By Martin Gansberg

For more than half an hour 38 respectable, law-abiding citizens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab a woman in three separate attacks in Kew Gardens.

Twice the sound of their voices and the sudden glow of their bedroom lights interrupted him and frightened him off, Each time he returned, sought her out and stabbed her again. Not one person telephoned the police during the assault; one witness called after the woman was dead.

That was two weeks ago today. But Assistant Chief Inspector Frederick M. Lussen, in charge of the borough’s detectives and a veteran of 25 years of homicide investigations, is still shocked.

He can give a matter-of-fact recitation of many murders. But the Kew Gardens slaying baffles him — not because it is a murder, but because the ‘good people’ failed to call the police.

‘As we have reconstructed the crime,’ he said, ‘the assailant had three chances to kill this woman during a 35-minute period. He returned twice to complete the job. If we had been called when he first attacked, the woman might not be dead now.’

‘He Stabbed Me!’

She got as far as a street light in front of a bookstore before the man grabbed her. She screamed. Lights went on in the 10-storey apartment house at 82—67 Austin Street, which faces the bookstore. Windows slid open and voices punctured the early-morning stillness.

Miss Genovese screamed: ‘Oh, my God, he stabbed me! Please help me! Please help me!’

From one of the upper windows in the apartment house, a man called down: ‘Let that girl alone!’

The assailant looked up at him, shrugged and walked down Austin Street toward a white sedan parked a short distance away. Miss Genovese struggled to her feet.

Lights went out. The killer returned to Miss Genovese, now trying to make her way around the side of the building by the parking lot to get to her apartment. The assailant grabbed her again.

‘I’m dying!’ she shrieked.

A City Bus Passed

Windows were opened again, and lights went on in many apartments. The assailant got into his car and drove away. Miss Genovese staggered to her feet. A city bus, Q-10, the Lefferts Boulevard line to Kennedy International Airport, passed. It was 3.35 am.

The assailant returned. By then, Miss Genovese had crawled to the back of the building where the freshly painted brown doors to the apartment house held out hope of safety. The killer tried the first door; she wasn’t there. At the second door, 82—62 Austin Street, he saw her slumped on the floor at the foot of the stairs. He stabbed her a third time — fatally.

It was 3.50 by the time the police received their first call, from a man who was a neighbour of Miss Genovese. In two minutes they were at the scene. The neighbour, a 70-year-old woman and another woman were the only persons on the street. Nobody else came forward.

The man explained that he had called the police after much deliberation. He had phoned a friend in Nassau County for advice and then he had crossed the roof of the elderly woman to get her to make the call.

‘I didn’t want to get involved,’ he sheepishly told the police.

Suspect is Arrested

Six days later, the police arrested Winston Moseley, a 29-year-old business-machine operator, and charged him with the homicide. Mosely had no previous record. He is married, has two children and owns a home at 133—19 Sutter Avenue, South Ozone Park, Queens. On Wednesday, a court committed him to Kings County Hospital for psychiatric observation.

The police stressed how simple it would have been to get in touch with them. ‘A phone call,’ said one of the detectives, ‘would have done it.’

Today witnesses from the neighbourhood, which is made up of one-family homes in the $35,000 to $60,000 range with the exception of the two apartment houses near the railroad station, find it difficult to explain why they didn’t call the police.

Lieut. Bernard Jacobs, who handled the investigation by the detectives, said:

‘It is one of the better neighbourhoods. There are few reports of crimes. You only get the usual complaints about boys playing or garbage cans being turned over.’

The police said most persons had told them they had been afraid to call, but had given meaningless answers when asked what they had feared.

‘We can understand the reticence of people to become involved in an area of violence,’ Lieutenant Jacobs said, ‘but where they are in their homes, near phones, why should they be afraid to call the police?’

He said that his men were able to piece together what happened — and capture the suspect — because the residents furnished all the information when detectives rang doorbells during the days following the slaying.

‘But why didn’t someone call us that night?’ he asked unbelievingly.

Witnesses — some of them unable to believe what they had allowed to happen — told a reporter why.

A housewife, knowingly if quite casual, said, ‘We thought it was a lovers’ quarrel’. A husband and wife both said, ‘Frankly, we were afraid’. They seemed aware of the fact that events might have been different. A distraught woman, wiping her hands in her apron, said, ‘I didn’t want my husband to get involved’.

One couple, now willing to talk about that night, said they heard the first screams. The husband looked thoughtfully at the bookstore where the killer first grabbed Miss Genovese.

‘We went to the window to see what was happening,’ he said, ‘but the light from our bedroom made it difficult to see the street’. The wife, still apprehensive, added: ‘I put out the light and we were able to see better’.

Asked why they hadn’t called the police, she shrugged and replied, ‘I don’t know’.

By Martin Gansberg

Another account giving details about what happened to Kitty’s murderer