48 Hours - The Diary of Martha Moxley - Encore

Episode Date: June 5, 2022

A 15-year-old girl beaten to death with a golf club in a wealthy Connecticut neighborhood. Does her diary hold clues to the killer? 48 Hours" correspondent Erin Moriarty reports.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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ConstantContact.ca Yeah, you mentioned you grew up in Greenwich and you were there in 75. The first thing people ask you is, did you know Martha Moxley? Belhaven, Connecticut is a small private community. it has big estates and almost no crime but a 15 year old girl has been brutally murdered there bell haven this was a virtually exclusive very wealthy community in greenwich connecticut where murders just don't occur. My name's Richard Burns, and I lived in Greenwich back then. That's the first time in 45 years we'd ever talked about it.

My name is Tori Holland. I grew up in Belle Haven. And in 1975, I was 15, along with Martha. She just had this beaming personality, and her beautiful blonde hair. Smiled all the time. I just smiled, you know, it just made you feel like you were the center of the world. The Skakels lived across the street from the Moxleys. They were a family of all these boys except for Julie.

I went to school with them, and Michael was a year behind me and Tom was a year ahead of me. It's a lovely place to grow up. You've just felt safe. And that all changed after that night. The instrument used in the striking of the Moxley girl was a golf club. We know that. It's absolutely devastating. Nearly a quarter of a century would pass before police would make an arrest for the murder of Martha Moxley. 39-year-old Michael Skakel was charged with murder.

Michael, did you kill her? I was shocked. I was like, Michael? I know Michael's innocent. The evidence is much stronger, suggesting that other people may have committed the crime. Bobby Kennedy Jr. is Michael's cousin, and he never believed for a minute Michael Skagel committed this crime. 27 years after the crime, Kennedy cousin Michael Skagel convicted in the murder of Martha Moxley.

Michael Skagel spent 11 and a half years in prison until his conviction was overturned on appeal. An innocent man now goes free. But if Michael didn't kill Martha Moxley, then who did? This little girl, this cute little amazing girl was murdered brutally by somebody. And I think it was somebody in that neighborhood. Could Martha's diary hold the clue? I believe all through this case, there's someone who's been keeping a secret. A.I. After she was murdered, everything had changed.

You have no sense of peace. You've lost it all. After she was murdered, everything had changed. You have no sense of peace. You've lost it all. Tori Holland and Richard Burns have waited decades to speak publicly about the event that forever marked their lives. The death of their friend, Martha Moxley. My backyard sort of melded into her front yard. Both Tori and Martha were just 15 years old, living in Belhaven, Connecticut. Martha's family had moved to the neighborhood a year earlier from California, and Martha wasted no time becoming the it girl. She was not a wallflower.

She wanted to meet everybody. But everybody in Greenwich, you know, was very kind of reserved, northeastern personalities. She was very an extrovert. She was the California girl of all of us. She was a joy to be around. You know, how can you kill someone like that? It still gets you. Yeah. It was the night before Halloween, October 30th, 1975, also known as Mischief Night.

What is Mischief Night? Basically, you would throw toilet paper into the trees. Martha headed across the street to hang out with her very wealthy neighbors, the Skakel family. The Skakels were cousins of the Kennedys. Rushton Skakel's sister, Ethel, had married Robert Kennedy in 1950. Rushton had inherited a fortune from the family's mining company. They were a very famous family. They just had a lot more attitude about, you know, they could do anything. Martha was friendly with the seven Skakel kids,

spending time mostly with Michael, who was also 15, and his older brother, 17-year-old Tommy. On mischief night, Martha and two other friends met Michael at the Skakel house around 9 p.m. They all piled into a Lincoln like this, parked in the driveway. Michael and Martha are in the front seat of the Skakel car. and Martha are in the front seat of the Skakel car. Reporter Len Levitt, now deceased, was interviewed in 2003.

