The Ghosts of Greenwich

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Speaker 4 After four days of deliberation and 27 years after the crime,

Speaker 5 Mr. Skagle, do you have anything to say? Mr.
Skagle, do you have anything to say? Anything to say, Mr.

Speaker 4 Skaggle? Kennedy cousin, Michael Scakl, convicted in the murder of Martha Moxley.

Speaker 3 Who was him? That's him.

Speaker 5 Michael, did you kill her?

Speaker 6 I know Michael Scakel, and I know he didn't commit the crime.

Speaker 7 Martha was an extremely popular, attractive girl.

Speaker 8 She liked everybody and everyone liked her.

Speaker 7 Typical teenager in probably the best sense of the term.

Speaker 9 Martha was found dead under a pine tree adjacent to their home.

Speaker 8 You know, we knew Michael had done this, absolutely no doubt.

Speaker 10 The instrument used in the striking of the Moxley girl was a golf club. We know that.

Speaker 9 My name is Stephen Skakle, and I am the brother of Michael Skakl.

Speaker 12 Michael Skakel puts himself at the crime scene. Michael Skakel makes admissions that only a murderer would make.

Speaker 9 At the time this murder was committed, my brother was in the other side of town.

Speaker 6 The evidence is much stronger in suggesting that other people may have committed the crime.

Speaker 9 One of the key pieces of information was that of Tony Bryant.

Speaker 13 One weekend we decided to go up to Greenwich and hang out and

Speaker 9 says in no uncertain terms that his two friends committed this crime.

Speaker 6 They picked up these clubs and they said that they were going to go out and get a girl caveman style.

Speaker 16 Why should you believe me?

Speaker 17 I was there.

Speaker 6 And it was astounding to me. that nobody looked and said, well, wait a second, there's some other suspects here.

Speaker 18 Our brother Michael's been stolen from us.

Speaker 9 It's an overzealous, unethical prosecution in my estimation who's politically motivated.

Speaker 6 Somebody decided that Skagel was going to go to jail.

Speaker 9 We appealed to the Connecticut Supreme Court, the U.S. Supreme Court, Stanford Superior Court.

Speaker 9 We've got our brother sitting in jail, and we're not going to quit until he's out.

Speaker 17 This case has never been connected to any other individual, at least least credibly, except for Michael Skagl.

Speaker 8 Well, I just think he has to pay for what he did.

Speaker 6 He doesn't deserve to be spending 20 years of his life in jail for a crime that he didn't commit.

Speaker 3 I'm Troy Roberts.

Speaker 20 There were dramatic developments in this case that could free Michael Skagl. I'm joined by 60 Minutes correspondent Leslie Stahl as we unravel this incredible story that spans nearly four decades.

Speaker 5 Mr. Skagl, do you have anything to say? Mr.
Skagel, do you have anything to say? Anything to say, Mr.

Speaker 21 Skaggle?

Speaker 8 Spring of 2002.

Speaker 8 And a trial that Dorothy Moxley had been waiting and praying for for nearly 30 years. Dear Lord, again today, like I've been doing for 27 years, I'm praying that I can find justice for Martha.

Speaker 8 And those prayers were finally answered. Justice in the murder of her daughter, Martha.

Speaker 4 After four days of deliberation and 27 years after the crime, Kennedy cousin Michael Skakal convicted in the murder of Martha Moxley.

Speaker 8 For the Moxleys, it was the end of a long ordeal. We knew Michael had done this.
You don't think there's any doubt? Now, absolutely no doubt.

Speaker 8 But for the Skakles, it was the lowest moment yet in their long ordeal.

Speaker 22 For our family, grieving has coincided with accusation.

Speaker 8 Michael is innocent.

Speaker 23 There is no way on earth he could have done this. And I will fight till the last breath in me to get him free.

Speaker 14 My heart almost stopped.

Speaker 8 Stephen Schakl will never forget the moment the jury returned its verdict against his older brother, Michael.

Speaker 14 I looked down at the floor and

Speaker 14 my whole world had been shattered.

Speaker 6 I know Michael Scakel and I know he didn't commit the crime.

Speaker 8 Michael's cousin Bobby Kennedy Jr. has long been speaking out in defense of Michael.

Speaker 6 You know people are going to dismiss that and say well of course he's defending his cousin. But the facts themselves speak for themselves.

Speaker 8 Kennedy, a former prosecutor and now a professor of law at Pace University, closely examined the details of his cousin's conviction. His findings were first published in the Atlantic Monthly.

Speaker 6 That's why I took the time to put together this piece, is that I am utterly convinced that he did not do the crime. I know he didn't do the crime.

Speaker 8 After the article was published, Kennedy said he received hundreds of letters about the case.

