Kitty Genovese: A True Account of a Public Murder and Its Private Consequences (23 page)

Louise, the young woman Kitty had helped with a job and a place to stay, had given her statements to detectives and wanted no further part in a police investigation. She had packed up and moved out within days of Kitty’s murder. Mary Ann never heard from her again.

Other friends—especially those who had been taken to the police station for questioning—felt similarly. One demanded that Mary Ann stop calling her, fearing Mary Ann’s phone might be tapped. Mary Ann told her this was ridiculous. Why would the police tap her phone? She had already told them everything, more than she had ever imagined telling them, in fact. Still, her friends weren’t taking any chances.

Mary Ann wasn’t stupid. She knew that “queers” got harassed by the cops—or worse. She knew it well. It happened all the time at places like the Swing Rendezvous and other lesbian bars in Greenwich Village. She had been there when the music would suddenly cut out, the frantic loud whisper from the bar, “The cops!
The cops!
” Everyone would suddenly stop, and wait, silently hoping they would not be singled out for attention, hoping the police would just take a payoff and leave them be. Homosexuality per se was not illegal in New York, but
cross dressing, “impersonating the opposite gender,” and sodomy were. Even if the police did overstep their bounds—not that they had many legal bounds to begin with when it came to harassing gays—what recourse did they have? What respectable person was going to stand up for a queer?

LIFE
magazine, arguably the most popular mainstream weekly photographic news journal of the time, was in fact busy preparing a major exposé on the menace of homosexuality. Published on June 26, 1964, a feature titled “HOMOSEXUALITY IN AMERICA” graced the widely read pages of
LIFE.
The article began with the subheading, “A secret world grows open and bolder. Society is forced to look at it—and try to understand it.”

Written as a cautionary report, the introduction read, “Homosexuality shears across the spectrum of American life . . . But today, especially in big cities, homosexuals are discarding their furtive ways and openly admitting, even flaunting, their deviation.” It said that homosexuals had their own drinking places, assignation streets, and even their own organizations. The article then warned, “And for every obvious homosexual, there are probably nine nearly impossible to detect. This social disorder, which society tries to suppress, has forced itself into the public eye because it does present a problem—and parents especially are concerned. The myth and misconception with which homosexuality has so long been clothed must be cleared away, not to condone it but to cope with it.”

The article, complete with photographs (including a full-page photo captioned, “Two fluffy-sweatered young men stroll in New York City, ignoring the stare of a ‘straight’ couple. Flagrant homosexuals are unabashed by reactions of shock, perplexity, disgust.”), focused at length on the efforts of law enforcement in major cities to crack down on the problem. “Homosexuals everywhere fear arrest—and the public exposure that may go with it. In Los Angeles, where homosexuals are particularly apparent on city streets, police drives are regular and relentless.”

There were no laws in California or any other state against being a homosexual, the story said, but police relied on laws that “make it
a crime for two people to engage in any sex activity which could not result in procreation.” There was of course no mention of these laws being applied to heterosexuals who engaged in such non-procreative behavior. “In many cases a conviction results in a homosexual being registered as a ‘sex offender’ (along with rapists) . . .”

Using Los Angeles as a model of enforcement, a blow-by-blow account was given of an undercover police sting (“a typical arrest effort”) designed to trap offenders. The operation consisted of a plainclothes officer loitering in suspect areas in hope of being propositioned by a gay man. An offer of money—soliciting prostitution—was not a factor; a willing suggestion was enough to warrant an arrest.

The decoy officers apparently came well prepared to the assignment. “As part of its antihomosexual drive the Los Angeles police force has compiled an ‘educational’ pamphlet for law enforcement officers entitled ‘Some Characteristics of the Homosexual.’ The strongly opinionated pamphlet includes the warning that what the homosexuals really want is ‘a fruit world.’ ”

The story said that the police response in Los Angeles mirrored that of other cities.

Though arrest efforts, according to the article, concentrated primarily on gay men, mention was made that there are women homosexuals too, though they apparently were not perceived as quite as much of a threat to society as their male counterparts. “There are also women homosexuals, of course, but the number is much smaller—by the estimate of the Institute for Sex Research, perhaps only a third or a quarter as high as the figure for men, which was anywhere from 2.3 million to 1.2 million ‘confirmed homosexuals.’ ”

“One reason, some analysts have suggested, is that it is far easier for a woman who is afraid of men to perform adequately in marriage than it is for a man who is afraid of women.” Intense fear of the opposite sex, some doctors theorized, could be a possible cause of the affliction. “At any rate women homosexuals are not nearly so numerous, promiscuous or conspicuous as their male counterparts, and the various studies have largely ignored them.”

Yet that was not to say that lesbians were any less “ill” than gay men, or less subject to being removed from their jobs if their deviance were discovered. The Civil Service Commission, for one, banned homosexuals from employment, due to their potential for being a “disruptive influence” combined with the fear that such a person in a position of power might be likely to bring other homosexuals on board. Any who managed to slip through were fired for “immoral conduct.”

Homosexuals fared little better in the realm of mental health, with professionals frustrated by their lack of ability to cure them. A companion piece looked extensively at the puzzling question of homosexuality from a medical point of view. Though it was noted that Sigmund Freud had not believed it was a mental defect, having once written to a concerned mother, “Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation. It cannot be classified as an illness,” there were contemporary psychologists who disagreed with the father of psychoanalysis. The story quoted an unnamed but “well-known psychologist and sexologist” beginning an address to the Mattachine Society, an early homophile organization, by saying, “I used to think that all homosexuals were neurotic. I now believe that homosexuals in most instances are borderline psychotics.”

