The woman who was murdered while neighbours and passersby watched

Catherine Susan "Kitty" Genovese (July 7, 1935 – March 13, 1964) was a New York City woman who was stabbed to death by Winston Moseley near her home in Kew Gardens, a neighborhood in the borough of Queens in New York City, on March 13, 1964.
Two weeks later, a newspaper article reported the circumstances of Genovese's murder and the lack of reaction from numerous neighbors. The common portrayal of her neighbors as being fully aware of what was transpiring but completely unresponsive has since been criticized as inaccurate.


Nonetheless, that portrayal prompted investigation into the social psychological phenomenon that has become known as the bystander effect or "Genovese syndrome",especially diffusion of responsibility.
Genovese's killer, Winston Moseley, was arrested, found guilty, and sentenced to death on June 15, 1964. That sentence was later reduced to lifetime imprisonment on the grounds that he had not been allowed to argue during the trial that he was "medically insane". Moseley committed another series of crimes when he escaped from custody on March 18, 1968 and then fled to a nearby vacant home, where he held the owners hostage. On March 22, he broke into another home and took a woman and her daughter hostage before surrendering to police. Moseley received two additional 15 year sentences for his 1968 crime spree.
Moseley, who was denied parole for a seventeenth time in December 2013, remains in prison as of December 2013; aged 78 at the time of his most recent parole hearing, he is currently one of the longest serving inmates in New York State