Ken Littleton (6:37)

No, but she would say things which were accusatory of my character and just basically cutting me down. I've got two sisters and at, you know, sort of traditional dinners like Thanksgiving and Christmas, when we had guests over and stuff like that, she would talk about us as her new car, the.

Narrator/Reporter (7:00)

Ltd. A note for younger listeners. Ford used to produce a sedan called the ltd.

Ken Littleton (7:07)

I was in the Alva rush. My younger sister was the T, the tramp, and then my oldest sister was the deserter because she had divorced her husband.

Narrator/Reporter (7:21)

For Ken, teaching rich kids high school science at Brunswick in Greenwich seemed a big comedown from the dream of life as a surgeon. And of course, finding himself in proximity to a violent murder could be traumatic for anyone. But Ken admitted he'd likely have been troubled. Regardless.

Ken Littleton (7:36)

Between you and I, I see myself as a very complicated individual. I see myself as individual who was basically good, who got involved in a mess that screwed up his life. Who might have been the alcoholic anyways, who probably would have been bipolar anyways?

Narrator/Reporter (7:59)

Ken might have been troubled, but up until the summer after Martha's murder, he'd largely avoided getting into trouble. That was about to change. The problem started that June when Littleton wrapped his Mustang around a telephone pole, which brought an unwelcome visit from the cops to the Skakel house. Around the same time, Julie Skakel reported Ken had been drinking on the job and the kids were still failing at school. Time for a new tutor. In July 1976, now untethered from the Skakels, Ken took off to Nantucket, where He'd spent summers in the past working and partying. He got a job as a bouncer at Preston's Airport Lounge, a Nantucket bar featuring live music. That summer, he started experimenting with drugs.

Ken Littleton (8:45)

It was the first time that I had done cocaine. And see what happened was I got, you know, in some trouble because of this cocaine.

Narrator/Reporter (8:57)

Ken went in hard. He didn't start with a harmless little disco bump. He used syringes to inject the drug straight into his veins. It was like Popeye trying his first can of spinach. The first night he shot coke, Ken spied a four foot tall sculpture of a nude man breaking out of chains in front of an art gallery. It spoke to him. He said it weighed 400 pounds.

Ken Littleton (9:17)

At that time, I was, you know, about 6, 2, 2, 10. I was really in good shape and I just threw the thing over my shoulder, you know, brought it back to my apartment, which is about 2000, 3000 yards away. Walked up the steps with it, put.

Interviewer/Detective (9:34)

It in the middle of the living.

Ken Littleton (9:35)

Room and, you know, got it on with my girlfriend. And the following two nights I did similar stunts. I got a cinder block and pumped it through a plate glass window of a gift shop right on Main street, you know, at three o' clock in the morning, reached in and took out and put in a pillowcase teeth of a whale, which are engraved scrimshaw. I had, you know, had my morals broken down so much one by the alcohol and then been punked so much by the cocaine, you know, eventually was cut.

Narrator/Reporter (10:13)

Nantucket PD arrested Ken on September 6, 1976. They charged him with breaking and entering and receiving stolen property. Brunswick got wind of the arrest and by the end of September, Ken was out of another job and now fully on the radar of Greenwich investigators.

Ken Littleton (10:29)

You know, I'm kicking myself in the ass because, you know, I, I hadn't been a suspect until I got in trouble that summer and then they focused the heat on me because they couldn't get at anybody else.

Narrator/Reporter (10:45)

Actually, detectives had first begun to develop suspicions about Ken even before that, in April of 1976, when, as you'll recall from the last episode, Rush Skakel Sr. S friend and neighbor, Cissy Ickes paid them a visit. In the course of that meeting, Sissy, who was known to be a bit of a gossip, told Captain Keegan and Detective Lunney all about Tommy Skakel's interrogation under the so called truth serum, sodium amytal, during which he stuck to the story he'd been telling cops from the beginning. Here's Cissy from An interview years later.

Mary Baker (11:18)

I think everyone was very relieved.

Narrator/Reporter (11:19)

I thought Tommy was innocent. During that same visit, Cissi also asked had they considered Ken Littleton. She couldn't figure out why Rush even kept him on, considering that he was supposed to be tutoring Michael and Tommy, but both were either flunking out of school or close to it. Littleton was weird, inappropriate, she said, keeping a big stack of skin mags in the house. And he was known to nude sunbathe on a gazebo on the property in full view of poor Margaret Sweeney, the Skakel's octogenarian housekeeper.

Mary Baker (11:46)

He just didn't behave like a normal tutor. He used to go out without any.

Interviewer/Detective (11:51)

Clothes on to the pool.

Narrator/Reporter (11:53)

The behavior was so bizarre, walking around.

Mary Baker (11:55)

Without his clothes on, doing strange things.

Narrator/Reporter (11:58)

I imagine the investigators in 10 eye tingling at Cissy Ick's suggestion. Up to that point, Ken had aroused little suspicion. They'd done a background check on him immediately after the murder. No arrests. He'd been of value to Keegan and Lonnie for one reason. Ken would be able to testify. Tommy was nowhere to be seen in the house at 9:45, the period corresponding to the likely time of the attack when he did a bed check. But with their efforts to pin the case on Tommy going nowhere, Cissy's springtime tip, followed by revelations of Ken's Nantucket summer hijinks, put Keegan and Lonnie hot on ken's Trail. On October 18, 1976, detectives Carol and Lonnie convinced Ken to submit to a polygraph at the state lab in Bethany.

Interviewer/Detective (12:41)

Did you kill Martha Moxley? Yeah. Do you know for sure who killed Martha Moxley? Have you now told me the complete truth about the death of Martha Moxley? Yes.

