Kitty Genovese: A True Account of a Public Murder and Its Private Consequences (16 page)

One of the bartenders at Ev’s said he believed Kitty was a lesbian in view of the fact that he never saw her with any fellows. He further
stated that her activities around the bar were strictly business and that she did not associate around the bar after business hours. (Her staying at the bar for a time on the early morning of March 13 had apparently been an exception, possibly because she was debating whether to drive home or to stay as planned with Bessie Thompson.)

A woman who worked on occasion as a relief barmaid at Ev’s told detectives that Kitty had mentioned a man she had once dated who had been annoying her. Kitty had only referred to him by his first name (which was neither George nor Paul). According to the barmaid, Kitty had told her she was considering moving from her apartment because this man whom she no longer dated had been present outside her home when she returned from work on several occasions within the past month. The barmaid was unable to supply any further information that would lead to his identity, as she had never met him and Kitty had mentioned this to her during casual conversation. Though it seemed a promising lead at the time, it would ultimately turn out to be a red herring. No one else the police spoke to knew anything about any man who had been bothering her.

One patron described Kitty as strictly a loner. He had known her for about two years and had never seen her in anybody’s company when she finished work at 6:00 p.m. Her private life was a secret around the bar; he had heard stories that she was a lesbian. He did not know of anybody who dated her, and she appeared to him as “a beatnik type.”

A man who was a longtime friend of Evelyn Randolph, owner of Ev’s Eleventh Hour, stated that he had known Kitty for about three years, since she first started working at Ev’s. He knew that Kitty took care of the place and she was in charge of all the bar’s financial matters, but beyond that he knew nothing else about her. He did not know if Kitty was a lesbian, but he had heard talk to that effect.

Bessie Thompson, the person with whom Kitty was supposed to stay the night of March 12, said Kitty was a very closemouthed girl yet very friendly to all patrons who came to the bar. According to Bessie, Kitty spoke very little of her private life.

That seemed to be the consensus. Everyone at Ev’s knew Kitty, but nobody knew much about her. At least nothing that gave a clue as to how she ended up as a homicide victim.

Interviews with her former employers produced similar results. The manager of a tavern where Kitty had worked part-time from February to May of 1962 said she was very quiet, did not drink, and did not go out with any of the customers. The night bartender at this tavern agreed; Kitty was a quiet person. He never saw her with anyone outside the bar, and she always went home by herself. Neither the manager nor the bartender knew of anyone who had worked there named George or Paul, nor anyone with a white compact car.

Detectives spoke with several of Kitty’s friends. While most were able to add a few details about Kitty’s interests, activities, and social life, there was nothing that seemed to have a bearing on what had happened to her.

The only mark in Kitty’s past that piqued the slightest suspicion was her arrest on a minor gambling charge in 1961. Prior to coming to Ev’s she had been employed at another bar in Queens where she had apparently been “working the phone” for a bookmaker, meaning she was taking bets. She and another barmaid had been arrested on a misdemeanor charge. At the time, gambling arrests—bookmakers, policy runners, floating dice games, and things of the sort—were common and widespread in New York. Due to the volume of such arrests, a separate courtroom designated “Gamblers Court” had been set aside in the Queens Courthouse for trials of the accused. Kitty and her co-defendant were convicted in Gamblers Court on September 5, 1961. The judge imposed a sentence of $50 and five days in jail. An appellate court later confirmed the conviction but suspended the jail time, sparing Kitty any time behind bars.

A barmaid who had worked with Kitty at the Queens Café at the time of her arrest said that she knew Kitty was working the phone for a bookmaker. She gave a description of the bookmaker but she did not know the man’s full name. She hadn’t seen Kitty since they had worked together in 1961.

A detective interviewed Kitty’s former boss from that time who confirmed that he had employed her as a barmaid for a period of four months in 1961. He had fired her when she was arrested for taking bets. Asked if he could furnish any possible motive or any ideas of who might be responsible for Kitty’s murder, he could offer nothing. He knew Kitty as a quiet girl who kept to herself.

