This is a case that has everything–an innocent victim, a lurid crime committed in a setting of conspicuous wealth and privilege and a connection to the Kennedy clan. Ethel Skakel Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy’s widow, is Michael Skakel’s aunt, and over the years the man now accused of murder has been a close associate of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Kennedy’s late brother Michael. Asked for his reaction to Michael Skakel’s indictment last week, Sen. Ted Kennedy said that it was “a very sad situation for all the families.” And Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said, “Michael Skakel is innocent. I can’t think of an instance in history where a more innocent man has been accused of a more terrible crime.”
That judgment, of course, will be rendered by the courts in what could yet be a sensational criminal trial. But it may not be sensational at all. Skakel, who was only 15 when the murder took place, has been charged as a juvenile under Connecticut law. That could mean his trial would be closed to the press and public, and that he could face as little as four years in prison if convicted. If convicted as an adult, he could get life in prison; prosecutors hope to transfer the case to adult court. “He’s going to plead not guilty,” Skakel’s lawyer, Mickey Sherman, said last week. “I do not believe there is any evidence which resembles a smoking gun. I have heard nothing about any incriminating physical evidence.”
That evidence–or the lack of it–is the crux of the case. Martha Moxley was beaten to death with a golf club on Oct. 30, 1975. But the fingerprints on the murder weapon were unusable and the investigation bogged down in a strange predicament: too many suspects. Even today, the investigative record seems to involve Michael Skakel’s older brother Thomas about as clearly as it implicates Michael. One difference is that Michael, who is a strict teetotaler today, had serious problems with alcohol when he was younger. But all the Skakel kids were known as hell-raisers, and if the one-man grand jury had physical evidence that pointed only to Michael, it hasn’t been made public yet.
Martha Moxley was killed on the grounds of her family’s home in Belle Haven, a gated community with its own security force on the shore of Long Island Sound. Rushton Skakel and his wife, Ann, lived with their seven children just across the street from the Moxley family. It was the night before Halloween and the time, as nearly as investigators could tell, was between 9:50 and midnight. Martha, who had been hanging out with a group that included Michael and Tommy Skakel, was attacked by an assailant who wielded a six iron with unimaginable ferocity. She was hit so hard that her skull was crushed and the six iron broke into three pieces; the killer then used a piece of the broken shaft to stab her in the neck. Although her jeans and panties were pulled down, she was not raped.
With little experience in homicide cases, the Greenwich Police Department made a number of critical mistakes. One was not insisting on a speedy autopsy: because the forensic examination of Martha’s body was delayed for nearly a day, the time of death is unusually imprecise. Another was the failure to get a search warrant for the Skakel home. The golf club belonged to Ann Skakel. The club’s head and shaft were found near the body but the handle, which presumably bore the killer’s fingerprints, was never found. “Maybe we weren’t aggressive enough,” says former detective Stephen Carroll, now retired, one of two Greenwich PD investigators on the case. “We had permission to search the Skakels’ [house] but we didn’t get a search warrant. Maybe we would’ve emptied drains, for instance. But we were really novices at this.”
The biggest blunder was a tacit assumption that no teenager could have committed the crime. Michael and Tommy Skakel were interviewed by police but not considered as possible suspects until the investigation was several months old–and even then, it was Tommy Skakel, not Michael, who got the investigators’ attention. One early target was Edward Hammond, a 26-year-old graduate student who lived next door to the Moxleys. The cops searched his house and got Hammond to take a lie-detector test, which he passed.
A second suspect was Kenneth Littleton, 23, who moved into the Skakel household as a live-in tutor on the day of the murder. Littleton had a teaching job at the Brunswick School, where Tommy Skakel was a student. In time it would become apparent that Littleton was emotionally unstable; in 1999, after a long downward spiral, he tried suicide. But in 1976, he looked like a strong suspect to the Greenwich gumshoes. Littleton flunked three polygraph tests but was never charged, in part because he barely knew Martha Moxley. He said he was watching TV with Tommy at the time Martha was killed.
Bit by bit the investigators concluded that the killer must have been among the group of kids gathered on the Skakels’ driveway. It was obvious Martha knew her murderer: no one heard her scream, and the autopsy showed she was facing her assailant when she was hit for the first time. Her diary showed she had been flirting with Tommy Skakel and that he was being aggressive; witnesses said she had brushed off one of his advances just before she headed home. The cops asked for a polygraph. The results were inconclusive, but Tommy passed on the second try. Then Rushton Skakel, angered that his son was now a possible suspect, ended cooperation with the cops.
The case went into limbo for 15 years. Tommy and Michael grew up and moved away. Michael, married and a father, lives in Hobe Sound, Fla., at his father’s home; he is unemployed. Dorthy Moxley, consumed by the tragedy, has spent nearly $1 million to keep the case alive. In 1991, Connecticut authorities reopened the investigation with Kenneth Littleton as the prime suspect. The Skakels hired Sutton Associates, a private investigative firm, to help prepare Tommy Skakel for an expected court appearance as a witness. Sutton’s investigators interviewed both Tommy and Michael and found they had changed their stories. Tommy now claimed he and Martha indulged in heavy petting that night. Michael said he climbed a tree outside Martha’s bedroom and tried to waken her by throwing pebbles at the window. When she didn’t appear, he said, he masturbated sitting in the tree. He also said he heard noises in the bushes outside the Moxley house. The discrepancies in the brothers’ stories were disturbing–but Rushton Skakel abruptly ended the project.
Through the ’90s, journalism played a key role in keeping the case alive. Reporter Len Levitt followed the case for years, writer Dominick Dunne wrote a fictionalized account and former Los Angeles PD detective Mark Fuhrman published an expose in 1998. The special grand jury that indicted Skakel was in part a response to this drumfire of publicity. The witness list reportedly included at least three people who attended the Elan School with Michael in the late 1970s. (The school, in Maine, then specialized in treating drug-and alcohol-addicted adolescents.) These witnesses reportedly said they heard Michael confess to a role in the murder in a therapy session at the school–but the founder of the school, Joseph Ricci, says, “It didn’t happen.”
Is Michael Skakel an unrepentant murderer or an innocent man? The answer may depend on the mystery witnesses, or on a new analysis of physical evidence with technology, like DNA typing, that didn’t exist in 1975. Either way, the case is headed to court–and Dorthy Moxley will be there to see justice done after all these years.
The Winding Path of Suspicion
It has taken police almost 25 years to make an arrest in the Moxley murder. A time line of key chapters of the investigation: Oct. 30, 1975 Fifteen-year-old Martha plays pre-Halloween pranks with friends, then stops at the Skakel house. The next day her body is found under a tree on her family’s property, beaten with a six-iron golf club and stabbed with the broken shaft.
1976 The police investigation begins to focus on Thomas Skakel, who was the last one seen with Martha. The Skakels stop cooperating with authorities.
1978-80 Michael Skakel enters a Maine school for substance abusers. Other students would allege that he admitted in group therapy to a role in the murder.
1988 Martha’s father, David, dies of a heart attack. After his death her mother, Dorthy (right), takes the lead in putting pressure on authorities to continue the investigation. She encourages Martha’s friends to talk to the media and keep the case alive.
1995 A story in Newsday by Len Levitt leaks details of a report by the Skakel family’s own private investigators, Sutton Associates. It places Michael at the scene of the crime. Public interest in the case increases.
1998 Mark Fuhrman writes “Murder in Greenwich”; (left), fingering Michael. George Thim (below), a one-man grand jury, begins interviewing 53 witnesses.
January 2000 A warrant is issued for the arrest of Michael Skakel. He turns himself in to police.
