Conviction

by Leonard Levitt

  “Are you going to the toy store?” I heard him ask the woman he was sitting with.

  “Not yet,” she whispered. Little Georgie made a face, then broke into a smile.

  As I watched him, tears came to my eyes. I, too, had been the father of a little boy who was now grown. Yes, Michael had pleaded for no jail time so that he could raise his son and for the first time I felt pity. Not for Michael. He had had his chance. He could have come forward years before and accepted responsibility. Had he done so then—had his family done so—Michael would have served perhaps a few years in a juvenile facility and would now have been free.

  No, it was not for him that I grieved. It was for this little boy, who would not only grow up without a father, but who would learn someday that his father was a murderer.

  •

  I was on vacation in Colorado in September 2003, when Dominick called. Susan and I were visiting her brother, my closest friend at Dartmouth of forty years before. He’d built himself a house on top of a mountain outside Aspen on 110 acres with spectacular views. Up on the ridges you could see elk. Bears also lived in the area. I hadn’t seen any up close, thank God, although their droppings were everywhere.

  “Did you hear the latest?” Dominick said when I answered my cell phone. I was outside, taking in the vistas, staring up at Mt. Sopris, which even in September was snow-capped.

  Michael’s appeals lawyer, Hope Seeley, claimed to have discovered two new suspects in Martha’s murder—two black men from the Bronx. As teenagers in 1975, Seeley said, they had admitted being in Belle Haven on Halloween eve, picking up a golf club lying on the ground at the Skakels’, then using it to murder Martha “caveman style” —whatever that meant.

  As bizarre as her story sounded, I had heard something about it a few months earlier, from, of all people, Cissy’s daughter, Helen Ix Fitz-patrick. Not long after the verdict, Helen’s husband had telephoned me, saying, as Sheridan had years before, that because my articles on the case had been fair, Helen and her parents felt they could talk to me about the case. Specifically, they felt they might be helpful in sharing information about the Skakels for this book.

  I drove over to Helen’s house one Friday night after work. She and her husband lived in Belle Haven just down the street from her parents. He was a Wall Street guy. She also had a corporate job and they had young children, one of whom attended Greenwich Academy, the sister school of Brunswick. Whatever help she offered was tailored to benefit Michael. That was how she mentioned the two black suspects.

  She said she had learned of them through Bobby Kennedy, who had learned of them through Tony Bryant, who had attended Brunswick years before. Tony was now a prosecutor in Florida, she said. After all these years, he had come forward.

  It turned out that Gitano “Tony” Bryant happened to be a cousin of the Los Angeles Lakers basketball star Kobe Bryant. His story was that on Halloween eve, 1975, he had been in Belle Haven with the two black teenagers from the Bronx and that the next day they admitted killing Martha.

  Helen added that Tony Bryant had recently told this story to another Brunswick classmate, a television writer named Crawford Mills. Mills had contacted Bobby Jr. after reading his article in the Atlantic Monthly.

  “Dominick, you have got to be kidding,” I said when he told me of the two new suspects. I had dismissed what Helen had told me as preposterous. I had never seen anything about two black teenagers in the Greenwich police reports. How had they gotten past the guards at the Belle Haven police booth without being stopped? Why had nobody reported seeing them at the time? And why would they have taken the missing part of the golf club handle with Anne Skakel’s name on it and risk being apprehended with the murder weapon?

  In fact, pinning the murder on two unnamed blacks seemed to me not just ridiculous but ludicrous. Seeley appeared to be playing to the meanest of American racial stereotypes. Two blacks from the Bronx. “Caveman” style.

  “Where do you suppose she came up with this?” Dominick asked.

  “I think it was from Bobby Kennedy Jr.,” I said.

  I immediately called Frank. When I asked him about Crawford Mills, Tony Bryant, and the two black guys, he exploded. “It’s all bullshit. How can people believe this crap? Remember Tad Baldwin? I almost indicted him for perjury. I tell you, Len, when I hear this kind of stuff I have to laugh.” I couldn’t tell whether he was more amused or disgusted.

  Frank said he had already checked out Tony Bryant. First, he wasn’t a prosecutor or even a lawyer. In 1993, he’d been convicted as an accomplice in a burglary in Beverly Hills, California. According to that trial testimony, thieves had entered a woman’s home pretending to deliver flowers, then threatened her with a gun, tied her up, and stole her jewelry.

