← Dead Certain: The Martha Moxley Murder
Dead Certain: The Martha Moxley Murder
The Out of Towners
01:15:32
An unexpected figure emerges with a new theory and possible new suspects. RFK Jr. sees a breakthrough, but deeper scrutiny reveals cracks in the story.
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- [00:00]
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- [00:54]
Andrew Goldman
In the days after Michael Skickle's trial, Martha Moxley's mother, Dorothy, made the rounds in the media expressing gratitude and certainty about the verdict. Are you sure that Michael Skakel killed your daughter? Do you have any doubts at all?
- [01:09]
Margie Walker
I have not one tiny thread of doubt that Michael Skakel did this. No question in my mind whatsoever. None. Absolutely none.
- [01:25]
Andrew Goldman
Who would deny a mother this kind of closure? She had, after all, suffered for more than two decades not knowing who had murdered her only daughter and following her husband's death in 1988, taken up as her life's work, the quest to bring Martha's killer to justice. But not everyone felt quite so resolved as Mrs. Moxley did about what had just happened in Connecticut Superior Court. And as fate would have it, on her press tour, Mrs. Moxley would run smack into someone who felt very strongly that the wrong man had been convicted for her daughter's murder. One morning in June 2002, Dorothy arrived at the General Motors building in midtown Manhattan to appear on CBS's the Early Show. A handsome 40 year old network audio engineer came over to attach a small microphone to her blouse. As he fiddled, he introduced himself as Crawford Mills from Old Greenwich, a third generation of Mills with the same name. He went by trace 3 in Spanish. Mills had gone to school at Brunswick with the Skakel boys and knew the core group of Belhaven teens. His name even appeared a few times in Martha Moxley's diary. He was close friends with Neil Walker, the younger brother of Martha's best friend, Margie Walker.
- [02:42]
Margie Walker
Here's Margie Crawford was one of my brother's best friends. He was A Brunswick student also, and he was in all the school plays growing up. He was sort of an actor. Consider himself actor, writer, that type of thing.
- [03:00]
Andrew Goldman
In fact, Mills told Mrs. Moxley that morning at CBS, Margie had written her a letter mentioning him several months before the trial. Mills asked if she'd read it. Dorothy shook her head, confused. Mills, who'd been waiting for such an opportunity, launched into an explanation. There was another suspect in Martha's killing, he said. Actually two of them. Mills told her that he'd been trying to get investigators to listen to his claims, to no avail. As he told his story, Dorothy Moxley looked understandably stricken. She'd likely not expected to be confronted on set by a stranger pushing an alternate theory about her daughter's murder. Immediately after her morning show appearance, Mills said she complained to his bosses about what he'd done. Here's Mills in a recorded telephone conversation that would later become an exhibit at one of Michael Skakel's appeals.
- [03:53]
Crawford Mills
An hour and a half later, I was escorted from the building. I got kicked out of the building that day.
- [03:59]
Andrew Goldman
Again, the audio isn't perfect. Shortly after his encounter with Dorothy Moxley, Mills said, he got kicked out of the building, that is fired. Mills was at his wit's end. For the last year, Mills had felt like the invisible man he'd later claim. He'd reached out to both prosecutor Jonathan Benedict and defense attorney Mickey Sherman, even to the judge, trying to get their attention. None of them had followed up, and now his efforts to share the story had apparently cost him his job. In one last Hail Mary, he reached out to the press.
- [04:32]
Crawford Mills
I called the New York Times and.
- [04:34]
Andrew Goldman
Told him all this, mills said. The Times interviewed him, but when he tried to follow up, the papers stopped responding.
- [04:40]
Crawford Mills
They haven't returned my calls, you know, at this point, I just threw up my hands.
- [04:45]
Andrew Goldman
It was perhaps understandable as far as most people, the media, law enforcement, the public were concerned, the case was closed, so many people wanted it to finally be put to rest. But then, in January 2003, six months after Michael Skakel was found guilty and Crawford Mills was escorted out of CBS, Michael's first cousin, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Who, as you learned in the last episode, had bonded with Michael in the 80s over their respective recoveries, authored a long piece in the Atlantic Monthly called A Miscarriage of justice, decrying the verdict and arguing that Ken Littleton was the far more likely killer of Martha Moxley. In the late 1990s, Michael had sworn off his Kennedy kin entirely. But Bobby had attended Michael's trial Briefly and eventually emerged as one of his staunchest advocates, writing in the Atlantic, quote, I support him not out of misguided family loyalty, but because I am certain he is innocent. Crawford Mills devoured the Atlantic. Peace. Bobby Kennedy, he thought, had gotten one major thing right about the case. Michael Skakel hadn't killed Martha Moxley. But Mills was sure it wasn't Ken Littleton either. I'm Andrew Goldman from NBC News studios and highly replaceable productions. This is dead certain. The Martha Moxley murder. In his apartment in lower Manhattan, a few blocks from the pit where the World Trade center had stood just 18 months before, Crawford Mills typed a fax address to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. The fax machine in the New York offices of the Atlantic Monthly. Word, the COVID sheet, pleaded. Will you please be kind enough to see that Mr. Kennedy receives the enclosed statement? I have been trying to make this information known for over a year now. Mills. Facts to Bobby read. I realize that what I'm about to tell you may at first sound absurd, but if you will take 30 seconds to read this letter, I'll be succinct. I went to school with Michael Skakel. We shared many friends. One of those friends, Mills wrote, was Tony Bryant. You may have heard of his cousin, Kobe Bryant. Mills wrote that Bryant, Tony, not Kobe, though I've not been able to formally confirm the family connection, had recently confided in him that he had been in Belhaven on October 30, 1975, along with two of his friends. And Bryant was certain that he had unreported evidence leading straight to Martha Moxley's killer, or rather killers. This Tony Bryant, who'd given Mills the tip in addition to being close with Mills, had also, back in 1975, spent a lot of time with the Belhaven teens. Bryant was also tight with Margie.
- [07:46]
Margie Walker
Walker's brother definitely knew Tony Bryant. He was a frequent visitor at our house and, you know, really nice guy with a big smile and, you know, gentle nature.
- [08:00]
Andrew Goldman
Bryant had been a star athlete while at Brunswick, had graduated from undergrad and law school, and was currently a small business owner in Miami with a wife and young family. In the fall of 2001, a few weeks after 9 11, Mills got a concerned call from Bryant. He hadn't heard from Bryant in years. But Mills lived near the World Trade center and his old friend wanted to check in. They caught up and discussed the upcoming Skakel trial, which was much in the news. Now that the case has been transferred to adult court. This may be the first time we hear Michael Skakel officially plead not guilty. Mills mentioned that in the late 1980s, he'd actually written a screenplay about the murder called Little Martha, but had little luck selling it. Mills got the impression from Bryant that he had showbiz cred, that he'd worked as an entertainment lawyer in Hollywood, and. And a script that he'd written for the Chuck Norris series, Walker, Texas Ranger, had made it to air. So Mills asked Bryant, would you be interested in giving notes on or even collaborating on Little Martha with the hopes of selling it? Bryant said, sure, send it to me. Mills did and waited for the Hollywood gears to crank up. Bryant never did do any work on that script, but he called Mills back sometime around Christmas. Your screenplay got it all wrong, Bryant told him, and then said he knew who really killed Martha Moxley. What Bryant had to say was a totally new theory of the case involving not one, but two suspects. He believed the two friends he'd been with in Greenwich the night of Martha's murder were the killers. Turns out Mills had actually met these two guys. He'd been introduced to them in Greenwich right around the time of the murder. One of them had given him the creeps, Mills would later say. He had a dead eye. You know, there was something wrong with the kid, and all you had to do was look at him to know it. He's a scary kind of guy. As soon as he heard Bryant's story, Mills decided he had a responsibility to get the word out. If Michael Skakel wasn't Martha's killer, that meant an innocent man was just months away from being tried for murder. But there was one problem. Tony Bryant didn't want to come forward. He'd later say that he thought there was no way Michael Skakel would be convicted, and he wanted to protect his business and family. Keep my name out of it, he told Mills. Mills agreed at first. But as Michael Skakel's trial date approached, he began sharing Bryant's story and his name with anyone who would listen, including Neil Walker, who in turn shared it with his sister Margie.