The primary article mentioned some fledgling decriminalization efforts (based on privacy laws and pity for those suffering from “psychological disturbance”), but they weren’t making much ground, even though the US Supreme Court had recently agreed to hear the case of a man denied a civil service job on the basis of homosexuality. The man, who had passed tests for three personnel and management positions, made a legal challenge to the decision of the Civil Service Commission not to hire him because of his sexuality. He had the cautious backing of the ACLU, though its chairman stated that the organization was not taking a position on homosexuality.

Though stating it was the first time the Supreme Court had agreed to hear such a case, the tone of the article suggested this was not a particularly important development. “But no legal procedures are likely to change society’s basic repugnance to homosexuality as an immoral and disruptive force that should somehow be removed.”

Even without reading a lengthy feature in
LIFE
, Mary Ann knew the attitudes, the dangers. She also knew she needed her friends now more than ever. How could they drop her like this? They had been Kitty’s friends too.

Karl even seemed jittery, especially since the police had arrested a man for Kitty’s murder. Maybe he was concerned about the effect a trial would have on Mary Ann.

The apartment had been cleared of many of Kitty’s belongings, first by the police, who had taken her personal papers and photographs while searching for possible clues to her murderer. These items would be released to the family, who had legal claim to and responsibility for the disposition of items from the small estate of the late Kitty Genovese. All Mary Ann basically had left as a connection to Kitty was Andrew, the miniature poodle Kitty had given her last Christmas.

The only friend who stood by Mary Ann, besides Andrew of course, was Sammy, the man Kitty helped out here and there. Sammy moved into the apartment with Mary Ann for a while. He apparently had not forgotten how good Kitty had been to him. Then again, Sammy needed a place to live, and the apartment of a murdered friend was presumably more comfortable than his car.

Regardless, Mary Ann felt grateful for the company. Whatever Sammy’s motivation—and in truth, Mary Ann thought Sammy more loyal friend than opportunist, one of the few they seemed to have apparently—she had no desire to examine whatever cause might lay behind his kindness. Like a miner trapped in the dark, suffocating collapse of a tunnel, she’d follow whatever small bits of light appeared.

Her main companion these days was alcohol, a numbing comfort. She drank alone most of the time, though she knew it wasn’t wise. It seemed her only escape from the constant pain, the only way to get any sleep. There was really no one around to tell her not to do so. In a way it seemed better to drink alone, the quiet, loosening effect of the alcohol helping her retreat into her memories of Kitty—alive, instead of dead on that steel table or lying in a coffin in that spectral white dress. Despite what she had given up to the police—what they had forced from her—there were sweet things she had kept to herself, for
herself: images, events dear to her that she would not allow to be sullied by sharing them with those who would likely react with disgust or perplexity.

Mary Ann Zielonko was a teenager with a turbulent childhood behind her when she came from New Hampshire to live in New York City. She spent time in Greenwich Village, and there she found a measure of acceptance among people who shared something dangerous in common with her.

She met Kitty at a place on Houston Street called Seven Steps, a lesbian bar. It was March of 1963. Mary Ann worked as a teletype operator for Western Union and lived in a rooming house at 79th and Broadway in Manhattan. Kitty had smiled and approached her, striking up a conversation. They possibly would not have met otherwise, as Mary Ann was far too shy to just start talking to someone she didn’t know.

But Kitty was not shy. She was friendly, confident, and very easy to talk to. After they chatted for a while, Kitty said, “I’d like to see you again. Can I call you?”

Mary Ann very much wanted her to, but living in a rooming house, she did not have a phone. And that would have been that, if not for Kitty’s enterprising ways.

When Mary Ann got home from work the following day, she found a note taped to her door.
Will call you at the corner phone booth at 7.–Kitty G.

Mary Ann waited. Kitty called.

Mary Ann never knew how Kitty found out where she lived. She never asked. She didn’t care. All that mattered was that she had called. She had called!

The chemistry was instant. Very soon after meeting, the two of them moved in together, into a hotel in Queens while they searched for an apartment to share. Within two weeks, they saw an ad in the paper that looked promising. A one bedroom in Kew Gardens—a very nice neighborhood, right by the train station. And it was affordable, too. Who cared if the place had no frills? Kitty didn’t like ostentatious
things anyway. She was, in fact, the most self-assured, down-to-earth person Mary Ann had ever met.

Always one for practicality, Kitty heeded the rule of real estate that said location was the prime thing. If the Tudor building was the place where people who could not afford to live in Kew Gardens could afford to live in Kew Gardens, so be it.

They moved into 82-70 Austin Street at the end of March 1963. The day they moved in, Kitty politely introduced herself to Tony Corrado, the man who operated the upholstery shop right beneath their new apartment. She asked Tony to help them move a sofa up the stairs, and he had. She thanked him and offered to pay, which he graciously refused.

Tony Corrado took the two attractive young women for flight attendants. Idlewild Airport
5
was nearby, and a lot of airline employees lived in the neighborhood.
Going to be a lot of wild parties up there, with those two pretty girls
, Tony thought.

Tony soon discovered he was wrong about that. There were no parties in fact, wild or otherwise. The new tenants were quiet and polite, a pleasure, really, and never a problem. Sophie and Greta liked them right away, as did the other neighbors. What wasn’t to like about two sweet women who were friendly but otherwise unobtrusive?

In the privacy of their budding relationship, Kitty wondered aloud what Mary Ann thought of being a teletype operator. It wasn’t her dream job, she told Kitty. But it was a job.