About Those Confessions...

this week on Meet the Press. All eyes on Iran, we dig into the latest as the conflict escalates throughout the Middle East. Plus Steve Kornaki with a brand new NBC News poll as we break down the first primaries of the 2026 midterms. This week on Meet the Press. Listen to the full episode now wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Craig Melvich. Cheers, cheers, cheers. I've always been a glass half full kind of guy. And now I'm talking to some people who look at the world that way too. Some really fascinating folks who share their defining moments, their triumphs, challenges, their stories, or funny, and my candid. So I hope you'll join me each week and who knows. You might just come away with your own glass half full. Search Glass Half full with Craig Melvich from today on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. The investigation was less than perfect, but is there enough evidence to convict Michael Schakel? The jury is about to decide. In early June 2002, after a month of testimony, Michael Schakel's trial drew to an end. Prosecutor Jonathan Benedict and Michael's defense attorney, Mickey Sherman, presented their closings on a Monday. Dominic Dunn has been following the Moxley case for years. Mr. Dunn, good morning. I know you were quite impressed with Jonathan Benedict's closing arguments. You said it he electrified the courtroom in fact. I mean, I thought it was one of the greatest closing arguments I have ever seen, and I've seen a lot of them now over the years. For the first time, I thought that the possibility of a conviction existed, and I had not thought that through the whole trial. On Wednesday, the jury sent a note to the judge requesting to review three pieces of evidence. Andy Shakespeare's testimony, where she said Michael absolutely hadn't left the Schakel house that night, and gone to Sir some corda. Julie Schakel's, in which she admitted she'd said, Michael come back here after the love mobile had departed the driveway. And Helen X's, who had to admit on the stand that she had no specific recollection of Michael getting into the car nearly 27 years before. It was clear if Michael stayed or went was a primary concern. And then, on Friday morning June 7, the jury sent word they'd reached a decision. Guilty. All of a sudden, it's closing, and I'm guilty. Done. Like, what happened? Took my breath away. Absolutely. Last thing I thought would happen. Michael Schakel was cuffed, put into a transfer van, and taken 45 minutes north to Garner Correctional Institute. Connecticut's prison for men with mental health problems, and the first stop for newly incarcerated inmates. A place that Stephen Schakel said could have doubled as the ward depicted in one flu over the Kukus nest. He left behind his three-year-old son, George. Michael's marriage to his wife, Margo, had fallen apart under the strain of his arrest and trial. Michael says he never sought coming. The mother of Martha Moxley says the prison sentence given to Kennedy relative Michael Schakel Thursday was reasonable. Schakel was given 20 years to life for killing the teen, almost 27 years ago, his attorney plans to appeal. I don't imagine what Dorothy Moxley experienced after the trial could really be called joy, but her relief was palpable. I just could hardly believe it. I thought, no, I just imagined it. But, you know, I didn't. So, you know, I'm very pleased. I'm hoping now that I can go out and help other mothers who've lost their children and, you know, I feel as though there's no hope. Martha's brother, John Moxley, was also vocal in his feelings about the outcome. Yeah, his life has been held for 27 years. I mean, it's clear that the consciousness of guilt has followed him wherever he went. Perhaps now, maybe he can start to find the other side of that. For the Schakel family, the conviction was a devastating and unexpected blow. In front of the bank of cameras outside the courthouse, Steven Schakel, whose raspless voice you won't even recognize, made a vow to the media. I know Michael, and I know that there is no way on Earth he could have done this. I love my brother, and I believe in him 100%. And I will fight for the last breath in me to get him free. Just as he had vowed, Steven Schakel and his brothers did everything in their power to free their brother, including filing multiple appeals. We'll get more into the details of those appeals soon, but suffice to say, convictions are incredibly difficult to overturn. And the wheels of justice are notoriously slow moving. In the meantime, Michael counted the days from inside a cell. He in prison, everyone says they're innocent, or a lot of people do. But there were a lot of people in there. I mean, the real gangsters, the real, they're like, man, you don't belong here. You know, my kid, I wrote them all the time. My brother, Steven, made sure that he was remembered on his birthday on holidays. I miss my kid every single day of that, because every minute, every hour, I had heart attack in prison. And when I woke up, my cellmate was banging on my chest. Prison wasn't a great place. As I've mentioned before in the series, the first time I heard Michael's name was when he was arrested for Martha's murder. Similarly, I recall learning of his conviction and not giving it too much thought. Justice was served, the right guy was behind bars, case closed. Of course, as you know, my thinking has changed since then. And what I uncovered while researching Michael's trial is one of the key reasons why. Jonathan Benedict made Polterrabbit out of his hat with his closing. But as you heard Dominic Dunn, reiterated a moment ago, up to that point, pretty much everyone agreed that the case was an obvious loser. Michael's first cousin, RFK Jr., an attorney himself, had attended the trial briefly. He later recalled being stung by the verdict. I was shocked. I think, you know, everybody was shocked. There was no friends together, and there's no physical evidence, no fingerprints, no DNA. There was nothing connecting him to that crime. In our conversations, Michael has always vehemently denied being involved in Martha's murder. But no idea when Martha was killed had no idea what happened. I was a good fall guy. You may not believe, Michael. If we took every person tried for murder at their word, there would be a lot more empty prison cells. But based on a careful post-mortem of this case, there's a lot of reasons to believe he's telling the truth. I'm Andrew Goldman. From NBC News Studios and highly replaceable productions, this is Dead Certain, the Martha Moxley Marguer. You've probably determined by now that Michael is a complicated character. I happen to