RedHanded - Episode 297 - Martha Moxley: Death & Dynasty

Episode Date: May 11, 2023

On Halloween morning, 1975, in one of the most exclusive gated communities in the USA, the bludgeoned body of 15-year-old Martha Moxley was discovered on her own front lawn. The shattered pieces of the murder weapon, a six-iron golf club, were found nearby.The police had the body, they had the weapon, and they had a strong indication of who took her life. But this was going to be anything but an open and shut-case. Why? Because this story implicated some of the wealthiest and most powerful families in American history. Follow us on social media:InstagramTwitterVisit our website:WebsiteSources available on redhandedpodcast.comSee 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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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, everybody. So shorthand, you will have noticed, you will have listened to us explain where it's moved, why it's moved. So you can now find it exclusively on the Amazon Music app. And there are some really great episodes that we have done very recently.

Honestly, it's some of our best work. So if you want to check it out, head on over to Amazon Music where you can listen there with a Prime membership. And some of the episodes we've done since it moved will include the pretty fascinatingly weird story of Sochi Yokoi. Sochi Yokoi was a man who still thought for a very long time after everybody else knew that it was over that World War II was still going on because he was living in the jungle and you should definitely check that out. We then went on to do a shorthand which was released on the 18th of October on the Kentler experiment and some of you, the smartest among you, will already have your ears ringing when you hear that because you will of course know it is the very bizarre story of why Germany decided at one point that it would be a great idea to just give paedophiles children to foster and definitely not abuse even though

that's exactly what happened. So come listen to that and then we followed it up with a shorthand on Otabenga. Yeah which broke my heart. So if you like the sound of those we've got lots of other things as well over on Amazon Music for shorthand so get your little butt over there. Hi Hannah. I'm Sruti. And welcome to Full Fat Red Handed, post-tour edition. We're back, back in the hood. Back at it again. Back at it again indeed. We've been back for a week, something like that. Tomorrow-ish. So we are adjusting and we've got quite a high society story for you today. Oh yes, very much so. It is high society. It's in Greenwich. It's fancy,

gated community. You already know what I'm talking about, everybody listening who knows this case. You're screaming it at me and screaming, get the hell on with it. So we'll put you out of your misery. On the 30th of October 1975, 15-year-old Martha Moxley was murdered on her front lawn with a golf club. Also quite high society. Yes, I think sustaining any damage from a golf club, it's a step up from a baseball bat. Yeah, the outcome's the same. But that is the weapon of choice used by, as you will go on to find out, an opportunistic killer. Poor Martha's skull had been caved in with so much rage that the golf club itself had shattered into pieces. So then the killer used the sharp splintered shaft of the broken golf club to stab

Martha as well. And the killer did this with such force that he drove a lock of Martha's blonde hair all the way through her neck, like the thread of a needle. That is a detail I could have done without. Yeah, it's not great. It's horrific. It's just so horribly, horribly visceral. And I don't know, it's like one of those things

I've never heard of before, but the minute you read it, you're like, I see. Yeah. I can visualize that and nothing else now. And this horrendous murder took place in one of the most exclusive, well-guarded, gated communities in the US, Belhaven in Greenwich, Connecticut,

which when I named the 50 states of America, Connecticut goes in my difficult to spell group, along with Massachusetts. Yes. And Belhaven is occupied by some of the most prominent and politically influential families in the country. The main suspects for the murder of Martha Moxley had family connections reaching all the way to the White House, which we did not see when we were in Washington DC. No, I'm embarrassed to say that at the start

of the tour, when we first kicked off, we were like full of it. We were like, we're going to go here, we're going to see everything, we're going to do all of these things. By the time we got to DC, I was like in my hotel room, laying in the bed. I was like, I'm 15 minutes walk from the White House. And I couldn't go. I didn't go. But it's not, I don't want it to say like I didn't go like it was a choice. I physically, literally, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually could not go. Yeah, I couldn't get out of the bed so instead i ordered an entire pan of cornbread and ate it yeah in place shelter in place with cornbread dc's very pretty though which i wasn't really expecting beautiful beautiful next time i'll be sure to see more of it

anyway the family connections going all the way to the top are what has led many people to believe that this family's fame, wealth and power is what stood in the way of justice being served for over a quarter of a century. The night before Halloween 1975 will always be remembered by the community of Belhaven as the night that the bubble of their sheltered lives

dramatically burst. The 30th of October 1975 was the start of a three-day weekend and the children of Belhaven were planning on going all out. The Moxley family, 15-year-old Martha, her older brother John, their mother Dorothy, and their father David had been living in the neighbourhood for barely a year. Having just moved from Northern California, David was the head of the New York office of Touche Ross, known today as Deloitte, which I think was a smart name change. Touche Ross. Yeah, it's not good stuff. And David was actually away that weekend. He was away for work in Atlanta at the time. Now, Martha was a smart, outgoing, good-looking teenager, and she had no problems making friends in her new town.

And that evening, she was planning to go to a house party just across the street. This house party was taking place in the home of Rushton Skakel and his family. When you're rich, you can just call yourself whatever. And that they do, because the Skakels were not just rich. They weren't just richy rich rich. They were unbelievably rich. Salt and paper, bazonka loaded. Yeah.

Even by Belhaven standards, they were next level wealth. To put that into perspective for you, the average house in Belhaven goes for the tens of millions of dollars. Yeah, yesterday. So I'm currently house hunting, looking for a property in East London. And yesterday I was just like, maybe we need to like branch out, still stay East, but like maybe I should just Google best places to buy a home in London now, just to see if there's like an up-and-coming neighbourhood that's maybe, you know, skipped my attention. And I saw this hilarious article, and I can't remember which paper it was in, but it was like a hilarious article where it

was like breaking down the different areas you should consider buying. But it starts off with, in bold, the average house price in that area. And I was just like, who is this article for? And it was like Richmond and it was like 15 million. I was just like, the people that could afford these average house prices aren't reading this article and aren't Googling what I'm Googling. They don't have a timeout subscription. They're not concerned where the best place to invest in property is. And I just thought it was like, okay, well, I'm just going to close this and go to sleep now and not worry about it anymore. Thanks. Maybe the Skakels. Maybe the Skakels. Maybe that article was for them because they were absolutely rolling in it. And their family fortune came from Great

Lakes Carbon, which is one of the largest privately held companies in the world. And it also helped that they were related to, essentially, the American monarchy, the Kennedys. Rushton's sister, Ethel Skakel, was married to Bobby Kennedy. So sure, the Skakels are rich, undeniably obnoxious, and very, very well connected. That October in 1975, Rushton was out of town. So his seven children had free reign to do whatever they wanted. Rushton's wife, Anne Reynolds Skakel, died of cancer in 1973. And since then, the children had been, quote unquote, raised by Rushton.

