Martha Moxley’s home in Belle Haven, Connecticut, where the 15-year-old child lived for over a year before she was murdered in 1975, no longer exists.The house and property was eventually sold to a couple who owned the adjacent property. Before demolishing the former Moxley mansion in the early 2000s, the new owners graciously offered Dorthy Moxley, Martha’s mother, a final tour, but she politely declined. Whatever good memories she may have associated with their old home, her bad memories far outweighed them.
Dorthy has come a long way from the woman that she became after Martha’s murder. She remembers that her husband David would force her out of bed each morning and insist that she drive him to the train station. With their only surviving child John away at school, David felt that Dorthy had to have a reason to get up each morning. David always handled contact with the police and any other business associated with Martha’s death. When he died in 1988, Dorthy worried that she wouldn’t be able to keep up the fight for Martha on her own. She needn’t have been so concerned. Both she and her son John proved to be tireless warriors in the fight for justice.
In a curious kind of symbiosis, every time a Kennedy made the headlines for yet another serious faux pas, sexual or otherwise, interest in Martha’s murder reawakened. The prime example was the 1991 rape trial of William Kennedy Smith. His subsequent acquittal notwithstanding, the rumors started swirling that William had been a guest of the Skakels on the night of Martha’s murder. Determined to finally clear his family in connection to Martha’s murder — or at the very least provide his son Thomas with a proper defense — Rushton Skakel Sr. promptly hired Sutton Associates, a New York based private investigative firm, to reinvestigate Martha’s murder by interviewing all the principles. Ironically, instead of pointing suspicion elsewhere, the Sutton team’s expertise led them to concentrate on who they called the “Suspect Triumvirate”: Thomas Skakel, the private tutor, Ken Littleton, and for the first time, Michael Skakel.
The Sutton Report is a fascinating read. It details the dramatic changes in both Tommy and Michael Skakel’s original alibis. Tommy’s new story has Martha alive a full two hours longer than was believed by the original investigators. This not only puts her death after 11:30 pm, but Michael places himself at the murder scene, according to this new timeline. Critics of The Sutton Report argue that there is insufficient analysis of Ken Littleton, the newly hired tutor’s, possible involvement. They believe that the investigators dismissed him too easily and that his evasive answers indicate that he not only knew more about the crime than he was willing to admit, but that his bipolar disorder suggests that he was more than capable of the murder. Readers are invited to study The Sutton Report themselves and to interpret the findings to their own satisfaction.
* * * * *
In 1996, the television show, “Unsolved Mysteries,” featured the Martha Moxley murder. Their tip line reportedly received a call from a woman named Eleanor Stude who claimed to be the “then girlfriend” of Rushton Skakel Sr. She claimed to have encouraged the hiring of someone to keep an eye on the Skakel children, while she and Rushton Sr. were away on a romantic trip in California. Somehow the tip line operator garbled the information and thought the woman claimed to be a girlfriend of Michael Skakel. Mark Fuhrman would later speak to Eleanor Stude. It would be the first time that she spoke to anyone other than the tip line operator regarding this alleged trip. She couldn’t remember exactly where they vacationed, but it certainly brought up new questions for Fuhrman. When did Rushton Sr. find out about Martha’s murder? Was he called to come home, before Martha was even found? The Skakel phone records were handed over to the police without the benefit of a warrant. Greenwich police claimed they never studied the records or gleaned any valuable information from them. Then they were destroyed. Another opportunity…lost.
* * * * *
Although the whereabouts of Michael Skakel during the 1980′s is hotly debated, his family maintains he was following and competing in the American Speed Skiers circuit. Wherever Michael Skakel resides, trouble generally follows. Shortly before his DUI arrest in 1978, it was alleged that Michael was expelled from a private school in Vermont. (Thomas graduated from the same school in 1977.) The Vershire headmaster reported that Michael “threatened to strike” a woman with a ski pole. Michael denies this claim. One of the schools Michael attended sustained serious fire damage. Many students were questioned but the origins of the fire were never determined. An informant alleges he attended Father Martin’s rehab facility in Maryland with Michael in 1987. He claims that Michael would speak of some “problem” that occurred in the mid-70′s and that his father kept him shuttled in and out of facilities to keep the police away. He claimed that Michael said he hated his father and planned on hitting the talk show circuit, when he “got out.” He reportedly wanted to expose the abuse in Rehab facilities.
Michael would re-emerge in the early 90′s. He graduated from Curry College, a Massachusetts college with a special program for students with learning disabilities. It had been determined that he had dyslexia. He first went to work for his uncle Edward Kennedy’s re-election campaign in 1994. After Teddy was reelected, Michael went to work for his cousin, Michael Kennedy, who served as the head of Citizens Energy Corporation (CEC). CEC was founded by Joe Kennedy as a non-profit organization designed to assist the poor, world-wide, by generating funds to assist in providing discounted and free home heating services.
Michael served as director of CEC’s international programs. Supposedly, in 1996, on a visit to Cuba, Michael suggested to Fidel Castro that he convert an abandoned nuclear reactor into “The Atomic Hotel and Nightclub.”
The ever helpful Michael uncovered the affair his cousin Michael Kennedy was having with an under-aged babysitter or at least is credited with leaking the affair to the media. Michael insisted he was only trying to help as he insinuated himself into the situation, telling the girl’s mother and reportedly preventing the mother’s suicide. Michael soon lost his CEC job, but kept busy “planning” or “helping” with a “tell all” book he was apparently working on at the time of his indictment. The book was to be entitled, “Dead Man Talking.” He reportedly planned to expose all the Kennedy secrets. Michael would claim that the Kennedy family’s fear of this exposure prompted the withdrawal of their support of him. He had run afoul of the “Kennedy Political Machine.” Michael claimed he was threatened and that they retaliated by not only withdrawing their support but by taking steps to see “that justice would be served, in the Martha Moxley murder.”
Or as Greenwich police detective Frank Garr has always maintained: Michael Skakel simply talks too much.
Please click below to view Margaret Garrett’s earlier posts covering the Michael Skakel – Martha Moxley murder case:
Michael Skakel Lies Low (or Does He Just Lie?)
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.