Michael Speaks

I'm Craig Melvin. 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, their 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 Melvin from today on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. As the day wraps up, get this scoop on what's been happening. With, here's the scoop, a new podcast from NBC News with me, your host, Gazzmi Bisugin. We'll take a deep dive into the day's top stories with NBC News' trusted journalists. It's a fresh take that's sharp, thoughtful, and informative, bringing you closer to the headlines and conversations that are shaping our world. From the front page to the zeitgeist, here's the scoop from NBC News. Listen daily on Apple Podcasts. Good morning. You're looking light at a shot of the Firminal Courts Building in downtown Los Angeles, where we are now just three hours away from learning the verdict in the trial of the century. On October 3rd, 1995, at 10 a.m. Pacific time, Americans stopped what they were doing to tune in for the verdict of the OJ Simpson murder trial. Trading on Wall Street nearly ground to a halt as 150 million people watched or listened in real time. Super Bowl 30 played three months later in Arizona, pitting the cowboys against the Steelers, a pitiling 94 million viewers. If you hadn't yet been born, you'd really miss something. The OJ verdict was a true national spectacle. The finale to an addictive 11-month televised courtroom drama that made household names of most every witness and attorney involved. Ask your folks to try to explain who Kato Kaila is. He couldn't make this guy up. Any drama, of course, has a villain. The trial's biggest heel, apart from the double murder defendant himself, a Los Angeles police detective named Mark Ferman. Detective Ferman, can you tell us how you feel about testifying today? Nervish? Reluctant. Ferman was the one who located a right hand glove on OJ Simpson's property, a glove that had blood, hair, and fibers connected not only to Simpson, but also to both murder victims, Simpson's ex-wife Nicole, and a waiter named Ron Goldman. No relation to me. But as compelling as that evidence sounds towards convicting Simpson, Ferman became a millstone for the prosecution and a gift to the defense. In one of the most famous side shows of the trial, Ferman testified under oath that he hadn't used the N word in the last 10 years. Days later, recently recorded tapes emerged. Ferman used the N word 41 times. He was saying things like, anything out of a black person's mouth for the first five or six sentences is a fucking lie. But he didn't say black person. In fact, we can probably thank Mark Ferman for the widespread use of the term N word. He said the word so many times on those tapes, the media needed less offensive expression to use when reporting on the trial. Ferman could also be heard telling stories of beating black suspects nearly to death and manufacturing evidence to frame them. Though he's steadfastly denied it, the defense would alleged that Ferman planted the bloody glove. A CNN poll at the time showed 30% of Americans believed it. In his closing, OJ's attorney Johnny Cochrane sent jurors off of the mission. That they could deliver their verdict not only on OJ's guilt, but on the behavior and attitude of men like Ferman, who Cochrane characterized as a purgering genocidal racist. When you go back in the jury room, some of you may want to say that, well gee, you know, boys will be boys. This is just like police talk. That's not acceptable as the consciences of this community. If you adopt that attitude, that's why we have this, because nobody has had the courage to say it's wrong. You are empowered to say we're not going to take that anymore. After Simpson's acquittal, Ferman pleaded no contest to purgeurie. At 44, his plea disallowed him from ever working as a cop or private detective again. So sure, he did retire from the LAPD in 1995, but he really had no choice in the matter. So he turned to something that wasn't prohibited by his plea deal, writing. In 1997, he published a book about the Simpson case, murder and Brentwood. But with the Simpson well tapped dry, he started looking for a subject for his next book. He consulted his book agent Lucienne Goldberg, whose name might sound familiar. Anyone who paid any attention to the Bill Clinton scandal and impeachment of the late 90s will remember Goldberg as the figure who advised another client, Linda Trip, to tape her calls with her young colleague Monica Lewinsky. Goldberg connected Ferman with her good friend Dominic Dunn. Although they had never met during the Simpson trial, Dunn, by all accounts, had watched Mark Ferman's testimony with great admiration and perhaps more than a little lust. Here's Dunn's biographer Robert Hoffler. The only one in that courtroom for the months that that went on who could hold his own against OJ was Mark Ferman. They both exuded this just incredible testosterone and just total male studs. And I think that it was obvious that Dominic had fallen in lust with Mark Ferman. I asked Ferman about this. Were you aware he seemed to have like a monster crush on you? Did you know that? Was that pretty obvious? Dominic Dunn? Dominic Dunn was a character and yeah, I remember, I don't know if it was 1998. He sends me an email and says, I want to invite you to the Vanity Fair Academy Awards after party. And I go, what? I go, the