And we're using the air quotes there because Rushton was an abusive alcoholic and was barely there at all. Naturally, the children had basically limitless funds and zero supervision. They were mainly looked after by household staff, but I can't imagine that they told them what to do very much. No, it sounds like a recipe for disaster. An alcoholic, abusive, absent father, but endless, endless money and zero parental supervision. Yeah, what could go wrong? Everything else we're about to tell you in this episode. So let's get back to the morning of the Skakel party. The newest member of the Skakel's live-in staff had just moved in. Rushton had hired 23-year-old Ken Littleton to be a live-in tutor for his six sons, hoping that he might be able to keep a check on their wilder traits.

A 23-year-old looking after six adolescent boys? I don't think so. No, I would agree. So other than being a tutor for the Skakel boys, Littleton also taught science and coached sports at Brunswick School, which three of the Skakel boys attended. And he moved into this enormous mansion. And so, being a teacher, being asked to move into this enormous mansion and being paid to do so, probably quite a considerable amount of money, just to tutor what looked from the outside like just a few harmless teenagers, probably sounded like a dream job for the 23-year-old Littleton. But little did Littleton know, his entire life was about to be turned upside down. Is it because he actually moved into Bly Manor and he's been haunted by little ghost girls who think everything is perfectly splendid? I am haunted by Bly Manor and I would

appreciate it if no one ever brought that show up again. Or I will be forced to get out my iPhone notes page titled Issues. Netflix, if you're looking for British consultants, the offer is still open. Look no further. Hi, I'm Lindsay Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to life some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history. Presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space

aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts. But less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes. And in the tragedy's aftermath, investigators uncover a series of preventable failures by NASA and its contractors that led to the disaster. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery Plus. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart.

But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Lainey Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing.

From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus. The evening that we are talking about, the night before Halloween 1975, the 30th of October, Martha headed out with her friends Helen Icks, Geoffrey Byrne and a few others. And just to really hammer home what kind of circles we're talking about here, Helen Icks' father was the president of Cadbury Schweppes Incorporated. I mean, every single person in this story is Richie Rich.

Yes, yeah, yeah. Martha and her friends arrived at the Skakel house at about nine o'clock, where they met the 15-year-old Michael Skakel outside. And then they all sat in a car for a while in the driveway listening to music, which seems like an odd thing to do at a house party, but I don't know, I'm not American and I've never been to the 70s. Also, all the ones that are in the car are like 15. They, even in America America they cannot drive yet. And then just a few moments later 17 year old Thomas Skakel came

out of the party and joined them in the car which meant that Martha Moxley was sat between brothers Michael and Thomas. Despite being well underage unsprisingly, both of the Skakel boys had been drinking at the Belhaven club that night, and they continued on the booze when they got home. Martha knew that both of the brothers had quite a large crush on her, and that the sibling rivalry between them was particularly strong. Thomas, the older one, immediately began flirting with Martha and put his hand on her leg, to which she said, get your hand off immediately. Thomas did what he was told,

but neither Thomas nor Michael let up on the flirting. Perhaps they should have spent a little bit more time hosting their actual party, because by about 9.30pm, the party inside the house was pretty much over. A bunch of people, including the older Skakel brothers, came out of the house and told everybody to get the hell out of the car because they wanted to drive north to their cousin's house to watch Monty Python.

I mean, it was the 70s after all. What's your favourite Monty Python? I don't know. I don't know. It's been a long time since I watched them. But I don't know if I have a top one that I can roll up. What's yours? It's between The Life of Brian and the one that's like the Robin Hood-ish one. And then the knight is like, come here and I'll bite your legs off.

That's my favourite one. Do you know what? I have to go with The Life of Brian. Yeah. I think that is probably my favourite. Yeah. So yes, these teenagers are on their way to watch Monty Python. I don't entirely believe them, even though it's the 70s.

I feel like they're probably going to go do something else. But Michael, the youngest, the 15-year-old, invited Martha along. But she said, no thanks, I need to get home. So Thomas, at this point, decided to also stay behind. So 17-year-old Thomas and 15-year-old Martha walked along the driveway. And I'm guessing that these houses have quite a long driveway that you can go out for like 15k runs on or whatever. And the flirting between the two of them at this point escalated. And eventually, they kissed. Now, Martha's friends actually saw the two of them kissing and decided to leave the

pair to it. You know, no one wants to hang around being a third wheel of the Gooseberry variety. So, her friends walked across the Skakel backyard. And they looked back they saw Thomas and Martha disappear behind the fence near the Skakel pool. It was the last time that Martha's friends saw her alive. At about the same time that evening Martha's mum Dorothy was upstairs in her house in the family's large English style mansion. She was painting the window frames of her bedroom which is quite a creepy thing to be doing at half past nine at night. I was going to say, look, Dorothy goes through a lot. I'm not here to call Dorothy up on any shit.

Her daughter, as you can probably guess, doesn't have a very good end in this story. Poor Martha. But painting a window frame at 9.30pm. Why? It's like flying a kite in the dark. It's just not good stuff. It's weird. I'm not for it. But there you go. That's what was going on. And she also makes quite a large mistake with her window painting because she paints them while they're closed because it was cold, which means

they're going to get stuck. And again, I don't want to make any sweeping generalizations about people. But is this because she's rich? Maybe. And rich people don't know don't paint your windows shut because they will never open again. Well the reason we mention the closed windows is because even though the windows were closed because it was cold outside Dorothy heard a loud, male voice coming from outside. She was used to hearing kids nearby. It was normal in Belhaven for kids to cut across each other's properties. But this voice was different.