- [10:37]
Margie Walker
So I said, somebody should know about this, and, you know, is it okay if I talk to them?
- [10:43]
Andrew Goldman
Though Margie didn't testify at Michael's trial, she says prosecutors periodically called or questioned her about the case as they were preparing for it.
- [10:51]
Margie Walker
And so I went and told the prosecutors at the time, I know this sounds crazy that these guys were running around the neighborhood and nobody saw them, but, you know, maybe it's something you should look into. And they didn't seem interested.
- [11:06]
Andrew Goldman
Walker later testified that about a Month before Michael's trial began, she personally took the story to both Inspector Frank Garr and Michael's defense attorney, Mickey Sherman. She said Garr was dismissive. As for Sherman, based on earlier episodes, it might not surprise you to learn how he reacted.
- [11:24]
Margie Walker
And he said, oh, no, no, you know, don't worry about it. I'm defending Michael and that's just extra information that I don't need to get into.
- [11:34]
Andrew Goldman
At Mills urging, Margie even wrote a letter to Dorothy Moxley, the one Mills would later mention that fateful morning at cbs. But Dorothy never responded. Nobody listened. Seemed like no one ever would. The train to convict Michael Skakel had already left the station. And then in early 2003, Margaret Crawford Mills faxed that letter to Bobby Kennedy. Bobby wasted no time calling Mills, who vented his frustration that Bobby was the first person at all receptive to hearing what he had to say.
- [12:05]
Crawford Mills
It's pretty darn disturbing that nobody wants to even investigate this. My credibility notwithstanding, here it felt like an idiot flight. No one would listen to me. But that's not the point. I mean, the point is this is the first story I've heard of anyone saying they've done it and they don't want to hear about it.
- [12:23]
Andrew Goldman
For Mills, Bobby taking an interest must have felt like being handed a cold drink after a two day desert hike. On the phone with Bobby, Mills explained that he considered Tony a friend. He was so hell bent on getting the story out because he believed him. Why wouldn't he?
- [12:40]
Crawford Mills
I don't understand why Tony would tell me this unless he's a psycho, you know, why would anyone say this unless they wanted some kind of strange, you know.
- [12:52]
Andrew Goldman
Mills finished his tale and waited. Then he heard Bobby ask, so do.
- [12:57]
Crawford Mills
You think that Tony Bryant would be willing to talk to me?
- [13:01]
Andrew Goldman
Mills said he thought so. Less than a week later in Miami, Bryant's cell phone rang. Tony, the voice said, this is Bobby Kennedy. Bryant, though still reluctant to get involved, shared his story with Bobby. Bobby was stunned. What Bryant told him was game changing. Bobby immediately called Michael's appeals attorney, Hope Seely, who enlisted Vito Colucci, Mickey Sherman's investigator, whom you heard from earlier in the series, to travel down to Miami to get an official interview. This was August 2003, only a little more than a year after Michael's trial. The Skakels and their attorneys thought that if they could get this story on the record, they could use it to appeal Michael's conviction. But Bryant was not particularly enthusiastic about talking with Colucci.
- [13:49]
Vito Colucci
He didn't want anything to do with the case. He said he didn't like Michael Skakel. He said his mother didn't want him to get involved in it. Finally he agreed to meet with me. When? Then a couple of times. He would call me and cancel. And I kept saying, you know, we gotta do this, we gotta do this.
- [14:10]
Andrew Goldman
Finally, Bryant agreed to a date. Sunday, August 24, 2003, at the Wyndham Grand Bay hotel in Miami. Colucci waited in the lobby for Bryant to arrive. A half hour passed, then another half hour, and then yet another.
- [14:27]
Vito Colucci
It was about an hour and a half late and I'm saying, oh, is this guy canceling again? This is ridiculous.
- [14:34]
Andrew Goldman
But then there he was in the lobby. Colucci finally got a look at this elusive Tony Bryant. He was a tall, over 6ft and good looking 42 year old with a distinctly athletic bearing. He looked prosperous with his close cropped hair and polo shirt and totally relaxed. Chewing a piece of gum, Colucci led him to a conference room where he'd set up a video camera.
- [14:58]
Vito Colucci
Initially he didn't want it videotaped. I finally convinced him, he said, well, I guess it's all gonna come out anyway, fine. Because I told him, I said, you, you help yourself by having a videotape so nobody can prove you said something differently. And he agreed to do that.
- [15:17]
Andrew Goldman
The conversation that unfolded would later become a centerpiece of Michael Skakel's appeals. Colucci began with the basics.
- [15:25]
Tony Bryant
Can you please state your full name and spell it please? Gitano Pierre Bryant. You're here today because you have information in regards to the Martha Moxley murder case that goes back to the 1970s, is that correct? That is correct.
- [15:43]
Andrew Goldman
And then over the next hour and four minutes, out came the story. Tony Bryant grew up in Chicago, the son of Barbara Bryant, a single mother of seven and a successful producer of educational films. Back when the Oscars had a category for them, Bryant won one. In 1971, Tony spent a school vacation week in Greenwich with friends of his mother and attended classes at Brunswick. Tony liked it. Brunswick liked him and his talents on the baseball and football fields. So starting in the fall of 1972, Tony moved in with the family friends and enrolled in the sixth grade, went.
- [16:21]
Tony Bryant
To Brunswick for approximately three years.
- [16:24]
Andrew Goldman
When Barbara Bryant moved from Chicago to Manhattan, her son left Brunswick and moved back in with her, enrolling as a freshman in the Charles Evans Hughes High school on West 18th street in Chelsea, an institution which couldn't have been more of an adjustment from woodsy, preppy Brunswick.
- [16:40]
Tony Bryant
It was a tough school. I mean, this is a city school in New York. We're not talking about Greenwich, Connecticut. There's no Boy Scouts at this school and if they were, I didn't know who they met.
- [16:52]
Andrew Goldman
He's not exaggerating. In 1980, a student was shot in the buttocks in front of Hughes in a gang incident involving a dispute over a comb. Not long after, the city closed the school entirely when teachers picketed over having to do daily battle with kids in a school with such rampant disciplinary problems. In the fall of 1975, 14 year old Tony began hanging out with two fellow Hughes students, Adolph Hasbrouck and Burr Tinsley. Like Michael skakel, Hasbrouck was 15, Kinsley a little older. But according to Bryant, both New York boys were much, much bigger. Yearbook photos I've seen of the two guys confirm this.
- [17:31]
Tony Bryant
I was probably the smallest of the three at 6ft, maybe 116, 70 pounds. How about the other two guys? About. They were bigger than you? Yes, yes. Burn was probably 6, 2, 63 and Adolf was 6, 3, 6, 4. Now an important question. Adolf is, is a black fella. That is correct. Right.
- [18:02]
Crawford Mills
How about Burr?
- [18:03]
Tony Bryant
Burr is a. I would say he was a mixed descent, probably Indian and Caucasian, or there may be some Asian blood and bloodlines. How did the three of you come about to, let's say, hang around the Greenwich area? Well, it's all initiated through me. Okay. I still have friends in Greenwich and one weekend we decided to go up to Greenwich and hang out and they liked it and they met some people that they liked and so we made it sort of like almost a weekly thing.
- [18:41]
Andrew Goldman
Bryant introduced Hasbrouck and Tinsley to his Greenwich pals, including Crawford Mills. They also became friendly with a younger kid, Jeff Byrne. As you may remember, it was 11 year old Jeff who along with Helen Icks, slinked out of the Skakel yard on Mischief Night after Martha and Tommy's driveway flirtation became uncomfortable. Bryant said Adolf Hasbrouck first laid eyes on Martha in September 1975.
- [19:06]
Tony Bryant
I think the first time he met her was when they have a street fair in Greenwich at the end of around the middle or the end of September. Okay. And they close off the main street and they sort of have a street fair. Okay. Adolf always had a thing. He had met Martha previously and he had a thing for her. He really liked her. You remember him ever approaching her to ask her either out or make a play for her or anything at all. He would make gestures at her. But I think he was. He couldn't really. He didn't have the confidence. He wasn't a very at that point in time, he wasn't a Skiscapers. No, I was very immature. Okay, do you remember any kind of responses that Martha would give to him? She was always sort of cordial, but she sort of brushed him off real kind of nicely. Okay, you know, we're all friends. Yeah, blah blah, blah. And she was always that way. She wasn't a person that would let you down hard. She let you down gently.
