Transcript
Andrew Goldman (0:00)
The Pit is back for a new season on the Pitt Podcast. Join Alok Patel and Hunter Harris as they unpack each episode after it airs, discussing the stories, real medicine and ethics behind every scene. You'll also hear from the cast and creators who bring the show to life, including Noah Wylie, Kathryn Lanassa and more. Watch the Pitt Podcast on HBO Max or wherever you get podcasts. Well, the holidays have come and gone once again, but if you've forgotten to get that special someone in your life a gift, well, Mint Mobile is extending their holiday offer of happy half off unlimited wireless. So here's the idea. You get it now, you call it an early present for next year. What do you have to lose? Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch limited time.
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Andrew Goldman (1:02)
At the beginning of this series, I asked you to consider a what do you know? Over the course of the last 11 episodes, we've trod every step of Martha Moxley's walk around Belhaven the night of October 30, 1975, many, many times. And we followed the steps of a lot of other players in this case in the ensuing years, too. Investigators, suspects, attorneys, journalists. I've done my very best to give you a lot of information about the Martha Moxley case in a manner that doesn't cut corners, doesn't edit out inconvenient facts in hopes of providing you a new answer to that original question. What do you know? Hopefully you know a lot more now than when we started. But at the end of a story like this, if you've come along the whole way, like Martha's family, like everyone involved in the case, you probably want definitive answers. Closure. I understand. As I was in the thick of production on this podcast, I found myself repeatedly fielding the same question from friends, listeners, the press. Exactly how are you planning to land this airbus, Sully? Are you going to solve this case? What do you, Andrew Goldman, really know? Given the time we've committed to listening? If it's truly a finale, surely you plan to unmask the real killer, right? Right. As a storyteller, I don't want to disappoint, though ultimately, I'm a reporter, not a detective. And although I have my theories and suspicions about what might have happened that night, as I'm sure you do too, my own thoughts on the case refuse to sit still. They're always jumping around based on new discoveries. Believe it or not, to this very day, for reasons we've explored, uncertainty defines this case. Fifty years in, there are still chapters, untold threads unexamined, several of which we'll be exploring today. You've been so patient. So let's begin the end with a biggie, with something we discussed a long, long time ago. The wait is over. So about that mysterious blood recall back in episode one, I told you about a 47 year old woman named Teresa Tirado who worked as a maid in a house in Belhaven. Tirado, in an interview with police, reported seeing smears of blood inside the house she was cleaning the morning of October 31, 1975. The house was one that Martha was very familiar with. A place where she spent a lot of time, nearly every day of her life for the preceding year and a half. A place where she wrote diary entries, hung out with friends. Her best friend Margie Walker told me about a small room on the third floor that Martha and pals turned into a kind of clubhouse where the girls would listen to Elton John or Peter Frampton and clip out phrases and pictures from magazines and paste them on the walls like a vision board, anticipating their future adventures. Yes, the house where the blood was spotted was Martha's very own. Teresa Tirado was the Moxley's maid. Here's what Tirado told police on Nov. 6, a week after the crime, with the assistance of a translator on Halloween morning at 8am she'd arrived at the Moxley house to clean it, as she'd done every Friday for the preceding year. Martha had by this point been missing for nearly 11 hours, although no one relayed this to Tirado, perhaps because she only spoke Spanish. Shortly after arriving, the police report states, Tirado observed the bedroom door of Martha's 17 year old brother, Jon Moxley to be open and his bed to be empty. Tirado recalled hearing a loud crash in the basement at 9am she did not investigate. Tirado told the cops that she first saw Jon Moxley that morning around 9:15am he was in the first floor TV room watching television with a friend. They stayed there until around 11am at which point she observed the pair go outside to the wooded area behind the house for about 10 minutes. Tirado noted that during this time she heard another crash in the basement. The police report notes, Jon Moxley came back into the house briefly, then the two boys left for good. At this point Tirado went into the TV room to clean up after them and spotted something on the table. Smears of blood, as if from three fingers is how it's phrased in the report. Tirado, still unaware that Martha was missing, didn't think anything of it and proceeded to wipe up the smears and finish cleaning the Moxley home. In their report, investigators wrote that on the basis of Tirado's interview, a recheck of the Moxley house will be made. Recheck is an interesting term. Right after the murder, the Greenwich police had questioned the entire Moxley family, including Martha's mother Dorothy and father David, as well as brother John. However, as far as I can tell, based on the police reports, they never did an initial thorough search of the Moxley home. Whatever the case, they scheduled the recheck for the following day and in the meantime summoned Jon Moxley for a follow up interview at the station. John confirmed the outlines of Tirado's story. He had in fact been watching TV with a friend from Greenwich High named John Harvey. As for that blood, John said he had no recollection of seeing any blood. Police pressed, albeit gently, might he or his friend John Harvey have cut themselves accidentally while weightlifting? No, John said. Had he heard the crashes? They asked that Tirada reported emanating from the basement. John said he had not. Was there any reason for blood to be found in the TV room? Investigators inquired. Here, John offered up a theory stating that, quote, the room is used by all members of the family and the stains that Teresa observed could have been food stains as everyone eats snacks in the room while watching the tv. Greenwich police proceeded with their recheck of the Moxley house the next day. Their report mentions a thorough search of the basement. However, it makes no reference to even setting foot in the TV room where Tirado said she'd seen the blood. Per the report, the search yielded nothing. And that seems to be where the Greenwich police's investigation into the supposed blood spotted in the Moxley house just ended. There is no further mention of it in any police documents that I've come across. Investigators didn't speak to Jon Moxley's friend John Harvey to ask him about the blood or the noises. And they never spoke again with Teresa Tirado. In December of 1975, they brought Jon Moxley back in for another round of questioning. This time with the help of their favorite investigative tool, the polygraph, John passed. Ultimately, it's impossible to know for sure what Teresa Tirado wiped up off the TV room table. That day. But let's take a moment and presume she was right, that the material she cleaned up the morning of Halloween, 1975, was in fact a blood smear. That would be significant in several ways. It would be the only blood found outside the crime scene. Yes, but there's more. Photographs of Martha's body taken at the crime scene also show a smear of blood clearly visible on the back of Martha's left inner thigh. At Michael Skakel's trial, Dr. Henry Lee testified about the mark, calling it a contact smear, theorizing that a bloody hand or fist caused could have come in contact with Martha's thigh, transferring the blood. Dr. Lee noted an additional blood smear visible in the photos that could have been left by bloody hands. The killer's hands should have a lot of blood. When you touch, you should have a lot of transfer of blood. These details made little impression at the trial, since there was never any blood tied to Michael Skakel or the Skakel home. But if what Teresa Tirado spoke bought it in the Moxley's TV room was, in fact, blood, the question remains, who left it there, when and under what circumstances? And did Greenwich investigators miss a critical opportunity to hunt down one of the only promising forensic leads in the case? When I first learned about the existence of the Teresa Torodo police report, I was shocked. No media coverage I'd ever come across even mentioned it. When I spoke with Mark Fuhrman, whose book was so pivotal in shifting public focus to Michael Skakel, I asked what he thought about Tirado's story. What did you make of the blood in the Moxley house?