It didn't sound friendly or innocent. Dorothy decided to check what was going on, but after turning on the lights outside, she still couldn't see anything. Soon after she heard this voice, a bunch of the residents' dogs began loudly barking and half of the neighbourhood woke up. By 11pm, Dorothy Moxley was sitting in her living room in front of the TV watching the news in her dressing gown. Martha's elder brother John had made his own fun on Halloween. He was rounding off his evening throwing eggs at his school's cheerleaders,

who probably deserved it. When John got home at about 11.20, his mother told him that Martha wasn't back yet and asked him to go and find her. So John jumped in his car and drove around the neighbourhood looking for Martha. But he couldn't find her. So, in classic teenage style, he gave up and went to bed.

Dorothy woke up sometime after midnight, having fallen asleep in front of the TV. She went upstairs and checked on Martha's bedroom, but her bed was still empty. Now, worried, Dorothy phoned up the Skakel house, and the one Skakel daughter, Julie, picked up. Julie asked her brother Thomas, the one that the many Skakel siblings and Martha's friends had last all seen Martha with by the Skakel pool, and Julie asked him if he knew where Martha was. But Thomas said that he had bid Martha goodnight at 9.30pm and then come back home to study for a test on Abraham Lincoln, like a good boy. Because I'm proud to be an American, where I can freely roam, or something like that. Something, something, something. So the early hours passed, and with no sign of Martha anywhere, Dorothy called anyone

she could think of who may have seen Martha that night. But nobody had a clue where she might be. So at 3.30am, Dorothy woke her son John up and asked him to go back out again and look for his sister. John drove around Greenwich, but still saw no sign of Martha. Not knowing what else to do, Dorothy called the Greenwich Police Department to report Martha missing. Then, at around noon the next day, 15-year-old Sheila Maguire was walking from her home across a wooded area of the Moxley's property. Sheila didn't know yet that her friend Martha was missing, and she was on her way to try and get Martha to go downtown with her.

But as Sheila made her way across the yard, she noticed something under a large pine tree about 60 metres from the Moxley house. At first, it looked like it was a sleeping bag on top of a foam mattress. But as she approached, Sheila realised that what she was actually looking at was the partially clothed body of her friend, Martha Moxley. Martha's body was half hidden under some low-hanging branches of a pine tree. She was lying on her side. Her hands were balled into fists. Her jeans and underwear had been pulled down around her ankles. Martha's eyes were closed and her hair was covered in so much blood that one of the officers later said that they were surprised when they were told that Martha was blonde.

The first two people on the scene after Sheila raised the alarm were juvenile officers, Hickman and Jones. After they confirmed that Martha was actually dead, Jones went to the Moxley house to phone the police HQ. Jones, despite being a juvenile officer, did know a thing or two. He didn't want to use the police radio because it was monitored by journalists. And Jones knew, even at this early stage in the investigation, that the murder of Martha Moxley was going to be enormous news. Jones told his

partner Hickman to stay with the body and protect the crime scene. He didn't do that. Hickman panicked and ran over to the police car, where he began frantically calling on the police radio for more officers and a medical examiner. When Officer Jones came back, he found Hickman petting a dog, who was licking up the trail of blood left on the grass and all over the leaves at the murder scene. So the dog is quite literally eating the evidence and Officer Hickman is encouraging this behaviour, it would seem. I mean, Hickman's so panicked at what they found that he needs some sort of emotional support dog. And when this dog runs over to lick all the blood, he's just like, oh, thank God you're here. Let me

pet you. And as if that wasn't enough, because Hickman had used the police radio, which is monitored by journos, the entire street was now totally full of reporters and rubberneckers who had heard the news. The way the crime scene was handled was beyond shambolic. As most of you will know, one of the most important rules of a homicide investigation is recording as much evidence as possible before the body is moved. Photographs, videos, measurements, sketches and notes must be taken before the body is even touched. But by 2pm that day, at least 12 people had touched or stood over the body of Martha Moxley and she had been moved three times. Is this hinterkaifeck? I mean yes but in Greenwich in 1975. It is unbelievable. How did

any of this happen? I hear you scream. Well between 1pm and 3pm police officers were interviewing people around the neighbourhood. That is normal, obviously you want to get out there, knocking on doors, doing some canvassing. But at the time, Martha's body was left completely unguarded. And the crime scene was basically completely overrun with journalists and onlookers who decided to touch the body and move things around. It is fucking unbelievable. The wind was also blowing away leaves covered in blood and other vital evidence and records of who found what evidence were never even made. As for the evidence the police did have, so the blood-stained head of a golf club and three pieces of the broken shaft. They had found these scattered on the Moxley's lawn.

But the handle of the club was missing. About 12 metres from where the head of the golf club was discovered, on the other side of the pebbled driveway, officers found a large pool of thick, coagulated, almost jelly-like blood. There were also clear drag marks in the leaves and grass of the lawn making it obvious that the killer had moved Martha's body. So basically they find the golf head, they find the like thick pool of congealed blood and the broken shafts of the golf club that clearly had been the weapon that had been used on the Moxley's front lawn.

But they find Martha in this sort of wooded area that is like further away from the house. So they can also see the blood trail, the drag marks. So whoever's done it has killed her on the lawn and then dragged her body underneath this tree in a sort of thinly veiled attempt to hide her body. So it was clear from the get-go that Greenwich Police clearly weren't equipped to deal with a crime like this. So the Connecticut State Police Mobile Crime Lab was called in, and they arrived at around 5pm, by which time it was already dark. And within half an hour of them getting there, they'd removed Martha's body from the scene and taken her to Greenwich Hospital Morgue for an autopsy to be conducted the following day.

