by Margaret Garrett
Even before Martha Moxley’s battered body was found under a pine tree in the Moxley’s yard on the afternoon of October 31, 1975, the rumors were already swirling around the community of Belle Haven that 17-year-old Tommy Skakel was the last person to have been seen with her. By the next morning, the whole “world” would know this because Tommy’s brother, 15 year-old Michael Skakel, would tell them. Michael was sitting on his front lawn, observing the activity at the Moxley home when he was approached by reporters. He freely answered their questions until a newswoman asked a rather callous and inappropriate question…“Hey, didn’t your mother choke to death at a barbecue?”
In fact, years before, one of Michael’s aunts had choked to death, at a barbecue, on shish kabob…Michael’s mother had died, just two years earlier, from brain cancer. This question reduced Michael to tears.
There’s no question that the death of Anne Reynolds Skakel had a profound effect on the entire Skakel household. Rushton Sr., 
already an alcoholic before his wife’s death, “began to live in the bottle.” On the evening of Martha’s murder, tutor Ken Littleton told the police that the “older Skakel children,” including 15-year-old Michael, all had a beer with dinner at the Belle Haven Club. Tommy would later tell the police that he had four or five beers at the club and a couple of scotches.
Oddly, free-flowing alcohol, reaching into their own parents’ medicine cabinets, and the easy access to cash, kept the children in their own community, and often right at home, where they could experiment with alcohol and substances with impunity.
Tommy quickly became a suspect in the murder of Martha, if not by the police, then in the eyes of the public. He was the last one seen with her. The golf club used to kill her would later be proven to have come from the Skakel home. He was known to have been flirting and rough-housing with her. Her body was found with her pants pulled down, suggesting a sexual component to the 
crime. The theory was that Tommy had been frustrated by Martha’s flirting and refusal to have sex with him. He followed her home with sex on his mind and struck her down, intending to rape her. The details and circumstances of Martha’s murder quickly became public…she was not raped. She was struck once and dragged to an area away from the street. There, she was struck again and again with such ferocity that the golf club broke into pieces. The amount of blood on the ground where she lay was estimated to be pints, indicating to investigators that she had laid there for as long as thirty minutes or more before being dragged again and stuffed up under the pine tree. The absence of injury and abrasions to her abdominal region and legs indicated that her pants were pulled down after she was dragged and placed under the tree. This odd “over-kill” tends to negate the notion that this crime was motivated by rape.
Tommy was questioned that evening after Martha’s body was found. It was a very amiable meeting. The officers knew him and they admired his athletic prowess. Even though he initially failed two lie-detector tests, they readily accepted his excuses of being 
tired and stressed. He eventually passed a third test. When the investigator requested Tommy and Michael’s school records from the private school in Belle Haven they both attended, the headmaster had an odd and pronounced reaction, all but throwing the officers out of his office, flatly refusing to honor the written consent of Rushton Skakel.
After this incident, Rush Sr. withdrew his “open-book-open-door” stance with the police, and henceforth only communicated through his lawyers. The headmaster later responded that he reacted that way because he felt they impressed on him that an arrest was imminent. Rush Sr. also reacted strongly after speaking to the headmaster, collapsing at a friend’s house after complaining of chest pain. Rush was then treated for a few weeks at a nearby facility for his alcohol dependency and released.
Shortly after his release, Dorothy Moxley recalls Rush showing up at her house, fresh from an AA meeting, drink in hand, saying that Tommy was undergoing a battery of psychological tests to prove that he didn’t murder Martha. No test results were ever delivered into the hands of investigators. Tommy struggled to finish school, then toured Europe. He took a series of jobs where he was more “babysat” than he was taught or mentored. He eventually settled down and married and is said to be very private and reclusive.
Oddly, Ken Littleton, the newly hired tutor, wasn’t looked at with much suspicion, until a neighbor woman contacted the police, voicing her “concerns” about him. Littleton was known to keep a stash of “girlie magazines” in his room. It was also reported that 
he liked to visit the gazebo on the Skakel family property in the nude and rumored that he had the habit of “skinny-dipping” in the Skakel swimming pool. Ken Littleton’s first day of employment with the Skakels was the day that Martha was murdered, a date when the temperature dipped below freezing during the night. He left his employment sometime in March, just a few months later, at the request of Rushton Sr. It hardly seems odd for a 23-year-old unmarried man to have a stash of “girlie magazines,” but the notion of Littleton swimming in a pool that was most likely frozen or sitting in the raw on a snow-covered gazebo seems highly unlikely.
Still, Ken Littleton was the “perfect suspect” for many reasons. He fit the “outsider theory” perfectly. His first day on the job was the day that Martha was killed. He was a stranger, a tall, well-muscled man, athletic…strong. Littleton was investigated longer and more rigorously than any other suspect in this case. There are many who believe to this day that Littleton committed the murder.
Before being hired as the Skakel tutor, Littleton had a promising future and unremarkable past. After the murder, his life went to hell, fast. After resigning his post in the spring, he claimed that Skakel suddenly turned against him. By this point, Skakel was no longer cooperating with the police and had lawyered up. When the police began to look at Littleton as possible suspect, he was apparently fired. That summer Littleton shed his preppy persona and began to drink heavily. He moved to Nantucket and was soon arrested for a string of burglaries aboard boats and stores. Littleton claimed these were drunken antics…based on dares. When the Greenwich police got wind of Littleton’s arrest, they felt certain that they had found their man!
