It is somewhat inevitable
that every genuinely sensational and shocking news story will eventually generate hype
and exaggeration and distortion. We never seem satisfied with even the
most surprising story. So humans rewrite and exaggerate and distort,
and, after a time, it becomes difficult to know what really happened. Did 300 Spartans really hold off 5
million Persians all by themselves? Did judges in Medieval Europe
really believe that witches float? Did they burn witches at the stake
in Salem, Massachusetts in the 17th century? Did the rich really elbow
their way into the lifeboats on the Titanic? Did Joseph McCarthy
really accuse completely innocent people of being communists in the 1950's? Did
Marie Antoinette really suggest that starving peasants should eat cake?
Did Al Gore really claim to
have invented the internet? Did some Arabs really dance in the streets
to celebrate 9/11?
Did 38 people really stand
by and do nothing while Kitty Genovese was murdered on the streets of New
York in March, 1964?
Did Evita Peron "whore" her
way to the pinnacle of power in Argentina?
The funny thing is, the core truth of
many of these
stories, if you can see beyond the ridiculous exaggerations imposed on them
by later generations or Hollywood, is often quite remarkable. It is
only in comparison to the hype that people sometimes think the gist of the
story is not true. Often, that is a mistake. And then you will
always find contrarians willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater, so
to speak.
Public shorthand for
shocking events does tend to simplify and distort and exaggerate. At
the same time, there is undoubtedly a temptation for a journalist or
historian to uncover the exact truth and shout, "eureka-- the public has
been deceived" when, in fact, the essential truth of the original story is
still quite compelling. We know there will always be some exaggeration and
distortion in the retelling of human events.
We also know, for example,
that some of the people Senator Joseph McCarthy persecuted really were or
had been communists. Anne Coulter, who wrote a book on the subject,
would have you believe that this a shocking revelation that changes the
meaning of "McCarthyism" and proves that Joseph McCarthy was actually a
hero.
But then, someone else will
come along and go back to the original story and discover, all over again,
that Senator Joseph McCarthy was a repulsive, vainglorious, vindictive
alcoholic thug and bully, and that his tactics really did constitute
"persecution" and that he really was engaged in a "witch hunt", in which
refusing to answer questions made you just as guilty as a confession, and,
of course, that most of his victims were innocent.
And so someone named Joseph
De May has made the shocking discovery that 38 people did not actually
watch Kitty Genovese's murder from
beginning to end.
De May's "discovery" is
only shocking if you have ever actually believed that 38 people actually
saw the killing, with their
eyeballs, from beginning to end and clearly saw
a knife and saw Kitty Genovese
bleeding to death and did nothing. I'm sure
some people remember the story that way.
I wonder how many reasonable people do.
You first have to
appreciate that De May believes that the word "witness" should only apply to
people who saw an event, clearly, with their eyes. He believes that
that is what everyone else thinks too, and he spends a lot of time trying
very hard to prove that 38 people did not see
the murder.
My memory of the event is
that 38 people heard or saw something of the attack and that not one of them
called the police or offered any assistance to the young girl. After
all of De May's convoluted explanations, that information remains
essentially accurate.
I don't
remember anyone ever insisting that most or all of the 38 actually saw the
attack clearly. I don't know why that would make a big difference to
Joseph De May who admits that at least 12 people saw
some part of the attack and at least 20 other
people heard part of the attack and knew something was going on on the
street below their windows. The New York Times editor, Abe
Rosenthal, who wrote a book on the subject, insists that no New York Times
reporter ever stated that 38 people saw the attack. The article uses
the term "witness" as I would: people who heard or saw.
I don't think it would even
have occurred to me to think about whether all 38 people saw the entire
attack from the beginning to the end. Why would that make any
difference?
De May insists that there
were two separate attacks, not three.. Again, I'm not sure why he
thinks that makes a big difference. Are we supposed to go, "Oh, well
then, I can understand why no one went down to assist the girl. They
were waiting for a third attack..." Furthermore, his case on
that point is not as air-tight as he seems to think it is. He finds
very little evidence in the official court record, but there is some witness
evidence that Moseley went away and then came back twice. It's not
clear-- and it doesn't really matter-- if he counts that as two attacks or
one.
The essential facts as
reported in the initial New York Times article remain substantially correct.
The one disputed fact that would matter is this: De May claims to
know of someone who did phone the police after the first attack. His
evidence for this is not very compelling. A former New York City cop
claims to have known an unidentified "old-timer" who told him that he had
worked at that precinct the night in question and had received the first
call. This was reported to De May
30 or 40 years after the events.
Remember -- the New York Times article was written the same month as the
attacks, before people had a chance to "interpret" their memories.
There is as much-- no--
less!-- evidence for this blockbuster claim than there is for the assertion
that there were three, not two separate attacks. It's unaccountable
hearsay by someone who would have an interest in proving that his family or
friends were not indifferent to human suffering.
Talk about a scoop!
And Mr. Michael Hoffman-- the retired cop--decided, in the face of all the
publicity about this case, to keep this information secret until just
recently! That's is truly astonishing. It is even more
astonishing that Mr. De May was not embarrassed to put this into the public
record without even being able to supply the name of the police officer who
told someone who told someone.
Then he proceeds to report
that Andree Picq also called. Why, there was a veritable torrent of
phone calls. Except that Andree felt her throat constrict and didn't
actually say anything on the phone before hanging up. So how do we
know she called? She says so. The police, who indisputably
did respond when they received a real call later, have no record of the
event.
