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- [00:00]
Julia Claire
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:04]
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- [01:07]
George Severis
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- [01:35]
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- [02:22]
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- [03:29]
George Severis
I'm George Severis.
- [03:31]
Julia Claire
And I'm Julia Claire.
- [03:32]
George Severis
And this is United States of Kennedy, a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week we go into one aspect of the Kennedy story and today we are talking about the murder of Martha Moxley. But before we do, I do want to address one thing which is listeners of the podcast might have noticed that it's been just me over the last couple of weeks, but we have an announcement for the future of the show, which is that Julia is officially joining as my second co host. Wow, wow, wow. And Julia, we've already been through your, some would call it clinical obsession with the Kennedys. Of course, in some medical textbooks, being Catholic and from Boston actually counts as an illness.
- [04:12]
Julia Claire
That's right. And it should. You know, we're working hard to add it to the dsm.
- [04:16]
George Severis
That's right. For listeners of the podcast, you might remember Julia as the guest in the movie episode we did about the frankly pretty bad Movie Bobby from 2006 A couple of weeks ago. And I did mention that Julia has a oft revisited biography of Bobby Kennedy in her home that I actually saw in real life recently when I went over to discuss some business. What I also saw is at least one commemorative plate or dish of some sort with the Kennedys on it.
- [04:47]
Julia Claire
That's right. I can't take credit for that one. The Bobby biography is mine. But all of the commemorative plates and letters and things like that are my husband's. His grandfather had some sort of weird connection to the Kennedys. And so we have all these like official White House stationary letters. Also, my husband's grandmother loved anything that was extremely tacky. So we do have a pretty life sized tapestry of JFK that is hidden away from public View.
- [05:18]
George Severis
And you did, correct me if I'm wrong, you got married in the Jackie pink Chanel suit from when JFK was absolutely right.
- [05:24]
Julia Claire
Yeah. Yeah. And I just thought that that was appropriate for my big day.
- [05:29]
George Severis
Of course. And it was a beautiful day for her.
- [05:32]
Julia Claire
It was a beautiful wedding.
- [05:34]
George Severis
Well, it's nice that we're starting in such a light hearted, jokey mood because this week's topic is a real laugh riot.
- [05:41]
Julia Claire
It's not a good one.
- [05:42]
George Severis
It's really not a good one. We should just come right out and say this is a slightly strange episode because we wanted to do this topic and we wanted it to be Julia's first topic that we do together because it is a really, you know, not to use true crime depraved language, but it's a real juicy one. It is a really genuinely interesting case that has so many open questions. It feels very true crimey. It really combines all the things that we are fascinated by, the Kennedys. And it also is a topic that somehow neither of us had ever come across, which is sort of crazy to me.
- [06:18]
Julia Claire
No. And you know what? I mentioned to my mom that we were gonna be talking about this and I had never heard of. And she was like, oh, my God. Well, I remember reading about that in the Boston Globe. It felt like there was always, like a new story about it. So it was clearly something that was national news. It just missed us because we're famously young.
- [06:39]
George Severis
So on the one hand, it is super interesting again, because it's this true crimey story that we hadn't heard of that has so many elements of Kennedy history. And so we were like, okay, great. We have a great research doc prepared by our wonderful researchers. We watched the 48 hour special on it that was released a few years ago. The last sort of big update on the case was around 2020, which we'll talk about later. And we thought we had all the facts and we were ready to record. And then literally today, on the day of this recording, you can't make this up.
- [07:10]
Julia Claire
November 4th, 2024.
- [07:11]
George Severis
November 4th. To give everyone a peek behind the curtain, today, an NBC News podcast about the case premieres in which Michael Skakel, who is the person that was arrested for this murder that we'll talk about soon. And the person who was later freed is breaking his silence for the first time in this PodC podcast that seeks to exonerate him. So we are reacting to all of this live. I had just listened to it an hour ago, but we're still processing what that means for this topic. And I think inevitably after the podcast is over and after there's inevitably a whole other cycle of media coverage, we will hopefully revisit this topic again and talk about how our views on it have changed.
- [07:56]
Julia Claire
Right. And honestly, even without this development from literally today, both George and I were commiserating over the fact that this case is so layered and there's so many moving parts and so many characters that even without this most recent breaking news, I think we would have a hard time knowing which way was up in this case.
- [08:21]
George Severis
Yeah, it's a really difficult one. And it is such a really perfect combination of a sort of bungled investigation that a police department that was not necessarily equipped for something this major ended up conducting pieces of evidence that arose later on, pieces of evidence that were ignored. Just the sheer time that passed between when it happened and when someone was convicted and when that person was freed, it has legitimately lasted for decades, or actually 50 years.
- [08:52]
Julia Claire
50 years. Today, November 4th is the 50 year anniversary since Martha's funeral.
