Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
Yeah, you mentioned you grew up in Grantwich and you
were there in seventy five. The first thing people ask
you is, did you know Martha Moxley?
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Bell Haven, Connecticut is a small private community. It has
big estates and almost no crime, but a fifteen year
old girl has been brutally murdered there bell Haven.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
This was a virtually exclusive, very wealthy community in Greenwich, Connecticut,
where murders just don't occur.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
My name's Richard Burns, and I lived in Greenwich back then.
That's the first time in forty five years we'd ever
talked about it.
Speaker 4 (00:53):
My name is Torri Holland. I grew up in Belle
Haven and in nineteen seventy five, I was fifteen along
with Martha. She just had this beaming personality and her
beautiful blonde hair smiled all the time.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
I just smiled, you know. It just made you feel
like you were the center of the world.
Speaker 5 (01:16):
The SCA girls lived across the street from the Moxleys.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
They were a family of all these boys except for Julie.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
I went to school with them, and Michael was a
year behind me, and Tommy this year ahead of me.
Speaker 4 (01:32):
It was a lovely place to grow up. You just
felt safe, and that all changed after that night.
Speaker 6 (01:41):
The instrument used in the striking of the Moxley girl
it was a golf club.
Speaker 4 (01:47):
We know that. It's absolutely devastating.
Speaker 7 (01:53):
Nearly a quarter of a century would pass before police
would make an arrest for the murder of Martha Moxley.
Speaker 5 (02:01):
Thirty nine year old Michael Skekel was charged with murder.
Speaker 8 (02:05):
Michael, did you kill her?
Speaker 9 (02:07):
I was shocked, like Michael, I know Michael's innocent. The
evidence is much stronger, suggesting that other people may have
committed the crime.
Speaker 5 (02:21):
Bobby Kennedy Junior is Michael's cousin and he never believed
for a minute Michael Skeegel committed this crime.
Speaker 9 (02:30):
Twenty seven years after the crime, kennedy cousin, Michael Skeakel
convicted in the murder of Martha Moxley.
Speaker 7 (02:39):
Michael Schegel spent eleven and a half years in prison
until his conviction was overturned on appeal.
Speaker 10 (02:48):
An innocent man now goes free.
Speaker 7 (02:50):
But if Michael didn't kill Martha Moxley, then who did.
Speaker 11 (02:56):
This little girl?
Speaker 1 (02:57):
This cute, little amazing girl was murdered brute believed by somebody,
and I think it was somebody in that neighborhood.
Speaker 8 (03:04):
Could Martha's diary hold the glue?
Speaker 5 (03:07):
I believe all through this case there's someone who's been
keeping a secret.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
After she was murdered, everything had changed.
Speaker 4 (04:05):
You have no sense of peace. You've lost it all.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
I think you she's sodesting.
Speaker 7 (04:12):
Tory Holland and Richard Burns have waited decades to speak
publicly about the event that forever marked their lives, the
death of their friend, Martha Moxley.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
My backyard sort of melded into her front yard.
Speaker 7 (04:29):
Both Tory and Martha were just fifteen years old, living
in Belle Haven, Connecticut. Martha's family had moved to the
neighborhood a year earlier from California, and Martha wasted no
time becoming the it girl.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
She was not a wallflower. She wanted to meet everybody,
but everybody in Gretige.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
You know, it was very kind of reserved Northeastern personalities.
She was very an extrovert.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
She was the California girl of all of us. She
was jo to be around.
Speaker 11 (05:00):
You know, how can you kill someone like that?
Speaker 7 (05:07):
It so guests you.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (05:11):
It was the night before Halloween, October thirtieth, nineteen seventy five,
also known as Mischief Night.
Speaker 8 (05:18):
What is mischief night?
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Basically you would throw toilet paper into the trees, which
was fun.
Speaker 7 (05:26):
Martha headed across the street to hang out with her
very wealthy neighbors, the Scagol family. The Scagles were cousins
of the Kennedys.
Speaker 8 (05:38):
Rushton.
Speaker 7 (05:38):
Scagel's sister Ethel had married Robert Kennedy in nineteen fifty.
Rushton had inherited a fortune from the family's mining company.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
They were a very famous family. They just had a
lot more attitude about you know. They could do anything.
Speaker 7 (05:54):
Martha was friendly with the seven Scagol kids, spending time
mostly with Michael, who was also fifteen, and his older brother,
seventeen year old Tommy. On Mischief Night, Martha and two
other friends met Michael at the Scagle house around nine pm.
They all piled into a Lincoln like this parked in
(06:18):
the driveway.
Speaker 12 (06:19):
Michael and Martha are in the front seat of the Scagole.
Speaker 7 (06:23):
KRP reporter Len Levitt, now deceased, was interviewed in two
thousand and three. He spent more than thirty years investigating
the night of Martha's death.
Speaker 12 (06:35):
Tommy comes and joins them, so the three of them
are sitting in the front seat, Martha's in the middle
between Tommy and Michael. They're listening to music.
Speaker 7 (06:47):
They were in the Lincoln until around nine thirty PM,
when two other Scago brothers said they needed the car
so they could drive their cousin, Jimmy terran to his house.
Speaker 8 (07:00):
To watch the US.
Speaker 7 (07:01):
Premiere of Monty Python's Flying Circus. Michael told police he
left with his brothers and cousin. Well, Martha and her
friends stayed behind with Tommy.
Speaker 12 (07:14):
What goes on between Martha and Tommy then a sort
of playful pushing back and forth with sexual overtones. At
one point, Tommy pushes Martha down and falls on top
of her, and the friends are so embarrassed that they
leave and go home, leaving Martha with Tommy. Martha never
gets home.
Speaker 7 (07:34):
Martha's mother, Dorothy, spoke with forty eight hours in two
thousand Marri's Martha and remembered that around one am the
next morning, she began calling Martha's friends and alerted the police.
Speaker 13 (07:50):
I was getting more worried and more worried. I mean,
it just was not like her.
Speaker 7 (07:57):
When the sun came up and Martha still hadn't reached
turned home. Dorothy walked over to the Scagoad house. Michael
answered the door.
Speaker 13 (08:06):
I'm Dorothy Moxley and I live across the street and
I'm looking for my daughter Martha. Do you know if
Martha is here. No, Martha was not there. And he
looked he didn't look healthy. He looked well. I actually
think he looked hungover.
Speaker 7 (08:22):
Hours past, it was now almost noon on Halloween. Tory
was on her way to join the search when another
friend discovered Martha's body under this tree towards the back
of the Moxley property.
Speaker 4 (08:43):
And I could see missus Moxley at the front door,
and she's going. She didn't want me to come any further,
but I could see the devastation with Missus Moxley's.
Speaker 7 (08:54):
Steve Carroll was among the first investigators from the Greenwich
Police Department to walk up to Martha his body.
Speaker 10 (09:01):
It was a maniacal attack that should have stopped, but didn't.
Speaker 7 (09:07):
When Carol spoke with forty eight hours in two thousand,
he was still shaken by what he had seen.
Speaker 10 (09:16):
We didn't even know what color hair she had because
it was all blood red and all of the blows
or damage were all to her head, and then we
could see a path that she had been dragged down
in the high grass down to where her final resting place,
(09:37):
which was under the pine tree.
Speaker 7 (09:39):
Investigators traced the trail of blood to the Moxley driveway.
Speaker 10 (09:44):
She had been bludgeoned right near the driveway because there
was a huge pull of.
Speaker 7 (09:48):
Blood there, they discovered a piece of the murder weapon,
the shaft of a golf club. Former Hartford Current reporter
and Hours consultant Lynn Towhey.
Speaker 5 (10:02):
It was a Tony Penna six iron golf club and
she was struck so violently that the shaft of the
golf club shattered and one portion of the shaft was
driven through her neck.
Speaker 7 (10:22):
Just a few hours later, while camising the Scagle property,
police discovered a matching golf club that came from the
same set as the six iron that was used to
kill Martha.
Speaker 5 (10:35):
It came from a set owned by Anne Scakle, Michaels
and Tommy's late mother.
Speaker 7 (10:41):
Police began taking a hard look at the scalicles and
they would find what sounded like tantalizing clues left by
Martha herself in her diary.
Speaker 4 (11:07):
I think I was still in shock that she was gone,
but that this had to be a beautiful tribute to
her to send her off.
Speaker 7 (11:20):
A few days after Martha's murder, on November fourth, nineteen
seventy five, about five hundred people gathered for her funeral,
and while family and friends mourned the teenager, investigators were
learning more about Martha's relationship with Michael and Tommy Schegel.
Do you remember either of the scaeguls having a crush
(11:43):
on Martha?
