Michael Speaks

Summary

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Podcast Summary:

Dead Certain: The Martha Moxley Murder
Episode: Michael Speaks
Host: Andrew Goldman (NBC News Studios)
Air Date: December 2, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode marks a pivotal point in the series, as it features Michael Skakel himself speaking about his past for the first time. The narrative weaves through the labyrinthine developments of the Martha Moxley case—how investigative focus fell on Michael in the late 1990s, the legal machinations that brought him to trial decades after the 1975 crime, and, crucially, the complex, troubled upbringing that shaped him. The episode also explores the infamous Elan School and the impact of its abusive practices, Michael’s struggle with family trauma, and the moments leading up to his arrest, all in his own words.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Media, Mark Fuhrman, and the Sutton Report

(00:59 - 22:48)

• The O.J. Simpson trial's ripple effect brought detective Mark Fuhrman, notorious for testimony and perjury, into the orbit of the Moxley case.
• Dominick Dunne, via his agent and through access to the Sutton Associates' report, connected Fuhrman with the Martha Moxley files.
• Importance of Sutton Report: Fuhrman considered the document the “Rosetta stone” (08:41) for moving the case forward, believing it contained actionable evidence against Michael Skakel.
• Fuhrman's theory placed Michael, not his brother Tommy or tutor Ken Littleton, at the center of the crime, seeing Michael’s "masturbating in a tree" confession during the Sutton interviews as an "orchestrated" story to preempt DNA evidence:

  “Not only does he put himself in a tree... right above the driveway where Martha was first attacked... but it's not that he's saying this off the cuff... He is talking to ex-FBI agents... And you have Michael making statements that puts himself at the scene.” (12:14 - 13:26)

• Fuhrman’s book, Murder in Greenwich, pressured Connecticut’s new state’s attorney toward reopening the case.

  “[The book] was the pebble that pushed the train over the mountain... I think that’s what actually pushed everything over the edge.” – Mark Fuhrman (22:26)

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2. Legal Shifts and the Grand Jury

(19:38 - 27:11)

• Long-inactive State's Attorney Donald Brown retired, replaced by Jonathan Benedict, who soon initialized a rare one-man grand jury.
• The grand jury did not call Michael or Tommy Skakel but focused investigative attention intensely on Michael for the first time.
• On January 19, 2000, it recommended Michael be charged. This moment marks Michael’s transition from near-invisibility in the case to the public figure at the center of a national sensation.

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3. Michael Skakel Speaks—Family, Trauma, and Upbringing

(28:34 - 46:40)

• First-Person Introduction:

  "My name is Michael Skakel. And why am I being interviewed? I mean, that's kind of a big question, isn't it?" (28:34)

• The Skakel Family Environment:
  • Michael and brother Stephen reminisce about their father’s harsh, devoutly Catholic, and sometimes violent parenting:

    “He was about as orthodox Catholic as he got... He believed what they said verbatim; was like hardcore porn.” – Michael (35:14)

  • The parents were distant; household help raised the children, and their mother, distant and later terminally ill, was largely absent.
• Physical and Emotional Abuse:
  • Michael details arbitrary, severe punishments, culminating in a memory:

    “He literally kicked me from one room, through the bathroom, through Nanny’s room, and into the back hallway against the wall.” (42:20)

  • Sister Julie corroborates the atmosphere of fear:

    "He had three loaded handguns under his mattress, and I knew he’d be drunk. I never knew if going through the doors of his bedroom I’d be blown away." (42:48)

• Guilt and Grief After His Mother’s Death:

  “I remember kneeling on the floors one morning saying, God, I wish you would just take her... And then when she died, I was like, holy fuck, I killed my... I killed my mom.” (45:06)

• Alcohol and Substance Use:
  • Drinking began at age 12, catalyzed by trauma and lack of guidance.

    “We tasted [the leftover drinks], and they always had cigarettes out for people. So we tried those…” (45:29)

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4. The Elan School: “A World of Utter Insanity”

(53:32 - 68:26)

• Sent to Elan after a reckless DUI incident at 17, Michael describes being forcibly taken:

  "I was dragged out of there like an animal… they did a pretty good job working me over in the car… handcuffed and flown to Poland Springs, Maine and introduced to a world of utter insanity." (53:32)

• The Elan School used unorthodox, brutal methods inspired by tough-love and even cult-like psychotherapy. Alumni, including Michael and others, recall ‘general meetings,’ ‘boxing ring’ punishments, and daily emotional and physical abuse.
• Michael’s most traumatic Elan memory:

  “They literally picked me up over their head and carried me down the stairs like I was a crash test dummy…people just kept spitting in my face and punching me and kicking me…” (63:28) "Guys are gonna try to defend themselves if they can fight. If they can't fight, they're not gonna defend themselves. Michael didn't." – Chuck Segan (65:23)

• Fellow students Kim Freehill and Chuck Segan recount similar or corroborating stories of systemic abuse.
• Long-Term Impact: Diagnosed with severe PTSD, Michael eventually gets sober, marries, and succeeds in both college and elite speed skiing.

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5. From Grand Jury to Arrest—Michael’s Perspective

(70:28 - 76:36)

• Michael’s arrest in 2000 is orchestrated as media spectacle; he flies back to Connecticut to avoid a dramatic police scenario.

  “My uncle Tommy rented me a private jet the next morning…I’m looking on the news the next morning and it’s all over every station, they’re storming Loblolly thinking that I’m in the house there.” (71:53)

• Michael’s sartorial choices for the surrender are scrutinized by the press:

  “I had a button down shirt and a tie. And the only thing I had to keep me warm was a cashmere sweater…yet the news said how dare I wear an ascot. I’ve never worn an ascot in my life.” (72:49)

• The “Kennedy cousin” narrative permeates mainstream coverage, heightening the spectacle and pressure.
• Legal wrangling over statute of limitations and potential for juvenile trial (max four-year sentence if convicted) was unsuccessful; the case is transferred to adult court, heightening stakes for Michael.

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Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• Fuhrman on The Sutton Report:

  “If we didn't have the Sutton Report, we wouldn't be talking.” (08:41)

• Michael’s candid intro:

  "My name is Michael Skakel. And why am I being interviewed? I mean, that's kind of a big question, isn't it?" (28:34)

• On Parental Absence & Abuse:

  “He said, you make me sick. If you only did better in school, your mother wouldn't have to be in the hospital. And I remember just going, oh, my God, I wanted to die.” (40:09)

• On Elan's brutality:

  “They literally picked me up over their head and carried me down the stairs…people just kept spitting in my face and punching me and kicking me…” (63:28)

• Kim Freehill on Elan:

  "I was beaten basically into psychosis…" (68:12)

• Michael on his arrest/press:

  “Yet the news said that how dare I wear an ascot. I’ve never worn an ascot in my life.” (72:49)

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Important Segment Timestamps

| Segment | Time | |-----------------------------------------------------|--------------| | O.J. Trial, Fuhrman’s Reputation and Role | 00:59 – 11:41| | Sutton Report and Skakel Investigation Developments | 11:41 – 23:09| | Grand Jury Formation and Indictment | 19:38 – 27:11| | Michael's Childhood & Family Trauma | 28:34 – 46:40| | The Elan School – Interviews and Testimonies | 53:32 – 68:26| | Michael's Life After Elan & The Arrest | 70:28 – 76:36|

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Episode Tone and Style

• The host, Andrew Goldman, balances investigative rigor with empathy, using dark humor and personal asides, and allows the participants—especially Michael and his family—to speak candidly.
• Michael’s own tone fluctuates between self-deprecating, vulnerable, and at times wry; he is forthcoming about his flaws, trauma, and the dramatic changes in his life’s trajectory.

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Summary Takeaway

This episode marks a turning point in the series, as it shifts from outside narratives to Michael Skakel’s direct perspective—illustrating how trauma, privilege, family dysfunction, and questionable rehabilitative practices all intersected long before his name became synonymous with the infamous Greenwich murder. By giving Michael space to narrate his story, the podcast complicates the public's understanding of him as simply a “Kennedy cousin” or privileged perpetrator, instead painting a portrait of a deeply damaged but self-aware man who, for the first time, publicly revisits the events and abuses that shaped his life before and after the death of Martha Moxley.