- [08:59]
George Severis
That's right.
- [09:00]
Julia Claire
So she was buried today 50 years ago. With that, I think that we should just get into the nuts and bolts of what happened completely.
- [09:08]
George Severis
So, Julia, do you want to kick us off and walk me through just the basic facts of this case?
- [09:13]
Julia Claire
Okay. So Martha Moxley was a 15 year old girl who moved with her family to. To Belhaven, an enclave of Greenwich, Connecticut in the year 1975 from California. She lived across the street from the Skakels. And George, can you tell us a little bit about the Skakels?
- [09:36]
George Severis
Yes. So the Skakels are the Kennedy connection, as you said, Martha Moxley's family had just moved to this Greenwich enclave. It is the richest enclave of an already incredibly wealthy town. Greenwich is like where the wealthy people from New York City moved when they had had kids in the 70s. So the Skakels lived right across the street from the Moxleys. And the Skakels were an incredibly wealthy family that is related to the Kennedys by marriage. So Rush Skakel, who is the patriarch of the Greenwich Skakels, was the brother of Ethel, who married Bobby Kennedy. So Bobby Kennedy, who we've discussed before in this podcast, of course, most importantly, the subject of the 2006 movie, Bobby.
- [10:19]
Julia Claire
That's right.
- [10:19]
George Severis
Bobby Kennedy and his wife Ethel are of course the parents of RFK Jr. Who everyone knows now, and all his other siblings. And it should be noted that while the Kennedy connection, of course, gave the Skakels some prestige in this town, they were actually way wealthier than the Kennedys and there was a running joke among the Kennedy community that the Kennedys actually married into the Skakels for the money. So these were social climbers that married into the Kennedys because they wanted to be American royalty. So Rush Skakels family business, Great Lakes Carbon, was one of the largest private companies in the US and he and his wife Anne had seven children, six boys and one girl, as Julia writes in our research doc. Yikes. But unfortunately, Anne had passed away recently, so Rush was raising his kids on his own. And actually this will come back later, but there was a live in tutor that had actually just moved into the house, I believe that day, the day of the murder, who had moved into the house because Rush felt like he needed more adult supervision in the home where he lived with all his children. So that's the Skakels. Two of the Skakel children, it should be noted, were Tommy and Michael Skakel. They are the ones that later on will be suspects in this case. So that's a very preliminary cast of characters. Obviously, other people are gonna present themselves, but we have the Moxleys. We have the skakels. Martha Moxley's 15 years old. Tommy and Michael Skakel are around her age. One of them is her exact age. One of them is two years older.
- [11:53]
Julia Claire
Michael is 15, Tommy is 17.
- [11:56]
George Severis
There you go. And to situate ourselves, it is October 30, 1975, which is the evening before Halloween, obviously. And kids are up to no good. They're going around, they're TPing homes. And then, Julia, walk us through what.
- [12:11]
Julia Claire
Happens the night of October 30, 1975. Martha Moxley was out with some friends in a group, including Tommy and Michael Skakel. And they were the two people with whom she was last seen alive at around 9:30pm and that's pretty much the very last of what we know for sure.
- [12:36]
George Severis
Yeah. So a bunch of kids congregated in the Skakel home, and they congregated around the porch. Then at some point, they moved to the dad's car, which was this very fancy, rich car that he allegedly, you know, used to pick up women. And they were there for a brief period of time, then they went back. And then by all counts, the last time everyone agrees they saw Martha was around 9:30. And it's important to note that her journey from the Skaggles back to her house would have taken her like two minutes. She wasn't going into some dark forest between one location and the other.
- [13:15]
Julia Claire
They literally lived right across the street from one another. So, long story. Short. Martha doesn't come home. And Martha's mother begins to worry. And so she's calling around to her friends. She actually goes to the Skakels, knocks on their door. The door is opened by 15 year old Michael, who Martha's mother alleges looks a little hungover, a little disoriented and says he hasn't seen her. Search begins and Martha is found under a tree in the Moxley backyard. And she is almost unrecognizable.
- [13:52]
George Severis
Yeah, she's discovered this was actually something that they described in gruesome detail in the new NBC News podcast because they interviewed this woman. I was about to say girl, but of course now she is much older, but at the time, this 15 year old girl named Sheila. And this is something that is clearly the single most traumatic experience of her life. She's walking around and she looks down, she sees a blue puffy material, thinks it's some kind of like mattress or it is Martha's puffer that she's wearing. And Martha's body is found bludgeoned to death with a golf club. Like very psychotically violent. This is not something that could be an accident or self defense or anything like that. It is. The golf club itself had been broken into three pieces. One of the pieces had been stabbed into the back of her neck. Famously, there was so much blood that the police couldn't tell what color her hair was. There was so much blood. And then Martha's pants and underwear were pulled down. But investigators found no signs of sexual. And apparently, according to forensic evidence, she had been killed near the driveway and the murderer dragged her body 80ft to the base of a tree where she was found. And just to go back to the Skakel connection, not only did this happen on her way back from the Skakels, but very quickly it became clear that the golf club that was used was discovered to be clearly part of a set that belonged to Ann Skakel.
