Christal Cooper
Chris Rice Cooper’s
Scripted Interview with Catherine Pelonero
*Author of the New York
Times Bestseller
Kitty
Genovese:
A True
Account of a Public Murder and Its Private Consequences
1.
When do you remember
hearing about Kitty Genovese?
I
first heard about Kitty Genovese when the movie Death Scream, which was loosely
based on Kitty’s murder, was broadcast on TV in the 1970s. I was a kid and when
I saw the movie promo, I said, “I want to see that!” My mother said, “You’re
not watching that. I remember when that happened. It was terrible.” My
curiosity was piqued. I didn’t know much about the real case until I was an
adult. I stumbled on a website that had the famous New York Times article by
Martin Gansberg.
After
reading what little I could find on the Internet about Kitty, I wanted to know
more, so I decided I’d look for a book on her case. I figured there must be
several because it was such a notorious incident, but the only one was A.M.
Rosenthal’s very short book 38 Witnesses, written in 1964, which
is basically a slightly extended version of the famous New York Times article.
It had no information at all about Kitty Genovese as a person, nor Winston
Moseley for that matter. I ended up writing the book I wanted to read.
Can you describe the
step by step of writing KITTY GENOVESE from the moment the idea was
first conceived in your brain until final book form?
It
was a long process because I had never written nonfiction before. I was a
playwright, primarily a comedy writer, believe it or not. It was seven years
from the time I decided to write the book until it was actually finished, and
most of that time was devoted to research. I had to start from scratch and read
a lot of how-to books, because nonfiction is worlds away from writing for
theatre. I also read scores of true crime books to learn how to structure a
story. I made a point of reading the very famous ones and also the lesser known
books, and I made notes on what worked best and why. In a nutshell, the best
true stories tell us something about the people, really bring them alive.
Crimes are not interesting, but people are.
Can you talk about the
physical environment in which you wrote Kitty Genovese? Did you write in a room of your house or at a
coffee house? Can you describe the
room/house you wrote in? What time of
day? What weather was like? Did you have a window to look out of? What was your view? Did you have something to drink? Do eat?
Did you listen to music? If so
what was it? How did you write it – in
longhand or on computer?
I
laugh to think back on that. I wrote Kitty Genovese in my garage in the
sweltering summer of 2013. I live in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles and
most days the temperature hovered around 100 degrees. I’d get up in the morning,
put on shorts and a tank top, drop my kids off at summer camp, and then head
out to the garage with my laptop and a supply of Diet Coke. I kept my mountain
of research material out there. I needed a small fan pointed at my aging laptop
to keep it from overheating and a bigger fan to keep me from melting.
Sometimes
I listen to music when I’m writing but that can change from moment to moment.
At times I need the music for background but other times I need silence for a
while. I typically handwrite a bulleted list of things to include in a chapter
along with some notes, then do the actual writing of the manuscript on laptop.
What are some of the
similarities that you and Kitty share?
Kitty
and I are both the oldest of five children from Italian-American families
(although my heritage is also mixed with Irish, Scandinavian, and who knows
what else.)
We both grew up in New York state - she in Brooklyn, me in Buffalo
- and worked as bartenders in our early 20s. Both of us came from large,
close-knit families and we were both Catholic. I learned that Kitty loved to crack
jokes and make people laugh, and I’m the same way.
Did you feel a
connection with Kitty? And if so can you describe the connection you felt?
Absolutely.
There were the similarities in our backgrounds but there was also a connection
that’s very difficult to explain. On the one hand I kept thinking about her
coming home late from the bar and suddenly falling victim to a random attack by
a stranger, and there was a part of me that thought, there but for the grace of
God go I. It made me think of all those nights when I drove home alone in the
wee hours of the morning. It’s frightening to think that any of us could become
a victim of violent crime. Beyond that, though, it’s hard for me to put my
finger on why I connected so strongly with Kitty, and felt so driven to learn
about her and give her an identity beyond “murder victim.” In a sense, I feel
like stories choose me rather than the other way around.
In your biography you
state that your father was a police officer.
Is this where your interest in crime reporting was conceived?
My
dad was a police officer for over 30 years but I didn’t start out writing true
crime. I never planned to write nonfiction, much less crime, and no one was
more surprised than I that my career turned in that direction.
Again,
I feel like it chose me rather than me choosing it, but that said, my dad’s
career in law enforcement definitely buoyed my interest in the realities of
crime, particularly of the human cost.
You mention a blue
typewriter you got for your 7th birthday. What is your you first writing
memory?
