The people of Kew Gardens — before that, a relatively crime-free neighborhood where few bothered locking their doors — were referred to in the press as monsters.
But as journalist Kevin Cook details in his new book, “Kitty Genovese: The Murder, the Bystanders, the Crime that Changed America” (W.W. Norton), some of the real thoughtlessness came from a police commissioner who lazily passed a falsehood to a journalist, and a media that fell so deeply in love with a story that it couldn’t be bothered to determine whether it was true. (…)
One could argue that Genovese became a legend not on the day she was killed, but 10 days later, when New York City Police Commissioner Michael “Bull” Murphy had lunch with The New York Times’ new city editor — later to become the paper’s executive editor — Abe Rosenthal.
Genovese, who was 28 years old when she was killed on March 13, 1964, in the hallway of her two-story apartment building on Austin Street, is the subject of a new book by Catherine Pelonero, who re-examined the case and found many new details about one of the most infamous murders in New York City history.
In her book, “Kitty Genovese: A True Account of a Public Murder and its Private Consequences,” scheduled to be published in March, Pelonero gives a detailed and chilling account of Winston Moseley’s fatal attack on Genovese….
