Over 38 of her neighbors watched the murder of Kitty Genovese and did nothing. As multiple media outlets reported, humanity failed her on March 13.
But should we believe, wholeheartedly, the media reports? What really happened that fateful night in 1964? Kevin Cook, award-winning author and successful journalist, analyzes the infamous but wildly misunderstood, case of Kitty Genovese.
In his book, Kitty Genovese: The Murder, The Bystanders, The Crime That Changed America, Cook delves into the interior lives of the key players in this murder story. Heavily researched, he portrays everyone as true and vibrant, highlighting character flaws of ordinary people making mundane, seemingly innocuous choices, all of which lead to Kitty being stabbed to death outside of her apartment.
Mary Ann Zielonko, her best friend and partner, allowed Cook to find the human behind the infamous murder. Kitty was a vivid and exuberant woman with light in her eyes and a big heart. As a lesbian in the early ’60s, she lived as a social outcast in New York but reportedly enjoyed nearly every minute of it. Making friends with everyone she met, Kitty was well-loved and appreciated by acquaintances, neighbors and loved ones. How, then, could those friends sit by and watch her brutal attack?
Cook argues that instead of the 38 people who were around the day and time Kitty died, only two witnessed enough to have a legitimate reason to call the authorities: Joseph Fink and Karl Ross. Both these men, who were Kitty’s neighbors and friends, were close enough to have helped her. But instead of doing so, Fink went to bed and Ross watched from behind a closed door, just feet away from Kitty and her attacker.
Rather than vilifying these people, Cook attempts to explain their behavior. Whether this leads to a confirmation of their guilt is up to each reader to decide. By taking the opportunity to understand the seemingly apathetic bystanders, Cook’s work inspires introspection and self-evaluation. Would you have reacted differently? In the end, does it really matter when a bystander turns their head when someone is in need?
Nearby on the Browsing Collection shelves is another novel by Cook, titled Driven: Teen Phenoms, Mad Parents, Swing Science and the Future of Golf, which documents the intense life at the David Leadbetter Golf Academy. For those who want to explore more secret lives behind the headlines, Patricia Cline Cohen’s book, The Murder of Helen Jewett: The Life and Death of a Prostitute in Nineteenth-Century New York is also available in the library. If Cook’s work gets you more interested in wanting to understand the psychology of bystanders or the murder, check out Adrian Raine’s, The Anatomy of Violence: The Biological Roots of Crime and Joshua Greene’s Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them.
All of these titles are available at the Marriott Library and through the InterLibrary Loan service.