50 years since Martha Moxley's murder on the eve of Halloween | "48 Hours" Full Episode | Forensic Files

Yeah. You mentioned you grew up in Greenwich and you were there in 75. The first thing people ask you is, "Did you
know Martha Moxley?" >> Bell Haven, Connecticut is a small private community. It has big estates
and almost no crime. But a 15-year-old girl has been brutally murdered there. >> Bell Haven. This was a virtually
exclusive, very wealthy community in Greenwich, Connecticut, where murders just don't occur.
My name's uh Richard Burns and I lived in Greenwich back then. That's the first time in 45 years we'd ever talked about
it. >> My name is Tory Holland. I grew up in Bell Haven and in 1975 I was 15 along
with Martha. She just had this beaming personality and her beautiful blonde hair. Smiled
all the time. I just smile, you know, it just made you feel like you were the center of of of
the world. >> The Skakels lived across the street from the Moxley's. They were a family of all these boys
except for Julie. >> I went to school with them and Michael was a year behind me and Tommy was a
year ahead of me. It >> was a lovely place to grow up. You just felt safe and that all changed after
that night. >> The instrument used in the striking of the Moxley girl was a golf club. We know
that >> it's absolutely devastating. >> Nearly a quarter of a century would pass
before police would make an arrest for the murder of Martha Moxley. >> 39-year-old Michael Skel was charged
with murder. >> Michael, did you kill her? >> I was shocked. I was like, Michael,
>> I know Michael's innocent. [music] The evidence is much stronger suggesting that other people may have committed the
crime. [music] >> Bobby Kennedy Jr. is Michael's cousin and he never believed for a minute
Michael Skaggel committed this crime. >> 27 years after the crime, Kennedy cousin
Michael Skaggel convicted in the murder of Martha Moxley. Michael Skegel spent 11 and a half years
in prison [music] until his conviction was overturned on appeal. >> An innocent man now goes free.
>> But if Michael didn't kill Martha Moxley, then who did? >> This little girl, this cute little
amazing girl was murdered brutally by somebody. And I think it was somebody in that neighborhood.
>> Could [music] Martha's diary hold the clue? I believe all through this case there's someone who's been keeping a
secret [music] >> [music] >> after she was was murdered. Everything had changed. You have no sense of peace.
You you've lost it all. >> I think if she had said yes, they would. >> Tori 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. My backyard sort of meldted into her front yard.
>> Both Tori and Martha were just 15 years old, living in Bell Haven, Connecticut.
Martha's family had moved to the neighborhood a year earlier from California. And Martha wasted no time
becoming the ITG girl. >> She was not a wallflower. She wanted to meet everybody, but everybody in
Greenwich, you know, was very kind of reserved northeastern personalities. She was very um an extrovert.
>> She was the California girl of of all of us. She was a joy to be around. >> You know, how can you kill someone like
that? >> It still gets you. >> Yeah. >> It was the night [music] before Halloween, October 30th, 1975.
Also known as mischief night. What is mischief? Basically, you would throw toilet paper
into the trees. [music] >> It was fun. >> Martha headed across the street to hang
out with her very wealthy neighbors, the Skakel family. The Skakels were cousins of the
Kennedys. Rushton Skakel's sister, Ethel, [music] had married Robert Kennedy in 1950.
Rushton had inherited a fortune from the family's mining company. >> They were a very famous family. They
just had a lot more attitude about, you know, they could do anything. >> Martha was friendly with the seven
Skakel kids, spending time mostly with Michael, who was also 15, and his older brother, 17-year-old Tommy. On mischief
night, Martha and two other friends met Michael at the Skakel [music] house around 900
p.m. They all piled into a Lincoln like this, parked in the driveway. Michael and
Martha are in the front seat of uh the Skakel carp. >> Reporter Len Levit, now deceased, was
interviewed in 2003. He spent more than 30 years investigating the night of Martha's death.
>> Tommy comes and joins them. So, the three of them are sitting in the front seat. Martha's in the middle between
[music] Tommy and Michael. They're listening to music. They were in the Lincoln until around
9:30 p.m. when two other Skel brothers said they needed the car so they could drive their cousin Jimmy Tyrion to his
house to watch the US premiere of Monty Python's Flying Circus. Michael told police he left with his brothers and
cousin while Martha and her friends stayed behind with Tommy. What goes on between
Martha and Tommy then is sort of playful pushing back and forth with sexual overtones. At one point, uh, Tommy
pushes Martha down and falls on top of her. And the friends are so embarrassed, they [music] leave and go home, leaving
Martha with Tommy. Martha never gets home. >> Martha's mother, Dorothy, spoke with 48
hours in 2000. there's Martha >> and remembered that around 1:00 a.m. the next morning.
