38 WHO SAW MURDER DIDN'T CALL THE POLICE

For more than half an hour 38 law-abiding "good" citizens watched a killer follow and stab a woman in three separate attacks in a section of New York City. No one telephoned the police during the attacks; one witness called after the woman was dead. This is what the police say happened beginning at 3:20 AM in the respectable, middle-class, tree-lined area:

Twenty-eight-year-old Kitty Genovese was returning home from her job as manager of a bar. She parked her red Fiat in a parking lot, locked the door, and started to walk the 100 feet to the entrance of her apartment at 82-70 Austin Street.

The entrance to the apartment is in the rear of the building because the front is rented to retail stores. At night the quiet neighborhood slumbers in the darkness that marks most residential areas.

Miss Genovese noticed a man at the far end of the parking lot, near a seven-story apartment house. She halted. Then, nervously she headed up Austin Street toward a call box for the 102nd Police Precinct. She got as far as a street light in front of a bookstore before the man grabbed her. She screamed. Lights went on in the 10-story apartment house facing the bookstore. Windows opened and voices punctuated the morning stillness. Miss Genovese screamed, "Oh my God, he stabbed me! Please help me! Please help me!"

From an upper window in the apartment house, a man called down, "Let that girl alone!"

The attacker looked up at him, shrugged, and walked down Austin Street toward a white car parked nearby. Miss Genovese struggled to her feet.

Lights went out. The killer returned to Miss Genovese, who was now trying to make her way around the side of the building by the parking lot to get to her apartment. The killer stabbed her again.

"I'm dying!" she shrieked. "I'm dying!"

Windows were opened again, and lights went on in many apartments. The killer got into his car and drove away. Miss Genovese staggered to her feet. A city bus passed. It was 3:35 AM.

The attacker returned. By then, Miss Genovese had crawled to the back of the building, where the freshly painted doors to the apartment house held out hope for safety. The killer tried the first door; she wasn't there. At the second door he found she had slumped on the floor at the foot of the stairs. He stabbed her a third time-fatally.

It was 3:50 by the time police received their first call from a man who was a neighbor of Miss Genovese. In two minutes they were at the scene. The male neighbor, a 70-year-old woman, and another woman were the only persons on the street. Nobody else came forward. The man explained that he'd called the police after much deliberation. He'd phoned a friend for advice and then had crossed the roof of the building to the apartment of the elderly woman to get her to make the call.

"I didn't want to get involved," he sheepishly told the police.

Six days later, the police arrested Winston Moseley and charged him with murder.

The police stressed how simple it would have been to have reached them. "A phone call," said one of the detectives, "would have done it." The police may be reached by dialing "0" for operator.

Today witnesses from the neighborhood find it difficult to explain why they hadn't called the police.

A housewife casually said, "We thought it was a lover's quarrel." A husband and wife said, "Frankly, we were afraid." They seemed aware of the fact that events might have been different. An upset woman said, "I didn't want my husband to get involved."

One couple, now willing to talk about that night, said they heard the first screams. The husband looked thoughtfully at the bookstore where the killer first grabbed Miss Genovese. "We went to the window to see what was happening," he said, "but the light from our bedroom made it difficult to see the street." The wife, still apprehensive, added, "I put out the light and we were able to see better." Asked why they hadn't called the police, she replied, "I don't know."

A man peered out from a slight opening in the doorway to his apartment and gave an account of the killer's second attack. Why hadn't he called the police at that time? "I was tired," he said without emotion. "I went back to bed."

It was 4:25 AM when the ambulance arrived to take the body of Miss Genovese.

It drove off. "Then," a solemn police detective said, "the people came out."