Crime Junkie - MURDERED: Martha Moxley

Episode Date: August 10, 2020

When 15-year-old Martha Moxley was brutally murdered in 1975, no one could have imagined that the search for her killer might lead right to the doorstep of American royalty. For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/. Sources for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/murdered-martha-moxley/ 

Hi crime junkies, I'm your host Ashley Flowers and I'm Brett and today I want to tell you a story that takes place across decades decades of money power and privilege When a teenage girl is found murdered in one of the country's wealthiest and most exclusive neighborhoods It sets off a hunt for justice that leads straight to the doorstep of a legendary American dynasty This is the story of Martha Moxley When 15 year old Martha Moxley first asked her mom Dorothy if she can go out with her friends on October 30th 1975 Dorothy says no and not because she's overly strict or anything But because Martha's been grounded for something small that she did the weekend before but Martha

Really wants to go out though because you see October 30th is mischief night in her little Connecticut town Okay, what's mischief night? Yeah, we didn't have that growing up But apparently that's the night before Halloween where kids in their town Traditionally go around playing like little harmless pranks on their neighbors like nothing terribly destructive just stuff like you know toilet paper in the trees and Playing ding dong ditch like that fun teenage stuff. Yeah. Yeah So it's not like she's like missing prom but when you're 15 even the smallest social gatherings make your FOMO act up hard And she is determined to convince her mom to let her go and she only has to convince her mom because her dad is actually out of town On a business trip. So she starts really laying it on thick. She's telling her mom

It's not fair her older brother is allowed to go and have fun. She has to stay home She just begs and begs using every line in the book and finally finally Dorothy says, okay, fine Go pull some pranks, but make sure you're back by 9 30 The evening drags on for Dorothy pretty uneventfully until 9 30 rolls around and there's no sign of Martha Now Dorothy doesn't freak out right away Martha's a teenager and being late is sort of kind of a theme on mischief night She's annoyed and Martha's probably gonna hear about it, but whatever but 9 30 turns to 10 then 11 and Before she knows it. It's 2 o'clock in the morning and Martha still is not home

Dorothy decides to call over to Martha's best friend Sheila's house to see if maybe Martha decided to spend the night there But Sheila hasn't seen Martha either By the time 3 30 rolls around and there's still no Martha Dorothy tries another one of Martha's friends the neighbor Tommy's Skakel, but he says that he doesn't know where Martha is either So at 3 45 in the morning, this is now Halloween day Dorothy makes the decision to call police According to the New York Daily News three police officers come to the Moxley's house and right away They start their search for Martha with Dorothy right alongside them, but after a cursory look around the area They don't find anything. I'm a little surprised the police took this so seriously like right away

Yeah, especially on this sort of like mischief night where kids are getting into all sorts of little mischief things You know exactly. I'm not saying that they shouldn't have but you know, you know, I've been doing this for a while It's not really what we usually see no I was actually kind of surprised as well because I mean often what we hear is I mean the crazy stuff like 24 48 plus hours We're not gonna investigate again, especially on mischief night when this is kind of like par for the course exactly But there's another reason I think they showed up right away So it's important to understand that Greenwich where this takes place and especially the bell haven neighborhood where the Moxley's live is a very rich area and I'm talking like

Generations of old money. This is one of the richest areas in the entire country. There's hardly any crime people Definitely don't just go missing from bell haven. So yeah, it got their attention for sure So with no sign of Martha that first day and no sleep yet for Dorothy Everyone kind of decides that the best thing to do here is just get some sleep and hope that when Dorothy wakes up She's just gonna find Martha sleeping safely in her room. This whole thing is gonna be a huge misunderstanding But before the police head away from the Moxley's They do put together a missing persons report from Martha and they send it to all of the nearby police stations So they can keep a lookout for her too

And you know if it comes to it and she's still not there in the morning Like they can actually join in on the search in this small town the next day if they need it And it turns out that they're gonna need it because by 10 a.m. On Halloween day Martha's bed is still empty No sign of her. She never came home. No one's even heard from her at this point. Now Dorothy can't just sit there She's like she's too anxious. She needs to do something. So she keeps trying to like call around She calls one of Martha's other friends Helen and Helen tells her that no, she's not with Martha But she had seen her the night before and the last time she'd seen her Martha was leaving the house next door the Skagals wait Tommy Skagal. Yes

