Conviction

by Leonard Levitt

  But when I brought that up to him now, Frank merely smiled.

  Okay, so that was one side. Now Frank offered another.

  “Look at it this way, Len. You begin with Martha’s murder. You rule out Littleton because he had no motive, he didn’t know the area. You rule out Tommy. He has an alibi—Littleton. You rule out Littleton. He has an alibi—Tommy.

  “Then you take the missing golf club. Only a Skakel would care about that. And only Michael has motive. You take all his admissions, his stories about his whereabouts, his blackouts, his drunkenness, his masturbation at the crime scene. You don’t want to believe Coleman? Well, what about Higgins? Michael told Higgins, who told Seigan. Neither of them had any reason to lie. And for that matter, neither did Coleman.

  “Then you take Zicarelli and Michael’s attempt to jump off the Triborough Bridge. You take Pugh and ‘The Tree,’ whether or not Morano got that in there to the jury.

  “Now don’t be confused about when the crime occurred. The time doesn’t mean anything. Whether you accept Andrea Shakespeare’s statement that Michael never went to the Terriens’ or you believe Michael about whacking off in the tree and running through the crime scene around midnight, it makes no difference. What is important is that he places himself at the murder scene. The fucking murder scene, Len.

  “At some point it all falls into place. It all fits. You find yourself saying, ‘It’s Michael. It can’t be anyone else. It’s him.’”

  •

  All I had hoped for when the jury began deliberations that Tuesday morning was that they went past the lunch break. If nothing else, that meant they would be out longer than the jurors in the O.J. case. We all agreed a quick verdict meant an acquittal. Clearly, that’s what the Skakels expected. As Benedict put it, “The longer they are out, the better I think we are.”

  If it went longer than just a few hours, no one could slight the state of Connecticut. No one could say that Benedict, and more specifically Frank, were not legitimate in their investigation.

  Outside in the hallway, I spotted Mickey and Manny Margolis. Mickey was whispering to him, smiling. But Margolis couldn’t restrain himself. “The prosecution has nothing,” he blurted out to me. “They’ve proven nothing. They haven’t touched Michael.”

  But the jury remained out all Tuesday. Contrary to Margolis’s expectation, there was no sign of a verdict.

  On Wednesday, more Skakel relatives turned up. Maybe Margolis felt the jury had come to a decision Tuesday night but wanted to sleep on it until the next morning. Maybe he believed Michael would be acquitted later that day. Bobby Kennedy Jr. appeared for the first time. He’d attended the pretrial hearing two years before but had not been seen since. Later, he would write that Michael was “cold and distant,” blaming him and the Kennedy family in part for his indictment.

  Tommy also turned up for the first time, though only for a day, which probably tells you either that he had no use for Michael or that he was scared as hell about himself. Margolis had choreographed and stage-managed his appearance and also spoke for him. “He came because he wanted to help Michael. He is very family oriented.”

  The old gas-bag, I found myself thinking. Approaching eighty, he had been on the case even longer than I, surviving both heart surgery and prostate cancer. He had at various times represented the entire family—except for Michael—and, according to Frank, Margolis had earned a small fortune stonewalling the police for twenty-six years.

  I saw what Manny was trying to do with Tommy. He had been hoping for a quick decision and had Tommy here for it. I could even imagine what Tommy might say. I could say it for him. All these years his family has been the target of unfair allegations. All these years he himself had been under a cloud, blah, blah, blah.

  Tommy himself seemed literally to recoil before the horde of reporters that surrounded him. Margolis said it all for him. “This has been a terrible time for him. He’s been living under enormous pressure and tension this whole time. But his emotional state is such that he can handle it. He’s here to say, ‘I’m your brother and I’m here to support you.’”

  I wouldn’t let Manny get away with it. I wouldn’t give him this pass, parading Tommy in here at the most opportune time for himself. Not without answering the question I’d spent twenty years pursuing.

  “Manny,” I said in front of the reporter crowd, “why did Tommy lie to the police?”

