Framed

Why Michael Skakel Spent Over a Decade in Prison for a Murder He Didn't Commit

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

• Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781510701786
• Edition: 0
• Subtopic: Law Theory & Practice

PART I

The Stage

CHAPTER 1

The Murder

Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies.

—Edna St. Vincent Millay

Sometime between 6:30 and 7:00 p.m., on the evening of Thursday, October 30, 1975, 15-year-old Martha Moxley finished a grilled cheese sandwich and left her home on Walsh Lane to socialize around her Belle Haven neighborhood.

Belle Haven is a well-heeled enclave of 120 houses on Long Island Sound in Greenwich, Connecticut. Eighteen months earlier, the Moxleys had relocated there from Piedmont, California. Martha was a sophomore at Greenwich High School. Her brother, John, was a senior. Martha’s father, David, who headed the New York office of Touche Ross, an international consulting and accounting firm, was away that night in Atlanta for a conference.

It was Halloween eve, a popular anniversary that Belle Haven teens referred to as “Mischief Night” or “Hell Night.” Neighborhood children played pranks such as ringing doorbells, toilet papering houses, soaping windows, and throwing eggs. As she left home, Martha slipped into her blue winter parka against unseasonable cold; temperatures that night would dip just below freezing.

According to Martha’s mother, Dorthy Moxley, Martha and her friend Helen Ix set out from the Moxley property with 11-year-old neighbor, Geoffrey “Geoff” Byrne, who would unwillingly play a pivotal role in Martha’s murder and whose life would be destroyed by the event nearly as surely as Martha’s. The trio headed for the Skakel house in search of Michael and his older brother Tommy. According to the Skakel gardener, Franz Wittine, all six Skakel children—Rush Jr., 19; Julie, 18; Tommy, 17; John, 16; Michael, 15; David, 12; and Stephen, 9—together with their new 23-year-old tutor, Kenneth “Kenny” Littleton; their cousin James “Jimmy” Dowdle, age 17; and Julie Skakel’s friend Andrea Shakespeare, age 16, were having a 6:00 p.m. dinner at the nearby Belle Haven Club. Littleton, a football coach and teacher at Brunswick, the private day school the Skakel boys attended, had been hired a week earlier by Rushton “Rucky” Skakel Sr., father of the Skakel children and my mother’s brother, to help look after the children and to tutor Tommy and Michael. Rucky was away on a hunting trip, and would not return until the following evening. Rucky’s wife, Anne Reynolds Skakel, had passed away two years before after a prolonged battle with brain cancer. Littleton was celebrating his first day on the job by drinking with his teenage charges. Rucky, an alcoholic, exerted only anemic parental supervision. A minor household army, including a cook, a housekeeper, a gardener, and, now, Littleton, managed the chaotic homestead.

After leaving the Skakels’, Martha, Helen Ix, and Geoff continued, in Helen’s words, “messing around” Belle Haven, and then stopped for a short visit at the home of the Moukad family on Otter Rock Drive, where Martha ate some ice cream. There, they picked up another neighborhood friend, Jackie Wetenhall. The group, now a quartet, left the Moukad home and headed back toward the Skakels’.

According to various trial testimony, Littleton returned with the kids from the Belle Haven Club between 8:30 p.m. and 8:45 p.m. For about 15 or 20 minutes they all remained in the house, mostly drinking and playing games. Jimmy Dowdle recalled drinking at least one more Heineken along with Michael and John, with whom he was playing backgammon on the enclosed back sunporch. Michael recalls breaking out two Heinekens for Jimmy and John. As he handed them the bottles, according to his testimony during his 2013 habeas hearing, Michael looked down toward the Skakels’ backyard chipping tee and saw a group of large boys he did not recognize on the lawn. Michael also shared this detail with author Richard Hoffman in 1997, who was ghostwriting Michael’s memoir, four years before the identity of these figures would become a crucial factor in this case. Among those strangers, in all likelihood, was the murderer—or murderers—who would bludgeon Martha Moxley to death 75 minutes later.

On the day Martha’s body was discovered, Helen Ix told police that after leaving the Moukads’ house the night before, she, Martha, and Geoff appeared at the Skakels’ at “about 9:10 p.m.” Michael told police that at approximately 9:10 p.m., he saw Martha, Helen, and Geoff come into the backyard. He motioned for them to go to a door between the sunporch and the mudroom where he let them into the house. He told police that he led his three friends through the house and out the kitchen door into the driveway. Michael said he and his friends then climbed into Rucky’s Lincoln Continental that was parked by the side kitchen entrance to talk and listen to eight-track tapes.