So apparently their house was this kind of like go-to spot where kids tended to hang out because there wasn't a whole lot of adult Supervision over there now remember Dorothy had already called them in the middle of the night But the oldest son said that he didn't know where Martha was So she decided to just go over there herself and see what's up and Tommy's younger brother Michael is actually the one who answers the door and there's this like big camper thing parked outside and Dorothy asked Michael if Maybe Martha was inside that camper sleeping or something But when he takes her to the camper to check inside the camper is empty And I have to imagine like when she's she's going and asking them like this stuff

I don't think anything like sinister is going on in her mind like she's sleeping off in a camper She fell asleep somewhere. Maybe she's with a friend mischief night Like this is what is supposed to happen almost. Yes, but when she's not in the camper It's completely empty both the Greenwich police and Dorothy and a growing group of people who have like come out to help are all starting to get a little concerned and they're all out searching for Martha and then just before 1 p.m. Sheila comes running in to Martha's house totally hysterical practically hyperventilating and through her tears Sheila is able to tell Martha's mom that something

Terrible has happened Martha's been attacked. She's not moving call 911 Now Dorothy's friend Jean who is with Dorothy at the time that Sheila comes running in tells Dorothy. Listen, you stay put I'm gonna go check. I'm gonna go see if Martha's are right like you don't need to go look But when Jean goes to check on Martha, Martha isn't all right. What she sees is Martha lying face down on the ground with her jeans and underwear pulled down to her ankles The back of her skull has been completely Savaged by a beating and she's been stabbed in the neck with a broken Golf club like I mean, it's literally sticking out of the back of her neck still when she comes upon this scene and

Pieces of this golf club are scattered all over the place Now interestingly what isn't around I mean again pieces of this are all around everywhere But the piece that might be the most useful for them the grip because I mean instinct would tell you that's probably where you're gonna Get fingerprints from that part is nowhere to be found But when she brings police there there is enough for police to determine the club is a six iron and This high-end brand is made by a company or a person called Tony Pena. Okay, but where exactly did they find her body? So this is the crazy part to me She was actually so close to her own home

According to A&E's American Justice episode called a murder in Greenwich They find Martha laying face down under some pine trees about 200 feet away From her very own house like literally she is still on her own property Weren't Dorothy and the police searching, you know the night before and even into the morning like how could they miss that? To be honest, I don't know for sure But what I do know is that the moxie property is huge. I mean, they don't even call it a property They call it an estate and it's two and a half full acres so

I wonder if maybe it was that that first night A there was only a few of them searching and B it was in the middle of the night like 4 a.m. So it's like super dark I can see how it's possible to miss something like that at first Especially in the pitch black darkness will end on mischief night like yes You searched the property, but like she went out she could be anywhere like you aren't gonna concentrate on your home Right, and I think that's part of it, right? You bring up the fact that it's mischief night I think the mindset again going back to like her mom going next door to check the camper for her sleeping

I think when they went out searching they're looking for Martha like skipping out on her curfew or like getting into trouble They're not looking For Martha's body or Martha's body or Martha at all on her own property if she was on her property She'd be home right right Now once she is found law enforcement officers are just totally stunned by all of this I mean there has not been a murder in Greenwich in 30 years at this point let alone something so violent And to someone so young and I don't think the local police were even prepared for something like this You know, I mean there isn't even anyone available in Greenwich to do an autopsy

So the police department has to call in the Connecticut state medical examiner And while the medical examiner goes to work to figure out as much as he can about what happened to Martha The police start putting together a timeline of exactly what Martha was doing on the night that she died According to William Heffernan and William McFadden's article in the New York Daily News They learned that she left her house with three of her friends Jackie Jeffrey and Helen And then all four of them headed over to the home of their friend Tommy the one who lives next door to Martha Okay, now What's interesting about them is I already told you this area is a super like ritzy wealthy area, right?

