The Martha Moxley Murder: Ineptitude or Slanted Justice?
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by Joseph Geringer
Whirlpool of Doubts
"Truth exists, only falsehood has to be invented."
-Georges Braque
What is more enchanting than Halloween in a small New England town, when
little goblins and witches criss-cross each other 'neath the leafy prism of
colors and geometric gables of brooding clapboard houses? Mix into the
diorama a whiff of salt-taffy air, a whisp of the Atlantic mist and a
harvest moon, and we have true Americana caught as if in an old, sepia-toned
photograph come to life. There it is, Norman Rockwell on a living canvas.
But what happens when, just as the trick and treaters are ready to head out,
a killer sneaks onto the scene? The whole mystical scenario falls flat
before it begins, the magic disappears under chaos and the tranquility that
is called the American Idyll seems to rot quicker than the windowsill
pumpkin. The Jack O'Lantern grin becomes sardonic.
When 15-year-old Martha Moxley was killed on the until-then-safe streets of
Greenwich, Connecticut, on October 30, 1975, no one simply knew how to
react. The neat and pristine-clean confines of Belle Haven, the richest
corner of town, had never anticipated murder. Its citizens became frightened
and perplexed. And its police force, totally unprepared for this, found
itself in a new and foreign world where issuing a simple parking ticket and
fining a rouster for drunk-and-disorderliness couldn't wipe away the
misdemeanor.
Martha Moxley was savagely killed in a manner that Belle Haven townspeople
would have expected only in a Stephen King novel. Suspicion pointed not to a
vampire or werewolf, but to one of the most powerful families on the East
Coast; a family that had connections that reached loftily to the Kennedys of
Hyannisport, a family that wined and dined the town officials, a family
that.well, a family that you just didn't accuse of murder.
For more than 20 years, the killer has evaded punishment, although suspicion
heavily points to at least one member of this family, the Skakels. Because
Rushton Skakel, the patriarch, is the brother of Ethel Kennedy (widow of the
assassinated Bobby Kennedy), many believe that the identity of the killer
has been known by authorities these past decades - but conveniently covered
up to protect a name that was already pockmarked by enough scandal. Others
are of the opinion that the unsolved murder is merely a case of simple
small-town police inexperience. Factions support each theory.
Martha Moxley, a few months before her death.
A strong advocate of the Skakel/Greenwich conspiracy theory is retired Los
Angeles detective Mark Fuhrman, the recent author of the book, Murder in
Greenwich - Who Killed Martha Moxley? Being the same Fuhrman who made a
splash with his controversial statements made during the prosecution of O.J.
Simpson, he prides himself as being an antagonist of what he himself might
call rich and mighty lawbreakers getting away with (literally) murder. Of
these people, he argues, "They think that by moving out to an exclusive
suburb (like Belle Haven) and sheltering themselves with money, and all the
things and people money can buy, they can avoid, or at least ignore, human
depravity. They are wrong. Greenwich may be richer, prettier, and safer than
most places on this earth, but it is not immune to evil."
Author Timothy Dumas, who grew up in Greenwich - he was a year younger than
Martha Moxley when she was slain - takes a more bird's eye view of the case
in A Wealth of Evil. "The Belle Haven peninsula.posed special problems. This
wealthy enclave was a distillation of the Greenwich image - remote,
superior, and gorgeous. But underneath, Belle Haven was a place of
considerable sorrow. Broken homes, alcoholism, and drug abuse were common in
the 1970s, owing chiefly to hard partying and high-pressure business
careers...This confounding atmosphere, as much as the failings of an
untested police force, is why the Moxley investigation became so hard to
navigate. The more information detectives amassed, the hazier the picture
turned."
Whether conspiracy, a demographic insanity or a product of oversight, the
fact that the brutal murder of a young girl has gone unsolved for so long -
nearly 24 years -- is in itself a scandal of high order. But, last year, a
one-man grand jury finally began re-examining the case in light of new
evidence and recently changed testimony - as well as a national
consciousness raised by Dumas, Fuhrman and media channels. The procedure,
which is expected at this point to utilize its full given 18-month period,
continues to interview the central figures involved in the case.
In the May, 1999 issue of InSight magazine, columnist John Elvin writes,
"Over the years, the Moxley murder has attracted the attention of reporters,
writers and TV producers. Police inexperience - some say incompetence -
coupled with the wealth and decadence of the principal characters, made the
still-unsolved case a natural for continuing public fascination and outrage
(especially) the allegation of a cover-up by a wealthy family." He hopes
that, because of the government's resurfacing of the case, "1999 may be the
final year of freedom for Moxley's murderer."
Perhaps when the killer is discovered or confesses as evidence builds up -
and let us hope the killer is found out by any means - the doubts that the
murder has generated will dissolve into nothingness. Doubts - about this
country's hierarchy; about the judicial system; about there being separate
laws for the rich and poor. More so, doubts about Mankind's honesty unto
itself.
Then the pumpkin can smile again without that cloud of doubt shadowing the
light within.
--
"They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it." William Penn
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less than a year, but was already quite popular among her classmates at
Greenwich High School. Her immediate friends, especially those who lived
near her in the Belle Haven neighborhood, found her bright, talkative, and
good-natured. She had moved east with her parents from California when her
father was promoted to the position of senior partner at the Touche Ross
national accounting firm in New York. Her mother, Dorothy, preferred to
remain a housewife because she believed in the importance of an at-home
mother while the kids were still growing. Besides Martha, there was brother
John, 17 years old, a member of the high school's varsity football squad.
"Martha's long blonde hair was parted in the middle and hung lankly down her
shoulders, in the fashion of the times," writes Timothy Dumas, author of A
Wealth of Evil. "She had shed her baby fat in that final summer and her
physique had acquired a sexy maturity that no boy could help noticing. Boys
always swirled around her now. Peter Ziluca had bested Grey Weicker, the
senator's son, for her attention, a victory.She loved cats. She collected
frogs. And she had the sort of small mischievous streak that makes a girl
highly desirable company."