“Martha was my friend,” Michael told me recently. “I would have liked to kiss her, but I would have liked to kiss just about any girl back then.” Michael, a virgin in early puberty, had teen crushes on Francie, the daughter of a family friend from nearby Armonk, New York, and on his Belle Haven neighbor Jackie Wetenhall. The runt of the Skakel litter, he was a scrawny kid who was always the smallest person in his class and at summer camp. “I was five foot five, weighed about 120 pounds and looked like a girl,” he said. “Martha was my size and could have kicked my ass.” The photo of Michael stolen by Detective Frank Garr that prosecutor Jonathan Benedict presented to Michael’s jury, without objection from Michael’s attorney, Mickey Sherman, depicted a beefy Michael four years after the murder. By then, he had passed puberty and had spent 24 months doing push-ups and bulking up for self-preservation at Élan, a brutal Maine reform school and drug rehabilitation facility he was attending.

Tommy told police that between 9:15 p.m. and 9:20 p.m., he had gone out to the Lincoln to find a tape. He climbed in the front seat beside Martha. Martha’s diary revealed that she, Michael, Tommy, and several other teenagers from Belle Haven enjoyed a close friendship, often socializing at each other’s homes. Martha and Tommy Skakel had developed mutual crushes.

Around 9:15 p.m., Rush Jr. along with John and their cousin Jimmy, having finished their backgammon game, appeared in the driveway, saying they needed to use the car to take Jimmy back to the Terrien/Dowdle home, a stone gothic fortress known as Sursum Corda (Latin for “lift up your hearts,” the opening line to the Eucharistic prayer). Sursum Corda sat on Jimmy’s mother, Georgeann Terrien’s, sprawling back-country estate 11 miles away, over a narrow, winding two-lane. The boys all intended to watch the 10:00 p.m. American premier of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Rush Jr., a Dartmouth junior, had fallen in love with the British screwball comedy when he saw it with a test audience in Hanover, New Hampshire, and was anxious to showcase it for his brothers and cousin.

In the 1990s, Michael told investigators from Sutton Associates—a Nassau County (New York) investigative firm that Rucky Skakel hired in 1992 to re-investigate the Moxley murder—that Martha declined his invitation to come with them to Sursum Corda, citing her 9:30 p.m. curfew. Michael and Martha made plans to go trick-or-treating the following night. With that, Rush Jr. backed the car out onto the street and headed off to Sursum Corda with his brothers John and Michael and his cousin, Jimmy, leaving Helen Ix, Martha, Geoff, and Tommy standing in the driveway. The facts of this departure and the occupants of the car have never been plausibly disputed. Tommy and Jimmy told this to police in 1975. John did as well; on December 9, 1975, he passed a polygraph administered by Connecticut State Police, asking him, “On October 30, from 9:30 to 10:30 p.m., were you with Mike, Rush, and James Terrien?” Georgeann Dowdle, Jimmy Dowdle’s sister (of the same first name as their mother, Georgeann Terrien), told police in November 1975 that she remembered seeing John, Michael, Rush Jr., and her brother arriving at Sursum Corda “just before 10:00 p.m.” A 1992 police report confirms the approximate time of the Lincoln’s departure from the Skakel home, as well as the four occupants of the car.

A few minutes after the Lincoln exited the driveway (around 9:20 p.m.), Helen Ix and Geoff decided to leave. Helen testified in 2002 that she felt like a “third wheel” because Martha and Tommy became “playful … flirtatious” at the end of the darkened driveway. Helen also had a 9:30 p.m. curfew. “It was time to go home,” she testified. It was the last time she saw her friend Martha alive.

A gentleman at 11 years old, Geoff walked Helen to her door and then disappeared into a nightmare that would not end until his own death five years later. The day after searchers discovered Martha’s body, Geoff told the police that, after escorting Helen to her house, he heard “footsteps following him” and bolted home with someone in pursuit. He was too spooked, he said, to turn and see who was dogging him.

At approximately 9:30 p.m., only 10 minutes after Helen and Geoff departed the Skakel driveway, Julie drove Andrea home in the family station wagon, according to Julie’s October 31, 1975, interview. While she was in the driveway waiting for Andrea to get in the car, Julie “observed a shadow of a person” running in front of her house in a crouched position. She told police the figure disappeared into the wooded area adjacent to the asphalt. Andrea confirmed to police that she, too, heard the figure running by her. For many years various homicide investigators wondered about the identity of this mysterious figure that both girls saw or heard only 25 minutes before Martha’s murder.

On October 31, 1975, Tommy told police that after his brothers and Helen and Geoff left, he and Martha chatted for a few minutes, and said goodnight. He watched Martha walk toward the rear yard, and then he went into the side door of his house. Eighteen years later, Tommy changed his story, telling Sutton Associates investigators in an October 1993 interview that as soon as his sister, Julie, drove off, he and Martha snuck behind the toolshed and engaged in a sexual encounter that lasted 20 minutes, and ended in mutual masturbation to orgasm. Following their dalliance, around 9:50 p.m., the two rearranged their clothes and Martha said goodnight. Just before he ducked in the kitchen door, Tommy watched Martha hurrying across the Skakel rear lawn chipping tee toward her house, 20 minutes late for her curfew. It would have been a three-minute walk but for the savage ambush that extinguished her young life. When police discovered Martha’s body, they found that she had written the name “Tom” on her left moccasin.

