Murder: True Crime Stories - SPECIAL: Halloween Murders 2

Episode Date: October 29, 2024

Join us for the second of two episodes on terrifying murders from Halloween. On Halloween night of 1984, a slasher film came to life when pregnant Doreen Erbert was brutally murdered by a man wearing a wolf mask. And in 1974, a wealthy Connecticut suburb was rocked by the murder of 15-year-old Martha Moxley on the evening known as “Mischief Night.” Murder: True Crime Stories is a Crime House Original. For more, follow us on Tiktok and Instagram @crimehouse To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is Crime House. Halloween is such a popular holiday because it's fun for everyone. Kids love it for the candy and the chance to play pretend. Adults enjoy all that too, but maybe for different reasons. Wearing a costume lowers people's inhibitions. When you're hiding behind a mask, you can let your true self show through. Most of the time, that means letting your hair down and dancing at a Halloween party. But what happens when the true self that comes out on Halloween is far scarier than any costume?

People's lives are like a story. There's a beginning, a middle, and an end, but you don't always know which part you're on. Sometimes the final chapter arrives far too soon, and we don't always get to know the real ending. I'm Carter Roy, and this is Murder True Crime Stories, a Crime House original. Every Tuesday, I'll explore the story of a notorious murder or murders. At Crime House, we want to express our gratitude to you, our community, for making this possible. Please support us by rating, reviewing, and following Murder True Crime Stories wherever you get your podcasts. Your feedback truly matters.

And for ad-free and early access to murder true crime stories, plus exciting bonus content, subscribe to Crime House Plus on Apple Podcasts. This is the second and final episode of our Halloween special, covering real-life murders that happened on Halloween night, and tragically changed how we perceive this holiday forever. In part one, you learned about the so-called trick-or-treat murder of 1957, when Peter Fabiano was killed by his wife's jealous friend. I also covered what's been called the Candyman murder of eight-year-old Timothy O'Brien, whose father killed him for a life insurance payout. This murder created a widespread fear of poisoned Halloween candy because Timothy was killed by a tainted pixie sticks. In today's part two, I'll be covering another pair of tragic Halloween murders that still haunt us today. First, I'll tell you about the death of Doreen Erbert, an expectant mother whose painful past led to an even greater trauma.

And finally, I'll talk about Martha Moxley, a teenager who lost her life when a night of mischief led to unimaginable devastation. I do need to warn you that the content of this episode might be especially disturbing to some listeners. It contains detailed descriptions of the violent murder of a pregnant woman and her unborn child. As always, our intention is to honor the victims by telling their stories truthfully and with care. In this case, however, the truth is particularly gruesome. Now, let's begin our story. Hey everyone, it's Carter. I have a favor to ask you. If you are enjoying Murder True Crime Stories, I would be honored if you took a moment to rate and review us on Apple and Spotify. Your valuable feedback helps us improve and expand our reach

so other true crime fans can find us too. Your support means everything. Your support means everything. Doreen Rae Erbert was born Doreen Rae Hitchens in San Joaquin County, California, on November 29, 1952. We don't know much about her early life, but those who knew Doreen remember her as kind and generous, with a wonderful smile. She was a petite woman, not quite five feet tall, but her warm and welcoming spirit made her seem larger than life. That might be why Doreen was able to connect with William Michael Dennis, who went by Michael or Mike. Because he communicated a little differently, people didn't always take the time to get to know him, but Doreen did. Michael was two years older than Doreen, born in 1950. Though unlike Doreen, he didn't grow up deeply connected to his community. Michael was diagnosed with partial

hearing loss at a young age. Today, a child like Michael would probably get highly effective hearing aids as a baby and would probably go to school alongside his peers. Hearing loss would be a part of his life, but not a defining trait. Although Michael did get a hearing aid as a child, it was bulky with a wire and a battery pack he had to carry around. He also didn't go to school with his neighbors. Instead, he was educated separately in a special program. Even worse, the adults in Michael's life mistakenly assumed he had an intellectual disability alongside his hearing loss. In addition to his hearing impairment, Michael sometimes stuttered.