last person on the planet that they want to see at the Academy Awards or an after party is me. Before he came around, I thought the last podcast Ferman would want to appear on would be this one. When I first reached him on a cell phone and explained my thoughts on the case, he was crabby and had his backup. Suggesting I sounded like a defense attorney, which he said like it was the absolute worst thing he could think of to call someone. Well, maybe the second worst thing. In addition to making Ferman a household name, the Sipsintrial created many media stars like Jeffrey Tuban, a young Harvard law grad turd journalist. Tuban made his name covering the Sipsintrial for the New Yorker, where he would write until he was let go following a notorious 2021 Zoom mishap. If you don't remember it, google it, but maybe not it work. The thing that I heard about Ferman from others was, yeah, he may have been a typical racist LAPD detective, but he was a really effective cop too. And that I think was what Dominic believed about him. Don counted himself among the minority of people who suspected Ferman might have planted that bloody glove. But to Don, doing so would have been a public service. Here's Don biographer Robert Hawthler again. The deal was did Mark Ferman plant the glove, the bloody glove on OJ's estate. And the way Dominic looked at it was, well maybe he planted it, but OJ still should have been convicted. In their first phone call, Don made his pitch. He said, you know, I've got something I want you to read. I'm not sure what to do with it. I'm not sure what a lot of it means. But I want you to read up on the Moxley case and then I want to give you this report that I have. Then Don shared the documents given to him by aspiring writer and Sutton associates freelance Brian. In them, Ferman saw not speculation, but a road map for solving the Moxley case. For Ferman, the report's importance could not be overstated. He saw it as the rose that is stoned to finally decoding the truth about Martha Moxley's brutal murder after 25 long years of fumbling. If we didn't have the Sutton report, we wouldn't be talking. I think it might be more accurate to say, if Mark Ferman didn't have the Sutton report, Michael Skakel probably never would have been charged with murder. I'm Andrew Goldman from NBC News Studios and highly replaceable productions. This is Dead Certain, the Martha Moxley murder. Having shared the Sutton report with Mark Ferman, Don now had his fish on the line and what an unusually sexy tuna he'd caught. He took Ferman out to the exclusive four seasons restaurant in Manhattan, invited him up to Connecticut and threw a cocktail party to parade him around local cops and OJ junkies. And after Ferman got a book deal, even loaned him his Manhattan apartment when he was out of town. Here's Don biographer Robert Houghler again. While he was in New York and doing some research, Mark Ferman's age, such a camp getting these calls from Dominic Don in London and he was going like, you know, how's Mark doing in my apartment? Did you tell him about the Dalai that if he gives the name Dominic Don, they'll put more pastrami on his sandwiches and know all the Sutton, you know, Dominic Don's boyfriend realized that there were all these Mark Ferman photographs all over the place. To Don's disappointment, the former detective was only interested in the Moxley murder. Ferman immediately recognized similarities with the Simpson case. I did see the parallels that, you know, obviously money, influence, power, position always influences any kind of criminal case. Sometimes that kind of case becomes just a little bit more obvious in where the truth lies than it would be in a normal case. In the fall of 1997, Ferman flew from his home in Idaho to Greenwich and checked into a room at the homestead in, a rambling old, clabbard hotel just outside the Bellhaven gates. In the following weeks, he reinvestigated the Moxley case. His conclusions first, that the case hadn't been solved because of the ineptitude of the Greenwich police. It is an agency that simply did not have this type of crime was not prepared to even confront this type of crime. They should have immediately turned this over to the state the moment that they found the victim. Second, that the police is an experience caused in twice decades, pursuing first Tommy Skakel and then Ken Littleton. If we had all the information in the Sutton report November 1st, 1975, who would have went to the police station? Meaning if Michael had told police in 1975 what he said to Sutton investigators years later, he probably would have been arrested back then. Because in reading Michael Skakel's story about masturbating in the tree in the Sutton report, Ferman saw it not just a change of story, but something far more damning, a thinly veiled confession. Ferman's spidey sense was particularly set off by the movements Michael described on the Moxley property. Climbing the tree, masturbating, climbing down, and then sensing a presence nearby yelling and gesticulating towards the brush. Not only does he put himself in a tree that is right above the driveway where Martha was first attack, but it also puts him close to the building. In a tree masturbating puts him in the driveway making a motion, a swinging motion that puts him in a place that he says he feels a presence and it's not that he's saying this