The
blue typewriter! The best birthday gift I ever got. The first thing I remember
writing - not counting the plays I forced my younger siblings and friends to
perform in - is a poem called “The Clover,” when I was in third grade.
Did you and your Dad
ever talk about the Kitty Genovese case? And if so what did he say?
No,
sadly my dad passed away in 2005 before I started writing true crime. I miss
him every day, and I so wish he was still here to guide me. We always had a lot
to talk about anyway, and we’d have even more now. There are so many times when
I wish I could ask him about a case. My new book (Absolute Madness) is
dedicated to my dad, and in fact, I feel like he’s helped my career
tremendously. Because of him, I have always felt right at home speaking with
police officers, and he is very well remembered by the people who worked with
him. You could honestly say he paved the way for me.
Where were you born and
in what year?
I
was born in Virginia in 1967 and my parents moved to Buffalo, New York when I
was an infant. Buffalo is my hometown.
Catherine's childhood home in Buffalo
Where do you live now?
Lovely
Los Angeles, my second hometown. And I still write in my garage.
What was the publication
process like for KITTY GENOVESE?
It
was exciting for me because it was my first published book. My prior
publications were stage plays, which is a whole different ballgame. We went
through a few rounds of edits and then the proofreading of the galleys. The
process actually went very quickly and I really enjoyed it. I was blessed to
work with a wonderful editor, Julie Ganz at Skyhorse Publishing. (www.skyhorsepublishing.com) I first saw the
manuscript in book form when the ARCs (advance reader copies) came out a couple
months ahead of publication. That was exciting. Later, when I got my first
copies of the actual hardcover book, I was over the moon with joy and awe.
Julie Ganz
Contact info:
I
love hearing from readers and they’re welcome to contact me anytime via my
website www.catherinepelonero.net.
Catherine with son Brent.
Photo taken in March of 2017
Anything you would like
to add?
I
think if you have a true passion for a story, a burning need to tell someone,
that passion translates to a reader and gives a book its drive.
Excerpt from KITTY GENOVESE
*Permission granted by
Catherine Pelonero and Skyhorse Publishing
*Photographs are not included in the book
*Photographs are not included in the book
Covered with ashes, tearing my hair, my face scored by clawing, but
with
piercing eyes, I stand before all humanity recapitulating my shames without losing sight of the
effect I am producing, and saying: “I was the lowest of the
low.” Then imperceptibly I
pass from the “I” to the “we.” . . . I am like them, to be sure; we are in
the soup together.
The Fall by Albert Camus
PART ONE
FEAR OF THE STRANGER
I was seven years old when it happened. There was
a patch of grass in
the rear of the buildings alongside the train tracks where we would play ball and a big bush where numerous intercepted catches and foul balls ended up. For years afterward, no kid wanted to fetch a ball that had found its
way into that bush. We “knew” there was a murdered girl in there. She had—I have no idea where we got this number from but we all knew it—38 wounds in her body.
She was waiting there to get us.
We used to ask why. The answers varied between, “That’s a long story,” and “Because you didn’t save her .
. .”
Of course, the fact that it happened in this “idyllic” neighborhood had a
lot
to do with it. If it had happened in the South Bronx, I don’t think it would ’ve even made page 15 of the
Daily News.
—Peter Mueller, former resident
of
Kew Gardens
chapter 1
FRIDAY, MARCH 13, 1964
IF SHE HAD walked out onto Jamaica Avenue a minute sooner or a min- ute later, he would never have seen her. They would have missed
each other entirely.
But he did see her.
He saw a young woman getting
into her car, alone.
He had been searching for her for more than an hour. Not this woman specifically; he had never seen her before, and that also was
key. The other keys were “woman” and “alone.”
The woman,
when at last he found her, had been easy to
spot since there was no
one
else
around and very little traffic at this time
of night, at least not here in Queens. Streets in Manhattan
may still have been busy
at 3:00 a.m. but he wouldn’t know, since he never did this kind of
thing in Manhattan; only in Queens. He
felt more secure in Queens, especially around this area, since he lived nearby.
And that was another key—sticking fairly close to home, because
at some point after the thing was done, he had to get home and check his dogs and his kids, and get some sleep so
he could be ready for work in the morning. He always showed up at the office on time, no matter how
late he had been out the night before.
Nothing in particular about this woman had caught his eye, other than
the feminine shape and the skirt she wore, both of which assured him that the figure stepping out into the darkness was female, and
she looked young.
