Kitty Genovese: A True Account of a Public Murder and Its Private Consequences (31 page)

SIDNEY SPARROW KNEW
too much. And he could not keep it to himself.

On April 1, Sparrow had spent three hours speaking with Winston Moseley at Kings County Hospital. Sparrow then went and spoke with Herbert Lyon, the defense attorney for Alvin Mitchell.

On April 2, Sidney Sparrow walked into the Queens County Courthouse and presented typed copies of his interview with Moseley to both the District Attorney’s Office and to Judge J. Irwin Shapiro, who, the week prior, had reserved decision on Alvin Mitchell’s appeal for bail. Then Sidney Sparrow held a press conference. With Mitchell’s attorney, Herbert Lyon, sitting next to him at the courthouse press table, Sparrow told reporters of his meeting with Winston Moseley.

Sparrow stated his unequivocal belief that his client had killed Barbara Kralik, calling her murder the first in a series of crimes that “if all the details ever become public, Bluebeard would have to take a back seat.”

Just as Moseley had been telling the truth in the Genovese and Johnson homicides, Sparrow said, he believed Moseley was telling the truth about Kralik as well.
Newsday
reporter Stuart Dim quoted Sparrow: “It’s a somewhat tricky position I find myself in. Communications between a client and his lawyer are confidential, but by the same token I can’t sit by and see an innocent man (Mitchell) go to trial for something he didn’t do. I urge very strongly against proceeding against Mitchell at this time until Moseley’s confession
is thoroughly investigated. I would hate to see a miscarriage of justice.”
Newsday
ran a three-paragraph item next to this article titled, “CASE MAY BE RERUN OF ‘THE WRONG MAN’ ” in which they briefly recounted Frank O’Connor’s shining involvement in the famous Balestrero case.

In response to Sparrow’s statement, Frank O’Connor was quoted by the
New York Herald Tribune
as saying, “I certainly am very interested in anything he can give us. I’d give my right arm to establish the innocence of Mitchell if Mitchell is innocent.”

As in the Annie Mae Johnson case, a major difference in Moseley’s account of killing Barbara Kralik had to do with the weapon used. Moseley claimed to have stabbed Barbara with a steak knife. According to police (and the D.A.), Alvin Mitchell had confessed to stabbing Barbara with scissors. In this instance, then, exhuming and X-raying the body would not provide the clear answer as it had with Annie Mae Johnson.

Sparrow continued: “Moseley was very clinical in his talk, and I think he was the actual killer. My prime obligation is to Moseley, and I will defend him to the utmost. But it appears that insanity will be his best defense. He is a psychotic.”

WHILE SIDNEY SPARROW
was utterly convinced that Winston Moseley had murdered Barbara Kralik, the two other members of Moseley’s defense team, Julius Lipitz and Martha Zellman, were not.

The day after Sparrow’s press conference, Lipitz and Zellman issued a joint statement saying they were not convinced of Moseley’s guilt. “We are not convinced of anything. We feel there isn’t enough evidence,” Lipitz and Zellman said, adding, “It’s not fair that anyone should have made the statements that have already appeared in the newspapers. It’s too premature for any opinion. We want to see that justice is done, too. But we haven’t come to any conclusion.”

Sidney Sparrow obviously had, however. And as lead counsel, Sparrow had the last word on the direction the Moseley defense would take. In the Kitty Genovese murder—the only one, at least at this
point, for which Moseley would stand trial—Sparrow could fathom no credible defense for Moseley
other
than insanity, in light of his client’s detailed confessions to the police, much of which had been corroborated by the finding of Kitty Genovese’s personal items in the precise locations where Moseley had said they would be. Evidence like this was irrefutable in Sparrow’s view, particularly with a defendant who spoke so candidly, articulately, insistently, and in such great detail of his commission of the crime. Doubts and grousing of co-counsel notwithstanding, Sparrow proceeded to put together the best insanity defense he possibly could. Even his client agreed that the prosecution had him “dead to rights,” as Sidney Sparrow had put it.