Julie returned from dropping off Andrea at 9:55 p.m., a fact she has attested to on many occasions, including a March 1993 interview under hypnosis. Julie recounted that when she pulled into her driveway, she was frightened to see a large man, bigger than any of her brothers, “crouched, big, dark, maybe even hooded,” dashing across the Skakel property between her car and the front of her house. Julie recalled that the figure was carrying an object in his left hand, and ran across the driveway and into the hedge only feet from the toolshed, where Tommy and Martha had just completed their make-out session. Julie told me that she watched terrified from her car as the figure sprinted south to north the full length of the Skakel home. I believe that this man may have been one of Martha’s murderers closing in for the kill.

Connecticut medical examiner Elliot Gross, who performed Martha’s autopsy, originally estimated that Martha died between 9:30 p.m. and 12 p.m. the following day when her body was discovered, “but closer to 9:30 p.m.” The Greenwich police sought outside help to determine a more exact time of death. They consulted one of the country’s preeminent forensic pathologists, Houston’s Joseph Jachimczyk. Dr. Jachimczyk established the time between 9:30 p.m. and 10:00 p.m., based on the condition of Martha’s bladder and the three ounces of unabsorbed liquid in her stomach. Connecticut police conferred with Detroit’s medical examiner, Werner Spitz, and two New York City deputy chief medical examiners, Michael Baden and John Devlin. All of them generally concurred with Jachimczyk.

Non-forensic indicators also suggested a 10:00 p.m. time of death. Martha, who had a 9:30 p.m. curfew, had gotten into trouble the prior weekend for breaking it. In a 2014 interview with investigator Vito Colucci, Helen Ix recalled that it was important for Martha to return home by 9:30 p.m. to avoid further angering her mother. Martha’s best friend, Margie Walker, confirmed in a May 2016 interview with me that Martha intended to keep her curfew that night. Margie, who was grounded, told me that Martha promised to call as soon as she got home at 9:30 p.m. to give her the lowdown on Mischief Night. “For her to have broken curfew that night would have been really weird,” Margie recounted.

Dorthy Moxley, testifying at Michael’s trial in 2002, said she was painting in the master bedroom when, sometime between 9:30 p.m. and 10:00 p.m., she heard a loud “commotion” in the yard on the side of the house where Martha’s body would later be discovered. Mrs. Moxley testified that the ruckus consisted of “excited voices” and incessant barking. In 1983, she recalled to both reporter Leonard Levitt and Greenwich detective James Lunney that she heard Martha’s screams; she confirmed this memory during a 1993 hypnosis session encouraged by state investigators. Greenwich Police continually ignored her consistent recollection. “I have told people this over and over again and nobody has ever … paid much attention to the fact that I heard these voices,” she testified in 2002. “I have always been trying to convince them … about the voices I heard and nobody … really believed.” At Michael’s trial, she testified that the racket was so unusual and disturbing that she stopped painting and ventured to the window to look outside. Unable to penetrate the darkness, she turned on an outside porch light. After a few seconds, she switched off the light, fearing that whoever was there might see Martha’s bike on the porch and steal it.

Helen Ix testified in 2002 that, after arriving home at 9:30 p.m., she telephoned a couple of friends. At approximately 9:45 p.m., her Australian shepherd, Zock, began to bark “incessantly.” Three days after the murder, Helen told police that Zock barked until approximately 10:15 p.m. The barking became so loud and annoying that Helen put down the telephone receiver to retrieve her dog. She found Zock at the end of her driveway, “frozen” by the edge of the road, baying in the direction of the Moxleys’ driveway. Helen testified that she never had seen her dog so agitated and that he was “scared” and barking “violently.” Although Zock always came to her when she called him, Helen said that on this occasion, he refused. After a while, she gave up and went back inside. The dog barked continuously for about 25 minutes, until the family’s housekeeper went out and horsed him in. In April 1976, the Greenwich Police Department interviewed Dr. Edward Fleischli, a Pound Ridge, New York, vet, who stated, “All indications given suggest the Ix dog witnessed part and/or all of the murder.” Helen agrees. “I firmly believe the murder happened when the dog was barking,” she told me in March 2016. “Zock was always very obedient, but he was going nuts, barking excessively. He was at the edge of the Moxleys’ property barking his head off. I called and called and called him and he wouldn’t come in.”

