[00:00] He got no punishment whatsoever, he got rewarded for murdering James. Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're looking at crimes that most infamously saw bystanders avoid the tragic situation.
[00:12] No one helped her, no one called the police, no one left to get her. The murder of Kitty Genovese. On March 13th, 1964, bar manager Kitty Genovese was followed around Queens, New York, by Winston Mosley.
[00:27] It happened here. Kitty Genovese was almost home when she heard a man's footsteps behind her. She ran, but the man cut up to her and stabbed her twice in the back. He eventually stabbed her and fled, only to return to continue the attack when no help arrived.
[00:43] The New York Times later ran the landmark Martin Gansberg article, 37 Who Saw Murder Didn't Call the Police. An abrupt change of story in the New York Times declared, 37 Who Saw Murder Didn't Call the Police.
[00:57] Investigations found that only about a dozen people heard the incident, with some mistaking it for a lover's quarrel, and at least two calling the police. Either way, Genovese's death was a historic tragedy that directly influenced the creation of the 911 emergency line in 1968.
[01:14] Whether it's the story of humanity's dark side or something else, it did contribute eventually to the creation of 911 and Good Samaritan Law. That same year, the phenomenon of crowds' reluctance to intervene until an individual does was dubbed the bystander effect.
[01:29] Junko Furuta's abduction. A group of teenage boys took their classmate Junko Furuta captive in November 1988. For more than 40 days, she was subjected to severe violence in a family home in Adachi, Japan,
[01:43] where plenty of neighbors could hear calls for help. Just one cursory visit was made by the police. After Furuta succumbs to her injuries and is buried in concrete in January, an investigation concluded that more than 100 people suspected or knew that something terrible was going on.
[01:59] The most common excuse for inaction was fear of retaliation. One of the most notorious crimes in modern Japanese history inspired juvenile justice system reforms to address the horrors that youths are capable of.
[02:12] The attack on Dalita Word, a minor fender bender on Detroit's MacArthur Bridge, prompted Martel Welch to assault Delita Word with a tire iron. 19-year-old Martel Welch was in the other vehicle.
[02:25] After catching up to her on the gridlocked bridge, police say Welch dragged Word out onto the road, beat her, and smashed her windshield. For nearly 30 minutes that August morning in 1995,
[02:37] dozens of motorists exited their vehicles and watched None of them promptly dialed 911 Some youths were said to have made snide remarks about the situation At this point widespread media reports say a crowd of 30 or 40 people
[02:51] started cheering and telling her to jump. Initial reports even claim that some in the crowd cheered as word escaped by jumping into the Detroit River, where she drowned before rescuers reached her. The police found that they were in fact exclaiming in horror, though they stayed
[03:06] silence when Welch asked the crowd for any objections. We may never know exactly what happened on this bridge, but what's clear is that public and media reaction to this incident has now far overshadowed the lethal word tragic death. He was later sentenced to 16 to 40 years in prison
[03:22] for second degree murder. Richmond High School homecoming dance. While those inside California's Richmond High School were enjoying the 2009 homecoming dance, one student was being assaulted for over two hours just outside.
[03:36] Police are still looking for several more suspects this morning and they expect to make more arrests soon because they say more than a dozen young men either actively took part in this attack or watched it happen and did nothing to stop it.
[03:49] Police later found that up to 10 people participated in this vicious act and up to 20 came out to the campus courtyard to watch. Some allegedly mocked the victim and filmed the incident with their phones. Some had joined in, others stood by and even cheered
[04:03] and took cell phone pictures as this went on. The initial report to police would come from a third party as the crime quickly circulated as gossip. Although no footage was recovered, six out of the seven arrested suspects were convicted.
[04:16] The assault motivated California schools to strengthen security policies and remains a quintessential example of apathy among young peers. Those who stood by and did nothing could also be charged with conspiracy once they're caught.
[04:29] Elin Halini's Entrapment In January 2006, Jewish phone salesman Ilan Halimi was lured from his parish shop and handed off to the anti-Semitic Gang of Barbarians.
[04:41] His captors went by the name of the Barbarian Gang. Their leader, Yusuf Safana, a minor gangster, 24 years old, and just released from prison. He targeted Ilan Halimi because he was Jewish, and for him, Jewish meant rich.
[04:56] They spent the next 24 days tormenting their captors in a Ben-Yu housing project. demanding ransom on the stereotypical assumption that his family was wealthy. Many of the neighbors rationalized the calls for help as some sort of domestic dispute or loud music.