like him, but I can understand why others, authorities certainly, some of his peers, and even some of his own family members, might not. He's not everyone's cup of tea. He's crass, a cut up, a wise ass, but also deeply damaged, and has a manic energy that can be exhausting. Talk to enough Bell Havenites, and you'll hear a dozen crazy stories about Michael's youth, like that chocolate cake he filled with mud and delivered to a neighbor. One way to put it, Michael has a personality that makes it easy to wag and even point a finger at him. Traits that may have rendered him particularly vulnerable to prosecution. Not guilty, but a personality that makes it easy to believe he's guilty. You'll recall from an earlier episode that Ken Littleton, the former scachal tutor and longtime suspect in Martha's murder, who seemed to particularly load Michael, had this to say about him. Michael, they always knew him as a blood-bursty, coked up, hot-a-fucker, who killed the animals on golf courses, who shot small birds with double-lots shotguns on hunting grounds. Ken claimed that Michael caught and crucified a chipmunk or squirrel with golf teas, while they were playing around at Grennitch Country Club. Kids killing or harming animals in childhood is an oft-sighted predictor of future violent tendencies. Michael denies that he ever took part in any kind of passion of the rodent. It's so nonsensical, something about killing chipmunks with... I don't know how you do that. I mean, I'm not... I'm not Jackrabbit Slim. I can't run that fast. And I don't believe I ever played golf with Ken Littleton, ever. I looked into it and found no evidence that Ken's story is true. But I also thought about it. Imagine the practical difficulties of carrying out a crucifixion on the busy fairway of an exclusive well-staffed club. Ken, I believe for my research, was just repeating a rumor he'd heard. Even Mary Baker, who was on the other end of that call when Ken spoke of it, told me she never once believed Ken's squirrel tail. Michael also told me he did Coke for sure, but not at 15, and only for a couple years prior to getting sober in 1982. Ken Littleton's accusations may have played a small part in convincing investigators that Michael was Martha's killer. But the real heart of the case was the witness testimony the state put on it trial. As prosecutor Benedict would say in a 2002 interview, when asked why he was so sure that Michael's giggle killed Martha, asked those witnesses. Many of me locked in, but those witnesses we put on who all provided the various incriminating statements by Michael's giggle. I think that tells me who did it. The statement's Benedict references ranged in their level of incriminating. Some witnesses, like Michael's friends Andy Pugh and Michael Meredith, claimed they'd heard him tell the masturbation story. Others said they'd heard Michael wonder if he could have killed Martha and somehow not remembered it. But the most serious allegations were made by the three so-called confession witnesses who claimed they'd heard an explicit admission by Michael. One of them, Geron Ridge, retracted her statement on the stand. The other two former-along students John Higginson Gregory Coleman were problematic, but as Jonathan Benedict would pause it after the trial, I suspect jurors wanted to believe they were telling the truth. And I think juries are able to sift out what's real and what's not. I think the grains of truth and what many witnesses said are very easy to understand. In the last episode you heard the meat of the confessions that Higginson Coleman claimed they heard. To continue the meat metaphor, confessions by the time they get to trial may appear to be as smooth and gristle-free as filet mignon, but when you dig in a bit, they're actually more like hot dogs, perhaps outwardly appearing uniform and neat, but disguising some less than savory processes that occur behind the butcher's doors. I want to take you behind those doors, show you how the proverbial sausage got made. 39-year-old auto mechanic John Higgins was far from the type of witness a prosecutor dreams of. First, he hadn't kept his nose clean after a long. He had a rap sheet with six arrests, including ones for theft and battery. Higgins first landed on Garz Radar in the fall of 1996, after he got a call from Chuck Seagun. You'll remember Seagun from earlier episodes of this series. He's the one who called the Greenwich Police to report that Higgins told him that Michael Skakel had confessed to Martha's murder. But what we haven't talked about is that Higgins didn't tell Seagun this while they were both at a long. And he didn't even tell him in the 80s when the pair regularly got drunk together. We drank a lot of beer, and we did this several times, and we talked about a long, we love talking about a long, you can go and go and go about your memories. All those times that we were talking and drinking and bringing up all this, he never once mentioned that he heard a confession. That is until the spring of 1996, a couple months after the unsolved mysteries episode about Martha's case aired, when after a period of a strangement, Seagun and Higgins reconnected. He called me, and he wasn't nice. He, he, yeah, heard you looking for me. My mom. Yeah, man, I just wanted to say hi and just see what was, you know, what was going on. Yeah, well, listen, did I ever tell you that uh, scapegoat confessed to me when we were at a line? What? Why, why are you telling me this? Why aren't you calling the police? I don't know, just full of it and hung up. And hung up. I'm like, okay, what do I do with this? You know, I'm not really the best at coping with normal shit. Oh my god, I'm going to cope with this. Seagun says he wondered if just knowing this information made him a target for the Kennedy family or the alleged Mafia connections of a law school director Joe Ritchie. I was wrestling with myself from a long time, but really what came down to it was Mrs. Moxley was on some TV show, on Salmisteries and she said if anybody has any information and she just was the mother. Talking to me, you know, if anybody has any information, can you please come forward? Well, that was it. I found that I didn't have to hold on to this anymore. I'm not an asshole. So I made the phone call. As you may recall from an earlier episode, after speaking with Seagun, Inspector Frank R. called John Higgins, who reported that Michael had mentioned the murder at a long, but said he didn't know whether he'd done it or not. Higgins went on to explain to Gar that he hadn't thought about his conversation with Michael in years. It only occurred to him after he received a call from another former Alon