off the cuff at a camping trip. He is talking to ex-FBI agents that are hired by his family attorneys to see what their exposure is for the murder of a young girl named Martha Moxley and you have Michael making statements that puts himself at the scene of the first attack and then he sneaks into the house at 1230 a night. Please somebody tell me where this comes from. Is this imagination? Is he told to say this or was this the truth? Ferman concluded that this midnight ramble did not take place as Michael described it. In fact, Michael had concocted this specific story to cover up for a murder. One that he worried might have been witnessed by someone. This description sounds just a tad bit orchestrated. It sounds like he's trying to account for bullet points. Was I seen by the Moxley House? Was I seen by the tree? Was I seen in the driveway? Was I seen making some kind of motion? He's accounting. To Ferman, it was obvious that Michael must have been coached by defense attorneys before he sat down with sudden investigators to preemptively cover his tracks. He'd need to explain why someone might have seen him at the crime scene. Not only that, he'd also want to account for any biological evidence that could link him to the murder. The masturbating in the tree story made up. Keep in mind that when Martha Moxley was killed in 1975, the technology to use DNA evidence to solve crimes was still over a decade away. But by the time Michael became a suspect, it was not only a thing, but thanks to the OJ Simpson trial, the thing, a national obsession. Nobody knew this more than Mark Ferman, harvester of much Simpson DNA. Well, to me, I start stripping the meat off the bone, and this is what I'm left with. The only person that actually makes a statement about walking across Walsh Lane, being at the crime scene, being at Martha's house, making statements, movements is Michael. The only person that lied about going out later was Michael. In May 1998, Harper Collins published Ferman's book, shifting 20 years of focus away from Tommy's gaitlin' Ken Blitleton. Former LA homicide detective Mark Ferman did some independent sleuthing about the case, including getting his hands on a confidential report. He's written a book entitled Murder in Grunnage, who killed Martha Moxley. Here's Ferman's theory of how the Moxley murder actually went down. Michael was undoubtedly nursing a major crush on Martha. The Sutton report had alluded to this. He said that when he climbed the tree and threw pebbles at her window, he did some hopes of lowering Martha out of her house for a kiss. In Ferman's interpretation of the night's events, in the midst of Michael's efforts to woo Martha in the love mobile, his brother Tommy came out of the house, sat on the bent seat next to Martha, and Michael watched as Tommy began rubbing her leg. When Rush Jr and John came out of the house to commandeer the car, Tommy sensing a sexual opportunity begged off from the trip to his cousins and instead stayed back with Martha. As the Lincoln backed out of the driveway, Ferman theorized, Michael helplessly looked through the windshield as Martha and Tommy started making out by the Pacasandra patch at the base of the driveway. Ferman posited that this had to be the tipping point for Michael. Ferman wrote, sitting with his brothers and cousins several miles away, his imagination runs wild. He visualizes Martha having sex with Tommy. The more he imagines the angrier he gets, Martha lied to him. She embarrassed him. She heard him. Here's Ferman in a 1998 date line interview. Michael's abandoned. He's abandoned by his brother. He's abandoned by what he thinks is his girlfriend. Michael suggests Ferman returns from his cousin Jimmy Terrians estate, Sersem Corta at 11.20 pm and walks into the house working counters Tommy. Note the timeline here. Ferman doesn't dispute that Michael went to Sersem Corta, but he speculates the murder took place later than Brennish investigators had concluded. Tommy is trying to sneak Martha out of the house. He knows the kind of fights he and his brother had and he knows this would be a fight. He's going out the back door with her. It's about 11.30 and Michael comes down and confronts him both. The brothers have an argument after which Tommy slips back upstairs leaving Michael by himself. When he's standing in the mudroom alone in Martha walks home. He gets into an uncontrollable rage. That's where the golf clubs are. The golf clubs that the kids pick up and go right out the back door and use to chip balls and drive balls across the lawn. He grabs one and he heads after Martha. He calls out her name. Martha, Martha. Michael catches up to Martha near her driveway since Ferman and delivers a beating so brutal that the club breaks into four pieces. The pool of blood is quite large, but she's still she's still breathing. He takes the golf club shaft that still lays by the body and drives it through her neck. It goes right to left and actually shoves the hair through the wound and it protrudes out the other side. Michael says Ferman then drags Martha's body toward the pine tree where she was found. The power of him dragging her as fast as he could could have brought her pants down exposing some skin that little hint of skin once he settled down when he was down at the pine tree might have aroused him. He might not have been able to perform or quite possibly