He spent more than 30 years investigating the night of Martha's death. Tommy comes and joins them, so the three of them are sitting in the front seat. Martha's in the middle between Tommy and Michael. They're listening to music. They were in the Lincoln until around 9.30 p.m. when two other Skagel brothers said they needed the car so they could drive their cousin, Jimmy Tarion, to his house to watch the U.S. premiere of Monty Python's Flying Circus. Michael told police he left with his brothers and cousin,

while Martha and her friends stayed behind with Tommy. What goes on between Martha and Tommy then is sort of playful, pushing back and forth with sexual overtones. At one point, Tommy pushestha down and falls on top of her and the friends are so embarrassed that they leave and go home leaving martha with tommy martha never gets home martha's mother dorothy spoke with 48 hours in 2000. there's martha and remembered that around 1am the next morning she began calling martha's friends and alerted the police.

I was getting more worried and more worried. I mean, it just was not like her. When the sun came up and Martha still hadn't returned home, Dorothy walked over to the Skakel house. Michael answered the door. I'm Dorothy Moxley, and I live across the street, and I'm looking for my daughter Martha. Do you know if Martha is here? No, Martha was not there. And he looked, he didn't look healthy. He looked, well, I actually think he looked hungover. Hours passed. It was now almost noon on Halloween. Tori was on her way to join the search

when another friend discovered Martha's body under this tree towards the back of the Moxley property. And I could see Mrs. Moxley at the front door and she's going she didn't want me to come any further but i could see the devastation with mrs moxley's steve carroll was among the first investigators from the greenwich police department to walk up to martha's body it was a maniacal attack that should have stopped but didn't. When Carol spoke with 48 Hours in 2000, he was still shaken by what he had seen. We didn't even know what color hair she had because it was all blood red and all of the blows or damage were all to her head. And then we could see a path that she had been dragged down in the high grass,

down to where her final resting place, which was under the pine tree. Investigators traced the trail of blood to the Moxley driveway. She had been bludgeoned right near the driveway because there was a huge pool of blood. There, they discovered a piece of the murder weapon. The shaft of a golf club. Former Hartford Current reporter and 48 Hours consultant Lynn Toohey. It was a Tony Pena six iron golf club. And she was struck so violently that the shaft of the golf club shattered. And one portion of the shaft was driven through her neck.

Just a few hours later, while canvassing the Skakel property, police discovered a matching golf club that came from the same set as the six iron that was used to kill Martha. It came from a set owned by Ann Skakel, Michael's and Tommy's late mother. Police began taking a hard look at the Skakels, and they would find what sounded like tantalizing clues left by Martha herself in her diary. Go inside the decades-long investigation of Martha Motzley's murder at 48hours.com. In 2014, Laura Heavlin

was in her home in Tennessee when she received a call from California. Her daughter, Erin Corwin, was missing. The young wife

of a Marine had moved to the California desert to a remote base near Joshua Tree National Park. They have to alert the military

and when they do, the NCIS gets involved. From CBS Studios and CBS News, this is 48 Hours NCIS. Listen to 48 Hours NCIS ad-free starting October 29th on Amazon Music. As a kid growing up in Chicago, there was one horror movie I was too scared to watch. It was called Candyman. The scary cult classic was set in the Chicago housing project.

It was about this supernatural killer who would attack his victims if they said his name five times into a bathroom mirror. Candyman. Candyman? Now we all know chanting a name won't make a killer magically appear. But did you know that the movie Candyman was partly inspired by an actual murder? I was struck by both how spooky it was, but also how outrageous it was. We're going to talk to the people who were there, and we're also going to uncover the larger story. My architect was shocked when he saw how this was created. Literally shocked. And we'll look at what the story tells us about injustice in America. If you really believed in tough on crime,

then you wouldn't make it easy to crawl into medicine cabinets and kill our women. Listen to Candyman, the true story behind the bathroom mirror murder, wherever you get your podcasts. I think I was still in shock that she was gone, but that this had to be a beautiful tribute to her to send her off. A few days after Martha's murder, on November 4th, 1975, about 500 people gathered for her funeral.

people gathered for her funeral. And while family and friends mourned the teenager, investigators were learning more about Martha's relationship with Michael and Tommy Skakel. Do you remember either the Skakels having a crush on Martha? Well, it would be hard not to. I know I did. Martha's friends told police that Tommy wanted to date her, but his advances may not have always been welcomed.