David Skakel, who was 12 years old in 1975, testified in 2002 that Zock’s barking was so “distressed and prolonged” that he got out of bed and opened a window to see what was going on. His bedroom overlooked his family’s backyard with views of both the Ixes’ and Moxleys’ properties. He could not see the dog in the darkness, but he said he could tell from the direction of its barking that the Australian shepherd was positioned near the road at the end of Ixes’ driveway. David recently told me that Zock always barked when there were people or cars passing. But that night the barking was much closer than usual. “Zock was yelping and howling. The sound was agitated and forlorn. I had never heard it bark like that before.” On cross-examination, prosecutor Jonathan Benedict mocked David for his “ridiculous” claim that he could tell where the dog was from 100 yards away, but David says, “The foliage on either side of Walsh Lane acted as a kind of sound corridor and I could tell that Zock’s barking was not coming from over the hill the way it usually did. He never barked like that before. It was incessant.” All over Belle Haven the dogs were barking madly. One of the Moxleys’ neighbors, Cynthia Bjork, told police in 1976 she heard her springer spaniel barking wildly beginning around 9:30 p.m. At 9:50 p.m., it dashed over toward the Moxley property. The day Martha’s body was discovered, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Gorman, who lived one house north of the Moxleys on Walsh Lane, reported hearing multiple dogs barking. Kenny Littleton testified in 2002 that at 10:00 p.m. the Skakels’ elderly Irish housekeeper, Margaret “Nanny” Sweeney, asked him to go outside and investigate the “fracas.” Kenny divulged to his wife, in a 1992 conversation surreptitiously recorded by police, that he also heard dogs barking when he went outside.

John Moxley, Martha’s 17-year-old brother, told police on November 5, 1975, that, when he arrived home between 11:00 p.m. and 11:30 p.m., his mother told him Martha had not returned and that she was “a little worried about her.” John testified in 2002 that he reassured his mother that it was Mischief Night, and that Martha probably was out having fun and would be home soon. After watching the evening news, John went upstairs to bed. His mother fell asleep on the sofa in front of the television.

After Monty Python ended at 10:30 p.m., Rush Jr., John, and Michael stayed at the Terriens’ for “maybe 15, 20 minutes,” according to Rush Jr.’s 2002 testimony, and then returned home to Belle Haven. John testified that the Skakel brothers left Sursum Corda at “about 11:00, maybe a few minutes later.” The trip home had been a signature Skakel undertaking. Michael recently told me that Rush was drunk and had to pull over for a time in Glennville, Connecticut, unable to drive. Following a group consultation, 16-year-old John, who was somewhat less poached, drove the Lincoln. Under hypnosis in 1993, John confirmed that Rush “gave up the wheel” to him. “I think he said it was better if I drive,” John told the interviewer. In the spring of 1976, Rush Jr. told psychiatrist Dr. Stanley Lesse, hired by the family to evaluate Tommy, that the brothers arrived back home in Belle Haven between 11:30 and 11:45 p.m. Martha had been dead for well over an hour. At Michael’s trial, Rush Jr., John, Jimmy, and Georgeann Dowdle all gave similar accounts of their activities on the night of the murder to those that they had given to police in 1975. John, Jimmy, and Rush Jr. all maintained from the first time they were questioned that they all left with Michael for Sursum Corda at 9:30 p.m., when Martha was still alive, and returned around 11:20 p.m. As mentioned, the police felt that polygraph test that John passed in December 1975 covered all four boys.

Julie was in her bedroom at the top of the stairs when her brothers rolled in. She testified at Michael’s trial that she heard noises downstairs at 11:30, a memory that jibed with a 1993 interview under hypnosis. “I did have a TV in my room; maybe I was watching the news. I definitely got up out of my bed, opened my door,” she said under hypnosis. “The noises were downstairs, but I don’t think I went any further than the top of the steps and then I went back in my room.” Recently, she elaborated on her memories. “They made such a racket that I came out of my bedroom,” she told me in May 2016. Michael was making his usual commotion. “He was off the charts hyperactive and he was always bouncing off the walls. He never stopped. It was bedlam—laughing, shouting, and slamming doors. He made his own singular pandemonium.” As John and Rush Jr. stumbled into their rooms to retire, she could still hear Michael running around downstairs creating his customary din. Michael briefly came upstairs to the landing near Julie’s door. “I saw Andrea was gone and everyone was in bed,” he told me recently. Still high on pot and alcohol, he decided to go back outside for a walk, a detail he first disclosed to investigators in 1993, but which he’d told me and many other...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• Cast of Characters
• Timeline
• Introduction
• Part I: The Stage
• Part II: The Suspects
• Part III: The Victims
• Part IV: The Frame
• Part V: The Witnesses
• Part VI: The Lawyer
• Part VII: The Ghosts
• Epilogue
• Index