A toxicology report found absolutely no signs of drugs or alcohol in Martha's system. Martha had been stabbed on the right side of her neck with such force that the shaft of the golf club had gone all the way through her windpipe and, as we already told you, dragged a lock of her hair with it through one side of her neck and out of the other. Blood was found in Martha's lungs and that means that she was still alive when she was stabbed in the neck. And we're pretty sure that this stab to the neck was the final blow from Martha's killer. And despite Martha's underwear and jeans having been around her ankles, they couldn't find any evidence that Martha had been sexually assaulted. Bruising and lacerations to Martha's head made it clear that she had been attacked from behind

as she was walking along the driveway and had been viciously beaten with the golf club and left for dead. Though it's pretty likely that Martha's attacker returned later on to move her body and found her to still be alive, which is when they stabbed her in the neck to finish her off, then dragged her body to the pine tree. Officers were pretty sure that Martha had been stabbed with the broken handle of the golf club,

which would explain why it was the only part of the broken club that was missing. The killer's fingerprints would have been all over it. So the investigators' primary focus was finding that handle. They scoured the neighbourhood with metal detectors. Men in cherry pickers searched the trees. Ponds and pools were drained. Every outbuilding, bomb shelter and storage basement in the neighbourhood was searched. But there was still no trace of it.

But it also wasn't totally hopeless because this wasn't just any golf club. Now, I know this sounds a bit crass to say, but I would say this whole entire case is very upper echelon, upper echelons of the US society. Greenwich, Connecticut, everyone is mega richy rich

and also the weapon of choice is a golf club. Yeah, I don't think that's crass. I think it's factual. It's factual. Pointing out the facts. And this one is even more so because it wasn't just any golf club. This golf club turned out to be a super rare, and I don't know what this means, but Tony Penner collection of clubs. Presumably that's something pretty fucking important. Sounds it.

And it was a set that the Skakels were known to own. And lo and behold, when officers searched the Skakel house, they found that the collection was missing the six iron. Again, don't know what that means. Now this set had belonged to the late Anne Skakel, Rushton's wife. And each club had her name engraved below the handle. So presumably now, not only did the person who used the golf club maybe run off with the handle that they had killed a child with because it had their fingerprints on, but also possibly because it had the name Anne Skakel on and that could be connected back to them.

Someone, perhaps, like her son. And the police and press already knew that Tommy Skakel was the last person to have been reported to have been seen with Martha. So now officers faced quite the challenge. Initially, everybody had assumed that some intruder had entered the community and murdered Martha. After all, it surely couldn't have been one of their own. But now, all the evidence was telling them that the killer most likely came from inside the wealthy gated community of Belhaven. And to prove this, the police would be taking on a family connected to one of the most powerful dynasties in the United States.

From the offset, Rushton Skakel did everything he could to help the investigation. He allowed officers to set up a neighbourhood HQ at his house. They could search his property at will and interview all of his seven children as much as they needed to. And those interviews contained everyone's favourite bullshit-o-meter, the polygraph. Thomas Skakel, naturally the prime suspect, agreed to be tested twice. The first time he took the polygraph, the results were found to be

inconclusive, but he managed to pass the second time he was tested on the 9th of November, which we've already told you so many times, means absolutely nothing. Here was Thomas' story. He said that at 9.15 on the night of the murder, he'd joined Martha and the others in the car where they listened to music. And then ten minutes later, his brothers needed the car, so everybody got out. He also told police about his and Martha's late-night walk and said that he was back in the house by 9.30, where he watched the French

connection with his tutor Ken before cramming for his Abe Lincoln test. Thomas's brother Michael said that he last saw Thomas and Martha at about 9.30 in the evening. Everybody knew that Michael had a crush on Martha and he had a reputation for being somewhat of a loose cannon. But at the time of the murder, Michael had been at his cousin's house. He hadn't returned to his home until 11.20pm, and that meant that he could be eliminated as a suspect pretty quickly and easily. Police then turned their attention to the 23-year-old live-in tutor, Ken Littleton, who, as we said, was only on day one of his job with the Skakels. So on the night of the murder, Littleton had taken the kids out for dinner at the country

club, returned home, unpacked, watched the French Connection, and then gone to bed. He'd never even heard the name Martha Moxley until the morning after she was killed, when police knocked on the Skakel's front door. Littleton passed the background checks and the police didn't feel that he was suspicious. But when a random neighbour said that she didn't trust Ken Littleton, the police put him straight back on their list of suspects. Then, a few weeks after the murder, Littleton fell out with Rushton Skakel, over pay, and he was fired. He moved to Nantucket and started teaching at a school there. But the police repeatedly interrupted his lessons

to bring him in for questioning. So much so that Littleton actually lost his job there. Now jobless, Littleton spiralled into alcoholism and was arrested for grand larceny, breaking and entering and burglary. Define larceny. Car theft? No, that's grand theft auto. Let's look it up. Larceny is like, yeah, robbery.

The theft of personal property. Okay, there you go. Grand larceny. So very personal property. So yes, he's in a bad way at this point. And this arrest, almost a year after the murder, for all of these various things that he had been spiralling into, put Ken Littleton back into the police's crosshairs. And so what had seemed like a dream job at the time he entered the Skakel home

ended up absolutely fucking ruining Ken Littleton's life. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Cone. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party, so. Yeah, that's what's up. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down. Today I'm announcing the

unsealing of a three-count indictment charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution. I was f***ed up. I hit rock bottom, but I made no excuses. I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry. Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace, from law and crime, this is The Rise and Fall of Diddy. Listen to The Rise and Fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery Plus. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years.

I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness, and inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favourite podcasts. Meanwhile, police were also closing in on the 17-year-old Thomas Skakel. Neighbours described Thomas as erratic and violent. He was also a terrible student, so the idea that he would

go into his room to study for a paper on Abraham Lincoln on the first night of a three-day weekend was quite frankly laughable. Especially when you take into account that his school never set a test on Abe in the first place. Very easily checkable. Investigators requested access to Thomas's school and mental health records, but Rushton, who had been extremely cooperative up until this point, refused to allow it. Actually, from that point on, the Skakel family stopped cooperating with the police entirely. And so, after a year had passed, the case of the murder of Martha Moxley went completely icy cold. And as time went on, the name Martha Moxley slowly faded from the memory of the nation until 1991, when someone called William Kennedy Smith found himself on trial for rape in Florida.

