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

by Robert F. Kennedy

  Tommy continues, “When Michael got convicted, it was horrible because I know he is innocent. But it didn’t give me any relief. For me, there was never any due process, no chance for me to defend myself, no presumption of innocence. Not one reporter or writer came to me and apologized. Nobody offered to give me back my life, my reputation. They just changed the spin to keep all the rumors alive.” At trial, Benedict told the jury that Tommy was part of the conspiracy. Since then, he has continued to say that Tommy helped Michael hide the body. In June 2002, Benedict told the New York Times that Tommy helped Michael “clean up” after the brutal slaying and “cover his tracks.” At Michael’s habeas appeal, before the Supreme Court in February 2016, Michael’s attorney Hubie Santos told the judges that Tommy was the most “probable killer.” For the record, Michael does not agree and was shocked that his lawyer made that statement.

  “The worst part is the nightmare for my children and my wife,” Tommy relates. “This has almost cost me my marriage and I’ve had a very difficult time trying to explain to my daughters what took place in October 1975. I can’t go anywhere. I never had a chance to lead a normal life and give that gift to my wife and kids. I spent years feeling like I just wanted to cover up and hide and run away from life. I forced myself to hold my head up and walk into those rooms and feel the hostility. And it got worse when I had my family. Before that, I could just cover up and go into a fetal position. Now I had to shield them and it kills me every time they feel the sting. I wish I could take the hit for them. That’s the worst part. I’d rather be waterboarded than go through this. It’s been an ordeal. Reporters can be soulless, merciless thugs.

  “There has been so much evidence pointing toward someone outside of the family and no evidence linking either my brother Michael, or myself, or any Skakel to Martha’s murder. But the State had one thing in mind and that was to convict a Skakel. It did not matter which one, just do whatever it took to convict a Skakel, period. I’ve lost a good part of my life and can’t get it back. My brother lost over 10 years in prison; he can’t get those back either.

  “I’m looking forward to one day being able to go back to Greenwich and someone saying to me, ‘Sorry. We are all sorry we put you and your family through hell. You, your brother, and your family just did not deserve this.’”

  Garr told Levitt that Littleton gave Tommy a gold-plated alibi by vouching for him during The French Connection chase scene. Garr goes on to say, “The strangest indication of Littleton’s innocence is that Tommy says the same thing about him. Without intending to, each alibi the other. Believe me, if Tommy or any other Skakel knew Littleton had done this, they’d have given him up in a heartbeat.” Levitt was right about Kenny alibiing Tommy. At 10:20 p.m., Tommy was with him in Rucky’s bedroom watching The French Connection wearing the same clothing he had worn during dinner at the Belle Haven Club and with no visible blood stains. But Levitt and Garr were wrong about Tommy providing a reciprocal alibi for Littleton. From the beginning, Tommy said that Littleton lay in his father’s chair with a blanket draped over him from chin to toe, hiding his clothing and body from sight. Kenny never came out from under the blanket. It struck Tommy as odd since it was quite warm in his father’s room.

  Whether or not he killed Martha Moxley, Kenny Littleton was a natural-born suspect.

  CHAPTER 9

  The Tutor

  Oh my God, this could be the guy who killed my sister.

  I had the impression he was crazy enough to do anything.

  —John Moxley

  In October 1975, Kenneth Wayne Littleton Jr. was a handsome, burly, 23-year-old graduate of Williams College. Littleton was over six feet tall, with flowing chestnut locks, and a solid linebacker’s build. Two months earlier, he began a new job teaching science and coaching football at the Brunswick School, the coat and tie Greenwich prep school that the Skakel brothers attended.

  Littleton, the eldest of three children, grew up in middle-class Belmont, Massachusetts. His father worked for Western Electric; his mother was a saleswoman at Filene’s. Kenny Littleton attended an all-boys private high school, Belmont Hill, on scholarship. He was a good student and a great athlete, with a solid golf game. The captain of his high school football team, he also played varsity baseball all four years. By his own estimation, Littleton was a lady’s man. He told a psychiatrist that his high school obsessions were “books, balls, and babes.”

