Turn Out the Lights

Genovese Syndrome – indifferent or too frightened, too alienated, too self-absorbed to get involved.

It was on March 13, 1964 that Kitty Genovese pulled her Red Fiat into her apartment parking lot in Queens, NY. She was coming home from her night shift as a Bar Manager at a local saloon. She needed to walk only 100 feet from her car to the front door of her apartment. She noticed a man walking toward her and she quickened her pace, but she was attacked only steps from the building. Her screams were heard by many, but nobody came to her rescue. Some shouted to” keep the noise down because they were trying to sleep” and others got up from bed and ”just pulled down the shades.”

Kitty Genovese was stabbed twice as she crawled to her apartment building. Her assailant would return a second time to stab her again. She shouted “I’m dying “and he ran away. When nobody bothered to help her, he came back a third time and killed her. There were 38 witnesses, yet none of them called the police. When the Police were finally alerted, they arrived on the scene in two minutes.

It would take the Police six days to capture the killer, Winston Moseley. He was to be sentenced to death in the electric chair. "I don't believe in capital punishment, but when I see a monster like this, I wouldn't hesitate to pull the switch myself", said Judge Irwin Shapiro. The State of New York would outlaw the death penalty in 1967 and Winston stills sits in a cell in Sing Sing.

On March 18, 1968, Moseley escaped from custody while being transported back to prison from Meyer Memorial Hospital in Buffalo, New York, where he had undergone minor surgery for a self-inflicted injury. Moseley hit the transporting correctional officer, stole his weapon, and then fled to a nearby residence. Moseley stayed undetected for three days. On March 21, the Kulagas went to check on their house, where they encountered Moseley. He held the couple hostage for more than an hour, during which he bound and gagged Matthew Kulaga and raped his wife. Moseley made his way to Grand Island where, on March 22, he broke into another house and took a woman and her daughter hostage, holding them for two hours before releasing them unharmed. Moseley surrendered to police shortly thereafter. He was later charged with escape and kidnapping, to which he pleaded guilty. Moseley was given two additional fifteen-year sentences concurrent with his life sentence.

Moseley participated in the Attica Prison riot on September 9, 1971. Following four days of riots, in which 10 hostages and 29 inmates were killed, and eighty-nine others seriously injured, New York Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller called in the National Guard to help quell the uprising.

In 1974, lawyers representing the 1,281 inmates filed a $2.8 billion class-action lawsuit against prison and state officials. In January 2000, New York State and the former and current inmates settled for $8 million, which was divided unevenly among about 500 inmates. Moseley may have been part of the settlement. He has been denied parole 18 times, and remains in prison at age 81. He has a chance to break the record for longest serving inmate in the New York State prison system history.


Paul Murphy

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