Alom, who, like Chuck Seagun, was living in the Chicago area. The three of 50,000 Alom rewards for information leads into the arrest of the murder of the smogs we go to increase 100. Well, that's special. Again, the tapes are rough. Higgins told Gar he'd heard about the $50,000 reward. Gar told him it had now been doubled. That's special, said Higgins. Higgins and Gar talked a while longer, covering a long, Higgins job as a mechanic and stories about Michael's scapego. As the conversation wrapped up, Higgins told Gar he wanted to take some time to think. As I'd like to take a break and consider all this and try and put it to respect it for myself, because I think that decisions are best made with good final thought. As Higgins now believed, $100,000 was on the line. He described himself as a man who lives and dies by the truth. In the same breath, he'd sworn he heard no explicit confession. What might he say next? When Gar called back a few days later, he started by mentioning that Higgins' wife had reached out to him over the weekend and they'd had a long talk. There's no transcript or police report available recounting their conversation. Who knows all the topics they discussed. One subject that seems to have been covered, Higgins' recent health problems. I'm out of a job, Higgins said, bad shoulders. You have to make some plans, Gar replied. Within minutes of this exchange, Higgins told Gar that he'd been mistaken when they last spoke. Indeed, he'd heard Michael's cacle confess quietly and only once. There were no witnesses. They were all alone when Michael said, I did it. During that second call, Higgins also told Gar that Michael said he remembered being in his own garage, remember pulling a golf club out of a bag, running through pine trees and waking up in his bed, with no knowledge of what had happened the night before. But two of these details didn't quite add up. The Skickles didn't have a garage. And according to police reports from the time, the stray Tony Pena clubs were kept in a barrel in the back hallway of the Otter Rock house. Still, it was the detail about the pine trees that Gar would say really sold him on the story. In his book, Conviction, Len Levit described Gar's thoughts. Only Michael could have known about the pine trees. No way Higgins could have known that on his own. He has to have heard that from Michael. I don't know how Gar could even say such a ridiculous thing. By 1996, there had been hundreds of stories that expressly mentioned that Martha's body had been discovered beneath the pine tree. But the tree detail Gar would say, like the hug, gave the story the patina of truth. What Gar believed in his heart, I can't say, though he later told Len Levit he believed Higgins. All we know for sure is that with that 100 grand reward on the line, Higgins' story evolved. Higgins died in 2013, so I can't ask him myself about what went down in those phone calls. But while testifying, Higgins was asked if the reward money influenced his story. He denied it. Either way, Higgins didn't give Gar a whole lot. One whispered confession witnessed by no one. But by the time Higgins reluctantly took the stand at trial, that whisper had become a cornerstone of the prosecution's case. Higgins was just one piece of the puzzle, though. The second Alana Lump's proclaimed that Michael confessed Greg Coleman wasn't so stingy with his details, though he made Higgins look by comparison like a boy scout. If you recall, in the spring of 1998, when Mark Furman's book about the case was released, the former detective's face was all over TV, fingering Michael as the culprit. One night, Coleman was channel surfing in a hotel room after his wife kicked him out of their house. He landed on a segment about the moxley case. Take a break. When we come back, I'm going to ask Mark Furman, who he thinks murdered Martha Moxley. Coleman's ears must have perked up. 18 years out of a lawn, he decided it was finally time to tell someone his story. He called up the local Rochester NBC affiliate. The reporter who fielded the call reached out to the State's Attorney's Office. Coleman's number wasn't in the phone book, so the State's Attorney's Office called John Regan, the Coleman family attorney. You remember him, who immediately flagged his concerns about Coleman? He had a bad drug problem. I told this prosecutor in 1998, I don't think you should be using Gregory. For whatever reason, Regan's take was completely disregarded. Because a couple days later, Greg Coleman's phone rang. This is Frank Gar, said the man on the line. Or at least that's what I can only assume he said. There's no transcript of this interview in the police file, or any of Gar's conversations with Coleman for that matter. In fact, the State's second star witness is only mentioned twice in police reports. But we know what Coleman said publicly before he died. In 1998, he testified before the grand jury that he personally heard Skakal confess five to six times. Two years later, at another proceeding, Coleman claimed he only remembered two confessions, saying he made a mistake during his prior testimony because he was going through heroin withdrawal while on the stand. Coleman would also say, impossible, though such a scenario would be, that Michael told him he'd return to Martha's body two days after the murder and masturbated upon her. But logic and consistency be damned, he stood by his story that Michael had confessed, and he didn't just limit his telling to the confines of a courtroom. For a quarter century, Greg Coleman was silent. Now, having come forward, the Rochester man has become a star witness. I believe in my heart, or a percent. You commit this crime. In February 2001, just a year before Michael's trial, Coleman made an appearance on Rochester's news 10 from the comfort of an overstuffed chair in his cluttered living room. Tall and beefy as heroin addicts go, he wore an uncapped van Dyke beard and his skin appeared waxy as he sweated under the lights in a giant red ski hoodie. For the first time, have her Coleman publicly about an admission he says he heard directly from Skakal. And the first words he ever said, meaning, was, I'm going to get away with murder on a Kennedy. This, by the way, is not something that Michael Skakal says he ever would have uttered. The Skakals and the Kennedys had a long history of enmity, which will dive into further. But Dominic Don, who fashioned himself a Kennedy expert, knew this well. It's a divided family. They don't like each other. Asked about his own credibility, Greg Coleman had this to say. Just because someone ends up in jail or someone has a disease of drug addiction definitely moves their lives or other