- [15:16]
Julia Claire
That's right. One of our researchers noted in the document that despite the fact that that it was immediately identified as part of the set belonging to Anne Skakel, that Greenwich police never sought or obtained a warrant to search the Skaggle home. Which is crazy. And we'll get into more of how the Greenwich police bungled this. But Greenwich is a town where virtually no crime happens. So to say that this shocked this extremely insular, wealthy community is the understatement of the century. But the Greenwich police were clearly ill equipped to handle this case. There had only been three murders in Greenwich in 25 years, and from the beginning, it was, I think, a foundational mistake is obviously not searching the Skakel home, but from the beginning, it was clear that they were just out of their depth.
- [16:11]
George Severis
Yeah. And the one sort of fact that I found out, actually in this new podcast is that apparently the police didn't even have enough crime scene tape when this happened. I mean, they were there to catch people that were speeding on the street every once in a while. This wasn't a police force that was equipped to deal with a violent murder case. And at the same time, they did their job. In the years that followed, they ended up questioning an estimated 500 people. It went on for years, but somehow no suspects were named, no arrests were made, and no grand juries were convened. Later on, years later, someone would say that internally, their prime suspect was Tommy Skakel. But he was. But that was never made public, and he was never arrested.
- [16:59]
Julia Claire
So, as we said, Tommy was 17, Michael was 15. And Martha has several entries in her diary that are read in the 48 hour special in which she explicitly says that Tommy is making passes at her, pulling her onto his lap, putting his hands onto her knees, stuff like that. It's clear that they had some sort of physical relationship with varying degrees of consent. And there's also allegations and different people remember certain things that Michael said about Michael also being enamored with Martha and wishing that she would be his girlfriend. And Tommy and Michael, as two brothers that close in age, often extremely competitive about everything. And both of them, based on varying accounts, had a temper. And that was another thing that was not investigated too thoroughly, basically the history of violent outbursts by both boys. And another thing that is important to note about Michael is his mother died when he was 12 in 1972. And there are different accounts that say that basically he had a drinking problem beginning at age 13, and he would later go to reform after getting a DUI at age 17. So this was a very chaotic, troubled, extremely wealthy family, which I think is like a really important piece of this whole thing, that this was just a deeply chaotic house which had no mother, allegedly a kind of distant and simultaneously violent father.
- [18:43]
George Severis
And there were substance abuse issues, just like throughout. This is a pattern in many pockets of the Kennedy family. And we will get to RFK Jr later. But one of the ways that RFK Jr, who is the Skakel's first cousin, one of the ways that he and Michael Skakel bonded is that they both got sober around the same time and supported each other through their sobriety process. We're going to take a short break. Stay with us.
- [19:13]
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- [20:13]
Julia Claire
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- [20:16]
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- [20:28]
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- [21:00]
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- [21:56]
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- [22:57]
George Severis
And we're back with United States of Kennedy. It should also be noted that during his time as a troubled teen, according to a couple of sources, Michael Skakel confessed is maybe too strong of a word, but almost like in a provocative way, would either brag about being able to get away with murder or allude to that night in provocative ways. And so there are many classmates of his that said that he like made incriminating statements during group therapy sessions while they were all in school together. So that is also something that sort of of people have had to deal with over the years. That said, the narrative from what I understand from Michael's perspective has just been like I was a troubled teen, I was an addict, I was even under the influence while some of this stuff was happening. And I Finally in my 20s and 30s turned my life around and became an upstanding member of society and I should not be held accountable for crazy things I said when I was in school.
- [23:54]
Julia Claire
Right? So going back to the night of there were really two to three initial suspects in this murder case. When they were questioned by police, Tommy and Michael each explained where they were at the time of Martha's murder and both of them said that they were hanging out with Martha outside of their house at 9pm Michael originally told police that he left Tommy and Martha at 9:30pm and went to his cousin's house to watch TV until 11:30 and then came home. Tommy told police that Martha left his house soon after Michael. So also around 9:30. And that was the last Time he saw her. Both of them ended up changing their stories after that. Also, there's something in the 48 Hours documentary that said that Tommy claimed that he went inside and wrote a paper about Abraham Lincoln.
- [24:42]
George Severis
Well, you know who among us? It's a really amazing way to relieve stress, to just write a quick paper about Abraham Lincoln.
- [24:48]
Julia Claire
But there was also one other suspect. George, can you tell us a little bit about.