Now, Smith was, of course, a member of that dynasty of all American dynasties, the Kennedys. Justice for Rose. Yeah. He was the nephew of JFK. So during this trial, a rumour began circulating. People were saying that old Willie Smith had been staying at the Skakel house in Belhaven

on the night that Martha Moxley was murdered, 16 years earlier. And of course, it's entirely possible that he could have been there because remember the Kennedys and the Skakels were related by marriage. Rushton's sister was married to one of them. I forget which one. Bobby, I think. Bobby. Bobby Kennedy.

Now this turned out to be hearsay. He wasn't at the house. But this accusation and this connection with the Kennedys was more than enough to nudge the nation's interest back to the unsolved case of the murder of Martha Moxley and, in turn, to the Skakel family. For Rushton Skakel, it was time to pull out all the stops, to clear his family name once and for all.

So he hired Sutton Associates, a prestigious private investigation firm on Long Island, to reinvestigate the murder of Martha Moxley. Sutton Associates spent years investigating the case and had access to the Skakel family in a way that the Greenwich police never did. But it didn't go exactly as Rushton had planned. In a way, I feel quite reassured that you can live in the most expensive, fanciest neighbourhood in the entirety of the United States

and still have a completely incompetent police department. Oh yes, oh yes. I mean, I was going to say this earlier. I was like, Greenwich police couldn't be policing a more affluent neighbourhood, affluent, powerful neighbourhood. And they were complete and utter trash. I mean, that shouldn't make us feel better. That should make all of us feel so much worse.

Yeah, that's true. Anna Rushton had spent over a million dollars on this private investigating service, and he was so horrified by what Sutton Associates had learned that he terminated their contract, paid them in full, and put an end to their investigation. And all of the investigators from Sutton Associates were bound by a confidentiality agreement to never reveal what they had found. So I think it's pretty obvious it's not good stuff for the Skakels. But luckily for us, a freelancer that Sutton Associates had

hired to compile the never completed report didn't sign this gag order. This freelancer leaked the draft documents of the report to a journalist who was looking into the murder of Martha Moxley. And although the report was ordered to clear Thomas and Michael's names, it completely backfired in the most spectacular of ways. Yeah, this is a great advert for Sutton Associates, I have to say. So one of the first things that Sutton Associates did when taking on the case was to contact their former FBI colleagues to develop a profile of Martha's murderer. This profile concluded that, quote, the probable

offender shares many obvious characteristics with Tommy and Michael Skakel. So what are these characteristics? Well, the profiler said that the offender would be between 14 and 18 years old. They would live within Belhaven, they would have had regular contact with the victim and would have experienced strong sibling rivalry tendencies and would have experienced behavioural problems both at school and at home and would also likely be under the influence of drugs and or alcohol at the time of the crime. I mean they got it really down to the nose with the sibling rivalry, which makes me slightly suspicious, but okay. So the Sutton documents also revealed that both Thomas and Michael Skakel

had lied to police about what really happened on the night of October 30, 1975. Thomas told police, and remember Thomas is the older one, he was 17 at the time and he was the one who had last been seen with Martha. And he told the police that he had last seen Martha at about 9.30pm when they said their goodbyes and he went back into his house. But when Sutton investigators interviewed Thomas in 1994, he broke down in tears. By that point, he was running a bed and breakfast in Massachusetts with his wife

and two children, and he admitted to the Sutton investigators that he had actually spent 30 more minutes with Martha than he had initially said, and he didn't spare the details. He now told the Sutton investigators that in that 30 minutes, Martha and he had kissed and engaged in mutual masturbation together, which ended in orgasm. So that meant Thomas was at the scene of the crime during the time frame in which it's believed that Martha was so brutally murdered. And what's more, the Sutton Report revealed important information

about Thomas' medical history, and what they found explains very clearly why his father refused police access to it all of those years ago. It turned out that Thomas had fallen out of a moving car at the age of four. And it was a pretty terrible fall. He had fractures on both sides of his skull. He was unconscious for 10 hours and had to stay in hospital for two weeks. How did that happen?

They just threw him out the window. Fuck it up. Several doctors since that accident concluded that Thomas's very severe head injury led to mental and emotional problems for the young Thomas. The phrase, no shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So classic. And just like Phineas Gage, after Thomas's accident... Not to confuse everybody, if you don't know what we're talking about, go read the book. And just like Phineas Gage, after Thomas's accident... Not to confuse everybody, if you don't know what we're talking about, go read the book. I look it up. Everyone knows who Phineas Gage is. Look, I'm not having people telling us they don't know what the fuck we're talking about. Thomas's personality changed entirely after his accident.

He was prone to temper tantrums and violent outbursts. A former nanny of the Skakels even reported that, quote, Thomas Skakel was the most disturbed child I have ever met. In 1976, a year after the murder, Rushton Skakel hired Dr. Stanley Lessie to examine his son Thomas with hopes of ruling out any possibility of an organic or psychological problem that could have precipitated violent behaviour. But again, this kind of backfired. It was found that Thomas was particularly immature, impulsive and erratic and bear in mind this is all coming out in 1976, a year after the murder of Martha. And this doctor said that it was likely that Thomas was

suffering from a feeling of unresolved guilt over his mother's death, as well as psychosexual confusion. Thomas underwent a sentence completion test with Dr. Lessie, where he had to complete the sentence with whatever came to mind. And the results are pretty revealing. I've never heard of this being done to assess someone's mental state before. My closest thing is the word association game that Mark plays in Peep Show. So this was all going on a year after the murder of Martha Moxley,

but Rushton obviously suppresses this all and we don't hear about this until much, much later. But let's have a look at his word association slash sentence completing games and just how they uh give us a little pee pee peephole into the mind of thomas skakel so okay we'll play the parts i'll be dr lessee hannah is going to be at this point 17 18 year old thomas skakel sex makes me feel... Unhappy. Scribble, scribble, scribble. Uh-oh. After I make love to her... I get drunk.