So even when he spoke to other kids, it was hard to communicate. It's easy to see why his childhood acquaintances remembered him as lonely. On top of his social struggles, Michael had a difficult home life. When he was nine, his parents divorced, leading him to develop a stress-related eating disorder, and his mental health only got worse with age. By his late teens, he suffered from clinical depression. At one point in his young adulthood, he had a failed suicide attempt. After the rough start he got in life, Michael had trouble meeting women in his teens and early 20s, but he didn't have to wait long for his luck to change.

He was either 24 or 25 when he met Doreen, who would have been 22 or 23. They married in 1975 after just a few months of dating. Maybe it was Michael's passion for his career that first caught Doreen's eye. He worked at Lockheed, the famed aerospace and weapons company, and he was involved in what was probably Lockheed's most exciting project at the time, the space shuttle. Michael's job was to apply a special coating to the space shuttle to protect it from extreme heat. According to his co-workers, he was very good at it. One friend who knew the couple during the early days of their marriage described Michael as devoted, going out of his way to please Doreen. But another family friend remembered seeing the couple as oddly matched from the beginning, describing them as a world-wise woman and an innocent lamb.

Still, it seems the newlyweds were happy together, at least at first. On April 17th, 1976, Doreen and Michael welcomed a son, who they named Paul Michael Dennis. They both doted on him. Every parent thinks their baby is the cutest, but Doreen and Michael just might have been right. In the few photos that survive of him, Paul looks like a cherub in a Renaissance painting, with his blonde, wavy hair, big, curious eyes, and chubby cheeks. But their shared love for Paul wasn't enough to keep Doreen and Michael's marriage on solid footing. In 1977, when Paul was just a year old, the couple divorced.

After a custody battle, a family court judge decided that Paul would live with Doreen and visit his father on the weekends. At first, it seemed like everyone was settling into the new arrangement. Michael paid child support, he took in lodgers to help make ends meet, and to have some company during the week. and to have some company during the week. His house was only about a mile from where Doreen lived in San Jose, California, so it was easy to bring Paul back and forth on the weekends. Another benefit of the custody arrangement was that Doreen had time to date. And since Doreen had the time to go out when Paul wasn't with her, she soon met someone new.

Charles Erbert, a local carpet store owner. The two married in 1979 and welcomed their first child, Deanna, the same year. Paul was now a big brother at the age of three. But sadly, the siblings didn't get much time together. Less than a year later, tragedy struck. In early February 1980, Paul fell into a swimming pool at the Erberts' home. By the time he was pulled from the water, he'd been without oxygen for so long that his brain was irreparably damaged. Paul was placed on life support for a week, but it was no use. On February 13th, he died. Everyone who knew Paul was devastated, but Michael's grief transformed into anger.

He blamed Doreen for what happened. He was furious that on the day Paul fell into the pool, Doreen was inside talking on the phone instead of watching their son. Over time, Michael's grief and rage turned into an obsession. He decided to sue Doreen for wrongful death, arguing that she'd been a negligent parent. The case went to trial in March 1982, but things didn't go Michael's way. The jury sided with Doreen. This was a tragic accident. The pool was fenced for safety, but Paul had managed to climb over it. but Paul had managed to climb over it.

Michael couldn't accept the verdict. He was so despondent and bitter that his work performance suffered, leading to a demotion and a pay cut. At home, he became explosive around his tenants, screaming obscenities and throwing objects. Doreen and Charles cut off all contact with Michael after the lawsuit. With Paul gone, there was no reason for them to stay in touch. The Urberts also had other things on their minds.

They were trying to have a second child together. Only things weren't going as planned. Doreen experienced two miscarriages, with one of them coming late enough in her pregnancy that the baby boy was buried with a gravestone and a name, Jonathan David Erbert. But the Erberts were determined to keep trying, and in February 1984, Doreen conceived again. This time, everything went as they'd hoped. As the months ticked by, she and Charles got more and more excited about the new baby. By Halloween of 1984, Doreen was too pregnant to take their four-year-old daughter Deanna trick-or-treating. So she sat at home answering the door while Charles and Deanna collected candy. But Charles didn't want Doreen to miss out on the fun entirely, so he came home and sent Doreen out

with Deanna to visit a few nearby houses. Once Doreen and Deanna returned, Charles was ready for a drink. He headed to the liquor store, only a couple minutes' drive away. On his way out, Charles told Doreen it was getting late, so she should lock up after he left. And she did. But around 9 p.m., somebody knocked anyway. It was a loud, aggressive bang. Doreen went to the door as four-year-old Deanna watched from the living room.