- [24:52]
George Severis
Right, so we alluded to him earlier. We said that literally the night of the murder, there was a live in tutor that had moved into the Skakel household because again, the father, Rush Skakel, wanted another adult figure in his children's life. So that man's name is Kenneth Littleton, and he was 24 years old. He was a 24 year old science teacher at a Greenwich private school called Brunswick School. And the night of the murder, he moved into the Skakel household to be a parental teacher figure there. So he wasn't a prime suspect in the murder case for more than a year. And then the Greenwich police learned that he had been arrested in Nantucket in the summer of 1976, six months after the murder. And he got drunk at least three separate times and stole things. He was found guilty of larceny and handed a suspended sentence and five years of probation. The point is, this is someone who had a history of alarming behavior.
- [25:51]
Julia Claire
Yes, but it could be. It's not necessarily. It was like, it seems like perhaps the inciting incident was the Martha Moxley murder. And then that was one of the big questions was like, was he wracked with guilt or was he just so traumatized by this event? And, you know, goes without saying that petty larceny and drunken disorderly conduct is a horse of a different color than murder. But yes, he has remained a kind of looming figure in the case for 50 years. Yeah.
- [26:22]
George Severis
As you're saying, it seems somehow emblematic of his guilt that his life sort of goes off the rails after the murder happens. And he is eventually fired from the Brunswick School. He's able to get a job at another private school. Then he was fired from that school after Greenwich police showed up to question him. But all that aside, Kenneth Littleton was never arrested or charged with Martha's murder.
- [26:45]
Julia Claire
And neither was anyone else.
- [26:47]
George Severis
And neither was anyone else for 25 years. So that's it. There were these three suspects that at various given times, seemed guilty. We had Tommy Skakel, we had Michael Skakel, and we had Kenneth Littleton. No one was arrested. People lose interest in the case, and 20 years go by and it should.
- [27:08]
Julia Claire
Be noted that the family patriarch agreed to work with the Greenwich police, but about six months into the case, stopped answering her questions and stopped cooperating with them.
- [27:18]
George Severis
So basically, now we're just fast tracking to 2001. That's the next time that there were any major updates on this case. The Moxley parents did not get any sort of closure or any sort of useful information about who killed their daughter. It was just this tragedy that happened in this otherwise wealthy, charming enclave.
- [27:38]
Julia Claire
So before we get to that, we have to make a pit stop in the 1990s, because in 1992, 1993, there are still no answers about the Martha Moxley case. And Rush Skakel, the family patriarch, decides to hire his own investigative firm to reopen and reinvestigate the case privately. And the results of this investigation become known as the Sutton Report. So Tommy and Michael both sat for testimony in the Sutton Report. Again, they just thought that it was like an internal family investigation. But both Tommy and Michael had. Their stories had changed. Tommy now said that Martha didn't go home when Michael left at 9:30. Tommy admitted that he and Martha engaged in a sexual act and that Martha went home around 10pm Michael said that he went to his cousin's house, watch a movie, which was part of his initial statement, but he came home around 11pm he said that he then went outside at midnight, climbed a tree outside of Martha's window and masturbated. And then investigators checked that out and alleged that there was no tree that matched Michael's description outside of her bedroom window.
- [28:47]
George Severis
It's one of those updates that only makes it more confusing because it doesn't actually incriminate either of them, but it does, does at least prove they lied to the police at some point, whether it was their first alibi or their second alibi. But also, it's just strange behavior on all sides. At the end of the day, these are all teenagers. So their behavior on a drunken night, the night before Halloween, regardless of whether it ended in murder or not, is going to be strange. I mean, these are rowdy, rich kids who want to be adventurous, who want to be naughty, and who are, you.
- [29:21]
Julia Claire
Know, know, they're essentially feral.
- [29:23]
George Severis
Yes, they're essentially. And they're also the popular kids. They are the kids that are the ones getting into trouble, and they know that at any given point their parents are going to bail them out. It's an archetype we're all very familiar with from teen movies.
- [29:34]
Julia Claire
Right. And the Skakels, again, it really can't be Overstated how wealthy the skagles were. Like, this is like Koch Brothers level money of that era. They don't have that much money anymore. But they were extremely wealthy and powerful at this time.
- [29:50]
George Severis
So Fast forward to 2001. Basically, what happens is through a kind of, like, renewed true crime craze, and with a legacy of the O.J. simpson case and Court TV and a renewed interest in true crime, basically the case, which is a classic hold case, gains traction again in the public imagination. And the two things that help with that are two books that are written. So first, we have this Dominic Dunne fiction book that is clearly heavily inspired by the case. And for listening, you might remember Dominic Dunn is a longtime Kennedy enthusiast. People might remember in the episode we did on the William Kennedy Smith trial, he wrote a very long and comprehensive profile of the William Kennedy Smith accuser, who at the time believed to be credible. And so he is someone who has always been very fascinated by the machinations of the Kennedy family and by the corruption they're in and by the ways they are able to bend the justice system to their whims. So that book, which is called A Season in Purgatory, is sort of a fictional account of the Moxley case. It ended up becoming a TV miniseries, and it got a lot of people talking about the case again. The second book, which was not billed as fiction and was a bit more problematic, was a book written by none other than Mark Fuhrman. Julia, do you want to remind maybe some of our younger listeners who Mark Fuhrman is?
