Framed: Why Michael Skakel Spent Over a Decade in Prison For a Murder He Didn't Commit

by Robert F. Kennedy

  John Moxley was at practice when Sheila discovered Martha. Greenwich football head coach Mike Ornato summoned John and told him, “Look, something happened at your home. You need to get there right away.”

  On December 2, 1975, John passed a polygraph commissioned by Greenwich Police. On his first meeting with Sutton investigators in 1994, he told them that he thought that the police wanted him to take the lie detector not only because of the blood Tirado had seen, but also because when he arrived home from football practice, he yelled out, “That’s my sister over there.” Sutton assumed that the policeman stationed at the end of the driveway heard John’s exclamation when he jumped from the car. At Michael’s trial, John testified that he only learned of Martha’s death once inside the house. The Sutton team wondered what prompted him to make the statement that had piqued police interest. After all, John had not previously expressed concern about Martha’s disappearance and her body was not visible from the Moxley driveway. He told author Tim Dumas that he didn’t know the nature of the emergency when he got home. “There was a sea of police cars,” he said, describing his arrival home. “There was no question in my mind that this was a major police event that involved us somehow.” He told Dumas that he rushed toward his house to see what was happening. According to Dumas’s account, on the Moxleys’ front steps, his father’s co-worker, Lou Pennington, intercepted him to deliver the news that his sister had been “killed.” Pennington’s words could have described any number of causes of death, accidental and otherwise. Dumas related the exchange that followed:

  JOHN: How? Was she stabbed or something?

  PENNINGTON: No. Hit with a golf club.

  After Fuhrman and Dunne began pushing Mrs. Moxley to condemn Michael, John Moxley became the vocal scourge of the Skakel family. He aggressively promoted his deeply held conviction that Michael was the killer and that other Skakels were co-conspirators. But in earlier days, his preferred suspect was Kenny Littleton.

  Sutton’s summary of a September 7, 1994, interview reads: “John Moxley stated that, in his view, Littleton is a very, very troubled individual. He believes that Littleton, at one time, had a sexual identity problem and that this belief was based on conversations he has had with several of Littleton’s friends. He also volunteered that some of Littleton’s friends thought that he may have been gay. John further volunteered that he thought that Littleton may have been using steroids, although this is only a feeling on his part and he has nothing to support his belief.”

  Then, in the context of discussing Kenny, John said something that disconcerted the Sutton team. “It was at this point in the interview that John stated that, in his own mind, he made a connection between the manner in which Martha’s body was found, with her jeans and underwear rolled down and her buttocks exposed, and Littleton’s possible sexual problems,” the Sutton report read. “He believed that the body found in this position may have been as a result of Littleton ‘trying to fuck her in the ass.’ Suffice it to say, the words chosen by John Moxley to convey this scenario struck our investigator as being offensively incongruent with the way one would expect a brother to speak of their deceased little sister.”

  Sutton would shut down its investigation in 1995 on orders from Tommy Skakel’s lawyer, Manny Margolis, before detectives could complete a more thorough investigation of John Moxley. However, John Moxley’s name kept popping up in interviews with Frank Garr, who had, by then, taken over the case from Carroll and Lunney. On April 10, 1992, Sheila met with Garr to review her memories. “Sheila reported that she remembered having no fear of Tommy, no fear of Michael, or any of her other friends, and being terrified of John Moxley,” Garr typed in his official police report, dated April 10, 1992.

  According to Garr, “Sheila reported that on pure speculation, she always suspected John Moxley [as Martha’s killer]. Her reason was based on the fact that John really did not like Martha’s boyfriend, Peter Ziluca. … According to Sheila, Peter had been to Martha’s house, and John was furious, and started chasing him around the house with a baseball bat, threatening to kill him. According to Sheila, John Moxley had a drinking problem. She described him as a hostile, tense person, with a hot temper, and reports that ever since then she has feared him. Sheila reported that John had gotten Bonnie Drucker (not her real name) drunk, and date-raped her just after the murder. Apparently, they had been in a car, at the end of Walsh Lane. However, Sheila reports that Bonnie was a bit promiscuous with John, and never reported the incident.”

