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TEXT ON SCREEN: NEW YORK CITY, 1963. 

TWO WOMEN ARE FALLING IN LOVE. 

MARY ANN ZIELONKO: I went to a gay bar in lower Manhattan at the Swing Rendezvous.  And she approached me and she said, don’t I know you from somewhere? I said no. 

The next day we went for coffee. That’s how we met. 

TEXT ON SCREEN: A FEW WEEKS LATER MARY ANN ZIELONKO AND KITTY GENOVESE MOVED INTO AN APARTMENT IN KEW GARDENS, QUEENS.

MARY ANN ZIELONKO: We were sort of closeted. Just…I never thought about it, you know.  It was my life. We just both tended bar, lived a very quiet life. And we used to go to her parents’ house on Mondays. And we used to go to the coffee shop downtown in the Village. Gerde’s Folk City every Monday night.

Kew Gardens was really very safe. It was rather artsy in a way. A lot of people from—who had been through the Holocaust. The area was very, very nice.

TEXT ON SCREEN: IN THE EARLY HOURS OF MARCH 13, 1964, KITTY LEFT THE BAR SHE MANAGED AND DROVE HOME.

RETRO REPORT PRODUCER: Tell me a little bit about what happened that night.

MARY ANN ZIELONKO: I went bowling with a friend. And I came home and I went to sleep. I heard a knock on the door. It was the police. They said, Kitty’s been hurt.

TEXT ON SCREEN: KITTY HAD BEEN RAPED AND STABBED TO DEATH INSIDE A NEARBY DOORWAY.

MARY ANN ZIELONKO: I saw where her body was. They had marks around it. You know, the chalk line, the outline. And the yellow tape around the area.

TEXT ON SCREEN: THE POLICE TOOK MARY ANN TO THE HOSPITAL TO IDENTIFY KITTY’S BODY.

MARY ANN ZIELONKO: They took me down to the police station in Queens and for six hours they questioned me because they think if you’re the closest person that maybe you had something to do with it.

TEXT ON SCREEN: FIVE DAYS LATER POLICE CAUGHT THE KILLER, WINSTON MOSELEY.

THE NEW YORK TIMES REPORTED THAT 38 PEOPLE WITNESSED THE ATTACK. THOUGH THE NUMBER OF WITNESSES IS IN DISPUTE, KITTY GENOVESE’S MURDER BECAME A SYMBOL OF URBAN APATHY.

MARY ANN ZIELONKO: I became very numb. I was very… I would say numb from the whole thing. I felt, well, she was so close and I was sleeping and I didn’t know what happened, and that I could have saved her.  That’s what I really think still, that I could have…

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