Kitty Genovese: We speak your name

Remember when Lens did that live action Kitty Genovese murder experiential theater thing on Girls?

No r1 I don't remember that. Did she do it?

Dyke!

I was so sad for her. I loved her stores.

I just saw that this very interesting documentary is on Amazon Prime. Her brother is a very intelligent and compelling figure, I found. I've been fascinated by Kitty and this particularly horror murder since I was a kid. I discovered only a few years ago that she was a lesbian living with a girlfriend. This was completely hidden for decades. This documentary refutes the original narrative concocted by a NYTs journalist that people did nothing.

^^^horrific murder

Wasn’t Kitty a lezzie?

R7, maybe read the thread first before posting.

She was related to but not close with members of the Genovese crime family.

She was a ruthless bitch too? Welcome!

Rest in power, beloved sister.

She looked butch. Had been arrested before too.

[quote] Wasn’t Kitty a lezzie?

Kitty liked pussy?

I think the male neighbor was a gay alcoholic. If there was any witness that acted reprehensibly, it was him. There is evidence, probably circumstantial, that he at least heard the second attack and possibly saw her bleeding to death but chose to do nothing.

I always found the randomness of the murder odd. She returns home late at night in a quiet, middle class, obscure area of Queens and happens to catch the attention of a brutal rapist and murderer? What are the chances?

I’ve been to where it happened. It’s a nice area now, not sure how it was then.

I've passed it several times on the LIRR and saw an article about it a few years ago with photos of where it all took place. It hasn't changed much at all. It was a nice neighborhood then too, definitely not a place one would expect a crime like this to take place.

- R5

Her girlfriend at the time died this year at the age of 85.

What neighborhood did the murder happen in?

Kew Gardens in Queens. It is a solid middle-class neighborhood.

It's one of those stories that have been dumbed down over time. People were reluctant to call the police because they thought it was domestic violence and that kind of thing was considered private. They were also afraid of the police. Her gay neighbor eventually called the police and got beaten and arrested when he yelled at them for taking so long to arrive. There's a You're Wrong About podcast episode about the case.

Mob connections?

I went to high school in the 70s and all my history teachers discussed this case. Each year, there was a safety course where the girls were taught to yell "Fire" if they were attacked, because "experts" believed people would be more willing to report a fire, rather than a woman being attacked.

Eldergay here. The myth of "no one called the police because no one wanted to get involved" was taken as gospel truth, was known and discussed in every church and high school across the country, and haunted the American psyche for decades.

R23, Back in the 1970s, a neighbor two houses away from my parents watched while two men stole my parents’ new car from their suburban Boston driveway at 1:00 AM and said/did nothing until much later that morning when questioned by the police.

Her excuse for not saying/doing anything was that she “did not want to get involved “.

Apparently, you're not supposed to yell "Help!", you're supposed to yell "Why are you doing this to me, I don't even know you!" That's how people know it's not a domestic dispute and so are likelier to intervene.

Learned that on Hacks just last week.

Rosa Parks was another mythical story started by the press. The event really happened but not to Rosa Parks.

Well what did happen to Rosa Parks?

R12, she and a co-worker were taking bets at a bar they worked at. They were fined. She wasn't some hardened criminal.

R17...

R21, I thought the same for awhile, but Mosley, her murderer, was a serial rapist and murderer, confessing to several, including the rape and murder of a 15 year old girl in Queens. He died in prison, never once mentioning he was hired as a hit man. He said he went out that night looking for a woman, saw Kitty driving home from work at 3 AM and followed her.

R20, link? Is he the one who saw her being attacked for a second time in the vestibule if their building, supposedly called his GF who told him to do nothing, and all he did was call their neighbor Sophie Farrar who went to her aide while he did nothing else?

I think he was hardly in any position to call out the police for taking so long. I posted above that I thought he was a gay alcoholic, I take that back. It was a big jump to a conclusion.

R27 - Claudette Colvin was arrested at the age of 15 in Montgomery, Alabama for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white woman, nine months before the Rosa Parks incident.