On September 12th, Martha wrote in her diary about going for ice cream with Michael and Tommy. Went driving in Tom's car, and I was practically sitting on Tom's lap. He kept putting his hand on my knee. sitting on Tom's lap. He kept putting his hand on my knee. And on October 4th, a little over three weeks before her murder, Martha wrote, I went to a party. Tom S. was being an ass. At the dance, he kept putting his arms around me and making moves. I did not know she was spending the time that she was spending with them. I did not hang around with them. They scared me a little bit. Why? What do you mean?

Well, because they were very rambunctious. Two years earlier, the seven Skakel siblings lost their mom, Anne, to cancer. Their father, Rushton, struggled to parent them. On the night of Martha's death, he was away on a hunting trip. Their father traveled quite a bit. They were allowed to do whatever they'd like. They definitely got into a lot of trouble. There was a lot of partying going on in that house. I read that Michael Skakel had a drinking problem at age 13.

Really? I would say that's true. And that drinking may have created conflict with Martha. In her diary, the month before her death, Martha wrote,

Michael was so totally out of it that he was being a real a**hole. He kept telling me that I was leading Tom on. Michael jumps to conclusions. I really have to stop going over there.

Tommy and Michael were both known to have very explosive tempers. The two of them were fierce rivals for anything, you know, from sports to affection, a girl's attention. Martha's? Possibly. It was daylight when Martha's body was found, but based on reports of neighborhood dogs barking the night before, investigators believed that Martha was killed sometime between 9.30 and 10 p.m., around the time she was thought to be at the Skakels. Remember, Michael told police at around

9.30 he had left to go to his cousin Jimmy Terrien's home, and Martha had stayed behind with Tommy. Tommy's story is that he last sees her at 9.30, and he goes inside home to write a paper on Abraham Lincoln. The police later find out that no teacher at Tommy's school ever assigned this paper. Levitt says police initially considered Tommy a strong suspect, but it turns out that even if Tommy lied about writing that paper, he had an alibi witness. Tommy is seen again shortly after 10 o'clock with Ken Littleton. Ken Littleton was a new tutor who had just moved into the Skakel house that very day. He told police that Tommy was watching TV with him around 10 p.m. He noticed nothing

unusual about Tommy and that's significant because Martha had been murdered violently. How does Tommy do this? How does Tommy manage to beat her to death, move her body, clean himself up, compose himself so that Ken Littleton says of Tommy, I noticed nothing about him out of the ordinary? No arrests were made. Months passed by, and with advice from Tommy's lawyer,

Rushton Skakel stopped cooperating with police. He also fired Ken Littleton, whose life unraveled shortly after. He moved to Nantucket. He drank heavily, did drugs, committed crimes of petty larceny. Investigators honed in on the Skakel tutor, speculating that his downfall could be rooted in his involvement in Martha's murder. But there were problems with that theory. He's got no motive to kill Martha. He never knew Martha. The manner in which Martha is killed indicates that it was somebody who had a relationship with Martha. Authorities found no evidence to prove Littleton was involved.

Years went by. Martha's murder became a cold case. There were no more leads to pursue. There was no new evidence. In 1991, the trial of another Kennedy cousin, William Kennedy Smith, who was charged with rape in Florida but acquitted, would open a new chapter in the Moxley case. There's an allegation, which is false, that William Kennedy Smith was at the Skakel house the night of the murder. That unfounded rumor and persistent press coverage kept the heat on the Greenwich Police Department and prompted them to reopen the investigation.

Now they announce a reward and a hotline. This time, in an effort to clear his family name, Rushton Skakel hired his own team of investigators. Their findings became known as the Sutton Report. But the effort backfired because that report, for the first time, pointed a finger at another of Rushton's sons, Michael Skakel. Michael lied to the police. Michael told police that after watching Monty Python's flying circus at his cousin Jimmy Terrien's house,

he came home around 11.30 p.m. and went straight to bed. But he told his dad's investigators another story. I remember thinking, oh, my God. If I tell anybody that I was out that night, they're going to say I did it. For 20 years, investigators seemed stymied in their effort to find Martha's killer. But all that changed in 1995, when someone leaked the Sutton report to the press. It was never supposed to see the light of day.