The visitor was a man in a wolf mask with gigantic, cartoonish eyes. It looked like a sinister, unhinged Looney Tunes character. Before Doreen could do anything, he forced his way in. According to little Deanna, Doreen told the intruder, Get out of my house. But he refused. Instead, the man in the wolf mask brandished a machete and replied, I'm going to kill you. To be continued... psychology of the world's most notorious serial killers. Names like Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy,

the Night Stalker, featuring expert psychological analysis from licensed clinical and forensic psychologist Dr. Tristan Engels. Mind of a Serial Killer will take you into their stories like never before. So get ready to uncover what drives someone to commit the unimaginable. Mind of a Serial Killer is a Crime House original. New episodes drop every Monday. Just search Mind of a Serial Killer and follow wherever you listen to podcasts. If you're fascinated by the darker sides of humanity, join us every week on our podcast, Serial Killers,

where we go deep into notorious true crime cases. With significant research and careful analysis, we examine the psyche of a killer, their motives and targets, and law enforcement's pursuit to stop their spree. Follow Serial Killers wherever you get your podcasts and get new episodes every Monday. At about 9 p.m. on Halloween night in 1984, a man wearing a wolf mask and wielding a machete

forced his way into 31-year-old Doreen Erbert's home. She was eight months pregnant at the time. Without explanation, he told Doreen he was going to kill her. Doreen screamed for her four-year-old daughter Deanna to hide behind the couch, the little girl obeyed. The attack was extremely violent. Doreen was stabbed multiple times, and her unborn child was also a victim of the attack. Thankfully, the killer wasn't able to find Deanna, who managed to find a secure hiding place. After looking around a few minutes, the killer exited through the front door. On his way out, he dropped his bloody mask on the porch. Doreen's husband, Charles, got home just two or three minutes later. As he entered the house, he saw Doreen

horrifically wounded but somehow still alive. Charles slipped in a puddle of blood as he rushed to give first aid to his dying wife. It had all happened so quickly he could hardly process what was happening. He'd left for the liquor store just before 9pm. By 9.15 he was calling 911. Doreen lived long enough for paramedics to arrive, but died on her way to the hospital. Charles tried to ride with her in the ambulance, but the paramedics wouldn't let him. When he resisted, the police arrested him. And once they noticed he was covered in blood and smelled like alcohol, they wondered if he had killed Doreen.

Charles was handcuffed in the back of a squad car, where he proceeded to scream and kick the windows. It makes sense that Charles was initially a suspect. It seemed a little too convenient that he'd been running a 15-minute errand in the exact window that his wife was hacked to death with a machete. But by 12.32 a.m. the next morning, the police were talking to someone else. Doreen's ex-husband and the father of her first child, 34-year-old William Michael Dennis. 34-year-old William Michael Dennis. After they heard about the lawsuit and his deep resentment towards Doreen,

Michael seemed like a pretty obvious suspect. The night of Doreen's murder, detectives found Michael at home and awake, with a badly cut hand wrapped in gauze. He blamed it on a kitchen accident, but the wound went all the way down to the tendon. When police informed him that his ex-wife had just been murdered, Michael's reply was a dry, you're kidding. There were bloodstained jeans on Michael's bed and trails of blood all over the house. Spots of blood were found inside his truck too. Those definitely didn't fit his story about carelessly tossing a kitchen knife and catching it barehanded. Based on this evidence, police decided to arrest Michael. He waived his right

to an attorney and agreed to speak with detectives right away. In a taped interview that same night, Michael insisted he had nothing to do with the murder, but evidence were able to match Michael's blood type to the blood found at the crime scene, which didn't belong to either Doreen or her baby. While that wasn't definitive proof he was the killer, it meant he couldn't be ruled out either. About a week later, a more thorough search of Michael's house turned up the label for an 18-inch machete discarded in his closet. No murder weapon was ever found, but detectives matched the label to some receipts for other items discovered in the house. They determined that Michael had likely purchased a machete from the Milpitas Builders Emporium at some point before the murder. Petus Builders Emporium at some point before the murder. In Michael's tool shed, police found two coffin-like boxes, two hand-sewn body bags, and two anchors. Michael owned a boat,