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Well, it would be hard not to, I know I did.
Speaker 7 (11:49):
Martha's friends told police that Tommy wanted to date her,
but his advances may not have always been welcomed. On
September twelfth, Martha wrote in her diary about going for
ice cream with Michael and Tommy.
Speaker 8 (12:03):
Went driving in Tom's.
Speaker 7 (12:04):
Car and I was practically sitting on Tom's lap. He
kept putting his hand on my knee. And on October fourth,
a little over three weeks before her murder, Martha wrote,
I went to a party. Tom s was being an
ass at the dance. He kept putting his arms around
me and making moves.
Speaker 4 (12:28):
I did not know she was spending the time that
she was spending with them. Well, I did not hang
around with them. They scared me a little bit. Why
what do you mean, well, because they were very rambunctious.
Speaker 7 (12:44):
Two years earlier, the seven Skagle siblings lost their mom,
Anne to cancer. Their father rushed and struggled.
Speaker 8 (12:52):
To parent them.
Speaker 7 (12:54):
On the night of Martha's death, he was away on
a hunting trip.
Speaker 4 (13:00):
Their father traveled quite a bit. They were allowed to
do whatever they'd like.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
They definitely got into a lot of trouble, with a
lot of partying going on in that house.
Speaker 7 (13:08):
I read that Michael Schaegole had a drinking problem at
age thirteen.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
Really obviously say that's true.
Speaker 7 (13:16):
And that drinking may have created conflict with Martha. In
her diary the month before her death, Martha wrote, Michael
was so totally out of it that he was being
a real He kept telling me that I was leading
tom on Michael jumps to conclusions. I really have to
stop going over there.
Speaker 5 (13:39):
Tommy and Michael were both known to have very explosive tempers.
The two of them were fierce rivals for anything, you know,
from sports to affection a girl's attention. Martha's possibly.
Speaker 7 (14:00):
It was daylight when Martha's body was found, but based
on reports of neighborhood dogs barking the night before. Investigators
believed that Martha was killed sometime between nine thirty and
ten PM, around the time she was thought to be
at the Scagles. Remember, Michael told police that around nine
(14:26):
thirty he had left to go to his cousin Jimmy
Terrian's home, and Martha had stayed behind with Tommy.
Speaker 12 (14:35):
Tommy's story is that he last sees her at nine
thirty and he goes inside home to write a paper
on Abraham Lincoln. The police later find out that no
teacher at Tommy school ever assigned this paper.
Speaker 7 (14:51):
Levitt says police initially considered Tommy a strong suspect, but
it turns out that even if Tommy lied about writing
that page, he had an alibi witness.
Speaker 12 (15:03):
Tommy is seen again shortly after ten o'clock with Ken Littleton.
Speaker 7 (15:10):
Ken Lyttleton was a new tutor who had just moved
into the Scagle house that very day. He told believes
that Tommy was watching TV with him around ten pm.
He noticed nothing unusual about Tommy, and that's significant because
Martha had been murdered violently.
Speaker 12 (15:30):
How does Tommy do this? How does Tommy manage to
beat to death, move her body, clean himself up, compose
himself so that ken Lilytleton says of Tommy, I noticed
nothing about him out of the ordinary.
Speaker 8 (15:43):
No arrests were made.
Speaker 7 (15:44):
Months passed by, and with advice from Tommy's lawyer, rushed
in Scagle stop cooperating with police. He also fired ken Lyttleton,
whose life unraveled shortly after he moved to Nantucket.
Speaker 5 (16:00):
Rank heavily did drugs, committed crimes of petty larceny.
Speaker 7 (16:07):
Investigators pned in on this, schaegled tutor, speculating that his
downfall could be rooted in his involvement in Martha's murder,
but there were problems with that theory.
Speaker 12 (16:19):
He's got no motives to kill Martha. He never knew Martha.
The manner in which Martha is killed indicates that it
was somebody who had a relationship with Arthur.
Speaker 7 (16:31):
Authorities found no evidence to prove Lyttleton was involved. Years
went by, Martha's murder became a cold case.
Speaker 5 (16:41):
There were no more leads to pursue. There was no
new evidence.
Speaker 7 (16:47):
In nineteen ninety one, the trial of another Kennedy cousin,
William Kennedy Smith, who was charged with rape and Florida,
but acquitted would open a new chapter in the Oxley case.
Speaker 12 (17:01):
There's an allegation which is false, that William Kennedy Smith
was at the Scafhele house the night of the murder.
Speaker 7 (17:09):
That unfounded rumor and persistent press coverage kept the heat
on the Greenwich Police Department and prompted them to reopen
the investigation.
Speaker 12 (17:20):
And now they announced a reward in a hotline.
Speaker 8 (17:22):
This time.
Speaker 7 (17:23):
In an effort to clear his family name, Rushton Skeakeel
hired his own team of investigators. Their findings became known
as the Sutton Report, but the effort backfired because that report,
for the first time, pointed a finger at another of
Rushton's sons, Michael Skakel.
Speaker 12 (17:44):
Michael lied to the police.
Speaker 7 (17:46):
Michael told Belie that after watching Monty Python's Flying Circus
at his cousin Jimmy Terrion's house, he came home around
eleven thirty pm and went straight to bed. But he
told his dad's investigation there's another story.
Speaker 6 (18:02):
Oh my god, I tell anybody that I was out
that night, they're going to say I did it.
Speaker 7 (18:25):
For twenty year's investigators seemed stymied in their effort to
find Martha's killer. But all that changed in nineteen ninety
five when someone leaked the Sutton report to the press.
Speaker 5 (18:38):
It was never supposed to see the lighter day.
Speaker 8 (18:40):
The report was an eye opener.
Speaker 7 (18:43):
Tommy admitted to his father's investigators that all those years ago,
in nineteen seventy five, he had lied to the police.
Speaker 5 (18:51):
Tommy told the Sutton investigators that he did not go
into his house at nine point thirty, He stayed outside
making out with my Artha for twenty minutes mutual petting,
semi sexual encounter, and suddenly casts himself as being most
likely the last person to see her alive.
Speaker 7 (19:10):
And not just the last person see her alive, but
who's with her at the time that investigators believe she
may have been killed? Correct, But it wasn't just Tommy
who changed his story.
Speaker 5 (19:22):
Wasn't No Michael also changed his story.
Speaker 7 (19:27):
Remember Michael told Belize that after watching Monty Python at
his cousin's, he came back home around eleven.
Speaker 8 (19:35):
Thirty PM and went straight to bed.
Speaker 12 (19:38):
The report was devastating to the scal.
Speaker 7 (19:40):
Family, but then he described a very different scenario to
those private investigators.
Speaker 12 (19:48):
Feeling horny on midnineties drunk, and he goes out and
he climbs a tree outside Martha's window and he masturbates
in the tree.
Speaker 7 (19:57):
In fact, in nineteen ninety seven, Michael made a tape
recording of that story while working on a book proposal
for a tell all autobiography.
Speaker 6 (20:07):
I pulled my pants out. I've masturbated for thirty seconds
in the trade, and I remember thinking, oh my god,
I hope gotten over comed. But I woke up to
missus Moxley saying, Michael, has have you seen Martha?
Speaker 14 (20:23):
Oh my god, did they seen you last night?
Speaker 7 (20:29):
Reports had also begun to circulate that Michael had actually
confessed to Martha's murder. It was said to have happened
while he was a student at a lawn, A reform
school that his father sent him to after a drunk
driving incident when he was seventeen.
Speaker 8 (20:50):
One former Alan.
Speaker 7 (20:51):
Student, Gregory Coleman, recounted to a local news reporter what
he says Michael told him back then.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
As you ever said to me, was I'm going to
get away with murder I m kennedy.
Speaker 7 (21:05):
Coleman says, Michael detailed what he did to Martha that night.
Speaker 12 (21:10):
He had made advances towards her, and she rejected his
advances and quote unquote that he drove her sculling away
the golf clubs.
Speaker 7 (21:23):
After hearing from Coleman and other former Alawn students, State's
Attorney Jonathan Benedict convened an unusual and rarely used one
person grand jury to look at all the evidence and
all the suspects in the case. After eighteen months and
more than forty witnesses, Oh did.
Speaker 8 (21:43):
You just skeggle? Don't have anything to say? Michael?
Speaker 12 (21:46):
Did you kill her?
Speaker 7 (21:49):
The grand jury indicted Michael Schaggel for murder twenty four
years after Martha's death. Michael was forty one years old
when his trial began.
Speaker 8 (22:01):
And how big a story was that it was huge?
Speaker 5 (22:04):
The scene outside was circus, likely, Skegel, did.
