Kitty Genovese: A True Account of a Public Murder and Its Private Consequences Read Online Free Page B

the near-freezing temperature. Only later did Sophiequestion whether she would have run outside had she known the situation, had she known she was dashing headlong into a bloody scene where a killer might still be lurking. As she later said, “I ran to help. It seemed the natural thing to do. I never thought of myself in danger.”
    Reaching the entrance at 82-62 Austin, Sophie pushed the door open and stepped inside. Entering the gloom of the hallway, she heard a low moan and looked down.
    Sophie Farrar, young mother and homemaker who had never known violence, let out a gasp.
    Kitty lay flat on her back, her head facing the door, as if she had tried to climb the stairs and had fallen backwards. But even in the darkness it was obvious this was no accident. Kitty’s grey skirt was hiked up to her waist. Her shoes were off. Her legs were splayed and her blouse and undergarments torn apart.
    Perhaps the motherly instinct in Sophie had become a reflex or perhaps she simply reacted to a friend in mortal distress; she dropped to her knees and slipped her arms around Kitty’s back and shoulder, cradling her as she would one of her children.
    “Kitty! Kitty, what happened? What happened?”
    Kitty instantly tensed at Sophie’s touch. Her hands came up in a weak pathetic flail of defense, still fighting off her attacker.
    “Kitty, it’s Sophie . . . it’s Sophie! It’s me . . . I’m here . . .”
    Kitty must have understood. She relaxed, the tenseness in her body subsiding. She moaned. Her mouth was agape, her narrowed eyes rolling, blinking. She moved slightly inward toward Sophie’s embrace, toward the last comforting human touch she would ever feel, and Sophie saw the holes in the back of her coat. Sharp slices in the fabric of the upper back.
    “Kitty, who did this to you?” Sophie asked. Guttural noises came from Kitty, but nothing Sophie could distinguish as words. Kitty moved again, a slow-motion thrash from the warmth of Sophie toward the cold wall stained with her own wet blood. “That’s when I saw that her throat had been slashed,” Sophie later recalled. Slipping her arm from Kitty’s back, Sophie now saw blood, all over her own hands.
    The shock, the sheer horror of it all, made it almost beyond belief, as if Sophie had somehow stepped not into a hallway in her own apartment building but into some strange macabre universe. Sophie may have vaguely wondered how she got here, to this nightmare, this unthinkable gruesome scene, with the freezing air swirling in and the warm blood soaking her, the sounds of Kitty’s moans and the plaintive muttering of Greta Schwartz, standing behind her saying, “That poor girl. That poor, poor girl . . .”
    Sophie placed her hand behind Kitty’s head, holding her so that they faced each other, hoping Kitty could see her, hoping she would know someone was here, someone who wasn’t going to hurt her. “I’m here, Kitty, I’m here . . .”
    It was then that a different fear washed over Sophie. Where was the man who did this? Where was he now? What if he came back?
    And Sophie felt as Kitty surely had—vulnerable, scared, keenly aware of her own helplessness. What if the man came back now, while she was on her knees in this cramped hallway, alone with an elderly woman and another dying in her arms?

    About this time the killer cruised along Hillside Avenue toward the Van Wyck Expressway, tossing certain items out of his car as he drove. Personal items, belonging to a woman whose name he did not know. He would check the newspaper tomorrow, find out her name, though their names never mattered to him. He’d find out if she lived or died. He got that kind of information from the newspapers, like everyone else.
    He would not return to Kew Gardens. Not tonight. Not for a few more nights.

    Someone else appeared in the hallway. Whether Karl Ross spoke or whether Sophie just heard him on the stairs is uncertain. Later it would be difficult to recall what was said in those