  “I’m not going to respond to that,” he shot back. “What he said to police in the course of a five-hour interview—it ain’t fun.”

  When they left the courtroom, I followed. I wouldn’t let it alone. This time, I went straight at Tommy. “Tommy, can you tell us now why you lied to the police?” I knew he wouldn’t answer. But I had to do it. I had to get in my shot.

  Manny rushed over. “You have no right to question him,” he shouted. “You go home, Len Levitt.”

  Margolis had shouted so loudly that Frank, standing in the well of the courtroom, heard him. He turned around. “Hey, Lenny,” he called out, smiling, “You better do what he says. It’s past your bedtime.”

  •

  There was no decision Wednesday. Instead, the jury asked for read-backs of the testimony of prosecution witnesses Andrea Shakespeare, John Higgins, and Andy Pugh, which took up all day.

  But now the momentum was shifting. Mickey and Margolis were stirring uneasily. Something was happening that they did not understand. They had never accepted the integrity of the state’s case. Like the national media, they believed Fuhrman had discovered Michael and that the state of Connecticut glommed onto his theory. They had not counted on Frank and his witnesses.

  I searched the courtroom for him. I watched as he moved about the room, always expressionless. Yet the trial had taken its toll. He had lost ten pounds. His black pinstripe suit hung on his frame.

  Like everyone in the courtroom, he concentrated on the jurors as they listened to the testimony of Andrea, Higgins, and Pugh. I, too, searched their faces. Merely the fact that they were asking for the testimony of prosecution witnesses indicated something. Perhaps that they were considering Benedict’s arguments. But then, maybe not.

  Again on Thursday, the jury remained out all day. Strangers were turning up now at the courthouse, men and women who related Martha’s murder to their own misfortunes. I refused to allow myself to think about what was becoming clear—that even I, Frank’s friend and would-be partner in this case, underestimated what he had accomplished.

  Here, Frank had done what no other law enforcement official—hell, what no other person in the case—had done. He had come into this in the middle—no mean feat as my old boss McCulloch, the best newsman I’d ever met, could testify to after his experience entering the Howard Hughes case in midstream. Then there was Murphy, an FBI guy, and Krebs, from the NYPD. They had seen the same information Frank had. But it was only Frank, a local detective from the muddled Greenwich Police Department, who had put it all together.

  •

  The end came at eleven o’clock Friday morning. The jury sent a note. They had reached a verdict. The courtroom was already full as I slipped into the second row behind Dorthy.

  She was seated between her son John and her late husband’s sister, Mary Jo, who had come in from Kansas. Their hands rested on each other’s shoulders. Seeing me, Dorthy smiled. She leaned over and whispered, “I’ll never forget what you have done. Without you and Frank, this never would have happened.”

  Then I saw Frank. He had been downstairs in the basement office, he told me, discussing the verdict with Benedict. If the verdict came today, they decided, they were confident it was for conviction. An acquittal would have been earlier. The worst they could expect now was a hung jury.

  As the courtroom doors closed Frank made his way forward, taking his seat at the railing. As he had been for so much of the eleven years he investigated the murder, he was alone.

  Despite his optimism, he had never been so nervous in his life. He sat, ramrod straight, his face
expressionless. But his hands gripped his knees. His knuckles were white with tension.

  Though it took only fifteen minutes before the judge and the jury emerged, it seemed forever. In those fifteen minutes, the twenty years Dorthy and I had known each other flashed before me. I remembered our first meeting at her apartment in New York, with the huge portrait of Martha on the wall; Dorthy crying through the interview. In those twenty years I never shed a tear for Martha. I did not have to. Dorthy wept enough for both of us.

  In those twenty years, she had become a different person. She attributed that to her husband’s death, which left her to take control. But I think there was more to it than that. Seeking justice for Martha gave her a purpose. The support she received from people like myself—strangers—helped make her whole.

  And there was something more. She didn’t hate. She didn’t hate Michael or the Skakels. She was even able to smile at Mickey. At one television appearance, I saw them buss each other on the cheek. The Skakels saw it too. It infuriated them and they never forgave Mickey for it.