Speaker 8 (22:08):
You have anything to say?
Speaker 5 (22:11):
All the national media was there, They had tents and
they had lights.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
It's Michael's defense and his only defense is that he
did not commit this crime.
Speaker 7 (22:20):
Michael Skeekeel was being represented by a well known local
defense attorney, Nicky Sherman.
Speaker 5 (22:26):
As charismatic as they come, Mickey is no amateur when
it comes to television.
Speaker 7 (22:32):
What's the motive for Michael Skeekell killing Martha Mosley.
Speaker 5 (22:37):
The only motive really is jealous rage over the attention
she was showing Tommy Schegel.
Speaker 7 (22:50):
In fact, in that same book proposal for his autobiography,
Michael wrote, I wanted her to be my girlfriend.
Speaker 13 (22:59):
I think Martha just rebuffed him. She could have been
flirting with Tommy, and maybe that made him angry.
Speaker 15 (23:08):
On trial Michael Skeagle.
Speaker 7 (23:11):
At trial, prosecutor Jonathan Benedict began with discrediting Michael's alibi
that he had gone for that ride to his cousin's
house around the time.
Speaker 8 (23:22):
Of Martha's murder.
Speaker 7 (23:24):
Prosecutors called Scagel family friend Andrea Shakespeare, who had been
at the Scapele house that night.
Speaker 8 (23:31):
Andrea Shakespeare is one of the witnesses who was certain
that mister Skegold never took that alibi ride.
Speaker 7 (23:39):
Benedict put holes in Michael's alibi, but he later said
Michael himself provided the most damaging evidence.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
The truth of the matter is that Michael Skeagle couldn't
keep his mouth shut for a quarter.
Speaker 9 (23:51):
Of a century.
Speaker 7 (23:52):
Benedict is referring to all those admissions Michael allegedly made
to killing Martha, like the one to align classmate Gregory Coleman.
Speaker 8 (24:02):
Although Coleman had died from a.
Speaker 7 (24:04):
Drug overdose before the trial began, his testimony from an
earlier hearing was read to the jury that infuriated Michael's
brother Stephen.
Speaker 4 (24:15):
Greg Coleman was high on heroin, a methadone.
Speaker 5 (24:18):
He was doing twenty to twenty five bags of heroin
a day.
Speaker 7 (24:23):
It turns out that before trial, Coleman admitted to Michael's
attorney that he was actually high on drugs when he
testified before the grand jury.
Speaker 8 (24:34):
But the state put.
Speaker 7 (24:35):
On nine other witnesses who told the jury that Michael
implied he had killed Martha. And then, of course there
was Michael's own words from that tell All book proposal.
In closing arguments, Prosecutor Benedict played and edited excerpt for
(24:58):
the jurors.
Speaker 14 (25:00):
Dot did they seen you last night?
Speaker 6 (25:03):
I remember just having a feeling of the panic.
Speaker 5 (25:05):
I think it very well may have been the lynchkin.
Speaker 7 (25:10):
What do you mean by that?
Speaker 5 (25:13):
Driving the nail into the coffin of Michael Skeegele. In
terms of a guilty verdict.
Speaker 8 (25:20):
It took the jury four days.
Speaker 7 (25:22):
Michael Skeegell was convicted for Martha's murder, his sentence twenty
years to life.
Speaker 9 (25:35):
I know Michael Skeekell and I know he didn't commit
the crime.
Speaker 14 (25:39):
Can talk with him.
Speaker 7 (25:40):
A few months after trial, Michael Skeekle's cousin, Robert Kennedy Junior,
accused the prosecutor of deliberately misrepresenting Michael's words in that
closing argument.
Speaker 9 (25:54):
His tape recorded words were used out of context by
the prosecutor to imply that he was confessing to the crime.
Speaker 14 (26:03):
Oh my god, did they see you last night?
Speaker 7 (26:07):
Because here's what the prosecutor didn't play in court.
Speaker 6 (26:11):
And I remember thinking, oh my god, I hope God
overcome me.
Speaker 7 (26:16):
Correspondent Leslie Stall asked Benedict about it.
Speaker 15 (26:20):
In hearing this myself, Yeah, without the preamble about masturbating
to anybody, is that he's actually talking about murdering her?
And isn't that really taking him out of context?
Speaker 6 (26:36):
No, I don't think so much.
Speaker 8 (26:36):
If I did this forty eight hours I'd be fired.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
I think it's a fair suggestion. Based upon the evidence
of the case.
Speaker 9 (26:44):
It appeared to anybody who looked at it that he
was confessing. He was saying that he was panicked because
he had committed this crime, and that was really the
segment that everybody agrees ended up convicting Michael Skagel.
Speaker 7 (27:01):
And Robert Kennedy was determined to exonerate his cousin. Eight
months after Michael Skeakell was sent off to prison, Kennedy
got a tip he believed would reveal Martha's real killers
(27:30):
to Robert Kennedy Junior. It was the break he had
been hoping for. Kennedy got a tip that a former
classmate of Michael Skeagle, a man named Tony Bryant, was
claiming he knew the identity of Martha Moxley's killers. So
Kennedy and Michael's attorneys track Bryant down in Florida.
Speaker 11 (27:50):
Brian has made a full confession of his involvement in
that crime.
Speaker 7 (27:58):
This is Tony Bryant in two thousand and three videotape
by Michael Skeaegle's team.
Speaker 14 (28:03):
We decided to go up to Greenwich and.
Speaker 8 (28:05):
Hangout, he told them.
Speaker 7 (28:07):
On the night of the murder, he had taken two friends,
Adolph Hasbrook also known as Al and Burton Tinsley to
Belle Haven.
Speaker 11 (28:16):
So do you believe that they killed her?
Speaker 14 (28:19):
There's no doubt in my mind that.
Speaker 6 (28:20):
They were involved.
Speaker 7 (28:21):
Bryant knew the two teams from New York and told
Skeegll's investigators that Hasbrook had become obsessed with Martha.
Speaker 10 (28:29):
I mean loved their beautiful blonde hair.
Speaker 7 (28:32):
Brian said that Hasbrook met Martha during previous trips to
belle Haven at a street fair and again at a dance.
Speaker 4 (28:39):
I'm trying to remember one of the mixers, and he
got jealous of other guys coming up to her and
talking to her.
Speaker 7 (28:45):
Tony claims Hasbrook complained to him, saying.
Speaker 10 (28:48):
I don't understand why she's spending her time with those.
Speaker 7 (28:51):
Guys when she could be with me. On the night
of the murder, Brian says he was with Hasbrooke and
Tinsley when they all picked up golf from this Schago backyard.
He claims that either has Brooke or Tinsley bragged about
wanting to hurt someone.
Speaker 13 (29:08):
I got my cave man clove right and I'm gonna
go grab somebody and pulled by hair and.
Speaker 14 (29:13):
Do what kates it.
Speaker 7 (29:16):
Tony says he wanted no part of it, so he
left Belhaven and then right after the murder, when you
met up with both Adolph and Berg.
Speaker 6 (29:25):
They told you we got we did it, We did it,
We achieved our fantasy.
Speaker 7 (29:29):
Brian stated that while his friends never mentioned Martha Moxley
by name, I knew who they were.
Speaker 14 (29:34):
Impla it was.
Speaker 12 (29:35):
It was so lobbyoust because I mean the next day
it was all over, I mean it was everywhere.
Speaker 7 (29:44):
Armed with Tony Bryant's story. In two thousand and five,
Michael Skeagel's attorneys filed an appeal asking for a new trial.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
You're on the petition for new trial that we filed
on behalf of Michael Skagel claims newly discovered evidence involves
the obligations concerning Tony Bryant.
Speaker 7 (30:03):
But at a hearing to present the new evidence, Bryant
refused to testify under oath.
Speaker 11 (30:10):
Well, of course he is not going to do that
because he admits that he brought them murderers to Greenwich,
because he could be charged with that crime.
Speaker 7 (30:18):
Kennedy says Brian wouldn't testify without immunity, So Skekell's attorneys
played his video statement, but the judge wasn't persuaded and
ruled against Michael Skeakell.
Speaker 12 (30:30):
Michael Skekell versus the State of Connecticut has been concluded.
Speaker 8 (30:36):
Despite the judge's ruling.
Speaker 7 (30:38):
Almost a decade later, in twenty sixteen, Robert Kennedy Junior
repeated Brian's allegations in his book Framed, using Martha's diary
as evidence. Kennedy claims that three weeks before her murder,
Martha wrote that she saw Tony and two strangers at
a dance. But that's not quite accurate. In her entry,
(31:04):
Martha doesn't mention Tony and she never uses the word strangers.
