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

by Robert F. Kennedy

  The biggest break for police the night of October 31 was finding a Toney Penna four-iron, apparently the sister club to the murder weapon. It was poking from a barrel of sporting gear by the backdoor mudroom. Two days later, Lunney and Brosko returned to the Skakel home. The club hadn’t moved. Rucky happily let them take it. He also signed a “Consent to Search Premises Without Search Warrant” form, granting the detectives free rein to search the house and remove, without asking, “any merchandise, materials, or other property” they deemed relevant to the investigation.

  “The Skakels were able to hold off the police all these years,” Dunne would recount to CNN years later. “If this was a family of lesser stature, that simply would not have happened.” Once again, the opposite was true. Beginning that night when Rucky got back from his hunting trip, he opened his home to police. “My father had an open-door policy,” recalls Rush Jr. “His attitude was, ‘We have nothing to hide. Come on in.’” Police reports echo Rush Jr.’s assessment. “Anything investigators wished to do would be agreeable to him,” a November 7 police report read. Rucky, who was something of a law-enforcement groupie, was happy to have his home turned into a makeshift command center. Ethel Jones, the family’s cook, served the cops coffee and homemade baked goods; Michael’s friend Peter Coomaraswamy recalls going over to the Skakel house during that period and finding the place swarming with cops. David recalls, “The Greenwich Police pretty much moved into our house. They used our kitchen as their headquarters for the investigation. That was their base.”

  Two weeks after the murder, on November 15, Rucky dutifully brought his kids and his nephew, Jimmy, to the Greenwich police station for formal police interviews. The children all repeated the same stories they told police on Halloween before leaving for Windham.

  It was true that Rucky spoke to his family, but not at Windham and not to concoct alibis. “When the boys came home from Windham after the weekend, my father assembled us all in the library,” recalls David. “He told us that investigators would be talking to us. You know, we were all kind of in shock about Martha’s murder. It just didn’t make sense. But that was it. There was nothing else to really talk about. There were only two times that we had family meetings during my entire childhood. The other time was on the bus, after my mother died, and he told us we could go to our rooms and cry.” I asked my cousins if there were ever detailed discussions among their siblings about the night of Martha’s murder. “Never,” Stephen tells me. “No, never,” Michael concurs. “We didn’t talk about it at first among ourselves because there was no reason to,” Rush Jr. tells me separately, “because we were never involved except for being neighbors. By the time they started drilling down on Tommy as a suspect, all the fine details of that night had disappeared.” And after that, Tommy’s lawyer told them not to talk about it. The Skakels rarely discussed the Moxley case among themselves, and, except for Julie, mostly didn’t read press reports about it—first because of family culture and legal advice, and second because most of the press coverage was biased, inaccurate, and painful. “We never talked about it,” Julie told me in 2003. “Through all the years we never discussed this. We never compared notes.”

  When Mickey Sherman first sat the family down together in Florida, soon after Michael hired him as defense attorney, he was stunned to listen as the siblings compared stories from that evening for the first time. “I just remember Julie saying that it was amazing talking about it, because they’d never spoken about it before,” Sherman told me in 2002. “That was always a mystery to me after they said that.”

  Tom Sheridan’s perception of the Greenwich Police also contradicted Dunne’s. Sheridan told me in 2002, “There was a faction within the Greenwich Police who, from almost the beginning, were not interested in any evidence that did not point to Tom Skakel.” Sheridan told me that police investigators violated Tommy’s constitutional rights by interrogating him when he was a minor for almost nine hours, without counsel and with no adult present. (When Rucky finally did hire counsel to represent Tommy, the police refused to hand over those earlier interviews to Tommy’s lawyer.)