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Transcript

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[Andrew Goldman]

Good morning. You're looking live at a shot of the Criminal Courts building in downtown Los Angeles, where we are now just three hours away from learning the verdict in the trial of the century.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

On October 3, 1995, at 10:00am Pacific Time, Americans stopped what they were doing to tune in for the verdict of the O.J. simpson murder trial. Trading on Wall street nearly ground to a halt as 150 million people watched or listened in real time. Super Bowl XXX played three months later in Arizona, pitting the Cowboys against the Steelers, a piddling 94 million viewers. If you hadn't yet been born, you really missed something. The OJ Verdict was a true national spectacle, the finale to an addictive 11 month televised courtroom drama that made household names of most every witness and attorney involved. Ask your folks to try to explain who Kato Kahlan is. You couldn't make this guy up. Any drama, of course, has a villain. The trial's biggest heel, apart from the double murder defendant himself, a Los Angeles police detective named Mark Fuhrman. Detective Fuhrman, can you tell us how.

[Andrew Goldman]

You feel about testifying today? Nervous? Reluctant.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Fuhrman was the one who located a right hand glove on O.J. simpson's property. A glove that had blood, hair and fibers connected not only to Simpson, but also to both murder victims, Simpson's ex wife Nicole, and a waiter named Ron Goldman. No relation to me. But as compelling as that evidence sounds towards convicting Simpson, Furman became a millstone for the prosecution and a gift to the defense. In one of the most famous sideshows of the trial, Fuhrman testified under oath that he hadn't used the N word in the last 10 years. Days later, recently recorded tapes emerged. Fuhrman used the N word 41 times. He was saying things like, anything out of a black person's mouth for the first five or six sentences is a fucking lie. But he didn't say black person. In fact, we can probably thank Mark Fuhrman for the widespread use of the term N word. He said the word so many times on those tapes, the media needed a less offensive expression to use when reporting on the trial. Furman could also be heard telling stories of beating black suspects nearly to death and manufacturing evidence to frame them. Though he steadfastly denied it, the defense would allege that Fuhrman planted the bloody glove. A CNN poll at the time showed 30% of Americans believed it. In its closing, O.J. s attorney, Johnnie Cochran sent jurors off with a mission that they could deliver their verdict not only on O.J. s guilt, but on the behavior and attitude of men like Furman, who Cochran characterized as a perjuring, genocidal racist.

[Andrew Goldman]

When you go back in the jury room, some of you may want to say that, well, gee, you know, boys will be boys. This is just like police talk. That's not acceptable as the consciences of this community if you adopt that attitude. That's why we have this, because nobody has had the courage to say it's wrong. You are empowered to say, we're not gonna take that anymore.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

After Simpson's acquittal, Fuhrman pleaded no contest to perjury. At 44, his plea disallowed him from ever working as a cop or private detective again. So, sure, he did retire from the LAPD in 1995, but he really had no choice in the matter. So he turned to something that wasn't prohibited by his plea deal writing in 1997, he published a book about the Simpson case, Murder in Brentwood. But with the Simpson well tapped dry, he started looking for a subject for his next book. He consulted his book agent, Lucien Goldberg, whose name might sound familiar. Anyone who paid any attention to the Bill Clinton scandal and impeachment of the late 90s will remember Goldberg as the figure who advised another client, Linda Tripp, to tape her calls with her young colleague, Monica Lewinsky. Goldberg connected Fuhrman with her good friend Dominic Dunn. Although they had never met during the Simpson trial, Dunn, by all accounts, had watched Mark Fuhrman's testimony with great admiration and perhaps more than a little lust. Here's Dunn's biographer, Robert Hoefler, the only one in that courtroom for the months that that went on, who could hold his own against OJ Was Mark Furman. They both exuded this just incredible testosterone and just total male studs. And I think that it was obvious that Dominic had fallen in lust with Mark Fuhrmann. I asked Furman about this. Were you aware he seemed to have, like, a monster crush on you?

[Andrew Goldman]

Did you know that?

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Was that pretty obvious?

[Andrew Goldman]

Dominic Dunn was a character. And, yeah, he. I remember. I don't know if it was 1998. He sends me an email and says, I want to invite you to the Vanity Fair Academy Awards after party. And I go, what? I go, the last person on the planet that they want to see at the Academy Awards or an after party is me.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Before he came around, I thought the last podcast Fuhrman would want to appear on would be this one. When I first reached him on his cell phone and explained my thoughts on the case, he was crabby and had his backup suggesting I sounded like a defense attorney, which he said like it was the absolute worst thing he could think of to call someone. Well, maybe the second worst thing. In addition to making Furman a household name, the Simpson trial created many media stars, like Jeffrey Toobin, a young Harvard Law grad turned journalist. Toobin made his name covering the Simpson trial for the New Yorker, where he would write until he was let go following a notorious 2021 Zoom mishap. If you don't remember it, Google it. But maybe not at work. The thing that I heard about Furman from others was, yeah, he may have.

[Andrew Goldman]

Been a typical racist LAPD detective, but.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

He was a really effective cop, too.

[Andrew Goldman]

And that, I think, was what Dominic believed about him.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Dunn counted himself among the minority of people who suspected Furman might have planted that bloody glove. But to Dunn, doing so would have been a public service. Here's Dun biographer Robert Hofler. Again. The deal was, did Mark Furman plant the glove, the bloody glove, on O.J. s estate? And the way Dominic looked at it was, well, maybe he planted it, but OJ still should have been convicted. In their first phone call, Dunn made his pitch.

[Andrew Goldman]

He said, you know, I've got something I want you to read. I'm not sure what to do with it. I'm not sure what a lot of it means, but I want you to read up on the Moxley case, and then I want to give you this report that I have.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Then Don shared the documents given to him by aspiring writer and Sutton Associates freelancer Jamie Bryant. In them, Fuhrman saw not speculation, but A roadmap for solving the Moxley case. For Furman, the report's importance could not be overstated. He saw it as the Rosetta stone to finally decoding the truth about Martha Moxley's brutal murder after 25 long years of fumbling.

[Andrew Goldman]

If we didn't have the Sutton Report, we wouldn't be talking.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

I think it might be more accurate to say if Mark Fuhrman didn't have the Sutton Report, Michael Skakel probably never would have been charged with murder. I'm Andrew Goldman from NBC News studios and highly replaceable productions. This is dead certain. The Martha Moxley murder. Having shared the Sutton report with Mark Fuhrman, Don now had his fish on the line. And what an unusually sexy tuna he'd caught. He took Furman out to the exclusive Four Seasons restaurant in Manhattan, invited him up to Connecticut, and threw a cocktail party to parade him around local cops and OJ Junkies. And after Furman got a book deal, even loaned him his Manhattan apartment when he was out of town. Here's Dunn biographer Robert Hofler again.

[Andrew Goldman]

While he was in New York and doing some research, Mark Fuhrman's agent said.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

She kept getting these calls from Dominic Dunn in London, and he was going like, you know, how's Mark doing in my apartment?

[Andrew Goldman]

Did you tell him about the deli?

[Narrator/Interviewer]

If he gives the name Dominic Dunn, they'll put more pastrami on his sandwiches.

[Andrew Goldman]

And.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

And all of a sudden, you know, Dominic Dunn's boyfriend realized that there were all these Mark Furman photographs all over the place. To Dunn's disappointment, the former detective was only interested in the Moxley murder. Furman immediately recognized similarities with the Simpson case.

[Andrew Goldman]

I did see the parallels that, you know, obviously, money, influence, power, position always influences any kind of criminal case. Sometimes that kind of case becomes just a little bit more obvious in where the truth lies than it would be in a normal case.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

In the fall of 1997, Furman flew from his home in Idaho to Greenwich and checked into a room at the Homestead Inn, a rambling old clapboard hotel just outside the Belhaven gates. In the following weeks, he reinvestigated the Moxley case. His conclusions? First, that the case hadn't been solved because of the ineptitude of the Greenwich police.

[Andrew Goldman]

It is an agency that simply did not have this type of crime, was not prepared to even confront this type of crime. They should have immediately turned this over to the state the moment that they found the victim.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Second, that the police's inexperience caused them to waste decades pursuing First Tommy Skakel and then Ken Littleton.

[Andrew Goldman]

If we had all the information in The Sutton Report, November 1, 1975, who would have went to the police station?

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Meaning if Michael had told police in 1975 what he said to Sutton investigators years later, he probably would have been arrested back then. Because in reading Michael Skakel's story about masturbating in the tree in the Sutton report, Fuhrman saw not just a change of story, but something far more damning. A thinly veiled confession. Fuhrman's spidey sense was particularly set off by the movements Michael described on the Moxley property. Climbing the tree, masturbating, climbing down, and then sensing a presence nearby, yelling and gesticulating towards the brush.