Speaker 6 I treated all of these things with a lot of skepticism.

Speaker 8 But when he got a letter from a former classmate of Michael Scakel named Crawford Mills, Kennedy was intrigued.

Speaker 6 Crawford Mills told me that Tony had information about the murder of Martha Moxley.

Speaker 8 Tony is Tony Bryant,

Speaker 8 cousin of basketball star Kobe Bryant.

Speaker 8 In 1974, Tony was a classmate of Michael Scakel. He claims two of his childhood friends boasted about committing the murder.

Speaker 6 They went up to Greenwich on several occasions with Tony, that one of them became obsessed with Martha Moxley.

Speaker 8 Armed with this new information, Michael's defense attorneys were sure they had found the evidence they needed for a new trial.

Speaker 8 Members of the Scakal family, Stephen, John, and David, say their brother Michael could never have committed murder.

Speaker 16 This is Michael in an earlier, happier time.

Speaker 8 The father of a young son,

Speaker 8 a talented athlete.

Speaker 14 This is Mount Hood, Oregon. This is in Norway.

Speaker 8 Who was a one-time member of the U.S. National Speed Skiing Squad.

Speaker 14 Getting medals at both races.

Speaker 8 And a man, they say, is dedicated to helping others.

Speaker 14 I wouldn't be sitting here if it weren't for Michael.

Speaker 18 Our brother Michael has been stolen from us.

Speaker 16 He's innocent.

Speaker 14 I know that. We are going to fight until he is freed and reunited with his son.

Speaker 8 For the Skakles, it's almost ironic that a Kennedy has come to their brother's defense.

Speaker 8 They believe it was the Kennedy connection that put them in the spotlight to begin with.

Speaker 8 They were our neighbors.

Speaker 24 They were rich.

Speaker 24 And they were Kennedys.

Speaker 8 This TV miniseries was one in a long line of books, articles, and TV dramatizations about Martha Moxley's murder.

Speaker 8 has happened.

Speaker 8 We can't undo it. A parade led by the late writer Dominic Dunn

Speaker 8 and disgraced policeman turned writer Mark Furman.

Speaker 12 I think you have a lot of problems with a lot of power and money and politics.

Speaker 8 The Skaggle brothers are the nephews of Ethel Skagill Kennedy, who married Robert Kennedy in 1950.

Speaker 25 The Skagill family were as powerful and as rich as the Kennedys.

Speaker 14 Dominic Dunn calls us all a bunch of rich snobs. He was the only one that I saw coming to court every day in a limousine.

Speaker 8 Are you all independently wealthy?

Speaker 14 Well, we're having trouble paying our lawyers now, so I guess the answer is no.

Speaker 8 They live modest lives, they say. Stephen has focused on charity work.

Speaker 14 I worked for a humanitarian aid group for 11 years.

Speaker 8 His brother David works as a county recycling manager, and his brother John sells insurance.

Speaker 14 I mean, these are not high-falutin jobs.

Speaker 8 But once upon a time,

Speaker 8 The Skagles were millionaires, living a life of wealth and privilege.

Speaker 17 That was a different time, a whole different life back then.

Speaker 8 Their father, Rushton Skakel, had inherited a fortune from the family mining company.

Speaker 8 40 years ago, the family was growing up in this house in the exclusive Bellehaven section of Greenwich, Connecticut. Was everybody rich?

Speaker 14 I mean, it was a fairly well-to-do area. It was a very friendly, open neighborhood.
There were lots of children.

Speaker 14 It was a wonderful place to grow up.

Speaker 16 Michael's the one that's on my mother's knee.

Speaker 8 In 1973, a cloud cast a shadow over those happy times for this family of six boys and one girl when they lost their mother to cancer.

Speaker 14 I remember my father said,

Speaker 14 your mother has died. If you want to go to your room and cry, that's fine.
And it was never discussed again.

Speaker 8 Unable to cope with raising seven children by himself, Rushton Rushton Skakal hired a nanny, and then in October 1975, a live-in tutor named Ken Littleton.

Speaker 14 I mean, he was the football coach, but he was pretty much a loner.

Speaker 8 On the day after Ken Littleton took up residence in the Skakill home, Martha Moxley, the Skakal's pretty next-door neighbor, would be found murdered.

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Speaker 7 Martha was an extremely popular, attractive girl.

Speaker 7 Typical teenager in probably the best sense of the term.

Speaker 8 Martha Moxley was murdered at the age of 15.

Speaker 7 Moxley murder is still unsolved.

Speaker 8 Len Levitt, a writer for the Huffington Post, has spent nearly twice as many years investigating her murder.

Speaker 29 I became an old man doing this case.

Speaker 8 Levitt's reporting of the case began following Martha's death on October 30th, 1975.