  On November 3, 1975, detectives appeared at the Skakel house at dinnertime and told Rucky they wanted Tommy to take a polygraph. Tommy had just gotten home from soccer practice and hadn’t eaten dinner. Rather than scheduling the polygraph for a more convenient time, Tommy was in the back of a cruiser a half hour later, barreling up the Merritt Parkway, en route to the State Police’s Troop I facility in Bethany, Connecticut, 90 minutes northwest of Greenwich. It was 9:00 p.m. by the time the test started, almost midnight when the State policeman finally pulled the wires and detached the blood pressure cuff from Tommy, and past 1:00 a.m. when Lunney and Brosko deposited him home on Otter Rock Drive. The results: “inconclusive.” According to the report, the polygraphers couldn’t get an accurate read because Tommy was “in an exhausted state.”

  Even after this ordeal, Tommy, who still hadn’t lawyered up, agreed to a retest two days later. Knowing that false positive polygraph results often lead to the prosecution of innocent suspects, I never would have allowed a client to consent to one polygraph, let alone two. But it was 1975, and Rucky was flying solo.

  Cooperation did not pay off. By early winter, Tommy was the prime suspect. On December 10, 1975, police re-interviewed Helen and Geoff. The two added some new color to their description of the romantic horseplay between Tommy and Martha; as they were leaving the Skakel driveway, they saw Tommy push Martha into a bush. Martha tripped and fell over the embankment encircling the bush and neither of them witnessed her get back up. To cops, it was the first signal that Tommy’s horseplay may have galloped out of control.

  Detectives Carroll and Lunney went to the Brunswick School to re-interview Littleton about Tommy. Littleton now told them that he wasn’t alone for the duration of The French Connection: Tommy had joined him around 10:15 p.m. and stuck around to watch the famous car chase scene. But it was another bit of information that started their pulses racing. At 9:45 p.m., Littleton told them, he’d toured the bedrooms to check on the kids who’d remained behind in the house. David and Stephen were asleep in their beds. Tommy’s room, however, was empty. If Tommy had said goodbye to Martha at the door at 9:30 p.m., the detectives wondered, where did he go for 45 minutes (from when he handed Andrea the keys to the station wagon and to when he appeared in Rucky’s room to watch The French Connection with Littleton)?

  That’s when Tommy tripped up badly. On Saturday, December 13, he appeared at the Greenwich station house for yet another interrogation. As usual, Tommy arrived sans lawyer. Carroll and Lunney took turns pushing and coaxing Tommy to elaborate on the shoving that Helen and Geoff had witnessed.

  Tommy initially claimed he didn’t remember any shoving. When Carroll and Lunney pressed him, however, Tommy recalled “that he did push her in a joking manner” into the pachysandra patch. But he didn’t remember it the way Geoff and Helen had described. “Tom related that he could not remember Martha falling to the ground, and that he believed that he caught her by the arm and prevented her from falling all the way,” the report reads. “Tom related that he was not entirely sure about this part of the evening … the incident was very foggy and the whole situation was very unclear.”

  He was, however, more certain about where he’d been between 9:30 and 10:00 p.m., the established time of Martha’s death. Littleton, Tommy said, didn’t find him in his room at 9:45 p.m. because he was working on an extra-credit history paper. He was across the hall from his own room in the guest room where he’d gone to find a book. “He related that he needed a book, which was on Abraham Lincoln and the log cabin,” the report says. Afterward, he “readily agreed” to provide a hair sample, and Lunney cut a lock from his head.

  Three days later, Lunney and Carroll drove back to Brunswick School to corroborate Tommy’s alibi. Tommy’s homeroom teacher was mystified. No Brunswick instructors had offered extra credit for a Lincoln essay. “That was just Tommy being Tommy,” Juli
e tells me. But, to the police, Tommy’s stretchers were compelling evidence of guilt. Years later, Tommy told me that he invented the yarn to cover his sexcapade with Martha. But at that time, in the Greenwich police station, all eyes were suddenly laser-focused on Tommy Skakel.

  It’s tough to imagine what thoughts were ricocheting around in Rucky’s head as he pushed his son into harm’s way. Perhaps he was so convinced of Tommy’s innocence that he sensed no jeopardy, but his paternal alarm bell should have been clanging; he knew the murder weapon was a golf club and that the police had taken clubs from his house. Tommy was the last to see Martha alive. Police had twice polygraphed Tommy, yet they were still questioning him. Even if Rucky was unaware of the Abraham Lincoln fib, it was way past time to lawyer up. Unbelievably, on January 16, 1976, a full month after Tommy’s disastrous Lincoln lie, Rucky signed a letter authorizing the police to access “any and all hospital, medical, psychological, and school records and/or any and all reports concerning my son, Thomas Skakel.”