dishonest. The point is well taken. Just because Coleman had a drug problem doesn't mean he's a liar. We know from Len Levit's book Conviction that Gare seemed to view Coleman through this exact lens. Here's Levit, quoting Gare. He was a great big teddy bear of a guy with enormous problems, but he was one of the most believable guys I ever talked to. Your worst day is a good day for this guy. He couldn't climb out of it. He had nothing, no future. He was sick, physically and probably mentally, because he had this monkey on his back. But that didn't mean he wasn't telling the truth. It's hard to understand how Gare came to that conclusion. Before Coleman's news 10 interview, he'd smoked crack and shot heroin, as he testified during an April 2001 probable cause hearing. A hearing in which he was only able to complete his second day of testimony after Gare personally took him to the hospital to get methadone. Perhaps it's more of a case of the detective making the best of his scruffy recruits. Thinking about the trial like Donald Rumsfeld once said of deploying a not totally outfitted fighting force. As you know, you go to war with the army you have, and not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time. We can't know for sure what Benedict or his team were thinking when they put Coleman and Higgins on the stand. Were they truly confident in their star witnesses? Did they actually buy that Michael had confessed it along? Or were they just willing to do anything required to win? When I interviewed John Regan, the Rochester lawyer who sounded the alarm bell about Greg Coleman's drug issues and credibility, he had this to say. You know, in my experience doing criminal defense, one of the frustrating things is that you get these terrible witnesses that are produced by the prosecution, and you're kind of surprised that they use them. But the difficulty is that they generally have a stock spiel that they give in their clothing about how well you know if you want to catch criminals, you're not going to, you know, have nuns who testify about their activity. Regan says there's also a common profile for those witnesses who provide questionable test-onion trials. They want stuff. It has always struck me that the worst kind of evidence produced in criminal cases is what you might call the jailhouse snitch, who is just somebody that comes in and says, oh yeah, I talked to someone, so in the jail, and he told me he did it. And then, you know, it comes out that of course this guy's getting offered some kind of consideration in terms of leniency or something else, forgiving this testimony. There are many ways to reward jailhouse snitches, reduced sentences, transfers to cushier prisons. But if you have snitches who aren't incarcerated, the best enticement is money. A year after Michael was convicted, John Higgins, Greg Coleman's widow, and Chuck Seagans split the reward money, all poultry $20,000 of it. The reward head indeed, just as Gar told Higgins, once spent $100,000. The Moxley family ponied up $80,000 in June 1996, several months before Chuck Seagans outed John Higgins to Frank Gar, but put a one-year expiration date on giving it away. Here's Seagans. You've got a little reward money, didn't you? For your... Yeah, I mean, I did, and I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with it. I'm like, got to say this ethical? Well, I did go through a lot of bullshit. Yes, I'll take it. What did the... Five grand. Five grand. Seagans felt torn that his involvement may have led to Michael's conviction, but he took the money anyway. Coleman's widow also got $5,000 and John Higgins got 10. Whether the reward money was a motivating force for them or not, it seems that the state's two primary confession witnesses Higgins and Coleman were questionable at best and liars at worst. But for Chuck Seagan, the only one of the trio still alive and well, the question of Michael's Skickles guilt still turns restlessly in his head. In our conversation, he said that by the time Michael's trial rolled around, despite testifying for the prosecution, he didn't believe Michael was guilty. But still, he wondered what, if anything, Michael knew about the crime. Seagan kept thinking back to Michael's reactions whenever he was confronted at a long. I was in several, at least to have a dozen groups when Michael was being confronted. Did you kill her? Did you kill her? Did you kill her? Over and over and over. Michael would never admit it. He would cry. And I always thought, why is he crying? Why, what is the struggle here? Chuck Seagan poses a fair question. If Michael Skickles didn't, in fact, kill Martha Moxley, why did he have such an emotional response to the confrontations that along? Recall that one of Alon's core tactics was the confrontational encounter. A methodology supposedly designed to break students down in order to build them back up, as NBC News would later report. Confrontation therapy comes in various forms. It is supposed to help trouble children. From everything I know about Alon, Joe Richie was adapted finding the perfect pressure point to break down his charges. Using various sadistic exercises he devised, carried out by his students. And although I understand Seagan's point of view about Michael's emotional response, I think most of us would cry if subjected to even a fraction of the punishments that were carried out at Alon. For me, there's a bigger question. Alon and its former students had such a huge hand in getting Michael convicted. So what did actually happen while he was there? Hey guys, Willie Geist here. We're celebrating 10 years of Sunday today by hosting a very special Sunday sit-down live event. And our guest is one of the biggest stars on the planet. Ryan Reynolds We're taking our conversation to the stage in front of an audience of you for one night only at City Winery in New York on April 7th and intimate in person evening. I promise you won't want to miss tickets are limited. So grab yours now at today.com. If you ever needed to be persuaded that bad things can happen anywhere, then take a journey with us. From compelling mysteries to in-depth investigations, our day line episodes are available as podcasts. You can hear the latest stories every Tuesday. For more follow Dateline NBC on Amazon Music or just ask Alexa, play the podcast Dateline NBC on Amazon Music. Great story telling with a twist from the true crime original. Recall that at trial, prosecutor Jonathan Benedict in his closing paraded Mark Firmens theory that Michael was sent to a lawn as a last resort. To protect the family and hide Michael from the police, Benedict, voiced here by an actor, suggested that Rush's giggle senior had outsourced