The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Skakel case coming to a close?
State must decide whether to file new charges in 45-year-old Moxley murder case
GREENWICH — With a court hearing approaching, speculation continues as to whether the state will retry Michael Skakel in the 1975 slaying of Greenwich teen Martha Moxley.
The chief’s state’s attorney’s office won’t comment on the future of the case and Skakel’s lawyer says he doesn’t know about the state’s plans.
But John Moxley, brother of Martha Moxley, said the family has been told by an individual close to the case that the state will not put Skakel back on trial.
Skakel, a Kennedy cousin and former neighbor of Moxley, had been found guilty of Martha’s murder in 2002, and served 11 years in prison. But a court vacated the conviction in 2013, a turn upheld by the state Supreme Court in 2018.
If the state does not retry, the decision could bring to an end one of Greenwich’s, and the state’s, darkest chapters, a seemingly never-ending, constantly twisting narrative — itself the subject of books, articles, films and 45 years of speculation.
John Moxley, who has been at his mother Dorthy’s side at court hearings, trials and press conferences as they pursued justice for Martha over the past decades, said the family is at peace with a decision to let the matter be.
“It would be extremely hard to put forward a case,” Moxley said. “People have died. People’s memories have faded. … It’s disappointing, but not devastating. We feel nothing but gratitude for the work the Greenwich
Police Department and the Connecticut state’s attorneys have done.”
The family had been discussing the issue with the State’s Attorney’s Office for the last month, he said.
Chief State’s Attorney Richard Colangelo would not comment on the case this week. Court sources have confirmed a hearing has been scheduled in the case for later this month.
Oct. 30 will be the 45th anniversary of the crime. Martha Moxley, forever a smiling 15-year-old gazing out from newspaper and magazine covers, would be turning 60 this year had her life not come to an abrupt and violent halt on Halloween Eve, 1975.
John Moxley said he and his mother got the closure they were seeking when Skakel was convicted of murder in 2002 by a jury. Even though Skakel was released on what Moxley called “a technicality” — and a “ridiculous” decision — there is no doubt in their minds that he is responsible for the crime, he said.
But as his mother did on several occasions during years of fighting to send Skakel to prison, Moxley this week offered words of compassion toward the man he believes killed his sister, referencing a tumultuous upbringing Skakel reportedly had in the wealthy Greenwich enclave of Belle Haven, where both families lived.
“I don’t think (Skakel) is the devil, I’ll say that,” Moxley said. “I think he led a tragic childhood. He was a full-blown alcoholic at 15 and doing a variety of other drugs. I think he got caught up in a fit of jealous rage because (brother) Tommy (Skakel) and Michael were interested in Martha. He did something that he’ll probably regret his entire life. I don’t think he’s a serial killer or anything like that. He’s been convicted.”
Tommy Skakel had been considered a suspect in the crime until investigators’ focus shifted to Michael in the early 1990s. In court filings for Michael’s 2013 appeal, his attorneys listed Tommy Skakel among several men who Michael’s original trial attorney should have investigated more fully in possible connection with the 1975 murder.
Michael Skakel has written about his struggles with drinking. As a teen he was sent to a now-shuttered private boarding school in Maine for troubled youth.
Skakel’s current defense lawyer, Stephan Seeger, said he had received no information about the resolution of the case from prosecutors.
“While we have always considered and discussed resolution options in this case, and there has been a fairly regular dialogue, we have never finalized anything that has been discussed between us,” Seeger said, “I don’t know what the state has in mind.”
No communication from the State’s Attorney’s Office has been made with Skakel, his lawyer added.
The defense lawyer has always insisted Skakel is an innocent man, a position he reiterated Monday.
“We continue to prepare for trial” should the case proceed, he said.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Skakel’s cousin and the author of a 2016 book that proclaimed his innocence, said Monday he was pleased the case might be dropped.
“I’m delighted. There’s been decades of injustice. Maybe now he can get some peace in his life,” he said.
Kennedy, a law professor who has been in regular contact with his cousin, said winning a guilty verdict on a re-trial against Skakel would be “a really long shot,” given the circumstances of the case and the passage of time.
“It doesn’t surprise me, I think they had no case,” Kennedy said.
The possibility that Skakel could be re-tried by the state has been a cloud hanging over him and his future, Kennedy said.
“His life has been stolen. He can’t get a job, he can’t do any of the things a normal person can do, because this has been hanging over his head,” Kennedy said.
Skakel has been living in northern Westchester County, N.Y., taking care of an elderly aunt, Kennedy said.
John Moxley noted that Oct. 30 will be the 45th anniversary of his sister’s murder.
Throughout the years following the crime, Dorthy Moxley was a persistent spur in the side of investigators, prodding them to reopen the case in the 1990s after it had gone cold, and she was a constant and stoic presence at nearly every court proceeding during the many years following Skakel’s arrest.
Martha Moxley was beaten to death with a golf club, which was later traced to a set owned by Michael Skakel’s late mother. Moxley’s battered body was found under a tree on her family’s property in Belle Haven.
A heavily criticized investigation did not lead to an arrest, and the case lay mostly dormant for more than 10 years until new investigations began in the 1990s that put Skakel before a jury for murder.
After several appeals were exhausted, another long legal battle in the case began in 2013, when a state judge tossed Skakel’s murder conviction on the grounds that he did not receive a fair trial due to inadequate representation by his trial defense lawyer, Greenwich’s Michael Sherman. In 2018, a sharply divided Supreme Court reversed its own earlier finding and declared Skakel was denied a fair trial due to the deficiencies of his attorney.
Connecticut prosecutors challenged the decision made by the state’s high court and brought a request to the U.S. Supreme Court. In January of 2019, that court declined to hear the case. It was became up to the state’s attorney to decide whether or not to call a new murder trial and file a new charge against Skakel.
John Moxley said people through the years have sought him out to offer support, and he has done the same to others who have lost loved ones to violent crime, just as his mother has given her time and perspective to support groups and conferences as a way to help others.
“It’s been 45 years and out of something that’s as terrible as it gets for your family, we have been witnesses to something very positive,” Moxley said. “When you witness something you become a participant in something positive versus something negative.”