  Armed with this letter, Carroll visited Dr. Anderson, the neurologist who had treated Tommy’s skull fracture when he tumbled from the car. Despite the letter Rucky had signed, Anderson respected Tommy’s confidentiality and turned over nothing. However, the Skakels’ pediatrician, Dr. Walter Camp, provided a raft of information that further stoked the detectives’ interest. According to Carroll, the file contained information on Tommy’s longstanding behavior problems, including descriptions of rages so severe that Tommy had required physical restraint.

  The inquisitive cops also visited Tommy’s elementary school alma mater, the Whitby School. Founded in 1958 by my Aunt Georgeann Terrien, Whitby was the first Montessori school in the United States. The school, which stood on a parcel formerly part of Sursum Corda, was, predictably, protective of Tommy. Paul Czaja, Whitby’s headmaster, told police that the school would provide nothing. Lunney reported that he got a call on January 20 from Christopher Roosevelt, grandson of FDR, who was an attorney and a member of the school’s board of directors. “During this conversation,” the report reads, “Mr. Roosevelt became highly agitated … and interpreted the request to be something akin to an actual arrest.” Roosevelt, the report said, told them if Tommy were to be arrested and charged, he “would be defended by a battery of lawyers who would claim that Thomas was temporarily insane.” In various books about the Moxley case, writers have repeatedly cited this detail to demonstrate the reach of Skakel power in Greenwich. Skakel critics offer the Roosevelt call as evidence that the school was conscious of Tommy’s guilt. Lunney and Carroll are both dead, but I called Chris Roosevelt, an acquaintance, who was a onetime assistant district attorney under my old boss, Bob Morganthau. Roosevelt denies the showdown described by Lunney. He said that he advised the Whitby School not to release Tommy’s scholastic records, but he says his advice had nothing to do with protecting the Skakels. Educational law was his specialty. He counseled Headmaster Czaja that if he released any student records without a subpoena, Whitby would be in violation of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act and open to damage claims. Roosevelt knew none of the Skakel children. He had met Rucky only once—later in Czaja’s office to discuss the school’s decision not to release records. In that meeting, which followed Lunney’s phone conversation with Roosevelt, Roosevelt told Rucky that he might want to reconsider his open-door policy. It was clear as daylight that the authorities were tightening the noose around Tommy’s neck. Hearing Roosevelt’s words, Rucky wept. It was apparently the first time Rucky considered that Tommy was a suspect. Finally, an attorney was telling Rucky just how reckless he had been by granting police carte blanche.

  That afternoon, Rucky went in person to Greenwich Police headquarters to deliver a letter to Chief Stephen Baran Jr., revoking his previous authorization to dig into Tommy’s medical and school records. Then he fled to the Ix house in a state of profound despair and agitation. Ix left Rucky in the study to fetch him a drink and when she returned, Rucky was writhing in his chair, holding his chest. He told Cissie that he’d just gotten some bad news. Cissie called an ambulance and the paramedics carted Rucky off to the Greenwich Hospital. Later that day, the cops visited him in his hospital room. Rucky told them that he’d hired Manny Margolis, a seasoned Stamford criminal defense lawyer, to represent Tommy.

  The police asked Margolis if Tommy would submit to a psychological profile from a doctor of their choosing. They also requested that Tommy undergo a sodium pentothal—so-called “truth serum”—interview. Manny demurred. According to the police report, Margolis “stated our department has had ample opportunity in the past to obtain the information desired from his client.” Margolis was angry at the Greenwich Police, who he said had repeatedly lost or mishandled evidence that might have exculpated Tommy, including the golf-club handle that was found with the body, a white hair pulled by the roots and found on Martha’s body, and the vaginal and anal swabs and slides taken by the Connecticut medical examiner and subsequently misplaced. Pledging continued cooperation, Margolis asked investigators to submit to him any further questions for family members. Margolis and Tom Sheridan met and spoke with the police and the State’s Attorney’s office periodically, conveying questions to and answers from family and household members.