She writes October fourth, Dear Diary, tonight was a sacred
Heart dance. When we walked in, some guy asked me
to dance. Some other guy asked me. It turned out
to be a slow dance. It was stairway to Heaven
at the fast party.
Speaker 8 (31:25):
Wouldn't even let go.
Speaker 7 (31:26):
I also dance with Dickie Neil and Peter Zamensky a
lot with Dickie. The Dickie she mentioned is actually Richard Burns,
who says he was with Martha much of that night.
Speaker 8 (31:40):
Seeing Tony Bryant. Do you remember that at all?
Speaker 7 (31:42):
No? Did you ever meet al Hasbruck or Burton Tinsley? No,
don't you think you would have remembered if she was
dancing with someone else who seemed possessive of her.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
She didn't, She didn't. We danced the whole night.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
Al Hasbrook is innocent.
Speaker 7 (32:04):
Al Hasbrook declined to be interviewed, and we were unable
to reach Burton Tinsley, but Hasbrook's attorney, Larry Schoenbach describes
the allegations as false and imflammatory.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
The coin of phrase, it's black versus white. Let's blame
somebody else. It's the black guy, Let's blame him. Why
not let's take the most vulnerable person in our society
and accuse him. I am as certain as certain can
be that neither had anything to do with this.
Speaker 7 (32:37):
Burton Tinsley and al Hasbrook don't deny that they have
been to bell Haven on several occasions, but Schoenbach says
there's no evidence that either one was in bell Haven
the night Martha was bludgeoned to death.
Speaker 3 (32:50):
Nobody saw al Hasbrook. Nobody. They would have seen a
young guy, a black man in a very very white
community and a big but nobody saw him because he
wasn't there.
Speaker 4 (33:04):
Somebody would have seen strangers and recognized that they were strangers.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
Nobody did, and I just thought that was kind of
a cheap shot that they were going after this black
kid from New York City.
Speaker 4 (33:15):
I mean, you know, really, I think it's they're trying
to find a scapegoat.
Speaker 7 (33:21):
What's more, Hasbrook's attorney is baffled as to why anyone
would believe Tony Bryant. Bryant has a criminal history that
includes a nineteen ninety three conviction for armed robbery in California.
We tried to reach him, but up until a few
weeks ago, he was serving a seven year sentence in
(33:41):
a Florida prison for tax evasion. Still Showing Box says
Kennedy irresponsibly perpetuates Bryant's allegations.
Speaker 3 (33:53):
With no facts and no evidence. He continues to put
forth this lie is a way of trying to clear
his cousin, and I guess by extension the Kennedy name.
Speaker 7 (34:06):
In November twenty twenty, Kennedy insisted to us that Tony
Bryant has no reason whatsoever to lie about al Hasbrook
and Burton Tinsley. When we pressed him about it, he
got up from the interview chair. Do you have any
regrets of pointing the finger at two people who've never
been suspects. There's no physical evidence to tie them to
(34:29):
the crime.
Speaker 11 (34:30):
There are lots of evidence that tuk to the crime.
You have their best friend who's Satisfaican festival.
Speaker 7 (34:38):
But in the end, it wouldn't be the words of
Tony Bryant that changed everything for Michael Schaegel. Michael's did
(35:00):
not give up. On April sixteenth, twenty thirteen, Skegell was
back in court I do with his attorney, Hubert Santos
and a new argument that that media savvy defense attorney
Mickey Sherman, hired to defend Michael at his two thousand
and two trials.
Speaker 9 (35:21):
He was advised of his rights station.
Speaker 8 (35:22):
Had botched the case.
Speaker 3 (35:27):
Mickey had me believing he was the real deal.
Speaker 7 (35:30):
He accused his former lawyer of being too chummy with
the press.
Speaker 9 (35:34):
He said he was a media whore.
Speaker 14 (35:36):
Everything about this trial is unique.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
You spent most of your time talking to the media,
right is a question?
Speaker 7 (35:43):
Yeah? No, And Skegel claimed that Sherman failed to focus
on a more viable suspect in Moxley's murder, Michael's own brother, Tommy.
Speaker 6 (35:54):
You knew that.
Speaker 3 (35:55):
Tommy Schegel was the last person to see Martha Moxley alt.
Speaker 11 (36:00):
I believe so.
Speaker 7 (36:02):
Sherman never presented evidence of Tommy's infamous temper.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
Did you know that he strangled the fellow classmate right
in front of his teacher? I don't recall that.
Speaker 7 (36:13):
Sherman also failed to convince the judge to allow Tommy
to testify, which could have raised out about Michael's involvement.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
Did you try Who's going?
Speaker 13 (36:23):
In both the fifth Amendment?
Speaker 11 (36:24):
No matter what we.
Speaker 7 (36:25):
Did, Perhaps most shocking, Sherman failed to call it critical
witness who supported Michael's alibi that he was miles away
the night Martha was murdered.
Speaker 5 (36:36):
So that was Dennis SiO who was at the Terarian
household the night they were all allegedly.
Speaker 9 (36:43):
Watching Quonty five in this flying circus.
Speaker 5 (36:46):
Michael was allegedly there.
Speaker 11 (36:49):
Mickey sher meant in instead of doing that, instead of calling,
never talked to that witness.
Speaker 7 (36:54):
But in twenty thirteen Santos did, was there anybody.
Speaker 13 (36:58):
Else at the home the boys were?
Speaker 14 (37:00):
There?
Speaker 13 (37:01):
Was Michael Skeakell on Michael was with him.
Speaker 5 (37:04):
He puts Michael Skeegell at that house and has no
motive to lie. He's not related to Michael Skeegel.
Speaker 7 (37:13):
Schegel's team argued that these missed opportunities would have created
reasonable doubt for the jury, and the judge agreed. Six
months later, he overturned Skegell's conviction.
Speaker 4 (37:33):
Wednesday, at Connecticut judge granted the fifty three year old
a new trial in the nineteen seventy five murder of
Martha Moxley.
Speaker 7 (37:41):
After eleven and a half years in prison, Michael Skekell
walked out of the courthouse, no longer a convicted killer.
Speaker 10 (37:49):
An innocent man now goes.
Speaker 8 (37:51):
Free, but not for long.
Speaker 5 (37:53):
In twenty sixteen, the Connecticut Supreme Court, in in a
sharply divided decision, reinstead his conviction, saying the defense was adequate.
Speaker 7 (38:05):
Skeagel, faced with returning to prison, then filed for reconsideration,
and in twenty eighteen, with a new judge on the bench,
the Connecticut Supreme Court reversed itself, now ruling that Skeagel
is entitled to a new trial. That trial would never happen.
Speaker 14 (38:29):
Looking at the evidence, your honor, looking at the state
of the case, it is my belief that the state
cannot prove this case beyond a reasonable doubt.
Speaker 7 (38:40):
On October thirtieth, twenty twenty, the forty fifth anniversary of
Martha Moxley's murder, the state of Connecticut announced it would
not retry Michael Schagel.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
You know, Michael's going to walk around the rest of
his life with that on his head, no matter whether
or not it's been vacated by the court, public opinion matters.
Speaker 8 (39:07):
As for his brother Tommy.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
Years later, I ended up playing some golf with him
a bunch of times.
Speaker 7 (39:12):
I mean, did you ever ask him point blank?
Speaker 1 (39:14):
I did, I didn't do it, and it ruined my life.
Speaker 5 (39:16):
This case has been a long and winding road, a
very painful case emotionally for many people.
Speaker 7 (39:26):
For Dorothy Moxley, time has done little to ease her loss.
Speaker 13 (39:32):
Martha, my baby will never have a life.
Speaker 5 (39:40):
This was devastating to the Moxley family. Dorothy to this
day remains convinced Martha was killed by Michael Schaigel.
Speaker 7 (39:50):
To lose a child is the worst thing in the world,
and so after Amlah, half a century of questions and
two families shattered, all that remains is one terrible truth.
Speaker 8 (40:09):
As we sit here.
Speaker 7 (40:10):
Today, no one has been convicted of Martha Moxley's murder.
Speaker 8 (40:16):
No, that's true.
Speaker 4 (40:18):
It's very frustrating, it's very upsetting.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
I think it's sad that she's not around of you know,
lived these forty five years.
Speaker 4 (40:30):
I think she would have done great things. I think
she would have been a great mother. She was always
a great friend.
Speaker 7 (40:38):
Lasting impressions of a life ended too soon, a life that,
in Martha's own words, was full of hope. Dear Diary,
today is the last day of seventy four. Boo who
seventy four has been one of the best years of
my life. Well, hope seventy five life is as good
Yeah, you mentioned you grew up in Grantwich and you
were there in seventy five. The first thing people ask
you is, did you know Martha Moxley?