[Andrew Goldman]

Not only does he put himself in a tree that is right above the driveway where Martha was first attacked, but it also puts him close to the building in a tree, masturbating. Puts him in the driveway making a motion, a swinging motion, that puts him in a place that he says he feels a presence. And it's not that he's saying this off the cuff. At a camping trip, he is talking to ex FBI agents that are hired by his family attorneys to see what their exposure for the murder of a young girl named Martha Moxley. And you have Michael making statements that puts himself at the scene of the first attack. And then he sneaks into the house at 12:30 at night. Please, somebody tell me where this comes from. Is this. Is this imagination? Is he told to say this? Or was this the truth?

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Furman concluded that this midnight ramble did not take place as Michael described it. In fact, Michael had concocted the specific story to cover up for a murder, one that he worried might have been witnessed by someone.

[Andrew Goldman]

This description sounds just a tad bit orchestrated. It sounds like he's trying to account for bullet points. Was I seen by the Mockley house? Was I seen by the tree? Was I seen in the driveway? Was I seen making some kind of motion? He's accounting.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

To Furman. It was obvious that Michael must have been coached by defense attorneys before he sat down with Sutton investigators to preemptively cover his tracks. He'd need to explain why someone might have seen him at the crime scene. Not only that, he'd also want to account for any biological evidence that could link him to the murder. The masturbating in the tree story made up. Keep in mind that when Martha Moxley was killed in 1975, the technology to use DNA evidence to solve crimes was still over a decade away. But by the time Michael became a suspect, it was not only a thing, but, thanks to the O.J. simpson trial, the thing a national obsession. Nobody knew this more than Mark Fuhrman, harvester of much Simpson DNA.

[Andrew Goldman]

Well, to me, I start stripping the meat off the bone, and this is what I'm left with. The only person that actually makes a statement about walking across Walsh Lane, being at the crime scene, being at Martha's house, making statements, movements, is Michael. The only person that lied about going out later was Michael.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

In May 1998, HarperCollins published Fuhrman's book, Shifting 20 Years of Focus away from Tommy Skakel and Ken Littleton. Former LA homicide detective Mark Fuhrman did some independent sleuthing about the case, including getting his hands on a confidential report. He's written a book entitled Murder in who Killed Martha Moxley? Here's Fuhrman's theory of how the Moxley murder actually went down. Michael was undoubtedly nursing a major crush on Martha. The Sutton Report had alluded to this. He said that when he climbed the tree and threw pebbles at her window, he did so in hopes of luring Martha out of her house for a kiss. In Fuhrman's interpretation of the night's events, in the midst of Michael's efforts to woo Martha in the Love Mobile, his brother Tommy came out of the house, sat on the bench seat next to Martha, and Michael, watched as Tommy began rubbing her leg. When Rush Jr. And John came out of the house to commandeer the car, Tommy, sensing a sexual opportunity, begged off from the trip to his cousin's and instead stayed back with Martha. As the Lincoln backed out of the driveway, Fuhrman theorized, Michael helplessly looked through the windshield as Martha and Tommy started making out by the pachysandra patch at the base of the driveway. Fuhrman posited that this had to be the tipping point for Michael. Fuhrman wrote, sitting with his brothers and cousins several miles away, his imagination runs wild. He visualizes Martha having sex with Tommy. The more he imagines, the angrier he gets. Martha lied to him. She embarrassed him. She hurt him. Here's Fuhrman in a 1998 Dateline interview.

[Andrew Goldman]

Michael's abandoned. He's abandoned by his brother. He's abandoned by what he thinks is his girlfriend.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Michael suggests Furman returns from his cousin Jimmy Tarrian's estate, Surson Corda, at 11:20pm and walks into the house where he encounters Tommy. Note the timeline here. Fuhrman doesn't dispute that Michael went to Sirsam Corda, but He speculates the murder took place later than Greenwich. Investigators had concluded Tommy is trying to.

[Andrew Goldman]

Sneak Martha out of the house. He knows the kind of fights he and his brother had, and he knows this would be a fight. He's going out the back door with her. It's about 11:30, and Michael comes down and confronts them both.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

The brothers have an argument, after which Tommy slips back upstairs, leaving Michael by himself.

[Andrew Goldman]

And he's standing in the mudroom alone. And Martha walks home. He gets into an uncontrollable rage. That's where the golf clubs are. The golf clubs that the kids pick up and go right out the back door and use to chip balls and drive balls across the lawn. He grabs one, and he heads after Martha. He calls out her name. Martha. Martha.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Michael catches up to Martha near her driveway, says Fuhrman, and delivers a beating so brutal that the club breaks into four pieces.

[Andrew Goldman]

The pool of blood is quite large, but she's still. She's still breathing. He takes the golf club shaft that still lays by the body and drives it through her neck. It goes right to left and actually shoves the hair through the wound, and it protrudes out the other side.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Michael says. Fuhrman then drags Martha's body toward the pine tree where she was found.

[Andrew Goldman]

The power of him dragging her as fast as he could could have brought her pants down, exposing some skin. That little hint of skin, once he settled down, when he was down at the pine tree, might have aroused him. He might not have been able to perform. Or quite possibly, he did exactly what he says he did in the tree. He masturbated close to the body.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

This, Fuhrman theorizes, is why Michael made up the masturbating in a tree story. He just needed some justification should his DNA be found years later on any of the evidence collected from the crime scene. Fuhrman was not content to let this shocking injustice languish between the pages of a HarperCollins book. He was on a mission to right the wrongs of the Greenwich police and his own reputation as a blacklisted detective. He took his message straight to the media. All the evidence needed to solve the crime was right there in his book, he told any outlet that would listen. Sure, his intent might have been to crack the bestseller list, but he had another, more influential audience in mind. The Fairfield County State's Attorney's office.

[Andrew Goldman]

Somebody better tell the people in Greenwich who they serve. They are civil service.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

He dared the state of Connecticut to pursue a conviction of Michael Skegel for the murder of Martha Moxley. Timing, as they say, is everything. Just a couple of months before Mark Fuhrman's book came out, Don Brown, the state's attorney who'd held his role as chief prosecutor for decades and had declined to prosecute Tommy Skakel, Ken Littleton, or anyone else for that matter, retired. Brown's decades long inaction on the Moxley case was a source of much frustration to both investigators and Dorothy Moxley, who aired her grievances on Dateline.

[Andrew Goldman]

Why can't the state's attorney haul people in and make them answer tough questions?

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Well, this is something that we would.

[Andrew Goldman]

Like Donald Brown, the state's attorney in charge of Martha's case, to do.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

When Brown left, he was replaced by a senior guy in his office, Jonathan Benedict, who seemed to have a very different view on prosecuting the case than his predecessor had. In June 1998, more than two decades after Martha's murder and only two months after he'd taken over the Moxley case, Benedict pulled the trigger.

[Andrew Goldman]

This is NBC News.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

At this hour, investigators in Greenwich could be closer than ever to finding some answers to the question of who bludgeoned Martha Moxley to death with a golf club. This week, the state of Connecticut opened a one man grand jury to begin looking into the case again. When the state's attorney's office decided to proceed, they invoked an unusual and rarely used option, appointing a single judge, George Thyme, to act as a one man grand jury. He had the power to subpoena witnesses and sift through decades old evidence. For Dorothy Moxley, the development was cause for rejoicing.

[Andrew Goldman]

I have prayed for 22 years for.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

A grand jury and it's going to happen. I'm still pinching myself to see if it's real. You know, I am so pleased because.

[Andrew Goldman]

Now the truth should come out.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

When addressing the press, Jonathan Benedict insisted that Mark Fuhrman had nothing to do with his decision that the state, having exhausted all other avenues of investigation, had applied for a grand jury. But the timing is certainly interesting, coming just one month after the publication of Furman's book. Furman told me that shortly after it was published, he spoke to Chris Marano, a junior state's attorney who worked under Benedict.

[Andrew Goldman]

I believe Chris Moreno actually said, you know, they bought a dozen books and they, they made a statement, says we're going to trial. And I says, oh, come on, stop it.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

When Murder and Greenwich came out in paperback the following year, the back cover touted it as the book that spawned the grand jury investigation. While this could be a case of clever marketing hype. Furman does acknowledge the book's critical influence on the case.

[Andrew Goldman]

If we want to be really honest, I'll be honest with myself. I said then, and I'll say now. It was the pebble that pushed the train over the mountain. Somebody put all these tidbits together so they could look at them as an entire chunk of information. And I think that's what actually pushed everything over the edge.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

In an interview with Dateline, Manny Margolis, Tommy Skakel's longtime lawyer, seemed to agree.

[Andrew Goldman]

Furman's book was the map. It laid out the way to put together the pieces. Circumstantial, indirect innuendo, assumptions that would lead to Michael Skakel.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

What's impossible to dispute is that in the spring of 1998, no one was stirring up more interest in the Moxley murder and Michael's possible role in it than Mark Fuhrman. Punishment. Mark Fuhrman, who do you believe murdered Martha Moxley?

