Notorious 1960s New York killer dies behind bars

New York: The man who raped and murdered a young New York woman whose screams for help famously fell on deaf ears and shocked 1960s America, has died behind bars. He was 81.

Serial killer Winston Moseley died on March 28 at the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, the New York state prisons service said on its website. The cause of death was not immediately disclosed.

He had spent more than 50 years behind bars for the terrifying rape and killing of 28-year-old bar manager Kitty Genovese, whom he stalked on her way home from work in Queens in July 1964.

Reports that neighbors saw the attack and heard her cries but did nothing to help caused outrage. That year there were 636 murders in New York, in stark contrast to 75 in 2015.

The crime went on to spawn books, films, music and even a musical. It led ultimately to the introduction of the 911 emergency services telephone number and sparked debate about the responsibilities of witnesses to a crime.

Moseley, at the time a married father of two, was arrested five days after her killing. He confessed on arrest to killing two other women from Queens, although he was never convicted of their deaths.

He was sentenced to death and in 1968 escaped, holding people hostage in the city of Buffalo and raping a woman before being recaptured.

In 1976 his death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment on appeal and a year later he got a degree in sociology. That year The New York Times published an op-ed by Moseley in which he expressed regret and claimed he was a changed man who wanted "to be an asset to society, not a liability to it."

He was reportedly denied parole 18 times, most recently in 2015. He was held in the same prison from which two other convicted killers staged an audacious prison break, cutting their way to freedom with power tools last June.