he did exactly what he says he did in the tree. He masturbated close to the body. This Ferman theorizes is why Michael made up the masturbating in a tree story. He just needed some justification should his DNA be found years later on any of the evidence collected from the crime scene. Ferman was not content to let this shocking injustice languish between the pages of a Harper Collins book. He was on a mission to write the wrongs of the Greenwich police and his own reputation as a blacklisted detective. He took his message straight to the media. All the evidence needed to solve the crime was right there in his book. He told any outlet that would listen. Sure his intent might have been to crack the best seller list but he had another more influential audience in mind. The Fairfield County State's Attorney's office. Somebody better tell the people in Greenwich who they serve they are civil servants. He dared the State of Connecticut to pursue a conviction of Michael Skagel for the murder of Martha Moxley. Timing as they say is everything. Just a couple of months before Mark Ferman's book came out, Don Brown, the state's attorney who'd held his role as chief prosecutor for decades and had declined to prosecute Tommy Skagel, Ken Littleton or anyone else for that matter, retired. Brown's decades long inaction on the Moxley case was a source of much frustration to both investigators and Dorothy Moxley who aired her grievances on date line. Why can't the state's attorney haul people in and make them answer tough questions? Well this is something that we would like Donald Brown in the state's attorney in charge of Martha's case to do. When Brown left he was replaced by a senior guy in his office, Jonathan Benedict, who seemed to have a very different view on prosecuting the case than his predecessor had. And in June 1998 more than two decades after Martha's murder and only two months after he'd taken over the Moxley case, Benedict pulled the trigger. Investigators in Greenwich could be closer than ever to finding some answers to the question of who bludgeoned Martha Moxley to death with a golf club. This week the State of Connecticut opened a one-man grand jury to begin looking into the case again. When the state's attorney's office decided to proceed they invoked an unusual and rarely used option, appointing a single judge, George Thymne to act as a one-man grand jury. He had the power to subpoena witnesses and sift through decades-old evidence. For Dorothy Moxley the development was caused for rejoicing. I have prayed for 22 years for a grand jury and it's going to happen. I'm still pinching myself to see if it's real. You know I am so pleased because now the truth should come out. When addressing the press Jonathan Benedict insisted that Mark Furman had nothing to do with his decision that the State having exhausted all other avenues of investigation had applied for a grand jury. But the timing is certainly interesting coming just one month after the publication of Furman's book. Furman told me that shortly after it was published he spoke to Chris Marano, a junior state's attorney who worked under Benedict. I believe Chris, Marano, actually said, you know they bought a dozen books and they made a statement as they were going to trial and I said, oh come on, stop it. When Murden and Grennich came out and paperbacked the following year the back cover titled it as the book that spawned the grand jury investigation. While this could be a case of clever marketing hype Furman does acknowledge the book's critical influence on the case. If we want to be really honest I'll be honest with myself. I said, Dan and I'll say now it was the pebble that pushed the train over the mountain. Somebody put all these tidbits together so they could look at them as an entire chunk of information and I think that's what actually pushed everything over the edge. In an interview with Dateline, many Margolis, Tommy Skakel's longtime lawyer, seemed to agree. Furman's book was the map. It laid out the way to put together the pieces circumstantial indirect innuendo assumptions that would lead to Michael Skakel. What's impossible to dispute is that in the spring of 1998 no one was stirring up more interest in the Moxley murder and Michael's possible role in it than Mark Furman. I'm in punishment. Mark Furman, who do you believe murdered Martha Moxley? What's my opinion that Michael Skakel is the murder of Martha Moxley? As Furman took his televised victory lap I imagine a certain someone must have been watching infuriated detective Frank Gar. Gar knew those unsolved mysteries tips about Michael have been coming in a good year before Mark Furman had even heard of Martha Moxley's murder and all that time Gar said he'd been banging on the state's attorney's door trying to get him to move on the case. If he'd only brought those tips to a different, less chicken state's attorney, like the one who conveniently took the job right before Furman's book came out, maybe he would have beaten Furman to the punch. And then most infuriating of all the cops who'd worked on the case, who do you imagine took the most brutal thrashing for incompetence in Furman's book? Gar. Furman, according to his book, thought Gar's biggest sin was disregarding the contents of the Sutton report. He wrote that before Dominic Dunn turns a report over to him, he'd first shared it with Frank