Speaker 8 It was the night before Halloween.

Speaker 7 Martha does not return home and her mother obviously is concerned. She starts making calls about one o'clock at night.
The police start searching in the neighborhood early the next morning.

Speaker 7 and at one o'clock a passing schoolgirl finds Martha under a tree at the edge of her property beaten to death with a golf club

Speaker 7 so severely that the golf club shatters into four parts.

Speaker 10 The instrument used in the striking of the Moxley girl was a golf club. We know that.

Speaker 8 It was the first clue Greenwich police had to go on.

Speaker 7 The day the body was found, the police found a golf club that matched the murder weapon inside the Scakel home.

Speaker 8 But at the time, it wasn't enough to arouse their suspicions.

Speaker 7 First hypothesis, nobody from Greenwich could have done this. This is too brutal a crime.

Speaker 22 Today, Belle Haven became even more private, sealed off to everyone but residents and police.

Speaker 7 Some hitchhiker, perhaps off the throughway.

Speaker 8 The investigation began by establishing the likely time of Martha's death. Greenwich police consulted forensic expert Dr.
Michael Bodden.

Speaker 30 It was our opinion that the time of death, based only on the stomach contest, was about 9.30, 10 o'clock.

Speaker 8 The police then established who had been with Martha that night.

Speaker 7 Martha turns up at the Scakel house, perhaps around 9 o'clock that night with some friends.

Speaker 8 Martha got into the Skakles Lincoln, similar to this one, which was parked in the driveway. She sat between Michael and his older brother Tommy.

Speaker 8 A short time later, the Skakles say, Martha got out of the car with Tommy while Michael and a few others drove off.

Speaker 7 Somewhere about 9.15, Michael goes with his older brothers Rush Jr. and John and his cousin Jimmy Terion back to Jimmy Terion's house.

Speaker 8 Around the time of Martha's murder, John Skakal says they were at the Terion's house

Speaker 8 watching the U.S. premiere of Monty Python's Flying Circus.

Speaker 16 At 10 o'clock, Michael was eight miles away with myself and my brother Rush and my cousin Jim Terry. Terry.

Speaker 8 Meanwhile back at the Skagel home.

Speaker 7 Martha is with Tommy. What goes on between Martha and Tommy then is sort of playful pushing back and forth with sexual overtones.
Friends are so embarrassed that they leave.

Speaker 7 Tommy tells the police he last sees Martha at 9.30 that night when she leaves and goes home. Martha never gets home.
Tommy is seen again shortly after 10 o'clock with Ken Littleton.

Speaker 8 Littleton was the family's new tutor who had just moved into the house that day.

Speaker 7 Littleton is unpacking. He's watching the French Connection on TV.

Speaker 8 Everyone Greenwich police interviewed who saw Martha that night had an alibi. Michael Scakl's alibi was so strong, he was not considered a suspect.

Speaker 8 Several weeks would pass before investigators turned their attention to the person they believed was the last to see Martha Moxley alive, Tommy Scakel.

Speaker 7 Tommy's story is that he last sees her at 9.30 when she leaves him and he goes inside home to write a paper on Abraham Lincoln.

Speaker 7 The police later find out no teacher at Tommy's school ever assigned this paper.

Speaker 7 By the late fall, they are focusing on Tommy and they're focusing on him with a vengeance.

Speaker 8 What was it like when you all realized that your older brother was a suspect?

Speaker 14 It was just shock and disbelief.

Speaker 8 What did Tommy say?

Speaker 14 He said he didn't do it, and I know that he didn't do it.

Speaker 8 Tommy Skakel lived under a cloud of suspicion for years.

Speaker 8 Now married with children, he was the only Skakal family member who refused to talk with 48 hours. In the end, police never charged him, partly because of his alibi that night.

Speaker 7 The problem with Tommy as a murder suspect is that if this happened at 10 o'clock, Tommy's alibi is Ken Littleton.

Speaker 8 With no new leads, the investigation went cold, but Dorothy Moxley never gave up hope. We knew it had to be one of the boys, either Tommy or Michael.
Right from the beginning.

Speaker 8 Well, you know, the murder weapon came from that house, and that was the last place she was seen.

Speaker 8 In 1991, 16 years after Martha Moxley's murder, the case was revived when a new investigator started taking another look at the Schakles.

Speaker 8 With the focus back on his family, Rushton Schakl did something extraordinary. Trying to clear the family name, he hired his own team of investigators to look into Martha's death.

Speaker 8 Their results became known as the Sutton Report. The key findings focused on Ken Littleton and Tommy and Michael Skakal.

Speaker 8 But the effort backfired because the report for the first time pointed a finger at Michael.