- [20:04]
Andrew Goldman
Bryant said that Martha's gentle rebuffs did not deter Hasbrouck, who seemed particularly fixated on making something happen with her. Seemingly whether or not she was interested.
- [20:14]
Tony Bryant
He someday I'm going to have her. I go over all the time he was all the time he said he was going to have her. It wasn't I'm going to. It's going to happen.
- [20:24]
Andrew Goldman
It's going to happen. Could these chilling words have been uttered by one of Martha's real killers?
- [20:44]
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- [21:44]
Andrew Goldman
Once upon a time in an icy winter world, a wicked woman stole a child. Only the power of love can save him and defeat her. The Snow Queen New to Morrison Mysteries. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. In his 2003 videotaped interview with investigator Vito Colucci, Tony Bryant said that as the fall of 1975 wore on, Hasbrick became increasingly graphic describing his yearnings A warning to listeners. Some of the language that follows is both misogynistic and violent.
- [22:22]
Tony Bryant
Now, let me ask you now, and you know, we need you to, to the best of your recollection, to say what you remember him saying, no matter how awkward it was, because this is important. When the driver and he went to go caveman on her, you know, what, what does that mean? Well, how would you just take her, grab her and have her the way he wanted her? So you mentioned before something about getting her from behind and dragging her. Yes. Are you saying dragging her by her hair or what? Definitely by her hair. That's what the whole concept, you know, hear me say this.
- [22:57]
Andrew Goldman
Okay.
- [22:57]
Tony Bryant
Yeah, but going caveman meant, you know, grabbing and pulling off and not just picking up as pulling off.
- [23:06]
Andrew Goldman
Late on the afternoon of October 30, 1975, Bryant said he and his two New York friends met up at Grand Central.
- [23:14]
Tony Bryant
We left from New York on a train. We went into Valhea, probably got there 6, 36, 40.
- [23:23]
Andrew Goldman
Tony said they stopped at a house in Belhaven that he knew had a stock refrigerator in the garage and collected some refreshments to go.
- [23:31]
Tony Bryant
Okay. I swear it says self serve. Okay. We helped ourselves to the mirror and.
- [23:39]
Vito Colucci
We.
- [23:41]
Tony Bryant
Took about three, six packs that night. Okay. Maybe a little bit more.
- [23:46]
Bobby Kennedy Jr.
Okay.
- [23:47]
Andrew Goldman
At this point, the group's numbers began to swell.
- [23:50]
Tony Bryant
The Burners lived across the street. Right here. This is the Burns house. Okay. And we went by there and we.
- [23:56]
Andrew Goldman
Picked up Jeff, that's 11 year old Jeff Burn.
- [23:59]
Tony Bryant
And then we start to do a little issue. We had toilet paper and shaving cream. We smashed pumpkins, we threw toilet paper over the lines. We shaved and soaked up some windows. How many of you were doing this? Oh, gosh, they. We picked up people. People all along the way. So it could have been maybe at that six people. Do you remember anybody else, like any of the girls in the area? Well, we saw some of the girls. It was like sort of a revolving door. We sort of ran into them in the back of. There's a big ME behind this house here.
- [24:34]
Andrew Goldman
The Mead, Bryant told Colucci, was an undeveloped lot in Belhaven that abutted the Skakel property.
- [24:42]
Tony Bryant
That was sort of like our collection place to sit and smoke cigarettes, smoke some marijuana and drink beer.
- [24:47]
Tony Bryant (continued)
Okay.
- [24:47]
Tony Bryant
So the parents couldn't see, but it was a big enough space to where if someone did get close, you could scatter and run and no one could catch you, really.
- [24:56]
Andrew Goldman
Bryant began sketching out the area on a piece of paper. I've seen the aerial maps. What he called the Mead absolutely existed in 1975. Bryant's recall of its size and location relative to Belhaven houses isn't perfect, but it's impressively accurate. The Mead, Bryant said, allowed for concealment and evasion.
- [25:17]
Tony Bryant
And if the one I'm trying to remember, the policeman that used to patrol Belhaven, I can't remember his name exactly, but we would get there because we would position ourselves, because we knew when he made his rounds. So we would sort of hide off and go off behind the walls or into the bushes so he couldn't see.
- [25:38]
Andrew Goldman
He said that at this point, another major character from the crime scene had made its entrance. The possible murder weapon. The group had walked through the Skakels yard on their way to the Mead.
- [25:50]
Tony Bryant
I think you mentioned in one of these reports something about the golf club. Everybody touched that club. I should say those clubs. Everybody in Bel Haven touched those clubs. We used to hit balls behind the house. Okay. And we used to also hit balls in cars. Whose clubs were these? Gegel's clubs, Skeko's clubs. Okay, well, where would you get them from? Just pick them off the back porch. They're just laying around. You can walk and trip overland.
- [26:20]
Andrew Goldman
This is important. Exactly. One source. The Skakels handyman, Franz Wittin, had told police in April 1976 that there were no clubs on the lawn. On Oct. 30, he said he'd been out and seen none. But several of the Belhaven kids I've spoken to have noted that the Skakels yard, ball field and pitch for a near feral brood and their friends was consistently littered with sporting equipment, golf clubs among them. I asked one time Belhaven team Peter Kumar Swami about the possibility you might remember Kuma from earlier episodes describing the Skakel boys and how magical a girl Martha was. So it seems like the idea that this could have been a weapon of opportunity seems plausible to you, that somebody could have picked up a club from. From the lawn. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, there was probably. Literally. I'm surprised there weren't four or five clubs laying around the freaking yard. I may have critiqued Greenwich Police Chief Stephen Barron for his handling of the case in its earliest days, but if you'll recall, he's the one who said he suspected the club had been picked up near the scene rather than from inside the Skakel house. Could he have been right? Tony Bryant seemed to think so.
- [27:33]
Tony Bryant
That night that Martha died, did anybody walk around with a golf club? I picked up one.
- [27:39]
Andrew Goldman
Right.
- [27:39]
Tony Bryant
Burr picked up one. Adolf picked up one. Jeff Burns picked Up one. And we were, like, goofed around.
- [27:45]
Tony Bryant (continued)
They.
- [27:45]
Tony Bryant
They were using them as sort of like walking sticks.
- [27:49]
Andrew Goldman
Bryant said that as he and his New York friends got drunker and higher out there in the Mead, the more uncomfortable he became. It was also getting late, close to.
- [27:59]
Tony Bryant
9Pm I know in some of your comments to Bobby Kennedy, something triggers where you want to get away from these guys. Well, I had been in trouble that summer, okay? And I had gotten arrested in Greenwich for being a little alien. So my mother told me that I had to catch the last train.
- [28:21]
Andrew Goldman
Bryant, along with a group of other teens, had been arrested for an incident that involved pulling down signs along the road. He knew he couldn't get in trouble again.
- [28:29]
Tony Bryant
And they had made some statements also that, you know, we just got to get into something. I'm. I'm not going out of here unsatisfied. Who said that burn. It ate off. What did you tend. What. What did that mean on Saturday? Well, we've been talking about this night. We've been talking about the Caveman. Okay? And so this is the night that Martha died. This is the Martha. She died that night. And this is the. The kind of. The kind of conversation that had been going on since we got on the train. So they go on for three or four hours already. Okay. Both. Both when you were sober and now. And get a little bit more exacerbated because they were like, where are the bitches? Okay? And so they got a little bit more out of hand.
- [29:16]
Andrew Goldman
Bryant said that shortly after 9, increasingly uneasy with the conversation and expected home, he announced that he was going to catch the last train into the city.
- [29:25]
Tony Bryant
Now you leave to go home. Is it because your mother says you have to be home a certain time, or is it because of the actions of these two other guys? I had to go home regardless, but their actions helped me make my decision a lot easier. Did Adolf and Burr stay in Belhaven that night? Yes, they did. They stayed with the Byrnes. They did, yes. You know that for a fact? You could stay in their house and they would never know, though. Okay? The parents would never know. Okay. It was a huge. You. They stayed there? Yes, they did. And Jeff told me that they'd also spent the night that night. Okay, so Jeff told you that they stayed there, and Adolf and Burr told you they stayed in Belhaven at the Burns House? That's correct. Before I left, they were. Like I said, what are you guys gonna do? Well, we're gonna stay at the Burns. Okay, I'm out. Bye.