so investigators reasoned that he'd planned to kill both Charles and Doreen and sink their bodies somewhere. But when he showed up at the house and realized Charles wasn't there, he changed his mind and just went after Doreen. But the single biggest piece of evidence came in the form of a witness. Detective Bert Caro spoke to a woman who had attended a Halloween party with Michael the year before. She said he dressed as a big bad wolf and she had pictures of him in his wolf mask. It was a perfect match for the bloody mask found on Doreen's porch. Even with those damning photos, it took four years to bring Michael to trial. Considering the brutality of the crime, prosecutors weren't going to move forward

without a rock-solid case against him because they weren't just aiming for a conviction. They wanted Michael to get the death penalty. The trial began in 1988. Defense attorneys saw only one way to save Michael's life. He ultimately pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Two psychiatrists diagnosed Michael with a delusional disorder and major depressive disorder. This bolstered his attorney's claim that Michael was driven to insanity by his son's death and couldn't be held criminally responsible for premeditated murder. If anything, according to the defense, the jury should find Michael guilty of manslaughter,

which carried a much lighter sentence. But a third psychiatrist disagreed, pointing out that at times Michael had been able to describe Paul's death as accidental. Instead, the third psychiatrist suggested that Michael was grieving Paul's death intensely and had underlying personality disorders with elements of both narcissism and sociopathy, none of which would qualify him as criminally insane. After hearing testimony from the now eight-year-old Deanna, the jury sided with psychiatrist number three. Michael might have been distraught, but the jury believed he was capable of taking responsibility for his actions. They found him guilty of first-degree murder for killing Doreen and second-degree murder for killing her unborn child. In September 1988, 38-year-old Michael was sentenced to death. As of this recording, the execution hasn't taken place yet,

but Deanne and Charles both want Michael to die for his crimes, partly because they don't believe he's sorry for what he did. And although Michael agrees he should be executed, it's for different reasons. In 2016, he told the Lake County Record Bee that he'd rather die than spend another 30 years behind bars. In 2019, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order establishing a moratorium on the death penalty in California. As long as that moratorium is in place, Michael won't be executed. So, at 74 years old, he remains incarcerated with no possibility of parole and no capital punishment in sight. As for Deanna and Charles, in their 2016 interview about the death penalty, they had a message for Michael. We survived, and we're making it.

He hasn't conquered us. It was a remarkable show of strength in the face of such a horrible tragedy. in the face of such a horrible tragedy. And coming up, I'll tell you the story of another family who has gone through their own horrific experience stemming from Halloween. Martha Moxley was killed on an evening known as Mischief Night. This Halloween tradition was meant for harmless pranks. But on a night in 1975, it turned deadly. And her family is still searching for justice.

In some neighborhoods, Halloween tricks are just as common and just as celebrated as Halloween treats. Pranks like pumpkin smashing and egging houses are mostly harmless ways for teenagers to cause a little trouble without facing serious consequences. At least, that's how it's supposed to work. In the wealthy Greenwich, Connecticut neighborhood of Belle Haven, there was even a special date set aside for these pranks, October 30th, Halloween Eve, which was known locally as Mischief Night. In 1975, 15-year-old Martha Moxley was celebrating her second annual Mischief Night in Belle Haven, but it was the first one where she really felt like a part of the fun. Her family had moved in a little over a year earlier from

Piedmont, California. Martha's father, David Moxley, made a good living as an accountant, but he had to to afford Belhaven. Still, the Moxley family was nowhere near as wealthy or prominent as many of their new neighbors. Across the street lived Rushton Skakel, a widower and his seven children, six boys and one girl. Rushton's fortune, inherited through his family's coal company, was enough to make him one of Bell Haven's most notable residents, especially because of a certain family connection. Back in 1950, Rushton's sister had married Robert F. Kennedy, JFK's brother. Robert was just 25 at the time and in law school, but the Kennedy name was already famous, and after he

married Rushton's sister, the Skakels became best known for their Kennedy connection. Just being associated with the closest thing the U.S. had to a royal family made the Skakel kids a little famous, even though they weren't directly related. By 1974, when Martha Moxley met the Skakel boys, they had cultivated a Kennedy-like mystique of their own. But under the surface, the Skakel siblings were struggling. Their mother, Anne, had died of cancer in 1973. Michael Skakel, the fifth of the seven kids, took the loss particularly hard. He was 12 when Anne passed and became an alcoholic by 13.

