Nathan Giles Jr. was first convicted of murder when he was 16. He and a friend stabbed an old woman to death with a screwdriver while burglarizing her apartment. Giles did 14 years of his 20-year-to-life sentence.

Then he got parole.

On November 24, 1978, Bonnie Anne Bush was on her way to work at Mount Sinai Hospital. Nathan Giles jumped into her car and tried to rob her, but Bush ran. Giles chased her, caught her, dragged her into an abandoned building, forced her to disrobe, shot her twice in the head and set her body on fire.

Bush’s death caused uproar in the city. The parole system was maligned as ineffective and downright dangerous, while Nathan Giles – captured after a car chase and shoot-out with police – received 62½ years to life.

But part of the reason for New York City’s outcry might have been tied up with guilt, for as Bonnie Bush ran for her life along West 102^nd Street, a woman watched the unfolding drama from her window and continued cleaning her apartment. A bread truck deliveryman swerved around Bush and kept driving. A man in a parked car watched Bush arrive at his window, listened to her beg for help. This was when Nathan Giles finally caught up and dragged her off to die. “This witness,” quoted the Times, “said that ‘after a minute or two’ he started his car and drove away, passing but not stopping a police patrol car at the intersection of the street where Miss Bush’s captor had taken her.”