[Andrew Goldman]

Well, it's my opinion that Michael Skakel is the murderer of Martha Moxley.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

As Fuhrman took his televised victory lap, I imagine a certain someone must have been watching, infuriated Detective Frank Garr. Garr knew those Unsolved Mysteries tips about Michael had been coming in a good year before Marc Fuhrman had even heard of Martha Moxley's murder. And all that time, Garr said he'd been banging on the state's attorney's door trying to get him to move on the case. If he'd only brought those tips to a different, less chicken state's attorney, like the one who conveniently took the job right before Furman's book came out, maybe he would have beaten Furman to the punch. And then, most infuriating of all the cops who'd worked on the case, who do you imagine took the most brutal thrashing for incompetence in Fuhrman's book? Gar Fuhrman, according to his book, thought Garr's biggest sin was disregarding the contents of the Sutton Report. He wrote that before Dominic Dunn turned the report over to him, he had first shared it with Frank Garr at Dorothy Moxley's urging. But Dunn got sick of waiting for Garr to make an arrest, so he gave copies to Furman. Furman saw the Sutton report as full of actionable leads, leads that Gar had simply failed to follow up on. But Gar, perhaps to his credit, never saw the Sutton report as anything more than it was an exercise in conjecture and hyperbole, riddled with inaccuracies written by a recent college grad with no investigative expertise. For Furman to have used it as the blueprint for his book and then for prosecutors to glom onto it, rather than Garr's shoe leather, detective work burned badly. Gar did his best to discredit the importance of Fuhrman's book in a statement to the press. We have a statement that was given to us by Frank Garr, who is the current investigator on the Moxley case. It reads as newspaper and magazine articles as well as books about this investigation have had absolutely no impact whatsoever with the course or timing of the proceedings. Facts reported in these releases were known to investigators well before their publication. That one once again, from the lead investigator on Martha Moxley's murder, Inspector Frank Garr. To paraphrase Shakespeare, I think the rebel investigator doth protest too much. Furbin is certainly aware that he'd gotten under Garr's skin. He really hated you. Did you know that? Were you aware of that?

[Andrew Goldman]

Get in line.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

But as of July 10, 1998, the sniping was just a sideshow to the main drama. Jonathan Benedict's grand jury convened for its first day in the basement of the Bridgeport courthouse. Benedict and other State's attorneys questioned 53 individuals in secret, sometimes for hours, while Frank Garr watched from the back of the room. Everybody came. There were the Belhavenites, both kids, and their parents, John and Dorothy Moxley, were the first to appear. Martha's father, David, had died of a heart attack a decade earlier. Martha's childhood friends Helen ickes and Sheila McGuire were both called twice. And then there were the Skakels. Rush Jr. Julie, John, Stephen and David all appeared. Oddly enough, there were two Skickles siblings neither subpoenaed nor called Michael and Tommy. Even Ken Littleton made an appearance, but only after Benedict, in a marked departure from his predecessors, granted him full immunity from prosecution in exchange for his testimony. It seemed a bit strange, singling out one of the most compelling suspects of the past 20 years and taking him permanently out of the running. But for Benedict and his associates, the decades long whodunit was over at last.

[Andrew Goldman]

And do they have to tell people.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Early on whether or not they are a target? Well, it becomes pretty clear as the.

[Andrew Goldman]

Grand jury moves on who is the target of the investigation.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

On January 19, 2000, the grand jury presented its findings to State's Attorney Jonathan Benedict. The same day, an arrest warrant was issued for Michael Skakel. Michael Skakel, now 39, charged with murdering his Greenwich, Connecticut neighbor, Martha Moxley in 1975, when they were both 15. This is the point at which most people, myself included, heard the name Michael Skakel for the first time. Before Unsolved Mysteries in the Sutton Report, Michael had never been a suspect. Prior to Michael, there was Ed Hammond, Tommy Skakel, Ken Littleton, but none of them had ever been charged. So they, unlike Michael, didn't overnight become a national media sensation. You've heard about what the investigators, individuals and the press had to say about why the spotlight shifted to Michael. But in my reporting, I've come to believe there were other factors that led here, years, decades even, of family history, which may have contributed in so many ways to making him a magnet for suspicion. So before we go any further, there's one person we really need to hear from. Many have spoken about Michael Skakel, his flaws, his privilege, and, of course, his guilt. He's been talked about a lot, but he's never spoken up to narrate his own story. Until now. Can you tell me your name? Say my name is and why I might be interviewing you.

[Andrew Goldman]

My name is Michael Skakel. And why am I being interviewed? I mean, that's kind of a big question, isn't it?

[Narrator/Interviewer]

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[Andrew Goldman]

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[Narrator/Interviewer]

That's microperfumes.com podcast for up to 60% off. Cash flow crunch on deck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Seasonal dips manage payroll, restock inventory or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply [e-mail] funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by On Deck or Celtic Bank. On Deck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans an amount subject to lender approval. On April 5, 2023, I pulled into the driveway of Steven Skakel's house in Norwalk, Connecticut, 15 minutes south of where I live in Westport. At this point, I was about eight years deep into my re examination of the case and had spent countless hours talking, visiting and exchanging texts and emails with Stephen and Michael. When I first rolled up to this house eight years before, I assumed I'd gotten the address wrong or my GPS had goofed. They live here. I read so much about the Skakel family that I assumed I'd be rolling through some dark gates and past a pool, a tennis court and a fountain or two. Zillow says the old Otter Rock house in Belhaven where they grew up is now estimated to be worth $9.3 million. Steven and his longtime girlfriend Monica live in a very modest 1700 square foot house on probably a quarter acre in a middle class neighborhood. With Michael there, not to mention their overweight black lab moose, it's a bit cramped. Steven takes great care in planting flowers in his backyard and attracting local birds. With about a dozen feeders lining the perimeter of a pretty small lawn they rent for the first half of the 20th century, the Skakels were incalculably rich. Robber baron rich, a kind of wealth we now associate with the Koch brothers. Not so anymore. As I found out over the course of my conversations with Michael, and for reasons I'll discuss, that Skakel fortune is long gone. Suffice to say, Rush Skakel Sr. Spent a not insignificant portion of his share trying to clear his family's name while inadvertently paving the way for Michael's conviction. All right, there he is. I'm rolling. Just if you don't want me to, we can start after, but I just. I need tape.

[Andrew Goldman]

All right, do whatever the hell you want to do, Andrew.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

I'm gonna fucking bitch slap. Why? Why?

[Andrew Goldman]

How are you? Shagadelic, baby.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

These days I speak to Steven pretty much on a daily basis. His girlfriend, Monica often refers to me as Steven's work wife. Steven and I see each other so much we don't shake hands anymore. But I hadn't seen Michael in person in close to a year when I first met him back in 2015. To be honest, being in the same room with him made me physically uncomfortable. The media coverage of the case had convinced me I was shaking a murderer's hand. After a near decade of reinvestigating, however, much had changed, notably my thoughts about the case and opinion about Michael's guilt, for reasons we're going to get into. But for years, I maintained a journalistic distance, keeping our greetings to a handshake. Today, we hug. How are ya? Looking good. Steven steps forward and shoves a stack of transcripts under my nose from a conversation between Mary Baker and a close friend of her ex, former Skakel tutor Ken Littleton.

[Andrew Goldman]

This is Mary talking to Joel, their mutual friend. He had a couple of bad episodes.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

He blacked out a couple of times. About a week and a half ago, he had a blackout. All blackouts? Yes. This is typical when we're not on a topic that triggers his trauma. Michael's all jokes and Stephen's all business. Although Stephen's been on record suspecting others of killing Martha Moxley for the last few years, he's gone deep on a Ken Littleton kick, wondering if he might also have blacked out on October 30, 1975, and killed Martha Moxley. Stephen remembers very little about 1975. He was, after all, only nine back then. But now he knows more about the case than virtually anybody. Certainly more than Michael, who, partly because he's dyslexic and partly because of the trauma associated with the topic, has read very little on the case. I'm always surprised that someone could do 11 and a half years for a crime and not be a fraction as obsessive about learning about it as his brother is. Or I am, for that matter. Have you been following the stuff that.

[Andrew Goldman]

He'S been getting piecemeal?

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Andrew Goldman]

I mean, it just for me, it's. I get a stream of fruits and vegetables and fireworks.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Emojis. Yeah, you're very good at emojis. That's actually one of your distinguishing characters. I don't give many of that anymore. Don't text me that much.

[Andrew Goldman]

It's a dyslexic.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

I got a nice message yesterday. People that are dyslexic.