Narrator/Reporter (12:49)

After the test, the Connecticut forensic lab's polygrapher left the room for a long time and returned with a grim look on his face. You failed, he told Ken badly.

Mary Baker (13:00)

Now, you, as far as I'm concerned, unless you've said something to Mike that I don't know about, haven't come up with any type of a valid explanation about these reactions. No.

Interviewer/Detective (13:11)

And I have no.

Mary Baker (13:12)

I have no explanation. Okay. Now, let's be honest with each other here, Ken. If you did not do this act, then you positively know who did, or you have some real strong concrete evidence. No, I don't. Then we have to assume that you did it.

Narrator/Reporter (13:28)

Ken maintained his innocence.

Mary Baker (13:30)

I never even knew her. I never came in contact with Martha Moxley. Are you neither? You saw her? No. And then, actually, to this day, we didn't even know what she looked like? No, only from the picture, which was in the newspaper the following day.

Narrator/Reporter (13:44)

It went like that for hours. The police trying to wrench a confession from Ken. Ken blamed his failure on the stress he was experiencing because of what happened in Nantucket. Investigators proposed he take another Polly, or better yet, submit to sodium pentothal testing, another barbiturate like sodium amytal, believed to make subjects powerless to lie. Ken's lawyer shut that idea down. That's when investigators decided to hightail it to Ken's home state of Massachusetts, where they tracked down Donna Unger of the unwelcome 4am visit. While there, they also spoke to a 22 year old named Vivian Oates, who said she shared a $75 a week apartment and a lot of cocaine with Ken. She provided Detective Carroll with an affidavit alleging that Ken would often try to force himself on her. She was mostly able to fight him off by scratching him and screaming, except when she was too drunk. Linda Cahoon, Nantucket's dog catcher, told Carol that she'd accidentally bumped into Ken's date on the dance floor of a bar called the Chicken Box. She said Ken backhanded her so hard, she fell to the ground. Following his debauched summer on Nantucket, Carol, Ken managed to land a new teaching job at St. Luke's in New Canaan. But that too evaporated when school administrators got word that their new hire was now the chief suspect in the Martha Moxley case. It was all adding up. Investigators felt sure they had their guy, but the fact was, they didn't actually have enough to bring charges against Ken. Cissiex thought he was a weirdo. He'd blown a polygraph, which was inadmissible in court, and he'd spent a summer being a pervert, bully and thief. But this was all circumstantial, just like all the evidence against Tommy had been. It just wasn't enough. Not without a confession. The cops had nowhere to go. Their case went cold. From a distance. They watched Ken broke, move home to Massachusetts for a few years, then in 1982, migrate south with dreams of making it big as an entertainer, like the plot of Showgirls but Sadder.

Ken Littleton (15:44)

Eventually got to Orlando, where I went to try to get a job stripping. And the place in Orlando was really high class. And I couldn't get, you know, the job because I didn't, you know, have, you know, proper outfits.

Narrator/Reporter (16:02)

He was a vagrant living on the streets, racking up four arrests in the span of three Months, drunk and disorderly, shoplifting, et cetera, and throwing a rock at a moving car. He was diagnosed with a litany of mental health issues and reported frequent paranoia and mania. By then, he'd also developed an obsession with the Moxley murder, the Skakels and their famous cousins. He started going by the name Kenny Kennedy, saying he was the black sheep of the political clan. Cops arrested him for trespassing on a construction site. He was several stories up, reciting JFK's ish bin ein Berliner speech at a bar in Fort Lauderdale. In 1983, he met Mary Baker, a 27 year old Canadian who was staying with family. Like Ken, she was an alcoholic, but unlike Ken, she had some money. Her father had just died, bequeathing her a decent inheritance. She brought Ken back to Ottawa, where they lived off her money, mostly golfing. Mary got sober and encouraged him to do the same. He'd be in AA, then he'd get a DUI, then back to AA. They moved back to the Boston area in 1984. They had a daughter and three years later, a son. Before long, Mary found out that the drinking was more easily treated than Ken's delusions. He would often tell her that Tommy's visit during the French Connection was a failed assassination plot. Tommy was supposed to have shot Ken in the head with his father's pistol. And then, according to some fuzzy logic, the family would frame him for the Moxley murder. When he was stabbed in the arm during a bar fight in Quebec in 1983, Ken saw it as a failed hit put out by the Skakel family. He once drunk dialed an alarmed David Moxley, Martha's dad, and referred to the murder as our mutual tragedy. When he wasn't in psychiatric hospitals, he could be found spending long stretches sitting in porn theaters. Mary filed for divorce in 1990 and took the kids to Ottawa. Ken stayed in Boston and seethed. Then one day In September of 1991, there was a knock at Mary's door. The two men outside introduced themselves as Jack Solomon and Frank Garr. There were investigators who'd come all the way from Connecticut, and they wanted to talk to her about Ken and the Martha Moxley murder. Did my card go through?

Mary Baker (Interview) (18:21)

Oh, no.

Narrator/Reporter (18:22)

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Narrator/Reporter (19:56)

In the spring of 1991, the Moxley case was ice cold. It had been 16 years since Captain Tom Keegan and Detective Steve Carroll had interviewed their last suspect, Ken Littleton, and then let him go. They'd both retired. The Martha Moxley case might have laid dormant forever, but then a Kennedy cousin but not a Skakel inadvertently brought it back to life. On Good Friday 1991, 30 year old William Kennedy Smith went out partying in Palm beach with his uncle, Senator Ted Kennedy. At a nightclub called O Bar, he met a 29 year old woman named Patricia Bowman. Early the next morning, a bruised Bowman showed up to a police precinct and told cops Smith had sexually assaulted her during a walk on the beach. Smith was arrested and went on trial.