Gar at Dorothy Moxley's urging, but Dunn got sick of waiting for Gar to make an arrest, so he gave copies to Furman. Furman saw the Sutton report as full of actionable leads. Leads that Gar had simply failed to follow up on. But Gar, perhaps who is credit? Never saw the Sutton report as anything more than it was. An exercise in conjecture and hyperbole riddled with inaccuracies written by a recent college grad with no investigative expertise. Furman to have used it as the blueprint for his book, and then for prosecutors to glam onto it, rather than Gar's shoe leather detective work burned badly. Gar did his best to discredit the importance of Furman's book in a statement to the press. We have a statement that was given to us by Frank Gar, who is the current investigator on the Moxley case. It reads as follows. Newspaper and magazine articles, as well as books about this investigation, have had absolutely no impact. What so ever, with the course or timing of the proceedings? Facts reported in these releases were known to investigators well before their publication. That once again, from the lead investigator on Martha Moxley's murder inspector Frank Gar. To paraphrase Shakespeare, I think the rebel investigator doth protest too much. Furman is certainly aware that he'd gotten under Gar's skin. He really hated you. Did you know that? Were you aware of that? Get in line. But as of July 10th, 1998, the sniping was just a side-sort of the main drama. Jonathan Benedict's grand jury convened for its first day in the basement of the Bridgeport Courthouse. Benedict and other state's attorneys questioned 53 individuals in secret, sometimes for hours, while Frank Gar watched from the back of the room. Everybody came. There were the bell havenites, both kids and their parents. John and Dorothy Moxley were the first to appear. Martha's father David had died of a heart attack a decade earlier. Martha's childhood friends Helen X and Sheila McGuire were both called twice. And then there were the scacals. Rush Jr., Julie, John, Steven, and David all appeared. Oddly enough, there were two scacals siblings neither subpoenaed nor called. Michael and Tommy. Even Ken Littleton made an appearance. But only after Benedict, in a marked departure from his predecessors, granted him full immunity from prosecution in exchange for his testimony. It seemed a bit strange singling out one of the most compelling suspects of the past 20 years and taking him permanently out of the running. But for Benedict and his associates, the decades long who done it was over at last. And do they have to tell people early on whether or not they are a target? Well, it becomes pretty clear as the grand jury moves on, who is the target of the investigation. On January 19th 2000, the grand jury presented its findings to state's Attorney Jonathan Benedict. The same day, an arrest warrant was issued for Michael Skakel. Michael Skakel, now 39, charged with murdering his Greenwich Connecticut neighbor Martha Moxley in 1975 when they were both 15. This is the point at which most people, myself included, heard the name Michael Skakel for the first time. Before unsolved mysteries in the Sutton report, Michael had never been a suspect. Prior to Michael, there was Ed Hammond, Tommy Skakel, Ken Littleton, but none of them had ever been charged. So they, unlike Michael, didn't overnight become a national media sensation. You've heard about what the investigators, individuals, and the press had to say about why the spotlight shifted to Michael. But in my reporting, I've come to believe there were other factors that led here, years, decades even, of family history, which may have contributed in so many ways to making him a magnet for suspicion. So before we go any further, there's one person we really need to hear from. Many have spoken about Michael Skakel, his flaws, his privilege, and of course, his guilt. He's been talked about a lot, but he's never spoken up to narrate his own story until now. Can you tell me your name, say my name, and why I might be interviewing you? My name is Michael Skakel, and why am I being interviewed? I mean, that's kind of a big question, isn't it? Friday night on Tateline. 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 say that this case took a turn, no one expected is really the understatement of my career. Nobody saw this coming. 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 podcast. On April 5, 2023, I pulled into the driveway of Stephen Skakele's house in Norwalk, Connecticut, 15 minutes south of where I live in Westport. At this point, I was about eight years deep into my re-examination of the case and had spent countless hours talking, visiting, and exchanging texts with Stephen and Michael. When I first rolled up to this house eight years before, I assumed I'd gotten the address wrong or my GPS had goofed. They live here? I'd read so much about the Skakele family that I assumed I'd be rolling through some gates and past a pool, a tennis court, and a fountain or two. Zillow says the old Otter Rock house in Bellhaven where they grew up is now estimated to be worth $9.3 million. Stephen and his longtime girlfriend Monaco live in a very modest 1700 square foot house on probably a quarter acre in a middle-class neighborhood. With Michael there, not to mention their overweight black lab moose, it's a bit cramped. Stephen takes great