- [31:12]
Julia Claire
For those of us who are extremely young, as George and I are, Mark Fuhrman was the. The disgraced former LAPD officer who is very much at the center of the O.J. simpson case.
- [31:24]
George Severis
Yes. So his testimony against Simpson was largely discredited after it was revealed that Fuhrman was a true, just literally speaking, a racist. He denied under oath that he regularly used the N word and then was charged with perjury. In his closing statement, even the prosecution called him a bad cop. I mean, this is someone who is a archetype of a racist cop, like.
- [31:48]
Julia Claire
Admitted to a reporter, admitted, bragged about extrajudicial violence against black people.
- [31:54]
George Severis
Right. And after leaving the police force, he became a very classic like fixture of trash tv. He went on TV as an expert on the OJ Case. He wrote a book called Murder in Brentwood about the O.J. murders. And he then developed this second career as a author of popular airport nonfiction books about unsolved murders. So a huge run for him was this Martha Moxley murder. He wrote the book Murder in Grand who killed Martha Moxley in June of 1998. And in the book, Furman concluded that Michael Skakel was most likely Martha's killer, saying he was spinning into a jealous rage after seeing Tommy and Martha making out. So this brings us to Michael Skakel actually being tried for murder. So this is January 20th, 2000. This is nearly 25 years after Martha's murder. Michael Skakel is charged with murder murder.
- [32:49]
Julia Claire
Based on the findings of the Sutton report. And then Greenwich hired a one person grand jury investigator to review all the new evidence and then he was brought to trial.
- [33:00]
George Severis
It should be noted, there is no new physical evidence connecting Michael to the murder. This is just the evidence that we had before. A sort of funny justice system quirk is that initially he was going to be tried as a juvenile, even though he was 39 years old because he was a minor when the crime originally took place. But then a federal judge ordered for him to be tried as an adult. And so obviously conviction as an adult for a murder could carry a maximum of a life sentence. So there's no new physical evidence. However, the judge is clearly out for Michael. He even specifically instructs the jurors that they are allowed to convict on the basis of circumstantial evidence. And then after only four days of deliberation, the jury returns a guilty verdict. This was stunning for Skakel and his team. He delivered this crazy 10 minute minute final statement where he quotes Bible verses and compares his arrests to the trials of Jesus. It was classic Kennedy scene. There were other Kennedys that were there at the trial, including Ethel Kennedy and RFK junior. Ethel sends a letter praising Michael for his mental toughness, fortitude, courage and tenacity. But it's just not enough. He was sentenced to 20 years to life, which was five years short of the maximum sentence.
- [34:14]
Julia Claire
So. So that's the last we hear of this case for over 10 years. And after 11 years in prison, Michael was released in 2013 when a Connecticut judge ordered a retrial of his 2001 conviction. So the reason for this was a fewfold. Skakel's defense lawyer in the 2001 conviction, the judge determined that Michael Skakel's defense lawyer, Michael Sherman, had failed. Michael Skakel on multiple levels, failed to call a witness named Dennis Osorio, who would have backed Skakel's alibi that he was at his cousin's house at the time of the murder. The defense attorney failed to rebut the testimonies of Skakel's classmates. From his reform school. And that's another thing about the trial, is that basically a centerpiece of the original 2001 conviction was that one of Michael's classmates at Elan, which was a reform school, said that Michael had bragged or made specific references to getting away with murder and bragging about the murder, and specifically mentioned something about the golf club. And it wasn't just him, it was nine other classmates who also testified to that effect. However, their testimonies were called into question because being that it was a reform school, many of the kids who are now adults had substance abuse problems, and the main witness that they had from Elon ended up dying of a heroin overdose. So there were lots of people who thought that his testimony was shaky at best. So the defense attorney, Sherman, also selected a juror who was not only a police officer, but a friend of the lead investigator on the Greenwich police force. And he failed to make a coherent closing argument. So Michael Skakel ended up being freed on 1.2 million doll bail and ordered not to leave the state of Connecticut until the retrial. And then the Supreme Court of Connecticut ended up deciding not to retry him.
- [36:23]
George Severis
This is a lot of information to take in, but basically what people need to know before we get into the more wild parts of this case is that the murder happened in 1975. Michael Skagel was convicted. In 2001, he was in jail for 11 and a half years. Then in 2013, a judge ordered a retrial. Then he was, he was freed on bail. Then in 2016, he went back to jail. And then after that, he was finally released again in 2018. There was going to be another retrial, but interest had waned in the case. So finally, in 2020, after the pandemic began to give you a sense of just how recent this is, Michael Skakel was officially declared a free man.