Narrator/Host (20:39)

That same year, William Smith came to court with his family at his side. Three men and three women were chosen to hear the details of the early.

Narrator/Reporter (20:47)

Morning of March 30th when 30 year.

Narrator/Host (20:50)

Old Patricia Bowman called claims Smith raped her at the Kennedy family's seaside estate. Prosecutors claim this is not a unique incident.

Narrator/Reporter (20:59)

Three other women came forward to claim that Smith had sexually assaulted them previously. They were not allowed to testify and Smith was acquitted to much media outrage. The story garnered blanket coverage from tabloids and their new TV cousins. Shows Like A Current Affair and Hard Copy, a rumor circulated through the press corps that William Kennedy Smith had been in Greenwich on October 30, 1975. Some wondered, could Willi Smith have been involved in the murder of Martha Moxley? There was nothing to the rumor, which was quickly debunked. But the William Kennedy Smith arrest led to many, many retrospective stories about the unsolved Moxley case in papers all over the country. An entire new generation was introduced to the case and the previous prime suspect, Tommy Skakel. Reporters wondered, would such someone finally be arrested for the murder of Martha Moxley? Political pressure can be a powerful motivator to defrost a cold case. The renewed public calls to act were enough to cause State's Attorney Donald Brown to respond decisively At a press conference on August 8, 1991, Brown unveiled a new toll free tip line. Dorothy Moxley announced she was personally adding $30,000 to the reward for information leading to an arrest for her daughter's murder, raising the total bounty from 20 to $50,000. And Brown introduced the two men he had handpicked to finally solve the case. Jack Solomon, an investigator from the State's Attorney's office and a Greenwich police detective, Frank Garr. Unlike the public, Gar and Solomon had moved their sights from former prime suspect Tommy Skakel, who was married and living in the Berkshires in Massachusetts, to a new big lead, this one further north in Canada. A month after the case was reopened, Garr and Solomon traveled up to Ottawa and knocked on Mary Baker's door.

Mary Baker (Interview) (22:52)

You know, the whole thing for me was a bit of a shock. Two policemen out of the blue.

Narrator/Reporter (23:00)

Did they just seem like regular cops or what did you think of when you, when you saw them?

Mary Baker (Interview) (23:05)

Well, Jack liked to talk. Frank sat closer to me, didn't say anything and just looked like he was listening.

Narrator/Reporter (23:17)

Jack Solomon, thick necked and looking like a graying actor, reminded Mary a little of John Wayne, but chattier. He never stopped talking and would earn the nickname Ricochet Rabbit after a speedy cartoon bunny from the 60s. Solomon's partner and subordinate, Frank Gar, was of a younger generation and had the whiff of the rebel about him. He was a Vietnam vet. He sometimes wore a skinny ponytail on his off days. Gar took acting lessons in Manhattan and even had a headshot made in case Hollywood ever called. Gar will become very important to this case. I know there's a lot of names to juggle in this story, but make special note of Gar. He'll be with us on this journey until the Bitter end. Both investigators felt a personal connection to the case. In his duties working for the state's attorney, Solomon had been at the scene with the state crime lab on October 31, 1975. It was Solomon who'd been the lead interrogator of initial suspect Ed Hammond, whose condoms and apocryphal semen jars you heard about in a prior episode, telling him that they knew he did it and he better confess. Garr had been the Greenwich police dispatcher the morning Dorothy Moxley first called the police. The two were almost certainly informed of the stakes. It was more than just a career case. They had the power to either restore the reputation of Connecticut law enforcement or drag it down even further into the mud. No pressure. The good news was by the time their plane landed in Ottawa, Solomon was certain that they'd finally identified Martha Moxley's killer. Kenneth Wayne Littleton Jr. There was of course, the failed polygraph, Ken's suspicious behavior in Nantucket, and his miles long rap sheet after that. But Solomon discovered even more. Hiding in plain sight. While he was poring over the police reports, something jumped off of the page. Ken made a fascinating admission in a December 1975 interview. He told police he had left the Skakel house once that night around 9:15 or 9:30 to check on the boys in the driveway. Here's Steven Skakel. He says that our live in babysitter Margaret Sweeney, who was in her mid to late 80s at that time, told him to go out and check out a fracas. By fracas, Sweeney meant loud kids who needed to be sent home. When he got to the front entryway to leave, Ken found a crowd. Tommy Skakel was standing with Andy Shakespeare, passing her the car keys that Julie had forgotten. Ken, Sunny went outside, found the driveway empty, walked by the Revcon motorhome at the base of the driveway and then went back into the house and directly up to Rush Skakel Sr. S second floor bedroom. By God, Solomon thought Ken was placing himself at the back of the house at the approximate time that Martha was leaving the backyard. Recall that nobody would see ken again until 10:20pm When Tommy walked into the second floor bedroom and joined him to watch the French Connection as it had been. With Tommy. Murdering Martha after 9:30 and then materializing in Rush's bedroom at 10:20 in unbloodied clothes would be no mean feat. But it might be easier for someone who'd had some practice. What if Martha wasn't the killer's first victim? October 7, 1976, 17 year old high school student Cynthia Kryzak strangled to death on her way to study at the Williams College Library. May 30, 1984. 17 year old nurses aide Bernice Cormanch disappears while hitchhiking near her home in Claremont, New Hampshire and is later found stabbed to death. July 4, 1988. 28 year old waitress Pam Divisio is found in a roadside ditch in Saratoga Springs, New York. Cause of death, bludgeoning. What did these crimes and 10 other homicides have in common? There were unsolved murders of young women that occurred in close proximity to where Solomon established Ken had been at the time. Coincidence? Solomon didn't think so. When he and Gar arrived at Mary Baker's front door. I can only imagine how taken aback they were by how open she was. It was immediately apparent that Mary loved to talk. She was a single mom with a four and six year old and had two people just dying to hear all about her crazy ex husband.