[Andrew Goldman]

Emojis.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Truly.

[Andrew Goldman]

Yes.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Today I've got the attention of both Steven and Michael. A rare opportunity. One note. You're gonna hear some crackling in the background of the audio. Sorry about that. I wasn't frying bacon while talking to Michael. Stephen had a fire going in his living room when I arrived. The conversation soon veers into religion, specifically their father, Rush Sr. S obsessive Catholicism. Rush Skakel liked scotch a lot, but he loved and lived for the Catholic Church.

[Andrew Goldman]

He was about as orthodox Catholic as he got. I mean, he was like. He. He believed what they said verbatim was like hardcore porn.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Porn. You guys, you couldn't even have National Geographic.

[Andrew Goldman]

We found Playboy. We found Playboy, the Belhaven Club. One of my friends goes, check this out. We open the door, and there's a room about half the size of this filled knee deep in Playboy. We're like, what the hell is this? We're going, holy. So we get a wheelbarrow off the tennis court, wheel it over, and we filled the thing up. We came down tons of clayboard, and we went right up out of Rock Drive. We brought him inside, we divvied them up, and everybody had gone home. And my father come, what the hell is this? What kind of sorcery is this?

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Did he say sorcery?

[Andrew Goldman]

Yeah, he, like, kicked my friend out of there. He slapped the shit out of. He goes, you little son of a bitch. He goes, sex is only for marriage and making children. And he goes, even then, it's disgusting. And he goes, you're gonna go to hell for looking at this. I'm like, I'm only nine. I don't even know what the hell this means. You know what I mean?

[Narrator/Interviewer]

The stories that Michael tells about his childhood are equal parts colorful and disturbing. Like this one from when he was about 4 years old.

[Andrew Goldman]

Let's just say it was rough and tumble. One of my brothers put a towel in my shirt when they had KED sneaker commercials. They said, you can run as fast as a train and fly like an eagle or whatever it was. And he said, okay, well, you can fly.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

The brother he's referring to, Tommy Skakel, who is two years older.

[Andrew Goldman]

So I went on top of a giro and missed the bed and broke my neck. I remember my head was stuck at my chest and I couldn't move. And I finally, to make a long story short, I ended up in Greenwich Hospital for a couple of months with my head on a chain.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

This kind of dangerous roughhousing often occurred when parents weren't around. We learned about the free range kids of Belhaven in earlier episodes. But Michael says in the Skakel household, absentee parenting was taken to an unusually extreme level. I've seen photos of Michael's mother, Ann Skakel. She was a thin, blonde beauty, far more physically attractive than her husband. Michael doesn't remember her as particularly maternal.

[Andrew Goldman]

She wasn't really touchy feely. She wasn't. She was very definitely more of the athletic, cerebral. I know she was a great tennis player. But as a kid, the parents lived in like a separate side of part of the house that had air conditioning, central air conditioning. They ate at a different time than we did. They ate different food than we did. You know, back then it was different. I mean, like my son, I couldn't imagine not changing his diaper, not feeding him, not putting him to bed, not reading him stories, not holding him when he hurt himself. But my parents back then, they had everyone else do that. I think it was that part of that generation, maybe after World War II, that baby boomer thing, if that makes any sense.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

I asked Michael if his parents came to visit him in the hospital after he broke his neck.

[Andrew Goldman]

They didn't, no, my mom, I think my mom came two or three times and I was there, I think for two months.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Michael says he was essentially raised by the household help, though he says he doesn't think either of his parents ever had to change a diaper or prepare a meal for their kids. The Skakel parents did show affection to one child more than any other. Tommy, you'll remember we talked about that accident in a previous episode. Tommy fell out of the family limousine, spent two in the hospital with a massive head injury, and suffered violent fits through his teen years. Though Michael has no memories of those days, he says he's almost positive that given her obvious favoritism for Tommy, his mother would have spent a lot of time at his bedside in the hospital. In 1968, Anne Skakel got sick, but nobody actually bothered to tell 8 year old Michael what was going on.

[Andrew Goldman]

I remember the first time she came back after chemotherapy. She had no hair. And I said, why does my mom have no hair? And they said, oh, she just used the wrong shampoo. So then I refused to use shampoo and the woman who took care of us said, no, I got punished for. Not for refusing to use shampoo, but yeah, she was pretty much taken out of our lives.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Confusion seems to be a dominant theme in Michael's upbringing. He spent his entire childhood failing or just barely passing his classes. He was eventually diagnosed with dyslexia at 25. But all his father saw was purposeful indolence and disobedience.

[Andrew Goldman]

As a 10 year old came to the top of the stairs and looked in my bedroom and said I hadn't seen him in weeks. And he said, you make me sick. If you only did better in school, your mother wouldn't have to be in the hospital. And I remember just going, oh, my God, I wanted to die. I just wanted to die. And I've come to realize that he wasn't just an alcoholic. I think he suffered from depression. And I think he may have had some other issues, maybe bipolar.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

You think?

[Andrew Goldman]

Yeah, he wasn't a bad man. He was just a sick man.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Things got worse following the diagnosis of Anne's cancer with both parents. Like the night Michael returned home alone after singing Silent Night in the third grade Christmas play, a performance neither parent was apparently even aware of.

[Andrew Goldman]

The whole first floor of the house was dark, so I knew they didn't save dinner for me. And I got in the house, and the front. Thank God the front door was open. And my brother Tommy immediately ran down the stairs and started a fight with me. And he was much bigger than me. And I just said, not tonight. And Tommy screamed, mom, Michael something or other. And she said, well, you're gonna get the belt tonight. And I said, I'm not getting the belt tonight. And I threw my books on the ground, I ran and I hid in a closet. She couldn't find me. So I thought, well, I'll sneak up the back stairs and find my dad, make him laugh, and then I won't be in trouble. And I got up the back stairs through the bathroom that I shared with Stephen and David. I got into their room and my father came in and he said, where the hell have you been? And I said, I was hiding in the closet downstairs and. And he screamed at my mother and said, get your ass in here. Is that true? And she said, no, I looked in that closet.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Michael says that this was the moment he realized that, like him, his mother feared his father and lied about her search of the house to mollify him.

[Andrew Goldman]

He said, are you lying to your mother? And then he. He literally kicked me from one room, through the bathroom, through Nanny's room, and into the back hallway against the wall. I remember having my hands over my head and my mother just saying, jesus Christ, Rush, quit kicking the kid. Quit kicking the kid. You're gonna kill him.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Apparently, this was not an isolated incident. Beatings punctuated Michael's childhood. Michael's older sister Julie confirmed Michael's recollection of these events with me in 2015, and in framed described her own fear of her father, saying, quote, I got so scared coming home from school every day. He had three loaded handguns under his mattress, and I knew he'd be drunk. I never knew if going through the doors of his bedroom, I'D be blown away, she said. He was such a nasty alcoholic. For Michael, the most destabilizing thing about the abuse he experienced was how totally arbitrary it seemed. Michael has one particularly vivid memory of his father coming home from work one day, summoning him and spanking him first with his hands, then a kitchen spoon, and then, after the spoon splintered, a brush without ever saying what he was being punished for.

[Andrew Goldman]

It kind of happened on and off. I just never knew when it was going to happen. I didn't know why it happened. I think to this day, it leaves me questioning reality, like, did I do something wrong? What did I do wrong? Why did that happen to me?

[Narrator/Interviewer]

I just.

[Andrew Goldman]

I didn't know. He never told me why.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

In the course of Anne Skakel's illness, she was hospitalized for months at a time. Rush spent lavishly on religious objects he thought might aid in her recovery, like a statue of the Virgin Mary that had supposedly cried tears that he had shipped from Europe and installed in her hospital room. The Skekel kids and close friends would kneel on the hard marble floors of St. Mary's for novenas before school, repeating Hail Marys. On Sunday, March 4, 1973, about a year and a half before Martha Moxley's murder, Rush Jr. Was piloting the Revcon motorhome back from the Wyndham ski house into Belhaven. The kids all noticed there was an unusual number of cars parked on Otto Rock Drive. Their father boarded the bus before they could debark and coldly announced the news. Here's Stephen.

[Andrew Goldman]

My father never sat us down on.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Anything, including when our mother dies.

[Andrew Goldman]

Said, she's gone. Do what you have to do.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

And it was never discussed again. After his mother's death, Michael became fixated on a regrettable thought he'd had years before when, as usual, his mother took Tommy's side in a fight.

[Andrew Goldman]

I remember kneeling on the floors one morning saying, God, I wish you would just take her. I think I was 10. And then I said, God, the next day I said, please forgive me, please. I take that prayer back. And then when she died, I was like, holy fuck, I killed my. I killed my mom.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Faced with unimaginable stress, grief and guilt, Michael coped in predictable Skakel fashion. When did you start drinking?