- [30:12]
Andrew Goldman
See, in that Miami hotel, Room. Tony Bryant had just recounted that less than an hour before Martha Moxley was last seen alive, he left two high school friends, Adolph and Burr, in Belhaven, drunk, high, and talking about taking a girl by force. Vito Kaluchi pressed him for more details.
- [30:33]
Tony Bryant
Okay, so you just said, I'm out of here, and you left.
- [30:37]
Tony Bryant (continued)
I left.
- [30:38]
Tony Bryant
Okay. When was the next time you saw them? I saw them that Monday. The following Monday.
- [30:45]
Andrew Goldman
Okay.
- [30:45]
Tony Bryant
And it was. It was not a pleasant experience because there was overtures made about. Well, I got mine.
- [30:57]
Andrew Goldman
Okay.
- [30:58]
Tony Bryant
And who said that? Adolf said it to me that day. And then Burn a Roundabout Way says, yeah, we. We did what we had to do and blah, blah, blah. You gotta get found on that. It's tough. I mean, whatever we did, we. We achieved the caveman. They said that?
- [31:18]
Andrew Goldman
Yeah.
- [31:19]
Tony Bryant
Both of them in different situations? Yes. Okay, so do you believe that they killed her, either the two of them, or possibly. I think they were definitely involved. Okay. Adolph and Burr? Yes. There's no doubt in my mind that they were involved. I think. Well, we know that they were there. Oh, no, there's. No. No, they were there when the murder took place.
- [31:43]
Andrew Goldman
Colucci then posed the question I imagine you're probably asking right about now through.
- [31:48]
Tony Bryant
All those early years, why didn't you come forward to anybody? For one thing, I was afraid of being automatically pinned in as a suspect. My family didn't have money to defend me from a lawsuit that, you know, it'd be easy if they could convict Michael Skaggle on circumstantial evidence, I think that would be an easier conviction than Michael. My mistake in judgment is. I mean, I sat on this story the whole time during the trial because there's no way. There's no way we ever thought that Michael Skeker would be convicted.
- [32:32]
Andrew Goldman
Bryant would later claim that in the days after the murder, he shared the story with his mother. Keep your mouth shut, she told him. Margie Walker says she later heard something similar from her brother.
- [32:43]
Margie Walker
Neil and Tony have talked over the years, and Tony's mother seemed to verify the story that he was out there, and she was terrified of what was going on and. And didn't want Tony to ever go back to Greenwich or anything.
- [33:01]
Andrew Goldman
Could Bryant's story be true? When Kaluchi and I spoke in 2023, I asked him if Bryant seemed credible.
- [33:09]
Vito Colucci
Oh, he seemed very credible because he named specifics. And for me, just as a side note of all the statements that I've taken over the years, both as a cop and many, many as a private detective, it was the best statement that day.
- [33:25]
Andrew Goldman
But Bryant didn't just sound credible. There were also some tantalizing hints in the police reports and interviews that back up Bryant's story and suggest what you might call some real. There, there. After Martha was found, her body was removed from the scene, wrapped in two blue sheets. The Connecticut State Police scanned those sheets for trace evidence and discovered a few hairs which they sent off to the FBI's crime lab. On December 5, the lab weighed in officially on one of the collected hairs, like this quote, a dark brown to black head hair possessing Negroid characteristics. There was a logical explanation for the presence of a hair having black characteristics on that sheet. One of the pair of youth officers who was first to respond to the crime scene was black Daniel Hickman. So naturally, cops sent a sample of Hickman's hair to the FBI as well as hair from the son of Ethel Jones, the Skakel's black cook who lived in servants quarters. But the FBI ruled out Hickman and Jones as the source of the unidentified hair. So whose head had it come from? And there was another mysterious hair recovered on the other blue sheet, one that had never been reported in the press. When the state crime lab sent it off for analysis before trial in 2002, the scientists reported back that the donor had an Asian background. Recall, Bryant said he thought Tinsley might have some Asian ancestry, although that's never been confirmed. And obviously Tinsley didn't offer up his DNA for testing in the case. Then there was the crime itself. Not only did the attack suggest great strength, but Martha was dragged 80ft to be deposited under the tree in the corner of her property. Could this even have been accomplished by a solitary attacker? Greenwich investigators wanted this themselves for a certain period of the investigation. According to Martha's friend Helen Icks, who sat for numerous interviews with cops over.
- [35:19]
Margie Walker
The years, the police told us that at one point they knew for sure it wasn't one person who did it because it was so brutal and it would take extraordinary strength.
- [35:28]
Andrew Goldman
Tell me about that. Wait, when did that happen? Is it Solomon and Gar or.
- [35:32]
Margie Walker
Yeah, it was Solomon for sure.
- [35:35]
Andrew Goldman
Helen's husband Dan sitting in on the interview also weighed in.
- [35:38]
Margie Walker
Yeah, and they said it was definitely two people.
- [35:40]
Andrew Goldman
Do you remember when the. When that meeting might have been? Late 80s, before 1996?
- [35:48]
Margie Walker
Yeah, I would say late, late 80s, early 90s. Yeah.
- [35:52]
Andrew Goldman
And they sat you down and they were re interviewing you and they said.
- [35:54]
Margie Walker
Yeah, they said it was definitely two people. Definitely. And they had experts, you know, confirm that there was no possible way that one could have done it.
- [36:06]
Andrew Goldman
By the time the grand jury was convened in 1998, the multiple suspects theory seems to have been breezily dismissed. But for years it was the dominant thinking about the case. Both Dorothy Moxley and Dominic Dunn had said so in media appearances in the years before Michael Skakel's arrest. Do you think two people were involved here? I think at least two.
- [36:25]
Margie Walker
I mean, it could have been more.
- [36:27]
Vito Colucci
Martha Moxley, once killed, was taken from one location and put into another.
- [36:32]
Andrew Goldman
Very hard to do with one person. Mrs. Moxley and Dunn, of course, were hinting at some combination of Skakel brothers and Ken Littleton, not Tony Bryant's friends from the city. But the point stood. The brutality and ferocity of the crime suggested more than one person's involvement. As for the identity of these multiple potential suspects, other details left by Martha herself seemingly corroborated elements of Tony Bryant's story. In a diary entry From September of 1975, she mentioned going to a block party on Greenwich Avenue, which sounded a lot like the party that Bryant said was where Hasbrouck first got a look at Martha. Tony is mentioned in other entries, as are Tony's friends. Still, none of this really proved anything. Ultimately, Tony Bryant's account was just one guy's story. On a Wednesday afternoon, two weeks after his interview with Tony Bryant, private eye Vito Colucci rolled up to a modest single family home in a working class neighborhood in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Adolf Hasbrouck's house. Riding shotgun was Chris Steele. Remember him? Pop star Michael Bolton's one time bodyguard who Mickey Sherman used as security during the Skakel trial. Kaluchi and Steele had grown tight during the trial, so Colucci started bringing in steel to help with investigative work. They knocked on the door, a man answered, invited them to talk on his stoop. Steele might be a sweet guy, but man. The description of Hasbrouck in the report he wrote was brutal appearance. 6, 4, 275 pounds, black pear shaped and sluggish looking. Here's Steele. Yeah, not a gentleman who looked like he was happy with life. Very, very sluggish. Talked very slow in his communications over an hour. Colucci did most of the talking. At some point, Colucci told Hasbrouck of Tony Bryant's allegations. They didn't tape the conversation even surreptitiously. Connecticut requires both parties to consent to being recorded and the pair didn't want to unnerve their subject by whipping out a recorder. What we do have is Steele's typed report of the interview which states Adolf was remarkably calm when Vito told him of the accusations Tony Bryant made against him. He didn't demand Tony's telephone number. He never called Tony a liar. In fact, according to Steele's report, Adolf Hasbrouck said something that only served to cement Colucci's and Steele's suspicions that Tony Bryant might be onto something. That afternoon in Bridgeport, he admitted he was in Belhaven on October 30, 1975. Hasbrouck did not, however, admit to being in Belhaven at 10pm the alleged time of the murder. Not exactly. According to Steele's report, Hasbrouck was all over the place, changing his account three times when describing when he returned to the city. First he told them he left Greenwich around noon. Then he said he left in the afternoon before nightfall. And then finally he said he returned to the city at 9 or 9:30, noting that his mother would have, quote, tanned my hide had he stayed in Belhaven overnight. Colucci asked if he might consider taking a polygraph. Hasbrouck told the investigators that he's a nervous guy and he suspected he'd fail it. Steele's conclusion in his report, from speaking with him, it was obvious that he was not being straight with us. Steele's notes of the meeting are far from exhaustive. And Colucci never wrote a report of his own. But both men are adamant about what they heard. I asked them both a number of different ways. I want to ask you again, Chris, is there any possibility that you misremembered whether he acknowledged that they were there? Is there any? Is there any? None whatsoever. I remember getting back in the car and Vito and I going, holy cow. This guy said he was there. Vito Kaluchi concurred. Are you absolutely 100% positive that he.