  Garr apparently did not follow up on this lead. (Garr refused to talk to me about his work on the case.) But Garr had an uncanny gift for hearing only the evidence he wanted, for filtering out facts and leads that were inconsistent with his theme, and, as we shall see, for inventing evidence when the truth was inadequate. Two years after Garr took Sheila’s statement about the rape, a woman named Frieda Saemann, a longtime Greenwich resident, visited Garr with a new take on Moxley’s alibi.

  Saemann knew John Salerno, who was in John Moxley’s senior class at Greenwich High. Saemann told Garr that Salerno had been with John Moxley, John Harvey, and Vinnie Cortese the night of October 30, 1975. Here was a revelation. Despite intense questioning over many years, Moxley had never mentioned Salerno. Following Martha’s murder, Salerno’s life had fallen apart. “He was a National Honor Society student, however, according to Ms. Saemann, immediately following the murder, Salerno’s grades began to drop and he ultimately did not graduate from high school,” the report read. Saemann told Garr that Salerno was working as a carpenter in the US Virgin Islands. She also provided the name of another acquaintance, Virginia Liddell, whose daughter had a friend who attended Ohio Wesleyan with John Moxley. “This friend heard John Moxley confess to murdering his sister in a drunken stupor.” Larry Holifield located Liddell and her son and left them many messages, none of which they returned. He was unable to locate Liddell’s daughter.

  Garr invited John Salerno’s mother, Marie, to the station. She confirmed Saemann’s story. Her son was with John Moxley the night of Martha’s murder, and his life had entered a death spiral after the murder. “Mrs. Salerno reports that in 1975–76, her son’s senior year at Greenwich High School, he became disinterested in school, and ultimately did not graduate with his class,” according to Garr’s report. Salerno said that her son had gone to summer school, then to Boston College, but dropped out after a semester, saying that college was not his thing. “Mrs. Salerno could give no reason for the lack of interest in his school work.” She reported that she had been unable to discuss the murder with her son, who immigrated to the Virgin Islands in 1989, where John Moxley would visit him. According to the report, “John Salerno would not talk about the murder, and cautioned his family not to discuss the murder with John Moxley. She reported that another one of her sons had learned of Martha’s death and when he told (his brother) John, John cried.”

  A week later, Garr reached Salerno in the Virgin Islands. During the telephone interview, Salerno confirmed that the rambling trio, described by John Moxley and John Harvey throughout the ages was, in fact, a quartet. He said John had picked him up in his car. They bought a bunch of beers, and eventually made it to Greenwich High for the pep rally preparations. From there, they went to a party; Salerno recalled it as being on either Cat Rock or Cognewaugh Road. In Salerno’s account, there were no trips to Dairy Queen.

  Holifield tracked down Salerno on December 16, 2015. He was living with his mother in her Lyon Avenue home. Holifield rang the Salernos’ doorbell and spoke briefly to Marie, who again lamented that her son had been a straight-A student until Martha’s murder. Five minutes later, a white Chevy Suburban backed into the driveway. John Salerno rolled down his window and spoke to Holifield for over an hour without getting out, which Holifield and his co-investigator Greg Garland found peculiar. It was just past 2:00 p.m., and Salerno smelled strongly of alcohol.

  Salerno said that he and John Moxley had been close since the Moxleys arrived in Greenwich. They p
layed football for Greenwich High together. Salerno had scored over 1300 on his SAT and had a bright future, but, devastated by Martha’s death, he began drinking heavily and smoking a lot of pot. Salerno teared up when he related how he would tuck six packs of Michelob under a bush at the Moxleys for Martha. He said it took years before he admitted this to John, whom he described as highly protective of Martha. Salerno remembered John discovering Martha drinking beer with Gray Weicker, the local Greenwich hockey star and son of then–US Senator Lowell Weicker. Infuriated, John assaulted Weicker with a baseball bat. Holifield’s report states that Salerno was “pleasant and talkative although he was extremely evasive when describing the details regarding the night Martha was murdered.” Salerno reported that the four boys went to several “keg parties” that night, but his recollection of anything beyond that was suspiciously vague, despite Holifield’s probing. Apparently, John Moxley and John Harvey had tapped “Dairy Queen” as a euphemism for keg parties.