To further complicate matters, Sparrow had in Winston Moseley a defendant who, despite his confessed monstrous acts, did not look or act like a crazy man. He was so intelligent; well-spoken; coherent;
polite
even, with his good manners and gentle countenance. Moseley would not even raise his voice, much less rant like a lunatic. It would not be easy to convince a jury that this man was insane, as Sparrow believed he must be, but it would have been pure folly to try and refute the fact that he had killed Kitty Genovese. In Sparrow’s view, the best victory he could strive for was saving Winston Moseley from the electric chair. Years later, in an interview with the History Channel, Sparrow described his client’s attitude toward killing women, saying that Moseley likened it to swatting at six flies on a wall; five get away, but one you’ve got.

Whatever doubts co-counsel Julius Lipitz and Martha Zellman may have harbored about Moseley’s guilt or insanity may have been put to rest when they joined Sidney Sparrow for another pre-trial meeting with Winston Moseley. In this interview, which was tape recorded, Moseley again went through the explicit details of his crimes. He also made some vulgar, perspicuous comments about the breasts and genitalia of Kitty Genovese. A startled and embarrassed Sidney Sparrow sputtered in reply that he was surprised about Moseley’s evaluation of Kitty Genovese. Sparrow told Moseley that he had had some contact with Kitty himself a few years before, when he had once represented her.

Well before the trial was slated to begin, Sparrow had also mentioned his prior representation of Kitty Genovese to Judge J. Irwin Shapiro. Sparrow had explained the circumstances, telling Judge Shapiro it had been a minor gambling charge during which he had minimal contact with her; she had been one of thousands of small gambling cases on his packed calendar. Sparrow had not had any contact with her in the years since. According to Sidney Sparrow, Judge Shapiro had commented, “Interesting.” This trial would not be the first time, Sparrow said, that he represented someone accused of murdering someone else he had represented in the past.

THE ALVIN MITCHELL
controversy provided a temporary distraction from the
New York Journal-American’s
exhaustive coverage of the Kitty Genovese case and the slew of dramatically wrought “public apathy” stories that followed. The
Journal-American’s
front-page story on April 3 shifted focus to Alvin Mitchell, featuring a large, close-up photo of Mitchell’s distressed parents with attorney Herbert Lyon under the headline, “WHEN CAN I COME HOME?” The Mitchells told of the living nightmare they had endured in the seven months since their eighteen-year-old son’s arrest for the murder of Barbara Kralik. They said they had always believed in their son’s innocence, a belief further affirmed by Winston Moseley’s confession, not to mention Sidney Sparrow’s assertion that it was true.

Herbert Lyon claimed the police had coerced a confession from Alvin. “The more they questioned him, the more trouble he got himself into,” Lyon said. “The police are very skillful interrogators, and this below-average boy tried to keep up with their questions.” Lyon called for the release of Alvin Mitchell on parole or bail until the reinvestigation could be completed.

The District Attorney’s Office still opposed the release of Alvin Mitchell. They had decided to postpone his trial, however, until after Winston Moseley’s trial for Kitty’s murder.

FRANK CACCIATORE, THE
district attorney’s supreme court trial bureau chief, would prosecute Moseley for the Genovese murder. A thirteen-year veteran of the District Attorney’s Office, Cacciatore was one of the most experienced prosecutors, known for his aggressive, feisty manner in the courtroom. Cacciatore had a dominating presence, despite his small physical stature. The trial would be held before Judge J. Irwin Shapiro, a dominating figure himself who brooked no nonsense—nor delay—from attorneys on either side of the aisle.

The DA expected the case to be complex, Sparrow having already announced his intention to pursue an insanity defense. The prosecution would therefore need to prove both the defendant’s guilt via evidence and testimony as well as counter any claims that he had not understood the nature and quality of his acts, or that he had not understood that his acts were wrong. O’Connor assigned a young assistant DA named Charles Skoller to aid Cacciatore in preparing the case for trial. Skoller had recently scored a win in the retrial of a kidnapping and rape case. He had also devoted some study to New York state laws relating to a defense of insanity. With an involved first-degree murder case that had already become a high-profile affair, O’Connor wanted it in the hands of two skilled attorneys. Moreover, Frank Cacciatore anticipated his own appointment to the criminal court bench in the near future. If this happened before the Moseley case came to trial, Skoller could step forward as sole prosecutor in Cacciatore’s stead.

