January 20, 2013

• On Visiting A Murder Site..

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  I was with Kitty ( Catherine ) Genovese,  Kew Gardens, Queens, NYC.  It was 3:14 AM on friday, March 14, 1964.  I was with her when she was stabbed five hundred times and watched as he raped her dead body.  He cut her bra off with the hunting knife he used to kill her.

  She died in the door right near her apartment.  She nearly made it home.  It took thirty two minutes for him to kill her.  Someone yelled for him to stop out of a window, but did nothing else.  The papers said that 38 people saw her being chased, or attacked and  or heard her scream and no one called the police.

  

  She drown in her own blood from a stab would directly to the lung.  She was the murderer's third victim.  He just wanted watch women die.  He is still alive and in prison.

  Kitty Genovese's lesbian lover, Tina Louise, (Ginger from Gilligan's Island) came to me and said she did not hear anything.   She told Ed Asner the same thing.

  The neighborhood is beautiful.  I would like to live there.  Kew Gardens, if it were a city,  would be the fifth largest city in America and is one of the most densely populated.   Kitty was murdered below her apartment, the second floor of a cute two story building where I wouldn't mind living.  I would like to live in her apartment.  It is right by the subway and the Long Island Railroad station.  

  As I stood and photographed the site, people gave me looks as if they knew what I was doing.  A bad memory.  I so badly wanted to approach the older people on the streets and ask if they remember.

  Although I was I just a child when the TV movie came out,  it had a strong effect on me.  I always call the police if I see someone in distress or needing help and never assume someone else will. 

   

   I have been a "victim" of The Bystander Effect when helping a drunken man out of the subway track,  no train was in sight,  but a large group of people stood and watched me struggle and no one stepped forward until I said "Hello!? Can somebody give me a hand here",  then several men approached quickly and helped pull this guy up.   If the train had come I would not have risked my own life, I don't think.

  Another reason this affected me is that Tina Louise played the role of a lesbian.  I was still struggling with my own sexual identity and I projected heavily onto this,  wondering how she could do such a thing,  if she might really be a lesbian,  and shocked that I was seeing this on television and that someone would be open about it....

  I wish I had been with Kitty Genovese,  or had seen or heard her screams.   I like to think I would have been the one to have called the police, of course there was no 911 in those days,  but with thirty two minutes,  all involved said she could have been saved.

  I sat long in the night a that Long Island Rail Road Station reading all about the murder of Kitty Genovese, and envisioning the whole scene.  Finding where the body lay.  Where it was violated after death. 

  A man approached me offering me a ticket into the city.  Strangely I didn't want it.   I thought he was going to try and sell it to me but he said "okay" and left on the ticket machine for someone to take.   I already had my subway pass and wanted more walking around before leaving,  seeing where Kitty may have parked her car,  shopped or eaten, taken her laundry or had her hair done...

  I so hoped to experience the ghost of Kitty Genovese and walked slowly away to the cemetery a few blocks up from Austin Street, to Leffert's Blvd.   Although Kitty is buried near the home of her family in Connecticut,  I stood by the locked cemetery wishing, yet never actually willing, to go inside,  hoping to see a spirit, until a shiver ran up my spine and I began to quickly walk toward the subway.

  This is what happens when you visit the site of a well known murder.
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  • 12:24 pm
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