Transcript of NBC News Studios Presents Dead Certain: The Martha Moxley Murder

Hello, Dade9 listeners. I'm Keith Morison, and I'd like to introduce you to a brand new 12-part original podcast series called Dead Certain: The Martha Moxley murder, produced by NBC News Studios, it's a story of privilege and secrets of a night that's haunted a town for half a century. Whispers that turn to accusations, lies unraveled, And just when you think you know the ending, another twist. Here's a special preview of the first episode.

What do you know? It's an old-fashioned expression. My dad often used it to express mild surprise. Oh, look, this is a for-sale sign on the neighbor's house. What do you know? Neil Diamond is coming to the CivicCenter. What do you know? But before we begin this story, I want you to treat it as a serious question. What do you know? I mean, really know. Is it possible that what you say you know is actually an opinion, something you just think? If you think something, what various forces worked on you to make you think that way? And were those forces so effective in making you think something that somewhere along the way, you started believing that you didn't just think it? You knew it? In In 1975, a 15-year-old girl named Martha Moxley was murdered in Greenwich, Connecticut. She was rich and beautiful and loved by all who knew her. For decades, despite intense media scrutiny on the tragic murder in a wealthy, supposedly safe community, police failed to make an arrest until the year 2000, when they took Martha's one-time neighbor, Michael Skakel, into custody. He was 39 years old. Back in 1975, he'd 15, just like Martha.

He was wealthy like her. He was also a cousin of the Kennedy's. The media responded in predictable fashion.

Kennedy nephew Michael Skakel, now 39, charged with murdering his Greenwich, Connecticut neighbor Martha Moxley. And a nephew of the late Robert Kennedy.

A teenage neighbor and friend of Martha Moxley related to the Kennedy class.

But the Kennedy name has lent this case tremendous notoriety.

I'm like a lot of people. I have an appetite for lourid news, a good murder story, especially one involving famous names. I watched the news. I read the articles. Of course, Michael Skakel killed his next door neighbor, Martha Moxley. He beat her to death with a golf club on October 30th, 1975, when they were both 15. I knew it. And if you followed the case like I did, I bet you knew it, too. In 2002, a jury convicted Skakel, and the judge threw the book at him.

It was nearly the maximum sentence possible. 20 years to life for Kennedy nephew Michael Skakel, convicted of killing his Greenwich, Connecticut, neighbor Martha Moxley, back in 1975.

And then in 2013, a judge released Michael Skakel on appeal after he'd served 11 and a half years in state prison. For the media, it was anything but an exoneration, but rather the clever legal maneuver only accessible to the super wealthy, free on a technicality. A famous New Yorker writer Jeffrey Touban, when tweeting about the case, appended the hashtag Rich People Justice. I live in West Port, Connecticut, with my wife and two teenage boys. It's just a handful of exits north of Greenwich on I-95. A few summers ago, my then-15-year-old son, Henry, was doing an odd job for a woman in town, helping to clean out her garage. Henry said he told her that I was a journalist, researching the Martha Moxley case. When she heard that, she immediately stopped what she was doing and said, I know exactly what happened to Martha Moxley. Michael Skakel murdered her. She knew just like I knew. And a lot of people who had important roles in the outcome of this case knew, too. At the start of this episode, I asked you to consider a question. What do you know? Now I want to ask you a follow-up.

Says who? My name is Andrew Goldman. I've been a journalist for 30 years. I got involved in this case in 2015 when current Secretary of Health and Human Services, Bobby Kennedy Jr, reached out asking if I was interested in ghostwriting his book about it. He wanted me to help exonerate his cousin. It was a great offer, except unlike Bobby, I didn't believe Michael Skegel was innocent. At that particular moment, I really needed the work. It was a moral quandry. The Kennedy family has a long history of using the media to carry its water, sometimes to defend the indefensible. Was I willing to be part of that machine? I consulted my wife and my shrink. I came up with moral justifications. But today, when I think back to why I took it, my true motivation is obvious. I think if I'm I put it in my job, it's because I'm curious. A less charitable way to put it would be nosy. I was way too fascinated with the Kennedy's, with Michael Skakel and the Moxley murder, to turn down the opportunity to penetrate the case's inner circle. The book was published in 2016. But here's the thing.

Once I started researching this case, I couldn't stop. I was no longer working for RFK, and the book was done, but I wasn't. I think it would be fair to say that this story has become an addiction for me. If I can do justice to this unbelievable yarn, I suspect it'll become an addiction for you, too. I thought I understood the case. It was a decades long story about the powerful and the privileged seemingly getting away with murder. But the deeper I dug, the more I came to question everything I thought I knew. I discovered a much darker, more shocking tale than I ever could have guessed. In this series, you'll be hearing from dozens of voices, some of whom may be familiar to you. I'm Jeffrey Tubin. My name is Amanda Knox. My name is Mark Furman. Linda Kenny Baden. Dr. Henry Lee. Oh, and one more person who's never before spoken to the media. Can you tell me your name, say my name is, and why I might be interviewing you? My name is Michael Skakel. Why am I being interviewed? I mean, that's a big question, isn't it? From NBC News Studios and Highly Replaceable Productions, this is Dead Certain, the Martha Motsley program.