After school on Thursday, October 30, 1975, the kids in Belle Haven were in
a festive mood. Not only were they off of school the next day, Halloween,
but they faced a three-day weekend. As teenagers anywhere, much partying was
in the offing. To officially kick off the frolic, Martha and her friends
planned to participate in Hacker's Night, when the kids of the community
playfully wrapped their neighbors' trees in toilet paper and lobbed
eggshells onto passing cars. Belle Haven police were out en force, just to
discourage any extremes.
Not that they anticipated trouble. Belle Haven, which means "beautiful
shelter," is the most exclusive edge of exclusive Greenwich. Comprised of
"40 homes on a hundred acres jutting into Long Island Sound," says Mark
Fuhrman in his book, Murder in Greenwich, Belle Haven has "a private
security force (patrolling) the streets around the clock and manned guard
posts at every public access."
The Moxley home today.
Early evening, Martha and some friends -- Helen Ix, Geoffrey Byrne, Jackie
Werenhall and Marie Coomoraswamy -- left the Moxley house at 38 Walsh Lane
to head to a party just around the corner on Otter Drive. Dorothy Moxley
reminded her daughter not to stay out late. Night had already fallen over
the suburb and Dorothy found it necessary to close the windows of their
Tudor-style home against the near-freezing October chill. Because she had
been painting trim all day, she would have preferred to keep them open a
while longer to vent the smell of enamel.
Outside, the troupe of teens headed toward the Skakel home. They were
feeling a little cautious. The Skakel boys' reputation wasn't the best, for
they were known to do just what they wanted to do - anytime, anyplace - damn
convention, damn obligation. And that sometimes caused trouble. Their mother
had died of cancer in 1973 and their father, Rushton, was gone most of the
time keeping the wheels of the family business, Great Lakes Carbon, running
profitably. So, there was little adult supervision.
However, maybe because of the connections they had - Rushton's sister was
Ethel Kennedy, widow of the assassinated Bobby Kennedy - and one of the
Hyannisport notables - the Belle Haven police overlooked the Skakel's
mischievous behavior. Neighbors noticed this and some of them kept their
children distant, money and fame notwithstanding. The Skakels were observed
by many as part of the large "Irish Mafia," comprised of the politically
smart, politically controlling all-Catholic East Coast Kennedy crowd, made
rich by Joseph Kennedy's bootlegging enterprises in the 1920s and made
permanent by John F. Kennedy's election to President in 1960.
The Greenwich line of Skakels was comprised of tycoon Rushton and his brood:
Rushton, Jr. (19), Julie (18), Thomas (17), John (16), Michael (15), David
(12) and Steven (9).
Martha and her group arrived at the Skakel home about 7:30 p.m., only to be
told by gardener Franz Wittine that the Skakels were dining with their new
live-in tutor Ken Littleton, at the private Belle Haven Club; they would be
home shortly. Marie went home. Martha and the other kids dallied around
town, and returned an hour later, but the family was still out. Walking
Jackie home to meet her nine o'clock curfew, the remaining trio returned
once more to the Skakels where, this time, they encountered Michael sitting
in the family's black Lincoln Continental, listening to music. Geoffrey and
Helen joined him in the car, sitting in the back seat, and so did Martha,
sliding onto the front seat beside Michael.
Martha liked the baby-faced Michael, but seemed to hold an equal interest in
his older brother, Thomas. In turn, both boys often fought over the girl.
Maybe that is why, when Thomas came from the house a few minutes later to
get a tape cassette from the glove compartment and saw her beside Michael,
he decided to remain and listen to the tape from the car's tape deck. In
fact, he had just edged in next to Martha when his hand crept upon her knee.
"Take your hand off!" Martha demanded. Thomas obeyed, but with a flirtatious
wisecrack that made the girl giggle. His breath smelled of beer, she
noticed; he had had a few at the club, as well as, he later confessed, a
couple of scotches.
A little after 9:30 p.m., Julie Skakel and a friend, Andrea Shakespeare,
emerged from the house and approached the Lincoln. Julie announced that she
needed the car to drive Andrea home. But, before the others could exit the
automobile, her brothers Rush and John followed her to equally claim use of
the car. With them was cousin Jim Terrien. The party was moving to the
Terrien house, Rush explained, and anyone who wanted to come was welcome.
Martha's two friends, Helen and Geoff, figured they had better not tag
along, for they had curfews. Martha and Thomas decided to stay at home also.
Their reason soon became apparent. No sooner did Michael and the others pull
away from the driveway than the older Skakel boy and Martha "began flirting,
roughhousing, and eventually kissing," says Fuhrman. "Helen Ix and Geoffrey
Byrne were a little disgusted with Martha's behavior and decided to go home.
As they walked together across the Skakel backyard, they saw Thomas and
Martha falling together behind the fence near the Skakel pool. This was the
last time they saw their friend Martha Moxley."
Across the way on Walsh Lane, Dorothy Moxley heard the neighbors' dogs
yelping outside beyond the driveway. It was 10 p.m. She glanced out to see
what the disturbance might be and saw nothing but darkness - not Martha, as
she had hoped. As the clock neared 11:00, and still no Martha, Dorothy
became a trifle concerned. Although the girl hadn't a specific curfew, she
was never one to take advantage of the liberty. She always wandered in at a
respectable hour. With husband David out of town on business, the first
person Dorothy had to share her motherly concerns with was son John when he
returned home from a party. He assured her that Martha was just out having a
good time. But, because he didn't like to see his mom worrying so, he agreed
to cruise the neighborhood to look for his sister. Circling Belle Haven a
couple of times, he spotted no one. When he came home with this report,
Dorothy grew frantic.
Midnight passed. Dorothy called Helen Ix, who explained that she hadn't seen
Martha since she left her with Thomas at the Skakel house, much earlier.
