ABSTRACT
On March 13, 1964, between 3:15 am and 3:45 am, a 28-year-old bartender named Catherine “Kitty” Genovese was sexually assaulted and stabbed to death outside of her apartment building in Queens, New York. In the years immediately following, Genovese's death was used as the defining example of the bystander effect, the psychological phenomenon in which bystanders do nothing while watching a dangerous situation unfold. However, by 2004, the narrative of Genovese's death had evolved to become a classic example of queer women's invisibility and erasure in the Stonewall era. In this chapter, we propose that Genovese's story is an example of a haunting: No matter who tells her story, the story is rarely about Genovese herself, but, rather, it is a ghostly reflection of much larger underlying societal issues. A haunting magnifies the fears of the reader or listener, whether it is a fear of victimization (while bystanders look on helplessly) or a fear of erasure. We note the lack of true crime media featuring queer women as victims, and we briefly review the framing and hauntings of two hate crimes: The 1988 murder of Rebecca Wright (the “Appalachian Trail” murder) and the lesser-known 2003 murder of 15-year-old Sakia Gunn. Finally, we outline intersectional issues in Genovese's case and in other cases.
