism from the NYT...... priceless.

[miss marmelstein]

This story was debunked for years and still people believe it. Just like the Matt Shepard story.

[NautiNurse]

Why did it take 50 years to refute the NYT story?

[Smokin' Joe]

Watch and see how long it takes for St. Trayvon to be stripped of that status, not to mention some of the media-made icons of the '60s

Crap, it'll take 100 years or the next ice age to get the Global Warming crap sifted out.

[Stepan12]

As regards the head policeman making up that false story to A.Rosenthal of the NYT, it appears that the New York Police arrested a person for murder that Winton Mosley (Kitty Genovese's killer) later confessed to. When this incident was questioned by A. Rosenthal to the Police Chief, as reported in the article, the Police Chief effectively parried Rosenthal with his 38 bystanders story.

I read of this account in a book called "Superfreakonomics" by Stephen Levitt. Mr. Levitt also wrote a book called "Freakonomics" in which Mr. Levitt strongly implies that abortion of black children is what is responsible for the reduction in crime (a thesis strongly opposed by John Lott in his book, "Freedomnomics").

[originalbuckeye]

Bookmark

[NautiNurse]

The Kitty Genovese story has been embedded in college level sociology and psychology books and lectures for decades.

[heartwood]

More rest of the story:

Moseley was a serial killer, who killed 15 y.o. Barbara Kralik and 24 y.o. Ann Johnson before he killed Kitty Genovese, and had attacked and raped many other women.

He was black, which I mention because even back then the FBI should have known about black serial killers.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

I remember, I remember.

[kidd]

Thanks for posting this. I had been taught the myth. I found the following to be especially telling:

Samuel called the police, and after three or four minutes on hold, he reached a police dispatcher. He related that a woman “got beat up and was staggering around,” and gave them the location....But the police did not respond to Samuel Hoffman’s call, and Moseley, seeing no help was imminent, returned.

It was a police error. And it was the police who embellished the story to the press. And the press didn't bother to investigate.

[Smokin' Joe]

I admittedly missed that. The University I attended let me take archaeology courses to satisfy the ‘humanities’ requirements, and that was a much better fit for a geology major (back when the talk was of the coming Ice Age, not Global Warming).