Speaker 7 Michael lied to the police. Michael's story was he'd gone to the Terrians, then he comes home at 11.30 and he goes right to bed.

Speaker 8 But he told the Sutton investigators that's not all he did that night.

Speaker 7 He's feeling horny. Around midnight, he's drunk.
He wants to see Martha. And he goes out and he climbs a tree outside Martha's window.
He throws stones at the window and he masturbates in the tree.

Speaker 7 He climbs down right around where the crime scene is. He hears voices and he runs home and he goes to bed.

Speaker 18 I ran home and I remember thinking, oh my God, I hope God nobody call me jerking off.

Speaker 8 In fact, Michael even made a tape recording of that story in a 1997 book proposal for a tell-all biography.

Speaker 18 I remember thinking, oh my God, if I tell anybody that I was out that night, they're going to say I did it.

Speaker 12 Michael Scakill puts himself at the crime scene. Michael Scakl makes admissions that only a murderer would make.

Speaker 8 When former LA detective Mark Furman, who gained notoriety during the O.J.

Speaker 8 Simpson case, was leaked a copy of the Sutton Report, he wrote the bestseller Murder in Greenwich naming Michael as Martha's killer.

Speaker 8 Just one month later, in June of 1998, prosecutor Jonathan Benedict called for a special grand jury to hear evidence about the case.

Speaker 8 The grand jury heard some explosive testimony.

Speaker 8 Much of it from Michael's former classmates at the Alan Reform School, where Skakel had been sent after a drunk driving incident. Several of them dropped a bombshell

Speaker 8 that he had confessed to killing Martha.

Speaker 25 The first words he ever said to me was, I'm going to get away with murder. I'm a Kennedy.

Speaker 8 This is former Elon student Greg Coleman telling a reporter what Michael told him about the night Martha died.

Speaker 25 He had made advances towards her and she rejected his advances. and quote unquote, that he drove her skull into the golf club.

Speaker 8 In January of 2000,

Speaker 8 after hearing testimony from several Elon students and others, Michael, did you hear her? The grand jury indicted Michael Scakl for the murder of Martha Moxley.

Speaker 8 When Michael Scakal went to trial, the rest of his family was convinced he would be found not guilty.

Speaker 8 After all, Michael had an airtight alibi, and there wasn't a single shred of physical or forensic evidence that linked him to the crime.

Speaker 8 His brother David Scakl thought that finally the family name would be cleared once and for all.

Speaker 6 Mr. Skaggle, do you have anything to say?

Speaker 32 We were worried that

Speaker 32 without a trial, he could never fully get closure in clearing of his reputation.

Speaker 8 So you saw this as a way to absolve him?

Speaker 16 We all did.

Speaker 5 Please come to the microphone.

Speaker 8 Please come to the microphone. So when the jury returned their guilty verdict,

Speaker 8 the Skagill family was left shocked and devastated.

Speaker 23 It's disheartening.

Speaker 23 I love my brother and I believe in him 100%.

Speaker 8 Following Michael's conviction, Bobby Kennedy Jr. began his own investigation

Speaker 8 and made a stunning discovery.

Speaker 6 On the night of the murder, they picked up a golf club or some golf clubs from the Skakal Yard.

Speaker 6 And they said that they were going to go out and get a girl caveman style.

Speaker 14 It's 8.30 on Saturday morning and going up to visit Michael.

Speaker 8 For the first few years of Michael Scakel's incarceration.

Speaker 14 This is the last thing I ever thought I would be doing.

Speaker 8 This is how his brother Stephen spent every Saturday morning.

Speaker 14 There are some mornings where I would like to sleep in.

Speaker 8 Making the long drive from his home in Connecticut to visit his older brother in prison.

Speaker 14 Just let him know we're still here and still fighting for him.

Speaker 8 Now 46, Stephen is the youngest of the Scakel children. He was just nine when Martha Moxley was murdered.

Speaker 14 There's only so much people can take, and we've taken it for 30 years.

Speaker 8 Since the conviction.

Speaker 14 I've gone through all of the transcripts, all the police reports.

Speaker 8 He has taken the lead in the fight to clear Michael and the Skakal family name. Did you ever look Michael in the eye and ask him directly if he killed Martha?

Speaker 3 No.

Speaker 14 I know Michael and I know

Speaker 14 in my heart that he did not.

Speaker 6 He doesn't deserve to be spending 20 years of his life in jail for a crime that he didn't commit.

Speaker 8 Even more outspoken is Skakel's cousin, Bobby Kennedy Jr.

Speaker 6 For me to come out publicly to defend somebody that basically everybody in the country feels is guilty of murder is, from a personal strategy, not a good choice for me, but I know he's innocent.