She began calling Martha's [music] friends and alerted the police. I was getting more worried and more
worried. I mean, it just was not like her. >> When the sun came up and Martha still
hadn't returned home, Dorothy walked over to the Skakel house. Michael answered the door.
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?
[music] No, Martha was not there. And he looked he didn't look healthy. He looked
well, I actually think he looked hung over. >> Hours passed. It was now almost noon on Halloween.
Tori 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 >> and I could see Mrs. 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 Mrs. Moxley's.
Steve Carol was among the first investigators from the Greenwich Police Department to walk up to Martha's body.
>> It was a maniacal attack that should have stopped but didn't. >> When Carol spoke with 48 hours in 2000,
he was still shaken by what he had seen. We didn't even know what color hair she
had because [music] it was all uh 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,
which was under the pine tree. >> Investigators traced the trail of blood to the Moxley driveway. She had been
bludgeoned right near the driveway because there was a huge pool of blood >> there. They discovered a piece of the
murder weapon. The shaft of a golf club, former Hartford current reporter and 48 hours
consultant Lynn Tui. >> It was a Tony Penna 6iron golf club. and she was struck so violently
that the shaft of the golf club shattered and one portion of the shaft was uh driven through her neck.
Just a few hours later, while canvasing the skake property, police discovered a matching golf club that came from the
same set as the sixiron that was used to kill Martha. >> [music] >> It came from a set owned by Anne Skakel,
Michael's and Tommy's late mother. >> Police began taking a hard look at the Skakels, and they would find what
sounded like tantalizing clues [music] left by Martha herself in her diary. [music]
I think I was still in shock that she was gone, but that this had to be [music] a
beautiful tribute to her to send her off. [music] A few days after Martha's murder
on November 4th, 1975, about 500 people gathered for her funeral. [music] And while family and
friends mourned the teenager, investigators were learning more about Martha's relationship with Michael and
Tommy Skakel. Do you remember either the Skakels having a crush on Martha? >> Well, it would be hard not to. I know I
did. >> Martha's friends [music] told police that Tommy wanted to date her, but his
advances may not have always been welcomed. On September [music] 12th, Martha wrote in her diary about going
for ice cream with Michael and Tommy. Went driving in Tom's car, and I was practically sitting on Tom's lap. He
kept putting his hand on my knee. And on [music] October 4th, a little over 3 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.
>> I did not know she was spending the time that she was spending with them. >> I did not hang around with them. They
scared me a little bit. >> Why? What do you mean? >> Well, they because they were very
rambunctious. [music] >> Two years earlier, the seven Skaggel siblings lost their mom an cancer. Their
father Rushton struggled to parent them. On the night of Martha's death, he was away on a hunting trip. [music]
>> Their father traveled quite a bit. They were allowed to do whatever they'd like.
>> They definitely got into a lot of trouble. There's a lot of partying going on in that house.
>> I read that Michael Skakel had a drinking problem at age 13. Really? >> I would say that's true.
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." 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. It was [music] 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 9:30 and 1000 p.m., around the time she was thought to be at the Skake.
Remember, Michael told police at around 9:30 he had left to go to his cousin Jimmy Terrion's home and Martha had
stayed behind with Tommy. >> Tommy's story is that he last sees her at 9:30 and he goes inside home to write
a paper on Abraham Lincoln. The police later find out that no teacher at Tommy's school ever assigned this paper.
Levit says police initially considered Tommy a strong suspect. But it turns out that even if Tommy lied about writing
that paper, he had an alibi witness. >> Tommy is seen [music] again shortly after 10:00 with Ken Littleton.
>> Ken Littleton was a new tutor who had just moved into the Skakel house that very day. He told police [music] that
Tommy was watching TV with him around 1000 p.m. [music] He noticed nothing unusual about Tommy and that's
significant because Martha had been murdered violently. >> How does Tommy do this? How does Tommy
manage to beat her to death, move her body, clean himself up, compose himself so that Ken Littleton says of Tommy, "I
notice nothing about him out of the ordinary." No arrests were made. Months passed by
and with advice from Tommy's lawyer, Rushton Skakel stopped cooperating with police. [music] He also fired Ken
Littleton, whose life unraveled shortly after. >> He moved to Nantucket. He drank heavily,
did drugs, committed crimes of petty larseny. Investigators honed in on the Skakel
tutor, speculating that his downfall could be rooted in his involvement in Martha's murder. But there were problems
with that theory. >> He's got no motive to kill Martha. He never knew Martha. The manner in which
[music] Martha is killed indicates that it was somebody who had a relationship with Martha.
