Read Kitty Genovese: A True Account of a Public Murder and Its Private Consequences for Free Online Page A

the Mowbray entrance, and having learned that the Mowbray employed round-the-clock elevator operators stationed in the lobby, detectives were eager to speak with the man on duty. He, however, was not eager to speak with them. As Detective Frezza recalled, the elevator man refused to give any information to police. He wouldn’t even tell them his name. Lieutenant Jacobs tried to talk sense to him, pointing out the severity of the crime and that the least bit of information could be useful, but the man remained as stony as the building. He didn’t see anything, he didn’t know anything, and he had nothing to say. And by the way, he was still on duty till 8:00 a.m. and couldn’t talk to them anymore. He had a job to do. What if somebody needed to use the elevator?
    “I want you to come down to the precinct as soon as your shift is over,” Jacobs told him.
    “No.” He was resolute. “I’m not going anywhere.”
    Jacobs had now had it with this man. He ordered his officers to take him to the 102nd precinct immediately for questioning.
    “We never did get his name that morning,” Detective Frezza recalled. “Not even when they hauled him off to the station.”
    The elevator man sat in the police station for hours before giving his name: Joseph Fink. When Fink finally started talking, detectives were angry, but their disgust was not confined to him. By that time, they were wondering what the hell was going on with the people in Kew Gardens.
    AROUND THE SAME time the elevator man was denying he had seen Kitty on the street, Mary Ann Zielonko saw her on a steel table. Kitty had never made it to the emergency room. Upon arrival at Queens General Hospital, a doctor by the name of Alquiros had pronounced her dead in the ambulance. She had been taken directly to the hospital morgue.
    Detectives had brought Mary Ann with them to Queens General Hospital. A relative would need to make the identification official, but as the victim’s roommate, Mary Ann’s ID would suffice until a family member could be contacted.
    In the echoing tomb of the large and impersonal Queens County Mortuary, a white sheet was pulled back to reveal the face of a dead woman.
    “Yes. That’s Kitty.”
    Still it did not seem real. None of it. The detectives. The morgue. Kitty, lying motionless under a white sheet. Kitty Genovese, the most truly alive person she had ever known. Kitty gone? Her mind rejected the idea. Kitty would never leave her like this.
    A detective led Mary Ann out of the room and to a bench in the hallway. How long she sat there waiting she could not recall, but when the detectives returned and told her it was time to go, she calmly, reflexively told them, “No, I’ll wait for her.” As if Kitty had just stepped out to run an errand and would be right back.
    BACK IN KEW Gardens, detectives canvassed apartments and private homes, took measurements and photos, and dusted the hallway for fingerprints. Some residents watched the action while others anxiously pondered what, if anything, they would tell the police.

chapter 3
    THE REPORTS MADE by New York City detectives during an investigation are called DD5s. By necessity the information contained on a DD5 is typically clinical and spare, brief accounts of the facts as the reporting officer has observed and recorded them; statements given, evidence gathered, actions taken. Except for the medical and forensic details of injuries inflicted on the victim, they contain no accounts of human damage. No mention of grief, sorrow. No indication of the suffering or sudden, unalterable change visited on the lives of those to whom the victim is more than just a name in a report or a newspaper article.
    Among the DD5s filed in criminal complaint #13372 was a very brief one affirming a crucial procedure, necessarily stark and superficial:
    SUBJECT: Kitty GENOVESE of 82-70 Austin St., Queens, F-W 28 yrs.
    1.3/13/64 Request transmitted to notify Vincent GENOVESE that his daughter Kitty is dead at