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Post by Joanna on Nov 6, 2013 23:28:16 GMT -5
Kennedy Cousin Convicted of Murder Gets New Trial
On October 12, a Connecticut judge ordered a new trial for Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel, who was convicted more than a decade ago of murdering a teenage neighbor, his defense attorney’s office said. Skakel’s attorneys had argued before state Superior Court Judge Thomas Bishop that his previous defense attorney, Mickey Sherman, did not competently defend him.
The judge granted Skakel a new trial, according to the office of his current defense attorney, Hubert Santos. Representatives of the court could not be reached for comment. Skakel, 53, is the nephew of Ethel Skakel Kennedy, widow of slain U.S. Senator Robert Kennedy.
Skakel is serving 20 years to life in prison for the bludgeoning death in 1975 of Martha Moxley, his neighbor in Greenwich, Connecticut. He was convicted in 2002. Both Skakel and Moxley were 15 when she was beaten to death with a golf club. Her body was found on the lawn of her parents’ home in the affluent New York City suburb. Skakel, who has maintained his innocence, was arrested in 2000. He was unsuccessful in his bid to be tried as a juvenile.
Appearing on CNN, Dorthy Moxley, the victim’s mother, said she remained convinced Skakel is guilty. “I have not given up and I do believe Michael Skakel killed my daughter,” she said. “I don’t believe there’s any doubt in that. He convicted himself practically, and there has been absolutely no new evidence that means anything since the trial.”
In 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by Skakel seeking to overturn his conviction on grounds that his constitutional rights had been violated because Connecticut’s five-year statute of limitations, in place at the time Moxley was killed, had expired when he was charged. In 2009, lawyers for Skakel unsuccessfully sought a new trial to overturn the conviction, indicating new evidence implicated other men. He lost a bid for parole a year ago.
Sources: Ellen Wulfhorst, Reuters, October 24, 2013, and Murder in Greenwich: Who Killed Martha Moxley? by Mark Fuhrman.
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Post by kitty on Nov 7, 2013 13:22:00 GMT -5
I saw something on TV a few days ago about some black guy admitting that he was there when a friend of his killed the girl. Did anyone else see that? It was Bobby Kennedy, Jr. who was being interviewed. If that's true, then maybe the cousin didn't do it after all.
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Post by natalie on Nov 8, 2013 12:15:10 GMT -5
I didn't.
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Post by jason on Nov 10, 2013 4:02:23 GMT -5
I saw that interview. He will probably be acquitted at the new trial because the guy who claimed that Skakel told him he killed the girl is dead now.
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Post by Graveyardbride on Nov 10, 2013 16:03:55 GMT -5
Kobe Bryant Cousin Witness in Moxley Murder
A former schoolmate of Michael Skakel’s says he has been hiding a terrible secret for more than 25 years. Gitano “Tony” Bryant, a cousin of Los Angeles Laker Kobe Bryant, claims he has known who killed 15-year-old Martha Moxley since the night of the grisly murder in 1975. And he insists that Michael Skakel, the Kennedy cousin convicted of the crime, had nothing to do with it.
“I am not seeking the limelight,” Bryant said over the weekend. “I have a family to protect, but I also had to tell the truth, and I know Michael Skakel did not do this.” Bryant, now a businessman in Miami, Fla., says Skakel didn’t commit the murder and that two of his childhood friends did. Bryant did not publicly identify his friends. The Hartford Courant reported today that one of the two men denied Bryant’s account and said he had nothing to do with Moxley’s death.
Skakel’s new defense attorney, Hope Seeley, said Skakel will seek a new trial based on the information from Bryant.
A 30-Year-Old Mystery. When a court convicted Skakel of murder last summer and sentenced him to 20 years to life, it seemed to lay to rest a nearly 30-year-old mystery that had haunted Connecticut’s elite in the wealthy town of Greenwich.
Moxley was savagely beaten to death in her posh Greenwich, Conn., neighborhood and her body was found in the early hours of Halloween 1975 on her family’s Greenwich estate. Police said the girl was beaten to death with a golf club from the Skakel home, which was next door to the Moxley house.
For years, it was widely speculated that the attacker had been her neighbor, a then-teenaged Michael Skakel, the nephew of Robert Kennedy’s widow, Ethel. Prosecutors convinced jurors in June 2002 that Skakel, who was also 15 at the time of the murder, had been competing with his brother, Thomas, for Moxley’s affections and that Michael clubbed the girl to death when she rejected his sexual advances.