His grades were never good. He lived with dyslexia, which wouldn't be diagnosed until his mid-20s. But his rapid descent into addiction made things even worse. Meeting Martha in 1974 must have been a welcome distraction for Michael. She was a classic California girl, blonde, tanned, extroverted, and nice to everyone. But there was a lot of competition for Martha's attention. After moving to Belhaven, she quickly became one of the most popular girls in the neighborhood. Among Michael's rivals was his own older brother, 17-year-old Tommy.

Based on Martha's diary, it seems Michael was especially jealous when it came to Tommy. Martha wrote a mysterious entry about Michael jumping to conclusions because she was talking to him. Martha wasn't too sure if she liked either Michael or Tommy. In September 1975, she wrote about flirting with Tommy during a car ride to get ice cream, but within a few weeks, it seemed she was getting sick of the Skakel boys altogether. October 4th's entry says Tommy was, quote, being an ass at a party by constantly putting his arms around her and trying to make moves. She told a friend she wasn't interested. And a diary entry shortly

before Halloween says, I really have to stop going over there, referring to the Skakel's house. Martha was dating another guy, Peter Zillica, and they were supposed to go to an upcoming dance together. But by mischief night, Martha's resolve had weakened. The Skakel home was a popular teen hangout because there wasn't much adult supervision. Staying away entirely would have put a serious damper on her social life. So, on the night before Halloween, Martha and her friend Helen paid a visit to the Skakels. Martha wore an old coat because she expected the group would pull some pranks that night, and she didn't want to risk ruining new clothes. Around 9pm, the girls, a friend named Jeff, and Michael Skakel all piled into a Lincoln Continental. They sat parked in the Skakel's driveway and listened to music.

Before long, Tommy joined them. A few minutes later, two of the older Skakel brothers emerged from the house. They kicked everyone out of the car because they needed to drive one of their cousins home. Michael later told police he joined them, though his story changed over time. The other kids stayed behind at the Skakel house. As they stood in the driveway watching the Lincoln drive away, Martha and Tommy started playfully roughhousing. At one point, Tommy pushed Martha down and laid on top of her. This made Helen uncomfortable, so she and Jeff went home early, around 9.30 p.m. Martha stayed behind with Tommy.

She would never be seen alive again. Around 1.30 a.m. on October 31st, 1975, Martha Moxley's mother, Dorothy, began to panic. Martha's curfew had ended hours earlier. She wasn't always a perfect kid. In fact, she was currently grounded and had gotten a brief reprieve only because she begged to participate in mischief night. But it wasn't like her to stay out past midnight without calling. Dorothy started phoning everyone she could think of who might have seen Martha. She also woke Martha's brother John and told him to go look for his sister. After hearing from Martha's friend Helen that she was last seen at the Skakel house, Dorothy called them several times during the night.

She spoke to 18-year-old Julie and 17-year-old Tommy. The Skakel siblings suggested Dorothy try their cousin's house, but Martha wasn't there either. That's when Dorothy called the Greenwich police, who sent an officer to take a report. When the sun rose and Martha still wasn't home, Dorothy visited the Skakel home in person. She'd spotted an RV parked on their property and wanted to know if Martha might be asleep inside. When she knocked at the front door of the house, Michael answered. He looked hungover. A Skakel family employee checked the RV, but Martha wasn't there. Dorothy reluctantly returned home, becoming increasingly convinced

that something was terribly wrong. Public school students like Martha had the holiday off, while private school kids like the Skakels were supposed to be in class, so several of Martha's friends were home and available to help Dorothy search the neighborhood. friends were home and available to help Dorothy search the neighborhood. They scoured the area looking for Martha, but she was nowhere to be found. Eventually, the group stopped looking around the neighborhood and started looking around the Moxley's property instead. As they neared the back of the three-and-a-half-acre lot, Martha's friend Sheila cried out. She had discovered Martha's body under a tree. It was a gory sight.