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Bell Haven, Connecticut is a small private community. It has
big estates and almost no crime, but a fifteen year
old girl has been brutally murdered there bell Haven.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
This was a virtually exclusive, very wealthy community in Greenwich, Connecticut,
where murders just don't occur.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
My name's Richard Burns, and I lived in Greenwich back then.
That's the first time in forty five years we'd ever
talked about it.
Speaker 4 (00:53):
My name is Torri Holland. I grew up in Belle
Haven and in nineteen seventy five, I was fifteen along
with Martha. She just had this beaming personality and her
beautiful blonde hair smiled all the time.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
I just smiled, you know. It just made you feel
like you were the center of the world.
Speaker 5 (01:16):
The SCA girls lived across the street from the Moxleys.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
They were a family of all these boys except for Julie.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
I went to school with them, and Michael was a
year behind me, and Tommy this year ahead of me.
Speaker 4 (01:32):
It was a lovely place to grow up. You just
felt safe, and that all changed after that night.
Speaker 6 (01:41):
The instrument used in the striking of the Moxley girl
it was a golf club.
Speaker 4 (01:47):
We know that. It's absolutely devastating.
Speaker 7 (01:53):
Nearly a quarter of a century would pass before police
would make an arrest for the murder of Martha Moxley.
Speaker 5 (02:01):
Thirty nine year old Michael Skekel was charged with murder.
Speaker 8 (02:05):
Michael, did you kill her?
Speaker 9 (02:07):
I was shocked, like Michael, I know Michael's innocent. The
evidence is much stronger, suggesting that other people may have
committed the crime.
Speaker 5 (02:21):
Bobby Kennedy Junior is Michael's cousin and he never believed
for a minute Michael Skeegel committed this crime.
Speaker 9 (02:30):
Twenty seven years after the crime, kennedy cousin, Michael Skeakel
convicted in the murder of Martha Moxley.
Speaker 7 (02:39):
Michael Schegel spent eleven and a half years in prison
until his conviction was overturned on appeal.
Speaker 10 (02:48):
An innocent man now goes free.
Speaker 7 (02:50):
But if Michael didn't kill Martha Moxley, then who did.
Speaker 11 (02:56):
This little girl?
Speaker 1 (02:57):
This cute, little amazing girl was murdered brute believed by somebody,
and I think it was somebody in that neighborhood.
Speaker 8 (03:04):
Could Martha's diary hold the glue?
Speaker 5 (03:07):
I believe all through this case there's someone who's been
keeping a secret.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
After she was murdered, everything had changed.
Speaker 4 (04:05):
You have no sense of peace. You've lost it all.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
I think you she's sodesting.
Speaker 7 (04:12):
Tory Holland and Richard Burns have waited decades to speak
publicly about the event that forever marked their lives, the
death of their friend, Martha Moxley.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
My backyard sort of melded into her front yard.
Speaker 7 (04:29):
Both Tory and Martha were just fifteen years old, living
in Belle Haven, Connecticut. Martha's family had moved to the
neighborhood a year earlier from California, and Martha wasted no
time becoming the it girl.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
She was not a wallflower. She wanted to meet everybody,
but everybody in Gretige.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
You know, it was very kind of reserved Northeastern personalities.
She was very an extrovert.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
She was the California girl of all of us. She
was jo to be around.
Speaker 11 (05:00):
You know, how can you kill someone like that?
Speaker 7 (05:07):
It so guests you.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (05:11):
It was the night before Halloween, October thirtieth, nineteen seventy five,
also known as Mischief Night.
Speaker 8 (05:18):
What is mischief night?
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Basically you would throw toilet paper into the trees, which
was fun.
Speaker 7 (05:26):
Martha headed across the street to hang out with her
very wealthy neighbors, the Scagol family. The Scagles were cousins
of the Kennedys.
Speaker 8 (05:38):
Rushton.
Speaker 7 (05:38):
Scagel's sister Ethel had married Robert Kennedy in nineteen fifty.
Rushton had inherited a fortune from the family's mining company.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
They were a very famous family. They just had a
lot more attitude about you know. They could do anything.
Speaker 7 (05:54):
Martha was friendly with the seven Scagol kids, spending time
mostly with Michael, who was also fifteen, and his older brother,
seventeen year old Tommy. On Mischief Night, Martha and two
other friends met Michael at the Scagle house around nine pm.
They all piled into a Lincoln like this parked in
(06:18):
the driveway.
Speaker 12 (06:19):
Michael and Martha are in the front seat of the Scagole.
Speaker 7 (06:23):
KRP reporter Len Levitt, now deceased, was interviewed in two
thousand and three. He spent more than thirty years investigating
the night of Martha's death.
Speaker 12 (06:35):
Tommy comes and joins them, so the three of them
are sitting in the front seat, Martha's in the middle
between Tommy and Michael. They're listening to music.
Speaker 7 (06:47):
They were in the Lincoln until around nine thirty PM,
when two other Scago brothers said they needed the car
so they could drive their cousin, Jimmy terran to his house.
Speaker 8 (07:00):
To watch the US.
Speaker 7 (07:01):
Premiere of Monty Python's Flying Circus. Michael told police he
left with his brothers and cousin. Well, Martha and her
friends stayed behind with Tommy.
Speaker 12 (07:14):
What goes on between Martha and Tommy then a sort
of playful pushing back and forth with sexual overtones. At
one point, Tommy pushes Martha down and falls on top
of her, and the friends are so embarrassed that they
leave and go home, leaving Martha with Tommy. Martha never
gets home.
Speaker 7 (07:34):
Martha's mother, Dorothy, spoke with forty eight hours in two
thousand Marri's Martha and remembered that around one am the
next morning, she began calling Martha's friends and alerted the police.
Speaker 13 (07:50):
I was getting more worried and more worried. I mean,
it just was not like her.
Speaker 7 (07:57):
When the sun came up and Martha still hadn't reached
turned home. Dorothy walked over to the Scagoad house. Michael
answered the door.
Speaker 13 (08:06):
I'm Dorothy Moxley and I live across the street and
I'm looking for my daughter Martha. Do you know if
Martha is here. No, Martha was not there. And he
looked he didn't look healthy. He looked well. I actually
think he looked hungover.
Speaker 7 (08:22):
Hours past, it was now almost noon on Halloween. Tory
was on her way to join the search when another
friend discovered Martha's body under this tree towards the back
of the Moxley property.
Speaker 4 (08:43):
And I could see missus Moxley at the front door,
and she's going. She didn't want me to come any further,
but I could see the devastation with Missus Moxley's.
Speaker 7 (08:54):
Steve Carroll was among the first investigators from the Greenwich
Police Department to walk up to Martha his body.
Speaker 10 (09:01):
It was a maniacal attack that should have stopped, but didn't.
Speaker 7 (09:07):
When Carol spoke with forty eight hours in two thousand,
he was still shaken by what he had seen.
Speaker 10 (09:16):
We didn't even know what color hair she had because
it was all blood red and all of the blows
or damage were all to her head, and then we
could see a path that she had been dragged down
in the high grass down to where her final resting place,
(09:37):
which was under the pine tree.
Speaker 7 (09:39):
Investigators traced the trail of blood to the Moxley driveway.
Speaker 10 (09:44):
She had been bludgeoned right near the driveway because there
was a huge pull of.
Speaker 7 (09:48):
Blood there, they discovered a piece of the murder weapon,
the shaft of a golf club. Former Hartford Current reporter
and Hours consultant Lynn Towhey.
Speaker 5 (10:02):
It was a Tony Penna six iron golf club and
she was struck so violently that the shaft of the
golf club shattered and one portion of the shaft was
driven through her neck.
Speaker 7 (10:22):
Just a few hours later, while camising the Scagle property,
police discovered a matching golf club that came from the
same set as the six iron that was used to
kill Martha.
Speaker 5 (10:35):
It came from a set owned by Anne Scakle, Michaels
and Tommy's late mother.
Speaker 7 (10:41):
Police began taking a hard look at the scalicles and
they would find what sounded like tantalizing clues left by
Martha herself in her diary.
Speaker 4 (11:07):
I think I was still in shock that she was gone,
but that this had to be a beautiful tribute to
her to send her off.
Speaker 7 (11:20):
A few days after Martha's murder, on November fourth, nineteen
seventy five, about five hundred people gathered for her funeral,
and while family and friends mourned the teenager, investigators were
learning more about Martha's relationship with Michael and Tommy Schegel.
Do you remember either of the scaeguls having a crush
(11:43):
on Martha?