Telephoning the Skakels, Julie (who answered the phone) checked with Thomas,
who was already half asleep in his room. He told his sister that Martha and
he had parted company about 9:30, at which time he came up to his room to
study. He had assumed she had gone straight home.
As the hours passed without a sign from her daughter, Dorothy feared the
worse. She dialed the Skakels several more times, each time getting Julie,
until she demanded to speak directly to Thomas. The boy, roused again from
sleep, related the same story as earlier. Now Dorothy Moxley panicked.
Despite the hour, she called anyone she could think of, the Terriens, the
Werenhalls and other parents of Julie's known friends. No one had seen
Martha nor knew where she had gone. At 3:48 a.m., Dorothy summoned the
police.
Two patrolmen scoured Belle Haven for the next couple of hours; they
searched back yards and driveways, groves and any recess where a teenager
might have fallen asleep drunk. They found no one. At dawn, one of the
patrolmen contacted Dorothy, hoping the child had come home in the meantime.
She hadn't. Now, realizing that this might be more serious than they
thought, turned the case over to the Youth Division. Officers from that unit
continued to search for the minor.
Mid-morning, around 10 a.m., Dorothy paid an urgent visit to the Skakel
home. She crossed Walsh Lane and short-cut through to the Skakel's back sun
porch, which was visible from her front stoop. Michael Skakel answered the
door, appearing, as Fuhrman describes, "very pale and disheveled, as if he
were hungover and hadn't slept all night." When Dorothy asked if Martha was
there, he answered no without really bothering to look."
A Belle Haven police booth
Realizing she wasn't going to find any answers there, she retreated to her
kitchen to wait for what she hoped would be Martha's eventual return. Having
been angry hours ago over her daughter's irresponsibility, all she wanted
now was to hug her prodigal offspring. In the meantime, the neighbors and
friends she had called during the night, most of them having daughters too,
stopped by to offer hope and consolation. Deep down, they were beginning to
wonder if something evil had befallen the Moxley girl. Belle Haven began to
pray. Time crept by without an answer.
Then an answer came. At roughly 12:15 p.m., the Moxley back doorbell rang
with an indication of alarm. Dorothy leaped from her chair, but neighbor
Jean Walker reached the door first. On the patio stood Sheila McGuire, a
15-year-old school acquaintance of Martha's, who had been cutting through
the wooded portion of the Moxley back yard. Tears streamed down her cheeks
and she seemed to be gasping for air. "I found Martha..there." she pointed a
trembling finger towards the row of trees that lined the property. "Martha's
there -- "under the tree.."
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was discovered - blunders occurred, some that bespeak bottom-line police
inexperience. Other "blunders," however, reek of a cover-up to protect
someone or something, contend certain theorists, including Mark Fuhrman,
former LAPD detective and author of Murder in Greenwich.
Local police, while prompt, had never investigated a murder; they had no
experience in dealing with such a major crime. To begin with, no adequate
records of the crime scene were kept, nor was a log of any kind maintained.
Times of death, of arrival of the police, etc., were estimated later as the
case progressed, sometimes months later. The position and condition of the
body, the fragments of what the police believed to be the murder weapon,
tangible and intangible pieces of evidences that would have told more
experienced lawmen much about the murder and the murderer - so much was
overlooked.
The botched and incomplete handling of the case continues to haunt 24 years
later.
Mark Fuhrman arrived in Greenwich in 1997 to conduct his own investigation.
Starting with whatever meager information was available, and in defiance to
an administration that clearly didn't want him there, he uncovered data that
clashes with established "results" in the initial Moxley investigation.
While by his own admission his aggressive and sincere investigation does not
prove a conspiracy, it surfaces startling information that casts serious
doubt on both the ability and honesty of some of the principles involved.
Cause of Death
Youth officers Dan Hickman and Millard Jones were the first policemen to
reach the scene. They found Martha's body under the shade of a Japanese elm
on the west side of the Moxley property. Her face was bruised and her hair
was matted with blood. Her dungarees and panties were pulled down to her
knees. Horrified, the two policemen radioed for help and soon the place was
crawling with blue uniforms and plainclothesmen. The place resembled a
battlefield, John Moxley remembers.
Shocked friends at Martha's funeral (New York Times)
The girl did not seem to have been sexually molested. Whoever killed her was
either interrupted in a rape attempt or had left her in that undraped
condition to humiliate her. Pieces of a broken golf club found near the body
seemed to have comprised the murder tool. Nevertheless, no representative
from the coroner's office or the medical examiner's office was at the crime
scene; this was the first in a series of mistakes. The only doctor present
that afternoon in the Moxley yard was the Moxley's own family doctor, Dr.
Danehower, who was called hours later to confirm that the victim was dead.
On-file records generate more questions than give information, Fuhrman
insists. Many early but important stages of the investigation are hazy.
Cause of death, for instance, was illegibly explained; police seemed to have
totally ignored the autopsy findings, which could have told them much about
how the girl died.
It was not until 1997 that Fuhrman and Dorothy Moxley managed to get around
a dissenting body of state authorities to arrange for renowned pathologist
Dr. Michael Baden to review the autopsy papers. He uncovered certain details
that conflicted with previous police documents that spoke of many bruises on
the body, leading to the conclusion that Martha Moxley was bludgeoned to
death by the golf club. While the reports accurately concluded that the
force of the club must have been tremendous to break into pieces, details
pretty much overlooked an obvious stab wound that told much about the
killer's attack and the girl's last desperate moments.
"(The stab wound) was in Martha's neck.was perimortem; in other words, it
was inflicted right around the time of death," Fuhrman notes. "That meant
that the stab wound was probably the last attack on the victim...(Dr. Baden)
found evidence that there was blood in the lungs, indicating that Martha was
still alive when the suspect stabbed her through the throat.There appears to
be little doubt (therefore) that she was beaten with the golf club and left
for dead by the suspect. The suspect returned later to hide the body.
