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

drunk.”
    The woman told him she had a phone number for Greta Schwartz, another neighbor who lived at that end of the building. He took the number and quickly left, leaving the woman staring after him as he scurried back across the roof to his own apartment.
    She walked into her bedroom. This was all so very odd. Her husband was in the bedroom and she said to him, “There’s a woman moaning in Karl’s hallway.” She thought of the police call box on the corner of Austin Street and Lefferts Boulevard. “Do you think I should go down and call the police from the call box?”
    “No.”
    THE MAN IN the fedora was about ready to give up. He had searched for several minutes, but his victim was nowhere to be seen. He stood at the top of the walkway next to the train tracks and looked down the long silent concrete path. He tried the door to the coffee shop on the corner.It was locked. He thought she must have made it home, for surely she must live around here. On impulse he tried one last door—the next one. A plain brown entry door. 82-62 Austin Street.
    She was lying on the floor. She looked up at him and let out a horrific scream—her last. People still at their windows around the other side of the block heard her last two cries of “HELP! HELP!”
    The door closed behind him. And then he was upon her.
    He straddled her where she lay and plunged the hunting knife into her throat to silence the screams. Unable to cry out, she moaned and struggled as he squatted down on her and cut open her jacket and blouse. She raised her gloved right hand in an effort to push him away but he slashed at her outstretched hand with the knife, cutting deep enough to tear her glove open and slice her palm. He cut through the center of her bra and discovered that her breasts were not as big as he had thought. She wore falsies. Infuriated by this, he slashed her right breast. Still she continued to twist and struggle beneath him, and now he was really fed up with her—fed up with her deception with the falsies and her defiance in still trying to get away. He took the hunting knife and stabbed her in the stomach, once, twice, and then again and again, not using all his strength, not deep enough to cause immediate death, but enough to make her still.
    Now, finally, he could do what he wanted.
    He pulled up her skirt. Underneath she wore layers of clothing—girdle, tennis shorts, nylons, and panties. He took the knife and cut through them all as the woman lay motionless and bleeding in the dank stairwell, moaning through the hole in her throat.
    A door at the top of the stairs opened.
    The man glanced up. Unfazed, he turned his attention back to his victim.
    The door at the top of the stairs closed.
    GRETA SCHWARTZ COULD not quite make sense of what her neighbor Karl Ross was telling her. What time was it, anyway? Close to 4:00 a.m. itlooked like. She tried to listen carefully and understand him because there must be a good reason for him to call her at this hour.
    Greta and her husband lived in one of the rear apartments down near Lefferts Boulevard. Karl babbled something about screaming on the street. Screaming? Greta did not know what he meant. She had been sound asleep until the phone rang. Karl said something about Kitty being hurt in his hallway and then something about calling Sophie to come over and check on her. It was confusing.
    Greta knew who Kitty was—one of the two young girls, the dark-haired one, who lived across the hall from young Sophie Farrar and her family. Close to sixty years of age herself, Greta considered them all young. None of this was making much sense and she could not understand why Karl would be asking her to call Sophie in the dead of night. There must be something going on though. Greta told Karl she’d be right over and hung up the phone. She threw on a robe and slippers and went downstairs.
    Stepping outside into the walkway, Greta turned right and walked toward the entrance to Karl’s apartment down near