Free Kitty Genovese: A True Account of a Public Murder and Its Private Consequences by Catherine Pelonero

he ever saw Kitty that way. Normally she wasn’t much of a drinker, but tonight she had been out for hours with Jack, who definitely enjoyed a few drinks. No wonder she had indulged.
    Not that it mattered, because Vic knew that Kitty would not be driving home. She had planned ahead to stay the night with Bessie Thompson and her husband, two regular customers who lived in an apartment above Ev’s. A wise choice all around, since Kitty had to be here to open Ev’s at 8:00 a.m., now just a few hours away. As night bartender, Victor would be closing the place at 4:00 a.m.
    But around ten minutes after 3:00, Victor noticed Kitty saying goodnight, heading for the front door. “I thought you were staying upstairs with Bessie,” he said to her.
    “Ah, I was going to, but I think I’ll go home,” Kitty replied.
    This surprised him. Kitty didn’t live that far away, but still. Why drive home now? He said to her, “Why don’t you stay upstairs? You’ll be better off.”
    “No, I’m going home. I’ll be fine.” Kitty gave a reassuring smile and stepped toward the door.
    Well, if she insisted. And in truth, Victor felt no worry. There wasn’t much traffic this time of night.
    Kitty flashed her familiar smile, said she’d see them all later on, and walked out the door. Victor watched through the front window as she went to her car, parked right at the corner. He saw Kitty get into her car alone. When he looked again, her car was gone. He saw nothing unusual. No disturbance, nothing out of the ordinary.
    It was only later that Victor or anyone else at Ev’s would learn of a white Chevy Corvair cruising down Jamaica Avenue as Kitty had left that night.
    Some people in Kew Gardens, however, had noticed Kitty’s assailant run to such a car. Not all were certain of the make, but enough that Detective Robert Plover filed the following report the day of the incident:
    Examined precinct records for any report of accident or summons relative to a white Chevrolet Corvair for the 24 hour period. There were no aided or accident cases and only one summons issued off signal light on Woodhaven Blvd. and Myrtle Avenue. CASE ACTIVE.

chapter 5
    THE WHITE CHEVY Corvair sat in the driveway of a house in South Ozone Park, a neighborhood roughly four miles south of Kew Gardens. The car and the home, much like their owner, blended well in the prosaic landscape of the middle class, arousing neither suspicion nor complaint, appearing to all as nothing more or less than unremarkable gears in the cog work of ordinary life.
    The car and house were owned by a man who, at twenty-nine years of age, was married, a father of three sons, and steadily employed with a firm in Mount Vernon, New York, called the Raygram Corporation. His name, known to few outside his own family, small circle of coworkers, and even smaller circle of friends, was Winston Moseley.
    The dawn of Friday, March 13, 1964, began for him much like every other weekday morning. In many respects, his was a structured, predictable life. Weekdays routinely started with a 7:00 a.m. phone call from his wife, phoning from her job to wake him for his own workday. Not that he particularly needed a wake-up call. Known as a man of meticulous habit who fulfilled his responsibilities without fail, he often was already awake by the time his wife called, tending to his five dogs and the two children while getting ready for work. Of the children, both boys and both toddlers, one was the son of himself and his wife, Elizabeth, also known as Bettye (pronounced “Betty” despite the extra e). The other boy was the son of one of his wife’s cousins who had fallen on hard times. By agreement with the child’s mother, Winstonand Bettye were raising the boy and planned to adopt him. Winston’s other sons, ages nine and seven, lived elsewhere in New York with their mother, Winston’s first wife, whom he had divorced in 1958.
    Bettye Moseley’s regular morning calls to her husband then were really more