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Well, it would be hard not to, I know I did.
Speaker 7 (11:49):
Martha's friends told police that Tommy wanted to date her,
but his advances may not have always been welcomed. On
September twelfth, Martha wrote in her diary about going for
ice cream with Michael and Tommy.
Speaker 8 (12:03):
Went driving in Tom's.
Speaker 7 (12:04):
Car and I was practically sitting on Tom's lap. He
kept putting his hand on my knee. And on October fourth,
a little over three weeks before her murder, Martha wrote,
I went to a party. Tom s was being an
ass at the dance. He kept putting his arms around
me and making moves.
Speaker 4 (12:28):
I did not know she was spending the time that
she was spending with them. Well, I did not hang
around with them. They scared me a little bit. Why
what do you mean, well, because they were very rambunctious.
Speaker 7 (12:44):
Two years earlier, the seven Skagle siblings lost their mom,
Anne to cancer. Their father rushed and struggled.
Speaker 8 (12:52):
To parent them.
Speaker 7 (12:54):
On the night of Martha's death, he was away on
a hunting trip.
Speaker 4 (13:00):
Their father traveled quite a bit. They were allowed to
do whatever they'd like.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
They definitely got into a lot of trouble, with a
lot of partying going on in that house.
Speaker 7 (13:08):
I read that Michael Schaegole had a drinking problem at
age thirteen.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
Really obviously say that's true.
Speaker 7 (13:16):
And that drinking may have created conflict with Martha. In
her diary the month before her death, Martha wrote, Michael
was so totally out of it that he was being
a real He kept telling me that I was leading
tom on Michael jumps to conclusions. I really have to
stop going over there.
Speaker 5 (13:39):
Tommy and Michael were both known to have very explosive tempers.
The two of them were fierce rivals for anything, you know,
from sports to affection a girl's attention. Martha's possibly.
Speaker 7 (14:00):
It was daylight when Martha's body was found, but based
on reports of neighborhood dogs barking the night before. Investigators
believed that Martha was killed sometime between nine thirty and
ten PM, around the time she was thought to be
at the Scagles. Remember, Michael told police that around nine
(14:26):
thirty he had left to go to his cousin Jimmy
Terrian's home, and Martha had stayed behind with Tommy.
Speaker 12 (14:35):
Tommy's story is that he last sees her at nine
thirty and he goes inside home to write a paper
on Abraham Lincoln. The police later find out that no
teacher at Tommy school ever assigned this paper.
Speaker 7 (14:51):
Levitt says police initially considered Tommy a strong suspect, but
it turns out that even if Tommy lied about writing
that page, he had an alibi witness.
Speaker 12 (15:03):
Tommy is seen again shortly after ten o'clock with Ken Littleton.
Speaker 7 (15:10):
Ken Lyttleton was a new tutor who had just moved
into the Scagle house that very day. He told believes
that Tommy was watching TV with him around ten pm.
He noticed nothing unusual about Tommy, and that's significant because
Martha had been murdered violently.
Speaker 12 (15:30):
How does Tommy do this? How does Tommy manage to
beat to death, move her body, clean himself up, compose
himself so that ken Lilytleton says of Tommy, I noticed
nothing about him out of the ordinary.
Speaker 8 (15:43):
No arrests were made.
Speaker 7 (15:44):
Months passed by, and with advice from Tommy's lawyer, rushed
in Scagle stop cooperating with police. He also fired ken Lyttleton,
whose life unraveled shortly after he moved to Nantucket.
Speaker 5 (16:00):
Rank heavily did drugs, committed crimes of petty larceny.
Speaker 7 (16:07):
Investigators pned in on this, schaegled tutor, speculating that his
downfall could be rooted in his involvement in Martha's murder,
but there were problems with that theory.
Speaker 12 (16:19):
He's got no motives to kill Martha. He never knew Martha.
The manner in which Martha is killed indicates that it
was somebody who had a relationship with Arthur.
Speaker 7 (16:31):
Authorities found no evidence to prove Lyttleton was involved. Years
went by, Martha's murder became a cold case.
Speaker 5 (16:41):
There were no more leads to pursue. There was no
new evidence.
Speaker 7 (16:47):
In nineteen ninety one, the trial of another Kennedy cousin,
William Kennedy Smith, who was charged with rape and Florida,
but acquitted would open a new chapter in the Oxley case.
Speaker 12 (17:01):
There's an allegation which is false, that William Kennedy Smith
was at the Scafhele house the night of the murder.
Speaker 7 (17:09):
That unfounded rumor and persistent press coverage kept the heat
on the Greenwich Police Department and prompted them to reopen
the investigation.
Speaker 12 (17:20):
And now they announced a reward in a hotline.
Speaker 8 (17:22):
This time.
Speaker 7 (17:23):
In an effort to clear his family name, Rushton Skeakeel
hired his own team of investigators. Their findings became known
as the Sutton Report, but the effort backfired because that report,
for the first time, pointed a finger at another of
Rushton's sons, Michael Skakel.
Speaker 12 (17:44):
Michael lied to the police.
Speaker 7 (17:46):
Michael told Belie that after watching Monty Python's Flying Circus
at his cousin Jimmy Terrion's house, he came home around
eleven thirty pm and went straight to bed. But he
told his dad's investigation there's another story.
Speaker 6 (18:02):
Oh my god, I tell anybody that I was out
that night, they're going to say I did it.
Speaker 7 (18:25):
For twenty year's investigators seemed stymied in their effort to
find Martha's killer. But all that changed in nineteen ninety
five when someone leaked the Sutton report to the press.
Speaker 5 (18:38):
It was never supposed to see the lighter day.
Speaker 8 (18:40):
The report was an eye opener.
Speaker 7 (18:43):
Tommy admitted to his father's investigators that all those years ago,
in nineteen seventy five, he had lied to the police.
Speaker 5 (18:51):
Tommy told the Sutton investigators that he did not go
into his house at nine point thirty, He stayed outside
making out with my Artha for twenty minutes mutual petting,
semi sexual encounter, and suddenly casts himself as being most
likely the last person to see her alive.
Speaker 7 (19:10):
And not just the last person see her alive, but
who's with her at the time that investigators believe she
may have been killed? Correct, But it wasn't just Tommy
who changed his story.
Speaker 5 (19:22):
Wasn't No Michael also changed his story.
Speaker 7 (19:27):
Remember Michael told Belize that after watching Monty Python at
his cousin's, he came back home around eleven.
Speaker 8 (19:35):
Thirty PM and went straight to bed.
Speaker 12 (19:38):
The report was devastating to the scal.
Speaker 7 (19:40):
Family, but then he described a very different scenario to
those private investigators.
Speaker 12 (19:48):
Feeling horny on midnineties drunk, and he goes out and
he climbs a tree outside Martha's window and he masturbates
in the tree.
Speaker 7 (19:57):
In fact, in nineteen ninety seven, Michael made a tape
recording of that story while working on a book proposal
for a tell all autobiography.
Speaker 6 (20:07):
I pulled my pants out. I've masturbated for thirty seconds
in the trade, and I remember thinking, oh my god,
I hope gotten over comed. But I woke up to
missus Moxley saying, Michael, has have you seen Martha?
Speaker 14 (20:23):
Oh my god, did they seen you last night?
Speaker 7 (20:29):
Reports had also begun to circulate that Michael had actually
confessed to Martha's murder. It was said to have happened
while he was a student at a lawn, A reform
school that his father sent him to after a drunk
driving incident when he was seventeen.
Speaker 8 (20:50):
One former Alan.
Speaker 7 (20:51):
Student, Gregory Coleman, recounted to a local news reporter what
he says Michael told him back then.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
As you ever said to me, was I'm going to
get away with murder I m kennedy.
Speaker 7 (21:05):
Coleman says, Michael detailed what he did to Martha that night.
Speaker 12 (21:10):
He had made advances towards her, and she rejected his
advances and quote unquote that he drove her sculling away
the golf clubs.
Speaker 7 (21:23):
After hearing from Coleman and other former Alawn students, State's
Attorney Jonathan Benedict convened an unusual and rarely used one
person grand jury to look at all the evidence and
all the suspects in the case. After eighteen months and
more than forty witnesses, Oh did.
Speaker 8 (21:43):
You just skeggle? Don't have anything to say? Michael?
Speaker 12 (21:46):
Did you kill her?
Speaker 7 (21:49):
The grand jury indicted Michael Schaggel for murder twenty four
years after Martha's death. Michael was forty one years old
when his trial began.
Speaker 8 (22:01):
And how big a story was that it was huge?
Speaker 5 (22:04):
The scene outside was circus, likely, Skegel, did.