Oh, no. Oh, no. More scribble, scribble, scribble. My sexual desires... Are very low. Curious. As a child, my greatest fear was... Mother. Oh no. Panic. Still is. When she refused me, I slapped her. Oh no. A man would be justified in beating a woman who did not do as he said.

Thank you so much for coming in, Mr. Thomas Skakel. Don't call me. I will call you. Goodbye. Yeah, bad stuff. But if you think that's bad, let's have a look at the younger Skakel, Michael. Michael may have had an alibi, but he was an absolute maniac. And the Sutton Report looked into him as well. And the report found that neighbours, friends and local police

had endless stories about Michael Skakel. He used to drive like a maniac, he drank like a fish, he was very violent, he threatened his family and he killed animals. And the Sutton Report quoted Michael's own father telling investigators that Julie, the girl Skakel, the sister, was terrified of her little brother because of his hair-trigger temper and violence. A few years after the murder of Martha Moxley, Michael was charged with drunk driving, without a license, because he almost ran over a police officer in a Jeep.

There was a girl in the year above me at school. She passed her driving test, and she was driving for a week before she overtook a police car on the A41 doing 75 miles an hour and she lost her license. I think if you do something major within the first year, it's just gone. So she had to retake her test. She had like a driving ban for like 18 months and then she had to retake her test and get a new license. Wow. So after Michael almost ran over a police officer in his Jeep, in order to get out of doing any jail time due to his history of insane behaviour and alcohol abuse, he was sent to somewhere called the Elan School instead of prison. The Elan School, which in 1978 cost $30,000 per year, which is $140,000

in today's post-crash money, is essentially a private treatment centre and school for troubled rich kids in Maine. When Michael first arrived at Elan, he was immediately made to sit for a three-hour recorded interview. During the interview, Michael was repeatedly asked why he thought he was there, to which Michael replied that something had happened, but he refused to elaborate. The interviewer tried pressing him, but Michael would just laugh, and at several points described

a girl with a golf club embedded in her chest. Every time he mentioned this, Michael would laugh harder. When the interviewer asked him what was so funny about a girl with a golf club in her chest, Michael would just keep laughing. Don't like that. Nope. And it's also scary stuff because by 1978, Michael was 15 when Martha is murdered. So he's getting on for 18 now.

So there's also not much longer they can keep him at this school. So they've got a very limited amount of time, even being a very expensive sort of personality rehab center for rich kids to like actually work on him so i would be particularly perturbed if i was this interviewer so yeah he's just laughing away acting fucking crazy and then we're skipping ahead now to 1996 at which point somebody phoned up the tip line of the TV show Unsolved Mysteries, claiming that they had lived with Michael Skakel in the Elan school in the late 70s. And this anonymous caller even said that Michael had confessed to multiple people at that school

that he had murdered Martha Moxley with a golf club, saying, quote, I'm going to get away with murder. I'm a Kennedy. And the Sutton report is the report that just keeps on giving because we've got even more. Honestly, hire these people. Yeah. The Sutton files also claim that Michael once confessed to the murder of Martha Moxley during a group therapy session at the Elan school, but very quickly changed his mind and took it back. Do you think the Elan school just kept all this quiet because if they like report it and then the police investigate and then take him to you know prison for murdering his friend when he was 15 that his dad will just stop paying them all of that money? I mean probably and also they they might not have wanted to get a

reputation for narking on their residents. Well, probably. Because then people will stop sending their children there. You're right. They're like, look, he's done something and we don't want to fucking know about it. So just put him in one of your group therapy and every time he starts talking about a golf club,

just la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la. Oh, man. Michael didn't have a particularly nice time at the Elan School, despite all of the money it cost his father. He actually escaped three times. And over the following ten years, he was bounced around various different treatment centres. And all of that moving might have kept him out of some trouble,

but it also kept him well out of the reach of investigators looking into the murder of Martha. And the report actually revealed that even though Michael hadn't sustained a head injury like his brother, his psychological and emotional difficulties were actually much worse than Thomas's. A doctor had concluded that Michael's pathology was evident of borderline features and his intense fear of abandonment would lead him to react with inappropriate anger. When Michael was interviewed by Sutton investigators in 1992, he admitted to them that he'd lied to the police about going to bed after returning home from his cousin's house at 11.20pm.

Because remember, that was Michael's alibi, that he had gone to his cousin's, watched Monty Python and then come home at around 11.20. Now he's saying he hadn't gone to bed. Still, though, the police were convinced that the murder of Martha Moxley had taken place between 9.30pm and 10pm. So even though he had lied about what time he'd come home from his cousin's house, they didn't think that he could have killed her. So I just feel like how are they so tightly drawing that distinction of the time frame within which she died? That is weird to me. That's never really explained. But that's where we are. But let's get back to what Michael told the Sutton Associates in 1992. He said that after getting back from his cousin's house, Michael walked past the Moxley house to another house of an unnamed woman,

who he would regularly watch through a window because she was often naked. Michael said that on this night, he'd watched her lying on her sofa for a while. But because she was wearing pyjamas, he'd lost interest. I didn't come here for dino pants. Exactly. Fuck you. Which is almost exclusively what I wear. But it is a great protection against peeping toms who will wank off to you.