4 KITTY GENOVESE
He slowed his car and watched as she stepped off the curb and walked around to the driver’s side of a red sports car. Perhaps he held his breath as he waited to see if anyone would join her, or his heart beat faster when he looked in his rearview mirror and saw that no one had, that she was definitely in the car alone, now pulling away from the curb; but it was just as likely that he remained steady and calm, because control was something he always maintained. Control and discipline. Equally important to him were preparation and organiza- tion, traits he showed in both his career and home life, and in situ- ations like this one now. The gloves he wore tonight
were not just
to protect his hands from the biting cold, nor was the purpose of the
stocking cap he wore solely to keep his head warm. He also had
another hat with him—a
dark brimmed fedora—and he
wore a three- quarter length
overcoat that looked indistinct, a bland and common color, with a pocket deep enough to hold a long bladed hunting
knife.
He made a U-turn
as the little red sports car shot ahead down
Jamaica Avenue
and
turned the corner onto 188th Street. She drove fast and he had to pick up his speed to keep up with her—and that was exciting, chasing her like this, because he had never had to do that before. She drove on to the Grand Central Parkway and he followed at a safe distance
until she exited at Queens Boulevard. Now they
were driving on side streets, first one and then another, the little red sports car and a white Chevy Corvair making all the same turns. The last street onto which they turned was still and silent, its boundaries
lined with tall trees, bare of leaves now in the final grip of winter. The street was called Austin, though the man did not know it at the time, as he was not familiar with this neighborhood. But he thought it looked just right, exactly the kind of place to which he hoped she would lead him.
The red car made a final turn into a parking lot. The white
car crept ahead on Austin Street and stopped on the street in front of a bus stop. Quickly he shut off the engine, stepped out, and closed
the door, careful not to slam it.
The woman was still in her car as he stood some yards away in the shadows, facing toward her, waiting. Standing
at the edge of the
FEAR OF THE STRANGER 5
parking lot, he vaguely noticed it was a Long Island Railroad station. A few other parked cars sat dark and empty, windows frosted from the night
air. Off to the extreme right sat a small commuter train depot, deserted at this hour. Directly ahead stood a pale, two-story building, a Tudor-style structure, unlit and noiseless. No one was
around. No one at all, except himself
and the young woman who now stepped out of
her car and into the cold and silent darkness.
She closed the door of the little red car.
He slid his hand into the deep pocket of his coat.
She was standing
by her car door with the key in the lock when she
turned her head and saw him, a thin, small man in a stocking cap,
over at the far end of the parking lot, looking at her. He had already
taken a few steps in her direction and now, as she looked up and it was clear that she had seen him, he wondered if he had fouled this up; moved too soon and given himself away. He
worried she would get back in her car. With some relief, he saw that she did not.
She was walking
now. She turned and strode quickly toward the building in front of her, veering to her right in the direction of the building’s rear entrances down a wide alleyway adjacent to the train tracks. Her brisk walk betrayed an urgency, and it could be that an awareness had dawned on her of how alone she was at this moment,
alone in the gloom and chill with the odd man in the parking lot, as if suddenly they were the only two souls left on earth. She hurried along, turning her back on the man; and that’s when he came at her faster. He was not quite running, not yet, but
he quickened his pace and came
rushing across the parking lot, his right arm held down at his side so she
would not see the hunting knife gripped in his gloved hand.
She looked over her shoulder and saw him again, the stranger who
had
been staring at
her,
and the feeling of uneasiness she may have felt a second before
turned into panic. Now she knew. He was coming for her. There could be no doubt. He was coming for her and she needed to
do something.
Suddenly she changed direction, darting sharply to her left and running full speed up toward Austin Street. She must have seen him change his course to intercept her, or perhaps it was simply
6 KITTY GENOVESE
instinct and fear and panic compelling her because by the time she set foot on the corner of Austin Street she screamed at the top of her lungs “Help!”
“HELP!” again as she dashed around the corner, the man now
in full pursuit. She kept screaming it—“HELP! HELP!”—as she ran down Austin Street toward Lefferts Boulevard, past the corner drug- store, a tiny grocery, a
dry cleaner, and now a bookstore, all shuttered for the night.
It was 3:20 a.m. There was only one business on this block that could
have been open at this hour and that may have been where she was
headed, to the safety of a neighborhood bar called Austin Bar & Grill, just four more doors away.
But he caught up to her now between the bookstore and the liquor store and she stopped running
suddenly, clumsily, halted by a knife thrust in her upper back that turned her cry of “Help!” into a tremendous piercing shriek. Again he plunged the knife into her upper back and her long scream intensified. She fell to her knees on the sidewalk with the man standing above her, his knife poised, and for a second they remained this way, the man panting, flushed, exhilarated, the woman shocked, stricken, perhaps disbelieving. She
raised her
head
and screamed, “Oh my God, he stabbed me! Help me! Somebody please help me!” As if her shattering cry were a
cue, the man bent over and lunged
the knife at her again.