[Andrew Goldman]

I'd say probably 12. But you know, my father. His position in work was he entertained people from all over the world. You come home from school at any age, you knew there was going to be a party that night because there'd be tons of people working there. So there were Always drinks left over in the morning. And as kids, I remember we tasted them and they always had cigarettes out for people. So we tried those when we came back from Windom the day our mother had died. I remember walking past all these relatives and friends of my mother and I mean, tons of people, and they. Nobody said anything. Nobody. I think I was 12. I just went into the bar, grabbed a bottle of Smirnoff, went out on the lawn and just. And just started. Just started drinking. I just popped the top off. And I remember at that time going F you to God. We had prayed for four years for her to live and she didn't live. And it. I just blame God.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

After Anne Skakel's death, everything in the Skakel household escalated. Rush Sr. S drinking, the violence, the chaos. And based on my conversations with Michael and Steven, by the time October 30, 1975, rolled around, the Skakel kids were essentially parentless and running wild. We'll come back to that night and Michael's memory of it soon. But in some ways, March 5, 1978, was an even more consequential date in Michael Skakel's life. I needed to ask Michael about it. Do we have time to talk about the drunk driving? It was a frigid evening in March of 1978. Michael was 17 a few weeks before he ditched boarding school in Vermont, his fourth and four years, and decamped to the Windham Ski House where he'd start every morning with a drink.

[Andrew Goldman]

And my brother Rush was home with a bunch of his friends from Dartmouth. And a lot of the older people were there and they were doing Quaaludes. I've never done them before, didn't know what they were, but one of their friends from Dartmouth gave me two of them. And I don't know if you know anything about Quaaludes.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Methak Balone, sold under the brand name Quaalude, was a powerful sedative. It was devised to treat insurance, but became a popular disco era party drug in the 70s. Often referred to as lewds or disco biscuits. They stopped producing them in the early 80s. They were apparently super addictive. But folks I know who've taken them say they make you feel like you're bouncing around on cushy springs, not legs, and totally primed for sex.

[Andrew Goldman]

Well, I took two of them and I had no plans on going out that night. I was very happy just being by myself and having just a peaceful night while they all went out and danced and listened to loud music. Wasn't into it this girl Debbie Deal came in looking for her boyfriend. And I said, oh, they went to some discotheque over at Hunter Mountain in Tannersville or something. And she said, how old are you? And I said 21. I was, I think 17. And she goes, really? I'm like, yeah, absolutely. So she said, do you want to go dancing? I'm like, sure. And she was really attractive. And so I grabbed my brother Tommy's car that was sitting there. He had a Jeep Cherokee and drove over. We couldn't find anybody in Tannersville. We couldn't find where they were. That was like Bar City back then. So we were driving back to Wyndham. The Quaaludes had kicked in.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Blue lights flickered in the rear view mirror.

[Andrew Goldman]

A cop and I'm like going, oh my God, I just want to go home. I just want to go home. I just want to go home. I'd never done. I had no idea that they would do this.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

He's talking about the Quaaludes here.

[Andrew Goldman]

I just couldn't get in any more trouble. So next thing I all I. There was, I think the Route 296. It's like a two lane road, goes from Hunter, New York to Wyndham. And I'd been on those roads driving since, you know, I was like 12. So outran the state trooper. There was snow squall, so he slowed down.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

The trooper radioed ahead. Michael sped through the little town of Hensonville. He was now just two and a half miles from home. He took a left on south street, which leads directly to the Wyndham Mountain Club, but soon faced a wall of police lights with a trooper on foot in front of a roadblock. He didn't stop.

[Andrew Goldman]

I just remember thinking, oh God. So I just. It was a four wheel drive, so I just tried to go around it. All I wanted to do was get home. That's all I wanted to do. And, you know, didn't want to hurt anybody. And outside the window, Mom's hotel about a mile up the road. I knew I wasn't going to make a corner so I tried to pull up and hit a double telephone pole. And, you know, thank God she was okay. I cracked the back of my head open. I think I needed 14 or 20 stitches.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

They arrested you?

[Andrew Goldman]

Yeah. I look up and there was a sea of police cars.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

These were some unhappy cops. In their reports, they claim Michael attempted to run the trooper down with the Jeep, not drive around him. They charged him with unlicensed operations, speeding, failure to comply and driving while intoxicated. Debbie Deal walked away unscathed. But the car Michael was driving wasn't as lucky. And to make matters worse, it wasn't even his. He'd borrowed his brother Tommy's brand new Jeep Cherokee Chief, providing yet another reason for his brother to hate him. As Michael readily admits, his behavior was beyond reckless. Boneheaded might better describe it. His father's attorney, Tom Sheridan, the one who'd later commissioned the Sutton report, paid the bond and got Michael sprung from jail. While awaiting trial. Shortly after the accident, Sheridan let himself into the Wyndham house where he found Michael at 9:30 in the morning smoking a cigarette and drinking gin and orange juice.

[Andrew Goldman]

Good news, the lawyer said Tom Sheridan made some deal.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

In fact, he made a deal with the court to spare Michael the DUI conviction. But in exchange, Michael would have to attend a special school.

[Andrew Goldman]

And he said, hey, I've got the school in Maine. It's great.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Elon Sheridan told him the school was called.

[Andrew Goldman]

They've got horseback riding and cross country skiing. They've got this and that. It's, you know, outdoorsy. I know you like the outdoors. Are you willing to go? I said, absolutely. I said, yeah, I'll go in the fall, but I'm not gonna go right now. And he goes, so you're refusing to go? And then all of a sudden the front door opened 10 minutes later and I hear shuffling of footsteps. There's a guy in a leather jacket, turns out he's the pilot and there's three other guys that are tattooed from head to toe. And they said, hi, we're from the Elan School. And they handcuffed me like I was some kind of a criminal. And I was dragged out of there like an animal. Yeah, you know, they did a pretty good job working me over in the car. And I know exactly where the airport is. I drove by it every time going back up to Wyndham small country airport. They had the plane waiting. Next thing I know I was thrown in that thing, handcuffed and flown to Poland Springs, Maine and introduced to a world of utter insanity.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

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[Andrew Goldman]

Hey everybody, it's Babs. You know, one thing that makes the.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

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[Andrew Goldman]

We share year after year. And that's why I'm so excited to tell you about Birch Lane.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

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[Andrew Goldman]

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[Narrator/Interviewer]

Shop my hand picked Birch Lane Collection.

[Andrew Goldman]

And more classic [e-mail] it used to be that we had bad kids who were locked away in reform schools and sick kids who were locked away in mental hospitals. But in the past decade, we've been looking for ways to change that behavior. This facility called Elan claims to be able to do that.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Shortly after his Quaalude fueled car crash in 1978, Michael Skakel found himself being whisked away and sequestered in the Maine wilderness at the Elan School, where he'd spend the better part of the next two years. Elan was a school where rich parents offloaded their troublemaker kids at a cost of about 30 grand a year. Though it was less than a decade old, the school had developed enough notoriety that in 1980, NBC News aired a special about it.

[Andrew Goldman]

Elan likes to call itself a last resort facility for troubled kids who have not been helped by other, more traditional methods. The man who runs Elan is Joe Richie, himself a former delinquent and heroin addict. Richie has strong opinions on why so many families no longer seem able to to control their own children. You know, we've gone through some serious craziness regarding adolescence in the last two decades. We have gone through the free school concept of it's not important that a child has structure. Well, that's nonsense. Everybody knows that successful people are people who are disciplined.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

I grew up in Portland, Maine, and though I didn't know Joe Richie, I knew of Joe Richie. Everyone in Southern Maine knew of Joe Ritchie. He owned Scarborough Downs, Maine's biggest horse racing track. He mounted a delusional campaign for governor, and he was widely rumored to be mobbed up. He certainly looked the part of a mafia capo, Joe Pesci short. He wore a black pompadour, lots of gold chains and black leather jackets. Richie strenuously rejected the Mafia rumors. In fact, much of his wealth came from a $15 million settlement paid in 1987 by a local bank that had shut off his line of credit. Owing to the pervasive scuttlebutt, Richie was born poor in Portchester, New York, and was in trouble virtually from the time he could walk. A teenage heroin addict, he was arrested for robbing a mail truck. And like Michael, he chose alternative sentencing and ended up at Daytop, then famous for its focus on confrontational encounters. Day Top's methods were based on the original notorious tough love drug treatment program, Synanon, which has a long and sordid history of abuse. Clips I've seen of Synanon sound a lot like how Elan students were taught to yell. Here's Chuck Segan, one of Michael's fellow Elon alums. It was a way to yell so that you don't burst your blood vessels in your face so you have to learn how to breathe when you yell. So you had, imagine, 30, 40 people yelling at the top of their lungs like, can I do this? What the fuck is wrong with you? Datop's Synanon like confrontations got Joe Ritchie sober and spoke to him. He teamed up with an older clinical psychiatrist from Boston named Gerald Davidson and opened the elan School in 1971. By the time Michael arrived there, the school was thriving with about 300 students, or residents, as Elan preferred they be called, each spending an average of 17 months there.