- [40:42]
Vito Colucci
Admitted that he was in Belhaven on.
- [40:44]
Andrew Goldman
October 30, 1975, when you interviewed him on that porch?
- [40:49]
Vito Colucci
Oh, yes. Didn't Chris Steele say the same thing he did? Yeah. Myself and Chris Steele heard that. Yeah.
- [40:59]
Andrew Goldman
Exactly one week after their September 2003 interview, Steele got Hasbrouck back on the phone again. He didn't record the call. Steele's goal? To convince Hasbrouck to provide his DNA and allow them to record a videotaped statement. This time, according to Steel's report, Hasbrouck was telling a different story. He was now adamant that, in fact, he'd not been in Belhaven on October 30, 1975. He told Steele he'd looked at a calendar and realized that October 30, 1975, had been a Thursday night and his mother would have never Let him go to Greenwich on a school night. Tony Bryant, he told Steele, probably had something to do with the murder. It went similarly with Burr Tinsley, as Vito Colucci would later testify. Colucci said that he got Tinsley on the phone at home in Portland, Oregon, in September 2003, and that day Tinsley confirmed that he'd been in Belhaven on October 30, 1975, only to reverse himself on a subsequent call saying he'd checked a 1975 calendar and said he'd goofed in saying so that he wasn't there after all. With Tony Bryant's story in hand, Bobby Kennedy was sure he'd cracked the case. He shared his findings with the media. In the fall of 2003, news trucks descended upon Bryant's house in Miami. But he was done talking. The cat was out of the bag. The though and Michael's lawyers quickly seized on Kennedy's discoveries, telling a Stanford judge that they had newly discovered evidence of Michael's wrongful conviction. In 2006, a pair of PIs hired by the Skakel family tracked down Tony's mother, Barbara Bryant, outside of her apartment building in Manhattan. According to their report, she said that her son had indeed been in Belhaven the day of the Moxley murder with Hasbro, Brooke, and Tinsley. She also told the PIs that the two boys had stayed in Belhaven that night in 2007. Remember how slow those wheels of justice move? Michael was granted an appellate hearing. We talked a bit about this hearing. In an earlier episode, Michael's attorneys brought up potential Brady violations by the prosecution. But another big part of their argument was that new evidence had been uncovered in the form of Bryant's story and and the interviews conducted by Colucci and Steele over the course of a week. Bobby and 21 other witnesses testified, notably absent from the witness, Tinsley, Hasbrouck, and Bryant. All three declined to appear, citing their fifth Amendment rights. The judges watched Tony Bryant's recorded interview with Vito Colucci, but without his and the New York guy's testimony, they were not convinced. In the court's decision, Judge Edward Kerrizen wrote, the testimony of Bryant is absent any genuine corroboration. It lacks credibility and therefore would not produce a different result in a new trial. Michael, who had by then served five years in prison, would remain there for the foreseeable future. While Michael might have lost his appeal, Bobby Kennedy refused to give up the fight. In fact, he doubled down, continuing to investigate on his own, making media rounds, and ultimately publishing a book about it all. The one I helped him write entitled Framed. After it came out, he repeated his convictions about the case in an interview with Dateline.
- [44:20]
Bobby Kennedy Jr.
I have a relationship with Michael. I strongly believe that he's innocent. I believe that the facts demonstrate that these two men murdered Martha Moxley. They admitted being in Greenwich that night. They knew the characters, the people.
- [44:37]
Andrew Goldman
Bobby was asked, didn't Hasbrouck and Tinsley later change their story and deny being there?
- [44:42]
Bobby Kennedy Jr.
Yes, and they took the Fifth Amendment when it came time for them to testify at Michael's hearing. If they're innocent, they should sue me.
- [44:53]
Andrew Goldman
Pretty convincing, right? And I want to say this now. I realize he's controversial, but I have good memories of Bobby Kennedy. He was easy to work with. When I was helping him put together his book in 2015, we talked several times a week, often several times a day. I wouldn't consider Bobby a friend, but we did some stuff friends would do. He drove me around Southern California in his seriously beat up minivan. We hiked with his dog. I went to his Kennedy memorabilia filled house in Malibu, watched him shower his emu with a garden hose, met his famous wife, Cheryl Hines, who I subsequently read, was regularly attacked by said emu. As a result, she was eventually shown the door. The emu, not Cheryl Hines. Whenever anyone asks me about the project, I always start by saying I really like Bobby. But. But, But. This story has so many sizable buts in it, you might mistake it for a Sir Mix a lot video. But while Bobby wholeheartedly believed he'd solve the Moxley case, I had some serious questions, concerns even about some of his methods and his conclusions. Bobby called the chapter about the New York guys, the killers. He echoed Mark Fuhrman's earlier play to pressure the state into action, writing, using the evidence I have cited in this book, prosecutors have sufficient cause to indict Burton Tinsley and Adolf Hasbrouck for Martha Moxley's murder. And he basically tried them without a trial. Writing, in my opinion, that evidence suggests that that the two men are guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. I didn't write that part of the book, nor would I have. Based on everything I'd seen, I had some doubts. Sure, the story of the New York guys was intriguing. Arguably, it should have been looked into when it was brought to investigators by Crawford Mills and Margie Walker before Michael's trial began. It would have been easy to do. Hasbrouck's house is literally, literally a 10 minute drive from Frank Garr's office in Bridgeport. Considering the stakes, a short drive to knock on Adolf hasbrouck's door seemed merited, but the authorities weren't interested in pursuing the lead, so Bobby took matters into his own hands. In 2015, as we were writing the book, Bobby and I tried to get in touch with Tony Bryant. But not long after those cameras showed up at his house in 2003, Bryant had seemingly vanished into thin air. Even years later, as I was working on this series, I couldn't track him down. Turns out there's a reason for that.
- [47:36]
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- [48:19]
Andrew Goldman
Hey guys, Willie Geist here reminding you to check out the Sunday Sit down podcast. On this week's episode, I get together with one of the most influential voices in the country right now, Mel Robbins, on her rise from rock bottom to an empire with a top podcast, best selling books, and an international tour with the message Let them. You can get my conversation with Mel for free wherever you download your podcasts. Earlier in the episode, I described Tony Bryant as a law school educated business owner. And that's true. What's also true is that by the time Michael's habeas appeal rolled around in 2013, some pretty serious cracks had started to appear in that clean cut facade, according to court testimony from a former colleague. Around 1991, Bryant landed a job with an Austin law firm with documents suggesting he'd pass the Maryland and Washington, D.C. bar exams, which he hadn't hired on the condition that he passed the Texas bar. Bryant didn't let the firm know when he failed it. He was ultimately fired. One year later, in 1992, Bryant was apprehended in Beverly Hills after an armed robbery where he and two others pretended to deliver flowers to a woman, only to steal more than $100,000 in jewelry while holding her at gunpoint. Originally, Bryant told cops he had been kidnapped by the other men, but eventually pleaded no contest to being an accessory to a felony. Larceny which earned him six months of house arrest. In September 2003, two weeks after Bryant sat down with Vito Colucci, the New York Times ran an article revealing that Bryant's tobacco importing business had been shut down by state regulators. Later, I would discover that right around the time Bobby and I were searching for him for the book, Bryant, already on probation, found himself back in legal hot water for grossly underpaying taxes on imported cigars. On December 19, 2016, five months after Framed was published, Bryant pleaded guilty to a single count of mail fraud. Unlike his prior scrape with authorities, this one came with a hefty price tag, four years in prison, and a $9.4 million restitution bill. Back in the early 2000s, when Bobby first reached out to Tony Bryant, googling someone's entire life history was not yet really a thing. Bobby didn't initially know the extent of Bryant's legal troubles. Bryant didn't mention them when they first spoke in early 2003. But even after he found out that Bryant was less than squeaky clean, Bobby was unmoved. If I had to boil down his justification for continuing to believe Bryant until at least 2016, when I last spoke with him about the case, it's contained in the phrase that my wife sometimes uses to address the fact that humans shouldn't be judged on isolated mistakes. P.O. buddy's nerfect. Bryant might have been extremely par from furfect, but Bobby still found his story about the two New York guys 100% believable.