Speaker 8 Although they were not close as kids, as adults, Bobby Kennedy and Michael Skagel shared a similar history, problems with addiction.

Speaker 6 I became close to Michael Scakel in 1983 when I first got sober. And Michael had been sober for

Speaker 6 a year or two years at that time.

Speaker 8 Kennedy spent six months investigating the case for the Atlantic Monthly article. What do you hope this article you wrote is going to accomplish?

Speaker 6 I really wrote that article for Michael's son, for Georgie. Doodle-dee-doot-de-doodly.
Because he's going to grow up with most people in this country thinking that his father murdered a girl.

Speaker 6 And he didn't do it.

Speaker 8 Kennedy knew he had hit pay dirt when the letter from Skagel's classmate Crawford Mills arrived, revealing that another classmate, Tony Bryant, said he knew who had killed Martha Moxley.

Speaker 6 Tony Bryant is one of the first African-American students at Brunswick. I don't know.

Speaker 8 I see.

Speaker 8 Bobby Kennedy located Bryant in Florida.

Speaker 6 Tony's story has a lot of credibility.

Speaker 8 Bryant told Kennedy that on the night Martha died, he was was in Greenwich with two friends from the Bronx.

Speaker 6 One of them was black and one of them was white and that they were these two people were best friends.

Speaker 6 They went up to Greenwich on several occasions with Tony that one of them became obsessed with Martha Moxley.

Speaker 8 Tony told Kennedy his friends had a plan.

Speaker 8 They picked up golf clubs from the Skaggles Yard.

Speaker 6 They picked up these clubs and they said that they were going to go out and get a girl caveman style and that Tony understood the girl to mean Martha Moxley.

Speaker 8 Now what is caveman style? What is that?

Speaker 6 What he says is that it meant that they were going to hit her over the head and drag her into the bushes.

Speaker 8 Bryant wanted no part of their plan and claims he left. When he read what happened to Martha Moxley, he feared the worst.

Speaker 8 He's saying that they confessed to him a couple of days later that they had killed Martha Moxley?

Speaker 6 Well, they never actually said that they had killed Martha Moxley, but that they

Speaker 3 were

Speaker 6 in some ways boastful about it and were kind of egging him on to inquire to them about the details. They would say things to him that were suggestive, like, we accomplished our mission and

Speaker 6 we did it.

Speaker 8 Why would he wait 28 years?

Speaker 6 His mother urged him not to talk about it publicly.

Speaker 6 That was prompted by her fear that as a young black man in Greenwich, that

Speaker 6 he would be a target for prosecution.

Speaker 8 When Bobby Kennedy spoke with the two men, he says neither of them acted as though they had anything to hide.

Speaker 6 I asked them

Speaker 6 to confirm some of the basic information information that I'd heard, that

Speaker 6 they were friends of Tony's, that they.

Speaker 8 They did confirm that?

Speaker 10 Yes.

Speaker 6 That they had been to

Speaker 6 Greenwich with him on several occasions.

Speaker 3 They confirmed that? Yeah.

Speaker 8 Bobby Kennedy, however, did not ask them if they had anything to do with Martha Moxley's murder.

Speaker 6 I didn't tell them that Tony had accused them of committing the crime at that point.

Speaker 8 Both men have denied any involvement in the death of Martha Moxley and despite attempts to challenge Tony Bryant's credibility, the man who went to prep school with Michael Scakel stands by his story.

Speaker 6 Somebody decided that Scakel was going to go to jail and that all of the other evidence, the abundant evidence against other people were going to be ignored.

Speaker 8 Kennedy says these new developments support his arguments that the prosecution simply had the wrong man.

Speaker 3 Michael, Michael, Michael.

Speaker 6 The strongest piece of evidence is that Michael has an alibi. Monty Python's Flying Circus.

Speaker 8 Michael's alibi that he was across town watching Monty Python when the murder occurred has always been supported by several relatives,

Speaker 8 including his brother John.

Speaker 16 I took a lie detector test in which I was asked who was in the car that went to my cousins and Tarrians who live about eight miles away and Michael was in fact in the car and that was my response.

Speaker 8 John's 1975 polygraph results, however, were inadmissible in court. What did make it into the trial though was the testimony of two former Elan students.

Speaker 6 The two most damaging witnesses against Michael were Greg Coleman and John Higgins.

Speaker 8 The prosecution contended that when 17-year-old Michael was at the Elon School, he talked openly about the murder.

Speaker 6 Greg Coleman testified that he had heard Michael confess to having murdered Martha Moxley five or six times.

Speaker 6 When he came up in front of the preliminary hearing, Greg Coleman testified that Michael had only confessed to him actually once or twice.

