Murder of Kitty Genovese

In the early hours of March 13, 1964, 28-year-old Kitty Genovese was stabbed outside the apartment building across the street from where she lived, in an apartment above a row of shops on Austin Street, in the Kew Gardens neighborhood of Queens in New York City. Two weeks after the murder, The New York Times published an article claiming that 38 witnesses saw or heard the attack, and that none of them called the police or came to her aid.
The incident prompted inquiries into what became known as the bystander effect or "Genovese syndrome", and the murder became a staple of U.S. psychology textbooks for the next four decades. However, researchers have since uncovered major inaccuracies in the New York Times article. Police interviews revealed that some witnesses had attempted to call the police.

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