- [51:29]
Bobby Kennedy Jr.
They met Martha Moxley. They planned her murder and where her assault. And on the way up, on Halloween Eve, they picked up golf clubs from the Skakel yard, killed Martha Moxley. Only Tony Bryant saw them that night.
- [51:50]
Andrew Goldman
When I started reinvesting the case on my own, I still wasn't quite sure what to make of Bryant or his story. The dings to his credibility were undeniable. But did they automatically mean he wasn't telling the truth about Martha's murder? I brought it up to Steven Skakel one day in early 2024. What do we think of Tony? Do we know where he is right now? I don't know where he is. He is. I mean, the interviews that Vito did with him are very compelling. His story is beyond compelling considering that one of the hairs, you know, that they sent for testing was an African American hair, which would fit into Tony's rendition of events. I proposed to Stephen, the times being what they were in 1975, if there had been reports of any black strangers in Belhaven, the Greenwich cops, as inept as they were, would likely have been all over it. He seemed to think I wasn't giving Greenwich teens enough credit for being colorblind, nor Tony Bryant enough credit for being stealthy. It got dark early, Tony. It was easy. You knew where to hide. You knew where the police were making the rounds. You knew where places on, you know, stone walls and stuff you could easily hide. And to think, I don't think anybody there really cared. Nobody was looking. Oh, you know, is your friend black or not? The difficulty of Tony's story is basically the partying in the Mead and nobody being able to remember if there's like a dozen people that they couldn't have found somebody. Well, you've also got Steve Harting and Maria Kumaswamy talking about a group of unknown teens at the end of Wall Slaying. Stephen's right. During Michael's 2007 appeal, his attorney spoke to a few of the neighborhood kids, now well into middle age, about what they had seen in 1975. On the stand, the little sister of Belhavenite Kumo, who you heard from earlier in the episode, did report seeing large, amorphous blobs of teens that she didn't recognize or couldn't remember. And back in their 1975 police interviews, a few other Belhaven teens mentioned seeing a lot of kids and a crowd near Walsh Lane. At the time, cops didn't press them for more specifics. When I asked Michael about all this, he mentioned that he'd seen several unidentified men on Mischief Night 1975.
- [54:14]
Tony Bryant
We had a. At the end of the house, there was a four season porch glassed in with a fireplace. When I walked into the room from our library, I looked out and there's two of the biggest apple trees you've ever seen. And I saw three large men walk.
- [54:32]
Andrew Goldman
One under another and then up our.
- [54:34]
Tony Bryant
Hill, head up our hill towards a garden and a tennis court.
- [54:39]
Andrew Goldman
So why not tell this to police back in 1975? Like many of the interviews the Greenwich cops did with the Belhaven teens, Michaels was perfunctory at best. But Michaels says he did share this story when he sat down with writer Richard Hoffman in 1998, three years before Crawford Mills and Tony Bryant came out of the woodwork. I said on the tapes with Richard Hoffman, I saw three large men walk by our pool, through the floodlights and.
- [55:07]
Tony Bryant
Up to our hill.
- [55:09]
Andrew Goldman
My point is, did I have a crystal ball?
- [55:12]
Tony Bryant (continued)
How would I know that?
- [55:13]
Andrew Goldman
But even if Michael did see three strangers that night, there's no proof they were Tony and his friends from the city. Over the years, I uncovered several other tantalizing clues that would seem to suggest there might be something to Bryant's story. Like the 1975 police interview of 11 year old Jeff Byrne, whom Bryant described to Vito Colucci as a key figure in the story. He's the one I mentioned earlier in the episode who fled the Skakel driveway after Tommy and Martha got flirtatious. Turns out when police asked Jeff to review what he'd done that night, he replied, quote, we went down to the Mead and stayed there for a while. In 2003, Tony told Colucci that after Martha was killed, Jeff seemed afraid.
- [55:58]
Tony Bryant
He had made mention to me several occasions that, you know, something bad happens with bad guys and what's, you know, was sort of reaching out to me to help him and I said, jeff, I can't do anything to help you. What am I going to do?
- [56:10]
Vito Colucci
Right?
- [56:10]
Tony Bryant
What am I going to do? What do you know that I don't know, Right. And was this after the murder? It was after the murders. He's like just, Tony, you got to stay clear. They're bad guys, okay?
- [56:21]
Andrew Goldman
Jeff didn't mention this to police in his 1975 interview, nor did he specifically mention Adolf Burr or Tony. Did you see anyone attack Martha? No. Do you suspect anyone of getting her? No. Do you know for sure who hit her?
- [56:38]
Vito Colucci
No.
- [56:40]
Andrew Goldman
Did you hit her? No, but then I stumbled upon this portion of the interview. Anything else you want to tell us that maybe we haven't asked you and you think it might help us in some way? Have you pretty much been thinking about this for the past two weeks? Nothing's come into your mind where you have no suspicion on anybody? Nothing that we. Not really anything? Not really anymore.
- [57:07]
Crawford Mills
What do you mean anymore?
- [57:09]
Andrew Goldman
No, I don't. Not really anymore. Could the 11 year old have known more than he was letting on? Obviously I'd love to hear him elaborate. Sadly, asking Jeff about this or anything else was going to be impossible. One weekend in 1981, the Walker family was going skiing in Vermont and Jeff Byrne, now 17, was planning to drive up with his brother and join them. Margie Walker remembers the call from Jeff's brother.
- [57:40]
Margie Walker
His brother called us in Vermont and said, you know, I'm really sorry to tell you this, but this is what happened to Jeff.
- [57:46]
Tony Bryant
What did he say?
- [57:48]
Margie Walker
That, you know, that he had. That they found him in the morning, that he had passed away and that was really shocking.
- [57:53]
Andrew Goldman
What happened?
- [57:55]
Margie Walker
I don't really know.
- [57:57]
Andrew Goldman
A horrible tragedy and one that meant that Jeff would never get to confirm his version of events on Mischief Night, 23 years later, while investigating the story to present new evidence to earn Michael an appeal, Bobby Kennedy called Jeff's sister Daryl and related the tale of Hasbrouck and Tinsley bunking in her house in an attempt to substantiate Bryant's claims. Unlikely, she thought, but said she'd ask her mother to weigh in when she called Bobby back. She had this to say.
- [58:27]
Crawford Mills
She said she was absolutely shocked in absolutely no way ever. And she had every hand as a black friend and one black friend many years later when they were going to support him. America, there was no brightness. There is Belhaven, and for someone to see them, they would have said something. I mean, it would have been so.
- [58:49]
Andrew Goldman
Kindly, uniform if you couldn't quite make that out. She said Jeff never had any black friends, and in those days there were no blacks in Belhaven. If someone had seen any, she said, it would have been so highly unusual that they would have said something. But, but, but. When Bobby Kennedy had talked to Burt Tinsley in 2003, he seemed to have a surprising amount of detail about what the inside of the Byrne family house supposedly looked like. Tinsley described how immense it was with its two kitchens and described in detail a refrigerator like he'd never seen before with a single button you pushed that would make the door pop open like something from a sci fi flick. His description of the home matches those of other Belhaven kids who had spent time in the Burn Mansion. Margie Walker, though she doesn't recall seeing Tony or the two New York guys on Mischief Night, does remember meeting them in Greenwich.
- [59:43]
Margie Walker
I had met them at least one time, and that's when we were at. In the fall, in September. They would have sort of just like a community gathering, like a pumpkin fest or a fall festival. And, you know, I have this recollection of being with Martha and seeing Tony and the two guys and meeting them. You know, we all met together.
