![]() ![]() ![]() New Yorkers were not nearly as edgy about crime in 1964 as they were a decade later during the city’s steep if temporary decline, and the Genovese story made readers suddenly aware of the quotidian dangers people face in an urban environment. I was working for the Times, though not as a local reporter, and living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, only a few miles from where Kitty Genovese was sexually assaulted and murdered. The story was gritty and local, in both respects uncharacteristic of the Times in those days, and it made a huge splash, not merely among the newspaper’s readers but across the nation as other news organizations picked up on it. Not one person telephoned the police during the assault one witness called after the woman was dead.” Half a century ago this month - two weeks after the incident took place - the New York Times published on its front page, in a prominent position and under what was for the Times an unusually large four-column headline, a story that began: “For more than half an hour 38 respectable, law-abiding citizens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab a woman in three separate attacks in Kew Gardens. ![]()
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