[Andrew Goldman]

Elan is a leader in an expanding coast to coast industry. The growth of that industry has been spurred by the availability of government money to pay for an alternative treatment. Profits from Elan have helped make Joe Richie a millionaire.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Despite spending his life evangelizing for programs like Daytop and Elan, Ritchie's own sobriety was tenuous at best. In 1989, his shrink partner Davidson sued him, claiming he was tanking the business with his paranoid behavior. Perhaps not surprising, given that Ritchie admitted it in the early 80s, he was, in fact, drinking heavily and snorting Scarface mounds of cocaine financed by the fortune Elon was raking in. By the mid-90s, he'd been charged twice for assault, once for biting a woman. Yes, he. You heard me right. Biting a woman at a local Restaurant Elan shut down in 2011 and Joe Richie died a decade before that, so I couldn't speak to him for this podcast. But the so called therapies employed at Elan remained fresh in the minds of the Elan alums I spoke with. Chuck Segan educated me on several of them. Haircuts, 21, gun salutes, blasts, verbal reprimands, scoldings of different kinds, different names.

[Andrew Goldman]

Primal scream therapy is intended to release a youngster's deepest fears and emotions. But Elan also uses older techniques like physical punishment for misbehavior and dunce caps for scholastic failure. Joe, you make no bones about it. There is corporal punishment here at Elan. First of all, corporal. It's a harsh term.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Actually, from what I've learned, harsh is a serious understatement. One of Michael's fellow students at Elan was a lanky, rebellious 17 year old named Kim Freehill. Her dad, a prominent New York lawyer, caught her smoking pot and decided it was one rebellion too many. He told her he was taking her on a business trip, but instead dropped her off at a complex of dilapidated farmhouses in the Maine woods, the Elan School. As soon as her father left campus, Kim was led from the admissions office directly into Elan 3, the largest of the buildings, which was used as a dining hall and gathering space for current residents. It was obvious something was brewing.

[Andrew Goldman]

They took me in and the house.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Was in an absolute frenzy.

[Andrew Goldman]

Complete state of chaos. There must have been 200 people in that dining room, minimum. It was a packed house. Everybody was screaming. General meeting, general meeting.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

The term general meeting meant nothing to Kim yet, but by the end of the afternoon, she'd find out that it was one of the many severe tactics that Joe Ritchie had devised to break students who were slow to get with the program. Richie stood in front and directed the frenzied teenagers like a symphony conductor. Chuck Segan was at the same meeting that Kim Freehill just referenced.

[Andrew Goldman]

It was a jam packed.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

There must have been a couple hundred people there at the time as everyone's sitting against the walls and it's almost like they're doing some kind of show and they're getting the crowd riled up. What I mean by that is that the director will come out and say something to the effect of, hey, all you people out here that are doing.

[Andrew Goldman]

Their best to stay in the rules and working hard and talking about your feelings and figuring out what it is.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

You need to do and change, there are some people here that just don't want to do it.

[Andrew Goldman]

And they spit in your face.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

So it was a way to get people all revved up and riled up.

[Andrew Goldman]

And they.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

A lot of times they have people stamping on the floor, you know, because we want the victim. Come on in.

[Andrew Goldman]

You're being sacrificed to King Kong.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

The victim of this general meeting was now presented to the crowd. Michael Skake his offense, trying unsuccessfully to escape Elan. A feat that both Kim Freehill and Chuck Segan recall as daring but risky.

[Andrew Goldman]

Michael had just been returned from running.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Away for the third time.

[Andrew Goldman]

And I couldn't believe how brilliant he was because the first thing I did was case the place to find out how to get out. It was a miracle that he was able to get out.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Headcounts were taken every 15 minutes. In that 15 to 20 minutes, you know, if you ran away, it was what Joe Richie hated the most.

[Andrew Goldman]

Joe Richie believes that much of Elon's success can be traced to the residents knowledge that they cannot escape. Even if a youngster manages to elude the expediters and run away, he can look forward to being tracked down and brought back. No matter how many times you run away, we will go and get you.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

As the packed room looked on, Michael was carried in over the heads of about 10 guys and thrown down hard on a raised stage in front Kim Freehill's first thought. The guys doing the throwing were big. Not so Michael, the unlucky kid getting thrown.

[Andrew Goldman]

Michael was about 5, 5 and 90 pounds. He was a weakling. He was a charm.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Michael has a lot of bad memories from Milan, but the general meeting is the one that's most difficult for him to recount.

[Andrew Goldman]

They sent maybe 10 guys upstairs to get me, and they literally picked me up over their head and carried me down the stairs like I was a crash test dummy. And when I was probably 10ft from the stage, they threw me. And I thought I broke my. My back on the stage. Oh my. I remember just took everything I had to be able to stand up. And Joe Richie said, do you guys have anything you want to say to this piece of. And people just kept spitting in my face and punching me and kicking me. They grabbed me like I was just. Piece of meat and just started hitting me with a paddle. They just wouldn't stop. And then they just. When they all got tired of hitting me, then they just got in a circle. That's how they did a boxing ring.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

The boxing ring, Another brutal tactic Joe Richie used to subjugate his students, remains the most notorious disciplinary tactic of elan. One kid would Remain in the circle, in this case, Michael, While another boy would put on the boxing gloves and hit him until he got tired, then pass the gloves to the next. 5, 6, 7, even 8 teenagers could take turns pummeling the kid in the middle. Here's Chuck Segan again. There were rings for girls, you know, okay, you know, you know, let's all hold arms together and make a ring and, oh, punch, punch, punch. GIRL CRIES but with guys, it was more savage than that.

[Andrew Goldman]

I mean, guys are gonna try to.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Defend themselves if they can fight. If they can't fight, they're not gonna defend themselves. Michael didn't.

[Andrew Goldman]

He didn't fight.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Often the gloves would end up on the hands of what were known as gorillas, strong boys who became favorites of Joe Richie's for showing absolute fealty to him and meting out punishment to those who didn't. Chuck Segan, who would literally spit shine Joe Richie's boots, had a much easier time at a lawn than Michael because he was one of those kids. Michael remembers Joe Ritchie throwing a pair of gloves to one of the larger boys.

[Andrew Goldman]

They put some on me, and if you fight, it's even worse. Worse. So then they just. He got his anger out and hit me till he was too tired. And then another guy and another guy and another guy and another guy and another guy just can't win. And then in between rounds, they'd put you over a chair again and paddle you more.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

And then.

[Andrew Goldman]

Then they'd have people come and scream at you more. And Kim reminded me, she said, you know, they had one. Ripped almost all your clothes off of you. I. I know. I remember looking at Joe Richie, he just kept saying, I hate you. I just hate you. And he said, you know, I haven't decided whether I'm going to have. Have you murdered right here, right now. I haven't decided whether I'm going to have these. Them break your neck. Higgins. Coleman. I was like, jesus Christ, how did I get here?

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Higgins. You heard that name last episode. It's the same John Higgins who, in 1996, would tell Frank Garr that he heard Michael confess. He and Gregory Coleman, whom you'll learn more about soon, were two of Joe Ritchie's prized gorillas, tasked by Richie to intimidate other students owing to their size and strength. Kim Freehild recalls watching, horrified, as Michael was brutalized. What they did to Michael, I will.

[Andrew Goldman]

Never forget as long as I live, beating him, spitting at him, screaming at him, being as demeaning as humanly possible to him.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Few left Alain Unscathed. But for kids like Kim Freehill, who like Michael, never got with the Elan program, severe punishment was the norm. Freehill recalls once receiving a beating with a wooden paddle at the hands of Richie's gorillas, so severe that witnesses remember her bottom bleeding through her pants. Eventually, the repeated abuse broke her down.

[Andrew Goldman]

I was beaten basically into psychosis.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

So I was airlifted out of a.

[Andrew Goldman]

Lawn, rudely beaten, spent three months in.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

A psychiatric hospital, supposed to have been.