Mary Baker (27:33)

He's preoccupied by thoughts and voices of merit forces. Indian.

Narrator/Reporter (27:41)

I know the tape's not great, Mary's saying. He's preoccupied by thoughts and voices. They're more important to him than other people talking to him. She was happy to share all the bizarre stuff she'd seen Ken do as Garr surreptitiously recorded the meeting. He once drank water from the toilet. He ate paper money. He was an obsessive collector of matchbooks depicting jfk. He was obsessed with a wine colored birthmark on Mikhail Gorbachev's head, loathed Reagan's Attorney General Ed Meese, and would often try to call him at the White House in the middle of the night. He left golf clubs and synagogues. Golf clubs. The investigators must have glanced at each other knowingly. Mary told the inspector she wanted to help. She understood what Dorothy Moxley was going through because her own mother disappeared in October of 1967 and her body was only discovered five months later. Do you think Ken killed her? Solomon blurted out. No, Mary said. It had actually been a suicide. And Besides, Ken was 13 then and living in another country. She was adamant about one thing. Ken might be off his rocker and he might have developed an unhealthy obsession with the murder. Every year, she told them, his psychiatric issues got worse as October 30th approached. But he did not kill Martha Moxley. Ken had steadfastly denied involvement and had shared all his theories of who he suspected. Perhaps you don't have all the facts, solomon told her. He alluded to Ken's creepy shenanigans in Nantucket Then he told her all about Ken's polygraph.

Interviewer/Detective (29:10)

Ken comes and takes this polygraph examination. We flunks it out, out and out. The questions they asked ken, they said 1. Did you kill Martha Mackley? Ken said no. He lost permission. Were you present when she was killed? He said no. Off the mission. Did you ignore them? Moxley with a golf club? He said no. Machine. There is evidence missing in this case. You know where the evidence is? Ken says no, but the machine he it out. Now.

Narrator/Reporter (29:39)

Was Mary aware of what happened at Ken's 1977 burglary trial? He asked. Connecticut authorities had arranged with the Nantucket DA to allow Ken to avoid a felony if only he'd return to Connecticut for further tests.

Interviewer/Detective (29:50)

We'd like to answer back on Ken. No way. Yeah. I'm not going back now. That's a strange reply from a man. I just offered this man his wife. When you come back and take a photograph, you're innocent. You have nothing to hide. Your career is back in tune. You've got a chance to go back and teach and be productive as you've been throughout the so far through your life. He turned his balance with you. He did not want to come back.

Narrator/Reporter (30:14)

Mary considered this and then admitted she had something that might interest them. She'd kept answering machine messages Ken left her when he was drunk and upset that she wasn't letting him see the kids. A note to listeners. There's some strong and very creepy language ahead.

Interviewer/Detective (30:31)

Your voice sounds so sweet. Unfortunately, anger and fury motivates this call. If you think you can get away with this fucking bullshit. Not communicate, communicating with me, you're full of shit. One way or another, I'm gonna fucking get you. I love two people on this earth right now. I will always love them. And as for you, well, you can take a bath in some menstrual juices. You're a selfish fucking whore. You separated me from the ones that I loved. If you think you're gonna get away with this shit, you're mistaken. Very mistaken. I won't elaborate. The checks come in at the beginning of the month, so watch out for a scratch on your window. And then. Remember when I was angry? Fish bait. Maybe we'll send off Charlie when he's drunk. Just fish for some muskies. With you on the line, they're singing about good tunes, about the water, about how your mother ended up in an ice bore. Mark. May you have a better fate, you menstrual cunt.

Narrator/Reporter (32:13)

I have no idea exactly when Solomon first suspected that Ken might be a serial killer. Neither he nor Gar responded to interview requests. And In April of 2024, just a couple months after I stopped by his house to try to speak to him, Solomon died. But honestly, the same thought crossed my mind when I first listened to these messages. Before leaving Ottawa, Gar provided Mary with a toll free number to reach him. She used it a lot. From the looks of the police files, which are littered with gossipy updates for Mary relating to Gar, her every conversation with Ken, it seems as though Mary had been waiting her whole life to be part of something as exciting as a murder investigation. She did everything they asked. They needed one of Kent's hairs to compare with evidence. So In November of 1991, Mary invited him up to Canada to visit the kids. Two hours before Kent arrived, Mounties showed up at her house bearing bedsheets to collect his hairs and ashtrays to collect his cigarette butts. And as soon as he'd walked out the door, the Mounties swept in to collect the evidence. Could Mary start taping calls? Sure, she said. So they set her up with a tape recorder and a cheap suction cup recording contraption to attach to her phone receiver. At last, they got a lead. Ken was obsessed with being set up for the Moxley murder and one day asked Mary what would happen to him if one day some hunter walking through the woods tripped over a golf club handle and bloody clothes planted to frame him. It was an oddly specific scenario for Ken to come up with. Upon hearing this, Solomon became convinced that Ken could have ditched evidence at the Skakels Wyndham, New York ski retreat. Right after the murder, dogs and troopers descended upon Wyndham and searched all day. No golf club handle, no bloody clothes. Strike one. So Mary agreed to confront Ken.