Right, but Tommy and his family. He has six brothers and sisters They're a little bit of kind of a special family in this neighborhood because they are all Kennedy cousins like The Kennedys the Kennedys the one and only and our fan club members will know that I have this Weird obsession with all things Kennedy related only and have for like decades at this point Yeah, I'm obsessed with this scandal that seems to follow them and actually the secret life of jfk is actually the subject Of the very first episode of my new podcast that comes out tomorrow august 11th. It's called very presidential So if anyone wants you can deep dive on all things Kennedy scandal with me there

So not only is this family super wealthy, but they're also close to fame and political power Yeah, and you see so the Skaigle kids aunt Ethel was married to senator Robert F. Kennedy until he was assassinated back in 68 so between the money and the family connections These kids are super well off even by Greenwich standards And what police learn is that in this house the two people that they're really looking at who would have been hanging out with Martha are these two boys around Martha's age Tommy who's 17 and his little brother Michael who is 15 and they all ran in the same crowd with Martha and her friends And since Martha was last seen alive at their house according to the Chicago Tribune

That's where they go first. That's where police want to check out first. They want to talk to both Tommy and Michael Now their dad rushed in was out of town on a hunting trip that night and their mom had actually passed away a couple of years before So the only person really there that night looking after the kids was their brand new tutor Ken Littleton And when I say brand new I mean Literally brand new Ken actually had just started that very same day on the 30th Oh, so when Russian finds out like what's going on in his neighborhood and that police want to talk to his sons He hurries back to Greenwich and at first the family is super cooperative And both Tommy and Michael are questioned that very same day

Both boys say they have alibis for the time of the murder Michael says that he was away from home visiting his cousin Jimmy And Tommy says that he was in for the night by 9 30 first watching a movie with ken the new tutor and then working on homework He said he had to write some kind of paper about Abraham Lincoln Well, Michael's alibi checks out but Tommy's Not so much like yes, they can verify that Ken watched a movie with him But when police talk to Tommy's teachers I mean a not only can you not verify that he's like in his room writing a paper

There's no one to corroborate that right, but his teachers like not a single one knows anything about an Abe Lincoln assignment so This starts to pique their interest something is up here and Tommy starts to look even worse to them when police find a set of Tony Pena clubs in the house And not only are they the same kind of clubs as the weapon used to murder Martha But one single club the six iron is missing As police do a little more digging they find out that this family is the only people in bellhaven with this kind of set of clubs which are

Super high-end actually like a collector's item Not only that but the los angeles times reported that part of the club found at the crime scene is actually Engraved with the name and scegel which is Tommy's late mom So there's no doubt that the clubs came from that house right though, you know, even though this seems really great We know that this isn't like the end all be all you can't take someone to court just because The murder weapon at some point was in their home. I mean there's a thousand ways. It's definitely not like a smoking gun Yeah, a thousand ways to get out of that So police know that they need more evidence if they're going to try to link Tommy to Martha's murder

And they're able to find more once police get a look at Martha's diary In Martha's diary, she actually wrote that Tommy had a crush on her and kept trying to as she put it Get to first and second base and she wasn't into it not so much in september of 1975 1975 she wrote quote, I can't be friends with Tom just because I talked to him. It doesn't mean I like him I really have to stop going over there end quote But she didn't stop going over there as we know because the last place Martha was seen alive was his house Now to go back to the autopsy because of this whole like rigor morrow with the out-of-town medical examiner the autopsy was Delayed and so that doesn't happen until november 1st

Ideally an autopsy should happen within 24 hours after a person dies and the longer you wait The harder it is to be precise about certain things like for example time of death Right, so the delay in Martha's autopsy means that the best the medical examiner can determine Is that Martha died sometime between 9 30 p.m. On october 30th and 5 a.m. On the 31st, okay, but that's a huge window huge window But based on what police are finding out in their investigation They think that Martha was most likely killed around the start of that time span so closer to that 9 30 mark And best I can tell they got to that time not because of something physical in her autopsy

But because Dorothy and a few others in the neighborhood all say that they heard dogs barking around 9 30 p.m. So that combined with the window makes them think that something was happening in the neighborhood around that time that was abnormal And of course, this is the only thing that night that that that is this big right right now I wasn't able to find anything else meaningful really that came out of the autopsy But I was curious to know about sexual assault since we know that Martha was found with her pants down But honestly, I don't feel like I got a definitive answer since we don't have an actual copy of the emmy's final report But it seems like sexual assault was not part of the equation at least according to sources like E news and the los angeles times

By early november police are more confident than ever that tommy is their guy There's just one big problem. There is no more physical evidence to tie tommy to the scene So police move on to basically start crossing their t's and dotting their eyes to make sure that they've ruled out Like everyone else that it could possibly be even though they think they have their man And their work was cut out for them because as it turns out tommy wasn't the only guy in Martha's life And he's not even the only potential suspect in the mix police also talked to Martha's boyfriend Peter They also interview the skaggle tutor ken and they even look hard at a neighbor in bellhaven that everyone thought was kind of creepy This guy named dan conners who's this like 26 year old grad student