It's like getting tattoos so you don't get cannibalized. So now, just wear dino pyjamas because no one will be after that. So yes, Michael said he saw this woman wearing pyjamas, his usual sort of wank bank material, and he lost interest. So he left this woman's house and climbed a tree outside of Martha Moxley's bedroom window. Michael then called her name, but when there was no response, he said he had a wank in the tree and then climbed down he said he then stopped under a street light between his house and the moxley's at which point he said he felt quote someone's presence in the area where martha's body was eventually discovered

alarm bells absolutely fucking screaming alarm bells yeah so then michael says that he yelled out into the darkness and had thrown a rock into the trees before running home out of fear would you if you were scared in the street by the feeling of a presence suddenly start screaming in the street and throwing rocks wouldn't be my go-to no i'm not much of a rock thrower no good more of a run of a way yes so i think is this possibly suggesting that the scream that dorothy moxley hears or the man's voice that dorothy moxley hears is it him shouting in the street And did him throwing a rock at the tree set the dogs off barking in the neighbourhood? I don't know. Michael also continues then saying that when he got to his house, because all of the doors of his house were locked, he had to climb to

the second floor and get in through his bedroom window, making it into his bed, into his house for 11.30pm. So that is a big difference to what he first said. Yes, so what, if anything, can we take away from that story? Mark Furman, a former LAPD detective famous for his role in the OJ Simpson case, wrote the book on Martha's case called Murder in Greenwich. And in this book, Mark Thurman suspects that this unknown woman who Michael claimed he regularly peeped on was actually Martha Moxley. We already know that Dorothy Moxley was downstairs asleep in front of the TV at this time, wearing her nightgown. So maybe Michael was at the Moxley house.

Yeah, so was he at the Moxley house? Did he look through the downstairs window, see Dorothy in her dino pants and dressing gown? And he's like, no thanks, climbs the tree in order to sneak in a look at Martha. Thurman also speculates that the only reason that Michael made an admission as embarrassing as wanking in a tree

was probably to lead the investigators into believing that he thought that Martha was still alive. Exactly. If he's willing to admit to something so fucking gross and sad that he was wanking in a tree outside of this girl who he's in love with's house, it's because he's saying, well, I didn't know she was dead. Right. And as for why he stopped under that streetlight, Mark Furman believes that Michael might have suspected that somebody had seen him.

Yeah, and if he did shout or something had happened and he noticed that maybe people had heard him or the dog started barking, he had to think of a reason to explain why all of those things had happened. And interestingly enough, the streetlight that Michael was talking about, if you're standing underneath it, you can see straight into the

French doors and balcony of Rushton Skakel's bedroom, which is where Ken Littleton, the tutor and French Connection fan, was staying that night. So is it possible that Ken Littleton saw Michael from the house? In fact, when Littleton was interviewed by Sutton Associates, he hinted that Michael may not have been at his cousin's house watching Monty Python that night after all. Yeah, and maybe Littleton felt like he had seen it, he's a bit suspicious, but then the first fucking day you're on this new job and, like, the girl across the street gets murdered

and two of the six boys you're tutoring suddenly turn up as suspects. And also, you've got yourself a pretty sweet gig there. Not saying it's easy, but it was probably a decent amount of money until he quit because he wasn't getting paid properly. But, like, I'm guessing the reason that he didn't just say the next day that he'd seen Michael if he did is because he was like, let's wait and see what happens. Littleton also mentioned that he had a pretty definitive feeling that the murder of Martha Moxley was committed after 10.30pm. But yet again,

he said that he couldn't elaborate on why he felt so definite about that. Why are you saying that if you can't elaborate? Yeah. Littleton also suggested that Michael may have gone out and thrown pebbles at Martha Moxley's window. But when he was asked if he actually saw Michael do this, Ken Littleton said no. So then the investigators basically go, if you had seen him, though, you wouldn't tell us, would you? And Ken Littleton says, no, I wouldn't. Yeah, yeah. So I think that my theory is correct.

So obviously, I think we can all agree on the reasons why Ken Littleton may not have told the police at the time what he had seen or suspected. But why didn't he come forward later? Especially when the police were harassing him in Nantucket and he was losing his fucking job all over the place. Why didn't he come out then and tell the police what he thought he might have seen or what he thought he might have known? Well, one possible reason, maybe because one night when he was in Quebec,

a few years after the murder, Ken Littleton was beaten, robbed and left to die in the street. The beating was so bad that Littleton was actually, robbed and left to die in the street. The beating was so bad that Littleton was actually clinically dead for a few minutes. And he could never prove it. But Littleton had always suspected that the Skakels had ordered a hit on his life. I agree with you, Ken. Or at the very least, just hired somebody to come and shit him up.

Now Michael Skakel's criminal history and psychological profile paint a picture of a violent and angry young man, more than capable of murder even though he was only 15 at the time. But what could have been his motive? Well, multiple sources who are close to him said that Martha had actually at one point been Michael Skakel's girlfriend, but that the two had broken up. Martha's diary stated that she knew Michael still had feelings for her and that she was aware his older brother Thomas was interested in her too. This coupled with the fact that brothers Thomas and Michael had an incredibly explosive sibling rivalry makes it easy to see how Michael would have been absolutely enraged

when he saw Thomas and Martha going off together that night, especially after he asked Martha to come watch Monty Python with him. And she was like, no thanks. And in his book, this is what Mark Furman lists as the reasons why he thinks that the 15-year-old Michael killed Martha Moxley. We've got his psychological profile and his rivalry with Thomas. Michael told someone at the Elan school that he'd seen the murder weapon quote, embedded in her chest, which is surely something that only the killer could know. Michael changed his story 17 years after the fact and placed himself at the crime scene. Michael lied to the

Greenwich police in 1975 about what he did on the night of the murder. He even claimed to not remember when he'd first heard of Martha's death, even though he was at home when the body was discovered and spoke with journalists that very day. And finally, Michael's fellow patients at the Elan School claimed that Michael had confessed to killing Martha multiple times. It's a pretty convincing set of circumstances. It really is, especially when you lay it out in a very clear bullet point set like that. However, a lot of people, including the Sutton investigators and Mark Furman himself, have said that it's not impossible that more than one person was involved in the murder of Martha.