  Littleton enrolled in Williams College in 1970 with plans to become a pediatric surgeon. He played varsity baseball all four years, varsity football for two, and two years of rugby, but his B average at graduation dashed his dream of a medical career. In the fall of 1974, he landed a teaching position at The Rectory, a private boarding school in Pomfret, Connecticut, but lost the job by spring. He spent the summer on Nantucket cruising the cobblestone streets in his cherry-red Mustang and working as a bouncer at Preston’s Airport Lounge, the island venue for visiting rock bands.

  In the fall of 1975, he started at Brunswick. Michael’s neighbor Neal Walker and Neal’s best friend, Crawford Mills, were in Littleton’s class. Both of these boys subsequently played pivotal roles in identifying Martha’s likely killers. Speaking of Littleton, “He was kind of an odd guy,” recalls Neal. “We had him for biology and we never did any work. He’d reminisce about getting laid in college and tell inappropriate stories.” Crawford remembered Littleton telling his students how he enjoyed crushing ants with a hammer.

  On October 30, 1975, Kenny Littleton and his duffle mustered at Otter Rock Drive for his first night as live-in tutor and companion to Rushton Skakel’s seven motherless children.

  Michael had a good feeling about Littleton. At dinner at the Belle Haven Club that night, Littleton didn’t flinch when the kids ordered drinks. “Here I was having just turned 15 years old, ordering rum and tonic and planter’s punch with the football coach. I was already planning to become Littleton’s drinking buddy. I would get in good with him, and he would make my life a lot easier by getting other teachers to lay off me and allowing me to drink.” The boys were buzzed when they pulled in the Skakel driveway between 8:30 p.m. and 8:45 p.m.

  During his October 31 interview, Littleton told Detectives Lunney and Brosko that after arriving home he went directly to the second-floor master bedroom to unpack. Rucky had left instructions that Littleton was to occupy that room while Rucky was away on his hunting trip to the Adirondacks. He said he had remained there until morning. Littleton said he neither heard nor saw anything suspicious. Two weeks later, on November 14, Littleton admitted that he had not stayed upstairs but had wandered downstairs, where he saw Tommy outside with Martha. He said he hadn’t set foot outside the Skakel home after returning from the Club. This account stood unchanged in two subsequent interviews.

  Then on December 10, Littleton switched his story again. During an interview at Brunswick School, Littleton told Lunney and Detective Carroll that he had gone outside the house, between 9:15 and 9:30 p.m., at the request of Nanny Sweeney, who had heard a “fracas.” He told police that he left through the front door, looked around the house to check on the Skakel boys, saw nobody outside, and came back in through the side door. He now said that he never saw Martha. The Lincoln, driven by Rush Jr., had departed at 9:15 p.m. Tommy had been at the front door at 9:30 p.m., handing the wagon keys to Andrea. Littleton was now putting himself outside and a mere three-minute walk from the murder scene. During the December 10 interview, he was vague about the time he went outside, and whom and what he saw, but he volunteered, without prompting, that he had not heard a dog barking:

  CARROLL: So when you went out the door, you didn’t see Julie in the car, the station wagon? And when you walked around to the side door, you didn’t see anything of Tommy pushing Martha or pushing someone?

  LITTLETON: No.

  CARROLL: Did you see any dogs?

  LITTLETON: No, and I didn’t hear any barking either! And I didn’t hear any barking all night. Unfortunately it was a cold night and I had
my window shut. Now my window faced the backyard in the Moxley property and the murder, as I understand it, occurred no more than a hundred yards from the window.

  Sutton’s Jim Murphy points out that Littleton claimed that after dinner, he’d gone up to Rucky’s room to unpack. Rucky’s bedroom patio would have afforded a direct line of sight to the spot in the yard where Tommy was making out with Martha at 9:30 p.m. Murphy says that he and Sutton investigators seriously considered the possibility that Littleton had witnessed the teenage sex romp. “Then he goes down and decides he’s going to get some for himself,” says Murphy, who then lays out how Littleton might have committed the crime.