- [37:06]
Julia Claire
45 years to the day after the murder.
- [37:09]
George Severis
We're going to take a short break. Stay with us. Foreign.
- [37:17]
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- [41:02]
George Severis
And we're back with United States of Kennedy. So those are the facts of the case. But one of the elements of this that we haven't really touched upon is the RFK Jr connection. RFK Jr has been a longtime supporter of his cousin. Again, RFK is Michael Skakel's first cousin. He has maintained that Michael has been innocent this whole time. In 2002, right after his conviction, RFK wrote a 15,000 word piece in the Atlantic refuting the case against Skakel. He talked about his moral character. He talked about how deep their relationship and friendship was. He talked about how they helped each other become sober. And then in The Atlantic article, RFK Jr also proposed a variety of alternative theories as to who committed the murder.
- [41:45]
Julia Claire
So as George said In this 2002 Atlantic piece, RFK Jr completely refutes the idea that Michael Skakel is guilty. He proposes an alternative theory into Kenneth Littleton. And then following the publication of that piece, as so often happens with cold cases, RFK Jr. Received a lot of tips. And one of those tips was telling him to get in touch with this man named Tony Bryant, who, in another insane twist of fate, happens to be the cousin of Kobe Bryant. And Tony Bryant was allegedly a classmate of Martha Moxley and the Skakel boys, who alleged that he was there the night that Martha Moxley was murdered and that he brought two of his friends from the Bronx into Greenwich and that they bragged about killing her. The problem with that story is manifold, but it is worth mentioning that two out of three of those kids, now adults, were black men. So there's no evidence that has ever put Tony Bryant or the two men that he alleges were there that night in Greenwich on the night of Martha Moxley's murder. It's also highly unlikely that two lost large black boys would be able to go around a place like Greenwich completely unnoticed. Yeah.
- [43:05]
George Severis
And not have any eyewitnesses. I mean, again, I know we said that they were not the most competent police force, but they did interview an estimated 500 people and no one mentioned two boys that would look out of place in a Predominantly white Connecticut suburb.
- [43:20]
Julia Claire
And we really don't think that in 1975 era Greenwich Police would not have just stopped two black boys on the streets of Greenwich. Anyways, it strains credulity for sure.
- [43:32]
George Severis
It really, it really does. As do many things that RFK Jr. Has said since 2016 when that came out. So RFK Jr. Writes this Atlantic piece, then starts getting various tips, then starts forming his own other theories. Cut to 2016, right in time for Michael's retrial, he publishes a full length book. So RFK Jr. Publishes a full book called Framed why Michael S. Skakel Spent Over a Decade in Prison For a Murder He Didn't Commit.
- [43:59]
Julia Claire
And it is, it should be noted that not only is Michael Skakel on the COVID of this book, but RFK Jr himself is also on the COVID of this book, which doesn't make any sense. I mean, it makes sense in that he wanted to kind of lend the Kennedy gravitas to his project. And the book became a national bestseller.
- [44:17]
George Severis
Became a national bestseller. It caused quite a stir, as you might remember. 2016, a bunch of other stuff was happening around that time too. So somehow we did miss did get.
- [44:26]
Julia Claire
Lost in the shop. I don't know how.
- [44:27]
George Severis
Personally, I don't remember the book making that much of a stir. But surely in the Kennedy enthusiast true crime communities, it was a big deal. And again, it accuses the two Bronx teens who both obviously denied the allegations. It also brings the Tudor back up as another alternative theory. And I believe that RFK Jr. Published the book because he wanted to help his cousin. And it's had the opposite effect. I mean, it was widely discredited. The Connecticut State Division of Criminal justice released a statement in response to the book calling his claims inflammatory and accusing the book of presenting no valid or new information. That's a direct quote. So it really did not do what RFK hoped it would do. And as we said, Skakel did end up going back to jail, only of course to be released two years later.
- [45:14]
Julia Claire
So I've done a lot of research about RFK Jr. Over the years and I found so many similarities between the way that he writes and speaks about the Michael Skakel trial to the way that he writes and speaks and about everything else. It's very fly by the seat of his pants. When he was being interviewed for a documentary for his work with Riverkeeper, his own sister was like, you need to fact check everything he says because he will sound like he is the smartest person in the room. He sounds very authoritative when he speaks. But he just makes stuff up. And I think we saw a clip of that, actually, in the 48 Hours documentary where RFK Jr. Was originally interviewed by the 48 Hours team maybe 15 or so years ago about this case and then was interviewed again in 2020. And he ended up walking out of the interview when he was asked if he had any regrets about accusing these two Bronx teens with no evidence. And then he got up and went to walk out and said, there's plenty of evidence, and of course, gave no sources or anything like that.