care in planting flowers in his backyard and attracting local birds with about a dozen feeders lining the perimeter of a pretty small lawn. They rent. For the first half of the 20th century, the Skakeles were incalculably rich, robber bear and rich, a kind of wealth we now associate with the Koch brothers. Not so anymore. As I found out over the course of my conversations with Michael, and for reasons I'll discuss, that Skakele fortune is long gone. Suffice to say, Rush Skakele seniors spent a not insignificant portion of his share trying to clear his family's name while inadvertently paving away for Michael's conviction. All right, there he is. I'm rolling. Just okay, if you don't want me to, we can start after. But I just, I need tape. All right, do whatever the hell you want to do, Andrew. I'm gonna fucking bitch laugh. Why? Why? Hey, how are you? Shagged, delig, baby. These days, I speak to Stephen pretty much on a daily basis. His girlfriend Monica often refers to me as Stephen's work wife. Stephen and I see each other so much, we don't shake hands anymore. But I hadn't seen Michael in person in close to a year. When I first met him back in 2015, to be honest, being in the same room with him made me physically uncomfortable. The media coverage of the case had convinced me I was shaking a murderer's hand. After a near decade of reinvestigating, however, much had changed. Notably, my thoughts about the case and opinion about Michael's guilt for reasons we're going to get into. But for years, I maintained a journalistic distance, keeping our greetings to a handshake. Today, we hug. Stephen steps forward and shoves a stack of transcripts under my nose from a conversation between Mary Baker and a close friend of her ex former scachal tutor Ken Littleton. This is Mary talking to Joel, their mutual friend. He had a couple of bad episodes. He blacked out a couple of times. About a week and a half ago, he had a blackout. All blackouts? Yes. This is typical. When we're not on a topic that triggers his trauma, Michael's all jokes and Stephen's all business. Although Stephen's been on records suspecting others of killing Martha Moxley, for the last few years, he's gone deep on a Ken Littleton kick. Wondering if he might also have blacked out on October 30th, 1975, and killed Martha Moxley. Stephen remembers very little about 1975. He was, after all, only nine back them. But now he knows more about the case than virtually anybody. Certainly more than Michael, who partly because he's dyslexic and partly because of the trauma associated with the topic, has read very little on the case. I'm always surprised that someone could do 11 and a half years for a crime and not be a fraction as obsessive about learning about it as his brother is. Or I am for that matter. Have you been following this stuff that he's been getting? Peace me on. Yeah. I'm being just for me. It's I get a stream of fruits and vegetables and fireworks emojis. Yeah, you're very good at emojis. That's actually one of your distinguishing characters. I don't get many that anymore. No, text me that much. It's a dyslexic message. People that are dyslexic emojis. I just truly. Yeah. Today, I've got the attention of both Stephen and Michael, a rare opportunity. One note, you're going to hear some crackling in the background of the audio. Sorry about that. I wasn't frying bacon while talking to Michael. Stephen had a fire going in his living room when I arrived. The conversation soon veers into religion. Specifically, their father rushed seniors obsessive Catholicism. Russ Kekkel likes Scotch a lot, but he loved and lived for the Catholic Church. He was about his orthodox Catholic as a guy. I mean, he was like, G G he he believed what they said verbatim. porn porn. You guys, you couldn't even have national geographic. We found playboy, we found playboy, the bell haven club. One of my friends just checked this out. We opened it and there's a room about half the sizes filled, need deep in playboy. We're like, what the hell is this? We're going to pull it. So we get a wheelbarrow off the tennis court. We went over and we filled the thing that we came down tons of playboy and we went right up out of rock drive. We brought him inside, we divvied him up and everybody gone home and my father come, what the hell is this? What kind of sorcery is this? Did he say sorcery? He kicked my friend out of the league slapped the shit out of his clothes. He little son of a bitch. He goes sex is only for marriage and making children and he goes even then it's disgusting and he goes, you're going to go to hell for looking at this. I'm like, I'm only nine. I don't even know what this aisle is means. You know what I mean? The stories that Michael tells about his childhood are equal parts colorful and disturbing like this one for money was about four years old. Let's just say it was rough and tumble. One of my brothers put a towel in my shirt when they had keg sneaker commercials. They see he can run as fast as a train and fly like an eagle or whatever it was and he said, okay, well you can fly. The brother he's referring to? Tommy Skakel, who was two years older? So I went on top of a bureau and missed the bed and broke my neck. I remember my head was stuck at my chest and I couldn't move and I finally, to make a long story short I ended up in Grand Chospal for a couple of months from my