The report was an eye-opener. Tommy admitted to his father's investigators that all those years ago, in 1975, he had lied to the police. Years ago, in 1975, he had lied to the police. Tommy told the Sutton investigators that he did not go into his house at 9.30. He stayed outside making out with Martha for 20 minutes. Mutual petting, semi-sexual encounter, and suddenly casts himself as being most likely the last person to see her alive. most likely the last person to see her alive. And not just the last person to see her alive, but who's with her at the time that investigators believe she may have been killed.

Correct. But it wasn't just Tommy who changed his story, was it? No, Michael also changed his story. Remember, Michael told police that after watching Monty Python at his cousin's, he came back home around 11.30 p.m. and went straight to bed. The report was devastating to the Skakel family. But then he described a very different scenario to those private investigators. He's feeling horny. Around midnight, he's drunk.

And he goes out and he climbs a tree outside Martha's window and he masturbates in the tree. In fact, in 1997, Michael even made a tape recording of that story while working on a book proposal for a tell-all autobiography. I pulled my pants out. I masturbated for 30 seconds in the tree. And I remember thinking, oh my God, I hope Scott never saw me. Then I woke up to Mrs. Moxley saying, Michael, have you seen Martha? I was like, oh my God, did they see me last night? Reports had also begun to circulate that Michael had actually confessed to Martha's murder. It was said to have happened while he was a student at Elan, a reform school that his father sent him to after a drunk driving incident when he was 17.

1917. One former Elan student, Gregory Coleman, recounted to a local news reporter what he says Michael told him back then. The first words he ever said to me was, I'm going to get away with murder, I'm a Kennedy. Coleman says Michael detailed what he did to Martha that night. He had made advances towards her, and she rejected his advances, and quote-unquote, that he drove her skull in the way of the golf club.

After hearing from Coleman and other former Elan students, state's attorney Jonathan Benedict convened an unusual and rarely used one-person grand jury to look at all the evidence and all the suspects in the case. After 18 months and more than 40 witnesses, Mr. Skakel, do you have anything to say? Michael, did you kill her? The grand jury indicted Michael Skakel for murder. 24 years after Martha's death, Michael was 41 years old when his trial began. And how big a story was that?

It was huge. The scene outside was a circus-like. Mr. Skakel, do you have anything to say? Anything to say, Mr. Skakel? All the national media was there. They had tents. They had lights. Michael's defense and his only defense is that he did not commit this crime. Michael Skakel was being represented by a well-known local defense attorney, Mickey Sherman. As charismatic as they come, Mickey is no amateur when it comes to television.

charismatic as they come, Mickey is no amateur when it comes to television. What's the motive for Michael Skakel killing Martha Moxley? The only motive really is jealous rage over the attention she was showing Tommy Skakel. In fact, in that same book proposal for his autobiography, Michael wrote, I wanted her to be my girlfriend. I think Martha just rebuffed him. She could have been flirting with Tommy, and maybe that made him angry. On trial, Michael Skakel. I'm angry. On trial, Michael Skakel.

At trial, prosecutor Jonathan Benedict began with discrediting Michael's alibi that he had gone for that ride to his cousin's house around the time of Martha's murder. Prosecutors called Skakel family friend Andrea Shakespeare, who had been at the Skakel house that night. Andrea Shakespeare is one of the witnesses who was certain that Mr. Skakel never took that alibi right. Benedict put holes in Michael's alibi, but he later said Michael himself provided the most damaging evidence. The truth of the matter is that Michael Skakel couldn't keep his mouth shut for a quarter of a century. Benedict is referring to all those admissions Michael allegedly made to killing Martha, like the one to a long classmate, Gregory Coleman.

Although Coleman had died from a drug overdose before the trial began, his testimony from an earlier hearing was read to the jury. That infuriated Michael's brother, Stephen. Greg Coleman was high on heroin, on methadone. He was doing 20 to 25 bags of heroin a day. It turns out that before trial, Coleman admitted to Michael's attorney that he was actually high on drugs when he testified before the grand jury. that he was actually high on drugs when he testified before the grand jury. But the state put on nine other witnesses who told the jury that Michael implied he had killed Martha.

And then, of course, there was Michael's own words from that tell-all book proposal. And then, of course, there was Michael's own words from that tell-all book proposal. In closing arguments, Prosecutor Benedict played an edited excerpt for the jurors. Oh, my God. Did they see me last night? And I remember just having a feeling of panic. I think it very well may have been the linchpin. Michael! Michael! What do you mean by that? Very well may have been the linchpin.

