We sat in my living room. The caller opened a briefcase. The first document he showed me was the Academy Group report.
It began with a description of Belle Haven— “a small community comprised of large expensive estates owned by the very wealthy.”
It described David Moxley as “a hard charger—very intense, ambitious and upwardly mobile in the world of business, a man destined to achieve success at the highest levels of New York City business circles.”
Dorthy was “an unpretentious ‘homebody’ who loved to sew and cook”; Martha “very pretty with a well-developed body who wore bikini bathing suits” that were “somewhat more revealing than those worn by her female friends.”
Then, the report got down to business. It noted the savagery of the murder and concluded that the killer had acted out of a “personal rage,” perhaps because Martha had rejected him sexually.
Again, I found myself thinking that if this were true, it ruled out Littleton. He had moved into the Skakel house the night of the murder and didn’t know Martha. Baker and DePew were all but exonerating him.
“The fact that the offender chose to confront the victim outside, on her driveway, provides several useful clues in understanding his approach, method and mindset,” the report continued.
“It is apparent that he (1) knew the victim, (2) knew she would be coming home at around that time-frame and (3) knew she habitually walked up her driveway then across her lawn toward her front door….
“The fact that the offender chose this outside location to make his initial contact with the victim indicates he was comfortable functioning in the neighborhood.”
The report then described how Martha had run from the gravel driveway across her lawn after the first attack and how the attacker had overtaken her and knocked her to the ground, then struck her repeatedly with the golf club.
“The initial blows to the head were struck with the entire club and were done with full powerful swings. These repeated blows to the victim’s head provide a clear indication of personalized rage again, indicating an acquaintance with the victim. Due to inexperience…his attack resulted in ‘overkill’ in that he struck the victim on the head 14 or 15 times.”
Reading those lines, I had to put the report down. I took a deep breath. Perhaps because I now had a daughter nearly Martha’s age, the force of the words hit me in a way they never had before. Yes, I knew Martha had been savagely beaten. But I had never before visualized what had actually occurred to her. Those full, powerful swings…repeated to Martha’s head fourteen or fifteen times. That poor, poor girl. And Dorthy, who couldn’t allow herself to ever think of this. Was it any wonder that she lived in torment?
Baker and DePew then described the personal traits of the murderer: “an explosive temper; a history of fighting; strong sibling rivalry tendencies; behavioral problems at school and at home; under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs.
“He may well have been viewed as the ‘problem child’ or ‘black sheep’ of the family. In all probability, he regularly fantasized about having sexual relations with the victim, and on the day of this crime may have consumed both alcohol and drugs as a means of building up his courage to seek a sexual encounter.
“His sexual fantasies regarding the victim were probably accompanied by viewing pornographic magazines and masturbation,” it continued. “We believe he also would have practiced window-peeping in the immediate neighborhood…. Any window-peeping activities by this offender would have been in conjunction with his nocturnal tendencies in that he was very comfortable being out late at night and functioned well under the cover of darkness. He was an emotional ‘loner’ and would have spent solitary periods while out at night either pursuing his fantasies, window-peeping or brooding….”
Experts though they were, I wondered how Baker and DePew could describe such specific character traits unless they had been told of them. Whether or not they realized it, they were describing not Tommy but Michael.
•
The caller said I could keep the Academy Group’s report for the weekend to study but that I would have to return it. That meant he knew I would make a copy. He was in effect giving me permission to do so.
The caller then handed me two other documents. They were Murphy’s Sutton Associates reports. I could take notes on them, he said, but I could not keep them. The first, in boldface captial letters, was headed TOMMY SKAKEL.
It began with Dr. Stanley Lesse’s evaluation of him, based on testing in 1976 at New York City’s Presbyterian Hospital’s Division of Psychology. The Skakels had used the alias Thomas Butler to hide his identity. This secret exam appeared to belie Murphy’s statement to me that Rushton had never for a moment believed any of his children had murdered Martha. Did that mean that Murphy lied? I didn’t think so. Rather, he had probably given Rushton the benefit of the doubt.
Tommy claimed to Lesse that he had spoken with Martha for less than five minutes outside his house before she left him at 9:30. “Maybe it was two minutes, maybe more,” Lesse quoted him as saying. “She asked whether I wanted to meet later…I told her I couldn’t because I didn’t have time and I had homework to do.”
Tommy then described the homework to Lesse as consisting of “something about log cabins.”
“We were studying the Puritans,” Tommy told him. “I studied for about five minutes. Then I needed a book that was in the guest room. It was a book on Lincoln…. I was in the guest room for about five or ten minutes and I brought the book back to my room. After another five minutes I went down to Dad’s room to watch television with Ken [Littleton] and then I went back up to sleep.”
Murphy’s report all but called Tommy a liar. “He has no recollection of what was said between him and Martha at the side of the house,” it read, “but recites in specifically contrived detail right down to the log cabins, exactly what he was doing after she left—carefully accounting for his all his time in five-minute blocks.
“The one detail of his conversation with Martha Moxley which Tommy could recall is a blatant lie. There was no homework assignment and Tommy wasn’t sending Martha away at that point anyway.”