We know that the killing took place in two stages. Martha was almost beaten to death, and then someone returned to stab her through the neck and drag her under the pine tree. It is possible that Michael beat Martha and killed her, and Thomas maybe helped him hide the body. It's also possible that the older Skakel siblings were aware of this whole mess and covered for their little brothers the entire time. After the explosive revelations in the Sutton Report were leaked by

that freelancer, three books and a television show were made about the case. And then, when Mark Furman published his book on the case in 1998, the state of Connecticut appointed an investigator and a one-man grand jury in the Moxley case. After 18 months, it was decided that there was, in fact, enough evidence to charge Michael Skakel with the murder. And in 2000, so 25 years after the murder, Michael Skakel was arrested and charged. But he was soon released on a $500,000 bail. He was originally arraigned in a juvenile court as he had been 15 at the time of the murder, but a judge decided that he should now be tried as an adult. By that point, by 2000, Michael Skakel was a 39-year-old balding, chubby husband

and father. In 2002, a quarter of a century after Martha's death, a judge indicted Michael Skakel for murder. But by the time that the trial began, the defence had had a 25-year head start. There was absolutely no physical evidence linking Michael to the crime scene. All of the evidence against him was circumstantial, from the murder weapon to neighbours' accounts of a young Michael murdering squirrels with a golf club. Even Michael's former classmates from Elan testifying that Michael had confessed to them was not concrete enough,

especially since two of Michael's brothers and cousins testified that Michael was indeed at the cousins' house watching Monty Python at the time of the murder. But the prosecution played the jury a recording of Michael in which he said he'd masturbated in that tree outside of Martha's bedroom that same night. The recording was from a proposal Michael had put together and sent to some book publishers because he wanted to tell his side of the story, which is utterly staggering. But you'll be glad to hear it was never written and it certainly was never published. Hey man, sex sells. And they were like, what have you got for us? And he was like, well, actually, I was wanking up a tree that night, so I definitely didn't murder Martha.

They're like, great, could you just send us that in a taped proposal? Just tapping her chest like oh is this thing working? And the prosecution really leaned into the three-ring circus element of the courtroom and they played this recording whilst showing the jury very graphic images of Martha's body. When you put together the findings from the Sutton Report and the excerpts from Martha's diary describing Michael's troubling behaviour toward her, it was quite difficult to not be persuaded, and the jury were well on their way.

On 30 August 2002, Michael Skakel was sentenced to 20 years to life for the murder of Martha Moxley. But Michael's defence team didn't give up there. No, they roped in Kobe Bryant's cousin, Tony. Tony Bryant was a former classmate of Michael Skakel's and said that on the night Martha was murdered, he and two of his friends from the Bronx were in Belhaven. Tony Bryant said that these two friends told him that they had wanted to rape Martha that night. Tony said that he didn't come forward at the time

because his mother advised him not to because she was worried that as a black man he would probably be framed for the murder. Michael's defence team requested a new trial on the basis of this revelation attempting to spin the old suspicion that the killing was the work of outsiders from the poorer areas of New York. But the judge was having none of it. He said that Tony Bryant's testimony wasn't credible

and denied the defence's request. And Michael Skakel remained behind bars. What are you doing, Tony Bryant? Like, what did they promise you to get you to say that? I don't know. And maybe it's true. Who knows? But these two random friends from the Bronx who were up in Belhaven to do whatever, like, doesn't outweigh all the evidence that there is against Michael Skakel. And it doesn't even end there. Because this story ends like any other in which a member of America's upper echelons is facing justice for something that they definitely did.

Seven years into his sentence in September 2010, Michael Skakel's legal team filed yet another appeal, this time arguing that his attorney had failed to call an important witness. And this very important witness who they failed to call in the original trial, was called Dennis Osario. Apparently he was also at the Skakel's cousin's house that night watching Monty Python. And this appeal worked. In 2013, a Connecticut judge ordered a new trial for Michael. And after spending 11 years on the inside,

Michael Skakel was released and allowed to walk free. That is shocking. And the only thing I can think as to why this worked is because Dennis Osario, unlike the other Skakel brothers and Skakel cousins who were there at the house that day, is seemingly an independent person, like seemingly not related to the family and therefore it's like they're saying he doesn't have as much reason to lie but like the Skakels are incredibly wealthy they could have paid this guy later down the line like I don't know I just don't see why this is compelling and we already also know that even if Michael Skakel had stayed there until 1120 like he said he did he could still have killed Martha. We don't know for sure when Martha died.

The police just seem fixated with the idea that she died between 9.30 and 10. But as far as I can see from the research, I can't see where the evidence is that that is definitively the time frame. In 2016, the Connecticut Supreme Court temporarily reinstated Michael's murder conviction after a court ruled that his legal representation at the trial was competent. But, like the bouncy ball that this case is, the decision was reversed back very soon and Michael's conviction was vacated again. And on the 30th of October 2020, the 45th anniversary of Martha Moxley's murder, the state of Connecticut announced that Michael Skakel would not be retried. The case once again went cold and Martha Moxley's killer walked free.

It's shocking, this story, because I feel like, I know it's 1975 and obviously I have to keep reminding myself of that, but just the fact of this heavily heavily like gated community very very rich houses rich people as we have talked about throughout and there's not one bit of CCTV there's not one bit of like surveillance there's not just like guards patrolling like that's what I have in my head and literally nobody saw anything there is no proper time frame the police absolutely fucked the investigation from literally the minute they got the phone call and the person who when

you lay out all of the evidence for me very obviously seems to have done this michael skakel gets away based on an argument that doesn't even disprove yeah that he did it because he admits i was there till 11.20 but then I came home and then I climbed up a tree and wanked outside of Martha Moxley's fucking bedroom window. And if that had been it maybe you could say okay. But all the stuff of feeling a presence, walking back

under the streetlight, stopping there and yelling out and throwing stones like, come on. Fucking hell. But there you go. that is the story of the murder of Martha Moxley Michael Skakel

definitely did it yeah it really does look that way doesn't it but there you go he's out and about

yep and there you go there you have it Martha Moxley and Michael Skakel if you are so inclined you can go and find Shorthand

over on Amazon Music exclusively. And we also did another thing, Filthy Rituals, six episodes. The press have fucking loved it, actually. So go and check that out. All episodes are available for free on Global Player or they're dropping one week at a time everywhere else. So we'll see you on one of those many platforms.

Soon, probably, hopefully. Yeah. Bye. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection. Claudine Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime, and there's much more to come.

This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On the Media. To listen, subscribe to On the Media wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mom's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now, exclusively on Wondery Plus. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met.

But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance but it instantly moved me and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health

this is season two of Finding and this time if all goes to plan we'll be finding Andy you can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app

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