But none of those leads get them any closer to the truth and by christmas of 75 police have interviewed You 250 people they've done dozens of polygraph tests But any leads they might have had early on in the investigation are just drying up fast Wait, so they didn't end up arresting tommy. No, I mean but not for a lack of trying They even polygraphed tommy not once but twice The first test came back inconclusive and police think that maybe they were like getting somewhere But the next test just a couple of days later Come back clear according to the test. He wasn't lying

So it feels like they're back at square one and square one is where this investigation would stay for 15 Years Nothing moves on this case. There are no leads. No suspects. No arrests until the early 1990s 1990s when martha's murder hits the headlines again and this time It's not because of the stagles, but because of their very famous relatives the kennedys in 1991 William kennedy smith who's one of president jfk's nephews and one of tommy and michael's cousins is actually charged with rape down in florida

And during his trial a rumor pops up that he was actually at the stagles house the night martha moxley Was murdered. What how did police miss that? Well, it turns out they didn't the rumors end up being just that rumors But that doesn't stop the media from once again digging into martha's murder And it turns out their digging pays off because there is more to uncover In the early summer of 1991 the new york post publishes an article about how nearly a decade prior So this would have been 1982 a couple of grenicke newspapers recruited a reporter named lennard levitt to do an Investigative piece on the case

But when he did after it was completed they wouldn't run his story What why not well apparently during his investigation Leonard unearthed these old rumors that the grenicke police were paid off back in the 1970s By who? Leonard doesn't say but that's honestly the least of their worries at this point because Leonard's investigative work also uncovered just how badly the whole grenicke law enforcement community Actually handled the entire investigation. I mean i mentioned before they didn't have a murder to investigate in the 30 years before martha's death So they really didn't have any good idea of what they were doing like here's a perfect example of what he found

Apparently after her body was discovered police left her body totally unattended Like to the point that a neighborhood dog was like walking all over the crime scene What and not only that they had a funeral director not a medical examiner Move her body from the moxley property to the emmy's office for the autopsy Which like completely violates a sort of chain of custody Right, and I mean again after you've already had a dog Trample all over the crime scene like again, none of this was protected It's not what you would want to see if you were conducting a thorough investigation

and I think part of the problem was There had to have been on the police's part some kind of fear of misstepping or somehow offending these incredibly wealthy and powerful People like and that's what you see over and over again I think it's part of the reason they responded so fast and maybe part of the reason they didn't Hammer in hard in the early days like they should have like so get this ten little ten Who is the kid's tutor who had just moved into their house the very night of the murder?

He didn't get formally questioned until the summer of 1976 Like yeah, they asked him like a couple of questions at the time But police didn't actually bring him in sit him down do a formal yeah like questioning not until almost a year after martha's murder my god and Again to put it in perspective. He's not even a kennedy cousin. He's just like attached to them Right, and here's another example Even though police knew tommy was the last person to see martha alive Even though they could match the murder weapon directly to the skaggle family within 48 hours of martha's murder police never

Got a warrant to do a full search of their property. You're kidding me now They did get permission from the family to do a search of their home But here is the part that like makes me want to rip my hair out and scream The police didn't even conduct the search themselves wait, so The skaggles offered their place to be searched to the police and the police were like thanks, but no thanks Well, no, no, no, no, they had it searched but by who exactly so They are like, okay We'll let you search our place and police have tommy's older sister

So someone who lives in that house her name's julie. She was 18 at the time The lives in the house end is connected to the possible suspect They have her do the actual search like I just can't even imagine She is the teenage sister of a murder suspect Conducting a search of her own home with no oversight. I mean again, it's not like someone followed her no oversight No accountability like again, you can see how this like attitude of You know trying to be so polite and sorry not to bother you Really got in the way of a freaking murder investigation

Yeah And it's I have such a hard time believing that things would have happened the same way If the skaggles weren't who they were they were not so wealthy that they weren't so connected Anyway, according to e-news after that scathing new york post piece goes to print Not only do the Greenwich paper suddenly publish lennards 1982 article But the connecticut state's attorney donald brown Reopens martha's case and the Greenwich police dive back into their investigation And as you can imagine after being absolutely

