In the Marines, and in Vietnam, Bill steps on a land mine and loses both his legs above the knees. Confined to a wheelchair doesn't really describe Bill's life at all, because he's not really confined. He gets around in his specially equipped van. He boosts himself up stairs, his hands protected by gloves that give him traction. He marries and raises a family.
But most of all, Bill is haunted by the legend of the story that so many people were said to have done nothing, and that his sister dies a horrific death because no one helped. Bill sets out for explanations in 2004 and finds out the legend is not true. There are people who helped; there were not 37, 38 eye witnesses who stood by and did nothing. The story has more depth than the deepest part of the ocean, and Bill folds it all in with the splendid help of others into a documentary film that does more than "set the record straight." It tells us about ourselves. And we're not all bad.
Bill does find the origin of the count of 38 witnesses who were said to have seen and done nothing. The number sprang from a lunch time conversation that a NYT editor, A,M. Rosenthal had with the police commissioner two weeks after the murder. The commissioner mentions 38 people saw and did nothing. The NYT ran with the number and didn't really look into it. The number becomes urban legend and becomes an academic talking point for decades.
The first report of the murder is a small one column mention, somewhat buried in the paper. After the lunch with the commissioner, the story two weeks later gets front page treatment, with crime scene photos and diagrams. The indictment on humanity has been delivered.
Bill does find in the police reports that there were 38 people, 38 people who at varying points heard something, but saw nothing by the time they got to the window, because by then Kitty had lifted herself from the pavement after the assailant initially ran away, and staggered around the corner of a building that put her out of sight from the largest apartment house that looked down on the initial attack. Thirty-eight people made statements and were interviewed by the police, but their role in human apathy is not as pronounced as the NYT made them out to be. There were people who did come to her aid, (unreported) but by then it was too late. And the police had been called, and may have ignored the first report.
Toward the end of the 90 minute film Bill has arranged for an actress, Shannon Beeby, to reenact the sounds, the screams, the blood curdling screams, Kitty made as she was being attacked, and to retrace the staggering steps she made through the door she opened where she finally collapsed at the foot of a staircase.
This part is especially haunting, and makes you wonder why Bill would put himself through it. At the time of Kitty's murder she was the only family member living in Kew Gardens. Bill, and the rest of the family had moved to New Canaan, Connecticut. So Bill puts himself back in time where he wasn't when the murder happened. For him, it is the William Faulkner quote, "the past is not dead. It's not even past."
The film reaches its end soon after the reenactment, and closes with some beautiful music and lyrics, Rosanne Cash singing "God Is in the Roses."
You become conscious of the lyrics isolated from the melody: "God is in the roses. the petals and the thorns...I love you like a brother..."
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