- [60:05]
Andrew Goldman
Margie also remembers the Burns Tudor mansion the way that Tony Bryant described it, a house so big that parents might never know who was staying there.
- [60:14]
Margie Walker
Jeff lived in this very large house that had a lot of kind of secret rooms and places that they used to go in the coal shaft underneath the front of the house that you could access and there was an iron door and you could crawl in through there.
- [60:33]
Andrew Goldman
Jeff Byrne's mother, like many of the Belhaven parents of the era, may not have been totally attuned to the particulars of her son's social life and given the sprawling floor plan of their home. The Byrnes could perhaps be forgiven for simply not noticing Hasbrouck and Tinsley hanging around. There was someone else who would be invaluable to speak to about all this. Crawford Mills, who was responsible for outing Tony Bryant and his story in the first place. But like Jeff, Byrne, Mills is another one of those people in the orbit of this story who met early and tragic ends. Margie Walker told me that Mills had a host of problems around the time he testified in Michael's appeal. He was diagnosed with cancer, which everyone suspected was related to him living so close to ground zero. But his slide had really begun when he got fired from that CBS job and had to move back to Connecticut and take a job with a local cable company.
- [61:26]
Margie Walker
You know, this is part of the story, I think what happened, the Moxley thing, is part of what happened to Trace.
- [61:33]
Andrew Goldman
Trace, of course, being Crawford Mills III. In October 2008, at age 47, Mills took his own life about seven years after he thought he'd learned who killed Martha Moxley, and one year after a judge dismissed the story he'd worked so hard to bring to light. There are stubborn, not easily dismissed aspects to Tony Bryant's story, which seemed so credible because it was so packed with details. But details, as we know, is the name of the town where Satan keeps a condo. With Bryant having vanished into thin air, I assumed all of this would forever remain a mystery. Then, on Tuesday, November 12th of 2024, Steven Skakel called me. You're never gonna guess who I was just talking to, he said. Tony Bryant, now three years since his release from federal prison camp Pensacola, had called Stephen out of the blue. He explained he'd lost all his contacts while in prison. He asked for Bobby's email. I found the timing of the call interesting. It was exactly a week after Trump's second term victory. Trump had installed Bobby on his transition team, which was tasked with making Cabinet recommendations. And by November 12, when Bryant reached out to Stephen, press reports made it look increasingly likely that Bobby would be nominated to serve as Trump's health secretary. As he was officially two days later, pending Senate conference, Bobby would soon be one of the most powerful men in Washington. Did Bryant want something from him? Turns out I would get to ask him myself.
- [63:29]
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- [63:59]
Andrew Goldman
I'm Julio Vaqueiro, anchor of Noticias Telemundo. You can watch Dateline, the hit true crime series on Telemundo. And now you can listen to Dateline as a podcast. Stories of love and betrayal, of secrets revealed of the men and women who stand between evil and justice. Every twist and turn can now be heard in Spanish, with new mysteries arriving every week. Just search Dateline en Espanol wherever you get your podcasts and start listening. Once upon a time, in an icy winter world, a wicked woman stole a child. Only the power of love can save him and defeat her. The Snow Queen, new to Morrison Mysteries. Listen not wherever you get your podcasts. In December 2024, Tony Bryant joined me on a video call from his home in Florida. It had been 21 years since Bryant sat with Vito Colucci. Almost 50 years since the crime. Well, let's talk about. Let's talk about October 30, 1975. As he told Colucci, Brian said that after he and his friends arrived in Belhaven, they joined with other mischief seekers in the Mead.
- [65:15]
Tony Bryant (continued)
I remember going back across the street and then going down into the mead and drinking, smoking. There's a bunch of people coming and going, though. So at one point in time, Martha had come in into, like, the group and to the little circle.
- [65:37]
Andrew Goldman
Back in 2003, Tony had told Colucci that some of the girls who'd been in the Mead, Martha included, didn't stay long. You said that some suggestive comments were made that made some of the girls in the circle uncomfortable.
- [65:49]
Tony Bryant (continued)
Oh, of course.
- [65:51]
Andrew Goldman
Suggestive comments made by Al and her. Were they getting into the sexually aggressive language, like the caveman stuff and all that?
- [65:58]
Tony Bryant (continued)
They were getting into that and then, you know, gestures and just things that are inappropriate in mixed company.
- [66:07]
Andrew Goldman
And I think that you said that they left, right, the circle.
- [66:09]
Tony Bryant (continued)
Yes, that's what I'm trying to tell you. There were. People were coming intentionally because we were hanging out. And then after the conversation, they were listening to this conversation, like, what the hell? And they're like, I'm out of here. And I don't blame them.
- [66:24]
Andrew Goldman
This detail has always perplexed me. Two unfamiliar teens making Belhaven Girls uncomfortable with sexually suggestive remarks just yards from the murder scene. After Martha's death, Greenwich was in a state of panic. Yet none of these girls ever reported that encounter to police. One would think that in their travels, the Greenwich police would have maybe encountered somebody who would have said, well, there were these guys that were being kind of gross.
- [66:50]
Tony Bryant (continued)
No, I don't know what happened. I don't. Seriously, I really don't know what happened with.
- [66:55]
Tony Bryant
With this.
- [66:56]
Tony Bryant (continued)
This whole thing. Yeah. And I don't know why they never. I mean, at least call my mom and say, listen, is it okay if you and your son come and we have a conversation? Because we understand that he may have been in Greenwich, and it just doesn't. None of it makes sense.
- [67:14]
Andrew Goldman
He's right. It doesn't make sense. But how would Greenwich police have known to reach out to him, since no one specifically reported seeing him or his two friends on Mischief Night? As to why Tony didn't consider coming forward to law enforcement, he says his mom had reservations.
- [67:30]
Tony Bryant (continued)
It's in the papers. And she's like, you need to tell me everything that you know. And we had that conversation. She's like, this is the problem, because Adolf is black. I'm black. Burr is a mixture. We're the three minorities. My mom's thinking, okay, this is gonna fall on one of you three.
- [67:59]
Andrew Goldman
His mom may have worried that their race could put Tony and his friends in police crosshairs. But on the subject of being black in Greenwich, Tony seemed to fall squarely into the Steven Skakel school of thought. One of the things that's been said about this case is any black people in Belhaven would stick out like a sore thumb and attract the attention of everybody. That it's bizarre that we're even talking about this, because. Why is it.
- [68:26]
Tony Bryant (continued)
Why do you say it's bizarre? Because, unfortunately, that construct exists in certain people's minds, and it's just how you see people. I mean, everybody knew that we were in Greenwich. Well, we were in Belhaven, not in Greenwich. We were in Belhaven. Even if you didn't see us there that night, you know, that we existed. We would be there during the day. We'd be at the Bellhaven, at the. At the club. I mean, it's just. It doesn't mean the same as it means now.
- [69:01]
Andrew Goldman
Back in 2003, Tony had been adamant that Jeff Byrne, along with Burren Tinsley, all said the New York guys slept at the Bern mansion after the murder. But when I asked him about it, Tony waffled. And how did you Find out that they stayed with Jeff.
- [69:15]
Tony Bryant (continued)
They didn't come back, so they had to stay with Jeff.
- [69:19]
Andrew Goldman
So did Jeff ever say, oh, the guy stayed with me that night? Or is this something you just intuited?
- [69:23]
Tony Bryant (continued)
It's just I know that's where they were because they had no place else to go. Unless they're sleeping on the street.
- [69:28]
Andrew Goldman
Yeah. So they didn't say. Or Jeff didn't say they slept at my place. It was just something you knew?
- [69:33]
Tony Bryant (continued)
Yeah, it's just something I know.
- [69:35]
Andrew Goldman
This particular detail had evolved from something that Tinsley Hasbrouck and Jeff Byrne had expressly told him into something that Tony just knew. Tony also told Vito colucci back in 2003 that after the murder, Jeff Byrne had on several occasions mentioned that something bad happened after Tony left Belhaven that night. But when we spoke, Tony told me that Jeff had never made any such ominous pronouncements. And there was another discrepancy. Bryant had told Vito Colucci that he remembered bumping into Hasbrouck only once after leaving Hughes High School.