Martha's pants and underwear were pulled down, though an autopsy would later find no other evidence of sexual assault. later find no other evidence of sexual assault. Her head was coated in blood, to the point that it was impossible to see she had blonde hair. Sheila and Dorothy immediately summoned the police, who were able to find the murder weapon near her body. It was a six-iron golf club. It was a six-iron golf club. Martha was beaten so violently, the club broke into pieces. One of the metal shards was driven all the way through her neck, dragging a lock of her hair with it. The golf club's handle was missing, which made it hard to find fingerprints, but that didn't stop investigators from figuring out where the club came from.

While questioning Tommy Skakel, the last person known to have seen Martha alive, a Greenwich detective noticed a set of golf clubs in the Skakel home. They matched the murder weapon. The golf clubs had belonged to the late Ann Skakel, the mother of all seven Skakel children. After her death, her daughter Julie inherited the set, but anyone with access to the family home could have taken one of the clubs from the hall. Naturally, Tommy became the first suspect. He was seen with Martha less than an hour before her estimated time of death. But he had an alibi witness, Ken Littleton, a tutor who had started working for the Skakel family the day Martha died.

Ken said Tommy was watching TV with him around 10 p.m. Based on the autopsy reports, the coroner determined that Martha was murdered sometime between 9.30 and 10.15. That would have given Tommy 30 minutes to kill Martha and return home, but according to Ken, Tommy seemed composed and normal, way too calm to have just beaten a girl to death. The police didn't entirely buy that story, though. They kept looking into Tommy. At first, the Skakel's father, Rushton, cooperated. He believed the police would quickly rule out his son and move on. But when that didn't happen,

Rushton abruptly cut off the detective's access to his sons. Rushton abruptly cut off the detective's access to his sons. As of January 22, 1976, about three months after Martha's death, the Skakel family completely stopped talking to the police. This effectively stalled the investigation. The police did try to get an arrest warrant for Tommy, but the state's attorney refused to let it go forward, citing a lack of probable cause. The only physical evidence linking Tommy to Martha's murder was the golf club.

But he had six siblings, a father, and a live-in tutor who all had the same access to that club as he did. And although he was the last person known to have seen Martha alive, she was killed near the back of her family's property, not at the Skakels. She easily could have started walking home alone and encountered someone as she crossed the street towards her own house. None of that proved Tommy wasn't guilty either, but there was no realistic path to an arrest warrant, much less a conviction. Detectives looked at other suspects too. Among them was Ken Littleton, the tutor. It was bizarre that he'd started working for the Skakels just hours before Martha was killed, but having just met Martha that day, he had no motive to kill her.

Martha's boyfriend, Peter, was also a person of interest, but he had an alibi. He'd planned to meet up with Martha on mischief night, but he would have had to borrow his mom's car. However, he was worried he'd get a ticket. Peter didn't have his license, and he'd smoked weed earlier that night too, so he wisely decided to stay home and was there all night. After Peter and Ken were ruled out as suspects, years went by with no new developments in the Martha Moxley investigation. At first, Martha's family was able to maintain a cordial relationship with their neighbor Rushton Skakel, despite the horrific circumstances. But when the Skakels stopped cooperating with the police, the Moxleys were furious and moved away from Bell Haven. Tragically, Martha's father, David, passed away before his daughter's killer could be found.

In 1988, 13 years after Martha was killed, he suffered a fatal heart attack. Dorothy, Martha's mother, blamed his refusal to discuss Martha's murder for his early death. But even though Martha's family had trouble talking about her case, it still remained in the public consciousness long after her murder. In 1991, a rumor popped up that an extended member of the Kennedy clan, William Kennedy Smith, knew something about the case. The rumor proved unfounded, but it set off a chain of events that got the case reopened, complete with a national tip line and a cash reward. Upset by renewed attention, Rushton Skakel retained a private investigation firm,

Sutton Associates. He wanted to know once and for all if Tommy killed Martha. Rushton gave them full access to his family, his private records, and his home. The report from Sutton Associates did exonerate Tommy. It pinned the crime on another suspect instead.