Instinctively the woman crouched lower as
he continued to jab at her.
Another young woman, this one watching through a window in an apartment building across the street, thought
the man was beating the screaming woman,
who was now crouched almost flat on the pave-
ment, her wounded back parallel to the sidewalk. But in fact he was stabbing at her again and the knife connected
twice more in her back before two other screams, both male, sounded
from across Austin Street. The
first was the angry voice of a young man, reacting to the clamor outside with a shout of, “Shut the fuck up!” The second fol- lowed immediately after and this one came booming from a window
high above, a
more mature and commanding
male voice demanding,
“What’s going on down there!?”
FEAR OF THE STRANGER 7
The man in the stocking cap jerked upright and looked up into the blackness, startled and suddenly fearful. Across the street stood an immense ten-story apartment building
that ran the length
of the entire block. Lights were coming on, first one and then another and another, as if a giant stone creature had suddenly awakened
and begun to open its many rectangular eyes. He
was standing
straight across from a recessed
entryway to the building where lights in the lobby shone
through a large bay window. Worse, he and his shrieking victim
on
the sidewalk were directly beneath
a street lamp.
The booming male voice from above—it sounded like the same one—shouted again,
“Leave that girl alone!”
The man in the
stocking cap turned and
darted down Austin Street back toward the train station. Some who watched him go saw
him disappear into the darkness as he ran past the parking lot. Others were able to see him get into his car, throw it in reverse, quickly back it down Austin Street and then, still in reverse, up
a one-way side street
called 82nd Road.
The injured young woman lay alone on the sidewalk in front of
the bookstore. She was no longer screaming, but crying—the pitiful, unguarded weeping
of a child.
“Help!” she called out through sobs. “If somebody
doesn’t
help me
I’m going to die!”
Any reply she may have hoped for did not come. The street was once again silent except for the sounds of her own plaintive weeping. No one stirred or peaked out from the Austin Bar & Grill; it had
closed early tonight. All of the businesses were deserted. Some of the apartment lights that had snapped
on a minute before went dark again. Some people went back to bed. Of the others who remained
at their windows, a few felt they could see
the street better with their inside lights off.
The woman tilted on her side and slumped
over on her back, facing up
toward the night sky and the yellow glow of the street lamp above,
blood from the wounds in her back forming fresh stains on the pave-
ment beneath her. Almost immediately she tried to get up and away; but,
as one onlooker later described it, she was not having an easy
8 KITTY GENOVESE
time of it. Her legs moved as if in slow motion as she tried to regain her
bearings and stand. She rolled to her side, propping herself on an elbow, and gradually climbed to her feet. A few faltering steps got her to a nearby parked car, which she leaned on for support. From there she lurched to a tall tree by the curb, resting
for a moment against
its trunk. Pushing off from the tree, she bent unsteadily and grabbed something—her wallet?—from where it had fallen on the sidewalk. Slowly she started down Austin Street the way she had come, back
toward the corner drugstore at the edge of the train station parking lot.
Accounts of how she moved would vary. Some would describe her as staggering, others as walking “dreamlike.” One woman watching
from a second-floor apartment
above the bookstore described her as zigzagging down the street. However she moved, it was a labored journey. Her winter jacket had tempered some of the hunting knife’s thrust; her wounds were not very deep nor imminently fatal, but two
had
reached far enough to put small punctures in each of the lobes of
her lungs. Air slowly leaked
into her chest cavity. The incisions were sharp, and the shock and fear that surely coursed
through her could have overshadowed the physical pain, might have pushed it into the background as a lesser and perhaps almost minor cog in this solitary nightmare. What she certainly felt other than a need to find help
was a mounting pressure in her chest, a gradual tightening that slowly but steadily gained in intensity with every step and breath, as if a python had coiled around her, making each inhalation a little
more difficult than the last.
The constriction added to her fear and desperation but also drove her forward toward the promise of salvation; her attacker
had
fled and she had only to make it to the safety of home, not ter- ribly far away. Less than a minute’s walk from here, normally. She kept moving down Austin Street, accompanied by the sound of her own
crying and mumbled
pleas and eyes that peered at her through win-
dows up and down
the block.
