and Rachel likely thought their children would be safer. At her insistence, the family picked up and moved to New Canaan, where Vincent Sr.
#Kitty genovese full
When she graduated her all-girls’ high school, Prospect Heights, in 1953, she was elected “Class Cut-Up.” Kitty had an average childhood, full of little victories like that, and days spent playing in the street with friends.īut when Rachel Genovese witnessed a shooting outside the family’s home, Park Slope suddenly didn’t seem so safe anymore.
Kitty was what some might call the classic older sister. Catherine-Kitty, as she was known to her friends-was the oldest of five siblings, named Vincent Jr., William, Frank, and Susan. Vincent, the father, was the owner of the Bay Ridge Coat and Apron Supply Company, and Rachel, the mother, was a homemaker. The family was unremarkably like any other: a big, Italian-American family living in Brooklyn. Johns Place, a brownstone in the Park Slope neighborhood. The Genovese family had begun raising their children at 29 St. This was the kind of thing Kitty’s mother likely feared when she moved the family to New Canaan, Connecticut after Kitty graduated high school. Or maybe the knife was still hidden in Moseley’s pocket.
It’s possible she started walking faster, breaths quickening, dark, fine hairs raising on the back of her neck. She may have seen the glint of the blade of Winston Moseley’s serrated hunting knife, if it rested in his palm. At 7 that night, she would call Mary Ann at the payphone across the street.Īs Kitty made her way home to Mary Ann that night in 1964, she might have noticed the white sedan that had parked across the empty lot. Kitty somehow located her dance partner’s apartment and left a note. As Mary Ann would come to find out, the girl was resourceful, too. She had been a vibrant girl with short, dark hair, sharp Italian-American features, and a piercing gaze. Mary Ann wondered if she’d ever see the stranger again. Probably sporting a smirk, Kitty sidled up to the stranger, and, amidst the jostling bodies, said, “Don’t I know you from somewhere?” The two danced together, but by the end of the night they hadn’t even exchanged names, much less numbers. Mary Ann was on her way to the bar, a long, wooden fixture scratched with too many pairs of initials to count. She saw the soft-featured Polish-American girl making her way through the crowd. It was in this crowd that Kitty met Mary Ann Zielonko. The club’s floor was a sea of women, dancing underneath the multicolored lights. She frequented clubs like this, the only type of place where she didn’t have to mask her true self, and loved Greenwich Village for its abundance of them. One year earlier, Kitty had descended the steps into the Swing Rendezvous, a lesbian bar at 117 Macdougal Street in Greenwich Village. They were likely the only sound in the quiet neighborhood, slicing through the nighttime silence. Kitty’s heels probably clicked in a staccato rhythm as she walked quickly down the sidewalk. Home, the second-floor apartment where her Mary Ann slept, waiting. That’s how far Kitty had to walk, how far she was from home. The neighborhood of Kew Gardens was heavy with sleep at this hour, and street lamps shed small pools of light on Austin Street. Maybe she took in a chilly breath, pulled her coat closer to her body. Maybe she saw the sliver of a moon hanging above her. Maybe, as she parked her red Fiat at the rail station by her apartment, Kitty looked up.
It was around this time that 28-year-old Kitty Genovese left the Hollis, Queens bar she managed, Ev’s 11th Hour, and headed home. The day’s average temperature was 40 degrees Fahrenheit, but at 3 AM, it was probably closer to 30. On the night of March 13, 1964, the moon in Queens was a waning crescent.
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