  More recently, Bryant had started a tobacco distribution company. It went out of business because he underreported sales and failed to pay $5 million in state taxes.

  As for Crawford Mills, before the trial he had contacted Mickey Sherman, who dismissed his information. Like Baldwin, Mills had been writing a TV script about the murder, and Mickey—who knew something about getting himself on TV—questioned whether Mills’s story was fact or fiction.

  Frank added that when Benedict had asked Seeley for the names and addresses of the two suspects so that the state could interview them and perhaps clear Michael, she refused to provide them. “They say they are saving it for their appeal,” he said. “Benedict thinks they’ll use this to claim Mickey was incompetent for not pursuing the lead.”

  “Why did Bryant wait all this time to come forward?” I asked Frank.

  “Why don’t you ask Michael’s lawyers?” he replied.

  “What about Littleton? Does this mean the Skakels have given up on him as Martha’s killer?”

  “Why don’t you ask Bobby Kennedy?” Eighteen months had passed since Michael’s conviction. Frank hadn’t lost his sense of humor.

  Coincidentally, I was supposed to meet with Bobby Kennedy Jr. the following week. He had written to me at Newsday, although he had gotten my name wrong, addressing the letter to “Larry Leavitt.” Because of his relationship with the Skakel family, he wrote, he felt he could provide me with information for this book, like the Ixes had. For reasons that I didn’t understand, he was under the mistaken impression that I didn’t want to meet with him.

  Of course, I jumped at the opportunity. We agreed to meet at his office at Pace University in Westchester. But the day of the meeting, he canceled. Frank had warned me that would happen.

  “Circumstances have changed,” Kennedy said. Specifically, he said he had changed his mind because of my relationship with Frank.

  Then he offered some advice. Or perhaps it something other than advice.

  “It would be silly and foolhardy not to rethink your thesis,” he said. “I think it will be obvious to a lot of people that many of your presumptions about the Skakels are wrong. Your presumption is that Michael Skakel is guilty. I think this evidence [that he had developed to clear Michael] is strong enough and will emerge over time that if you go ahead and write your book on that earlier theme, it will not look accurate.”

  At the same time, Seeley’s partner, Hubert J. Santos, sent a letter to Benedict, with a copy to the newly appointed chief state’s attorney—who was none other than Frank’s nemesis, Chris Morano.

  “It is our understanding that Mr. Garr serves as the main character and hero in Mr. Levitt’s book,” Santos wrote, “and that he has been actively involved with Mr. Levitt in this book project.”

  Because of this, Santos said Frank had a conflict of interest and urged Benedict to drop him from the case.

  “Do you see what the Skakels are doing?” said Frank. We were back at the Lakeside at our usual table by the water. Spring was coming. The ice was melting and ducks were paddling about.

  “First, they went after Littleton,” he said. “They hired Murphy and Krebs to ruin him. Instead, when Murphy and Krebs discovered that Tommy and Michael had lied to the po
lice, Sheridan fired them.

  “Because the information got out, they turned on Sheridan. Next, they fired Mickey, saying he was incompetent. Now with your book, they’re coming after us.”

  Could this be true? That now it was Frank and me in the Skakels’ crosshairs? For a moment, I tried to imagine how the Skakels could attack me. As far as I could see, they couldn’t. I worked for a top news organization. I’d been a reporter for thirty years. In his article in the Atlantic, even Bobby Kennedy Jr. had written that my articles had been the most thorough about the case.

  Then I realized what they were doing. In his letter to me, Bobby Jr. had written, “I suspect that your alliance with Officer Frank Garr may have caused you after many years of aggressive yet unbiased reports on the Moxley murder to adopt his bias towards the Skakel family.”

  To the Skakels, Frank was the weak link. To them, he was the local detective from the discredited Greenwich Police Department. They would attack me through him.

  “What happened to Santos’s letter to Benedict, saying you should be taken off the case?” I asked him.

  “Benedict said he wouldn’t dignify it with a response,” he answered. That was reassuring at least.

  I began discussing my meeting with Sheridan. I had told Frank of it before, of course, but I couldn’t get out of my mind what Sheridan had said of Michael, of his two virtual confessions. That and what Michael had told the counselor about the blood.