Finding Martha still alive, he stabbed her with the broken golf club shaft."
Murder Weapon
Of the golf club itself, three pieces of it were reported to have been found
at the crime scene. These included the head (with drops of blood on it) and
two small lengths of shaft (dripping with blood). The handle, according to
official reports, was missing and never located. Investigators believed that
the killer's identity would become telltale if that one missing piece of the
club, the leatherette handle, could have been found, for it most assuredly
contained the murderer's fingerprints.
The gathered sections of club were enough, however, to identify it as a
six-iron from a rare Tony Penna set. Because Thomas Skakel was the last
person to be seen with Martha the night of the murder, and did not possess a
clear alibi, the police felt inclined to visit the Skakel home the next day.
Indeed, they discovered a set of the same make of clubs that had belonged to
the deceased Mrs. Ann Skakel; her name was engraved beneath the leather grip
on each club. The six-iron was missing from the set.
Thomas became suspect and interviewed. On November 3, he was given a
polygraph test with inconclusive results. Six days later, he agreed to take
another, which he passed. Nonetheless, rumors flew wild in Belle Haven.
Gossipers wondered if perhaps Martha had rejected his sexual advances and,
enraged, he killed her. But, the law officers were skeptical. They seemed,
according to Fuhrman, to "accept any explanation as long as it directed
attention away from a member of a local and prominent family."
As example, when Rushton Skakel inferred that anyone could have found the
six-iron in his back yard and used it against Martha, Police Chief Steve
Baran vocally, publicly agreed. A clip from the November 2, 1975, edition of
the Greenwich Time reads: "'Kids are always leaving bicycles, tennis
rackets, and golf clubs outdoors, after playing with them on the lawn,' he
said, explaining the murderer or murderers might simply have picked up the
club."
Since the murder, Greenwich authorities have spent many years claiming that
an indictment or indictments are impossible without the leatherette handle.
No handle, no fingerprints; no fingerprints, no culprit. But, because weapon
obviously did come from the Skakels -- even an FBI test of the broken pieces
confirms it -- Fuhrman cannot understand why the family Skakel wasn't
interrogated more thoroughly
Again and again, in the vicious circle of events, the administrative answer
to the above is and has always been: Without that leatherette handle and its
fingerprints there can never be anything more than assumptions about anyone.
Then cometh a bombshell.
On October 11, 1997, Fuhrman unearthed a revelation that, if accurate - and
it appears it is -it changes the face of the investigation and makes hash of
the administration's hesitancy. While interviewing Millard Jones (who is now
a minister, but in 1975 was one of the first two policemen at the crime
scene), Jones recalled that the so-called missing piece (the handle) was
still protruding from Martha's neck when he arrived: "I'm not a golfer, I
don't know much about golf, but.I guess it was like a leatherette or
whatever you call it, the holder or the handle."
To corroborate this information, Fuhrman asked his ghostwriter to interview
Dan Hickman, the second patrolman at the murder scene that day. Hickman
confirmed Jones' testimony. He, too, saw the instrument protruding from
Martha Moxley.
"Jones and Hickman said they had never been formally interviewed by the
detectives investigating the case," Fuhrman goes on. "Still, I needed
additional corraboration.I called Dr. Richard Danehower (the Moxley's
personal physician), who arrived on the scene later. He said that on the
ground next to Martha's body he had seen a shiny metal object which looked
like a golf club handle."
The next person Fuhrman contacted was Police Captain Tom Keegan who had been
on site, but Keegan refused to talk. However, Detective Steve Carroll, who
had also been present that day in 1975, did. While not having recalled
seeing the club handle per se, he did concur with Fuhrman's suspicions: Said
Carroll, "If the shaft was there, it would have had Ann Skakel's name on
it."
So certain that they were correct in their recollections, both Hickman and
Jones agreed to present their testimony to the Greenwich Time, which ran
their story on Oct. 23, 1997.
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Moxley's physical death and the neglectful identification of the golf club
handle are only two of several mishandled elements that leave many scholars
of the case puzzled. Here are some others:
Time of Death
The police assumed that Martha Moxley was killed between 9:30 and 10 p.m.
This determination was based, sadly enough, on one haphazard and very
non-technical fact: That was the time Dorothy Moxley said she heard
neighbors' dogs barking loudly. Chiefly, if the autopsy report had been used
to determine a time of death (as it should have been), then the time frame
ratio opens up to as early as 9:30 p.m., October 30,. and as late as 1 a.m.,
October 31. That being the case, then Michael Skakel becomes a suspect, too,
and not just his brother, Thomas.
Indeed, since then, as we shall see, Michael became a major suspect in the
early 1990s. But, if the case was handled appropriately, his alibi - of
having been out at the Terrien's house until 11:20 - would not have
withstood for so many years.
Search Warrant
After the murderous Tony Penna six-iron was traced back to the Skakel
residence, no search warrant was ever issued. While the police argue that
they went through the house top to bottom, admittedly it was just by polite
invitation from Rushton Skakel and did not involve a thorough search of the
closets, the cellar, the attic, the garage nor the grounds where evidence,
such as bloody clothes from a murderer, might have been hidden.
Death Photos
A standard procedure at a murder site is the photographing of the body
before it is moved. Tom Sorenson, the Greenwich criminologist and
photographer, claims to have approached the body with a fully loaded camera,
but someone (he does not remember who) forbade him to take photos of the
corpse. Because he was already there, he said, he spent his time taking
shots of the general hullabaloo. However, some detectives recall seeing
photos of the body. If they are correct: Who took them? What happened to
them?
Blood & Hair Samples
Henry Lee of the Connecticut State Crime Lab said that all the blood
recovered from the Moxley death scene came from the victim. Perhaps so,
because there seems to have been no struggle. However, there was a lot of
blood splattered among the autumn leaves lying around Martha. "The police
could have recorded and analyzed blood spatter on the ground and trees of
the crime scene, but they did not," says Mark Fuhrman. "By the next morning,
with the wind blowing the leaves all over the Moxley property. important
blood evidence was lost forever."