Speaker 8 When Michael's defense attorney Mickey Sherman asked Greg Coleman why he had changed his story, Coleman admitted that prior to facing the grand jury, he had taken 25 bags of heroin.

Speaker 8 Greg Coleman died of a drug overdose just before the trial, but a tape of his previous testimony was played for the jury.

Speaker 6 Higgins was an Atlant bully who tortured Michael when he was at Atlan.

Speaker 8 John Higgins did testify at the trial and said Michael had also confessed to him. Higgins refused our requests for an interview.
Why couldn't Michael's attorneys have destroyed their credibility?

Speaker 6 I think Michael could have gotten better representation.

Speaker 14 I would ask Mickey, why aren't you bringing this or that up? Everything's fine.

Speaker 14 We're going to have a good day.

Speaker 8 Michael, how are you feeling? But the worst day of all for the Skakles and Mickey Sherman was June 3rd, the day of closing arguments.

Speaker 6 Prosecutors in the case used a very, very sophisticated multimedia technique.

Speaker 17 We needed to connect the dots, and that's what I did.

Speaker 8 Prosecutor Jonathan Benedict transcribed and played Michael's own words from that book proposal over gory photographs from the crime scene that we have blocked out.

Speaker 18 Then I woke up to Mrs. Moxley saying, Michael, have you seen Martha? I was like, oh my God, did they see me last night?

Speaker 8 John Scakel, who was in the courtroom, feels it distorted Michael's own words into a confession.

Speaker 18 We all felt sick. And I remember just having a feeling of panic.

Speaker 3 Like, oh, shit.

Speaker 18 Like my worry of what I went to bed with.

Speaker 8 The problem, says Bobby Kennedy, was that Michael was talking about being seen masturbating, not committing murder.

Speaker 6 His tape-recorded words were used out of context by the prosecutor to imply that he was confessing to it to the crime.

Speaker 6 That multimedia display really convicted Michael in the end.

Speaker 8 But is the end about to be rewritten? What the Skakles now have is hope.

Speaker 8 Tony Bryant was eventually persuaded to do a 90-minute interview on videotape confirming what he had told Bobby Kennedy.

Speaker 8 Would this be Michael Skakal's ticket out of jail?

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Speaker 6 Talking about a crime that was 27 years old.

Speaker 6 Everybody's memories are hazy.

Speaker 8 To Bobby Kennedy Jr., the conviction of Michael Skagl was a miscarriage.

Speaker 6 This was the easiest case in the world to win. Reasonable doubt was all over the place.

Speaker 8 Turns out that Tony Bryant's story was known even before the trial began. Michael, Michael!

Speaker 8 Remember Crawford Mills? He says he first took the information to the prosecutor's office and Michael Skagl's attorney just before the trial.

Speaker 6 Prosecutor told him to get get lost. They weren't interested in pursuing this evidence, this lead.

Speaker 8 In fact, the defense didn't pursue it either. While prosecutor Jonathan Benedict declined to talk to us about Tony Bryant's story, he was clear that he thought the trial was fair and appropriate.

Speaker 8 Is there any part of your brain that has any doubt that Michael did it?

Speaker 17 Absolutely not.

Speaker 8 What in the article, Bobby Kennedy's article, did you feel was simply not true?

Speaker 20 Almost all of it.

Speaker 6 Literally paragraph by paragraph.

Speaker 8 Can you give us one or two highlights that you think are the most egregious?

Speaker 17 Probably his attack on Ken Littleton.

Speaker 8 The Skakle family originally thought that Ken Littleton, the family tutor, should have been looked at more closely.

Speaker 8 At the time of the murder, Littleton said he was watching a movie with Tommy Scakel.

Speaker 8 But there were some inconsistencies in his story.

Speaker 12 He's been diagnosed having a bipolar disorder and severe.

Speaker 8 He's been in and out of hospitals. It's not a problem.

Speaker 12 He's had a number of hospitalizations.

Speaker 8 Gene Riccio was Ken Littleton's attorney. Is it possible that the illness can be attributed to the murder of Martha Moxley?

Speaker 12 I don't think so at all.

Speaker 12 I think arguments made that Mr. Littleton is responsible for this homicide are ridiculous.

Speaker 8 In fact, the Schakles agree and now no longer consider Ken Littleton their primary suspect.

Speaker 8 Prosecutor Benedict says there was no miscarriage of justice.

Speaker 8 His case was built point by point, beginning with discrediting Michael's airtight alibi of taking a ride to his cousin's house at the time of the murder.

Speaker 8 He put Skakel family friend Andrea Shakespeare on the stand.

Speaker 17 Andrea Shakespeare is one of the witnesses from the neighborhood on the night of the murder who was certain that Mr. Skakold never took that alibi ride.