- [46:19]
George Severis
Yeah, and he has this sort of vibe of just asking questions about everything. I mean, it's the same way he talks about public health. Now, even with book, it's not necessarily that he presented a point by point case for a specific theory. It's more that he wanted to muddy the waters. And I do think he believes this firmly, that his cousin is innocent. And so he's just grasping at straws to come up with a variety of other theories. Obviously, if there was another theory, it would exist somewhere, but there just isn't. And it is one of those, like, weird cases where the answers are not quite easy to come by. But, yes, I think that the book didn't help either side. But I do want to say, just to bring it to present day, I mean, as we said, Michael Skakel was released in 2020, and he is free. And as we talked about in the beginning of this episode, it is this insane coincidence that we are recording on the day when it has been announced that in this new podcast, he is finally breaking his silence. So I started listening to the first episode of this new podcast. It is produced by NBC News, obviously a reputable news source. It is called Dead the Martha Moxley Murder, and it is hosted by Andrew Gold. So I start listening. I'm like two, three, four minutes in. It's very well produced. I'm ready to learn more about the case. And the host drops the most insane bomb I can think of, which is he starts talking about how in 2014, 2015, he was approached by RFK Jr to ghostwrite this Michael Skakel book. And so I'm thinking this story is gonna end with him saying no to the ghostwriting offer, but then developing his own independent interest in this case. But in fact, he did go straight the book. So this new podcast, the podcast that seeks to exonerate Michael Skakel is produced by NBC News and hosted by the literal journalist who Ghost wrote the RFK Jr. Book that sought to exonerate Michael Skakel. At this point, almost 10 years ago.
- [48:17]
Julia Claire
Yeah, it's a real doozy. I don't know. I'm excited to listen to that show. But this is one of those examples that we talked about at the beginning where everything just keeps getting muddier and muddier. Every new piece that is introduced into this case makes it less clear, not more.
- [48:34]
George Severis
Yes.
- [48:34]
Julia Claire
I don't know how you feel about this, but I've gone on a real journey and I think where I've ultimately come out is I don't know. But I do think Michael or Tommy have the motive or they're the only people in this case with motive in my reading of it. I mean, again, it is absolutely insane that Greenwich police did not search the Skakel house and, and there were just like a million missed opportunities. But the idea that it was hoodlums who came in from New York City.
- [49:07]
George Severis
Yes.
- [49:07]
Julia Claire
Is crazy to me.
- [49:09]
George Severis
And to be honest, I don't know if this podcast is ultimately making that argument. I mean, I have no way of knowing. It's a 12 part series and only what episode has come out. But one thing that I did find intriguing is that there is new evidence that has been released since all the other books have been written about this case. So the value add of this podcast is that they have new information that they're working with that has not been reported before. So as much as I am listening with a critical eye, and of course I don't inherently trust the guy that ghostwrote the RFK book that was then widely discredited, I it seems like he's a reputable journalist. He's a reputable journalist that has more much as what can I say? I still have some trust in mainstream media. I still believe that NBC News would not just give any hat a podcast to rewrite the history on a settled case.
- [50:01]
Julia Claire
I also trust NBC News. I'm also a shill for the mainstream media. And I. I love them and I give them a little kiss every day.
- [50:10]
George Severis
Yes, every day we wake up and we say thank God for Jake Tapper and all the rest of the gang.
- [50:14]
Julia Claire
Kiss, kiss, kiss.
- [50:15]
George Severis
Crazy at work. I'm looking forward to our listeners never understanding when we're joking and when we're not joking. If there's one place where kind of deadpan humor works, it's on a history podcast about topics that are famously difficult to form opinions about. I mean, we had no way of knowing when we planned this episode that it would truly coincide with a bombshell investigation that included the first interview with the actual convicted exonerated at this point. But with a formally convicted murderer of the case itself. But I don't know, I'm thinking, you know, it really is one of those news stories that I. I could convince myself either way, I guess, is what I'm saying.
- [50:56]
Julia Claire
Yeah.
- [50:57]
George Severis
And I think the only thing that is convincing to me is that there's some sort of evidence that has been hidden. I don't think based on the facts that I have, reading the research that was given to us and reading the articles that have already been written, I don't think based on those facts, I could draw any conclusion that makes sense. But, you know, I would not be surprised if somehow some huge part of the story has been hidden all these years. I mean, one small thing that was mentioned in the first episode of this show is that there was a ton of blood on the crime scene, but then no blood was found anywhere else. It was as though the person that did it cleaned up everything but the actual crime scene itself. Yeah, it's just this very strange thing there was an allusion to. Obviously this show is doing the true crime thing of ending every episode on a cliffhanger. But they alluded to the fact that blood was found in a different house in the neighborhood. But then the police never followed up with it. They said that potentially Martha had had a boyfriend. That is not part of the official narrative during this time when she's potentially hooking up with Tommy Skakel. She also had a boyfriend that could have been upset. I mean, there was just all this stuff that has not been part of the official narrative.
