The two-phase attack that began at a streetlight and ended in a hallway

The light at 82-70 Austin Street in Kew Gardens, Queens, marks the spot.

Not a hallway. Not a doorway. The open street, under the light.

The attack happened in two phases.

First, the stabbing near the streetlight, in the open, where the light fell.

Then a neighbor shouted.

That shout is the pivot between the two phases, and it is documented in the record.

The attacker fled.

He came back.

He returned to finish the assault in a building hallway.

Why did he flee at a shout, then return?

Why did the shout stop him once and not twice?

The record does not explain his reasoning.

That streetlight is the unresolved detail.

The source does not name the neighbor who shouted; that identity is not in the record.

Not the witness who saw part of the attack. Not the voice that carried from a window.

Just the shout itself.

It is a documented fact. It is also a blank space.

The attack began under the light. It ended in a hallway.

Between those two points sits a question the file leaves open.

THE RETURN FROM WORK

Catherine "Kitty" Genovese left Ev's 11th Hour Bar in the early hours of March 13, 1964.

She was a 28-year-old bar manager, coming home from work.

She was outside her apartment building at 82-70 Austin Street in Kew Gardens, Queens.

Winston Moseley, a 29-year-old business machine operator, attacked her with a hunting knife.

The first phase of the attack happened near a streetlight.

A neighbor shouted.

Moseley fled.

Then he returned and continued the assault in a building hallway.

Genovese died from her wounds en route to Queens General Hospital.

The record does not establish the exact time of the attack.

The record does not establish how she traveled home from the bar.

She came home from work.

That is the ordinary fact at the center of it.

THE CONFESSION

Six days after the murder, Moseley was arrested while driving a stolen car in Queens.

It was March 19, 1964.