>> Authorities found no evidence to prove Littleton was involved. Years went by. Martha's murder became a
cold case. >> There were no more leads to pursue. There was no new evidence. >> In 1991, the [music] trial of another
Kennedy cousin, William Kennedy Smith, who was charged with rape in Florida but acquitted, would open a new chapter in
the [music] Moxley case. There's an allegation which is false that William Kennedy Smith was at the Skakel house
the night of the murder. >> That unfounded rumor and persistent press coverage kept the heat on the
Greenidge Police Department and prompted them to reopen the investigation. >> And now they announced a reward and a
hotline. >> This time in an effort to clear his family name, Rushton Skakel hired his
own team of investigators. Their findings became known as the Sutton report. But the effort [music]
backfired because that report for the first time pointed a finger at another of Rushton's sons, Michael Skakel.
>> Michael lied to the police. >> Michael told police that after watching Monty Python's flying circus at his
cousin Jimmy Terrion's house, he came home around 11:30 p.m. and went straight to bed. But he told his dad's
investigators another story. >> I don't know. Oh my god. If I tell anybody that I was out that night,
they're going to say I did it. For 20 years, investigators seemed stymied in their effort to find Martha's
killer. [music] But all that changed in 1995 when someone leaked the Sutton report to
the press. >> It was never supposed to see the light of day. >> The report was an eyeopener. Tommy
admitted to his father's investigators that all those years ago in 1975, he had lied to the police. Tommy told
the Sutton investigators that he did not go into his house at 9:30. He stayed outside making out with Martha for 20
minutes. Mutual petting, semisexual encounter, and suddenly cast himself as being most likely the last person to see
her alive. And not just the last person to 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, was it?
>> No. Michael also changed his story. >> Remember, Michael told police that after
watching Monty Python at his cousins, he came back home around 11:30 p.m. and went straight to bed.
The report was devastating to the Skakel family. >> But then he described a very different
scenario to those private investigators. He's >> feeling horny around midnight. He's
drunk and he goes out and he climbs a tree outside Martha's window and he masturbates in the tree.
>> In fact, in 1997, Michael even made a tape recording of that story while working on a book proposal for a tell
all autobiography. I pulled my pants out. I masturbated for 30 seconds in the tree. And I remember
thinking, "Oh my god, I hope God never saw me." Then I woke up to Mrs. Moxley saying, "Michael, have have you seen
Martha?" I was like, "Oh my god, did they see you last night?" >> Reports had also begun to circulate that
Michael had actually confessed [music] to Martha's murder. It was said to have happened while he
was a student at Alain, a reform [music] school that his father sent him to after
a drunk driving incident when he was 17. One former Alain student, Gregory Coleman, recounted to a local news
reporter what he says Michael told him back then. >> The first words he [music] ever said to
me uh was, "I'm going to get away with murder. Kennedy >> Coleman says Michael detailed what he
did to Martha that night. >> He had made advances towards her and she rejected his advances and uh quote
unquote that he drove uh her skull away the golf club. [music] After hearing from Coleman and other
former Alain students, states attorney Jonathan Benedict convened an unusual and rarely used oneperson grand jury to
look at all the evidence and all the suspects in the case after 18 months and more than 40 witnesses.
>> Mr. Skaggel, do you have anything to say? >> Michael, did you kill her? The grand jury indicted Michael Skakel
for murder a little space. >> 24 years after Martha's death, Michael was 41 years old when his trial began.
And how big a story was that? It >> was huge. The scene outside was circus like >> Mr. Skele, do you have anything to say?
>> Anything to say, Mr. Skele? >> All the national media was there. They had tents. They had lights. It's
Michael's defense and his only defense is that he did not commit this crime. >> Michael Skel was being represented by a
well-known local defense attorney, Mickey Sherman. >> As charismatic as they come, Mickey
[clears throat] is no amateur when it comes to television. >> What's the motive for Michael Skakel
killing Martha Mossley? The only motive really is jealous rage over the attention she was showing Tommy Skakel.