When I accepted the Skakel Book gig, I did the first thing I do whenever I approach a story, a deep dive on the subject. I read the three books that had been written about the case. I went back and read a bunch of trial coverage from newspapers, as well as the work of two of my heroes in journalism, writing for the most esteemed high-profile publications in America. My research confirmed everything I thought I knew about the case, and worse. Writing for the New Yorker, Jeffrey Toobin reported that Skakel, driven mad from a romantic obsession, killed Moxley and incriminated himself by confessing to the crime repeatedly in the 27 years following the murder. Toobin dismissed out of hand the idea that any of the others suspected of the crime over the years could have done it. Dominic Dunn in Vanity Fair describes how Skakel's family, rich and Kennedy connected by marriage, used its wealth and influence to evade justice for decades. He reported that a detective agency the Skakel patriarch hired in hopes of clearing the family name had reinvestigated the case and determined Michael Skakel to be the likely killer. In 1998, Mark Furman, made famous by the O.

J. Simpson trial, authored a popular book that renewed interest in the case. Furman wrote that immediately after the murder, Skakel's father had apparently hatched a conspiracy of silence within the family, shipping his kids off to their ski retreat so they could get their story straight. Then, he warehoused his son, Michael, in a treatment center where investigators couldn't get to him. In the end, it was the rich kid's big mouth that undid him. Even Skakel's multimillion dollar gold-plated defense couldn't save him from justice. When Skakel successfully appealed his conviction, Thuben wrote that Skakel had finally found a judge who believed his story. His freedom, he wrote, was about his privilege, not his innocence. I didn't grow up with money. I never went to sleepaway camp, never learned to play tennis, golf, ski, or even go on a family vacation. It's true. I have lived in Westport, a really town of Connecticut for the last decade. But the ways of the country clubs and money elite remain a complete mystery to me. I'm a stop and shop sail watcher living among a lot of, if you have to ask, you can't afford it types. To understand this murder, I'd have to learn about how the other half lived in Tony Greenwich.

In the '70s, if you wanted to get rich, you worked in New York City. Likewise, in the '70s, if you worked in the city, were rich and had kids, you lived anywhere but New York City. There were plenty of nice suburbs to stash your family, far from the crime-ridden, nearly bankrupt metropolis. But Greenwich, Connecticut was the dream. Its schools were among the best in the country, and it only took 25 minutes for the Express into Grand Central. Of all the towns on Connecticut's so-called Gold Coast on the Long Island Sound, a Greenwich address had and continues to have the most cachet among the money to lead. But like every creme, Greenwich had its creme de la creme. And the creamiest cream was Bellhaven, which on a map looks like a toe dipping into the Long Island Sound on the south tip of Greenwich. Bellhaven was built as a vacation colony in the late 19th century. Grand white, clabbered cottages with wrap-around porches on which you could sip your Sherry at sunset while listening to scratchy Brahm symphonies on the gramophone. Vips, captains of industry, and a couple of famous entertainers like Frank Gorshin, the riddler from the '60s Batman series, were typical of Belhaven's residence.

In the summer of 1974, a moving truck rolled up to the big white house at 38 Walsh Lane. It had come 3,000 miles all the way from Piedmont, California. 42-year-old David Moxley had been tapped by accounting giant Touche Ross to relocate from the West Coast to run its New York office. The job and the house and the neighborhood were a big step up in the world for the Kansas native. David and Dorothy Moxley's teenage kids, Martha and John, would live among the most privileged families in America. That being said, at least for kids, Bell Haven didn't feel all that stuffy.

My name is Sheila Maguire. The back of my home looked at the back of Martha's home.

Sheila is a mom of two grown kids. I interviewed her on her day off in the Newtown Connecticut Public Library near her home. Like her friend and neighbor Martha, Sheila was also 15 in 1975, one of a big Catholic brood of seven girls.

Yeah, it was a charming time. There was kick the can going on in the streets, flash light tags. We had special little codes. We were putting little secret notes in trees. We had secret calls for one another. We rode bikes all over the place. I've swam in almost every pool there, and a couple of them in the middle of the night. It just goes the way it was. Everyone was essentially safe.

Like most Bellhaven kids, Sheila and her sisters were basically free range.

