Kitty Genovese's Murder Case

It was a time in the city’s history to get the perpetrators of the crime committed and to be recognized as solving the greatest crime of time. Media and public presence played a huge role in pressuring law enforcement to figure out this awful incident. The demand from the public was pushing from all sides of this story to get answers.

‘A Television Drama’, written by Jane Rule, is the story of a woman who lives on the street where a crime takes place. The police, swarmed just outside the woman’s house, were asking witnesses questions and looking for the suspect of a burglary that had occurred a few blocks away. The protagonist, Carolee, is frightened by this and decides to stay inside her home. While inside the house, she walks around aimlessly, glancing outside the windows when she spots an injured man in her garden. She hesitates to call the police and simply observes the man, ultimately deciding against calling 911. Some believe that this was not a morally correct thing to do; however, Carolee was correct in deciding not to phone the police because she thought she might have been imagining the man in her garden, the police were already on the scene

In the early morning hours of March 13, 1964, twenty-eight year old barmaid Catherine "Kitty" Genovese was murdered and raped on the street in Kew Gardens, New York. The incident did not initially receive much attention until Martin Gansberg's infamous article, "Thirty-Eight Who Saw Murder, Didn't Call the Police", was published in the New York Times two weeks later. In reality, only twelve people witnessed the event yet each did nothing to significantly help Genovese until it was too late. The Genovese murder has become the definitive example of the "bystander effect", the social phenomenon in which individuals are less likely to help someone in distress if there are other people present. The bystander effect occurs wherever there is

1. After the 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese, John Darley and Bibb Latane were in shock as the rest of the city/world that a 28 year old lady could be stabbed in a neighborhood with about 38 by standers or more and say or do nothing. Why didn’t anyone try and help her? How could people stand by and watch this go on? People speculated that the failure of people to get involved might be due more to the influence (socially) that bystanders have on each other. To test this theory, Darley and Latane, two psychologists, decided to conduct a study. “Diffusion of Responsibility” Everyone hopes that someone else will be the first to step up

In the Chapter “In the Unlikely Event of a Water Landing,” from the book Opening Skinner’s Box, by Lauren Slater. Slater describes a crime scene in which the witnesses didn’t do anything to help a woman that was being stabbed, she also tells us about a few experiments that were conducted in regards to how people would react when help is needed in certain situations, will they report the situation to anyone or just go about their business like nothing is going on. Calling for help or assisting someone in a time of need isn’t always something that people do as an immediate reaction, especially when there’s a crowd of people present.

‘“I can accept the shooting was a mistake,” Jones said about his daughter’s death as a bleary-eyed Stanley sat motionless next to him. “But I can’t accept it because they lied about it. I can’t heal properly because of it. It was all for the cameras. I don’t want no apology from the police. It’s too late”’ (LeDuff, 122).

This essay will ‘compare and contrast’ two approaches made in investigating the ‘bystander effect’. It will discuss in some depth as to what exactly is meant by the bystander effect, illustrating when this concept was first shown and why. An outline will be made of the different methods used, those being experiments and discourse analysis, explaining each one in turn, within the framework of two cases. The first being the murder of ‘Catherine Genovese,’ 1964.and the second ‘James Bulger’ 1993. The essay will then show examples of the differences and similarities between each method. Concluding with a summary of findings into the two approaches to investigating the Bystander Effect.

Further demonstrated that if a victim is perceived as responsible for their situation then help will be withheld.

Since 1960, 200,000 murders have remained unsolved, allowing dangerous people to continue to walk the streets. There have been murders for a number of reasons from gang related violence to domestic disputes. The United States had 16,121 murders in 2015 alone. However, the scary part of all of this is how horribly the United States Justice System has failed at solving these crimes. Only 67.1% of all murders end in arrest which means that out of the 16,121 murders in the United States last year only 10,817 were solved which means that over 5 thousand of these murderers still walk the streets. This alone makes people very angry and want to seek revenge or become a vigilantly such as the case of the Judge in the novel And Then There Were None.

The reason for this study was due to the death of Kitty Genovese in New York City. She was a young woman who was murdered by Winston Mosley in observance of many spectators who saw the incident from their bedroom windows of an apartment complex. Media went into a frenzy stating that 38 people witnessed the attack but did nothing to assist and did not call law enforcement, however, the story was misconstrued and it was later found that there were significantly less than 38 people observing and at least once person called law enforcement.

In article “Murder Isn’t a Nationwide Problem”, John R. Lott, Jr., does not struggle to layout the statistics that prove to us, the audience, that murder really isn’t a nationwide problem and that killings only take place in some places. In fact, the last sentence he states is: “To put it simply, murder isn’t a nationwide problem; it’s a problem in a very small set of urban areas”. Throughout the article, Lott, Jr. gives us many statistics saying the murders and the population in these “urban areas”.

Fear roamed through cities, due to the violence people were witnessing and enduring. Not only were citizens terrified to get involved in anything but they sat back and ignored the shrieks of a woman being murdered. If I were to be in a similar situation that kitty Genovese's neighbors were in, I would have called the authorities right away. But, you have to look at this situation in a different perspective considering the events that were occurring back in the 50's and 60's. it's completely understandable on to why her neighbors didn't call the authorities. I'm the type of person who can't stand seeing people suffer or getting hurt by others, but to be honest I don't know what I would do if I saw someone getting stabbed to death. Would I help

“Gilroy offers provocative commentary on the creation and consumption of [the] news in 21st century America. This may be true, but Nightcrawler is a powerful reminder that the situation has only gotten worse” (Nightcrawler). It is known that the purpose of local television news is to inform people about what is happening in their communities. For example, when Lou captured the homicide scene, Nina insisted on making the scene more dramatic by telling the [presenters to keep repeating] some strong words that would scare the audience and give more fame to her TV station. Nina says, “hit it harder. Build it. Say ‘vicious attack’” (Gilroy). “Nightcrawler takes it a step further by showing us how local news operates when crime rates have dropped. This dearth of violence means there will be a frantic fight to be the first on the scene when a crime does occur; furthermore, in Lou’s case, there will also be fabrication in order to make the scene more dramatic” (‘Nightcrawler’). To succeed as a TV station, news should be exclusive and unique. However, Nightcrawler has shown how news can fabricate a crime scene in order to make it look more dramatic and more frightening. It seems as if Gilroy is questioning the credibility of news and at the same time accusing the news of obtaining their news immorally. The Nightcrawler insinuates

The Bystander Effect is a psychological phenomenon that occurs when people are less likely to offer assistance in emergency situations if bystanders, or other individuals, are also present. The murder of a woman, Kitty Genovese, was the catalyst for the discovery of such an effect. Approximately 40 individuals observed or overheard Genovese’s murder, yet no one reported it to authorities or attempted to intervene in any way. This phenomenon was studied and demonstrated by John M. Darley and Bibb Latene, both social psychologists. Darley and Latene showed this effect in several experiments known together as the “Bystander Apathy Experiments.”

Oliver Stone’s 1994 classic, Natural Born Killers, excited and traumatized its audiences while also causing controversy. The tale of white trash lovers caught up in a realm of chaos that includes a continuous murderous rampage from state to state, draws in audiences with its graphic violence and riveting pulse inducing music. Yet, the message of this film seems to be much deeper than just exposing audiences to yet another chaotic action movie filled with guns, blood and mayhem. Stone’s Natural Born Killers examines the subject of media’s investment in serial murder very thoroughly, and so it seems likely that it has the potential to offer a more rigorous interrogation of the nature of the American public’s fascination with the serial