Speaker 8 (22:08):
You have anything to say?
Speaker 5 (22:11):
All the national media was there, They had tents and
they had lights.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
It's Michael's defense and his only defense is that he
did not commit this crime.
Speaker 7 (22:20):
Michael Skeekeel was being represented by a well known local
defense attorney, Nicky Sherman.
Speaker 5 (22:26):
As charismatic as they come, Mickey is no amateur when
it comes to television.
Speaker 7 (22:32):
What's the motive for Michael Skeekell killing Martha Mosley.
Speaker 5 (22:37):
The only motive really is jealous rage over the attention
she was showing Tommy Schegel.
Speaker 7 (22:50):
In fact, in that same book proposal for his autobiography,
Michael wrote, I wanted her to be my girlfriend.
Speaker 13 (22:59):
I think Martha just rebuffed him. She could have been
flirting with Tommy, and maybe that made him angry.
Speaker 15 (23:08):
On trial Michael Skeagle.
Speaker 7 (23:11):
At trial, prosecutor Jonathan Benedict began with discrediting Michael's alibi
that he had gone for that ride to his cousin's
house around the time.
Speaker 8 (23:22):
Of Martha's murder.
Speaker 7 (23:24):
Prosecutors called Scagel family friend Andrea Shakespeare, who had been
at the Scapele house that night.
Speaker 8 (23:31):
Andrea Shakespeare is one of the witnesses who was certain
that mister Skegold never took that alibi ride.
Speaker 7 (23:39):
Benedict put holes in Michael's alibi, but he later said
Michael himself provided the most damaging evidence.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
The truth of the matter is that Michael Skeagle couldn't
keep his mouth shut for a quarter.
Speaker 9 (23:51):
Of a century.
Speaker 7 (23:52):
Benedict is referring to all those admissions Michael allegedly made
to killing Martha, like the one to align classmate Gregory Coleman.
Speaker 8 (24:02):
Although Coleman had died from a.
Speaker 7 (24:04):
Drug overdose before the trial began, his testimony from an
earlier hearing was read to the jury that infuriated Michael's
brother Stephen.
Speaker 4 (24:15):
Greg Coleman was high on heroin, a methadone.
Speaker 5 (24:18):
He was doing twenty to twenty five bags of heroin
a day.
Speaker 7 (24:23):
It turns out that before trial, Coleman admitted to Michael's
attorney that he was actually high on drugs when he
testified before the grand jury.
Speaker 8 (24:34):
But the state put.
Speaker 7 (24:35):
On nine other witnesses who told the jury that Michael
implied he had killed Martha. And then, of course there
was Michael's own words from that tell All book proposal.
In closing arguments, Prosecutor Benedict played and edited excerpt for
(24:58):
the jurors.
Speaker 14 (25:00):
Dot did they seen you last night?
Speaker 6 (25:03):
I remember just having a feeling of the panic.
Speaker 5 (25:05):
I think it very well may have been the lynchkin.
Speaker 7 (25:10):
What do you mean by that?
Speaker 5 (25:13):
Driving the nail into the coffin of Michael Skeegele. In
terms of a guilty verdict.
Speaker 8 (25:20):
It took the jury four days.
Speaker 7 (25:22):
Michael Skeegell was convicted for Martha's murder, his sentence twenty
years to life.
Speaker 9 (25:35):
I know Michael Skeekell and I know he didn't commit
the crime.
Speaker 14 (25:39):
Can talk with him.
Speaker 7 (25:40):
A few months after trial, Michael Skeekle's cousin, Robert Kennedy Junior,
accused the prosecutor of deliberately misrepresenting Michael's words in that
closing argument.
Speaker 9 (25:54):
His tape recorded words were used out of context by
the prosecutor to imply that he was confessing to the crime.
Speaker 14 (26:03):
Oh my god, did they see you last night?
Speaker 7 (26:07):
Because here's what the prosecutor didn't play in court.
Speaker 6 (26:11):
And I remember thinking, oh my god, I hope God
overcome me.
Speaker 7 (26:16):
Correspondent Leslie Stall asked Benedict about it.
Speaker 15 (26:20):
In hearing this myself, Yeah, without the preamble about masturbating
to anybody, is that he's actually talking about murdering her?
And isn't that really taking him out of context?
Speaker 6 (26:36):
No, I don't think so much.
Speaker 8 (26:36):
If I did this forty eight hours I'd be fired.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
I think it's a fair suggestion. Based upon the evidence
of the case.
Speaker 9 (26:44):
It appeared to anybody who looked at it that he
was confessing. He was saying that he was panicked because
he had committed this crime, and that was really the
segment that everybody agrees ended up convicting Michael Skagel.
Speaker 7 (27:01):
And Robert Kennedy was determined to exonerate his cousin. Eight
months after Michael Skeakell was sent off to prison, Kennedy
got a tip he believed would reveal Martha's real killers
(27:30):
to Robert Kennedy Junior. It was the break he had
been hoping for. Kennedy got a tip that a former
classmate of Michael Skeagle, a man named Tony Bryant, was
claiming he knew the identity of Martha Moxley's killers. So
Kennedy and Michael's attorneys track Bryant down in Florida.
Speaker 11 (27:50):
Brian has made a full confession of his involvement in
that crime.
Speaker 7 (27:58):
This is Tony Bryant in two thousand and three videotape
by Michael Skeaegle's team.
Speaker 14 (28:03):
We decided to go up to Greenwich and.
Speaker 8 (28:05):
Hangout, he told them.
Speaker 7 (28:07):
On the night of the murder, he had taken two friends,
Adolph Hasbrook also known as Al and Burton Tinsley to
Belle Haven.
Speaker 11 (28:16):
So do you believe that they killed her?
Speaker 14 (28:19):
There's no doubt in my mind that.
Speaker 6 (28:20):
They were involved.
Speaker 7 (28:21):
Bryant knew the two teams from New York and told
Skeegll's investigators that Hasbrook had become obsessed with Martha.
Speaker 10 (28:29):
I mean loved their beautiful blonde hair.
Speaker 7 (28:32):
Brian said that Hasbrook met Martha during previous trips to
belle Haven at a street fair and again at a dance.
Speaker 4 (28:39):
I'm trying to remember one of the mixers, and he
got jealous of other guys coming up to her and
talking to her.
Speaker 7 (28:45):
Tony claims Hasbrook complained to him, saying.
Speaker 10 (28:48):
I don't understand why she's spending her time with those.
Speaker 7 (28:51):
Guys when she could be with me. On the night
of the murder, Brian says he was with Hasbrooke and
Tinsley when they all picked up golf from this Schago backyard.
He claims that either has Brooke or Tinsley bragged about
wanting to hurt someone.
Speaker 13 (29:08):
I got my cave man clove right and I'm gonna
go grab somebody and pulled by hair and.
Speaker 14 (29:13):
Do what kates it.
Speaker 7 (29:16):
Tony says he wanted no part of it, so he
left Belhaven and then right after the murder, when you
met up with both Adolph and Berg.
Speaker 6 (29:25):
They told you we got we did it, We did it,
We achieved our fantasy.
Speaker 7 (29:29):
Brian stated that while his friends never mentioned Martha Moxley
by name, I knew who they were.
Speaker 14 (29:34):
Impla it was.
Speaker 12 (29:35):
It was so lobbyoust because I mean the next day
it was all over, I mean it was everywhere.
Speaker 7 (29:44):
Armed with Tony Bryant's story. In two thousand and five,
Michael Skeagel's attorneys filed an appeal asking for a new trial.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
You're on the petition for new trial that we filed
on behalf of Michael Skagel claims newly discovered evidence involves
the obligations concerning Tony Bryant.
Speaker 7 (30:03):
But at a hearing to present the new evidence, Bryant
refused to testify under oath.
Speaker 11 (30:10):
Well, of course he is not going to do that
because he admits that he brought them murderers to Greenwich,
because he could be charged with that crime.
Speaker 7 (30:18):
Kennedy says Brian wouldn't testify without immunity, So Skekell's attorneys
played his video statement, but the judge wasn't persuaded and
ruled against Michael Skeakell.
Speaker 12 (30:30):
Michael Skekell versus the State of Connecticut has been concluded.
Speaker 8 (30:36):
Despite the judge's ruling.
Speaker 7 (30:38):
Almost a decade later, in twenty sixteen, Robert Kennedy Junior
repeated Brian's allegations in his book Framed, using Martha's diary
as evidence. Kennedy claims that three weeks before her murder,
Martha wrote that she saw Tony and two strangers at
a dance. But that's not quite accurate. In her entry,
(31:04):
Martha doesn't mention Tony and she never uses the word strangers.