Speaker 8 In her testimony, when asked if Michael had gone to his cousins that night, she replied, he did not.

Speaker 8 Benedict continued to attack the alibi using Michael's own brother, John. One of the other Schakold brothers, John, had taken a polygraph.

Speaker 17 Yeah, he passed. He was, therefore, in 1975-1976, considered to be the most credible alibi witness for Michael Skagel.
But a funny thing happened over the years.

Speaker 17 When John came before the grand jury, he changed his story to this. He really didn't have any recall of who went to Tarion's house and who didn't.

Speaker 8 Benedict may have succeeded in discrediting the alibi, but ultimately, he says, Michael did himself in.

Speaker 17 The truth of the matter is that Michael Skagel couldn't keep his mouth shut for a quarter of a century.

Speaker 8 Benedict is referring to those Elon students and others that Michael supposedly confessed to over the years. Bobby Kennedy spends some time in the article really shredding their truthfulness

Speaker 8 and their motivation for coming forward.

Speaker 17 Mickey Sherman did that at trial.

Speaker 8 And they say he wasn't that successful or effective. He didn't push hard enough.

Speaker 17 Mickey pushed as hard as he possibly could.

Speaker 17 He didn't miss a single issue.

Speaker 8 What the defense failed to anticipate was the impact of Jonathan Benedict's closing argument.

Speaker 17 I don't know that the Scapel family realized how many persuasive dots I had to connect.

Speaker 8 Up until that point, both sides thought Michael might be acquitted. There were many days I thought, oh, you know, this is just never going to happen.
This is just looking very bleak.

Speaker 8 Were you thinking it was going to go the other way?

Speaker 32 Well, yeah, we had no doubt about it until

Speaker 32 we saw this multimedia closing.

Speaker 8 Benedict played a critical passage from Michael's own book proposal to sum up his case.

Speaker 8 But the passage he used was edited in such a way that what the jury heard appeared to be a confession to murder.

Speaker 18 Then I woke up to Mrs. Moxley saying,

Speaker 18 Michael, have you seen Martha?

Speaker 18 I was like, oh my god, did they see me last night? And I remember just having a feeling of panic, like, oh, shit.

Speaker 8 But here is what Benedict intentionally left out.

Speaker 18 And I remember thinking, oh my God, I hope to God nobody saw me jerking off. Then I woke up to Mrs.
Moxley saying, Michael, have you seen Martha?

Speaker 3 I was like, oh my God, did they see me last night?

Speaker 8 In hearing this myself,

Speaker 22 without the

Speaker 8 preamble about masturbating, is that Mrs. Moxley wakes him up and he says, oh my God, did they see me last night? And over in the corner is a picture of the battered body of Martha.

Speaker 8 Oh my god, did they see me last night? I had a feeling of panic and they're looking at the picture of her and the suggestion

Speaker 8 to anybody is that he's actually talking about murdering her. And isn't that

Speaker 8 really taking him out of context?

Speaker 17 No, I don't think so.

Speaker 8 If I did this on 48 hours, I'd be fired.

Speaker 17 I think it's a fair suggestion based upon

Speaker 17 the evidence of the case.

Speaker 8 It took the jury four days to come back with a guilty verdict. The sentence, 20 years to life.

Speaker 8 End of story? Not yet. 38 years after the crime, 11 years after the conviction, Troy Roberts reports that the question of who did kill Martha Moxley is heading back to court.

Speaker 36 Michael Skakel versus the state of Connecticut case, CV0.

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Speaker 8 Martha was one of these children that was just so easy. She just was so easy to raise, to do things with.

Speaker 20 Dorothy Moxley's only daughter, Martha, would have turned 53 this year.

Speaker 8 She just was really a very, very

Speaker 6 special

Speaker 3 little girl.

Speaker 20 And while Bobby Kennedy says he understands her laws, he has been been steadfast in his belief.

Speaker 6 I know he's innocent. I know he's innocent.

Speaker 17 He walked himself through the crime scene.

Speaker 6 A skillful prosecutor can often put people in jail who are not guilty of a crime.

Speaker 20 For the past 11 years, Stephen Scakel has been leading his family's efforts to free his brother.

Speaker 9 You have to remain hopeful. I mean, you can't ever give up hope.

Speaker 20 There have been appeals on the state and federal levels. And in 2007, Michael Scakl stood in front of a judge once again.

Speaker 16 Your Honor, the petition for new trial that we've filed on behalf of Michael Skakle claims newly discovered evidence in Count 1,

Speaker 11 which involves the allegations concerning Tony Bryant.

Speaker 20 Skakle's team had hoped a video statement from Tony Bryan could help set Michael free.

Speaker 13 We decided to go up to Greenwich and hang out.