In fact, in that same book proposal for his autobiography, Michael wrote, "I wanted her to be my girlfriend." [music]
>> I think Martha just rebuffed him. She could have been flirting with Tommy and
maybe that made him angry. >> On trial, Michael Skakel. >> Michael. >> At trial, prosecutor Jonathan Benedict
[music] began with discrediting Michael's alibi that he had gone for that ride to his cousin's house around
the time of Martha's murder. Prosecutors called Skakel family friend Andrea Shakespeare, who had been at the Skakel
house that night. Andrea Shakespeare is one of the witnesses who was certain that Mr.
Skakel never took that alibi ride. >> Benedict put holes in Michael's alibi, but he later said Michael himself
provided the most damaging evidence. >> The truth of the matter is that Michael Skaggel couldn't keep his mouth shut for
a quarter of a century. Benedict is referring to all those admissions Michael allegedly made to killing
Martha, like the one to Alain classmate Gregory Coleman. Although Coleman had died from a drug overdose before the
trial began, his testimony from an earlier hearing was read to the jury. That infuriated Michael's brother,
Steven. >> Greg Coleman was high on heroin on methadone. He was doing 20 to 25 bags of
heroin a day. >> 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. But the state put on nine other
witnesses who told the jury that Michael implied he had killed Martha. [music] >> Michael, how you feeling? And then of
course there was Michael's own words from that tell all book proposal. In closing arguments, prosecutor Benedict
played an edited excerpt for the jurors. >> Oh my god, did they see me last night?
And I remember just having a feeling of panic. >> I think it very well may have been the
lynch pin. >> Michael, Michael, [music] >> what do you mean by that? driving the nail into the coffin of
Michael Skakel in terms of a guilty verdict. [music] >> It took the jury 4 days. Michael Skel
was convicted for Martha's murder. His sentence, 20 years to life. [music] >> I know Michael Skakel and I know he
didn't commit the crime. >> Robert, can you talk with us? A few months after trial, Michael Skel's
cousin, Robert Kennedy Jr., accused the prosecutor of deliberately misrepresenting Michael's words in that
closing argument. >> His tape recorded words were used out of context by the prosecutor to imply that
he was confessing to to the crime. I like, "Oh my god, did they see me last night?" Because here's what the
prosecutor didn't play in court. >> And I remember thinking, "Oh my god, I hope Scott nobody saw me."
>> Correspondent Leslie Stall asked Benedict about it. >> In hearing this myself.
>> Yeah. >> Without the the preamble about masturbating to anybody is that he's actually talking about murdering her.
And and isn't that really taking him out of context? No, I don't think so. I think
>> if I did this on 48 hours, I'd be fired. >> I think it's a fair suggestion based
upon the evidence of the case. >> 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 um and that was really the segment that everybody
agrees ended up convicting Michael Skel. And Robert Kennedy was determined to exonerate his cousin. Eight months after
Michael Skaggel was sent off to prison, Kennedy got a tip he believed would reveal Martha's real killers.
To Robert [music] Kennedy Jr., it was the break he had been hoping for. Kennedy got a tip that a former
classmate of Michael Skakel, a man named Tony Bryant was [music] claiming he knew
the identity of Martha Moxley's killers. So Kennedy and Michael's attorneys tracked Bryant down in Florida.
>> Bryant has made a full confession of his involvement in that crime. >> Well, that night,
>> this is Tony Bryant in 2003 videotaped by Michael Skakel's team. We decided to
go up to Greenidge and hang out. >> He told them on the night of the murder he had taken two friends, Adolf Hasbro,
also known as Al and Burton Tinsley, to Bell Haven. >> So, do you believe that they killed her?
There's no doubt in my mind that they were involved. >> Bryant knew the two teens from New York
and told Skaggel's investigators that Hasbro had become obsessed with Martha. >> I mean, love their beautiful blonde
hair. Brian said that Hasbro met Martha during previous trips to Bell Haven, at a street fair and again at a dance.
>> I'm trying to remember at one of the mixers and he got jealous of other guys coming up to her and talking to her.
>> Tony claims Hasbro complained to him saying, >> "I don't understand why she's spending
her time with those guys when she would be with me." On the night of the murder, Bryant says
he was with Hasbro and Tinsley when they all picked up golf clubs from the Skakel
backyard. He claims that either Hasbro or Tinsley bragged about wanting to hurt someone.