Mary Baker (33:56)

I'll lay it on the line for you. There have been times, you know, I've had some pretty frightening nightmares wondering, you know, why the hell would you say, you know, she wouldn't die? I just had to stab her to death.

Narrator/Host (34:19)

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Narrator/Reporter (35:37)

In 1984, two years into what you've by now gathered was a very dysfunctional marriage, Ken Littleton and Mary Baker took a road trip from Florida to Massachusetts. Ken drank all the way and ended up passed out in the backseat of their Firebird. Seven years later, as she surreptitiously recorded their conversation, Mary asked Ken about something he'd said, actually confessed to during the trip.

Mary Baker (36:02)

Why the hell would you say, you know, she wouldn't die? I just had to stab her to death.

Interviewer/Detective (36:08)

That was. That was in when I was blacked out.

Mary Baker (36:11)

Oh, sure. Going to Greenwich.

Interviewer/Detective (36:13)

Yeah.

Mary Baker (36:14)

Yeah. But why would you say that?

Interviewer/Detective (36:19)

I've tried to explain this how many times?

Mary Baker (36:22)

Oh, I know, but you always claim you were drinking or you were otherwise incapacitated.

Interviewer/Detective (36:26)

But no, I didn't. I. I didn't explain it like that at all. I explained it in this way, in the sense that when I thought about it, I thought, you know, could there have been any way that I could have perpetrated the crime? And I went through my mind, which this was all instigated by the Greenwich police putting me in a position where, you know, they made me feel like, you know, I committed it.

Narrator/Reporter (37:03)

Actually, Ken needn't have explained why he said it because he had never, ever said such a thing. Solomon and Gar, perhaps tired of listening to hours of tapes of Ken and Mary yammering on about nothing important, decided to prime the pump. They told her, tell him. He said he admitted to killing Martha while he's blacked out. See what he says. This is at least the version of Events that Mary Baker and Frank Garr claim occurred. Solomon would later flatly deny ever telling Mary to lie. Based on my research, I'm inclined to believe Mary's account either way. What's certain is that Mary absolutely told Ken he'd confessed while passed out in that Firebird. But no matter how much she tried, she couldn't get Ken to confess while conscious.

Mary Baker (37:43)

Have you lied to me? No.

Interviewer/Detective (37:46)

No.

Narrator/Reporter (37:47)

The calls were yielding nothing. Mary was a hopeless spook, the cops decided. But Solomon and Garr weren't ready to stop pushing if they were ever going to get their confession. They needed a new tactic. In 1992, they gave up the spy stuff and just called Ken up and pitched the idea of coming back to Connecticut to clear his name. A defense attorney, Ken New, told him under no circumstances should he do it. But Ken clearly couldn't help himself. He was consumed. Just a few months before, he'd been arrested for DUI in Boston, driving the wrong way on a one way street frequented by prostitutes. Cops reported he was muttering that he needed to talk to the Kennedys. Ken agreed to return to Greenwich in December of 1992 and sit down with forensic psychiatrist Dr. Kathy Morale. She's the one you heard Ken talking to earlier in the episode. Solomon and Garr had caught Morale on a network true crime show and were so impressed, they flew her to town from her home in Denver to help solve their case and set up a video camera in the library of the Greenwich Police Department to record the sessions. Had Littleton ever been in shape to work a stripper pole? He certainly was no longer. Ken was now a big Massachusetts galoot with a significant beer paunch. His oversized rugby shirt couldn't hide. He wore a longish mane of brown hair and aviator glasses. Here's how Ken described his predicament to Morale.

Ken Littleton (39:03)

I'm down here. Against very smart defense attorney's advice. I'm down here naked. Basically. I'm down here because I know I. I didn't commit the crime and I want to, if possible, help solve the murder. That was not the case, however, back in 1975, I trust Frank and I trust Jeff. I trust the process we're going through right now.

Narrator/Reporter (39:33)

Ken spent a day and a half with Dr. Morale, chain smoking in the Greenwich police library. The cops had gone for a kitchen sink approach, encouraging Ken to do anything they could think of that might, they told him, clear him. But of course, their real motive was to find more evidence of his guilt. They might use his leverage to finally get a confession. Ken even said he'd consider letting a doctor inject him with sodium pentothal, the supposed truth serum. But they couldn't rustle up a shrink willing to do the honors, so they brought in another psychiatrist who did hypnosis. Garr nearly exploded when he told them he wouldn't conduct the test without a sign off from Ken's attorney. They also flew in a folksy white haired man named Robert Brizentine from Maryland to administer a polygraph. Bryzantin had a distinguished 30 year military career, much of it as a polygrapher, and had personally designed the army's standardized protocol for lie detection. He was a polygraph true believer, claiming in published articles that with the trained polygrapher, the box was at least 90% accurate in sussing out liars. He began with a health intake.

Interviewer/Detective (40:35)

All right, your medication, what are you taking?

Ken Littleton (40:39)

I am taking lithonate Perfezanine. Anxiety and paranoia reducer. 2,500 milligrams of delta coat Wellbutrin. I have bipolar disability, Manic depressive illness.