  “If, at 9:50, Martha announced that she was late for her curfew and had to get home, Tommy would have gone inside via the side door, and Kenny could have followed Martha back towards her house, convinced that a handsome, experienced 24-year-old man could certainly get as far with her as a 17-year-old.” All the Skakel children attest that there were golf clubs scattered across the Skakel lawn from a Mitsubishi Chipping Tournament a few weeks earlier. Martha had to cross the chipping tee to get home.

  Tommy had reported watching The French Connection chase scene with Kenny Littleton starting at 10:15 p.m. When investigators checked with CBS in 1976, they learned that the network actually broadcast the scene 10 minutes later, from 10:25 p.m. to 10:32 p.m. Littleton would have had time to kill Martha and still catch Gene Hackman’s famous pursuit sequence. Julie reported that when she bumped into Littleton in the kitchen, he was wearing different clothes than he had at dinner. Littleton had a couple beers at the Belle Haven Club and his inhibitions were relaxed. It would soon become apparent how volatile Littleton could be when drinking.

  Charles Morganti, a 28-year-old Belle Haven security officer, told police that he saw a white male walking near the intersection of Field Point Road and Walsh Lane at about 10:00 p.m. Morganti accosted the man. “I’m going home,” the man told him. “I live on Walsh Lane.” He then turned and started down Walsh Lane, which put him 150 yards from the bushwhack spot at 10:00 p.m.

  Morganti described the man as: “White male, six feet tall, 200 pounds, late 20s to early 30s, dark rimmed glasses, fatigue jacket, tan slacks, blond hair.” At the police station, Morganti helped create a composite sketch of the man. The sketch, which Garr and Benedict purposefully concealed from Michael’s defense team, uncannily resembles Kenny Littleton in 1975.

  Littleton began to exhibit odd behavior following the murder. On April 10, 1976, Cissie Ix told the police that “girlie magazines were found in Mr. Littleton’s room.” This, of course, was prima facie evidence of guilt in Rucky’s house and precisely the sort of tidbit that usually captured the imagination of Greenwich Police’s Moxley murder homicide squad. Ix added that Littleton was in the habit of visiting the Skakel gazebo in the nude, after disrobing in front of 80-year-old Nanny Sweeney. Ix urged police to look at Littleton, but the Greenwich Police at the time were preoccupied with building their case against Tommy.

  Later that month, Rucky fired Littleton after the police visited the Skakel home to report that he had wrapped Rucky’s car around a tree in a drunken blackout and then abandoned it.

  When the school year ended and Littleton headed back to Nantucket, he was still not a suspect. There was nothing to prevent him from enjoying a freewheeling summer like the one before.

  But Littleton returned to the island a changed man. His friend Ken Howard told police that after the murder, he noticed a drastic transformation in Littleton’s behavior. Howard reported that he had become more aggressive and somewhat outlandish. The previous summer, Littleton had looked like every other island preppy: polo shirts, khaki shorts, and deck shoes. In 1976, he appeared in an all-white disco getup, his shirt unbuttoned nearly to his navel, and a shark-tooth necklace. On occasion he sported a blue tuxedo. He peacocked around town flexing his muscles and adjusting his hair in shop windows. Back at work as bouncer at Preston’s Airport Lounge, Littleton practiced calisthenics, drank through his shifts, and brandished his molded musculature for the summer tourists. James Manchester, Preston’s owner, thought Littleton was making a nuisance of himself with unsolicited hugging of female patrons and crowding women on the dance floor. When no one else was dancing, Littleton, in his white suit, would leap on deck busting John Travolta moves in preening solos.

  Littleton left a trail of mayhem across the island that summer. In July, a Nantucket tourist awoke in her bed to find Littleton lying naked on top of her. He’d pulled off a window screen and climbed in. Shortly after that incident, Manchester fired Littleton for kiting beer from Preston’s on his birthday. Littleton threatened Manchester ominously, then returned to bleed the tires on Manchester’s brother’s car.

  With no income, Littleton invited a 22-year-old girl to share his $75-a-week rent. She told police that he repeatedly “forced himself on her sexually and often erupted in fits of violence, smashing things in her apartment.” Littleton, she said, was injecting cocaine. Other islanders noticed needle marks on his arm.