Hair samples had been taken from several suspects, but the one human hair
found on Martha's clothing - from a male Caucasian - did not match any of
the suspects. One very interesting note is that the police also found a hair
from a male Negroid in the blanket in which they wrapped the body of Martha
Moxley. They immediately dismissed its importance, saying it had probably
come from Dan Hickman, the Black officer who was one of the first on the
crime scene. Why is this interesting? Because at this point, early in the
investigation, the police were loudly advocating the premise that a drifter
or vagabond might have been a killer. That being so, if they truly believed
that they might be dealing with an "outside" force, the hair should have
been highly suspect.
Witch Hunt
Because Belle Haven was considered so safe and so far removed from the likes
of murder, disbelieving police couldn't help pinning the crime on some
transient who might have wandered in off the turnpike, found the Skakel golf
club, killed Martha and vanished back to the highway. After a combing of the
encircling woods and back roads, as well as of miles of Connecticut
Turnpike, produced no leads, this Transient Theory dissipated as quickly as
it had begun.
Then followed a fiasco of pin-the-tail-on-the-culprit, reminiscent of the
witch hunts in nearby Salem, Massachusetts during the 17th Century. Anyone
whom neighbors considered odd, anyone whom the police knew might spoke pot,
anyone who might have had committed even a simple transgression was suddenly
under scrutiny. Among these were a Belle Haven neighbor who had taken an
innocent stroll the night of the murder; a man who had installed drapes at
the Moxley house; a young man who occasionally had given Martha a ride home
from school; a Belle Haven man who had chased three youths off his private
property with a golf club; a part-time gardener who landscaped for two Belle
Haven residents; and a man whose neighbors claimed had a broken section of a
golf club in his house. It turned out to be a shoehorn.
A Neighbor of Circumstance
One particular fellow who suffered months of harassment was the Moxley's
next door neighbor, 26-year-old Columbia College graduate student Ed
Hammond. Because he was a bit of a loner, because he was known to hit the
bottle, because his room faced the Moxley driveway, and because he had one
condom missing in a pack in his room, he was brought in for questioning.
According to Hammond, one policeman pointed to the woolen sweater he wore,
loaded with hairs from his St. Bernard, and threatened, "We can match those
human hairs on your sweater to Martha." For months, Hammond was under
investigation until, no firm evidence presenting itself and after passing a
polygraph test, he was finally dismissed.
Recently, Hammond, who no longer drinks and runs a successful law practice,
stated, "I wish to God I'd seen or heard something that could have helped
the police figure out what happened to that poor girl. But, I didn't and I
became a suspect. I have to live with that every day of my life."
The Tutor
Hammond was much luckier than Ken Littleton, another (what Fuhrman calls)
"convenient suspect." Twenty-three-year-old Littleton had the misfortune to
have started working at the Skakel home the afternoon of the murder. While
continuing to teach at Brunswick Academy, where the Skakel boys attended,
Littleton was invited by Rushton to serve as his children's tutor. His life
ever since has been a living hell of legal badgering with virtually no hard
evidence linking him to the killing.
Littleton, on the night of the murder, had taken the Skakel children to the
Belle Haven Club for dinner; upon their return, he went straight up to his
bedroom to unpack. He paid little attention to what was happening
downstairs. While unpacking, he watched the movie, The French Connection.
The movie over, he then retired for the evening.
It was not until the following afternoon, when the police rapped at the
Skakel door to examine their set of golf clubs, that Littleton first heard
the name Martha Moxley.
Having passed a background check, suspicion really did not point to the
tutor until a neighbor, Mildred Ix (mother of Martha's friend, Helen) told
investigators that she didn't trust Littleton. She had heard from the
neighborhood kids that he had girly magazines secreted in his room and,
sometimes late at night, went skinny dipping in the family pool.
Weeks after the murder, Littleton had a falling out with employer Skakel
over pay. and left the house. Soon after, he lost his teaching position at
Brunswick. Hoping to avoid police scrutiny, he move to Nantucket and
obtained a teaching position. But, being constantly visited by investigators
while on its premises, that school let him go, too.
His life an open window, Littleton began to drink. Then followed a series of
immature acts of petty thievery that led to his vilification. Because he
stole a few items from local stores and from Nantucket front yards - more on
a drunken dare to himself than anything - then tried to bury the items when
the law closed in, the Greenwich police began wondering what other secrets
he may have at one time buried. A golf club perhaps?
But, try as it may, the legal system could not find anything deeper than a
nervous, neurotic nature under Littleton's garments, nothing worthy of the
flames of a sacrificial altar. "I don't think (the petty thievery ) was done
maliciously," says retired detective Steve Carroll, who spent two years on
the case. "That is why we kind of ruled him out. It would usually happen
after he'd been drinking. He'd get off of work and stop and have a few
beers, which is normal for a young guy. And then, walking home.he'd pick
these things up by somebody's house. He was getting his jollies. Getting a
rush."
Another go for a job in Florida gone disastrous, a try at marriage proven
half-fast, Littleton ultimately surrendered to the abstract. According to
author Timothy Dumas, the Skakel's star-crossed tutor finally lost himself
in Australia - "about as far away as one can get from Greenwich,
Connecticut."
kkramer
In the months following the murder, investigators became increasingly
suspicious of Thomas. Through interviews with neighbors, they learned that
he was known to have displayed an erratic nature, sometimes violently.