Narrator/Reporter (40:59)

Ken told him about his two recent suicide attempts, his paranoia and his multiple psychiatric diagnoses. And then Brzentine connected him to the machine. After completing the test, Brisentine rushed into the room where Garr waited. Frank, that guy killed that girl. I polygraphed three convicts in jail that confessed to crimes. And their polygraphs were not as good as this guy's. By good, Brisentine meant suggestive of guilt, which was obviously bad for Ken Littleton. Solon and Gar then brought Ken in and used every trick they knew, using the failed polygraph as leverage to pry a confession out of him. Solomon said, ken, you did it. I know you did it. Give it up. You've been living with this for 17 years. It's time to be a man, Ken. Do the right thing. Ken leapt to his feet, incensed, and started yelling. So this is what this is all about? This is why you brought me here. It was the same thing in 1976. To accuse me, to try to make me say I did something I didn't do. Ken stormed out, swearing off another generation of Connecticut cops. Ken was done, and Solomon was too. He gave up on trying to nail Ken for Martha Moxley's killing and with that chapter closed, also seemed to forget all about the trail of murders he had once attempted to connect to Ken. After all their efforts, all they really had on Ken was a second failed polygraph. Solomon was sure the polygraph indicated they had the right guy all along, but there's a reason polygraphs are inadmissible in court.

Leonard Sachs (42:30)

My name is Leonard Sachs, professor at Brandeis University.

Narrator/Reporter (42:35)

Dr. Len Sachs is basically the go to guy on the subject of polygraphy. In 1983, President Reagan proposed polygraphing any federal employee with access to sensitive materials, as well as all prospective hires. Congress wanted to hear if the test actually worked. So Len Sachs was put in charge of a panel of scientists and polygraph examiners, some of whom were lie detector skeptics and others true believers. Sachs was neither.

Leonard Sachs (42:58)

I was asked to do this study originally in some ways because I was tabula rasa. I had not been previously involved. I knew psychophysiology, I knew research. I knew how to look at cumulative data.

Narrator/Reporter (43:14)

The panel's findings were devastating.

Leonard Sachs (43:16)

Our conclusion was that there was no scientific basis for polygraph tests. The fundamental issue is that there is no unique psychophysiological reaction to lying. In other words, the measures that the polygraph takes. Changes in heart rate, sweating, breathing. These responses are not necessarily the function of a lie. One could be just really concerned. The police are interrogating you about having murdered somebody. Now, that is not to say that a skilled interrogator cannot use the polygraph, if you will, as a prop and use the results to try to get a confession.

Narrator/Reporter (44:11)

I showed Sacks portions of Ken's polygraph. He shook his head in disbelief.

Leonard Sachs (44:15)

I mean, I've never heard of a case where a person who was on this combination of drugs is deemed a reasonable subject. The idea that you can test someone who's on a complex regiment of psychoactive psychotropic drugs and assume that you can figure out from their emotional reactions whether they're afraid, they're not afraid, whatever. It just doesn't make any sense.

Narrator/Reporter (44:51)

I discovered in the police files that Solomon and Gar definitely would have been aware of Ken's unsuitability to be tested. Bricentine's polygraph, it turns out, wasn't Ken's first polygraph. That month, 10 days before Brizentine flew in to administer the test in Greenwich, Connecticut, State Police's own polygrapher, Joseph Scheidler, tried to test him at a police station near Ken's house in Boston. He began with a health intake and a so called stim test designed to see if the polygraph is able to detect a person's physiological response to deception and also convince subjects the machine will be able to catch them in their lies. Ken was instructed to choose a number and and then lie about picking it.

Interviewer/Detective (45:28)

I'm going to give you the opinion. You picked number 13. Is that the number you picked?

Ken Littleton (45:33)

Picked number three.

Interviewer/Detective (45:35)

You picked number three. Yeah, well, not good enough.

Narrator/Reporter (45:40)

By that, Shadler meant Ken's physiological response to the stim test indicated an inconclusive result.

Interviewer/Detective (45:47)

What that tells us here, very simply, Ken, is as far as today goes, you're not testable. Okay, I know that doesn't help you.

Ken Littleton (45:55)

A heck of a lot, but it's.

Interviewer/Detective (45:57)

One of my concern was with some of that medication that you were taking and how it may be affecting you. You may be in that minority that just can't be polygraphed.

Narrator/Reporter (46:06)

Shaler also called into question the results of Ken's 1976 failed polygraph.

Interviewer/Detective (46:11)

My concern is maybe when they did that test with you back in 1976, if that was something that was undiagnosed.

Ken Littleton (46:19)

That may have caused some of the problems that they had with the test.

Interviewer/Detective (46:23)

And that is a possibility.

Ken Littleton (46:24)

So I want to make sure we don't have history repeat itself here.

Narrator/Reporter (46:28)

Schedler cited Ken's bipolar diagnosis and medications as the reason he couldn't do the test and wrote he wouldn't do another one without a waiver from Ken's doctor. One polygrapher wouldn't do the test, but Solomon and Gar found another who would. My afternoon with Len Sachs led me to discount any polygraph evidence related to the case. Both passes and fails. Which may eliminate the most concrete evidence against Ken, but it certainly doesn't eliminate him as a suspect. Ken had never spent the night at the Skakels before October 30, 1975. Belhaven enjoyed a solid run of almost no murders up until then. Was it just Ken's incredibly bad luck? A horrible coincidence? Or perhaps something more sinister? Ken's violent coke fueled Nantucket crime spree in 1976 would suggest, though undiagnosed, he was already mentally ill. And not a good polygraph subject. But also just the kind of violent, unpredictable, sexually aggressive person who might murder a teenage girl. He told Kathy Morale that he'd been having alcohol fueled blackouts since college. As he had put it before, when I drink, I flip out. And by blackout you mean there would be a period of time you couldn't account for.

Ken Littleton (47:46)

Exactly.