  Manchester said that Littleton preferred younger girls. A friend of Manchester recounted that Littleton brazenly approached a teenager dining with her father at a local restaurant. He embraced her, provocatively inserted his shark tooth into her ear, and signaled her to follow him. Drunk on Grand Marnier at the Mad Hatter, he cleared the bar with churlish antics. When the bartender cut him off, Littleton smashed his mug, spraying the pub with shattered glass. Police removed him. On the dance floor of the Chicken Box, Nantucket’s Dog Officer, Linda Cahoon, accidentally bumped Littleton’s dance partner. As she apologized, Littleton backhanded her so hard she hit the floor. “You really shouldn’t fool with my woman,” he warned.

  In early September, Nantucket Police arrested Littleton for a string of burglaries. He stole fresh vegetables from a farmer’s garden and sneaked aboard a docked boat to filch a flagon of wine. He pilfered a three-foot statue of Hercules, a fishing pole, a decorative plate, a painting, and other items from gift stores. Littleton heaved a brick through the plate glass window of the wharf-side Four Winds Gift Shop to swipe a scrimshaw basket. He pinched booze from a liquor store and a nude male figure from a lawn. He buried the sculpture in the backyard of his Main Street apartment, then unearthed and reburied it in the front yard. “Ken told me that he intended to sell all these items once he left the island,” his girlfriend recounted. She told Steve Carroll that Littleton was always jobless, but never short on cash.

  When cops caught him fencing the gift-shop booty, Littleton blamed liquor for his marauding. He directed police to another buried cache of plunder at Swain’s Wharf, a half mile from his house, and complained that the elements had destroyed the bulk of his buried loot. They charged him with larceny and burglary and tossed him in the Barnstable County jail. Littleton made bail and returned to Greenwich just in time for the Brunswick autumn semester.

  The Greenwich Police, in the doldrums on Tommy’s case, were ready to take a fresh gander at Kenny Littleton. In October 1976, Lunney asked John Meerbergen, Littleton’s attorney, to produce his client for a polygraph. Littleton confessed to his new Greenwich roommate that he was distressed about taking the lie-detector test; the Greenwich Police were still unaware of his Nantucket arrest.

  On the morning of Monday, October 18, 1976, Lunney and Carroll picked up a chatty Littleton for the long ride to Bethany. Tommy, he told them, had seemed relaxed when they watched The French Connection together. There was no indication that he was coming in from outside. His cheeks were not ruddy. He wasn’t wearing a jacket. Littleton also mentioned that young Rush Jr. had told him at 9:15 p.m. that he was taking John and Michael with him to Sursum Corda. Police recorded this recollection in a case report, which 25 years later, Frank Garr withheld from Michael’s defense team. Littleton’s admission might have had great significance in Michael’s trial, because it was confirmation of Michael’s alibi—from a non-family source. Kenny Littleton’s statement meant that, if the Skakel family had inv
ented Michael’s Sursum Corda alibi—as Benedict contended at trial—they would have had to concoct the plan at least an hour before Martha was killed.

  But this fact did not interest police at the time. It would be a decade before Michael became a suspect. During the polygraph exam, Trooper Mike Beal slowly asked the following questions.

  1. Do you know for sure who killed Martha Moxley?

  2. Did you kill Martha Moxley?

  3. Can you take me to the missing section of the golf club used to kill Martha Moxley?

  4. Did you strike Martha Moxley with a golf club?

  5. Last October, did you participate in any way in the murder of Martha Moxley?

  6. Are you withholding any information from the police about the murder of Martha Moxley?

  Littleton answered “no” to each query. Beal repeated the questions a second and a third time. The cops disappeared and came back accompanied by Jack Solomon from the State’s Attorney’s office. Solomon delivered the news: Littleton had failed. Badly. The machine had detected his deception.

  At first Littleton fumbled. He was surprised, he said, to learn that the machine thought he was lying. And then he offered a poorly conceived explanation. He’d been arrested in Nantucket for stealing, while drunk. Might his anxiety about that incident, he asked the police, have affected the results? Tell us more about Nantucket, the cops said.