The Greenwich police had been concentrating on Tommy Skakel, but when Rushton Sr. stopped cooperating, they began to focus on Littleton. Despite the fact that he had never met Moxley and that they could not connect him to the crime, he was still a suspect, even though his whereabouts and activities at the Skakel home on the night of the murder were accounted for by several members of family and staff during the time period in which the police believed that the murder had occurred.
Based on him confessing to burglary, the Greenwich police became convinced that he was a murderer! After his arrest, he 
was unable to maintain or get a job teaching. He moved to Florida were his problems continued. He was arrested several times for DUI, disorderly conduct, trespassing and shoplifting. He was then diagnosed with severe manic depression (bipolar disorder) and was hospitalized many times. He married and then quickly divorced. He moved to Canada where his problems continued. He was mugged and beaten so badly that in the aftermath he was at one point clinically dead. He became convinced that this was a “failed hit on his life” made by the Skakel family.
All the while, the Greenwich police were so convinced of his guilt that they actually tried to prove that he was a serial killer, and attempted to tie his activities to a series of unsolved murders along the eastern seaboard. They could no more tie him to those murders, however, than they could tie him to Martha Moxley’s murder. The Greenwich police were convinced his personal problems were the result of his feelings of guilt over the Moxley murder. At the very least, they felt he knew something that he was not revealing. Perhaps Mark Fuhrman best describes why Littleton shouldn’t have been a suspect in his book, Murder in Greenwich:
“Six reasons why I don’t think Ken Littleton committed this crime:
“Littleton had no money, no powerful family behind him, no clout. If Littleton had murdered Martha Moxley, he would NOT have gotten away with it.”
Michael Skakel was not considered a suspect by the Greenwich police, in large part due to his brother John passing a polygraph examination, regarding Michael’s whereabouts that evening. Michael had a solid alibi during the narrow window of thirty 
minutes in which the police believed the crime was committed. He was reportedly at his cousin’s house watching television. On the other hand, a staff member reported that after the murder, the Skakel children all treated Michael as if he knew something. They acted differently towards him, were somewhat kinder. Shortly thereafter, Michael was allegedly involved in vandalizing a kitchen at a nearby school. Rush Sr. reportedly whipped out his checkbook and offered to build them a new kitchen.
Later evaluations revealed problems with bed wetting and cruelty to animals… Michael was known to beat chipmunks and squirrels to death that wandered onto the property. Some said he also killed the neighbor’s cats. It was unclear whether he actually wore his mother’s dresses or just took comfort from them, sleeping next to them. His fights with his brother Tommy got out of control, and if Rushton Sr. couldn’t subdue Michael by sitting on him, they would opt to call a neighbor, Mr Phelps. Phelps was such a big and imposing man that the mere mention of his name would often de-escalate the situation.
Michael would often pitch a fit if he didn’t get his way and his own sister, Julie, reported that she was deathly afraid of him. He would steal things from local stores and the shop owners became accustomed to calling Rush Sr., seeking reimbursement. In March of 1978, Michael was arrested for driving without a license, speeding, failure to comply and driving while intoxicated. Approaching the scene of an accident, he apparently didn’t pull over as directed and nearly ran over the officer on the scene which led to a high speed police chase which ended with him crashing into a tree. Fortunately, no one was seriously hurt. He would plead guilty to all of the charges except the DUI with the understanding that if he agreed to enter a treatment facility for six months, this charge would be dropped. When he was admonished for the crime, instead of realizing how fortunate it was that no one was hurt, he reportedly stated, “Next time, I won’t get caught.”
The family later admitted that Michael spent a couple of years at the Elan facility (reportedly, a rich kid’s reform school), but 
other sources suggest that he was in and out of treatment facilities for the next twelve years! His recorded entrance evaluation at the Elan facility was extremely bizarre. He kept visualizing a girl with a golf club sticking out of her chest. He would answer any resulting questions by laughing. His family reported that he was a member of the American Speed Sking Squad but proving where and how he spent all those years is very difficult. Patient confidentiality precludes such information being given out. Michael repeatedly tried to escape from the Elan facility, calling it a prison. How ironic that he would emerge from a place that he called prison, where he was safe from police interrogation, and perhaps, from destroying himself, only to be incarcerated again years later for murder.
The next installment will cover the events that reopened the murder investigation as well as The Sutton Report and dramatic changes to both Tommy and Michael’s alibis. Where exactly was Rushton Skakel the night Martha was murdered and when did he come to know that she had been killed?
Please click below to view Margaret Garrett’s earlier posts covering the Michael Skakel – Martha Moxley murder case:
Kennedy Cousin Michael Skakel Granted New Trial in Martha Moxley Murder Case
Cover-Up in Connecticut? The Martha Moxley Murder Investigation
Martha Moxley’s Final Night on Earth
Margaret Garrett resides in New England. She is a retired RN, who has been married to the same wonderful man for over thirty-five years. She is the mother of grown children and “Nana,” to two, delightful grandchildren. She enjoys gardening, reading true crime, trial watching and blogging.