Skewered in the local and national news the pressure is on the Greenwich police But instead of reinvestigating tommy again the last person to see martha alive They decide to start their investigation all the way back at ken the skaggles tutor In 1991 when the da reopens the case one of the first people police reach out to talk to is ken littleton Wait, didn't you say that they already interviewed him and ruled him out? So police did talk to him back in the beginning. I remember within that first like year But once the case is reopened and the new investigators look into the file with fresh eyes They see that ken actually failed a polygraph when he was questioned that first time

And it doesn't help that ken's life had taken a sharp left turn since martha's murder I mean at this point when they go look at him. He now has a criminal record He has a long history of substance use and mental illness Which thanks to all the stigma around mental health and addiction, especially back then pretty much counts as evidence at the time to these police And they're just assuming like oh my gosh. I mean look at this guy now He must have had something to do with it So they bring him back in again for questioning in 91 and he fails two more polygraph tests But there's nothing to actually link him to the crime. No forensics. They can't even come up with a motive

There's just nothing so while police don't rule him out just yet They can't charge him with anything either and even though police's heat is squarely on ken The media interest remains where it's always been on the skagals Finally, tommy's dad russian is just like over it. He's been over it for 15 years But now in 91 he decides to shut the rumors down once and for all So what he does is he hires a pi and starts their own investigation in hopes of finally ending the speculation That any member of his family had something to do with martha's murder The investigators he hires go over the case with a fine tooth comb sourcing the files conducting new interviews all of it

And even though this is great I mean there's something about a wealthy family like hiring their own pi's to clear their kid's name in a 15 year old murder investigation that Just turns some heads and yeah one of those heads is that a writer dominic done now Dominic is a pretty polarizing figure and honestly we could probably do a whole episode just about like his own I am very familiar. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's he has a ton of clout as a writer as an investigative journalist a movie producer And in his lifetime he was kind of one of the og crime reporters and was really well known for his regular vanity fair columns I mean he covered some pretty infamous cases like even the oj simpson trial, which is probably how you know

And he actually lived through the trauma of his own daughter's murder Which spurred an interest in murder and like high society and all of this So dominic convinces dorthy moxley to let him write a novel based on martha's murder with the details changed Just enough so nobody gets like sued basically and this novel comes out in 1993 under the name A season in purgatory and once again the media goes crazy for martha's story all over again According to a piece dominic wrote in 2000 for vanity fair What he says is that a forensic pathologist who used to work with the Greenwich police actually comes to him when he's in Colorado on his book tour back in 93

And at this book tour he actually gives him a copy of martha's autopsy photos Wait, what yeah, and the pathologist also tells him everyone's got this all wrong Tommy didn't kill martha. Okay Who did if the pathologist knows she won't say But a couple of years later in the fall of 1995 Another source approaches dominic and a handful of other well-known journalists With a copy of the report from the pi firm that russian hired And if russian's goal was to repair his son's reputation and clear the family name boy did that backfire

According to excerpts from this report that cnn published by the early 90s. Tommy had changed his story Completely about what he was doing on the night martha moxley was murdered and not only tommy But his brother michael was also changing his story and it's not like small Oh, like I you know misremembered this small detail kind of changes, but we're talking about like huge huge differences So remember how back in 75 tommy told police he last saw martha in the evening, but by 9 30 He's like home. He's with ken. He's writing this paper about ablinkon right the paper that none of his teachers know about Yes, that fake paper. Well, during the pi's investigation tommy says he lied to police about more than just the paper He said he was actually with martha longer than that until about 10 p.m

And according to the daily beast he now says that before they parted ways the two engaged in Basically like some hand stuff Okay, that might explain why her pants are pulled down, but there's no sign of you know a sexual assault or anything So I was thinking about that like I think at first when you hear that you're like, oh, that's an explanation but to me that only makes sense if tommy was the person who Killed her because it's not like he's gonna pull up his pants and you know like whatever they're doing is done He pulls up his pants and walks away And she's just like sitting there hanging out with her underwear at her ankles

Like that makes no sense for any way to do and you can't even say that they were like in the middle of something And then she got attacked by someone else because then tommy should have been there for the attack and said something And he would have known you know what I mean, right? So what about michael though? You said his story had changed too Yeah in a very weird way So his original story was that he was visiting some cousins like nowhere near the moxley house And that is still his story. He visited his cousins then came home The difference is now he says that he left his house again around midnight climbed a tree outside martha's window