The report suggested Tommy also lied to his sister Julie after Dorthy had called the Skakels, looking for Martha. At 1:15 A.M., Julie had answered her call, then awakened Tommy.
“A very troubling point of conflict is when exactly Julie and Tommy were first made aware that Martha Moxley was missing,” the document stated.
“I went upstairs and asked Tommy where she [Martha] was, when was the last time he had seen her,” Julie was quoted as saying. Tommy answered that he’d seen Martha at 9:30 by the back door when he went to write his Abraham Lincoln report.
Years later, however, he admitted he had seen Martha after that. The fact that in 1975 he had told Julie 9:30 meant Tommy had lied even before Martha’s body was discovered. Did he know then that Martha was dead? Or had he merely sought to hide his sexual involvement with her? But if Tommy didn’t know she was dead, why wouldn’t he have mentioned those extra twenty minutes to Julie when she came to his room at 1:15 A.M., omitting the mutual masturbation if he was so afraid of his father or embarrassed for Martha’s mother?
Murphy’s report agreed. “The first omissions can be written off as knee-jerk insecurity from a frightened teenager,” it read. “However as the weeks, months and the years go by, his continued deception—even presumably under lie detecting tests—can no longer be viewed by any standard as the misjudgment of an innocent…. On at least two occasions he was able to fool the polygraph. He has fooled or fabricated the polygraph, the police, analysts and his own investigators.”
If Tommy knew Martha was dead at 1:15, the report concluded, “It could mean only one thing. He was involved in her murder.”
•
The caller wasn’t finished. As I returned Tommy’s report to him, he handed me another one. In boldface capital letters were the words MICHAEL SKAKEL.
“Some feel Michael and other suspects
were not thoroughly examined at the time due to a somewhat premature conviction on the part of local authorities that Tommy Skakel was the murderer,” it began.
“It was only later that the spotlight of serious scrutiny was placed directly on Michael. His arrest on drunk driving charges in 1978 probably did as much as anything to renew the police’s interest.”
I was brought up short by those last two sentences. Right away, I knew something wasn’t right. The Greenwich police had never considered Michael a suspect. I knew that because I had read every page of its report on the case.
As late as 1991 when I had written my article, the Greenwich police had never placed Michael under “serious” or any other kind of scrutiny. Yes, the police file had noted his drunken-driving arrest in 1978. But no one—least of all Keegan, Lunney, Browne, or Solomon—had ever considered him a murder suspect. If the murder had occurred at 10:00 P.M., Keegan had told me in his office years before, Michael could not have returned from the Terriens’ in time to have done it.
So how had Murphy’s group come up with the information that Michael’s 1978 arrest had “renewed” the police’s interest in him? Sheridan had represented Michael in his drunken-driving arrest. He had also hired Murphy and Krebs. Who else but Sheridan would have suggested to them that Michael had been a suspect? I was beginning to suspect that Sheridan knew more about the Moxley murder than anyone realized.
My suspicions were confirmed a few pages later. Murphy’s Sutton Associates report cited a memo, written on June 6, 1978, after Michael had been sent to Elan, following the drunken-driving incident.
“A Tom Sheridan memo of 6/6/78 stated that it was possible Michael could have committed the murder and doesn’t know it and possibly someone else, i.e. Tommy, could have hidden the body and taken Michael to the Terrien’s [sic] to provide him with an alibi.”
How had Sheridan devised that scenario? Was he merely speculating? Or was there a basis in fact? Whatever the truth, Sheridan’s memo indicated to me that he trusted neither Michael nor Tommy. Years later, when I asked Sheridan about the memo, he said he had no recollection of it.
The report then turned to motive.
“Coupled with our extensive knowledge of just how vehemently Michael and Tommy fought with each other, we at least believe Michael had more than ample reason to be extremely upset when Tommy was carrying on with Martha by the side of the house just before 9:30 P.M.
“She turned down an offer to hang out with Michael that night, in order to be with his older brother. It is hard to imagine how such a spectacle would not have made him both increasingly depressed and overtly hostile….”
This puzzled me. How could Michael have seen Martha carrying on with Tommy at 9:30 if by then he had gone with his brothers to the Terriens’? As far as I knew, no one—least of all the police—had doubted that Michael had made this trip. I knew nothing then about Andrea Shakespeare’s claim to Frank that Michael had never gone there.
Murphy’s report, however, raised questions about whether or not Michael had gone to the Terriens’. “There is curious evidence suggesting this is not exactly what happened,” the report said.
Rush Jr. initially stated to Lesse that Michael had never gone to the Terriens’, it continued. Michael’s brother John, who had gone, appeared to confirm this. In an interview under hypnosis on May 4, 1993, he could not place Michael in the car during the ride there.
“The interviewer on repeated occasions tried to get John to place Michael in the car and then at the Terriens’. John could not. He could only recall that someone else was in the car and that someone else was at the house. As much as the interviewer persisted, John could not identify that person as Michael.”
But before I could begin to digest this, the report raised another possibility—that Michael had murdered Martha not at 10:00 P.M. but after he returned from the Terriens’.