Certain Belle Haven residents feared him and stayed clear of his path. When
questioned about his whereabouts at the time of the crime, he told police
(as he had told Dorothy Moxley) the last he saw of Martha was at 9:30 p.m.
when he went indoors to do his homework. He had had a report to write, he
explained, on Abraham Lincoln and log cabins. Investigators found his alibi
incredulous since they knew that Thomas was considered a poor student, one
who doubtfully would prepare homework on the night before a three-day
holiday. More damaging, Ken Littleton remarked that there was no such
assignment given neither at Brunswick or by him. When investigators tried to
examine Thomas' school and mental health records, a move that required
parental authorization, Rushton Skakel forbade permission, presumably under
advice from his attorney. The police were stymied. No further, real attempts
were made to corral Thomas, and the case languished.
In the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, certain key players did what
they could to revitalize the energy of the investigation. Martha's father,
David Moxley, and a top law enforcement consultant succeeded in bringing
into Greenwich the help of high-tech law enforcement people from Detroit,
but the investigation, though erstwhile, came to nothing. Connecticut
Governor Ella Grasso and the Moxley family separately authorized large
monetary rewards for information leading to the killer, but the incentives
produced no leads. When a young member of the Kennedy clan, William Kennedy
Smith, was tried for rape in Palm Springs, Florida, in 1991, the media made
a direct connection between that crime and the trouble-making Kennedy
cousins in Belle Haven, Connecticut. This connection spawned a back-to-the
drawing board reinvestigation that looked for a while like it might take
off. But, again, no new roads were traveled and no new evidence resulted.
The case had gone nowhere and, despite there being other suspects who came
and went, including Ken Littleton, suspicion continued to point to the
Skakels. But, doubt and skepticism engender no culpability. Eventually,
shrugging state investigators publicly admitted they were at a standstill.
There didn't seem too much else they could do.
Martha Moxley may have blanked from memory if not for media coverage that
continued to revive interest in her untimely death. Television segments of
Hard Copy and A Current Affair aired occasional updates; a TV movie, based
on the case, played to a large viewing audience; and a novel, A Season In
Purgatory, by writer Dominick Dunne (who faithfully based it on the Moxley
case), became a national bestseller.
Rushton Skakel rankled at these incessant accusations darting his family's
name. In July, 1992, he hired a private investigation company out of
Jericho, New York, to find evidence pointing to someone else. The firm he
chose, Sutton Associates, is one of the nation's best; it is headed by
former FBI agent Jim Murphy and is comprised of top-notch law enforcement
people from all walks of life.
But, Rushton's plan backfired. Says Fuhrman, "Sutton Associates performed a
lengthy and expensive investigation, taking several years and costing,
according to some estimates, upwards of a million dollars. They soon found
out that the evidence against the Skakel boys was even more damaging than
previously thought.Chief among these revelations was the fact that during
interviews conducted by Sutton Associates investigators and attended by
Skakel family lawyers, Thomas and Michael significantly changed their alibis
for the night of Martha's murder."
Thomas, for the first time, admitted that he did not go into do homework at
9:30 p.m., as previously stated, but spent another 20 minutes with Martha
kissing and petting until both reached mutual masturbation and orgasm.
But, the most surprising and far-reaching revelation to emerge from the
Sutton people's work was the surfacing of Michael Skakel as a major
suspect - the first time after 17 years.
Although Michael still maintained he had gone out with his brothers and
cousin Jim Terrien, he now confessed that, upon arriving home at 11:30, he
had gone window peeping. A particular neighbor lady (name not mentioned) was
in the habit of walking around in her home nude, he said, and he would oft
espy her through her rear windows. That night, however, she disappointed him
by remaining dressed in a nightgown and lying on the sofa.. That sojourn
quickly over, he decided to see if his friend Martha was still awake. He
climbed a tree beside the Moxley property to toss pebbles at Martha's
third-floor bedroom window to get her attention. Waiting for her to come to
the window, Michael claimed he masturbated. After Martha did not respond, he
ran home, climbed another tree outside his own bedroom window, and entered
his house by approximately 12:30 a.m.
His was a strange story, but things started congealing. Little tidbits of
information concerning Michael that had been recorded and transcribed here
and there, and which had been taken in-passing over the years, suddenly
leaped out from the pages as noteworthy testimony. ("Little clues," says
Timothy Dumas, "begged attention.") Franz Wittine, the Skakel's gardener,
had told the police that after the murder Michael's brothers and sister were
treating him "as if he knew something". A neighbor had told Dorothy Moxley
that she didn't think Thomas capable of murder, "but I'll give you Michael
any day". Other Belle Haven residents had noticed Michael's obsession with
killing small animals. He seemed, they said, to get pleasure in harassing
birds and squirrels, hitting them with golf clubs - all on a whim.
Sutton reported its findings to Rushton - along with its damaging turnabout
on son Michael -- and told him it was preparing a detailed report. Alarmed
at what he had heard, the father told the firm to dispense with the report,
he didn't need it, didn't want it, and paid them for their troubles.
However, a freelance writer who had been paid by Sutton Associates to put
its voluminous pages of notes into a legible chronology, slipped a copy of
the files to author/reporter Dominick Dunne, whom he knew was studying the
case. Dunne, who lost his own daughter in a murder much resembling the
Moxley incident, was obsessed with seeing justice done.
"All of the detectives on the case had signed confidentiality oaths, except
the young writer who contacted me and gave me a copy of the Sutton files,"
attests Dunne. "I read it that night. I told Dorothy Moxley, who had become
a friend over the years, that I had something astonishing. I swore her to
secrecy until I could decide how to handle it.." Weighing the best possible
use for the dynamite he possessed, he eventually turned the files over to
Mark Fuhrman whose book, Murder in Brentwood, fashioned after the O.J.
Simpson case, reflected the same ingredients of money-buys-corruption.
In the meantime, astute journalist Len Levitt had uncovered the Sutton
findings through inside sources, and the story of the Skakel boys' changed
alibis first appeared to the public in Newsday.
Why Did the Alibis Change?