the harboring of his murderous son to Joe Richie. That's what they decided that they had to do with the killer living under their roof. Michael says that's absolutely not true. I had, you know, got a car accident and that's why I went to a lawn. Not because I killed somebody like the prosecution said I went there because I kept failing out of schools and got a DWI. Michael was sent to a lawn because of the car accident. But recall that Michael and his father already had a particularly fraught relationship for many years before. Partly due to Rush's temper and drinking and partly because teenage Michael was a bit of a hellion and thanks to his undiagnosed dyslexia consistently flunking in school. If Rush was gasoline, Michael was a match. And an incident that occurred in 1976, a little less than two years before he went to a lawn may have added fuel to the fire. Here's Michael. There was a bedroom downstairs and, you know, I just missed my mom, so I smoked some pot and I cried and went to sleep. I slept with one of my mom's dresses just because I missed her and I know it sounds crazy and weird. I just missed my mom. You know what I mean? I never had a time to, I was never allowed to grieve, never allowed. And the next morning, the maid came in and went, young lady and I'm like, with hell am I? And then I'm like, oh, shit. And stood up and she said, Michael? Yes, you know, I threw the dress on the bed and you know, I was just embarrassed. Though Michael says he was just holding the dress, the maid immediately reported to Rush's senior that she'd found Michael wearing it. For staunchly Catholic Rush, this would be as offensive as a kid's behavior could get. Worst, I imagine, than fornication or masturbation. Recall the violence to the discovery of those playboy magazines invited. So did this get to your father? Did you and her father have it out because it sound that's yeah, but yeah, we did. We did have it out. And Michael says that when he crashed the car in windum a little over a year later, his father was incensed. Michael recalls that shortly after he arrived at a lawn, Rush's giggle and family lawyer Tom Sheridan flew in on a great lake plane to meet with Joe Richie. I remember my father, they sat me down and they said, Mr. Schaker, you got anything to say to your kid? And he picked up a big ash and he smashed it across this blackboard. And he said, you're no longer my fucking kid. You're disowned. You can keep your first name. You got no last name. You got nothing. You know, because you were drunk driving, you could have killed Debbie Deel. He said she could have died. You would have cost us everything. As far as I'm concerned, you can stay here forever. It was after this visit during which Richie certainly would have learned about the other misadventures that had plagued Michael and his family in recent years, including the Moxley murder that Michael says Richie began tormenting him. But not about him committing the murder. He just said, I want to make everybody aware that this kid, his brother murdered somebody and he knows about it and he's never leaving here until he admits what his brother did. There was no question that initially they were asking you about Tommy. It's absolutely no question. For the first year, not the first week or 10 days or two months, literally the first year. Which makes sense. In the late 70s, Tommy was the only scapegold ever considered a suspect by police. Michael wouldn't even hit their radar for another decade and a half. Brother of a killer was the pressure point that Joe Richie used. Until Michael was returned from running away that third time and suddenly things changed. They then call the general meeting at the beginning of the day and he said, yeah, he said, screw you, brother, Tommy, you did this crime. You're the one that did it. I'm like, what? Chuck Sieg and remembers Richie making the announcement to the seabing crowd. Joe Richie had a file book that probably had, you know, 20, 30 pages in it and he said, listen, I want to let you know why he's here. I can't remember word for word. But he said, Michael is here because there was a murder of a neighbor and they suspect that Michael did it. After that, Michael says the pressure, the confrontations, the accusations never let up. Okay, Michael, this is important. They wanted, during some of these exercises, they wanted you to admit that you killed Martha Moxley, is that right? That's my whole point. They put a sign around my neck that said, hi, my name is Michael Skakel and I'm a murderer. Please confront me why I killed my friend Martha. I'm a sick fuck. I'm a rich kid. I need help. Please confront me. I had to repeat that seven times a day. The entire communities had to stop and listen to me do that. Then they had a thing called a haircut where it was from one person to 20, 21 people and you had to stay on there with your hands at your side and somebody would literally scream at you at the top of their lungs like you're in the military. And they would say, Michael Skakel, you're a fucking murderer and you need to admit that you committed this crime. If you don't admit that you committed this crime, you'll never leave here blah, blah, blah. So they wanted an admission. Oh, they absolutely wanted an admission. I'm like, this is insane. I finally figured out. I finally realized the only way to stop them from is just to say, I don't know. At trial, the state put on several witnesses, including Chuck Siegann, who claimed Michael had, at some point, said that he was so drunk the night of Martha's murder, he had blacked out. I'll remember in those groups that stood out and this is what I told the prosecutor was Michael said. He was stumbling and fumbling around the backyard and he was blind drunk and he doesn't remember anything. Michael's never denied drinking that night. But he says while at a lawn, he never said he might have blacked out and killed Martha. I didn't even say that. I just said, I don't know. Was there ever an admission? No, never. And this in fact was precisely what four additional Alon students who testified, including Chuck Siegann, said on the stand, that when interrogated in those high pressure situations about the murder, Michael would break down and cry. But the closest he got to confessing was saying, I don't know. Another former student testified that she witnessed Michael's beatings and heard Joe Richie threaten at least a dozen times, Skakel, you are not getting out of here till you fess up. But that Michael never did. And someone else who might surprise you also backed up Michael's denials. Joe Richie. In the run up to Michael's trial, Joe Richie made several public statements adamantly denying