As Woman Burned Alive on NYC Subway Car, Bystanders Watched — and Filmed

New Yorkers have long been haunted by the story of Kitty Genovese, a 28-year-old bartender who was raped and stabbed outside her apartment building in Queens in 1964.

The most harrowing part of the story came two weeks after the murder, when the New York Times published an article that claimed some three dozen witnesses saw or heard the attack—which lasted more than half an hour—but that no one, apart from Genovese’s neighbor, called the police or came to her aid.

Although the report was later disputed by authorities who said many of the witnesses did in fact attempt to call the police, the “bystander effect” that grew out of Genovese’s murder was enshrined as an urban legend.

The infamous story has been thrown back into the national conversation in the aftermath of the horrific murder of a woman on a New York City subway train early on Sunday, when an illegal migrant allegedly lit the passenger on fire and watched as she burned alive while the train was stopped at a Brooklyn station.

In addition to the alleged killer, video of the horrifying incident shows bystanders and at least one uniformed NYPD officer appearing to casually walk by or mill about rather than render aid to the fully engulfed victim.

Gerald Posner, the journalist and author known for his investigations into the JFK assassination, called the “stomach-wrenching videos” a “digital Kitty Genovese” in a post on social media.

“I could imagine if you didn’t want to be the person who wanted to rush in and try to help them, because you’re afraid you’re going to catch on fire, you don’t know what’s going on—I get that.” Posner told Newsweek in an interview. “But the idea, then, of just not running to get the cops, as opposed to just sort of looking out at the phone and filming it… It did make me think back to that 1964 murder.”

Around 7:30 a.m. on Sunday morning, a woman—who is yet to be positively identified by officials—was set lit on fire as the F train she was riding pulled into the the Stillwell Avenue station at the end of the line in Coney Island.

NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said that the victim became “fully engulfed in a matter of seconds” after a man walked calmly to the woman and used a lighter to ignite her clothes.

Videos of the incident spread nearly as fast on social media. The victim was seen standing motionless against the subway door as bystanders watched, some filming her with their phones. Meanwhile, a man, who was later identified as the suspect, approaches the woman with a garment and — instead of using it to smother the fire — fans the flames with the cloth.

A day later, Sebastian Zapeta-Calil, an illegal immigrant from Guatemala who had been deported in 2018 only to return to the U.S. at a later date, was charged with first-degree murder and arson in the attack that officials said was at random.

When asked for comment about the officer who was captured on camera walking by the woman on fire, rather than coming to her aid, the NYPD referred Newsweek to the department’s Monday press conference.

At that briefing, Joseph Gulotta, the NYPD’s chief of transit, pushed back on questions about whether the unidentified officer had responded appropriately, saying he “did his job perfectly as his fellow officers went and got [transit] workers, got fire extinguishers and eventually, were able to extinguish the individual.”

“I went and spoke to these officers and I’ll say this: They responded—there were numerous officers responding, not just the one officer, to this heinous crime,” Gulotta said. “What the officers saw and they had to deal with, and they were trying to get fire extinguishers, I commend that one officer who stayed there, made sure he kept the crime scene the way it’s supposed to be, made sure he kept an eye on what was going on.”

Even still, Posner wondered why people stood around recording the inferno instead of trying to extinguish the flames and why the police officer did not, at the least, take off his jacket to smother the flames.

In replies and posts on X, other users drew similar parallels between the Sunday incident and the Genovese murder, specifically the image of the police officer who did little to stifle the flames.

“Seeing actual video footage of no one doing anything, including two NYPD officers, as a woman was burning alive, is disturbing,” one user wrote.

“Cops walked by her on fire. People watched and refused to intervene. Of all the things I have witnessed in my life, this is by far one of the most horrifying things I have seen. Not because it was graphic, but because it was ‘no big deal’ to everyone watching and filming it,” another said.

“After seeing dozens of times yesterday video of all those people doing nothing to help that woman on the train on fire it looks like little has changed in 60 years,” a third posted. “Except now, I think, it’s worse since the first instinct so many have is to make sure they’re recording it.”

Posner, who acknowledged that he does not know what he would do if he were put in the same situation, asked if the incident might be a watershed moment for a society dealing with the intertwining issues of crime, disorder — and apathy.

“Not everyone’s going to be the hero, I get it, but there has to be something better than just being the person recording it playing out in front of you,” he said.

In his original post on X, Posner argued that “the only difference today” with the Genovese murder is that the bystanders in Sunday’s incident had phones to document the horrific scene. And by filming, he said those bystanders helped document “why sometimes I think we humans are a failed species.”