head on a chain. This kind of dangerous rough housing often occurred when parents weren't around. We learned about the free range kids of Belhaven in earlier episodes but Michael says in the Skakel household absentee parenting was taken to an unusually extreme level. I've seen photos of Michael's mother and Skakel. She was a thin blonde beauty far more physically attractive than her husband. Michael doesn't remember her as particularly maternal. She wasn't really touchy-feely. She wasn't, she was definitely more of the athletic cerebral. I know she was a great tennis player but as a kid the parents lived in like a separate side of part of the house. The head air conditioning, central air conditioning. They ate it at different time than we did. They ate different food than we did. You know back then it was different. I mean like my son I couldn't imagine not changing his diaper, not feeding him, not putting it in bed, not reading him stories, not holding him when he heard him so. But my parents back then they had everyone else do that. I think it was that part of that generation maybe after World War II that baby boomer thing if that makes any sense. I asked Michael if his parents came to visit him in the hospital after he broke his neck. They didn't know. My mom, I think my mom came two or three times and I was there I think for two months. Michael says he was essentially raised by the household help. Though he says he doesn't think either of his parents ever had to change a diaper or prepare a meal for their kids, the Skakel parents did show affection to one child more than any other. Tommy, you'll remember we talked about that accident in a previous episode. Tommy fell out of the family limousine, spent two weeks in the hospital with a massive head injury and suffered violent fits through his teen years. Though Michael has no memories of those days, he says he's almost positive that given her obvious favoritism for Tommy, his mother would have spent a lot of time at his bedside in the hospital. In 1968, Anne Skakel got sick, but nobody actually bothered to tell eight-year-old Michael what was going on. I remember the first time she came back after chemotherapies, she had no hair and I said, why is my mom I have no hair? And they said, oh, she just used the wrong shampoo. So then I refused to reuse shampoo. And the woman who took care of us said, no, I got punished for not refusing to use shampoo. But she was pretty much taken out of our lives. Confusion seems to be a dominant theme in Michael's upbringing. He spent his entire childhood failing or just barely passing his classes, who eventually diagnosed with dyslexia 25. But all his father saw was purposeful indolence and disobedience. As a 10-year-old came to the top of the stairs and looked at my bedroom and said, I'd seen him in weeks and he said, you make me sick, if you only did better in school, your mother wouldn't have to be in the hospital. I remember just going, oh my god, I wanted to die. I just wanted to die. And I've come to realize that he wasn't just an alcoholic. I think he suffered from depression and I think he may have had some other issues, maybe bipolar. Yeah, he wasn't a bad man. He was just a sick man. Things got worse following the diagnosis of Anne's cancer with both parents. Like the night Michael returned home alone after singing Silent Night in the third grade Christmas play. A performance neither parent was apparently even aware of. The whole first floor of the house was dark, so I knew they didn't save dinner for me. And I got in the house and the front, thank God the front door was open. And my brother Tommy immediately ran down the stairs and started to fight with me and he was much bigger than me. And I just said, not tonight. And Tommy's great mom, Michael, something a rather, and she said, well, you're going to get the belt tonight. And I said, I'm not getting the belt tonight. And I threw my books all around. I ran my head in a closet. She couldn't find me. So I thought, well, I'll sneak up the back stairs and find my dad making laugh. And then I will be in trouble. And I got up the back stairs through the bathroom and I shared with Stephen and David. I got into their room and my father came in and he said, where the hell have you been? And I said, I was hiding the closet downstairs and he screamed at my mother and said, get your ass in here. Is that true? And she said, no, I looked in that closet. Michael says that this was the moment he realized that like him, his mother feared his father and lied about her search for the house to qualify him. He said, are you lying to your mother? And then he he literally kicked me from one room through the bathroom, through Nanny's room and into the back hallway against the wall. I remember having my hands over my head and my mother just saying, Jesus Christ, Rosh, quit kicking the kid. Quit kicking the kid. You're going to kill him. Apparently, this is not an isolated incident. Beating's punctuated Michael's childhood. Michael's older sister, Julie, confirmed Michael's recollection of these events with me in 2015. And in framed, described her own fear of her father, saying, quote, I got so scared coming home from school every day. He had three loaded handguns under his mattress and I knew he'd be drunk. I never knew if going through the doors of his bedroom, I'd be blown away, she said. He