that Michael had ever confessed to Martha's murder. Richie accused the Alon students pointing fingers of doing so out of greed, apparently referencing the reward money. He told the Hartford current, I think it's absurd what you've got are a bunch of people who have been intimidated. Who Richie seemed to think had been lucky enough to get a crack at intimidating his former students? I'm not sure. When the witnesses were still at Alon, it was Richie who obviously relished being intimidated and chief, or as he preferred to be called by students, the God of Therapy. Which is another reason that Seagun doesn't believe that anyone heard Michael confess it along. There were great rewards in funneling information to Richie and stiff punishments if you found out you hadn't. If you had that kind of information man, you had, he had it all. And Joe Richie was looking for it. He was hungry. And you're telling me that you're holding back a piece of information you know what I'm saying. It makes no sense. Kim Frihill, who on her first day at Alon, witnessed Michael's beating at a general meeting and would later need to be airlifted to a hospital because of her own, says it's a miracle that Michael didn't crack under the pressure and brutality. You would admit that you were King Kong. You would admit whatever. You would admit anything. You do not know what these beatings were like. Frihill and Michael got close at Alon. Can he spend so a lot of time building a lot of potatoes and watching a lot of floors? If he'd truly murdered Martha Moxley, she thought he might have entrusted her with the information. But he'd never in a million years have confided in Higgins or Coleman. He would have shared it with me. He trusted me. I trusted him that we would exchange cigarettes. He would have trusted me. Michael's way too smart to trust the dose to Coleman and Higgins. The two biggest bullies in a place who had beaten him alive, not only him, myself, why would he trust them? Why would you trust somebody that's beating him to shit out of you? Michael says he only knew Higgins and Coleman in their capacity as richies and forcers. And so he steered well clear of them. I never said a word to Coleman. I never ever spoke to Greg Coleman. I never said I would stay away from him as much as I could. Twice my size, back then, just a bully. Like Higgins and really, really relished causing pain to people. I haven't uncovered any concrete evidence that Michael actually confessed at Alon. And in 2015, after I reached out to author Len Levit, who died in 2020, he shocked me by emailing that even he didn't put any stock in the Alon confessions. The state's case, of course, wasn't limited to confession testimony. There was also the question of Michael's whereabouts on mischief night, about which his family members had testified, albeit somewhat unhelpfully. And then there was Andreas Shakespeare, who blew a hole in Michael's otherwise largely substantiated alibi. By introducing the idea that Michael had never gone to sursum court of with his brothers and cousin that night. Remember her actor voice testimony from the last episode? Was Michael's scatel in the house after that car left? Yes. And have you ever had any doubt in your mind about the fact that Michael's scatel was home after that car left from the side driveway? No. From 1975 to today, have you been certain that Michael was home after that car left? Yes. Here's Dominic Dunn, after the trial. Andreas Shakespeare was a very, very good witness, saying that he did not go in the car with his brothers to the cousin's house. She placed him at the scene of the crime. Shakespeare was resolute on the stand when prosecutor Susan Gill questioned her. She said she had no doubt in her mind that Michael was home after the love mobile left the scatel driveway, and she'd been totally certain of it since 1975. Try as he might, defense attorney Mickey Sherman could not get her to budge from this point. And after closing arguments, jurors requested a transcript of her testimony, as well as other testimony that supported the theory that Michael hadn't gone. But in my reporting, I uncovered an issue with Shakespeare's statement. Right there in the police file, plain as day, is evidence that what she said on the stand is simply untrue. Hey, it's Kate Snow, NBC News anchor, host of the podcast The Drink with Kate Snow. I sit down with all kinds of celebrities, musicians, athletes over a drink of their choice for candid conversations about how they made it there. With actor comedian host Joel McHale, I could barely stop laughing. You know Joel from Community or The Soup, his new show Animal Control. He asked for four bottles of Washington State wine for our interview. He has news about whether there's a community movie coming. He tells the story of how he got one of his first big acting gigs by lying about his height, and you have to stay through the credits. He's so funny. We have behind the scenes bloopers and outtakes from our conversation. Hope you'll listen and follow the drink wherever you get your podcasts. Friday night on Dateline. We don't get too many cases like that. A hit for hire and an undercover staying were just the beginning. Some people call this a twisted love story. I think it's true love. To see that this case took a turn, no one expected is really the understatement of my career. Nobody saw this coming. Dateline Friday night at 9.8 Central only on NBC. Hey guys, Willie Geist here, reminding you to check out the Sunday Sitdown podcast. On this week's episode, I get together with music superstar Charlie Puth to talk about his nailing the national anthem at this year's Super Bowl and the inspiration for his new album, drawn from a line about him in a recent Taylor Swift song. You can get our conversation now for re- wherever you download your podcasts. On June 11, 1991, Jack Solomon and Frank Gar right in the midst of their efforts to pin the crime on Ken Littleton went almost 200 miles north to Hanson, Massachusetts to interview Andreas Shakespeare about her memories of mischief night in 1975. She really only had something meaningful to say about one specific thing. Running back to the Skakeles front door to fetch Julius forgotten car keys, finding its stuck and ringing the doorbell. I don't think I waited too long. Thomas came right to the door and opened it. I mean, I don't think it was immediate. It was like dang, dang, I went to another. Okay. I love the keys to the car. I love the keys to the car. No. She goes, yes. Kits me the keys. I have a good night. Talk to you school and see you whenever. Door's open. Well, do you need to door? Door is open. Same. Go to the door. See anybody else in the