De May quotes the
Times article about a man who saw the second attack. He told the
reporter that he didn't call the police because he was tired. He went
back to bed. De May stunningly excuses this man because the Times
reporter did not provide details of what the man thought
he saw-- only of the fact that he went back to bed right after he claimed he
saw it. The man, by the time he talked to the reporter, knew a murder had taken place. He
knew that what he was claiming to have witnessed resulted in the death of a
young neighbor, and he knew the reporter knew that. Yet he casually
dismisses his responsibility with "I was tired"... and De May exonerates
him.
The rest of De May's
article consists of a lot of quibbling. It was rather dark. It
was cold. It was not unusual for boisterous people to make a lot of
noise in the streets nearby. Genovese got up after the first attack
and may not have staggered quite as dramatically as some people believe she
did. She seemed to walk slowly.
But even De May does not
deny that Kitty screamed, "Oh, my God, he stabbed me! Please help me!
Please help me!" But he actually quibbles over whether Winston Moseley
stabbed her before or after she screamed! If he stabbed her first,
then the witnesses who came to their windows could not have actually seen a
stabbing. So then... you can't blame them for ignoring the cries of
"he stabbed me! Help me! Help me!"?
De May tries to argue that many of the witnesses would likely have
thought that the noise coming from the street was not unusual for a
neighborhood with a bar on the corner. But he had already admitted that
people came to their windows to try to see what was going on-- he argues
that they couldn't see very much. Why would they bother going to
the window at 3:00 in the morning if they thought the screaming was coming
from just one of many inebriated couples having a quarrel?
De May seems to think that people generally believe that
most of the witnesses told police that they didn't call because they didn't
think it was any of their business. I don't know why anyone would
think everyone would say the same thing.
Rather astoundingly, De May, defending the indifferent
bystanders, actually lists five instances of people who testified in court
that they heard Kitty screaming but did nothing. He quotes a witness
as stating that he heard Kitty say "help me, help me" as proof that he did
not hear Kitty say "he stabbed me", and therefore... therefore what?
Therefore had no obligation as a human being to react? To help?
To at least call the police? The question is not whether the witnesses
had an accurate perception of what was happening. The question is
whether what the majority of witnesses heard and saw should have compelled a
responsible citizen to at least investigate further. Some witnesses
opened their windows. How large of a step is it to the point at which
you shout to Kitty Genovese, "Are you okay? Do you want me to call the
police?"
De May admits that the reporter whose article he claims to
debunk, Martin Gansberg, interviewed virtually all of the same witnesses the
police interviewed, immediately after the event. The product of Gansberg's intimate familiarity with the feelings and attitudes of these
witnesses is the conclusion that most of these people did not care enough
about what they heard to investigate further, to provide assistance, or even
to phone the police. De May admits that at least a dozen people heard
something at 3:00 a.m., got out of bed, went to the window, and then went
back to bed, or just stayed at the window and watched. Why?
Because, he says, they justifiably believed nothing important was happening.
And none of them decided to investigate further, even though what they heard
was compelling enough to get them out of bed?
We enter into the realm of ridiculousness when De May
starts describing how complicated it was to call the police with a telephone
in 1964-- before 911. A reasonable person could be forgiven for
believing that many New Yorkers might actually be familiar with the process,
or might have the number near their phones.
Karl Ross, who did finally
instigate a phone call to the police-- by asking another neighbor to do it--
told the police, "I didn't want to get involved". Another woman told
the police that she told her husband not to get involved.
I can't find any evidence
in De May's website to prove his rather astounding claim that some people
did in fact call immediately after the first attack. He claims that
the police might not have recorded
such a call. But the police responded immediately to a specific call
that was made too late. Why would anyone think they had ignored an
earlier call, but not this one? They were at the scene in 3 minutes.
Given the publicity this
case generated, if someone had called, why would they not have come forward?
Why doesn't De May identify the person? Such a person would have been
received as a hero. But the police, who interviewed everyone who lived
in the area, could not locate a single person who claimed to have called
them earlier than the neighbor asked by Mr. Ross.
De May argues that some of
the witnesses may have been reluctant to call the police because they feared
retribution. Well, this has become pathetic. After trying very
hard to convince us that the witnesses never saw anything anyway, De May now
wants us to believe that these good citizens were simply wisely looking
after themselves and that's why they closed their windows and went back to
bed. So now he concedes that a number of people, had they not feared
retribution, could have been expected to call the police?
Here he has clearly entered
advocacy mode. He is no longer really interested in clearing up some
misconceptions about the attack: he wants to restore the reputations of the
citizens of Kew Gardens. Amazingly, just before making this argument,
he argues that Kew Gardens was so crime free, that most of the witnesses
probably didn't believe they were actually seeing a murder. Or was it
that they were so used to drunks leaving a nearby bar that they didn't see
anything remarkable about a woman screaming at 3:00 a.m., though it was
remarkable enough to draw them out of bed and to their window, and for some
of them to open their windows and try to see what was happening.
As proof that the 38
witnesses were not indifferent, De May quotes this one:
Of course I heard the screams. But there
was nothing I could do. I was afraid. My hands were trembling. I couldn't
have dialed for an operator if I'd tried. I never even thought of it. I was
too afraid.
That sounds about right. I don't know why De May
thinks this would correct my impression of what happened that night.
It is one of what I would expect to be many reasons given by the 38 as to
why they chose not to do anything. The "of course I heard the screams"
is a ringing indictment: obviously many of the witnesses heard the screams.
What we have is revisionism. Now that the notoriety of Kew Gardens
has been established, the people involved have revised their memories.
None of the reasons each individual had for inaction are
very good. Each individual excuses, while unfortunate, is not
preposterous. But what was compelling about the story of the murder of
Kitty Genovese and remains just as compelling today is that a large number of
people had good reason to be concerned about what was happening in the
street just below them and chose to do nothing.