Another co-worker from the same period concurred, describing Kitty as an able barmaid who more or less kept to herself. The co-worker stated that she knew Kitty was a “lesie,” having been told so by Kitty herself. According to the woman, Kitty had been going with a thin blonde girl at the time she worked at the Queens Café. She knew Kitty’s girlfriend only by a nickname and was unable to provide her exact name or address. She couldn’t offer anything further as to who might be responsible for the crime.

With some further checking, detectives uncovered the identity of Kitty’s former lover. Prior to Mary Ann Zielonko, it appeared that Kitty had had only one other relationship of note with a woman. Unlike her relationship with Mary Ann, this prior union had been a tumultuous one marked by jealousy and violence on the part of Kitty’s former partner, Sarah, who allegedly assaulted Kitty on occasion when she found out Kitty was going out with others. Kitty had received a phone call from Sarah about ten months ago, detectives were told, wherein Sarah allegedly told Kitty that if she did not come back, “she would have something on her.” The person who furnished this information did not know what that something referred to, but the account of the phone call sounded threatening nevertheless. Detectives wanted to speak with Sarah, particularly since at least one person in Kew Gardens had suggested, because of the slight build of the perpetrator, that Kitty’s attacker may have been a woman.

Brought to the 102nd Detective Squad for questioning, Sarah confirmed that Kitty had lived with her for a period of three years, moving out in 1963. Sarah was a barmaid, married but separated from her husband. According to Sarah, Kitty’s move had been prompted by a series of arguments between the two of them concerning a mutual friend to whom Sarah had lent a significant amount of money. The
borrower had not repaid all of it, angering Sarah. Ever the compassionate peacemaker, Kitty had tried to intervene, speaking up on the friend’s behalf. Sarah did not want to hear it. According to her, she and Kitty had so many quarrels over it that Kitty had moved out. Sarah added that she currently had a summons out for the debtor in an effort to collect her money. She also said she had no idea who might have wanted to harm Kitty or anyone with whom she had been arguing.

SO IT SEEMED
that Kitty Genovese, despite her unconventional love life, had neither any discernible enemies nor any alarming incidents in her past prior to the horror that had befallen her on March 13. While her co-workers and patrons at Ev’s had little intimate knowledge of her, this did not lessen the shock and sadness they felt on hearing of her death, which most of them did within a few short hours of it happening. Even before the detectives showed up, news of the murder was broadcast on local radio stations that morning. The first newspaper accounts appeared the following day.

The
New York Times
ran a brief article in its back pages on March 14, 1964. Under the headline, “QUEENS WOMAN IS STABBED TO DEATH IN FRONT OF HOME,” the article gave her name—calling her “Miss Catherine Genovese”—her age, address, and four short paragraphs describing the murder, stating that neighbors who were awakened by her screams had found her in front of a building three doors from her home. The article ended by saying that police had no clues.

Smaller newspapers catering to readers in the borough of Queens devoted considerably more space and detail to the story. The
New York Daily News
ran an article with the headline “QUEENS BARMAID STABBED, DIES” that included a photo of Kitty with the caption “Catherine (Kitty) Genovese,
‘I’ve been stabbed.’
” Written by Thomas Pugh and Richard Henry, the first paragraph read: “An attractive 28-year-old brunette who had given up a more prosaic life for a career as a barmaid and residence in a tiny Bohemian section of Queens was stabbed to death early yesterday.”

After describing her wounds, there was a brief bio that included a reference to her prior arrest (“In August, 1961, her travels with a ‘fast crowd’ contributed to her arrest on a bookmaking rap.”) The article went on to say that neighbors had been awakened by her screams and that Kitty had cried out that she’d been stabbed.

Decades later, after Kitty’s murder had been widely written of, broadcast, and dramatized in publications and venues throughout the world, Abe Rosenthal of the
New York Times
ruefully remarked that journalism never inquired very deeply into the life of Catherine Genovese, only into her death. There was, however, one notable exception to this. Edward Weiland, a Queens-based reporter whose articles appeared in the
Long Island Star-Journal
and the
Long Island Press
, wrote some far more detailed pieces in the days immediately following the murder that put focus on who Kitty was rather than on just what had happened to her. Long before Kitty Genovese (her death, at least) became a hot topic, Edward Weiland penned articles in which he clearly wished to capture some of the living essence of a doomed young woman he never met. While a bizarre knife slaying on a street in Queens would merit coverage from any beat reporter in the borough, Weiland went a step beyond. His work suggests a feeling that the deceased woman herself deserved some sort of recorded remembrance of who she had been.