  Salerno said he was unimpressed by Garr’s 1994 phone interview. He said it struck him that the detective was just going through the motions. Salerno gathered from the call that John Moxley was a suspect, so he couldn’t understand why Garr’s interview was so perfunctory. After all, he was one of Moxley’s alibi witnesses and Garr asked only a few heedless questions about the night of the murder and did not press him on details. There were a hundred obvious questions Garr could have asked, for instance: What time did John leave the group? How long was he gone? How many beers had he had? Why did neither John Moxley nor John Harvey mention that Salerno had been out with them? Did Salerno accompany John on whatever trip he went on? Did he go back to Belle Haven at any point? Did John witness something that might have set him off? Police reports do not indicate that Garr made any effort to confirm John Moxley’s supposed Ohio Wesleyan confession.

  Unsurprisingly, Sherman never contacted Salerno.

  During Michael’s probable cause hearing, Judge John Kavanewsky gave Sherman a letter the judge had received from an Oakland, California, physician, Dr. Mark Knopp, who knew John Moxley and offered his detailed suspicion that John was involved in three bludgeoning murders in Oakland, California. The victims included a friend of Moxley’s wrestling teammate, George Zador; a travel agent neighbor of the Moxley’s; and a young girl who was Moxley’s schoolmate. Dr. Knopp said that John was on the Montera Junior High golf team and he suspected John had two Toney Penna golf clubs owned by the team coach in his possession in Greenwich at the time of the murder. John admitted chipping golf balls in his Belle Haven yard. Police found a golf ball near Martha’s body.

  It wasn’t until December 17, 1975, 50 days after Martha’s discovery, that Mrs. Moxley made it to the State Police Crime Lab in Bethany, Connecticut, where so many Skakels had preceded her, to be polygraphed. She received courtesies never extended to Tommy Skakel. “Mrs. Moxley was too nervous,” the report read, and the troopers “felt that the test would be futile.” The troopers explained this to Mrs. Moxley and her son; she agreed to try again after the holidays. There is no record that the police ever attempted to retest her. The Greenwich Police impulse to treat the grieving Moxley family gingerly is understandable. But it neither advanced resolution of the case, nor served the interests of blind justice.

  CHAPTER 6

  The Boyfriend

  Jesus, if Peter found out, I would be dead.

  —Martha Moxley

  Greenwich Police also gave a mulligan to Martha’s boyfriend, Peter Ziluca. If there is a sinister figure in Martha’s diary, it is Ziluca. The month before she died, Martha wrote, “Sometimes I wonder why I go with [Peter]. He’s always telling me he hates me.” In her September 12, 1975, entry she describes his black moods. “Peter was being his usual self again,” she wrote. “Margie talked to him & she said that the reason he wasn’t talking to me was because he got really wasted & he felt like everyone was laughing at him.” In the same entry, she described a flirtatious driving lesson with Tommy, followed by a chilling hypothesis. “I drove a little then and I was practically sitting on Tom’s lap ’cause I was only steering,” she wrote. “He kept putting his hand on my knee. Then we went to the Gazeebo [sic] … Jesus, if Peter found out, I would be dead!!” (Michael appears innocently in the story: “We went to Friendly’s and Michael treated me and he got me a double but I only wanted a single so I threw the top scoop out the window.”)

  Following her drive with Tommy, she wrote that she intended to end her relationship with Peter. It’s the closest thing to an actual motive for murder that she offers for anyone in her milieu. “Yesterday I decided I really don’t like Peter anymore.” Martha’s last diary entry is dated a day before her death. She had not yet broken up with Ziluca.

  Michael Skakel’s childhood friend and Belle Haven neighbor Peter Coomaraswamy describes Ziluca as a “badass” who wasn’t scared to fight. Michael says he was a “tough guy” quick to anger, good with his fists, and possessive about Martha. Martha, Michael says, was Peter’s steady girl and he would have been furious to learn that she was dating other boys. Ziluca was a Belle Haven version of the Fonz, but without the laughs. By all accounts, he was an angry 16-year-old kid who was already deep into drugs.