house? No. No one else is in the house. Band in at the door. No. Walking down. No. Tommy and me. Absolutely. Absolutely. Not quite absolutely. Because back when she was first interviewed in 1975, Andy told police that when she went to grab the keys, Tommy, along with Ken Littleton and Stephen, answered the door. But the intervening 16 years seemed to have erased those two figures from her memory. In 1991, Andrea was almost apologetic to the investigators about how little she had to offer them. I mean, I didn't see anybody after a certain point. I asked, except for Tommy who answered the door. Okay. There was a lot of activity at the Skakele House that night. Kids coming and going, backgaming, an excursion to the love mobile to listen to music, rough housing in the driveway. In 1991, Shakespeare said she saw none of this, and didn't lay eyes on anyone other than Julie, with whom she spent this portion of the evening drinking tea in the kitchen and watching Ellery Queen on the sun porch. I mean, the first day of a hamburger guy sitting in the car was in the sense he was right now. The first time I ever heard about guys sitting in a car listening to tapes is right now, she said. But as Solomon walked her through the movements outside the Skakele House, none of what she claimed to have witnessed, she stopped him. This also was a deviation from her original police interview. In 1975, Andrea had mentioned both seeing Michael inside the house and him leaving. But in 1991, Andrea remembered seeing none of that, not Michael leaving the sun porch to go outside, nor the love mobile departing. Despite this, prosecutors called her as a witness in Michael's trial. It must have been a surprise to Inspector Frank Gar that Benedict, in his closing, so embraced Shakespeare's recollection of Michael's staying, and the possibility he'd killed Martha around 10. Like Ferman, Gar was convinced Michael had gone to Sir some Corda and only killed Martha upon returning. In fact, Michael's alibi seemed to be widely accepted by the many investigators examining the case. Here's Michael, talking about that night at Sir some Corda. The state knew I was there. They always knew I was there. But at trial, Benedict was able to cast Shakespeare's testimony as a revelation. And it seems jurors sought the same way. I would have liked to ask Shakespeare herself about this, but I reached out and never heard back. So it's hard to know what to make for sudden certainty. About a night 25 years in the distant past, that she'd never been able to offer much information about before. Had memory failed her twice? Or had she, like so many, simply become convinced by the relentless media coverage that Michael's takeoff had to be guilty? She had, while being cross-examined by Mickey Sherman at the trial, conceded that she'd read Mark Ferman's book. Whatever the case, it's clear she did some damage on the stand. But it was Michael's bizarre tale of masturbating in a tree, which Jonathan Benedict used so cleverly to insinuate his guilt that probably tipped the scales. Recall that Mark Ferman and his media blitz played a big role in turning the salacious story into water-cooler fodder. He crawled up a tree, masturbated in a tree, called out Martha's name, the accounts for the possibility of any forensic evidence being transferred to Martha because she had access to the same location, but he claims that he actually left Seaman. That's not, of course, anything that Michael ever claimed. Though the Sutton Worse case scenario reports on which Ferman based his case theory do include a mention of masturbation to orgasm, Michael says even that didn't happen. I, being a stupid kid, I was thinking about the lady next door and played pocket fool for about 20 seconds, 30 seconds. There was no happy ending, there was no nothing. But once the story got out, the seed, if you'll pardon the expression, was planted. And prosecutors definitely used it to suggest Michael was trying to explain a potential DNA at the crime scene. Michael doesn't like it, but he understands it. I think humans just don't think too deep about things, and I think they equate with well if he was masturbating, then he must have been there, so he must have done this, something like that. Since coming clean first to his friends, and then Sutton Associates in 1992, Michael has stuck by his story. He got home from Sir some Corda, climbed the tree outside Martha's window, masturbated briefly, and went home. The story hasn't deviated. Of course, it's not just the weird story itself, but also the fact that it only came out years after Martha's murder that's been cited to suggest he's guilty. It's a reasonable question. If the masturbation story is true, which Michael says it is, why did he initially lie to investigators about it in 1975? The reason I'm my story changed between 1975 and 1992, or whatever the Sutton Friggin report was, is pretty simple, because in 1975, I literally didn't have the emotional or mental tools. When I went to bed that night, I was so embarrassed, I'm like, oh my god, this is so stupid, I'm an absolute idiot. I was so angry at myself, and then to have Mrs. Moxley wake me up, I was like, holy crap, you know what I mean? It was like the worst nightmare ever. My biggest fear is that I would get blamed for this murder because of this, and that my father was absolutely right, that you're going to go to hell because you had fun with yourself, you know, because you looked at Playboy. And have been ashamed out of my mind, ever since, for being human, for being a kid, for being me. Back then, at age 15, Michael says, the fear and shame associated with his father's pure botanical stance on all things sex-related drove him to lie. But seriously, who among us at any age wouldn't lie about masturbating, especially to cops? But then things changed for Michael. A long happened, sobriety happened, found out it a learning disability, found a whole new perspective on life. I was able to be more honest about my life and be able to cope with things a lot better. Michael says he owned up to the tree story and sticks by it now because his recovery requires him to tell the truth. One of the major A.A. tenants is the saying, we're only as sick as our secrets. The idea being that deception is incompatible with sobriety. Michael takes this very seriously. I'd say his devotion to the program rivals his father's devotion to the Catholic Church. Not just even keeping a secret's responsibility, it's taking response, I have to be honest about everything. Or I'm screwed. It's just that's just the way I'm built. If I'm not honest, then I'm in pain. Whatever you think of all of this, one thing remains true. The state of