The enormous attention that the case had already garnered could work against the prosecutors in preparing for trial; the ongoing media frenzy in Kew Gardens had made many residents reluctant to speak of it at all for fear of being exposed and thus subject to harassment. The
New York Times
had received a flurry of letters in the wake of their front-page story from readers venting their anger and disgust over the failure of the witnesses in Kew Gardens. Some of the letter writers blamed the police department in general, complaining that officers were often rude to callers and offering this as a reason why the witnesses had not seen fit to contact the police, while others blamed the influence of television for rendering people insensitive to violence.
Mostly, though, the finger of condemnation was pointed at the silent witnesses, or at Kew Gardens as a whole.

In the days before twenty-four-hour television news, the shelf life of a story, even one that caused inflammatory reactions at the time of publication, typically lasted a few days before receding into the background of public consciousness, pushed out of the headlines to make way for reportage of the next incendiary incident to come along. This was particularly true in a city the size of New York, with no shortage of galvanizing and provocative news. Significantly, the usual fade-away did not happen with the story of Kitty Genovese (or, more aptly, the story of the silent witnesses). As the weeks wore on in the spring of 1964, it remained a widespread topic of conversation, not to mention a recurring theme in newspapers and magazines.

The coverage was by no means limited to the local media. In his “The View From Here” segment in the April 10, 1964, issue of
LIFE
magazine, columnist Loudon Wainwright had penned an incisive piece titled, “THE DYING GIRL THAT NO ONE HELPED.” Wainwright opined that “if the reactions of the 38 heedless witnesses to the murder of Catherine Genovese provide any true reflection of a national attitude toward our neighbors, we are becoming a callous, chicken-hearted and immoral people.” An examination of the facts, he stated, “makes very necessary the ugly personal question each of us must ask: What would
I
have done?”

Wainwright gave a short description of the events, mentioning that Kitty had called to one of her neighbors by name in her pleas for help (obviously Karl Ross, though Wainwright did not give his name). “For the most part,” Loudon Wainwright wrote, “the witnesses, crouching in darkened windows like watchers of a Late Show, looked on until the play had passed beyond their view. Then they went back to bed.” He pointed out that not all of the people had understood they were watching a murder, conceding that some had seen or heard too little to grasp what was going on, but others had. “The fact is that no one, even those who were sure something was terribly wrong, felt moved enough to act.”

Wainwright had interviewed Lieutenant Bernard Jacobs at the scene. His article mentioned that Jacobs stood next to the bloodstains on the sidewalk as they spoke. He quoted Jacobs: “People told us they just didn’t want to get involved. They don’t want to be questioned or have to go to court.” Lieutenant Jacobs pointed out the Mowbray, where he said people had looked down at what was happening to Kitty, then at the apartments on the second floor of the Tudor building, of which he said, “People up there were sitting right on top of the crime.” Jacobs also told him of Winston Moseley’s statement to police, that he had not been worried about anyone coming to help the victim.

Wainwright also interviewed a witness from the Mowbray who expressed his deep regret, saying, “The thing keeps coming back in my mind. You just don’t want to get involved. They might have picked me up as a suspect if I’d bounced right out there. I was getting ready, but my wife stopped me.” The man described seeing Kitty on the pavement, struggling to get up; how she had then staggered a little when she walked “like she had a few drinks in her.” He told of how he had strained forward to get a closer look, how others had done the same. He saw people with their heads out and heard windows going up and down all along the street. The man spoke of how bad he now felt whenever he looked out at the place on Austin Street where Kitty had been attacked. “How could so many of us have had the same idea that we didn’t need to do anything? But that’s not all that’s wrong.” Wainwright wrote that the man then revealed something else that was bothering him. The thirty-eight witnesses had at least talked to the police. Pointing accusingly at another building, likely the Tudor, the man said, “There are people over there who saw everything. And there hasn’t been a peep out of them yet. Not one peep.”

Indeed, the prosecutors feared they wouldn’t be able to get one peep out of any of the witnesses anymore.

When they began interviewing them in preparation for the trial, they took the unusual step of having them brought in by police via O’Connor’s secure garage entrance to the building. The goal was to protect their identities from the press.