  In the well of the courtroom, Michael stood and faced the entrance through which the jurors would enter any second. His jaw was clenched, his face, already florid, increasingly red. I suspected he feared the worst.

  The judge, John Kavanewsky Jr., took the bench and confirmed there was a verdict. The jury, six white men and six white women, filed in and took their seats on the courtroom’s left side. Some reporters said later that the jurors had smiled at Dorthy as they entered.

  The court clerk read off their names. One by one, each rose and remained standing. The jury foreman, Kevin Cambra, the head of a drivers’ education school, was the last. The court clerk asked him what verdict they’d reached.

  “Guilty.”

  A collective gasp filled the courtroom. It was the sound I heard when Benedict suggested Michael had never gone to the Terriens’. Later, John Moxley would say he felt his heart stop beating.

  Michael turned away and bit his upper lip, keeping his composure but on the verge of tears. Mickey closed his eyes and rubbed his hand over his mouth. He seemed about to faint. Michael’s aunt, Big Ann, bolted from the courtroom, sobbing, followed by her daughter.

  I saw Frank in his chair, trying not to smile. John Moxley reached over and put a hand on his shoulder. Later, Frank would say that pat was confirmation of his work for the last eleven years. “To me,” he said, “that pat was worth its weight in gold.”

  Yet he would not open his mouth. He forced himself to remain expressionless. Instead, as he had done at Greenwich police headquarters when he formally arrested Michael, he turned in his chair and merely nodded his acknowledgment.

  Judge Kavanewsky ordered Michael to stand as each juror’s name was called. His family had filled each seat on the courtroom’s right side but now Michael was all alone. By the time the final juror spoke, beads of sweat had broken out across his forehead.

  Kavanewsky set sentencing for the following month and announced that Michael’s bond would be revoked. Mickey declared he would appeal.

  “I’d like to say something,” said Michael.

  “No sir,” Kavanewsky cut him off.

  He turned to the issue of bail. Susan Gill had argued that Michael’s $500,000 bond be revoked and that he be taken into state custody. Mickey, in barely a whisper, urged his release, saying many issues would be subject to appeal.

  “Bail is revoked,” Kavenewsky ordered. “Take the defendant into custody.”

  Three marshals surrounded Michael and cuffed his hands behind him. His younger brother David, who was nine at the time of the murder, reached out to touch Michael’s shoulder from his seat in the first row of spectators behind the defense table. A marshal swatted his hand away.

  Frank noticed that Michael’s smirk was gone. His arrogance, his cockiness were no more.

  Mickey tried a final motion to set aside the verdict but Kavanewsky denied it. The marshals led Michael away. Twenty-seven years after Martha’s death, he was in custody for the first time.

  Outside the courtroom, a crowd had filled the hallway. State troopers escorted the Moxleys through them, with Frank behind. As they appeared, the crowd burst into applause. Tears streamed down John and Dorthy Moxley’s faces. They hugged Benedict, Morano, Susan Gill, and Frank.

  I was on the sidelines. I was a reporter now, trying to keep my emotional distance. But I caught Frank’s eye and couldn’t help smiling. Still expressionless, he nodded back. Watching him, you might have thought Michael had been acquitted.

  “It’s wonderful. Can you believe it?” I heard Dorthy saying to Dominick.

  “After all this time,” Dominick said, “I just want to cry.”

  “You did it, Frankie,” I heard someone from the prosecutor’s office shouting to Frank. “Shit, Frankie, you had it right all along. All those little pieces. You had the whole picture.”

  The television crews had assembled outside, behind the courthouse. As the Moxleys walked toward them, the crowd followed. Stepping up to the microphones, Dorthy said that before coming to court she had repeated a familiar prayer that was finally answered: “Dear Lord, again today, like I have been doing for twenty-seven years, I’m praying that I can find justice for Martha. This whole thing was about Martha.”

  At her side, John Moxley was asked what message the verdict sent. “I think one message is, ‘You’ve got to be responsible for your actions.’”