  “Len,” he said, “why do you sound surprised? They all know he did it. What Sheridan said makes no sense and no difference. That old windbag did everything he could to protect Rucky and the Skakel family. That’s all he cares about. He tells you Michael confessed to him at least twice and he still doesn’t believe he did it? Just remember, he is not a stupid man.”

  “Jesus, Frank,” I said, “this still isn’t over.” The subject of the appeal and Kennedy’s letter were depressing me. The Skakels, I realized, would never let it die. They were like the forces of evil and they just kept coming. Not only that. Despite the conviction, Frank and I still questioned whether Michael had acted alone.

  I happened to think of Dorthy. Like Frank and me, we had remained in touch since the verdict. She’d come into the city a couple of times and we’d had lunch. I’d found a place downtown near my office that she enjoyed and we had a fine old time reminiscing.

  “You know, Frank,” I said, “she’s somehow different now.” I had to ponder a moment to figure out how, and then I hit on it. For the first time since I’d known her, she seemed, well, almost happy. She’d never get over Martha, of course. No parent could. But with Michael’s conviction, she had finally found a kind of equilibrium.

  “But here’s where you’re wrong, Len,” Frank answered. “For the Skakels, it is over. They just don’t know it.

  “And remember this. If I am wrong and their appeal is somehow granted, and even if Michael gets a new trial, you and I will still be there. We’ll be there to stop them. Sometimes I think that’s what we are meant to do in this world.”

  List of Names

  THE MOXLEYS

  MARTHA MOXLEY, fifteen years old at the time she was murdered (in 1975).

  DORTHY, Martha’s mother.

  DAVID, Martha’s father.

  JOHN, Martha’s older brother, seventeen years old at the time she was murdered.

  JOHN MCCREIGHT, friend and colleague of David Moxley.

  THE SKAKELS

  RUSHTON SR., brother of ETHEL SKAKEL KENNEDY (wife of the late SENATOR ROBERT KENNEDY).

  ANNE REYNOLDS SKAKEL, his wife, who died in 1973.

  Their Children

  TOMMY, seventeen years old at the time of Martha’s murder. For years he was the prime suspect.

  MICHAEL, fifteen years old at the time of the murder. He became a suspect in 1995 when it was reported that he placed himself at the murder scene the night of the murder.

  DAVID, JOHN (JOHNNY), RUSH JR., STEPHEN, JULIE.

  Skakel Relatives, Supporters, Acquaintances

  JIMMY TERRIEN, Skakel first cousin. Michael said that he and his brothers were at Terrien’s home at the time of the murder. Terrien’s whereabouts later that night are unknown.

  GEORGEANN TERRIEN, Jimmy’s mother, Rushton Sr.’s sister.

  TOM SHERIDAN, Skakel family friend and lawyer who became Michael’s criminal attorney after a drunken-driving accident in 1978.

  MICKEY SHERMAN, Michael’s attorney at his trial.

  EMANUEL “MANNY” MARGOLIS, Tommy’s attorney.

  KEN LITTLETON, Skakel family tutor. He moved into the Skakel house the night of Martha’s murder and later became a suspect.

  FATHER MARK CONNOLLY, Skakel family priest. He visited Michael shortly after his arrival at the Elan school in Poland Springs, Maine, and was told by a guidance counselor that Michael said that on the night of the murder he had been covered in blood.

  ANDREA SHAKESPEARE, family friend of Julie Skakel, who was at the Skakel house the night of the murder and testified that Michael never went to Terrien’s.

  Neighbors and Friends

  ROBERT AND CISSY IX, whose daughter HELEN was Martha’s age. In front of the grand jury, Cissy said that Rushton told her Michael had confided to him he thought he might have killed Martha. At Michael’s trial, she renounced her grand jury testimony.

  EDWARD HAMMOND, a neighbor, who became the murder’s first suspect.

  LAW ENFORCEMENT

  From the Greenwich Police Department

  STEPHEN BARAN, chief of the department at the time of the Moxley murder.

  TOM KEEGAN, chief of detectives and head of the Moxley investigation, who succeeded Baran as chief.

  DETECTIVE JIM LUNNEY, lead investigator on the Moxley case.