>> I got my caveman club, right, and I'm going to go grab somebody and pull them
by hair and do what caveman do. >> Tony says he wanted no part of it, so he left Bell Haven. And then right after
the murder, when you met up with both Adolf and Burke, they told you, "We got we did it. We did it. We achieved our
fantasy." >> Brian stated that while his friends never mentioned Martha Moxley by name,
>> I knew who they were implying, it was it was so obvious because I mean, the next
day it was all over. I mean, it was everywhere. Armed with Tony Bryant's story, in 2005,
Michael Skel's attorneys filed an appeal asking for a new trial. >> Your honor, the petition for new trial
that we've filed on behalf of Michael Skakel claims newly discovered evidence, which involves the allegations
concerning Tony Bryant. >> But at a hearing to present the new evidence, Bryant refused to testify
under oath. Well, of course he's not going to do that because he admits that he brought the murderers to Greenwich
because he could be charged with that crime. >> Kennedy says Brian wouldn't testify
without immunity. So, Skakel's attorneys played his video statement, but the judge wasn't persuaded and ruled against
Michael Skakel. >> Michael Skakel versus the state of Connecticut has been concluded.
Despite the judge's ruling, almost [music] a decade later in 2016, Robert Kennedy Jr. 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, [music]
Martha doesn't mention Tony and she never uses the word strangers. She writes, "October 4th, 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 part, he wouldn't even let go. I also dance with
Dicki, Neil, and Peter Zammenski. a lot with Dicki. The Dicki she mentions is actually Richard Burns who says he was
with Martha much of that night. Seen Tony Bryant. Do you remember that at all? >> No.
>> Did you ever meet Al Hasbrook? >> No. >> Or Burton Tinsley? >> No. >> Don't you think you would have
remembered if she was dancing with someone else who seemed possessive of her? >> She didn't.
She didn't. We danced the whole night. Al Hasbrook is innocent. >> Al Hasbrook declined to be interviewed
and we were unable to reach Burton Tinsley, but Hasbuk's attorney, Larry Shomach, describes the allegations as
false and inflammatory. >> To coin a phrase, it's black versus white. Let's blame somebody [music]
else. It's the black guy. Let's blame him. Why not? Let's take the most vulnerable person in our society [music]
and accuse him. I am as certain as certain can be that neither had anything to do with this. Burton Tinsley and Al
Hasbrook don't deny that they have been to Bell Haven on several occasions. But Shonach says there's no evidence that
either one was in Bell Haven the night Martha was bludgeoned to death. >> Nobody saw Al Hasbrook. Nobody. They
would have seen a young guy, a black man in a very, very white community and a big guy, but nobody saw him because he
wasn't there. >> Somebody would have seen a strangers and recognized that they were strangers.
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. I mean, you know, really, >> I think it's they're trying to find a
scapegoat. What's more, Hasbro's attorney is baffled as to why anyone would believe
Tony Bryant. Bryant has a criminal history that includes a 1993 conviction for armed robbery in California. We
tried to reach him, but up until a few weeks ago, [music] he was serving a 7-year sentence in a
Florida prison for tax evasion. >> How are you feeling? Still, Shenbach says Kennedy irresponsibly perpetuates
Bryant's allegations. >> With no facts and no evidence, he continues to put forth this lie as a way
of trying to clear his cousin and I [music] guess by extension the Kennedy name.
In November 2020, 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 the crime. >> At the area, there's lots of evidence that ties them to the crime. you have
their best friend who says that they confess to him. >> But in the end, it wouldn't be the words
of Tony Bryant that [music] changed everything for Michael Skakel. Michael Skakel did not give up. On April
16th, 2013, Skaggel was back in court. >> Thank you. >> With his attorney, Hubert Santos, and a
new argument that that media savvy defense attorney, Mickey Sherman, >> Mickey, >> hired to defend Michael at his 2002
trial. >> He was advised of his rights, >> had botched the case. >> Mickey had me believing he was the real
deal. He accused his former lawyer of being too chummy with the press. >> He said he was a media [ __ ] Uh,
everything about this trial is unique. >> You spent most of your time talking to
the media, right? >> Is that a question? >> Yeah. >> No. >> And Skel claimed that Sherman failed to
focus on a more viable suspect in Moxley's murder. Michael's own brother, Tommy. You knew that Tommy Skakel was
the last person to see Martha Moxley alive? >> I believe so. [music] >> Sherman never presented evidence of
Tommy's infamous temper. >> Did you know that he strangled a fellow classmate right in front of his teacher?