  A few minutes later, it was Mickey’s turn. “Yes, I am bitterly disappointed,” he said. “This is the most upsetting verdict I have ever had or will ever have in my life. But I will tell you as long as there is a breath in my body, this case is not over as far as I am concerned. I’m not bitter. I’m determined. I believe in Michael Skakel. He didn’t do it. He doesn’t have a clue who did it. He wasn’t there. He never confessed.”

  Benedict spoke to the media next. Michael, he said, was convicted by his own words. “Hoist by his own petard,” he added, quoting Shakespeare.

  Was there a break in the case? someone asked him. A single event that broke it open? Yes, Benedict said. “It was Frank Garr’s goofy idea in early 1996 to present the case on a segment of the television program Unsolved Mysteries.”

  Two alternate jurors, Anne Layton and Gary Shannon, were telling reporters it was Coleman who provided the most believable testimony against Michael.

  “I believed Coleman,” Layton said. “Just because he’s a drug addict doesn’t mean he can’t give truthful testimony.” So Frank had been right about that too. The jurors had believed him.

  Finally, the Skakels appeared. They were, all of them, grim-faced. All four brothers were there but Tommy, who did not return to court after his first and only appearance.

  David spoke first. “We all know each other so very well and we all stand behind our brother Michael, not out of loyalty but from an intimate understanding.” Michael, he said, was a person of “love and integrity. Michael is innocent. I know this because I know Michael like only a brother does.”

  Stephen, the youngest brother, said there were two Michaels. “The one you know is that arrogant, rich kid with no self-control. But that is not the real Michael. He is generous and compassionate. I love my brother. I believe in him 100 percent. I will fight until my last breath. There is no way on earth he would have done this.”

  I wondered what it meant that the two brothers who spoke up for Michael were the youngest, who knew him the least growing up. Nothing from Rush Jr. Nothing from Johnny, who as a teenager fought brutally with him. And, of course, nothing from the missing Tommy.

  •

  “I’ll tell you what it means,” said Frank. “It means the Skakels know what he is and none of them can stand him.”

  We were standing in the courthouse hallway an hour later. Everyone had gone and the building was nearly empty. It was as though a storm had passed through. A hurricane. The courthouse was returning to its normal routine, the slow pace of a Friday afternoon in spring.

  We
both felt empty, drained. We had talked about celebrating at Dominick’s restaurant in the Bronx after the verdict but somehow neither of us felt like it yet. The enormity of what had occurred hadn’t sunk in.

  •

  “I think he should spend the rest of his life in jail. I think his sentence should be life.” That was Dorthy speaking. She stood before Judge Kavanewsky four months later, on August 29, 2002, the day of Michael’s sentencing, to give what is known as a “victim impact” statement. It was the first and only time I’d seen her let go and express her bitterness at the Skakels.

  Again the courtroom was packed. Everyone who had attended the trial was present except Mickey. The Skakels had already replaced him.

  Again, the Skakel family filled the rows on the courtroom’s far right side. In her seat in the first row sat Michael’s aunt, Ann McCooey—Big Ann—with her daughter next to her. When John Moxley rose to speak about his sister, he passed them. Big Ann could not restrain herself. “You son-of-a-bitch,” she muttered to him.

  When I asked her about it later, she smiled. “I’m a convent girl,” she said. “Do you think a convent girl would talk like that?”

  Then it was Michael’s turn. Friends and family members—including his aunts, cousins, and in-laws—spoke on his behalf. They sounded alike, as though they had been advised or instructed together. All of them mentioned his motherless childhood and his alcoholic father; his two torturous years at Elan; his recovery and support for other alcoholics, including his Kennedy cousins and his own brothers. All of them attested he had been with them that night at Terrien’s. That meant, they said, that he was innocent of Martha’s murder.

  The court also received ninety letters, including a single-spaced, four-page typewritten letter from Bobby Kennedy Jr. and an eight page, handwritten letter from Bobby’s mother, Michael’s aunt Ethel. It was her first public acknowledgment of Michael since his indictment more than two and a half years ealier.