The Genovese saga was/is a staple of college courses, especially psychology and sociology. It is the go-to anecdote for lazy profs and TAs to demonstrate desensitization, conditioning, etc.
Naturally, none of these ‘academics’ ever cracked a book to find out if their chestnut was truthful or accurate.
Last year my HS daughter had to write about it. I did some research on the net and found an article about how it really went down. She ended up writing about that instead of what the teacher was expecting.