Narrator/Reporter (47:47)

His statements about how much he had to drink at the Belhaven Club the night of Martha's murder were inconsistent. It started with one beer, went to two beers, and the Skakel house was absolutely filled with unmonitored liquor. And then there's the so called Morganty sketch. At 8 o' clock on Mischief Night, a 28 year old Belhaven security officer named Charles Morganti stopped a man on Field Point Road and asked where he was headed. The man told him that he lived on Walsh Lane, just down the street from the Moxley House. Two hours later, at 10 o', clock, Morganti was fixing a stanchion that had fallen and thought he saw the same man 100 yards away, very close to the intersection of Otter Rock and Walsh Lane. This was just south of the Skekel house and about half a block from where Martha was attacked. The sighting was at or just after the suspected time of the attack in 1975. Morganti described the man as a six foot tall white male, blond hair, approximately 200 pounds, in his late 20s to early 30s, wearing dark trimmed glasses, tan pants and a green army jacket. Because of the mystery man's position close to the crime scene at the time of the crime, police brought in a sketch artist to work with Morganti. No one could dispute the results. If you look at the side by side, the sketch looks almost identical to Ken Littleton. But there was a catch. Police determined that Morganti's first sighting at 8 o' clock was Carl Wald, a 23 year old who did in fact live with his parents on Walsh Lane and remembered the interaction. But the second, more distant sighting at 10pm could not have been Carl Wald. Both his mother and father alibi'd him as at home playing pool, then watching the French Connection and not leaving the house again that night. Morganti told police he was sure it had been the same man, but unless his parents were lying, it wasn't Waldo. So I can only assume Morganti saw someone 100 yards away who strongly resembled the first man, rather than 23 year old Karl Wald. Had Morgante seen 24 year old Ken Littleton fresh from a murder? Ken would not be seen by anyone else for another 20 or so minutes, at which time Tommy walked into his father's room and found Ken there and watched TV with him. And there was one more thing. I had to think that in order for the mother of Ken's children to participate in the variety of ruses she did, she must have had some suspicion of his guilt, right? Baker wasn't hard to track down in Ottawa. And just as she'd been 34 years ago with those cops at her door, she seemed eager to discuss her troubled ex. I had so many questions. This is one question that has been nagging at me. I listened to these tapes of you telling Ken about the blackout and about him confessing and I just wonder what your motivation.

Mary Baker (Interview) (50:34)

It's all made up.

Narrator/Reporter (50:35)

I wonder what your Motivation could be you either kind of hate him or it was terrible, or you have.

Mary Baker (Interview) (50:42)

It wasn't to get him in trouble.

Narrator/Reporter (50:44)

But wait, you either must really despise him, or you had sort of a nagging thought in your head that maybe he'd done it. Like, why else would you have. Would you have basically told him? Yeah. What is number three?

Mary Baker (Interview) (50:58)

Number three is, since I met him in 1982 and saw the uselessness and the torture that went on about this particular case, if he could be free of suspicion, free of feeling guilty, that he actually might be able to recover and live a life. So I can see how people would turn around and say, you must have really despised him. No, I think it was more that I wanted to prove to Jack and Frank that he didn't do it, but I truly believed that he didn't do it and that he would be cleared. I admit I got caught up in helping the police, and my judgment about going with Jack's plan was terrible. It was flawed. And there's no doubt that in my pathetic way, I tried my best to sell what I was supposed to sell. You confessed to me. I didn't sell it. He didn't believe me.

Narrator/Reporter (52:10)

But he was tortured by this. I mean, it was a classic kind of gaslighting. He was being driven crazy by this idea that he had confessed to you. Well, tell me this. Nobody told Ken until 2002 that he hadn't actually confessed, correct?

Mary Baker (Interview) (52:27)

I have no idea.

Narrator/Reporter (52:29)

But didn't you at some point want to call him and say that was all a ruse? You didn't actually confess? Wasn't that something that you thought might be important for him?

Mary Baker (Interview) (52:38)

Good point. I guess I should have. But my life was busy working, dealing with teenagers and the things that they do. And to tell you the truth, I put the whole thing out of my mind, like I didn't have to deal with them. My son went down when he was 15 and met Ken. And Ken took a dump, did his number two business in his sister's front yard in front of my son. And after that, I. I'm guilty of disconnecting with him completely. I guess I was a bitch back then.

Narrator/Reporter (53:29)

Mary may say she sure Ken didn't kill Martha Moxley, but a couple of things she told me actually made me somewhat more suspicious of him than I'd been before we spoke. You'll recall from episode two that multiple people aligned the time of Martha's murder with an explosion of dogs barking in the neighborhood. Early in the investigation, when Ken was interviewed by police, he Specifically and quite adamantly insisted he'd heard no dogs barking that night. The only noise he'd heard was those rowdy kids. The fracas mentioned earlier in the episode. But by the 90s, barking dogs had become a prominent part of what Ken reported he'd heard when he left the house at the request of the Skaggles housekeeper. Odd, no? And then Mary Baker told me this story about a night in arlington, Massachusetts, in 1989, when Ken scared her enough that she called the cops.

Mary Baker (Interview) (54:21)

Ken was going into one of his psychotic modes. He was living with a. A girl. Nice girl, Kimberly. And she was a stripper. And my son and I, who was 3, were over at our house, and Kimberly called and said, ken's really, really mad. He says he wants to come and kill you. So I think I called the Arlington police. But Ken did come by the bottom of the driveway, yelled a bunch about the dog barking next door. I mean, the things that he carried from that night in the Skakel house. The barking dogs used to set him off. But anyhow. Sorry. Kimberly called me. I called.