And Masturbated up in the tree. I'm sorry. What isn't that the weirdest? Strangest thing you've ever heard. Uh, it's definitely up there and my biggest thing with this is This isn't even something you can miss remember neither of these stories these new stories are the kinds of details that you like accidentally Leave out. I did you don't forget that you climbed a tree. Yeah, they're like really really specific Right And they're super incriminating for both brothers and it puts them both in and around the crime scene but again, even with

All of this like commotion around the changing stories and all this got brought up again because of the book and this article and There's all this media interest eventually it all dies down again But the case doesn't stay out of the limelight for long because in 1998 a whole new generation learns about the case after another book comes out Called murder and Greenwich who killed martha moxley? And this is actually how I first learned about the case and the author of this book

Claims that he's cracked it And get this the author of that book is none other than mark ferman Oh, that's the name I recognize. Yeah, I had a feeling so it is the same LAPD detective mark ferman who became notorious for His racial slurs his perjury during the oj simpson case, which I again, I know you're obsessed So I knew you'd recognize his name So mark gets interested in this case because of dominic dun who gives him access to the pi report Now mark's book is pretty clear on two things

First, that the Greenwich police dropped the ball in a big way investigating martha's murder And second, he says he knows who the killer really is According to mark ferman's book martha moxley was murdered not by tommy's cagle, but by his older brother Michael uh based on what? Well, he says based on michael's confession And confession is a loose word. I'm gonna call it confession ish statement. So let me explain Okay, so like there's air quotes around the word confession Yeah, so the thing about michael is that he's kind of this textbook poor little rich kid now we talked about the kennedy curse in one of our headline segments over in our fan club and

That extends all the way out to the cousin. So the stagels weren't exactly one big happy family russian was an alcoholic He was away from home a lot and after his wife and died He left kind of the whole parenting of seven kids thing to nannies and tutors religious figures in the church Kind of basically opting for like an open checkbook closed emotions kind of style of nurturing Often the kids would like fight with each other It would get violent drugs and alcohol were easily accessible even at very very young ages And in his book mark firman says that by age 15 Michael was already a very heavy drinker and was actually drunk the night martha died Now we know there's at least some truth to him being a heavy drinker because he got a dui in 1978

And afterward he was sent to this fancy like rehab slash reform school in maine called elon school And it's a pretty well known like school for being a haven for troubled rich kids And michael actually wrote about his time there in his own book proposal Which is where mark gets the information to prop up his claims and what he's calling this like confession ish thing So according to time magazine michael wrote in that book proposal that part of his treatment was group therapy Which sounds pretty standard, right? Yeah, totally Except it wasn't or at least it was nothing like any group therapy that i've ever heard of According to michael, he was forced to wear a sign around his neck that said quote

I am an arrogant rich brat Confront me on why i killed my friend martha End quote what mark says he confirmed this story about the sign Which was in michael's own would be book proposal by talking to some people who had actually been with michael during these group sessions And one of the people said that he was at group therapy that michael allegedly Blurted out that he'd killed martha So i mean this is like a huge revelation at this point So within a month of mark's book coming out in the summer of 1998 the state of connecticut actually

Puts together a grand jury to go over all of the evidence and see if they can actually Use this and press charges based on a book about a book proposal from what i can gather I mean apparently like that's what i'm gathering from this So when they bring this grand jury together 53 witnesses testify over the next year and a half And finally in january 2000 nearly 25 years from martha's death and arrest warrant is issued But it's not a warrant for michael's arrest According to eonline the warrant is for an unnamed juvenile It turns out though that the unnamed juvenile listed in the warrant is actually michael skegel who by this time

Is almost 40 years old, but who at the time of martha's death was just 15 And there was this whole like confusion and mix-up because i guess at first he was charged as a juvenile because Again, he was a juvenile when this crime took place. He was so young But by the time he goes to trial in june of 2002 He ends up getting tried as an adult now He says he's innocent just like he said since the 70s and he sticks to that script But the prosecution is confident that they have their guide they play audio tapes from his book proposal Which he recorded on cassette by the way where he admits that yes

He had a thing for martha and yes He was up in the tree that night and on the other side of the aisle michael's lawyer focuses hard on reasonable doubt simon critter reported for time magazine that the former greenwich chief of police Testified that he wanted to arrest tommy back in 76, but the da wouldn't grant him a warrant Which i mean to me that makes sense and we see this a lot where someone looks so good for a crime But there is enough reasonable doubt for a reason like in this case the golf clubs. Yes, they were in tommy's house, but also Everyone else in the house would have had access to them