No one can yet answer this question for sure. The best clues are found in
Timothy Dumas' A Wealth of Evil. His book draws an interesting conclusion
that perhaps the killer feared the results of a new type of DNA testing that
could surface genetic information from trace evidence years after a death.
In comments that indicate who Dumas really believes is the killer (Michael),
as well as hypothesizes a motive (jealousy), the author states, "I found
Tommy's 1990s version of his actions hard to believe - and not only of the
seeming unlikelihood of Martha engaging him sexually. The story smacked of
ass-covering. At this time, (Dr.) Henry Lee had started examining evidence
with his magic machines, and Tommy knew that some day he might be called
upon to account for whatever Lee turned up -- like the presence of semen.
"Still, the tryst story helps Tommy's story in one crucial regard: it
unwittingly creates a motive for Michael. What meaner brotherly trespass
could Tommy have committed than to encroach on Michael's love interest? How
would the emotionally precarious Michael have reacted? Consider that the
behavioral scientists said the nature of the attack on Martha was personal,
that the killer knew Martha and fantacized about her, and that he was a
voyeur.If Michael was indeed the killer, than the scientists had sketched a
stunningly accurate portrayal of him."
Strangely, nothing came of the new accusations. Jim Murphy, who headed
Sutton, told the writer, Len Levitt, that if he was subpoenaed, he would
tell all. But, the case again sank into silence. That is, until Fuhrman and
Dumas and others of their ilk decided that it was too big a story to die -
as Martha Moxley was too good a person to die.
kkramer
state's attorney has been presenting evidence to the one-man grand juror.
The basis for the reinvestigation is to decide whether or not to issue an
arrest warrant and, simply put, whom to charge with the murder of Martha
Moxley. Kenneth Littleton's culpability having faded, no longer under
suspicion, the only two suspects remaining are Thomas and Michael Skakel.
Paraphrasing Moxley's neighbor, both Dumas and Fuhrman - and many others who
have reported on the case - lay their money on Michael. Both brothers,
however, now in their 40s, have, according to the Greenwich Time, "refused
repeated requests for interviews as part of the investigation."
Because the Martha Moxley murder reeks of a classic whodunit, let's stop to
put an emphasis on the who, and briefly examine the backgrounds of the
stand-out brothers Skakel.
Thomas
Thomas' troubles began when, at four years old, he fell on his head from a
moving car and suffered a linear fracture on both sides of his skull. The
result of this accident generated mental and emotional problems. As a youth,
he was hard to handle and given to mood swings and a stubborn, often
unbending and occasionally violent temperament. A former nanny described him
as, "the most disturbed child I have ever met."
When Sutton Associates accepted the case in the 1990s, it first-off prepared
a profile of the murderer with help from FBI experts. Results in, Sutton
concluded that, "the probable offender shares many obvious characteristics
with Tommy Skakel.between fourteen (to) eighteen years of age, resided
within easy walking distance to the victim's residence, was in the same
socio-economic status as the victim, had regular interaction with the
victim, would have experienced strong sibling rivalry tendencies, would have
experienced behavioral problems both at school and at home and was under the
influence of drugs and/or alcohol at the time of this crime."
Thomas Skakel in high school (Courtesy Greenwich Library)
Thomas fits the age, the locale, the status, the familiarity with Martha; he
constantly battled Michael for Martha; he was a tonic to both his teachers
and his family; and he had been drinking at the Bell Haven Club during
dinner and possibly at home before the murder.
After the murder, his father removed him from the town's wagging tongues to
finish high school at Vershire Academy in Vermont. From there, Thomas
enrolled in Elmira College in northern New York State. Failing, he then
attended the New School for Social Research in New York. Throughout the
1980s, he worked with an ecology team and traveled throughout the world.
Back in the states by 1989, he married Anne Maitland Gillman and earned a
job at New York's Harco International, a trade corporation.
Today, Thomas is happily married, has two children, and lives in
Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
Michael
Belle Haven residents would probably all agree: Michael was the wildest of
the wild Skakel boys. If there was reason that mothers forbade their
children to "stay away from those Skakels," it was probably because of
Michael's practiced lunacy. Fighting, bullying other kids, killing small
animals - all this was a normal day for the boy. Even his own family feared
him; sister Julie had once remarked, "Michael scares me to death!"
Mark Fuhrman, who strongly suggests Michael as his choice as killer,
believes that Michael's changing of his alibi was an attempt to save his own
hide. Knowing that Sutton was commissioned by his father to dig deep, more
deeply than ever, into the crime, he may have feared that the investigators
might perhaps come across a witness who may have seen him on the Moxley
property that night. What better way to explain his presence than with a
fabricated story of climbing that tree to get Martha's attention?
As for the window-peeping, Fuhrman doesn't doubt that Michael could be very
capable of such an act. "It is very possible that the house where Michael
regularly peeped was not another neighbor's but the Moxleys. At 11:40
Dorothy Moxley was downstairs in the television room, wearing a nightgown
and sleeping on the couch, just like the woman Michael described in his
statement. Did he regularly peep in on Dorothy or was it Martha?"
An element of Michael's reworked alibi that bothers Fuhrman is his statement
about climbing into his bedroom at night's end. Why did the boy say he had
to climb into his house?
Everyone who intimately knew the Skakels said the family never bothered to
lock its doors, and with the father gone Michael certainly had no worry of
angering his father's curfew demands. Fuhrman hints that Michael could not
have entered the main doors with blood on his clothes in fear of dripping it
on the carpeting, or, more possibly, being caught by a family member with it
smeared across him. And as for admitting his offbeat means of entrance, that
was just another ploy to explain himself just in case he had been seen.
The story of Michael's life after the event reads like a nightmare from the
dream book of Sigmund Freud.
In March of 1978,Miichael was arrested on a DUI in Windham, New York, after
nearly running over a policeman. Skakel attorney Tom Sheridan worked out a
deal with the prosecution that charges be dropped if Michael committed
himself to observation for six months. He enrolled in Elan School, a college
preparatory for people with emotional, behavioral and drug abuse problems.