>> I don't recall that. >> Sherman also failed to convince the judge to allow Tommy to testify, which
could have raised doubts about Michael's involvement. Did you try? He was going to invoke the Fifth Amendment no matter
what we did. >> Perhaps most shocking. Sherman failed to call a critical witness who supported Michael's alibi
that he was miles away the night Martha was murdered. That was Dennis Sorio, who
was at the Terran household the night they were all allegedly watching >> Montipython's Flying [music] Circus.
Michael was allegedly there >> and Mickey Sherman instead [clears throat] of doing that instead of
calling never talked to that witness. >> But in 2013, Santos did. >> Was there anybody else at the home?
>> The boys were there. Was Michael Skakel one of them? >> Michael was with them.
>> He puts Michael Skaggel at that house and has no motive to lie. He's not related to Michael Skaggel.
Skaggel's team argued that these missed opportunities [music] would have created reasonable
doubt for the jury [music] and the judge agreed. 6 [music] months later, he overturned
Skel's conviction. Wednesday, a Connecticut judge granted the 53year-old a new trial in the 1975
murder of Martha Moxley. After 11 and a half years in prison, Michael Skel walked out of the
courthouse. No longer a convicted killer, >> an innocent man now goes free. >> But not for long.
>> In 2016, the Connecticut Supreme Court in a sharply divided decision, reinstates his conviction, saying the
defense was adequate. Skel faced with returning to prison then filed for reconsideration.
And in [music] 2018 with a new judge on the bench, the Connecticut Supreme Court reversed
itself now ruling that Skegel is entitled to a new trial. That trial would never happen. Looking
at the evidence, your honor, looking at the the state of the case, it is my belief that uh the state cannot prove
this case beyond a reasonable doubt. >> On October 30th, 2020, the 45th anniversary of Martha Moxley's
murder, the [music] state of Connecticut announced it would not retry Michael Skakel.
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. >> As for his brother, Tommy, >> years later, I ended up playing some
golf with him a bunch of times. >> I mean, did you ever ask him point blank? >> I did. He I didn't do it, and it ruined
my life. >> This case has been a long and winding road, a very painful case emotionally
for many people. For Dorothy Moxley, time has done little to ease her loss. >> Martha,
my baby, will never have a life. This was devastating to the Moxley family. Dorothy to this day remains
convinced Martha was killed by Michael Skakel. >> To lose a child is the worst thing in
the world. And so after almost half [music] a century of questions and two families
shattered, all that remains is one terrible truth. As we sit here today, no one has been [music] convicted of Martha
Moxley's murder. >> No, that's true. >> It's very frustrating. It's very upsetting.
[music] >> I think it's sad that she's not around to you know, live these 45 years.
I think she would have done great things. I think she would have been a great mother. She was always a great
friend. Lasting impressions of a life ended too soon. A [music] life that, in Martha's
own words, was full of hope. Dear diary, today is the last day of 74. Boohoo. 74 [music] has been one of the
best years of my life. Well, hope 75 is as good.

It has been 50 years since Martha Moxley, a 15-year-old girl from Greenwich, Conn., was bludgeoned to death with a golf club. "48 Hours" correspondent Erin Moriarty reports.

True crime. Real justice. "48 Hours" investigates the most intriguing crime and justice cases that touch on all areas of the human experience including greed and passion. "48 Hours," which premiered in 1988, has developed a rich history of original reporting and impact journalism that has helped exonerate wrongly convicted people, caused cold cases to be reopened and solved, and along the way changed lives.

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Brief Summary

Martha Moxley's 1975 murder remains unsolved, featuring insights from Richard Burns and Tory Holland about the case and its impact on their lives.

Key points

The Murder of Martha Moxley. A 15-year-old girl is brutally murdered in a wealthy community, shocking the residents.
Michael Skakel's Arrest. Nearly 25 years after the murder, Michael Skakel is charged with Martha's murder.
The Overturned Conviction. Michael Skakel's conviction is overturned after 11 years in prison, raising new questions.
The Shocking Confession. Michael Skakel allegedly confesses to the murder while at a reform school.
The Jury's Verdict. After a lengthy trial, Michael Skakel is convicted of Martha's murder.
Michael Skakel's Release. After 11 years in prison, Michael Skakel is released, declared an innocent man.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I was shocked. I was like, Michael, I know Michael's innocent.

Reaction to Michael Skakel's arrest.

2:10WatchOct 30, 2025

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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