“Many investigators believe the only way Michael could have committed or participated in the murder of Martha Moxley is if she was killed later than the 9:50/10:00 estimate,” the report stated.
“There is a possibility that Martha may have actually gone home for an indefinite period of time after being with Tommy and then sneaked back out.”
When we’d first met in 1992, I had asked Murphy what would happen if the investigation led back to the Skakels. Murphy said Rushton had assured him he would “back the search for the truth wherever it led and share the information with Connecticut authorities.”
Now as the caller packed up his briefcase, I asked him what Rushton’s reaction had been when Murphy presented him with these findings. Recalling Rushton’s promise to Murphy, I asked what the Skakel family was now prepared to do.
The caller stopped what he was doing and stared at me. For a moment, our eyes met.
“You don’t know?” he said. “After Murphy showed his report to Sheridan, Sheridan fired him.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Sitting on a Bombshell
July–November 1995
I knew I had a bombshell.
Now I could write that Tommy and Michael both admitted lying to the police about their whereabouts the night of the murder.
The Sutton Associates report had returned the case to the Skakels’ doorstep. Contrary to Rushton’s promise to take responsibility and share whatever information Murphy had developed with Connecticut authorities, Rushton had fired him.
I didn’t know who murdered Martha. I didn’t know the truth about both Tommy’s and Michael’s activities the night of the murder. But I knew that once again, my story would change the direction of the case.
The question was where to publish it. Although Ken and I had mended our relationship, I did not want to deal with him again. Instead, I decided to write it for New York Newsday. Although the paper was losing money, it had grown to a circulation of 225,000 and had established itself in the city.
The year before, I had begun a new assignment. With Rudy Giuliani as mayor, vowing to get crime under control, I moved back downtown to police headquarters and began writing a column about the department, called One Police Plaza. Some of my columns had been picked up by the wire services and the other city papers. By running my Moxley story in New York Newsday, I felt the story would be picked up nationally, forcing Ken to run it in the Stamford Advocate and Greenwich Time. Then, the Connecticut authorities would follow up on my leads.
But here fate intervened. On July 20, 1995, New York Newsday folded. Despite its journalistic excellence, Times-Mirror’s board in California viewed it as a financial drain. After the closing was announced, the company’s stock price soared.
People at Newsday on Long Island had also disparaged New York Newsday. The rivalry between Tony and Don had become institutionalized.
Newsday’s plan was to maintain a scaled-back version of the New York paper by reducing circulation to 50,000, with Long Island’s editors taking full control. But when I presented my Moxley story to them, they showed no interest. Even the fact that Murphy’s company, Sutton Associates, was based in Jericho, Long Island, made no difference. Whether they were merely provincial or retaliating against New York Newsday, I didn’t know.
For the second time, I was sitting atop a story that would break open the Moxley case, with nowhere to publish it.
In desperation, I called Joe Pisani, the editor under Ken at the Greenwich Time. Joe had urged Ken to publish my original Moxley story four years before. Now with his intercession, Ken agreed, albeit reluctantly, to consider publishing this one.
I broke it out into four parts, the first detailing Tommy’s changed story, a later one detailing Michael’s. But as Ken and I put it together, the same pattern emerged as a decade before. Ken would raise a question. I would answer it. A week later he asked the same thing. Only this time he couldn’t offer Isenberg as his excuse.
The summer passed. I continued to meet with the caller as I refined the story. He never mentioned New York Newsday’s closing. Nor did I. I never let on to him that the stor
y was in trouble.
But the frustration was getting to me. I found myself waking up in the middle of the night, plotting what to do next. I considered writing it for a magazine. Maybe Esquire or New York magazine. Who did I know there? An editor at Newsday gave me the name of someone at The New Yorker. I wrote him, offering a synopsis.
I could write the story as speculation, he said, though he advised against it. He wrote back, “I’m sorry I can’t offer you much hope.”
Of course, I couldn’t tell Dorthy of my difficulties. I had told her I was on to something major, though I couldn’t say what, other than to assure her it would alter the investigation. I didn’t want to put her through any more than she had already suffered. Now I was suffering for her.
By the fall, relations between Ken and me had so deteriorated that in a memo to Pisani, he referred to me not by name but as “the reporter.” That was when I decided to take the story back from him. I was convinced Ken would never run it. Joe pleaded with me, saying he could get it through. But I had had enough. It was now November. Ken had held the story three months. I wasn’t prepared to wait another three years.
In the midst of this, Dorthy decided to throw a party. With absolutely nothing having been accomplished in twenty years, she announced that its purpose was to thank everyone who had worked on solving Martha’s murder.
The place she selected was none other than the Belle Haven Club, where the Skakels had dined the night of the murder and where she had retained her membership.
Some fifty people attended. Keegan had long since departed for South Carolina but Lunney and Carroll came from the Greenwich Police Department. Browne and Solomon represented the state’s attorney’s office. Both were about to retire. Browne, however, had agreed to remain on solely to supervise the Moxley case.
Frank accompanied them. I barely knew him then, though that was about to change. He had recently left the Greenwich Police Department and joined Browne’s office, replacing Solomon as the lead investigator on the Moxley case.
Conviction Page 15