Peter Hellman - Fifty Years After Kitty Genovese

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

PETER HELLMAN, a New Yorkbased journalist and author for more than forty years, has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, New York magazine, the New York Post, and Wine Spectator, among many others. His books include Chief!, coauthored with Albert Seedman, The Auschwitz Album, and When Courage Was Stronger Than Fear. His travels as a writer have brought him as far as Bordeaux and Macau. He and his wife Susan call New York City home.

ALBERT A. SEEDMAN (19182013) was an NYPD deputy inspector overseeing four Queens detective squads when Kitty Genovese was murdered. An unlikely policeman when he first joined the force (he had been a certified public accountant), he ultimately rose through the ranks to become Chief of Detectives in New York Cityat the helm of an investigative force second only to the FBI in size. A legend in his own time, he is remembered for his keen insights into the many high-profile cases that crossed his desk.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

FOR THEIR GENEROUS HELP and expert guidance with the rebirthing of this classic case, I offer special thanks to Joseph De May, Harold Takooshian, Matthew Lore, and Karen Giangreco.

FIFTY YEARS
AFTER
KITTY GENOVESE

ALSO BY ALBERT A. SEEDMAN
AND PETER HELLMAN

Chief! Classic Cases from the Files of the Chief of Detectives

ALSO BY PETER HELLMAN

When Courage Was Stronger Than Fear:
Remarkable Stories of Christians and Muslims Who Saved Jews from the Holocaust

The Auschwitz Album:
A Book Based Upon an Album Discovered by a Concentration Camp Survivor, Lili Meier

FIFTY YEARS
AFTER
KITTY GENOVESE

Inside the Case That
Rocked Our Faith in Each Other

THE ORIGINAL CASE FILE REVISITED

DETECTIVE CHIEF ALBERT A. SEEDMAN
AND PETER HELLMAN

New York

FIFTY YEARS AFTER KITTY GENOVESE:
Inside the Case That Rocked Our Faith in Each Other

copyright 1974, 2001, 2014 Albert A. Seedman and Peter Hellman.
All other text copyright 2014 Peter Hellman.

All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or online reviews, no portion of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or information storage or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

The Experiment, LLC
220 East 23rd Street, Suite 301
New York, NY 10010-4674
www.theexperimentpublishing.com

The Experiments books are available at special discounts when purchased in bulk for premiums and sales promotions as well as for fund-raising or educational use. For details, contact us at .

The text of The Kitty Genovese Case was first published in Chief! Classic Cases from the Files of the Chief of Detectives (1974). It has been revised and updated for this edition.

Ebook ISBN 978-1-61519-229-8

Cover and text design by Karen Giangreco.

of Seedman at his desk copyright Ken Regan | Camera 5.
of Kittys last steps based on an original by Joseph De May.
Stairwell copyright Dave Sagarin.
of the Tudor building copyright Peter Hellman.

Distributed by Workman Publishing Company, Inc.
Distributed simultaneously in Canada by Thomas Allen & Son Ltd.
Published March 2014

In memory of Catherine Genovese
and Albert Seedman

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION
ABOUT ALBERT SEEDMAN AND HIS MOST FAMOUS CASE

THE NYPDS CHIEF OF DETECTIVES commands the nations second-largest investigative force after the FBI. Yet few New Yorkers, even those who keep up with local news, are likely to know the name of their top detective. The last time, and possibly the only time, that a Chief of Detectives broke into the limelight was over forty years ago, during the thirteen-month reign of Albert Seedman, whose knack for crime-solving was right up there with that of Sherlock Holmes (admittedly, one directed 3,000 detectives, while the other counted only on Watson and a gaggle of underage Baker Street irregulars to assist him). Seedman died in 2013 at age ninety-four, nearly blind but in full possession of his canny instincts.

A couple of factors put the shine on Al Seedmans three-star badge. For starters, he looked the part of a Big Apple detective chiefwith his square jaw and shoulders, the piercing glint of his grey eyes, the onyx pinky ring on one hand, and the diamond-sprayed job on the ring finger of the other. The ever-present cigar was thrust out at a jaunty angle from his lips. And then, there were the headline cases that came his way, one after another, starting just before his elevation to the top detective job in March 1971. The previous year, it was the accidental destruction of an elegant Greenwich Village townhouse (next door to actor Dustin Hoffmans home) which doubled as a Weathermen bomb factory. The next year saw the very public shooting of Mafia kingpin Joe Colombo in Central Park and murderous attacks on three different pairs of NYPD patrolman by the secretive Black Liberation Army. In the spring of 1972, feared gangster Crazy Joe Gallo was slain outside Umbertos Clam House. Under Seedman, the Detective Bureau solved all these crimes.

Chief of Detectives Albert A. Seedman with one of his ever-present cigars.

Decades later, the names of the victims and perpetrators in those cases have faded from the public memory. All except one. That name belonged to Catherine Kitty Genovese, a lively, dark-eyed barmaid who hoped one day to run her own tavern. Coming home in the early morning hours of March 13, 1964, in a serene, middle-class neighborhood in Queens called Kew Gardens, the twenty-eight-year-old Genovese was stalked and stabbed fourteen times by a lone assailant in two separate attacks. Her screams echoed in the chilly night air, but none of her neighbors, peering out of their windows, came to her aid, and no more than two belatedly dialed the police. As her killer finished Genovese off and raped her at the base of a steep stairwell at the rear entrance to two second-story apartments, a man who lived upstairs opened his door and looked down. Then he slunk back into his apartment and only after much hesitation did he call his girlfriend to ask what he should do. Unwilling to call the police from his own phone, he skittered across the roof to a neighbors apartment, where he mustered the courage to call from her telephone. And this was a man who knew the victim.

THE FOLLOWING ACCOUNT of the Genovese murder investigation, as seen from within the Detective Bureau, was originally published in 1974 in Chief! Classic Cases from the Files of the Chief of Detectives. The book grew out of a New York Times Magazine profile of Seedman which was very nearly stillborn at our first meeting in the late fall of 1971. Id trekked up the imposingly formal staircase of the old police headquarters, a domed Baroque pile on Centre Street later converted to luxury apartments. The Chief of Detectives enormous second-floor office was adjacent to the Commissioners. Seedman, wreathed in cigar smoke at his ancient desk, acknowledged me with a cursory nod when I was ushered in before returning to his paperwork. A white phone, one of two on his desk, rang. He picked it up and listened for a few moments but said nothing before hanging up. Curious. Much later, when I asked him about that phone and his silence, he explained that it was a direct wiretap of a line in a social club frequented by mobsters. From time to time, when a conversation turned interesting, the monitoring detectives rang the white phone.