Skakel’s conviction surprised many courtroom observers because prosecutors did not have any physical evidence linking him to the killing and there were no eyewitnesses.
Talk of ‘Caveman’ Attack on Girl. Now, a year later, Bryant – a former classmate of Skakel’s – has brought a new wrinkle to the Moxley case. He says he was with two friends, both visiting him from the Bronx, when they went to Moxley’s neighborhood the night of her murder. The two friends reportedly picked up Skakel’s golf clubs from the Skakel yard on a whim and told Bryant they wanted to attack a girl “caveman style,” using the clubs. Bryant, wanting no part of their plan, left the neighborhood, and learned of Moxley’s murder later. His friends later told him they committed the crime, but Bryant remained silent, he admits.
Skakel’s new defense lawyers tracked Bryant down based on an August 2002 tip. Mickey Sherman, Skakel’s original defense attorney, heard about Bryant’s theory years ago, but dismissed it, according to newspaper reports. He had no comment on the request by Skakel’s attorneys for a new trial except to say he continues to believe Skakel is innocent.
Sources: CNN, September 8, 2013, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., "A Miscarriage of Justice," The Atlantic Monthly, January 2003.
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Post by jason on Nov 11, 2013 12:28:34 GMT -5
If some lowlife like Kobe Bryant's cousin was in school with the Kennedy cousins, it would have been through some special program.
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Post by catherine on Nov 11, 2013 18:29:56 GMT -5
I always doubted that Skakel killed Martha Moxley because bashing someone's head in is a low class murder. The information about her being killed by those thugs came out when the trial was going on, but the defense lawyers didn't pay any attention to it for some reason. If they had, maybe he wouldn't have been convicted.
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Post by Joanna on Nov 12, 2013 0:17:39 GMT -5
If it turns out that Michael Skakel didn't kill her, it's going to make Mark Fuhrman look like a complete fool! I read his book, Murder in Greenwich, and it was a good book, but I never understood why everyone was so willing to accept the word of a person who had been convicted of perjury.
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Post by jason on Nov 12, 2013 15:26:56 GMT -5
I've done some checking and Bryant said that the reason he didn't tell about his two friends killing the girl back in 1975 was because his mother told him that because he was black that he would be blamed. I don't like Mark Fuhrman either and if Skakel is acquitted at the next trial, I hope that he sues Fuhrman for every penny he has.
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Post by Joanna on May 15, 2018 1:44:01 GMT -5
Connecticut Supreme Court Vacates Michael Skakel's Conviction
The case was tabloid fodder and spawned books and television programs. The murder of a 15-year-old girl in a genteel Connecticut suburb went years without an arrest, only to turn into a drawn-out legal battle that transfixed much of the nation with its connections to the Kennedy family and questions concerning the influence of wealth and privilege, with one twist after the other.
The latest turn, and quite possibly the last, came Friday, May 4, when the Connecticut Supreme Court vacated the conviction of Michael C. Skakel (above), who had been found guilty of killing Martha Moxley with a golf club in 1975. The decision was, in itself, another surprising development, reversing a ruling by the same court less than two years ago.
Skakel, a Kennedy nephew, had been convicted in 2002 of killing Moxley, who lived in the same Greenwich neighborhood. He was found guilty after a three-week trial that brought to light details about, among other things, his drinking and drug use. But as his legal team waged an appeal in recent years, they argued that he had been failed repeatedly by his trial lawyer.
In the majority opinion, Justice Richard N. Palmer cited the shortcomings of Skakel’s trial lawyer, noting the conviction was founded on a case “devoid of any forensic evidence or eyewitness testimony linking the petitioner to the crime.”
But in a lacerating dissent, Justice Carmen E. Espinosa argued that more than anything else, Skakel had benefitted from his wealth and prominent connections. She wrote that other convicted criminals “would undoubtedly be thrilled to receive such special treatment. Unfortunately for them, the vast majority do not share the petitioner’s financial resources, social standing, ethnicity or connections to a political dynasty,” she wrote. “Nor do their cases share the same ‘glam’ and celebrity factor as this cause célèbre.”