Speaker 20 Bryant described what his friends had told him about the night Martha Moxley was murdered.

Speaker 31 I got my caveman club right

Speaker 31 and I'm gonna go grab somebody and pull them by the hair and do what caveman is there.

Speaker 3 So do you believe that they killed her?

Speaker 30 Either the two of them or possibly

Speaker 31 I think they were definitely involved. Okay, there's no doubt in my mind that they were involved.

Speaker 20 The Skakles were sure they had made their case.

Speaker 36 Michael Skakal versus the state of Connecticut case has been concluded.

Speaker 20 But in the end, the judge did not agree. Michael Skakal's petition for a new trial was denied.

Speaker 9 It was a subjective determination by the judge that the Tony Bryan information would not be enough to sway a jury.

Speaker 20 But the Skakles were far from done. They filed fresh appeals with a renewed focus on the performance of Michael's first lawyer, Mickey Sherman.
Mickey, Mickey, come over here.

Speaker 6 I think Michael could have gotten a better representation.

Speaker 9 It's dumbfounded us as to the amount of information that Mickey did not follow up on. And as a result, we're stuck in the situation that we're in.

Speaker 9 And my brother's sitting in a jail cell.

Speaker 20 This past April, one more court date, one more shot. Michael Scaiko was back in court and took the stand, testifying against his former ally.

Speaker 29 Mickey had me believing he was the real deal.

Speaker 20 Scako blasted Sherman for botching the case and being more interested in raising his own profile.

Speaker 32 He was hanging out with the press.

Speaker 29 He said he was a media whore.

Speaker 32 Said what?

Speaker 29 A media whore.

Speaker 20 Mickey Sherman, defense attorney, now had to defend himself. Skako's new lawyer, Hubert Santos, was on the attack.

Speaker 11 You spent most of your time talking to the media, right?

Speaker 32 Is that a question?

Speaker 3 Yeah. No.

Speaker 11 Matter of fact, your billing records are replete

Speaker 11 with conversations with reporters that you built the Skakos for.

Speaker 32 Right? It's one of the reasons they hired me. It's because I was

Speaker 32 one of the reasons they hired me.

Speaker 20 And it's not the first time he's been in the hot seat. In 2011, he was sent to prison for failing to pay hundreds of thousands in federal taxes.

Speaker 20 Facing the latest challenge, Sherman was grilled as to why he dismissed the information concerning two other possible suspects.

Speaker 11 You dismissed this as another crackbot case, nut case.

Speaker 10 Frankly, yes.

Speaker 20 Skako's lawyer also questioned Sherman as to why he didn't raise suspicion about Michael's own brother, Tommy, who had exhibited questionable behavior.

Speaker 11 Did you know prior or during the trial that he would put his fists through doors?

Speaker 7 Not I don't recall.

Speaker 11 Did you know that prior to the trial or during the trial that he ripped a telephone off the wall?

Speaker 30 No.

Speaker 11 Did you know prior to or during the trial that he strangled a fellow classmate right in front of his teacher?

Speaker 9 I don't recall.

Speaker 20 As Santos finished with Sherman, one last point.

Speaker 11 Would it surprise you to learn that you'd not once used the term in your summation

Speaker 11 proof beyond reasonable doubt?

Speaker 8 It's possible.

Speaker 20 In a dramatic reversal of fortune, Judge Thomas Bishop granted Skagel a new trial and in the 136-page decision, skewered Sherman for failing to adequately represent his client, including the failure to point the finger at others, most notably Michael's older brother, Tommy.

Speaker 19 a season.

Speaker 20 As Michael Skagl awaits the next chapter in his Odyssey, his one constant has been his son.

Speaker 9 The one thing that keeps him going throughout this whole thing is his son.

Speaker 9 That's what keeps him steady during the roller coaster of the different decisions that have come down thus far.

Speaker 20 But there's another parent, Martha Moxley's mother, Dorothy. who has to relive what happened to her daughter all over again.

Speaker 8 I'm always going to have Michael Skakel with me. It really doesn't end.
Once you're a victim,

Speaker 8 being a victim is just part of you forever.

Speaker 20 For the Skakles, the past 11 years that Michael has been in prison have been a test of patience and determination. One they say they will continue to face together as a family.

Speaker 9 We all want to get our brother freed and clear his name and our family's name as a whole. Because I know if I was in my brother Michael's position, he would never stop.

Speaker 9 None of us would.

Speaker 19 In 2013, Michael Scakl was released from prison after a judge ruled that his lawyer had not provided effective representation.

Speaker 19 In 2020, 45 years after Martha Moxley was killed, prosecutors announced that they would not retry Skankle. Martha Moxley's killing remains unsolved.

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