Perpetrator
Winston Moseley (born March 2, 1935), an African-American business machine operator, was later apprehended in connection with burglary charges. He confessed not only to the murder of Kitty Genovese, but also to two other murders, both involving sexual assaults. Subsequent psychiatric examinations suggested that Moseley was a necrophile.
Moseley gave a confession to the police in which he detailed the attack, corroborating the physical evidence at the scene. His motive for the attack was simply "to kill a woman." Moseley preferred to kill women because, he said, "they were easier and didn't fight back". Moseley stated that he got up that night around 2:00 am, leaving his wife asleep at home, and drove around to find a victim. He spied Genovese and followed her to the parking lot.
Moseley also testified at his own trial where he further described the attack (along with two other murders and numerous attacks), leaving no question that he was the killer.
He was convicted of murder. On Monday, June 15, 1964, when the death sentence was announced by the jury foreman "The room erupted into loud spontaneous applause and cheers." When calm had returned, the judge added, "I don't believe in capital punishment, but when I see this monster, I wouldn't hesitate to pull the switch myself!" On June 1, 1967, the New York Court of Appeals found that Moseley should have been able to argue that he was "medically insane" at the sentencing hearing when the trial court found that he had been legally sane, and the initial death sentence was reduced to an indeterminate sentence/lifetime imprisonment.
In 1968, during a trip to a Buffalo, New York, hospital for surgery on a self-inflicted injury, Moseley overpowered a guard and beat him to the point that his eyes were bloody. He then took a baseball bat and swung it at the closest person to him and took five hostages, raping one of them in front of her husband—actions for which Moseley would later blame his parents—before he was recaptured after a two-day manhunt. He also participated in the 1971 Attica Prison riots. In the late 1970s Moseley obtained a B.A. in Sociology in prison.
Moseley's first parole hearing in 1984 included his defense that "For a victim outside, it's a one-time or one-hour or one-minute affair, but for the person who's caught, it's forever." Moseley remains in prison after being denied parole a fifteenth time in November 2011. Moseley's next parole hearing is scheduled for November 2013.
Read more about this topic: Murder Of Kitty Genovese
Famous quotes containing the word perpetrator:
“But ice-crunching and loud gum-chewing, together with drumming on tables, and whistling the same tune seventy times in succession, because they indicate an indifference on the part of the perpetrator to the rest of the world in general, are not only registered on the delicate surfaces of the brain but eat little holes in it until it finally collapses or blows up.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)