Skakel, who was 15 at the time of the Moxley’s murder, was not arrested until he was in his late 30s. He was sentenced to 20 years to life for the crime. He was released in 2013 after spending more than a decade in prison. A judge had vacated the original sentence, finding that Skakel’s trial lawyer had not provided effective representation. Then, in 2016, the Connecticut Supreme Court disagreed with the judge’s finding and reinstated the conviction. The high court, acting on a request from the defense, decided to review its own decision. In the interim, the makeup of the court changed with the retirement of the justice who wrote the majority opinion in the previous ruling.
The ruling was a reminder of how, after more than 40 years, the enduring legal struggle had left both the Moxley and Skakel families without a solid resolution. The two families had lived in the same gated community on the Connecticut coast. The morning after Martha failed to come home, Skakel answered the door when Moxley’s mother knocked, searching for her daughter.
John Moxley, Martha’s older brother, called the decision disappointing. In a brief interview, Dorthy Moxley, the victim’s mother, said she continues to believe that Skakel killed her daughter. “No question about it,” she asserted. “What do I want to say?” Mrs. Moxley continued. “Well, I am surprised and not particularly happy about this. But we’ll handle it and do what we have to do.”
Skakel’s lawyers had argued that his trial attorney, Mickey Sherman, failed to investigate a witness who could have confirmed that Skakel was nowhere close to the Moxley home at the time of the murder. They also contended his older brother, Tommy Skakel, was the likely culprit.
“The Supreme Court did the right thing,” Michael A. Fitzpatrick, Skakel’s lawyer, commented in a statement, adding that his client had been “unjustly imprisoned” for more than 11 years. “To be absolutely clear,” he added, “Michael Skakel is innocent of this crime.”
Tommy Skakel did not respond to requests for comment.
Martha Moxley, a popular teenager, was killed the night of October 30, 1975. Her body was found the following morning under a pine tree on the grounds of her family’s home. She had been struck with a steel golf club with enough force to break the club, with the head and part of the shaft ending up more than 100 feet away. Another piece of the shaft was used to stab the girl through the neck.
The grisly crime led to years of investigation, Hollywood treatments and books that capitalized on the crime’s link to the Kennedy family – Skakel’s aunt is Ethel Kennedy, the widow of Robert F. Kennedy.
After Skakel’s arrest 25 years later, prosecutors faced major hurdles as they brought the case to trial, which was centered largely on circumstantial evidence. The case raised a host of legal issues: he was initially charged as a juvenile, because of his age at the time of the murder, and had he been convicted in juvenile court, he would have faced little jail time. Beyond this, important witnesses died before the trial and prosecutors did not have direct physical evidence linking Skakel to the crime.
Investigators had recovered the golf club used in the attack, a 6-iron from a set that had belonged to Skakel’s mother, Anne, who died of cancer in 1973. But investigators found no fingerprints or blood connecting it to a perpetrator. Skakel also claimed to have an alibi: watching Monty Python’s Flying Circus on television at a cousin’s home miles from the murder scene.
Following Skakel’s conviction, several jurors said that they had been convinced of his guilt by his own incriminating words and years of erratic behavior. They said Skakel had changed his account of where he was during the killing and believed relatives and friends could have been covering up for him. The jury relied on a taped conversation between Skakel and the ghostwriter of his planned autobiography in which Skakel placed himself near the murder scene.
With Skakel facing a life sentence, his aunt sent the judge a handwritten letter from Hyannis Port, Mass., describing a tumultuous childhood and asking for leniency. She praised Skakel for his “mental toughness, fortitude, courage and tenacity” in overcoming his difficult upbringing and alcohol addiction and for his “sweetness, kindness, good cheer and love of life.” The letter was signed, “Out of the depths, but with hope, Ethel Kennedy.”
One of Skakel’s most vigorous defenders has been his cousin, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a former prosecutor and environmental lawyer who, in a book published two years ago, explored what he said was a botched police investigation and prosecutorial misbehavior and offered alternative theories about who killed Martha Moxley. “I think it’s a strong validation,” Kennedy said, “and I’m very happy for Michael.”
Prosecutors will now have to decide whether they will try the case again. On Friday, a spokesperson said the state was reviewing the decision, but would face significant obstacles, such as dead witnesses and hazy memories more than four decades after the crime. As it was, it took 25 years for Skakel to be charged following an investigation that had long been stalled for lack of physical evidence.
Sources: Rick Rojas and Kristin Hussey, The New York Times, May 4, 2018, Murder in Greenwich: Who Killed Martha Moxley? by Mark Fuhrman.
