under a streetlight, to her apartment, but did nothing to help her. Witnesses saw Moseley drive away, then return about 10 minutes later. He had put on a wider-rimmed hat to hide his face, and searched for Genovese in the parking lot, the train station, and the apartment complex, for 10 minutes, before finding her prone in the external hallway at the rear of the building, where the door was locked. She could not get in.
Moseley proceeded to stab her to death, inflicting multiple wounds in her hands and forearms, indicating that she tried to fight him off. She finally succumbed and he raped her as she lay dying. He then stole around $50 from her and fled. The whole incident spanned 30 minutes.
A newspaper blasted it the next day as “Thirty-eight Who Saw Murder Didn’t Call Police,” but this is inaccurate. There were approximately 12 people who claimed to have seen the first attack. Many of them later stated that they “just didn’t want to get involved.” A simple phone call to the police would have sufficed, but everyone assumed someone else would do it.
2 The Richmond High School Incident
The events that transpired on the night of
October 27, 2009 inspired me to compile
this list and I admit that it has caused me
to reconsider the crime of the #1 entry.
The girl’s name has not been released to
date, as she is 15 years old, but the
accounts of the crime all agree, and it is
beyond belief. For 2 and a half hours,
while the High School Homecoming
Dance was taking place inside the
gymnasium, approximately 10 men gang-
raped the 15-year-old student, beating
her savagely the whole time, all the while
10 others stood around laughing and
taking pictures with their cell phones.
The crowd eventually numbered more than 20, and no one called the police. No one went inside to tell a security guard or a policeman, several of which were on campus at the time. A little earlier, the assistant principal looked out his office window and saw 12 to 15 grown men sitting around near the scene of the crime, none of whom had identification badges, as is required, and none of whom appeared to be a teenager, and the assistant principal did not call the police, or alert any teachers or students. He returned to his job and ignored them.
The girl is still in critical condition at a hospital, having been found later by someone leaving the dance.
1 The Holocaust
The most repugnant, globally violent disgrace of the reputation of humanity gave rise to the equally infamous use of the phrase “diffusion of responsibility,” as the Nazi officers tried at Nuremberg all claimed the same defense, “We were just following orders.”
They argued that if the Holocaust really was as bad as journalists were saying, then someone else must surely have known of it, and thus it was not necessarily their responsibility to report it to the authorities.