For nearly fifty years, a quiet, affluent Connecticut community has been plagued by the unsolved murder of Martha Moxley, a 15-year-old who was beaten to death with a golf club.
It happened the night before Halloween, known to some as the "Night of Doom," when teenagers celebrate the holiday early one evening by terrorizing the neighborhood with relatively harmless pranks like robbing houses and covering up the toilet paper.
Martha Moxley, who lived in Belle Haven, a gated community in Greenwich, Connecticut, joined in the fun with her friends on October 30, 1975.
But when she missed curfew, her parents became concerned and started looking for her.
The next day, Martha was found dead in her backyard. Pieces of a broken six-iron golf club were found near her body. An autopsy revealed that she had been beaten and stabbed with the bat.
While some residents assumed the killing was the work of someone who was just passing through town and saw an opportunity to kill, the broken golf club led investigators to a house across the street where the prominent Skakel family lived.
Michael Skakel, who was also 15 at the time of the assassination, and his brother, Thomas "Tommy" Skakel, 17, cousins of Robert F. Kennedy's widow, Ethel Kennedy, were both seen with Martha the night she was killed.
Months prior to her murder, Martha wrote in a diary about the boys next door, often ranting about having to dodge Michael's unwanted romantic advances.
The case attracted international attention because of the prominent and wealthy Skakel family, their connection to the Kennedy dynasty and the numerous theories about who killed the teenager.
But for decades, no one was charged with Martha's murder.
In 2000, Michael Skakel was arrested. He was 41 years old when he stood trial in 2002.
Prosecutors argued that Skakel became enraged with jealousy over an alleged relationship between Martha and his brother Tommy, leading him to kill her in a drunken rage on that fateful Halloween night.
Night of mischief... and murder
When Martha's body was discovered in her own backyard, she had been beaten to death and her jeans and underwear had been pulled down to her knees.
However, according to Jack Solomon, Easton, then chief of the Connecticut State Police, there was no evidence of sexual assault.
She had been attacked so violently that the metal shaft of the club was broken. It was then driven through her neck, according to the Hartford Courant.
"Martha was hit with a golf club. She received several blows to the head. The head of the club was found 50 feet from the part of her driveway where she was believed to have been accosted," he said at the time. "It is believed that the part of the golf club shaft that was used was later used as a weapon to stab her."
Martha was last seen alive with friends, including her neighbors, Michael and Tommy.
Michael told police at the time that both he and his brother had spent part of the night with Martha, but at some point they left her to go to his cousin Jimmy Terrien's house, where he and some of his family members reportedly gathered to watch. Monty Python's Flying Circus according to CNN.
The brothers were both considered possible suspects in the case, along with 24-year-old Kenneth Littleton, who was a live-in teacher in the Skakel household, CBS News reported at the time. But no arrests were made.
In 1991, the rape case against William Kennedy Smith brought the case back to life. Police investigated rumors that Smith, another Kennedy cousin, knew something about Martha's murder. Smith was acquitted in the rape case and no connection to Martha was found, CBS News reported.
But there was renewed interest in the case, which even inspired several books, including the novel A season in Purgator y by Dominick Dunne.
In 1998, a special grand jury was appointed to investigate Martha's death and in 2000, Michael Skakel, then 39 years old, was arrested for murder.
Martha Moxley's Diary
During the trial, prosecutors argued that Michael was angry with Martha for rejecting his advances while she was having a sexual relationship with his brother, Tommy, and pointed to entries in her diary as evidence.
In her notes, she described her relationship with the Skakel brothers, which prosecutors said showed the rivalry between them, according to Oxygen True Crime.
While her friends told police that Tommy wanted to go out with her, it seemed his advances were not always welcome.
About a month before her murder, Martha wrote in her diary that she went out for ice cream with Michael and Tommy: "I was driving in Tom's car... and I was practically sitting on Tom's lap." ... He kept putting his hand on my knee."
"He kept doing things like that. Jesus, if Peter ever found out, I'd be dead! "I think Jackie really likes Michael and I think he might like her too (maybe because he was drunk, but I don't know)," the entry continued.
On October 4, 1975, just over three weeks before her murder, she wrote: "I went to a party... Tom S. was an asshole. While dancing he kept putting his arms around me and making movements."
Another post described an interaction with Michael.
"Michael was so completely out of it that he was a real bastard in his actions and words. He kept telling me I was leading Tom on, even though I don't like him (except as a friend). I said, what about you and Jackie? You keep telling me you don't like her and you're all over her. He doesn't understand how he can be nice to her without hovering over her. Michael jumps to conclusions. I can't be friends with Tom, just because I talk to him doesn't mean I like him. I really need to stop going there."
Just over a month later, Martha was beaten to death with a golf club belonging to the Skakel family.
At one point in the trial, two people who had been in a substance abuse treatment center in Maine with Michael Skakel claimed that he had confessed to killing Marth.
Gregory Coleman told the court that Skakel said he could get away with murder because "I'm a Kennedy." He later admitted that he had used heroin before giving that testimony, but said he stood by his story.
Michael Skakel was convicted on June 7, 2002. He was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison.
Murder conviction overturned
After serving more than a decade in prison for the murder, a judge granted Skakel a new trial in 2013, saying his first attorney had failed to adequately represent him. He was released and has remained free ever since.
In 2018, the Connecticut Supreme Court overturned his murder conviction and ordered a new trial. But in 2020, the main state's prosecutor declined to prosecute Skakel again, cementing his freedom.
In January 2024, Skakel filed a lawsuit alleging that after his wrongful conviction, authorities withheld evidence for more than a decade that led to his prison sentence. The independent reported earlier this year.
According to the lawsuit, the City of Greenwich, its police department and the investigator "conspired, aided and/or otherwise acted jointly and/or in concert with one or more of each of the foregoing others" to violate Mr. Skakel's civil rights.
He claims authorities withheld statements from witnesses who said two other men were near Moxley the night of Moxley's murder.
The defendants in the lawsuit "knew that there were other, more likely suspects and that there was no probable cause to arrest and/or prosecute the plaintiff (Skakel), but continued to do so intentionally and maliciously, in order to condemn. "Kennedy Cousin," the complaint alleges.
Skakel's lawsuit seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages against both the city and investigator Frank Garr, who Skakel claims harbored "deep antipathy" toward him and the entire Kennedy family.
The lawsuit also alleges that Garr wanted to make a profit by collaborating on a book about Skakel's murder of Martha, and that he threatened witnesses into testifying against him.
Skakel suffered violations of his constitutional rights, loss of liberty from his time in prison, humiliation, shame, "severe emotional distress, terror and fear," financial losses and damages and "destruction of reputation and family relationships," the lawsuit said.
Their cousin, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now a presidential candidate, was one of his staunchest defenders and wrote a book claiming that Michael Skakel had been framed.
Martha's family remains convinced that Michael Skakel killed their daughter. Her father John died in 1988, but after news in 2018 that Michael Skakel's conviction had been overturned, her mother Dorthy Moxley told the New York Times: "I have no doubt in my mind that he did it."