[05:11] It was on the third story of this building where he was housed for 24 days without anyone in the neighborhood noticing a thing. Some believed that if there were a problem, someone else would handle it. Helene was declared dead on arrival at the hospital after the barbarians dumped him near a railway More than 20 conspirators were ultimately convicted whether they were directly involved in the violence or somehow indirectly complicit
[05:33] Three years after the incident, the subject of the barbarian gang is off limits. Facebook live assault. Early 2017 was an especially dark time in Chicago, where four suspects broadcast a racially charged torture on Facebook Live in January.
[05:48] Police say sisters Brittany and Tanishia Covington of Chicago, Jordan Hill of Carpentersville and Tess Faye Cooper of Chicago held the teen hostage for six hours inside a Westside apartment.
[06:00] Two months later, five or six men live-streamed the vicious assault of a recently abducted teenager on the same platform. Police confirmed that at least 40 people turned in, but not one viewer contacted the authorities.
[06:12] For you to do something like that and then to post it up on Facebook like it's a joke is just terrible. Only two of the participants were arrested after the victim's mother discovered its screenshots the next day.
[06:24] And only after police contacted Facebook did they work to scrub the videos. These two horrific scenes in one city have since been discussed as the epitome of how the bystander effect applies even with the witness's online anonymity.
[06:38] It just disgusts me that people would look at those videos and not pick up the phone and dial 911. Wong Ye hit and run. On October 13, 2011, unaccompanied toddler Wang Ye was struck by a van after wandering into a market street in Foshan, Japan.
[06:56] The driver, Hu Jun, then left the child for dead. In the seven minutes it took for one of at least 18 passers-by to help Ye, another van ran her over. The surveillance footage sparked a national debate about public morality and fears that those who help a victim could be held criminally liable.
[07:14] Poo was sentenced to 42 months in prison for Little Yaya's death, and in 2017, the National People's Congress passed good Samaritan laws to protect those who assist victims of a crime.
[07:26] The assault of Cheryl Arahu. A horrid scene unfolded on the night of March 6, 1983, in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Nearly a dozen patrons at Big Dan's Tavern stood aside as several men sexually assaulted Cheryl Arahu and blocked the bartender from calling police.
[07:43] This was something really heinous, and no one did anything about it. The trial would be the first of its kind to receive national coverage in America, ending in four prosecutions. Here, at the heart of the courthouse, is where Judge William Young will preside,
[07:56] and where juries will decide what happened that night at the dance almost a year ago. Two men who cheered on the crime were acquitted of accessory charges. Araujo case may now be best remembered in pop culture as the basis for the Oscar Jodie Foster film The Accused What word came into your head What word
[08:20] No. But it was a landmark in public discussions about sexual violence and victim blaming, both in the midst of a crime and afterwards. The abduction of James Bolger. John Venables and Robert Thompson abducted toddler James Bolger near Liverpool, England on February 12, 1993.
[08:38] James was abducted from way over the far end of the stand, which was sort of right across the other end on the ground floor. And he marched at some speed from one end of the stand to the other end of the stand, hand in hand, walking out through the store.
[08:55] The kidnappers were children themselves, who lured their increasingly distressed victim four kilometers and passed some 38 people. He was also sporting noticeable head injuries. The murdered Bulger was found at a railway after two days of torture,
[09:10] in what is considered one of the most shocking crimes in modern British history. The ultimate objective was always to turn James Lee from the world to the family. And the realization that that wasn't going to happen.
[09:25] I was... yeah, I was... I was... Venables and Thompson would be the nation's youngest convicted murderers. It's all the more disturbing for the fact that passers-by thought these unsupervised minors were brothers having a tiff.
[09:39] Even children can go to great lengths of cruelty if they think they can get away with it. It is just plain evil. Want more True Crime on WatchMojo? Check out our dedicated 24-hour livestream, True Crime All the Time.
[09:55] We're going to have a great time together, Cheryl. The stabbing of Hugo Alfredo Talaiax. The truth is that there are great risks involved in Good Samaritan Acts. In the early hours of April 18, 2010,
[10:08] homeless day laborer Hugo Alfredo Talaiax helped a woman during a street altercation in Queens, New York. She was able to flee after her unidentified attacker stabbed Talaiax.
[10:20] CCTV cameras showed him lying in agony for about an hour, while more than 20 people walked by or stopped to stare. At least one passerby took a photo. There was no more active threat, yet no one called 911 until after the victim died.
[10:36] The media dubbed Taliaks a homeless hero for taking action to save someone only to become a casualty of others' indifference. What are some other notorious incidents of the bystander effect? Speak up in the comments below.
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