  DETECTIVE STEVE CARROLL, Lunney’s partner.

  DETECTIVE FRANK GARR, who took over the case when it was reopened.

  From the Fairfield County State’s Attorney’s Office in Bridgeport

  DONALD BROWNE, Fairfield County state’s attorney.

  DETECTIVE JACK SOLOMON, Browne’s chief investigator.

  JOHN BENEDICT, Browne’s successor as Fairfield County state’s attorney.

  SUSAN GILL, assistant state’s attorney.

  CHRIS MORANO and DOMINICK GALLUZO, assistant state’s attorneys sent from the chief state’s attorney’s office outside Hartford

  From the Detroit Police Department

  HOMICIDE CHIEF GERALD HALE, who came to Greenwich to look into the case at the request of John McCreight.

  Private Investigators for the Skakels, Hired by Sheridan

  JIM MURPHY, former FBI supervisor.

  WILLIS [BILLY] KREBS, Murphy’s associate, former New York City Police Department lieutenant. When their investigation revealed that both Tommy and Michael had lied about their whereabouts the night of the murder, they were fired.

  FROM THE TIMES-MIRROR CORPORATION

  KEN BRIEF, editor-in-chief of the Stamford Advocate and Greenwich Time.

  JOE PISANI, Ken’s deputy and editor of the Greenwich Time.

  STEVE ISENBERG, publisher of the Stamford Advocate and Greenwich Time and later associate publisher of New York Newsday.

  DAVE LAVENTHOL, editor, then publisher of Newsday on Long Island and later the head of Times-Mirror’s East Coast newspapers.

  TONY INSOLIA, Laventhol’s successor as editor of Newsday.

  DON FORST, editor of New York Newsday.

  Searchable Terms

  The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific passage, please use the search feature of your e-book reader.

  Abuse, child, 31

  Academy Group, 137, 141-43

  Affleck, Ben, 233

  Alcohol/alcoholism

  Dowdle, Jack, 29

  Dunne, Dominick, 200

  Kennedy, Michael, 216

  Skakel, Michael, 33, 107-8

  Skakel, Rushton, 27, 69

  Terrien, Georgeann, 28-29
<
br />   Altman, Melvyn, 84

  Animal abuse, 33-34, 75-76

  Annenberg, Walter, 100

  Appeal process, 274

  Associated Press, 20

  Atlantic Monthly, 31, 91, 274, 282

  Attorney’s office, state. See Garr, Frank; Prosecutors

  Backal, Lorraine, 84

  Bailey, John, Jr., 210-11

  Baker, Kenneth, 137, 142

  Baker, Mary, 74, 122-29, 245, 246-47

  Baldwin, Tad, 232

  Baran, Stephen, 20, 55-57, 169

  Begelman, David, 200

  Behavior disorders, Skakel brothers evaluated with, 29-30

  Benedict, Jonathan

  final arguments, 258-61

  Fuhrman, interactions with Mark, 211, 212

  Garr, conflict of interest accusations against, 284

  grand jury indictment, 233

  Levitt, meeting with, 231

  Solomon’s obsession with Ken Littleton, Jack, 125

  taking over the prosecution, 209, 210

  trial, the, 245, 247-48, 258-62

  verdict, the, 269

  Big Story, The, 11, 86, 168

  Birney, Diane, 106

  Blacks from the Bronx (NY) as murder suspects, 281-83

  Blumingdale, Ellen, 29

  Body discovered, Martha Moxley’s, 43

  Borge, Victor, 23

  Boston Herald, 216-17

  Bower, John, 84-85

  Bower and Gardner, 83

  Bowlin, David, 105-6

  Brannack, Ann (grandmother, Michael’s), 25-26

  Breed, Rebecca, 50

  Brieant, Charles, 84

  Brief, Ken

  Freedom of Information Commission and police case file, 61-62

  Hale Report, 41

  Levitt’s entry into case, the cause of, 9, 19

  newspaper story (1995) on murder case, 149

  newspaper story (1983/1984) on case delayed/canceled, 77-78, 81-82, 88-89, 185

  Skakel, helping to arrange for interview with Tommy, 73

  Brisentine, Robert, 127-28

  Bronx (NY), news stories in, 82-83

  Brown, Tina, 236