At $30,000 a year in 1978, Fuhrman calls it "a rich kid's reform school".
Michael made several tries at escape from Elan, but the family always
brought him back.
Elan wasn't the only "special help" institution Michael attended over the
next decade. He jumped out of one and into the lap of another well into
adulthood, and it wasn't until the early 1990s that he roamed back into the
outside world. While at a rehabilitation center in Aberdeen, Maryland, he
supposedly told his roommate, "Something happened back home and the police
were involved. Since then I've been in a whole lot of facilities. The police
want to talk to me. So my family keeps me moving from one place to another
because the police can't track you down."
Michael graduated from Massachusetts' Curry College, designed for students
with learning disabilities. Upon leaving college, he married a lady he had
met in rehab and, for a several years afterward, worked for the Kennedy
family in a number of position - from driver to corporate representative. He
even accompanied some of the family on a goodwill tour to Cuba. But, in the
last several months he has been idle.
The most suspected man in the Moxley case - the man whom the current grand
jury has seemingly targeted - now hides away from the leagues of reporters
knocking on his door, ringing his telephone. With wife Margot and recent
child, he has retreated behind the security gates of picturesque Lobolly
Pines, Florida. This is the community where his father hides, too. The
squire and son dodging everlasting tortures of what Rushton calls, "the
family problem". But, it is really the past catching up to them
kkramer
"The appointment of a one-man grand jury to probe the1975 murder of
Greenwich teenager Martha Moxley is being hailed as a major milestone by
those connected with the unsolved homicide," hailed the Greenwich Time on
July 18, 1998, when the jury was announced." Since then, more than 50
witnesses have testified, among them Dorothy and John Moxley (David has
since passed away), patrolmen Daniel Hickman and Millard Jones, Mildred Ix,
Kenneth Littleton, Detective Stephen Carroll, Sheila McGuire and many more.
The juror is Bridgeport Superior Court Judge George Thim, a man with an
impeccable court record since he first stepped on the bench in 1985.
According to Reuters, "Grand juries, rare in Connecticut, have the power to
subpoena witnesses and ultimately to recommend an indictment."
For months, Rushton Skakel has been continuing to dodge the past, but the
past is at last yanking at his cuffs. On July 28, 1999, "the 4th District
Court of Appeals rejected arguments by Rushton Skakel's lawyers that the
74-year-old man is mentally unfit to travel or testify," an Associated Press
memo informs us. "An affidavit by an investigator suggests Skakel may have
overheard one of his sons discussing the slaying."
* * * * *
Dorothy Moxley continues to wait and listen and watch from the sidelines.
She believes that state prosecutors, in seeking a grand jury, feel they have
enough evidence for an indictment. But, it is not vengeance she is after.
She wants justice so she can put to peace the haunted memories and, most of
all, recall Martha without the pain. "Í wonder how I'll feel when I know who
did this," she told the New York Times. "I would think they have lived with
a lot of difficulty in keeping this a secret."
She now lives, a widow, in a pretty home in the quiet town of Chatham, New
Jersey, not far from her son John, a successful commercial realtor. She
likes the fact that John, his wife and two children live so near. She enjoys
being a grandmother.
As for the Skakels, their "money may prove to do nothing more than extend
and amplify the nightmare," pens Timothy Dumas in A Wealth of Evil. "The
family's legal bills are mounting precipitously (at one point, they retained
ten lawyers in ten states).and the story in which (Michael) finds himself
appears to have no blue sky beyond the gloom." He is angry and bitter. And,
if he is guilty, probably very, very nervous.
If attitude means anything, then Thomas is innocent. Recently, Dumas met the
older Skakel, now 44, on the streets of Stockbridge, where he, his wife and
two children live. "Here, Tommy Skakel was a contented man living a steady
and uneventful life," Dumas says. He spends his time between helping his
wife run a bed and breakfast and working at a nearby manufacturing plant.
In an unintended parody of fate, too dark to be funny, too unbelievable to
be ignored, the manufacturer for which he works produces golf clubs.
kkramer
the Martha Moxley murder and the Skakel suspects. Contemporary to that
presentation, the grand jury was still in session; host Bill Kurtis wisely
called the case "a story with many chapters yet to come". On Wednesday,
January 19, 2000, Kurtis' words proved prophetic.
The first of what indeed promises to be a continuing succession of dramatic
"chapters" has unveiled. Michael Skakel peaceably turned himself into
Greenwich, Connecticut, authorities after the grand jury issued a warrant
for his arrest. Posting a $500,000 bond, Skakel was allowed to return to his
private residence to await arraignment, which is currently slated for
February 8 of this year.
Michael's lawyer, Michael Sherman, who accompanied his client to Greenwich,
insists that Michael is innocent. "(My client) stated all along that he did
not do this," attorney Sherman told the press. "He had no knowledge of it.
He had no part in it. He is not guilty (and) I don't believe there is any
hard, physical evidence at all."
According to the CNN Network, "Skakel was charged as a juvenile (because the
murder for which he is alleged to have committed occurred when he was 15
years old), fingerprinted, photographed and released on bail pending further
judicial proceedings."
But, adds CNN, "State's Attorney Jonathan Benedict said he would try to move
Skakel's case from juvenile to criminal court, prosecuting him as an adult,
a process that could take a year."
Martha's brother and mother, in the meantime, look forward to justice at
last. "We're thrilled that Greenwich stuck with it," brother John told
ABC-TV's Good Morning America on January 19. "It's bittersweet at best."
Elderly Dorothy Moxley, who has waited 25 years for peace, now hopes that
the legal process, finally on the march, doesn't revert to toe-shuffling.
"Confess. Let's not drag this out," says she. "Let's just do things quickly
and not hurt any more people."
The Crime Library will keep close watch and report on the scheduled
arraignment and other unfolding events. Stay tuned.