Michael! Michael! What do you mean by that? Driving the nail into the coffin of Michael Skakel in terms of a guilty verdict. It took the jury four days. Michael Skakel was convicted for Martha's murder. His sentence, 20 years to life. I know Michael Skakel, and I know he didn't commit the crime. Robert, can you talk with us?

A few months after trial, Michael Skakel's cousin, Robert Kennedy Jr., accused the prosecutor of deliberately misrepresenting Michael's words in that closing argument. His tape-recorded words were used out of context by the prosecutor to imply that he was confessing to the crime. I was like, oh my God, did they see me last night? Because here's what the prosecutor didn't play in court. And I remember thinking, oh my God, I hope Scott don't be calling me ****. Correspondent Leslie Stahl asked Benedict about it.

In hearing this myself, without the preamble about masturbating, to anybody is that he's actually talking about murdering her. And isn't that really taking him out of context? No, I don't think so. If I did this on 48 hours, I'd be fired. I think it's a fair suggestion based upon the evidence of the case. It appeared to anybody who looked at it that he was confessing, he was saying that he was panicked because he had committed this crime.

And that was really the segment that everybody agrees ended up convicting Michael Skakel. And Robert Kennedy was determined to exonerate his cousin. Eight months after Michael Skakel was sent off to prison, Kennedy got a tip he believed would reveal Martha's real killers. Do you think the prosecutor's closing argument was fair? Chat now on Facebook and Twitter. Have you ever wondered who created that bottle of sriracha that's living in your fridge?

Or why nearly every house in America has at least one game of Monopoly? Introducing The Best Idea Yet, a brand new podcast from Wondery and T-Boy about the surprising origin stories of the products you're obsessed with and the bold risk-takers who brought them to life. Like, did you know that Super Mario, the best-selling video game character of all time, only exists because Nintendo couldn't get the rights to Popeye? Or Jack, that the idea for the McDonald's Happy Meal first came from a mom in Guatemala?

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people will get away with what they can get away with. In the Pitcairn trials, I'll be uncovering a story of abuse and the fight for justice that has brought a unique, lonely Pacific island to the brink of extinction. Listen to the Pitcairn Trials exclusively on Wondery+. Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. To Robert Kennedy Jr., it was the break he had been hoping for. Kennedy got a tip that a former classmate of Michael Skakel, a man named Tony Bryant, was claiming he knew the identity of Martha Moxley's killers.

So Kennedy and Michael's attorneys tracked Bryant down in Florida. Bryant has made a full confession of his involvement in that crime. This is Tony Bryant in 2003, videotaped by Michael Skakel's team. We decided to go up to Greenwich and hang out. He told them on the night of the murder

he had taken two friends, Adolph Hasbrook, also known as Al, and Burton Tinsley, to Bellhaven. So do you believe that they killed her? There's no doubt in my mind that they were involved. Bryant knew the two teens from New York and told Skakel's investigators that Hasbrook had become obsessed with Martha. I mean, love their beautiful blonde hair.

Bryant said that Hasbrook met Martha during previous trips to Belhaven at a street fair and again at a dance. I'm trying to remember at one of the mixers and he got jealous of other guys coming up to her and talking to her. Tony claims Hasbrook complained to him, saying, I don't understand why she's spending her time with those guys when she can be with me. On the night of the murder, Bryant says he was with Hasbrook and Tinsley when they all picked up golf clubs from the Skakel backyard. He claims that either Hasbrook or Tinsley bragged about wanting to hurt someone. I got my caveman club right, and I'm going to go grab somebody and pull them by the hair and do what cavemen do.

Tony says he wanted no part of it, so he left Bellhaven. And then right after the murder, when you met up with both Adolph and Berg, they told you we did it. We did it. we achieved our fantasy brian stated that while his friends never mentioned martha moxley by name i knew who they were implying it was it was so obvious because i mean the next day it was all over i mean it was everywhere Armed with Tony Bryant's story, in 2005, Michael Skakel's attorneys filed an appeal asking for a new trial. Your Honor, the petition for new trial that we filed on behalf of Michael Skakel claims newly discovered evidence, which involves the allegations concerning Tony Bryant. But at a hearing to present the new evidence, Bryant refused to testify under oath.

