On March 13th, 1964, while walking back to her apartment in the Kew Gardens district of Queens, New York, Kitty Genovese was brutally attacked and killed.  

"For more than half an hour 38 respectable, law‐abiding cit­izens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab a woman in three separate attacks in Kew Gardens"

  These were the words the New York Times would release about the attack.

Kitty’s murder became a staple of psychological textbooks when discussing “the bystander effect” because it was publicized at the time that there were 38 witnesses to her murder, but no one called the police or did anything.

Was this true, or was the story exaggerated by the media? 

How could 38 people witness a woman being killed and refrain from getting involved?