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Post by steve on May 18, 2018 14:25:22 GMT -5
So if Kennedy didn't do it, that leaves his brother or the black guys. Is there any DNA from the body that could be tested?
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Post by jason on May 18, 2018 22:46:26 GMT -5
So if Kennedy didn't do it, that leaves his brother or the black guys. Is there any DNA from the body that could be tested? My money's on the black guys. Bashing a woman (or girl) who's a friend over the head like that isn't the sort of crime a civilized person commits -- it's a stranger crime. |
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Post by Graveyardbride on May 19, 2018 8:07:08 GMT -5
‘Touch DNA’ Could Identify Martha Moxley’s Killer
In a stunning reversal of its 2016 decision, the Connecticut Supreme Court recently concluded, as a habeas court did in 2013, that Michael Skakel is entitled to a new trial in the Martha Moxley murder case because of ineffective assistance of counsel. Michael Sherman, his attorney, failed to present testimony from a credible witness that supported his alibi that he went with two of his older brothers and a cousin to the cousin’s house to watch television that night.
Martha, 15, was murdered on Halloween eve of 1975. Around 9 p.m., she and two friends walked across the street to the Skakel home and sat with Michael, also 15, in the family’s car listening to music. Around 9:15, Michael’s brother Tommy, 17, joined them and at approximately 9:30 Michael left with his brothers. Tommy, Martha and her two friends didn’t go to the cousin’s home and the two friends initially told police they last saw Martha standing with Tommy in the Skakel’s driveway. Later they changed their stories and claimed they last saw them pushing and shoving each other and falling to the ground near the swimming pool in the Skakel’s backyard. Years later, Tommy acknowledged he and Martha had engaged in intimate behavior for about 20 minutes before she left to go home.
The Moxley’s house was across the street from the Skakel’s backyard. As Martha walked up the driveway to her home, she was hit in the head from behind several times with a six-iron, hit so hard her skull was fractured and the club shaft broken. Her assailant then used the broken handle to stab her through the neck. The Skakel boys often played with golf clubs in their backyard.
Martha’s body was dragged 80 feet and hidden beneath a large pine tree on the Moxley property and wasn’t found until the next day. Because the autopsy was delayed, the time of death was estimated within a range of three to four hours, between 9:30 p.m. and 1 a.m. A forensic pathologist estimated the likely time of death to be around 10 p.m., which is consistent with reports of unusual noises in the neighborhood around that time, including two dogs in nearby yards that started barking in a loud and agitated manner – so much so that several neighbors went out to see what was going on.
In the 2013 habeas trial, a man who had not testified at the original trial said he was at the Skakel cousin’s home in North Greenwich that evening and talked with Michael and his brothers and cousin while they watched Monty Python. The habeas judge concluded Sherman could have easily located the man prior to the trial – the cousin’s sister had referred to him as her “beau” in her grand jury testimony – and called him to testify in support of Michael’s alibi. But for some reason, Sherman failed to do this. That was one of the reasons the habeas judge threw out the conviction and the Supreme Court did likewise in its recent decision.
Who killed Martha Moxley? Given the amount of time that has passed since October 30, 1975, the fact some individuals involved in the events that evening have died, that the memories of others have faded or changed over the years, and important evidence – most notably the handle of the golf club – disappeared in the early stages of the investigation, it may be difficult to answer this question.
Difficult but not impossible, thanks to recent developments in the analysis of DNA. Over the past decade, forensic scientists have developed the ability to collect and analyze “touch DNA” – the DNA in skin cells left on an object when a person touches it. Martha weighed around 115 pounds. Whoever killed her undoubtedly left his “touch DNA” on her clothing where he grasped and dragged her to the pine tree. Is the touch DNA of the killer still on the clothing Martha wore that evening? We don’t know. But if it is, we may yet find out who killed Martha Moxley.
Sources: Professor David R. Cameron, The New Haven Register, May 11, 2018, and Framed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr..
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Post by Kate on May 19, 2018 14:19:53 GMT -5
If she was rolling around in the grass with Tommy, his DNA would have been all over her.
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Post by catherine on May 20, 2018 4:59:26 GMT -5
If she was rolling around in the grass with Tommy, his DNA would have been all over her.
This was a stranger killing. Both Tommy and Michael Skakel knew her and if either one of them got mad at her or felt that she was leading them on, they might call her a bitch. What they wouldn't do is sneak up behind her and bash her head in. |
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