Midway to the corner she retreated to the building
for support, groping along the walls of the storefronts. She passed the darkened
windows of the dry cleaner, the grocery, the drugstore—businesses
she patronized during the day. The building she now clung to housed
FEAR OF THE STRANGER 9
sixteen apartments,
all
on the second floor, one of which was her own. The
entrances to most of the apartments, including hers, were in the rear along the wide walkway next to the train tracks.
She rounded the corner and continued
inching along the side of the building. The train station parking lot was now to her right. Directly beyond the lot stood a seven-story apartment building
where a man and his wife on the sixth floor watched the young woman make her way toward the rear walkway. They would both later say that
the woman definitely staggered at this point and that her move- ment had slowed from what it had been on the opposite side of Austin Street. Others who still had her in view would agree.
Partway along the side of the building—and now several min- utes into her ordeal—panic overcame her. She cried out, “I’m dying! I’m dying!”
This outburst, coupled with the fresh horror about to come, caused at
least two people listening to think the woman had been attacked again,
here next to the parking lot. That was not the case, however.
The woman’s cries were yet another
reaction to her deepening
mortal
distress, and perhaps the certainty that she would not be able to go much farther.
She made it to the
next turn
at the far
edge of the building, where a darkened coffee shop with large glass windows overlooking
the walkway occupied the ground floor corner lot. Laboring past the locked door of the coffee shop she came finally to an unlocked door—
an apartment entrance. Clutching the door knob, she pushed inward with her remaining strength. The man and his wife up on the sixth floor across the
parking lot watched her disappear
inside, watched the door close behind her.
It was right after this that the
man with the hunting knife returned.
Who Was
Kitty Genovese?
Compiled By Chris Rice
Cooper
Catherine Susan “Kitty” Genovese was born in New
York City in July 7, 1935 to Italian American parents Vincent and Rachel
Genovese.
Her father ran the Bay Ridge Coat & Apron
Supply Company and her mother was a homemaker.
She was reared in a Brooklyn Italian neighborhood along with her four
younger siblings, in a close-knit Catholic family.
Kitty attended an all girls’ high school Prospect
Heights High School where she excelled in English and Music. She was known as the talkative girl with
self-confidence, with a sunny disposition, and always full of laughter. She was never at a loss for telling jokes and
as a result she was elected “Class Cut
Up” in her senior year. She graduated in
a class of 712 girls in June of 1953.
In 1954 Rachel witnessed a shooting near their
neighborhood and she and Vincent decided it was best to move the family to New
Canaan, Connecticut.
Kitty remained in the city with her grandmother planning
her wedding to her first and only husband.
The marriage would be annulled within the same year.
Kitty would later reveal to her family and close
friends that she was gay. Her family remained
loving and accepting to their daughter, never denying their daughter status in
the family.
Kitty moved into a Brooklyn apartment and worked
in clerical jobs. She also worked as a
hostess, barmaid, bar manager and a bartender, which she loved.
Kitty was reliable, dependable, hard worker and had
a gift with handling money. She was
working double shifts and was earning an income of $750 per month, the
equivalent of $5,835.32 in 2016 dollars.
Her dream was to make enough money to open up her own Italian
restaurant.
Her father loved to brag that the moment she no
longer lived in the Genovese household he never had to send her one single
penny. Vincent remembers his daughter
telling him, “No man could support me because I make more than a man.”
Kitty's father Vincent Genovese
On March 13, 1963, Kitty met Mary
Ann Zielonko at Swing Rendezvous, an underground lesbian bar in Greenwich
Village. The two fell in love and moved in to an apartment on 82-70 Austin
Street, next to the Long Island Rail Road Station in Kew Gardens, a
neighborhood in Queens. They lived on the second floor in one of 14 units in a
two-story building with stores and shops on the ground floor, all the
apartments on the second floor.
Mary Ann Zielonko
Mary Ann and Kitty's apartment on 82-70 Austin Street
Since 1953 when she first ventured out on her
own, Kitty never forgot about her family and her younger siblings, three
younger brothers (Bill, Vinnie, and Frank) and one younger sister (Susan). Every weekend she had off, she would drive to
Connecticut to visit her parents, and her siblings. Her siblings viewed her as a second mother (she
was 12 years older than the oldest son Bill) and would ask her for advice.
It seems fitting to quote Catherine Pelonero in
the AFTERWORD of KITTY GENOVESE:
There was something else that I really hoped readers would glean from my book. A lot of people have written me and I sincerely appreciate the comments, questions, and feedback from readers. For me, the most personally meaningful message I received was from a man in Northern California who wrote that he never knew anything about Kitty Genovese before reading my book. Now that he did, he wrote, “I wish Kitty had been my friend.”
No book review has ever meant more to me
I wish she were my friend too.