[Andrew Goldman]

Institutionalized for life, but thank God I.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Was taught to speak and to feed myself. Once again, against the odds. After Kim got out of the hospital, she went to college and became a high level recruiter for the investment banking industry. Then there was Phil Williams. In 2016, Maine State Police opened an investigation into the 1982 death of Williams, a ward of the state of Maine. He died of an aneurysm that witnesses believe may have been brought on by the boxing ring at elan. He was 15 years old. Michael was never hospitalized for the physical abuse he endured, but he was eventually diagnosed with the PTSD caused by it and spent a month at a residential facility in California that specialized in treating the most severe post traumatic stress cases. Despite these psychic wounds, he turned his life around. Michael got sober in October of 1982 with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous and says he hasn't touched drugs or alcohol since. He got married in 1991 and then in 1993 graduated from Curry College, a private college in Massachusetts catering for learning disabled. That same year he graduated. He was named to the US National Speed Ski Team and represented the US on the World cup circuit for the next four years. In 1996, at age 36, Michael skied his personal fastest time at les arcs in France. 136 miles per hour. That's really, really fast. That year he was ranked the third fastest speed skier in the US and 18th fastest worldwide. Alon, though stubbornly still in his thoughts, was 16 years back in the rearview mirror. While Michael was concentrating on getting his life back on track, there was all this other stuff going on that he was paying scant attention to. The Sutton Report, Dominic Dunn, Mark Fuhrman. He didn't have the slightest inkling that he was about to get hurled right over a cliff. Michael Skakel surrendered to authorities in Connecticut on Wednesday after warrant was issued for.

[Andrew Goldman]

His arrest on a 25 year old murder charge.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Skakel says he is not guilty of beating his 15 year old neighbor Martha Moxley to death in 1975. In January 2000, when his arrest warrant was issued, Michael and his family were staying with his father at his house in Loblolly, a development on a golf course and marina in Hope Sound, Florida. Do you remember the day that you had to fly from Florida?

[Andrew Goldman]

Absolutely.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Can you tell me everything you remember about.

[Andrew Goldman]

Yeah, I just put my son down for a nap. I got a call that law enforcement here in the state of Connecticut had just said, get your tail out of Florida and up to Connecticut because they're coming to arrest you right now. And I said, what are you talking about?

[Narrator/Interviewer]

During the grand jury proceedings, the secrecy surrounding them kept Michael from worrying that he was in the crosshairs. As a precaution, he'd hired a lawyer, a confident Greenwich criminal defense attorney named Mickey Sherman. Over and over during the 18 months of the grand jury, Sherman told him he had absolutely nothing to worry about.

[Andrew Goldman]

He did. He said, no, don't worry about it. You're never going to get indicted. You're never, you're never, you're never.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Now that never had in fact come to pass. Sherman had arranged with prosecutors to allow Michael to surrender in Connecticut on his own recognizance to avoid an ugly raid and arrest.

[Andrew Goldman]

My uncle Tommy rented me a private jet the next morning and I flew from Jupiter Jetport, the private jetport, to Teterboro. And I'm looking on the the news the next morning and it's all over every station, they're storming Loblolly thinking that I'm in the house there. And they had no idea. The guards told me that a half hour after I left, they all showed up out front and it's parked there all night. So it was an orchestrated cop news event. That is just such bullshit.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Frank Garr was at the car to meet Michael when he was delivered to the Greenwich Police Department. And as cameras clicked, Garr and Mickey Sherman trailed Michael for his perp walk. His fashion choices would be much maligned.

[Andrew Goldman]

The outfit, oh, they said, what'd you wear? It was 12 degrees when I landed. You can check the weather. And I've been living in Florida, so the only suit I had was a cotton suit and, or a linen suit. And I had a button down shirt and a tie. And the only thing I had to keep me warm was a cashmere sweater that I bought on sale in the off season. So yet the news said that how dare I wear an ascot. I've never worn an ascot in my life.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Oh, how that yellow zip up sweater would dog him. It's hard to say why, but it's undeniable. That sweater under his black suit gave the impression that he was wearing an ascot. It looked like something Mr. Monopoly might wear to be arraigned. He was portly, his hair a little too long and stringy and combed over his balding head. In the photos, Michael wears a slight smile, arguably a smirk. Later, Sherman would say that Michael's fate was sealed on that day. Those ascot pictures did him in. One look, and every particular potential juror in Connecticut would naturally hate him. I don't happen to believe this, but as stagecraft goes, his surrender couldn't have gone much worse. As I mentioned earlier, the day of Michael's arrest was when I first heard the name Skakel. I can't imagine I'm alone in thinking this, but the name has an oddly sinister ring to it. For me, it brought to mind the Skeezix, an evil crow whose space you never wanted to land on in Uncle Wiggily, a board game I played as a kid. But in the media coverage, the name Skakel might have gotten drowned out by another, more famous name. Kennedy nephew Michael Skakel, now 39, charged with murdering his Greenwich, Connecticut neighbor, Martha Moxley in 1974.

[Andrew Goldman]

Former Greenwich, Connecticut, neighbor of the Moxleys.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

And a nephew of the late Robert Kennedy. The investigation was less than perfect. But is there enough evidence to convict Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel? Steven Skakel couldn't escape that constant refrain. Virtually every article on this case began with Kennedy cousin. Yeah, which is infuriating unto itself, as you'll hear a lot about in future episodes. The families were hardly close, especially in 2002 after he was arrested. Michael says Mickey Sherman's promises morphed from you'll never be indicted to you'll never see the inside of a courtroom. Which, legally speaking, wasn't ridiculous, though it was naive. High profile cases, I've learned, often don't hew to the law when the law favors the defendant. An argument could have been made that Michael really couldn't even be charged with the murder until 1976. Hard though it might be to believe, Connecticut had a five year statute of limitations on all crimes, including homicide. So according to 1975 law, Michael could only have been tried for the murder of Martha Moxley through October 30, 1980. The defense had been used successfully in other Connecticut murder cases. Sherman filed a motion arguing this, which was rejected. And there was another thing. Michael arguably should have been tried as a juvenile, which would have meant that if convicted, he'd face a maximum sentence of four years. Once again, Sherman filed a motion in response, state's attorney Jonathan Benedikt told the media that were the case to land in juvenile court, he wouldn't even bother trying it. An outcome desired by few outside the Skakel family. It sounded a lot like he was issuing a public challenge, maybe even a warning directed at the juvenile Court Judge Maureen Dennis. On January 31, 2001, Dennis opted to toss the hot potato and transferred the case to Superior Court. After months of debate, a Connecticut judge makes a decision.

[Andrew Goldman]

Kennedy nephew Michael Skakel will be tried.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

As an adult in the 25 year.

[Andrew Goldman]

Old Martha Martha Moxley murder case.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Judge Dennis curious justification that should Michael be convicted, the state of Connecticut had no facility appropriate to house a 39 year old juvenile. Mickey Sherman had failed at every pre trial effort to protect his client, which meant that the biggest case of his career was about to take place on the biggest possible stage. Michael Skakel's attorney says he expected this decision from Judge Maureen Dennis.

[Andrew Goldman]

I'm not exactly in despair. I believe he will be found not guilty.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Mickey Sherman basically proved to be the anti Nostradamus. Every one of his predictions turned out to be dead wrong. Next time on Dead Certain the Martha Moxley murder.

[Andrew Goldman]

There has been a myth that somehow this was a weak case. It was not.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

They took just looked at him and saw this massive guy when in fact he was a little kid.

[Andrew Goldman]

The budget that big means that they want convictions. So you better come up with something that is tremendous.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

From NBC News studios and highly replaceable productions. Dead Certain the Martha Moxley Murder is written, reported, executive produced and hosted by me, Andrew Goldman. Alexa Danner is executive producer and head of audio at NBC News Studios. Megan Shields is our senior producer. Rob Heath is our producer. Nora Battell is our story editor. Fact checking by Simone Buteau. Production assistance by Brendan Wiesel. Sound design by Rick Kwan, Mark Yoshizumi and Bob Mallory. Original music by John Estes. Amanda Moore is our production manager and Marissa Reilly is the director of production. Liz Cole is president of NBC News Studios. Thanks for listening. New episodes of Dead Certain the Martha Moxley Murder Drop Tuesdays through January 20th. Did you know? 39% of teen drivers admit to texting while driving. Even scarier, those who text are more likely to speed and run red lights. Shockingly, 94% know it's dangerous, but do it anyway.

[Andrew Goldman]

As a parent, you can't always be.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

In the car, but you can stay connected to their safety with greenlight. Infinity's driving reports. Monitor their driving habits, see if they're using their phone, speeding and more. These reports provide real data for meaningful conversations about safety. Plus, with weekly updates, you can track their progress over time. Help keep your teens safe. Sign up for Greenlight [e-mail] podcast.