Murder of Kitty Genovese

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2021-10-27 20:30:08

In the early hours of March 13, 1964, Kitty Genovese, a 28-year-old bartender, was stabbed outside the apartment building where she lived in the Kew Gardens neighborhood of Queens in New York City, New York, United States.[2][3][4] Two weeks after the murder, The New York Times published an article erroneously claiming that 38 witnesses saw or heard the attack, and that none of them called the police or came to her aid.[5]

The incident prompted inquiries into what became known as the bystander effect, or "Genovese syndrome",[6] and the murder became a staple of U.S. psychology textbooks for the next four decades. However, researchers have since uncovered major inaccuracies in the New York Times article. Police interviews revealed that some witnesses had attempted to call the police.

Reporters at a competing news organization discovered in 1964 that the Times article was inconsistent with the facts, but they were unwilling at the time to challenge Times editor Abe Rosenthal. In 2007, an article in the American Psychologist found "no evidence for the presence of 38 witnesses, or that witnesses observed the murder, or that witnesses remained inactive".[7] In 2016, the Times called its own reporting "flawed", stating that the original story "grossly exaggerated the number of witnesses and what they had perceived".[8]