‘The Witness’: The truth about an infamous New York murder

Screams so loud, they woke neighbors up from a dead sleep — 38 neighbors, who saw and did nothing.

It was a murder so famous it’s been referenced dozens of times in pop culture, on television series as diverse as “Perry Mason” and “Girls.” Books have been written about it. Psychological studies have been conducted. It coined the term “bystander effect.”

Catherine “Kitty” Genovese didn’t just die that March night in 1964 in the vestibule of a Queens apartment building, she became a symbol of urban moral apathy. After Kitty was stalked, stabbed, raped and left for dead, the New York Times famously reported that 38 onlookers witnessed the event and didn’t so much as call the police. The article painted a picture of a city cowering behind curtains from apartment windows, and confirmed what deep down we all fear: that we are, each of us, fundamentally alone.

It was a hard reality for the city to live with, harder still for the Genovese family, which quickly fell apart after Kitty’s murder. She left behind three younger brothers, each of whom failed to cope in his own way. Mostly, they avoided the pain by never mentioning her, letting her memory die with her.

But the story gnawed at her favorite brother, William Genovese, who can’t find his way to closure. “It’s hard to let go when you can never know the whole truth,” he says. So with documentarian James D. Solomon in tow, the Vietnam vet and double amputee drags himself through the city, on his fists when necessary, to painstakingly piece together the murder that tore his life apart 50 years before.

For all the tedium of the work before him, “The Witness” is a riveting deconstruction of a decades-old media narrative. William pores through court records for the names of the famed 38, and then undertakes the even more laborious process of trying to find them five decades later. Most are long dead. Some refuse to talk. But he does find a handful of people who were woken by those blood-curdling screams in 1964.

Through dogged determination and warmth, William succeeds where countless journalists failed before him (including “20/20,” which had tried interviewing witnesses in 1979 with no success). He unravels the story of the 38 as an invention of rapacious reporters and editors masking their conceit behind the clout of the Times, because the truth would have “ruined” the story. The police were called. A man shouted at the killer. Kitty died in the arms of a friend.

But William doesn’t just discover the truth of Kitty’s death; he discovers the truth of her life. Even more than an expose of bad reporting and social hysteria, “The Witness” is an intimate exercise in grief and healing. Kitty was a beloved bonne vivante. And, it turns out, she had a female lover, whom William is able to track down. She, too, still struggles to move on, even after all these years. For a few cathartic moments, she and William grieve together.

For those few moments, they are not alone.

★★★

FilmRise presents a documentary directed by James A. Solomon. Running time: 89 minutes. No MPAA rating. Opens Friday at the Gene Siskel Film Center.