I think a lot of the parents were absentee at the time because it was just the way it was. I mean, the sound of music in Bellhaven was clinking of ice and glasses, and 11-year-olds watching three-year-olds for 12 hours a day, or nine-year-olds watching three-year-olds for 12 hours a day. At the club, I think I babysat for three families at the same time when I was 11.

By the club, Sheila means the Bellhaven Club. It sat within a mile of each of the 120 or so houses in Bellhaven. It offered sailing lessons, tennis, and a huge dining room overlooking the Sound. Homeowners were nearly a short membership, but they didn't need to be sponsored. At a cocktail party, not long after moving in, the Moxleys met the recent widderer who lived in the massive spread just around the corner on Otter Rock Drive with a swimming pool and tennis courts and countless rowdy kids. Rush Skakel was his name. He was a rotund man, jokey, friendly, goofy, the type to sometimes greet friends with belly bumps, and hardly gave off a corporate vibe, even though he was the chairman of Great Lakes Carbon Corporation, one of the most valuable private companies in America. Rush was remarkably solicitous to his new neighbor. He seemed, and in fact was, the type to be a tad too eager to be liked by all. Rush didn't hesitate to offer to sponsor David Moxley's membership of the club. This gesture was typical. Rush also invited the Moxleys to his family's private ski resort in Wyndom, New York, and almost certainly, based on his usual habits, suggested the family should join him on the company plane to go see the Atlanta Braves play.

Rush was a part owner of the team. But his social bona fides were even loftier. He had friends in high places. Despite the Skakeles being a rock-ribbed Republican family, Rush was close personal friends with Hugh Carey, the Democratic governor of New York. And although Rush certainly wouldn't have mentioned it right away himself, everyone in Bellhaven knew that back in 1950, Rush's older sister, Ethel, had married Robert F. Kennedy right there in town at St. Mary's on Greenwich Avenue. Rush had been an usher. Jfk, then a congressman from Boston, Bobby's best man. Patriarch Joe Kennedy famously used his considerable riches to fund his family's political ambitions. Some would even say he bought the White House for his son Jack. But as rich as the Kennedy's were, the scale of fortune dworffed that of the Kennedy's. The Skakels resided in a whole other financial universe, so much so that the scuttlebutt at the time was that Bobby had married the Skakel girl for her money. A family's wealth and corporate affiliations might have been of interest to the parents of Belhaven, but this social yardstick wasn't as relevant to their 15-year-old kids. There was more immediate stuff to consider.

How's my hair look? Does he like me? Why is my complexion betraying me? Who's got beer? To both the boys and girls of Belhaven, Martha was different, less self-conscious than the other girls, a little more adventurous, like an emissary to frigid Connecticut from free and easy California.

I think that one of the things that really totally gets lost in a lot of this stuff is how absolutely awesome and wonderful Martha was.

That's Peter Kumerswami. His father was chief of cardiac surgery at both Greenwich and Stanford hospitals. His mother was a prominent attorney and one of Martha's mom, Dorothy Moxley's closest friends. He was known as Kumo back then and was 15 in 1975, just like Martha Moxley.

I remember I was sitting in a room with her and a bunch of other girls, and everybody got up and left. And she was very, very, very pretty. And I remember her sitting across from me and just started talking to me. And I was like, Oh, my goodness. This girl is really, really genuinely interesting and a nice person.

And, wow, she's really good.

Just genuinely interested, not polluted enough to be fake.

Everyone I've spoken to agrees with this assessment. Here's Sheila Maguire again.

Yeah, she was joy on legs. I mean, she just was this blonde smile, very happy, very flirtatious, but not in a sexual inappropriate way. Just this happy person. Just darling. She came from California. She was like the Gidget, the surfer girl thing. We all loved her. Just really special.

Girls Girls liked her, and boys really liked her. The feeling that I get when I talk to guys who knew Martha, especially the ones who are a bit older than her, is that there is perhaps a reluctance to come out and just talk about how alluring she was. Maybe that's because even though she'd be 65 now, she'll always be stuck in time at 15 and forever off limits. But back in the '70s, she may not have felt that way to her peers. Martha's diary entries from 1975 portray what might today be a burgeoning sex positivity. 'Boy crazy' was the phrase kids of my generation used. She called the many boys she liked foxes, which she often scrawled in capital letters to emphasize her attraction and chronicled her hut make-out sessions. She'd only had her braces off for a few months, but it's clear from her diary that many, many boys seem to find her particularly fascinating. In her diary, she was, as the saying goes, fighting them off clearly enjoying the attention. On October 30th, 1975, Martha's diary entry centered on a boy who had been writing her flirtatious notes. These notes are too much, she wrote.

He was in bed dreaming of me last night. I could hardly wait to see tomorrow's. But tomorrow for Martha never came.

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