- [52:08]
Julia Claire
Right. But that's so funny because in the 48 hour special, they go pretty in depth into Martha's diary and she doesn't mention a boyfriend, but she does mention Tommy and Michael, and she mentions Tommy in a Roman romantic sense and how he had all these advances on her, not all of which were welcome, but she also mentions Michael's drinking. She said that they were at a dance or something like that, and that Michael was loaded and being an asshole. And it's clear based on a few different things that he was in some way jealous of Tommy's relationship with Martha. So I think that if she did have a boyfriend, maybe it was a secret, but I don't know that it would have been a secret from her diary.
- [52:50]
George Severis
Well, yes, that's the thing. You hear that and you're like, wow, that's the key that unlocks it all. But then, of course, again, you have to remind yourself, well, this is being reported by the person who wrote this other book. It's Just, it's very confusing.
- [53:03]
Julia Claire
I mean, and also the fact that the case is now 50 years old.
- [53:06]
George Severis
Right, Exactly. I mean, I have to say, so far, I'm impressed with the number of people from the community that they are interviewing. I mean, just the fact that they have the woman that found the body on record and she's describing that experience. They have a lot of other neighbors that are discussing what Martha was like as a young girl. But it is impressive that they were able to get all these people. And it is one of those things where the clock is ticking. I mean, 50 years is already way too long. But this is Michael Skakel's last chance to prove his innocence.
- [53:33]
Julia Claire
Right.
- [53:34]
George Severis
And another thing, and I know I've now mentioned this many times, but it really is important to note the sheer violence of the act. This is something that would happen in a horror movie. I mean, there is a graphic description of how they found the body in the podcast. And what one visual that has really stayed with me is that one of the blows that she took, the golf club, went through her neck. And so there is literally a strand of her hair that went through that hole and came out the other side of her neck. I mean, that is the level of violence we're talking about. And so obviously, yes, I could see Michael, as a troubled teen with substance abuse issues and a difficult home life, committing an act of violence. But something like pushing someone. Someone off a cliff or something is different than this.
- [54:22]
Julia Claire
Kind of like hitting someone with a six iron so hard that the shaft of it shatters.
- [54:28]
George Severis
Exactly. Yeah. I mean, it's this catch 22. Right. Because if that is what happened, then he is a literal psychopath and you can't trust anything he says in this series. You know what I mean? Someone who is able to commit that level of violence is, I'm sure, also able to lie with a straight face about it.
- [54:45]
Julia Claire
Yeah. This is one of those cases that I think will be cold forever until all parties involved are dead.
- [54:51]
George Severis
Yeah.
- [54:52]
Julia Claire
I honestly was thinking, even when the case was going on in the early 2000s, how credible are everyone's memories then? My memory is barely credible for things I did last week.
- [55:04]
George Severis
Totally. I mean, I really think, and this is something that I've discovered with so many of these Kennedy related cases, especially the more salacious ones that we have talked about, is every case like this is so dependent on the time in which it is being covered by the media, like the fact that this was happening in 2000 and 2001. People have such strong memories at the time of the O.J. simpson trial, of other kind of like salacious live stream trials. You know, for example, the Johnny Depp case could only have gone the way it went in a media environment that was dominated by TikTok, that was dominated by these sort of like very strange forces on each side. I mean, who knows if the same exact thing with the same exact actions had happened in, I don't know, 2010 or 1935, if it would have gone the same way.
- [55:55]
Julia Claire
Right?
- [55:56]
George Severis
So anyway, that's where we're at. This is a very non traditional episode because we really both are still working through how we feel about this case, as Julia keeps saying. We highly recommend the 48 hours special about it. It's all available on YouTube and I have to say so so far I am cautiously recommending this new NBC podcast.
- [56:16]
Julia Claire
I'm definitely gonna listen.
- [56:17]
George Severis
It's called Dead Certain the Martha Moxley Murder.
- [56:20]
Julia Claire
Andrew Goldman, come on the show.
- [56:22]
George Severis
Andrew Goldman, we would love to have you on the show. I think even if the podcast is a complete bust, I think there is certainly new information that they are somehow bringing to light. So it's an open topic here at United States of Kennedy. We're gonna talk about it again.
- [56:36]
Julia Claire
If you have any tips, please send them in.
- [56:39]
George Severis
Please send them in. Thank you for bearing with us as we're thinking about this in real time. But that is this week's episode. United States of Kennedy is a production of Iheart Podcasts.
- [56:49]
Julia Claire
Subscribe and follow United States of Kennedy for all things Kennedy every week.
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Julia Claire
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