Marcia Gallo (History) is the author of "No One Helped": Kitty Genovese, New York City, and the Myth of Urban Apathy, which was published in April. In this, her second book, Gallo examines one of America's most infamous true-crime stories: the 1964 rape and murder of Catherine "Kitty" Genovese in a middle-class neighborhood of Queens, New York. The story began when a front-page report in the New York Times incorrectly identified 38 indifferent witnesses to the crime, fueling fears of apathy and urban decay. Genovese's life, including her lesbian relationship, also was obscured in media accounts of the crime.
Fifty years later, the story of Kitty Genovese continues to circulate in popular culture. Although it is now widely known that there were far fewer actual witnesses to the crime than was reported in 1964, the moral of the story continues to be urban apathy. "No One Helped" traces the Genovese story's development and resilience while challenging the myth it created. It places the conscious creation and promotion of the Genovese story within a changing urban environment. Even though the particulars of the sad story of her death were distorted, Kitty Genovese left an enduring legacy of positive changes to the urban environment.