Well, of course he's not going to do that because he admits that he brought the murderers to Greenwich because he could be charged with that crime. Kennedy says Bryant wouldn't testify without immunity, so Skakel's attorneys played his video statement. But the judge wasn't persuaded and ruled against Michael Skakel. Michael Skakel versus the state of Connecticut has been concluded. Despite the judge's ruling, almost a decade later in 2016, Robert Kennedy Jr. repeated Brian's allegations in his book, Framed. Using Martha's diary as evidence, Kennedy claims that three weeks before her murder, Martha wrote that she saw Tony and two strangers at a dance. But that's not quite accurate.

In her entry, Martha doesn't mention Tony, and she never uses the word strangers. She writes, October 4th, Dear Diary, tonight was a sacred heart dance. When we walked in, some guy asked me to dance. Some other guy asked me. It turned out to be a slow dance. It was stairway to heaven. At the fast part, he wouldn't even let go. I also dance with Dickie, Neil, and Peter Zemenski. A lot with Dickie. The Dickie she mentions is actually Richard Burns, who says he was with Martha much of that night. Seen Tony Bryant? Do you remember that at all? No. Did you ever meet Al Hasbrook? No. Or Burton Tinsley? No. Don't you think you would have remembered if she was dancing with someone else who seemed possessive of her?

She didn't. She didn't. We danced the whole night. Al Hasbrook is innocent. Al Hasbrook declined to be interviewed, and we were unable to reach Burton Tinsley. But Hasbrook's attorney, Larry Schoenbach, describes the allegations as false and inflammatory. To coin a phrase, it's black versus white. Let's blame somebody else. It's the black guy. Let's blame him. Why not? Let's take the most vulnerable person in our society and accuse him. I am as certain as certain can be that neither had anything to do with this. Burton Tinsley and Al Hasbrook don't deny that they have been to Belhaven on several occasions. But Schoenbach says there's no evidence that either one was in Belhaven the night Martha was bludgeoned to death.

Nobody saw Al Hasbrook. Nobody. They would have seen a young guy, a black man in a very, very white community, and a big guy. But nobody saw him because he wasn't there. Somebody would have seen strangers and recognized that they were strangers. Nobody did. And I just thought that was kind of a cheap shot. That they were going after this black kid from New York City. I mean, you know, really? I think they're trying to find a scapegoat.

What's more, Hasbrook's attorney is baffled as to why anyone would believe Tony Bryant. Bryant has a criminal history that includes a 1993 conviction for armed robbery in California. We tried to reach him, but couldn't. Up until October 2021, he was serving a seven-year sentence in a Florida prison for tax evasion. Lord of prison for tax evasion. How are you feeling? Still, Schoenbach says Kennedy irresponsibly perpetuates Bryant's allegations. With no facts and no evidence, he continues to put forth this lie as a way of trying to clear his cousin and, I guess, by extension, the Kennedy name.

cousin and, I guess by extension, the Kennedy name. In November 2020, Kennedy insisted to us that Tony Bryant has no reason whatsoever to lie about Al Hasbrook and Burton Tinsley. When we pressed him about it, he got up from the interview chair. Do you have any regrets of pointing the finger at two people who've never been suspects? There's no physical evidence to tie them to the crime. There is plenty, there's lots of evidence to tie them to the crime. You have their best friend who says that they confessed to him. But in the end, it wouldn't be the words of Tony Bryant that changed everything for Michael Skakel. that changed everything for Michael Skakel.

What do you make of Tony Bryant's account? Chat now on Facebook and Twitter. Hot shot Australian attorney Nicola Gaba was born into legal royalty. Her specialty? Representing some of the city's most infamous gangland criminals. However, while Nicola held the underworld's darkest secrets, the most dangerous secret was her own. She's going to all the major groups within Melbourne's underworld, and she's informing on them all. I'm Marcia Clark, host of the new podcast, Informants Lawyer X.