Weiland visited Ev’s Eleventh Hour early in the day on March 13, 1964, speaking to customers about Kitty, asking what she was like. He called her family in Connecticut and spoke with her brother, Vincent, Jr.

On March 14, the day after the murder, two front-page articles by Weiland appeared in smaller New York papers. The longer of the two, published in the
Long Island Press
, bore the headline “KITTY WORSHIPPED LIFE IN THE CITY, AND DIED IN ITS LONELY STREETS.” The article began, “Kitty was footloose and fancy free, and the small Connecticut town where her family lived crowded in on her. Six years ago she left New Canaan and came to New York. ‘I feel free here,’ she used to tell her friends. ‘I can breathe. I’m alive.’ ”

The article gave an account of patrons walking through the door at Ev’s on March 13, asking, “Is it true?”

Weiland described how they and Kitty’s family found it incredible to believe she had been murdered. He quoted her brother Vincent, Jr., as saying that his family had deliberately not turned on the radio or television, had not read any of the newspapers in order to avoid the reports of her death. Vincent, Jr., then told Weiland something that in retrospect seems particularly wrenching: “The grief of Kitty’s death is enough. Reading about it, listening to it would only make it worse.”

Vincent, Jr., gave a few words about his sister, mentioning her varied interests in art, politics, and culture, and her love of life in the city. “Her world was just too big, too broad for New Canaan . . . She said she never took to the town and the town never took to her.”

Weiland walked among the customers at Ev’s asking what Kitty was like. They told him of a “28 year old girl with the intense brown eyes, the dark brown hair, the olive skin, the vitality and enthusiasm of a half a dozen people.” Customers spoke of how Kitty ran the place, how everyone liked and respected her. They described a happy woman who made them laugh, an educated woman with a keen intellect. One patron said that Kitty was a college graduate but liked working at the bar. Speaking of her knowledge, the same patron said, “There was nothing she didn’t know. When my son used to ask me questions about his history homework, I sent him down to the bar to talk to Kitty.”

Kitty liked to spark discussions of art, history, and especially politics. She held strong convictions and liked debate. “She liked [Lyndon B.] Johnson. She thought he was a good president.”

Though she liked to talk, they said, she rarely spoke about herself. Most had no idea where she had come from or what her life was like outside the bar.

Many years later, a regular from Ev’s named Wally Brosnan reflected on this. Maybe the reason none of them had known Kitty better, he thought, was because
she
was the one always listening to everybody else. “Everyone talks to the bartender, you know. She knew all about us, all our secrets,” Brosnan chuckled. “A lot of the guys took her
into their confidence. She was close with a couple of the guys, like Jack Timmins and her friend Tommy Baker, the cop. She may have confided a little in them. But mostly she was the one doing the listening.”

Wally Brosnan had grown up with Kitty’s co-worker Victor Horan, the Timmins brothers, and several other of the regular customers in the Hollis neighborhood where Ev’s Eleventh Hour was located. In adulthood the bars in the area were hangouts (and often places of employment) for him and his boyhood friends, the kind of cozy joints where everybody knew each other and often had for a long time.

Brosnan was in his mid-twenties when Kitty came to work at Ev’s. “She was a terrific bartender,” he said. “A very nice person. Great company. She knew everybody, she knew how to handle everybody. All different personalities. She knew how to handle people in general.

“We knew she was gay. We all knew it, but it was never an issue. I don’t imagine any of us knew when she first started,” Brosnan recalled. “She never came out and said it, but she didn’t deny it either. She didn’t act it or flaunt it, but she had friends who came in to the bar, other girls, and you knew they were gay too. They didn’t hang out a lot, but there were a few of them that used to come in and see her. Eventually it just all comes out, you know. As I say, all the guys, everybody knew she was gay and no one made fun of it or anything like that.”