- [70:09]
Tony Bryant
I saw Adolph. I was with my mother. We were at the Bombay palace, which is an Indian restaurant, and my mother and I were leaving, and he was the doorman at the movie theater. And I just sort of. And my mom's like, you were shocked. You look like you were about to urinate on yourself. Why? Because of this murder? Because of the murder. Because of their. They were just. They were unpredictable.
- [70:42]
Andrew Goldman
The Indian meal came up again when Tony and I spoke, but with a significant, and, I would venture, pretty memorable detail changed.
- [70:51]
Tony Bryant (continued)
It was Bombay palace, and we walked across the street. And as we were walking, we ran into Adolph, and he was living in Central Park. He was homeless. His mother had thrown him out and put him out in the street. So my mom gave him some money, we got him some food, and we said our goodbyes. And she looked at me and she's like, what the hell was that?
- [71:19]
Andrew Goldman
I remember you saying you bumped into him. Was he also working at a movie theater? Or is that a different time?
- [71:25]
Tony Bryant (continued)
That's a different time.
- [71:27]
Andrew Goldman
It's possible that Tony's shifting stories were just a byproduct of time, distorting his recollections. Memory and its disintegration over time is a recurrent theme in this case. Or was there something else going on? During Michael's 2013 habeas proceeding, prosecutor Jonathan Benedict had flown in one of Tony's former colleagues, an attorney who testified that Tony had lied about passing multiple bar exams. My opinion of his veracity, the Attorney testified is that he cannot be trusted. I asked Tony about this. You know, the guy in Austin came up and said that he lied about being in the bar. Not only did you not pass the bar in Texas, but you hadn't passed the bar in either Maryland or D.C. what. What is there. Is there any.
- [72:11]
Tony Bryant (continued)
I never took the. I never took the DC Bar. Never took the Maryland bar. They went on a recommendation. I never placed it on my resume.
- [72:21]
Andrew Goldman
In 2013, Bryant's Austin colleague had testified otherwise. Bryant spent a bit of time explaining to me that his alleged lies were just a misunderstanding. But ultimately, he admitted, I did not.
- [72:33]
Tony Bryant (continued)
Pass the Texas bar because I was. I mean, I. I took it while I was working with them, and I. I failed. And then when the notification came, I went to them and said, I didn't pass. I failed in my personal responsibilities to. To study. I was too interested in doing my job. I put my aspirations over my qualifications. That was my mistake.
- [73:01]
Andrew Goldman
Mistake or not, it wasn't the only blemish on his record. It's hard to see how you could go from starting an entertainment division of a firm in Austin to being the following year sitting in a van while two of your buddies rob somebody at gunpoint. How does that happen? I don't know.
- [73:24]
Tony Bryant (continued)
And it happened. I think when I left Austin.
- [73:33]
Andrew Goldman
I.
- [73:33]
Tony Bryant (continued)
Wasn'T doing well, and I made a lot of bad choices. I made choices that I'm just putting to rest right now.
- [73:44]
Andrew Goldman
Did the desire to put his choices to rest, I wondered, have anything to do with the timing of his coming out of the woodwork after all these years? Are you looking. Are you hoping for a pardon on the federal charges?
- [73:56]
Tony Bryant (continued)
No, no, no.
- [73:59]
Andrew Goldman
I mean, you do know somebody, and you have friends in high places now.
- [74:03]
Tony Bryant (continued)
Nah, I don't know. I would never put my friendship. My friendship is not something that I'm looking for. Any type of. That doesn't make sense to me, and it's not related. I would never ask anybody to do anything like that on my behalf.
- [74:20]
Andrew Goldman
Maybe he wasn't looking for redemption from Bobby, but Bobby had very publicly defended Michael and hired me to help him write a book based on Tony's story. So Tony's answer to my next question stunned me a bit. Let me ask you plainly. Do you think that Al Hasbrouck and Burt Tinsley killed Martha Moxley?
- [74:45]
Tony Bryant (continued)
I wouldn't feel comfortable today making that statement because I don't know. I have suspicions.
- [74:54]
Andrew Goldman
Do you think that they were present? Do you think that they witnessed something? I wouldn't.
- [75:01]
Tony Bryant (continued)
I wouldn't know.
- [75:03]
Andrew Goldman
So the man who'd once been certain of something was now not sure what happened or if he ever really knew. I had to wonder how we'd even gotten here. Was there something else Tony was hiding in the media? I think that there was an interview with Al Hasbrouck and he actually said, I think Tony has something to do with this. Let me just ask you plainly, did you witness or commit the murder of Martha Moxley?
- [75:34]
Tony Bryant (continued)
No, I didn't. I didn't witness it, and I did not touch a hair on Martha Moxley's head.
- [75:45]
Andrew Goldman
I'm still not sure I know what to make of Tony's story or his motives in sharing it. Then or now. True or not, it yielded some terrible consequences. I keep thinking back to what Crawford Mills said when he and Bobby first spoke.
- [76:02]
Crawford Mills
I don't understand why Tony would tell me this unless he's a psycho. Why would anyone say this unless they wanted some kind of strange attention?
- [76:09]
Andrew Goldman
You know, Crawford, I think, when he testified, said Tony knew me well enough to know that I wouldn't be able to keep my mouth shut with this information. Is that the case?
- [76:21]
Vito Colucci
He.
- [76:22]
Tony Bryant (continued)
I don't. I don't agree with that. I think that he understood that I needed him to be quiet about it and that I was trusting him with something that was very, very, very sensitive. It was a big risk for me. I could have been quiet and my life would have been a lot more peaceful.
- [76:40]
Andrew Goldman
I reached out to Burr Tinsley, but never got a reply. Adolf Hasbrouck's attorney said that there was absolutely no chance his client would speak to me for this podcast. But in 2016, 13 years after Bobby first amplified Bryant's story, and right after the publication of Framed, Hasbrouck gave an interview to one time Newsday reporter Len Levitt. After graduating from Hughes, he'd served three years in the army, then graduated from SUNY Brockport, had been married for 20 years, had a grown daughter, and had taken the Metro north into the city every morning for 15 years for his tech job at ABC. Hasbrook said the press coverage totally upended his life. It affected me mentally and physically, he said. I see people looking at me. There is a change in attitude when they hear my name. People drive by my house, they park in my driveway, they knock on my door, they camp outside for hours. Before I enter my house, I look to see if anybody is lurking. I keep my curtains drawn so people can't look inside. I can't sit out in my backyard. My wife gets physically sick whenever this comes up. I don't want to be near anyone with a camera. In an interview for a 2019 Oxygen Channel special about Martha's case, Hasbrouck's attorney echoed his client's sentiments. Oh, it's a horrible impact. People now look at him. People who.
- [77:58]
Tony Bryant
Who would never know the name Al.
- [78:00]
Andrew Goldman
Hasbrouck or know his face, know exactly what he's accused of, and they look away from him. I recognize these symptoms. It's a lot like what Michael Skakel describes feeling every time he leaves the house. Now that you've heard about Michael and Tommy Skakel and Ken Littleton and the mysterious out of towners, you may be under the impression that you've met all the potential suspects, or at least all of those who behaved suspiciously. I have some news for you on that particular subject. We're not quite done. You're about to hear from Martha herself. Could the work she left behind possibly be the key to finally identifying her killer? Next time on Dead Certain the Martha Moxley murder. He knew his father would be very.
- [78:56]
Tony Bryant
Upset if he said that he had sex with Martha.
- [78:59]
Margie Walker
Peter was kind of a live wire, a little unpredictable.
- [79:04]
Tony Bryant
After I got out of a lawn, I asked him, I just said, look up. If you did this, I forgive you.
- [79:11]
Andrew Goldman
From NBC News studios and highly replaceable productions, Dead the Martha Moxley Murder is written, reported, executive produced and hosted by me, Andrew Goldman. Alexa Danner is executive producer, writer and head of audio at NBC News Studios. Megan Shiels is senior producer and writer. Rob Heath is our producer. Nora Battell is our story editor. Fact checking by Simone Buteau and Laura Hunkadea. Production assistance by Brendan Weisel. Sound designed by Rick Kwan, Mark Yoshizumi and Bob Mallory. Original music by John Estes. 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.
- [80:18]
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- [80:27]
Andrew Goldman
I wake up.