  By March 1976, the authorities had disremembered all of Rucky’s early willingness to help the police. Fairfield County State’s Attorney Donald Browne told the Associated Press that a Greenwich family (whom everyone knew to be the Skakels) “had refused to cooperate with the investigation.” He added that the family had “pertinent information” but had taken actions that “clearly impeded” the police.

  Margolis didn’t flinch at Browne’s thrust, but Rucky—who hadn’t had a heart attack (anxiety and drinking had landed him in the hospital)—was cracking. Desperate to know the truth, Rucky had sent Tommy to New York Presbyterian Hospital to undergo a battery of psychological exams by Dr. Stanley Lesse. It might as well have been an alien abduction: Tommy came back having been probed, penetrated, tested, tapped, injected, and interrogated; plus strapped to sophisticated lie detectors and a brain wave machine, and grilled during a series of sodium pentothal inquisitions. In March 1976, the doctors concluded, according to Margolis, that Tommy could not have committed the crime. Appearing relieved, Rucky paid Dorthy Moxley a visit. Tommy, he assured her, was innocent. The Skakel family lawyers conveyed the test results to police.

  But the stress was taking its toll on Tommy. At the end of April, Greenwich Hospital admitted the boy with excruciating stomach pains and bleeding. His diagnosis was “hemorrhagic gastritis”—a condition generally caused by excessive drinking or stress. “It was from nerves,” Tommy says. “I was trying to take care of Dad. He was a mess, dealing with all this and it just got to me. I just remember being really sick. I threw up a lot.”

  Meanwhile, Martha Moxley’s father, David, had recruited Detroit’s police chief, Gerald Hale, and his star homicide inspector John Lock to come to Greenwich to reinvestigate the evidence. With Tommy’s psychiatric reports in hand, Hale concluded that Tommy was the likely killer. On May 10, 1976, Hale issued a report that focused on Tommy’s psychological problems and rages. “He would jump up from the table,” the report read, “begin to throw things about, turn over beds, pull phones from the wall or threaten siblings. He would not lose consciousness and the episodes varied from 15 to 20 minutes to as long as 2 to 3 hours. His father was able to control him, but only physically.” After just one week spent reviewing the case, Chief Hale was able to conclude, as he told Len Levitt, that, “when it came to the Skakels, the Greenwich Police were treading lightly.” Skakel nemesis Frank Garr took issue with this part of Hale’s theory. “No one sitting in Detroit or anywhere else for that matter can read a Greenwich police report and know how he would react at any point,” Garr told Levitt. “Hale didn’t have the right to criticize anyone. If he wasn’t there, he should keep his mouth shut. No one was afraid of the Skakels.” Hale also criticized the Greenwich cops f
or investing polygraphs with papal infallibility. They were using lie detector results to exculpate suspects like Hammond, Wittine, Ziluca, as a substitute for hardscrabble detective work.

  In May that year, the Greenwich Police brought Fairfield County State’s Attorney Donald Browne an application for a bench warrant charging Tommy with the murder. Browne deemed it inadequate to indict. “The application was based on all kinds of shaky evidence,” Harold Pickerstein, the attorney for Jack Solomon, then the chief inspector in the Fairfield County State’s Attorney’s office, told me in 2002. (Solomon, who, in 2002, was the chief of police in Easton, Connecticut, would not discuss the case.) Solomon and Browne concluded that the application did not meet legal standards for probable cause and refused to sign it. “I read it,” Browne told me, “and there was nothing in there other than the fact that he was the last to see her alive and that he’d had some mental problems in the past.” Browne remembers the overwhelming pressure from the police to charge Tommy: “There was some suggestion that if you issue a warrant, nobody will accuse you of not doing your job. But I don’t do things that way.” Despite the suspicious behavior and the circumstantial evidence, the case against Tommy was cold by the end of 1976.