Connecticut pulled some major Abra-Kidabra and one a case that most people thought was theirs to lose. But like all magic tricks, I wanted to know exactly how they did it. Was it simply the questionable witnesses and prosecutor Benedict's dramatic closing argument? Or was there more? In 2007, after five years behind bars, Michael, then 46, petitioned the state of Connecticut for a new trial based on the promise of new evidence, as well as claims that the state had illegally suppressed crucial evidence from the defense. An appeal is like an autopsy of a case. A pellet attorneys dissect everything that happens in the trial, hoping to isolate instances of wrongdoing on the part of the state that might get their clients another shot at freedom. And in Michael's 2007 appeal, his attorneys had some thoughts about how the state might have won their case. Unsurprisingly, one of their arguments was that Gregory Coleman wasn't a reliable witness. Lawyer Stefan Seeger was part of Michael's original defense team and also continues to represent him on a variety of case-related matters. Coleman was such a liar and such a bad person to mess any faith in even at a probable cause here. There's more than enough evidence that Benedict would have known about at the time for him to make a credibility assessment. But that was only part of the basis of the appeal. Michael's attorneys also argued that the prosecution had potentially committed Brady violations. By law, prosecutors must disclose any evidence that could help prove a defendant's innocence or undermine the prosecution's case. If the prosecution fails to do so, it violates the Constitution's due process clause. The state, Michael's attorneys asserted on appeal, had failed to turn over several key pieces of evidence. One was the so-called more ganty sketch of the figure seen by Bellhaven officer Charles Morgante, near the crime scene close to the likely time of the attack. Remember from our discussion of scachal tutor Ken Littleton, the sketch that looks remarkably like him? The other was a 43-page suspect profile for Ken Littleton authored by Solomon and Gar in 1992. Not only would the evidence against Littleton have been helpful, but the report also states that, quote, it was determined, unquote, by the two investigators that Michael did indeed go to Sersemcorda, a conclusion that would have been essential in countering the argument that he hadn't. Gar would eventually be asked under oath why he hadn't turned over the report during discovery. He replied that Mr. Benedict told him not to. The state stands on this? The materials were a work product, not subject to disclosure to the defense. The appeals court ruled against Michael in 2007, upholding his conviction. Their conclusion on the matter of Coleman's reliability was striking. Michael's original defense team had dropped the ball. The court ruled that the defense should have done more to discredit Coleman. As for the potential Brady violations, not the state's fault the court determined. Michael's defense attorney, Mickey Sherman, had simply neglected to request those items from the state. This perplexed me. How could Sherman have committed such grave oversights in such an important case? One day a couple of years ago, as I waited through transcripts of the entire trial, thousands of pages of them, I located something even more incredible. And this one wasn't hidden from the defense at all. Recall that Jonathan Benedict would pick up on Firmens theory and run with it. Arguing that Michael had only concocted the masturbation story in order to explain potential DNA evidence that might be discovered linking him to the crime. But state's witness Michael Meredith himself testified that Michael related the tree story in that summer of 1987 he spent at the Skakele House. Bobby Kennedy told me and included in his book that Michael also told him the tree story four years earlier in 1983. The story that he was telling at the time of trial was the same story that I've been hearing for 20 years later. He heard this story since 1983. Here's Dr. Henry Lee, Connecticut's former chief criminalist, who testified at Michael's trial about when he'd first started using DNA evidence in criminal cases. 1980 now we start doing now. Lee is referencing his own professional experience in Connecticut. And in fact, 1989 was the only date jurors heard at Michael's trial about the use of DNA in criminal cases. Actually, the very first time DNA was ever used in a criminal case in the United States was in the rate conviction of a Florida man named Tommy Lee Andrews in November 1987, which would have been at least three months after Michael shared the tree story with Michael Meredith and more than four years after he told Bobby. When Michael told the story to Michael Meredith, DNA just wasn't being used in criminal cases. Was the state suggesting Michael was a prophet anticipating future science? In Mickey's Charmonds closing, when discussing Michael Meredith, did he connect these two very simple points for jurors? That because of these dates they'd heard from two prosecution witnesses, the state's theory was on its face ridiculous? He did not. Why hadn't he? I wondered. I haven't answered for this and I don't say this lightly, it's mind blowing. Gregory Coleman, the mist sketches, a bad closing, turns out it's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Mickey's Sherman. Next time on Dead Certain, the Martha Moxley Marvin. I said, Steven, your brother is going to be convicted if he keeps Mickey as his attorney. As long as there's a breath on my body, this case is not over as far as I'm concerned. The man was living a rock star lifestyle to try and mirror and keep up with his rock star best friend. From NBC News Studios and highly replaceable productions, Dead Certain, the Martha Moxley murder, is written, reported, executive produced, and hosted by me Andrew Goldman. Alexa Danner is executive producer and head of audio at NBC News Studios. Megad Shields is our senior producer, Rob Heath is our producer, Nora Patel is our story editor, fact checking by Simone Futo, production assistants by Brendan Weissel, sound designed by Rick Quann, Mark Yoshizumi, and Bob Mallory, original music by John Estes. Amanda Moore is our production manager and Marissa Riley is the director of production. Liz Cole is president of NBC News Studios. This week on Meet the Press, all eyes on Iran we dig into the latest as the conflict escalates throughout the Middle East. Plus Steve Kornaki with a brand new NBC News poll as we break down the first primaries of the 2026 midterms. This week on Meet the Press, listen to the full episode now wherever you get your podcast.