  Experienced detectives would have automatically treated Peter as a “person of interest.” In 2007, 45 percent of murdered females were killed by intimate partners, about half of whom they’d never married. And Martha’s diary provided Peter with a clear motive. Her journal is a catalogue of assignations with other boys during the period she was going steady with Peter. Martha fretted that he was curious about the contents of her diary. “Tyler & Peter came over & took my diary & boy was I pissed,” she wrote. “So I ran out of the house & those guys (Margie etc.) were on their way over. So Margie talked to Peter. Well any ways, I am still a little mad but at least he apologized.” If he managed to get a look at the journal, he would have been crushed by her fast-paced juggling, often with older boys. Mark, a college freshman, propositioned her on July 4, 1975. “By the way I forgot to say … Mark said to me—‘Do you want to go for it?’ But I said no (not at 14).” Two days later, on July 6, she was with a high school senior. On July 9: “There were 6 FOXES [she wrote her code for desirable boys in capital letters]. There was Mark, Brad, Matt, Larry, Ralph & Skip. Me & Karen got really bombed. Me and Matt were together & Karen & Brad. (We both went to 2nd.)” The following day, she reunited with Mark. “All of a sudden we were making out! El foxo!” she wrote. “Mark & I went downstairs to his bedroom ON the bed. We went to 3rd, he was so fuckin’ cute! About 6'2" very dark (tan) dark hair, brown eyes, very foxy!”

  Peter seems to have made powerful emotional and psychic investments in Martha as his girlfriend. Peter professed his love for Martha to author Tim Dumas. He both idolized and idealized her. He told Dumas that she was a virgin and that he had safeguarded her virginity, suggesting his aspirations for a long-term relationship. He talked about his “pride” that she was his steady girl because she chose him over Senator Weicker’s son, Gray—another suitor. Initially, he “knew” Martha would never go out with him and yet she did. He described his adoration for Martha as “love at first sight.” There was a sense of possessiveness when he spoke of Martha. One can imagine the catastrophic blow he would have suffered had he discovered her cavalier ramblings. Adolescent love is a heightened emotional experience—ecstatic and intense. First heartbreak is correspondingly painful and traumatic. Statistics show that people only rarely kill members of the opposite sex without first loving them. A toxic brew of betrayal, lost possession, shattered dreams, and injured pride provokes men to kill their lovers. Neither Michael nor Tommy enjoyed the kind of profound emotional attachment to Martha that might lead a jilted lover to do her harm.

  As with so many Greenwich stories, Peter started life as privileged kid with limitless promise before addiction sidetracked him. Peter was the great, great grandson of Giuseppe Garibaldi, a founding father of Italy. A floor broker on the New York Stock Exchange, his fath
er prospered sufficiently to raise Peter and his four sisters in a Greenwich back-country home so colossal that the locals referred to it as “The Castle.” Peter’s parents divorced when he was 12. By the night of Martha’s death, Peter was living in a smaller home with his mother, Nancy, on Old Church Road beside the Greenwich Country Club.

  Unconfirmed rumors of Peter sightings in Belle Haven on October 30 abound in the hazy mist of the Moxley murder, but I found no corroboration. His mother, who died in 1992, provided Peter’s alibi. Cops first interviewed Peter at 10:30 p.m., five days after Martha’s murder. A local matron, Mrs. Barrington Fuchs, called police to say that she had eight of Martha’s friends, including Peter, sitting in her living room on Mayo Lane. Greenwich Detective Jim Lunney soon appeared to question the children, including Peter, who told Lunney that he’d last seen Martha at 2:00 p.m., at the end of the school day Thursday, October 30, at Greenwich High. Lunney’s notes are characteristically listless, despite Peter’s role in Martha’s life. “Martha wanted to come to his house on Thursday evening, but he advised her that he was tired and was going to bed early,” the report read. “Further stated that he was going to call Martha, but it had gotten late, so he did not call her. Related that he stayed home with his mother.”

  Two days later, Detective Steve Carroll called Nancy Ziluca by phone. “Mother of Peter related that her son was with her all evening in the house,” Carroll’s report read. Immediately after hanging up, Carroll attended to more pressing matters—trying to coordinate a polygraph for then–prime suspect Ed Hammond.

  Lunney finally visited the Ziluca house on Tuesday evening, November 4, leaving the Zilucas five days to reconcile alibis. Lunney interviewed the mother and son without separating them—a classic rookie blunder. There is an interesting discrepancy between his two interviews. Peter said that on October 30 he couldn’t see Martha because he was “going to bed early.” Peter and his mom now told Lunney the pair had stayed up until 11:30 p.m. watching TV together, an excruciatingly long marathon date for a self-described “wild” teenaged boy and his mother. Stephen Skakel wonders, “What if, after standing Martha up for dinner, Peter drove the car to Belle Haven only to surprise her leaving Tommy’s arms?”