Rushton's other son, Michael. In 1975, Michael told the police that when Martha was killed, he was at his cousin's house watching a Monty Python movie on TV. But nearly 20 years later, he told the private detectives a different story. According to the Sutton Report, Michael said he did go to Martha's house on mischief night. did go to Martha's house on mischief night,

not to kill her, but to climb a tree outside her bedroom window to get her attention. When she didn't respond, he sat in the tree and masturbated. This story didn't make a lot of sense though, considering the short window of time between Martha being last seen alive in the Skakels' driveway and her murder, which suddenly made Michael look much more suspicious. Unsurprisingly, the Skakels did not release the Sutton Report, but despite Rushton's best efforts to keep it quiet, the Sutton Report made its way into the hands of journalist Dominic Dunn in the late 1990s. Dominic had written a novel that told a fictionalized version of Martha's story

in hopes of drumming up interest in her cold case. Now, someone had handed him what looked like a smoking gun. And before long, Martha's case was reopened yet again. On January 18, 2000, Dorothy Moxley got a call she'd been hoping to receive since 1975. The state's attorney's office told her they were finally going to prosecute Martha's killer The next day, the public learned that Michael Skakel had been arrested and charged Michael's trial began in May 2002 The most damning evidence against him was testimony from his classmates when he was a schoolboy who said they'd heard Michael confess to the murder. The jury also heard a tape of Michael discussing his tree-climbing masturbation story.

Prosecutors painted it as an attempt by Michael to preemptively explain how his semen might be at the scene of the crime, even though none was ever found there. On June 7, 2002, Michael was convicted of murdering Martha Moxley. 27 years after her death, Martha finally got justice. Or did she? Michael's family never believed the verdict and continued to push for his release. While they made their case to the media, his lawyers worked their way up the court system. And their appeals had merit. One of the witnesses from Michael's old school revised his story.

Now, he said he and some fellow students had forced Michael to confess to Martha's murder, which meant his confession may have been coerced. In 2018, Michael's conviction was vacated. Michael's conviction was vacated. He wasn't exonerated exactly. The Connecticut Supreme Court simply found too many issues with his original trial to uphold the conviction. He could still be tried again if new evidence was brought. The state considered it, but many of the original witnesses for the prosecution had died. The evidence just wasn't there. On October 30, 2020, 45 years to the day after Martha died, the state of Connecticut announced it wouldn't retry Michael. He was a free man once again. Michael didn't just quietly disappear back into private life though. On January 3rd, 2024, he announced a lawsuit against the lead investigator in the case, Frank Garr and the city of Greenwich. Michael's suit claims the police knew there were

other more likely suspects, but they focused on him because they wanted to convict a, quote, Kennedy cousin. At the time of this recording, the lawsuit remains unresolved. As for Dorothy Moxley, she's still convinced Michael killed her daughter. She suspects his Kennedy connection affected what happened. If Michael wasn't connected to the Kennedys, Dorothy believes he'd still be in prison today. Unless some huge new piece of evidence emerges, all anyone can do is remember Martha as more than a murder victim. She was the sweet girl who hand-wrote lemon square recipes in her mother's recipe book. And the straight-A student voted best personality by her middle school classmates.

She was the devoted daughter who not only accepted her family's abrupt move from California to Connecticut, but thrived as the new kid on the block. She was a friend to everyone who knew her, and her life story deserved a far better ending than the one it got. Thanks so much for listening. I'm Carter Roy, and this is Murder True Crime Stories. That's it for our Halloween special, but come back next week as we resume our regular programming. As always, I'll be covering another true story of a murder and all the people it affected. Murder True Crime Stories is a CrimeHouse original. Here at CrimeHouse, we want to thank each and every one of you for your support.

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fact-checked by Claire Cronin, and included production assistance from Sarah Carroll. Murder, True Crime Stories is hosted by House original. New episodes drop every Monday. Just search Mind of a Serial Killer and follow wherever you listen to podcasts. If you're fascinated by the darker sides of humanity, join us every week on our podcast, Serial Killers, where we go deep into notorious true crime cases. With significant research and careful analysis, we examine the psyche of a killer, their motives and targets, and law enforcement's pursuit to stop their spree. Follow Serial Killers wherever you get your podcasts and get new episodes every Monday.