If you saw someone actually being murdered, would you take action? Would you call the police or maybe try to get involved? These are the questions that the Kitty Genovese case has brought to the minds of anyone that hears about it.
The story is a case of a rollercoaster. It involves power relations, media sensationalism, and the actual establishment of the 911 system. It's most known for its connection to the bystander effect.
Sometimes known as Genovese Syndrome, the bystander effect has forced psychologists to take a hard look at how and when people make decisions about getting involved with conflict. But before we dive into about the bystander effect, this video is going to be talking about the Kitty Genovese case. So first of all, what happened to Kitty Genovese?
At 3 in the morning on March 13, 1964, Kitty Genovese walked home to her apartments in Queens. On the way, she was approached by William Moseley, who had been following her home. Moseley ran after Kitty, eventually caught up to her, and then stabbed her multiple times.
She screamed for help. and a neighbor yelled towards Mosley to leave Kitty alone. Mosley quickly fled the scene, and Kitty ran to her apartment building.
However, Mosley came back after a few minutes. He found Kitty lying in front of a door to the back of the apartment building. He stabbed her multiple times, stole some money, and ran away again.
In total, she was stabbed over a dozen times, and the entire attack took place over 30 minutes, during which time multiple calls to the police were made. At 4.15 in the morning, Kitty died as she was being taken to the hospital. In a few days after the murder, Genovese's death did not receive much attention.
It took a week for the police to find the murderer. In fact, they actually originally named Kitty's girlfriend as a suspect. So why has this case lived on as one of the most famous murders in America, 60 years after it happened? Well, this brings us to the New York Times story.
Word got around to the staff at the New York Times about Kitty's murder. But the actual murder wasn't what interested editor Abe Rosenthal. It was the witnesses to the murder. Police had interviewed 38 people in their investigations.
Five of them gave testimony at the trial. Two weeks after Kitty's murder, the New York Times published an article titled, 37 Who Saw Murder But Didn't Call Police. The article took the nation by a storm. Media outlets called it a failure, casting the city of New York into a dark light.
People saw it as a failure of humankind. And many people called it a case of urban apathy. That same year, editor Abe Rosenthal published a book called 38 Witnesses. He called on us all to question how we act in the face of crime, and how the urban environment may impact our decisions.
These questions still haunt many psychologists and academics today, and in fact, entire courses have been created based on this case. The search for answers has shaped the way many people look at decision making, and the way that they go about their life. But let's go back to a minute about the New York Times article.
So the story's first paragraph reads, 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. Later on, it mentions, Not one person telephoned the police during the assault. One witness called after the woman was dead. Wait a second, you might be saying, didn't you say people actually called the police? Yes.
In the 50 or more years that have passed since New York Times published this article, much criticism has come out against it. New details about the case have been revealed, that Kitty did not die alone. but in the arms of a friend, that multiple calls were made to the police before her death, and that some witness statements to the police were discarded because they already got the call. Certainly, 38 people did not see Kitty die.
Of all 38 people interviewed by the police, many of them heard screams, looked out their window, saw nothing, and then went back to bed. The New York Times has gone back to review and correct information that was originally shared in the incorrect article. If you want to learn more about uncovering the facts of this case, I recommend that you watch The Witness. This documentary follows Kitty's brother, Bill Genovese, as he tracks down information on Kitty's life and her death. He talks to reporters involved in the case, witnesses who were shocked to learn that they were one of the 38 and other people involved.
It was actually nominated for a News and Documentary Emmy Award in 2018. So the story put out by the New York Times wasn't entirely accurate, but the impact of the Kitty Genovese case and the story that soon came after it is true. Sociologists, psychologists, and journalists have spent the past 50 years researching the bystander effect, and something else called the diffusion of responsibility, two phenomena in which people fail to act due to the amount of bystanders present. These phenomena seek to explain, I thought you were going to do something about it, or I didn't want to get involved. The case is also one of the reasons that the 911 system was put in place. Before Kitty's death, you could only call the operator and then ask to be connected to the local police station, or you could call the station's number directly.
Three years later, federal agencies put in a plan to create the 911 system as we know it is today. The first 911 call was made in 1968. Now there's a lot of stories within this one case. There's a story of a witness who did fail to call the police. There's a story of a falsely reported article that went on to be sensationalized in the media. And there's a story of how we as people react to the idea of the bystander effect and the diffusion of responsibility.
I hope you enjoyed this video, and if you have any questions about the bystander effect or the Kitty Genovese case, feel free to leave them in the comments below. Or stay tuned for my next video all about specifically the bystander effect, and the research that has been done to support the idea. Thank you so much for watching, I'll see you in the next one.