She writes October fourth, Dear Diary, tonight was a sacred
Heart dance. When we walked in, some guy asked me
to dance. Some other guy asked me. It turned out
to be a slow dance. It was stairway to Heaven
at the fast party.
Speaker 8 (31:25):
Wouldn't even let go.
Speaker 7 (31:26):
I also dance with Dickie Neil and Peter Zamensky a
lot with Dickie. The Dickie she mentioned is actually Richard Burns,
who says he was with Martha much of that night.
Speaker 8 (31:40):
Seeing Tony Bryant. Do you remember that at all?
Speaker 7 (31:42):
No? Did you ever meet al Hasbruck or Burton Tinsley? No,
don't you think you would have remembered if she was
dancing with someone else who seemed possessive of her.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
She didn't, She didn't. We danced the whole night.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
Al Hasbrook is innocent.
Speaker 7 (32:04):
Al Hasbrook declined to be interviewed, and we were unable
to reach Burton Tinsley, but Hasbrook's attorney, Larry Schoenbach describes
the allegations as false and imflammatory.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
The coin of phrase, it's black versus white. Let's blame
somebody else. It's the black guy, Let's blame him. Why
not let's take the most vulnerable person in our society
and accuse him. I am as certain as certain can
be that neither had anything to do with this.
Speaker 7 (32:37):
Burton Tinsley and al Hasbrook don't deny that they have
been to bell Haven on several occasions, but Schoenbach says
there's no evidence that either one was in bell Haven
the night Martha was bludgeoned to death.
Speaker 3 (32:50):
Nobody saw al Hasbrook. Nobody. They would have seen a
young guy, a black man in a very very white
community and a big but nobody saw him because he
wasn't there.
Speaker 4 (33:04):
Somebody would have seen strangers and recognized that they were strangers.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
Nobody did, and I just thought that was kind of
a cheap shot that they were going after this black
kid from New York City.
Speaker 4 (33:15):
I mean, you know, really, I think it's they're trying
to find a scapegoat.
Speaker 7 (33:21):
What's more, Hasbrook's attorney is baffled as to why anyone
would believe Tony Bryant. Bryant has a criminal history that
includes a nineteen ninety three conviction for armed robbery in California.
We tried to reach him, but up until a few
weeks ago, he was serving a seven year sentence in
(33:41):
a Florida prison for tax evasion. Still Showing Box says
Kennedy irresponsibly perpetuates Bryant's allegations.
Speaker 3 (33:53):
With no facts and no evidence. He continues to put
forth this lie is a way of trying to clear
his cousin, and I guess by extension the Kennedy name.
Speaker 7 (34:06):
In November twenty twenty, Kennedy insisted to us that Tony
Bryant has no reason whatsoever to lie about al Hasbrook
and Burton Tinsley. When we pressed him about it, he
got up from the interview chair. Do you have any
regrets of pointing the finger at two people who've never
been suspects. There's no physical evidence to tie them to
(34:29):
the crime.
Speaker 11 (34:30):
There are lots of evidence that tuk to the crime.
You have their best friend who's Satisfaican festival.
Speaker 7 (34:38):
But in the end, it wouldn't be the words of
Tony Bryant that changed everything for Michael Schaegel. Michael's did
(35:00):
not give up. On April sixteenth, twenty thirteen, Skegell was
back in court I do with his attorney, Hubert Santos
and a new argument that that media savvy defense attorney
Mickey Sherman, hired to defend Michael at his two thousand
and two trials.
Speaker 9 (35:21):
He was advised of his rights station.
Speaker 8 (35:22):
Had botched the case.
Speaker 3 (35:27):
Mickey had me believing he was the real deal.
Speaker 7 (35:30):
He accused his former lawyer of being too chummy with
the press.
Speaker 9 (35:34):
He said he was a media whore.
Speaker 14 (35:36):
Everything about this trial is unique.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
You spent most of your time talking to the media,
right is a question?
Speaker 7 (35:43):
Yeah? No, And Skegel claimed that Sherman failed to focus
on a more viable suspect in Moxley's murder, Michael's own brother, Tommy.
Speaker 6 (35:54):
You knew that.
Speaker 3 (35:55):
Tommy Schegel was the last person to see Martha Moxley alt.
Speaker 11 (36:00):
I believe so.
Speaker 7 (36:02):
Sherman never presented evidence of Tommy's infamous temper.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
Did you know that he strangled the fellow classmate right
in front of his teacher? I don't recall that.
Speaker 7 (36:13):
Sherman also failed to convince the judge to allow Tommy
to testify, which could have raised out about Michael's involvement.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
Did you try Who's going?
Speaker 13 (36:23):
In both the fifth Amendment?
Speaker 11 (36:24):
No matter what we.
Speaker 7 (36:25):
Did, Perhaps most shocking, Sherman failed to call it critical
witness who supported Michael's alibi that he was miles away
the night Martha was murdered.
Speaker 5 (36:36):
So that was Dennis SiO who was at the Terarian
household the night they were all allegedly.
Speaker 9 (36:43):
Watching Quonty five in this flying circus.
Speaker 5 (36:46):
Michael was allegedly there.
Speaker 11 (36:49):
Mickey sher meant in instead of doing that, instead of calling,
never talked to that witness.
Speaker 7 (36:54):
But in twenty thirteen Santos did, was there anybody.
Speaker 13 (36:58):
Else at the home the boys were?
Speaker 14 (37:00):
There?
Speaker 13 (37:01):
Was Michael Skeakell on Michael was with him.
Speaker 5 (37:04):
He puts Michael Skeegell at that house and has no
motive to lie. He's not related to Michael Skeegel.
Speaker 7 (37:13):
Schegel's team argued that these missed opportunities would have created
reasonable doubt for the jury, and the judge agreed. Six
months later, he overturned Skegell's conviction.
Speaker 4 (37:33):
Wednesday, at Connecticut judge granted the fifty three year old
a new trial in the nineteen seventy five murder of
Martha Moxley.
Speaker 7 (37:41):
After eleven and a half years in prison, Michael Skekell
walked out of the courthouse, no longer a convicted killer.
Speaker 10 (37:49):
An innocent man now goes.
Speaker 8 (37:51):
Free, but not for long.
Speaker 5 (37:53):
In twenty sixteen, the Connecticut Supreme Court, in in a
sharply divided decision, reinstead his conviction, saying the defense was adequate.
Speaker 7 (38:05):
Skeagel, faced with returning to prison, then filed for reconsideration,
and in twenty eighteen, with a new judge on the bench,
the Connecticut Supreme Court reversed itself, now ruling that Skeagel
is entitled to a new trial. That trial would never happen.
Speaker 14 (38:29):
Looking at the evidence, your honor, looking at the state
of the case, it is my belief that the state
cannot prove this case beyond a reasonable doubt.
Speaker 7 (38:40):
On October thirtieth, twenty twenty, the forty fifth anniversary of
Martha Moxley's murder, the state of Connecticut announced it would
not retry Michael Schagel.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
You know, Michael's going to walk around the rest of
his life with that on his head, no matter whether
or not it's been vacated by the court, public opinion matters.
Speaker 8 (39:07):
As for his brother Tommy.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
Years later, I ended up playing some golf with him
a bunch of times.
Speaker 7 (39:12):
I mean, did you ever ask him point blank?
Speaker 1 (39:14):
I did, I didn't do it, and it ruined my life.
Speaker 5 (39:16):
This case has been a long and winding road, a
very painful case emotionally for many people.
Speaker 7 (39:26):
For Dorothy Moxley, time has done little to ease her loss.
Speaker 13 (39:32):
Martha, my baby will never have a life.
Speaker 5 (39:40):
This was devastating to the Moxley family. Dorothy to this
day remains convinced Martha was killed by Michael Schaigel.
Speaker 7 (39:50):
To lose a child is the worst thing in the world,
and so after Amlah, half a century of questions and
two families shattered, all that remains is one terrible truth.
Speaker 8 (40:09):
As we sit here.
Speaker 7 (40:10):
Today, no one has been convicted of Martha Moxley's murder.
Speaker 8 (40:16):
No, that's true.
Speaker 4 (40:18):
It's very frustrating, it's very upsetting.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
I think it's sad that she's not around of you know,
lived these forty five years.
Speaker 4 (40:30):
I think she would have done great things. I think
she would have been a great mother. She was always
a great friend.
Speaker 7 (40:38):
Lasting impressions of a life ended too soon, a life that,
in Martha's own words, was full of hope. Dear Diary,
today is the last day of seventy four. Boo who
seventy four has been one of the best years of
my life. Well, hope seventy five life is as good
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