Right. I mean and that's what we talked about earlier when we said like yes this seems like such a damning piece of evidence, but I mean anyone could have got them. I mean not even just people in the house because remember there's more siblings than even just these two There's a tutor. There's whoever but it doesn't help that it's mischief night Someone could have broken and stolen them well and not even stolen them Russian actually says that his kids would play with those clubs and leave them outside and like around the property all the time So again, if we're talking reasonable doubt you could say that anyone went out and picked it up off of the lawn It it opens it up to anyone who could have walked through the neighborhood basically

But the same problem still remains with michael as with tommy the prosecution Has zero physical evidence that actually ties michael to martha or her murder. There's no bodily fluids. No fingerprints Nothing everything they have is all circumstantial because again michael was around the area He had access to the clubs, but so did a lot of people but there was that sort of weird confession-ish thing Like the sign around his neck. Yeah, so here's the thing about that sign that elan school had some Super controversial tactics like humiliation therapy, which is exactly what it sounds like with basically the premise of trying to break someone down and then build them back up And when I looked into this school, I mean they also had students fight each other

According to the new york times one of michael's old classmates Testified that he saw michael thrown into a boxing ring like an actual boxing ring And get beaten up by other students as means to get him to confess to the murder And all of this was totally sanctioned by the staff as part of their treatment. So I don't know and let's do air quotes around treatment as well Yeah, exactly. So you can see the testimony in this trial is very much kind of a he said she said We said scenario with one side saying one thing the other saying entirely different thing And after months of arguments and evidence the jury deliberated for three days

And on june 7th 2002 michael is found guilty of the murdering martha moxley And he sentenced to 20 years to life in prison So if this was a normal case, it might have ended there, right? Like maybe some appeals but legal fees and court costs to keep fighting year after year really add up for most people But michael isn't most people In 2003 his lawyers filed an appeal on seven different grounds saying that he should have been tried in juvenile court And basically the prosecution biased the jury against michael when they called him a spoiled brat And by the time the decision comes down in 2006 the connecticut supreme court is having none of it

And they uphold michael's conviction But later that same year michael gets a new lawyer who asked the us supreme court to review the lower court's judgment And the supreme court shuts it down. They say nope. No, thanks And i won't bore you with all of the legal wranglings over the next few years because there is a lot of it But in 2013 after michael's been in jail for 11 years a superior court judge ends up granting him a new Trial on what grounds michael's new lawyers argue that his original lawyer was ineffective ineffective assistant of counsel We've seen this in a lot of cases Yeah, they basically say that he did a bad job during the trial the seattle times reported that michael's new lawyer

points to how the original one didn't get in contact with witnesses to back up michael's alibi and how He didn't mention another suspect like specifically. He believed that his lawyers should have pointed to his brother tommy well If michael's first lawyer was ineffective this new one certainly isn't because michael gets out of prison on bail in november of 2013 and he's still out on bail in 2016 when the connecticut supreme court reinstates his conviction The opinion from that court says basically like hey no your lawyer did a good enough job You are back to being guilty and now i kind of feel like billy maize from all those infomercials when i was in college because wait

There is still more So michael's lawyers go back to court in 2018 The connecticut supreme court vacates the murder conviction and reverses the decision from 2016 Okay, wait you kind of lost me here the 2016 decision was to not have a new trial But then that was vacated So he gets a new trial. So he is now entitled to one. Yes The state of connecticut tried to get the u.s. Supreme court to hear the case but in january of 2019 They said no

So technically michael could still be tried again for the murder of martha moxley, but as of today 2020 that retrial has never happened and i don't know that it ever will Money power and privilege cover up a lot of sins Someone in the skaggle house is potentially keeping a secret whether they're involved or not They just may know more but secrets don't stay secrets forever and when the truth comes out Whenever that happens martha moxley will finally get the justice she's deserved for almost 45 years If you want to see pictures and our source material for this episode you can check that out on our website crimejunkiepodcast.com And be sure to follow us on instagram at crime junkie podcast

We'll be back next week with a brand new episode But in the meantime make sure to check out my new show very presidential with ashley flowers where i'll be talking about some Kennedys Crime junkie is an audio chuck production. So what do you think chuck do you approve?