Narrator/Reporter (55:11)

No, no, no. Well, finish that. Thought the barking dogs would set him off.

Mary Baker (Interview) (55:14)

Living next door, our neighbors had a German shepherd. It was awful. He was always saying horrible things to the dog. He was afraid of dogs.

Narrator/Reporter (55:26)

The things that he carried from that night in the Skekel house. Mary seems to link Ken's fear of dogs to the night of the Moxley murder. Whoever murdered Martha Moxley would have carried out the attack, while Zoc Hellenix's dog agitatedly barked just yards away. This had to have left a lasting impression on our killer. In one of their surreptitiously recorded phone calls, Mary even uses the dog trauma to try to elicit that ever elusive admission from Ken.

Mary Baker (55:52)

It's also crossed my mind that you wouldn't have walked out of that house with dogs outside. Unarmed.

Interviewer/Detective (56:01)

Unarmed?

Mary Baker (56:02)

Yeah.

Interviewer/Detective (56:03)

Why not? I've never fucking carried a gun in my life.

Mary Baker (56:06)

I don't mean a gun or ever.

Interviewer/Detective (56:07)

Been interested in a gun in my life.

Mary Baker (56:09)

I didn't say armed with a gun.

Interviewer/Detective (56:11)

The only reason why I'm interested in a gun now is to pull a fucking bullet through my head.

Mary Baker (56:16)

What I'm saying to you is that when you told me the story about the dogs and everything else, I. Knowing how you feel about dogs, I can't imagine you going outside without something to beat them off with.

Interviewer/Detective (56:28)

So what did I go outside with, a golf club?

Mary Baker (56:30)

Guess it's possible.

Narrator/Reporter (56:33)

Mary never did manage to squeeze a confession out of Ken. But despite what she Told me in those tapes. I just don't hear a woman who's entirely convinced that her ex husband wasn't a murderer when she was living in Canada and Ken was hundreds of miles away in Massachusetts. Mary was certainly treating Ken as a man capable of anything. I asked her about those messages. Those threats you heard were apparently as chilling to her as they were to me.

Mary Baker (Interview) (56:57)

The kids and I moved back to Ottawa. So he. In one of the calls, yeah, he threatened to kill me. And yes, it did scare me. When we moved, I had bars on the basement windows. He scared the kids. They wouldn't answer the phone anymore.

Narrator/Reporter (57:17)

After we spoke, one thing nagged at me. How could Mary have been so convinced that Ken didn't kill Martha Moxley, but also be afraid enough of him to put bars on the basement windows? A month after ken Littleton's failed December 1992 polygraph, Dr. Kathy Morale outlined her assessment of him in a 27 page report for the Connecticut cops. She wrote, the examination of behavior following the crime strongly points to Mr. Littleton. Not only does he engage in violence, much of it directed towards women, his apparent preoccupation with the crime and his theories of how it occurred would typically suggest involvement or guilt. In a section labeled Final Thoughts, Morale concluded Ken has to remain the primary suspect unless there is other evidence to support otherwise. But Ken's leaving Greenwich in a rage after that second Paulie marked the end of Connecticut authorities efforts to indict him. The Moxley investigation once again stalled out. Jack Solomon retired in 1995, and the day after Frank Garr retired as a Greenwich detective, he took Solomon's place in the state's attorney's office. Years later, Gar would claim that he was always skeptical that Ken murdered Martha. But the police reports don't do anything to suggest he wasn't just as gung ho to indict Ken as Solomon. It was Gar, in fact, who had located and hired Brissantine. When Connecticut's polygrapher bowed out, Gar had the unenviable job of listening to all those tapes Mary sent down from Canada. Hours and hours of Ken talking dirty, complaining about his family and how he was playing American gigolo, juggling three women at a time. But inevitably, Ken would return to talking about October 30, 1975. One night in 1992, he told Mary his personal theory about someone the authorities had never even once thought to consider.

Interviewer/Detective (59:12)

Michael, the motherfucker says that Tommy is the last one to be seen alive with Martha. But when I went out, it was a about 9:20 with the dogs. And then Tommy showed up. He wasn't in any way distressed. He wasn't in any way panicked. You know, I always thought he was a nice kid, but for Michael, I always knew him as a bloodthirsty, coked up. Who killed him? Animals on golf courses, who shot small birds with double OD shotguns on hunting grounds. I think Michael committed the whole thing and focused all the attention on his brother to take the attention off himself. Very smart move.

Narrator/Reporter (60:07)

Hearing those words, I imagine Gar's head cocked like a spaniel's. I've often wondered if by sharing his thoughts, theories, Ken might have inadvertently designated the next one up in the hot seat. Michael had never been a suspect before this point, but he sure would be soon. Next time on Dead Certain the Martha Moxley Murder. Both Thomas and Michael admitted that they had lied to the police. In 1975.

Interviewer/Detective (60:36)

I pulled my pants out, I masturbated for 30 seconds in the tree and I went, this is crazy. If they catch me, they're gonna think I'm nuts.

Narrator/Reporter (60:45)

Mr. Skakel's objective was that if we were able to prove that one of.

Ken Littleton (60:51)

His sons committed this homicide, then he.

Narrator/Reporter (60:55)

Would bring his son forward. 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 Shiels and Rob Heath are producers. Nora Battell is our story editor. Fact checking by Simone Buteau. Production assistance by Brendan Wiesel. Sound design by Rick Kwan and Mark Yoshizumi. Original music by John Estes. Bryson Barnes is our technical director. Amanda Moore is our production manager, and Marissa Riley 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.

Narrator/Host (62:01)

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