In my long career in criminal justice as a prosecutor and defense attorney, I've seen some crazy cases, and this one belongs right at the top of the list. She was addicted to the game she had created. She just didn't know how to stop. Now, through dramatic interviews and access, I'll reveal the truth behind one of the world's most shocking legal scandals. Listen to Informant's Lawyer X exclusively on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify, and listen to more Exhibit C true crime shows early and ad-free right now. Michael Skakel did not give up. On April 16, 2013, Skakel was back in court with his attorney Hubert Santos and a new argument that that media savvy defense attorney, Mickey Sherman, hired to defend Michael at

his 2002 trial had botched the case. Mickey had me believing he was the real deal. He accused his former lawyer of being too chummy with the press. He said he was a media whore. Everything about this trial is unique. You spent most of your time talking to the media, right? Any questions? Yeah. No.

talking to the media, right? Any questions? Yeah. No. And Skakel claimed that Sherman failed to focus on a more viable suspect in Moxley's murder, Michael's own brother, Tommy. You knew that Tommy Skakel was the last person to see Martha Moxley alive?

I believe so. Sherman never presented evidence of Tommy's infamous temper. Did you know that he strangled a fellow classmate right in front of his teacher? I don't recall that. Sherman also failed to convince the judge to allow Tommy to testify, which could have raised doubts about Michael's involvement. Did you try? He was going to invoke the Fifth Amendment no matter what we did. Perhaps most shocking, Sherman failed to call a critical witness who supported Michael's alibi that he was miles away the night Martha was murdered. That was Dennis Soria, who was at the Tarion household the night they were all allegedly watching Monty Python's Flying Circus. Michael was allegedly there. Mickey Sherman, instead of doing that, instead of calling, never talked to

that witness. But in 2013, Santos did. Was there anybody else at the home? The boys were there. Was Michael Skakel one of them? Michael was with them. He puts Michael Skakel at that house and has no motive to lie. He's not related to Michael Skakel. Skakel's team argued that these missed opportunities would have created reasonable doubt for the jury. And the judge agreed six months later he overturned Skakel's conviction Wednesday a Connecticut judge granted the 53 year old a new trial in the 1975 murder of Martha Moxley after 11 and a half years in prison Michael Skakel walked out of the courthouse, no longer a convicted killer. An innocent man now goes free.

But not for long. In 2016, the Connecticut Supreme Court, in a sharply divided decision, reinstates his conviction, saying the defense was adequate. states his conviction, saying the defense was adequate. Skakel, faced with returning to prison, then filed for reconsideration. And in 2018, with a new judge on the bench, the Connecticut Supreme Court reversed itself, now ruling that Skakel is entitled to a new trial. That trial would never happen. Looking at the evidence, Your Honor, looking at the state of the case, it is my belief that the state cannot prove this case

beyond a reasonable doubt. On October 30th, 2020, the 45th anniversary of Martha Moxley's murder, the state of Connecticut announced it would not retry Michael Skakel. You know, Michael's going to walk around the rest of his life with that on his head, no matter whether or not it's been vacated by the court, public opinion matters. As for his brother Tommy... Years later, I ended up playing some golf with him a bunch of times.

I mean, did you ever ask him point blank? I did. I didn't do it, and it ruined my life. This case has been a long and winding road, a very painful case emotionally for many people. For Dorothy Moxley, time has done little to ease her loss. Martha, my baby, will never have a life. This was devastating to the Moxley family. Dorothy to this day remains convinced Martha was killed by Michael Skakel. To lose a child is the worst thing in the world. And so, after almost half a century of questions and two families shattered,

all that remains is one terrible truth. As we sit here today, no one has been convicted of Martha Moxley's murder. No. That's true. It's very frustrating. It's very upsetting. I think it's sad that she's not around, who, you know, live these 45 years.

I think she would have done great things. I think she would have been a great mother. She was always a great friend. Lasting impressions of a life ended too soon. A life that, in Martha's own words, was full of hope. Dear Diary, today is the last day of 74. Boo hoo. 74 has been one of the best years of my life. Well, hope 75 is as good. A beautiful ballerina. A troubled marriage.

A deadly confrontation. She tells the neighbor, I shot Doug in self-defense. Was she genuinely afraid or just trying to get her way? Underneath those white feathers, she's an evil woman. She's the black swan. 48 Hours, next on CBS. If you like this podcast, you can listen ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app.

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