was such a nasty alcoholic. For Michael, the most destabilizing thing about the abusive experience was how totally arbitrary it seemed. Michael has one particularly vivid memory. I was father coming home from work one day, summoning him and spanking him first with his hands, then a kitchen spoon, and then after the spoon splintered a brush without ever saying what he was being punished for. A kind of happened on and off. I just never knew when it was going to happen. I didn't know why it happened. I was I think to this day, it leaves me questioning reality. Like, did I do something wrong? What did I do wrong? Why did I why did that happen to me? I just I didn't know. He never told me why. In the course of Antskickle's illness, she was hospitalized for months at a time. Rush spent lavishly on religious objects. He thought might aid in her recovery, like a statue of the Virgin Mary that it supposedly cried tears that he had shipped from Europe and installed in her hospital room. The Skickle kids and close friends would kneel on the hard marble floors of St. Mary's for no venus before school, repeating Hail Mary's. On Sunday, March 4, 1973, about a year and a half before Martha Moxley's murder, Rush Jr. was piloting the Revcon Motorhome back from the Windom ski house in Debell Haven. The kids all noticed there was an unusual number of cars parked on Otter Rock Drive. Their father boarded the bus before they could debark and coldly announced the news. Here's Stephen. I father never sat us down on anything, including what our mother died said she's gone, do what you have to do and it was never discussed again. After his mother's death, Michael became fixated on a regrettable thought he'd had years before. When, as usual, his mother took Tommy's side in a fight. I remember kneeling on the floors one morning saying, God, I wish you would just take her. I think I was 10. Then I said, God, the next day, I said, please forgive me, please, I take that prayer back. Then when she was died, I was like, holy fuck, I killed my mom. Faced with unimaginable stress, grief and guilt, Michael coped in predictable Skickle fashion. When did you start drinking? Let's say probably 12. But my father, his position in work was he entertained people from all over the world. He'd come home from school at any age. You knew there was going to be a party that night because there'd be tons of people working there. We were always drinks left over in the morning as kids remember we tasted them and they always had cigarettes out for people. So we tried those. When we came back from Wyndham, the day our mother had died, I remember walking past all these relatives and friends of my mother. I mean, tons of people. Nobody said anything. Nobody, I think I was 12. I just went into the bar, grabbed a bottle of smear and off, went out on the lawn and just started just started drinking. I just popped the top off. And I remember at that time going, F you to God, we'd prayed for four years for her to live and she didn't live and I just blamed God. After Anne's Skakele's death, everything in the Skakele household escalated. Rush seniors drinking the violence, the chaos. And based on my conversations with Michael and Stephen, by the time October 30th 1975 rolled around, the Skakele kids were essentially parentless and running wild. We'll come back to that night and Michael's memory of it soon. But in some ways, March 5th 1978 was an even more consequential date in Michael's Skakele's life. I needed to ask Michael about it. To be a time to talk about the Trump Trident. It was a frigid evening in March of 1978. Michael was 17. A few weeks before he ditched boarding school in Vermont, his fourth and four years, and decamped the Wyndham ski house where he'd start every morning with a drink. And my brother, Rush, was home with a bunch of his friends from Dartmouth and a lot of the older people were there and they were doing quaywoods. I've never done before, didn't know what they were. But one of their friends from Dartmouth, Davie, two of them. And I don't know if you know anything about quaywoods. Methacbalone, sold under the brand name Quayloot, was a powerful sedative. It was devised to treat insomnia, but became a popular disco era party drug in the 70s, often referred to as Luz, or disco biscuits. They stopped producing them in the early 80s. They were apparently super addictive. But folks I know who've taken them said they make you feel like you're bouncing around on cushy springs, not legs, and totally primed for sex. Well, I took two of them and I had no plans on going out that night. I was very happy just being by myself and having just a peaceful night while they all went out and danced and listened to loud music wasn't into it. This girl, Debbie Deel, came in looking for her boyfriend and I said, oh, they went to some disco tech over at Hunter Mountain in Tanner'sville or something. And she said, how old are you? And I said 21. I was, I think, 17. And she goes, really? I'm like, yeah, absolutely. So she said, do you want to go dancing? I'm like, sure. And she was really attractive. And so I grabbed my brother Tommy's car that was sitting there. He had a Jeep Cherokee. And drove over. We couldn't find anybody in Tanner'sville. We couldn't find where they were. That was like bar city back then. So we were driving back to Windom. The quailudes had kicked in. Blue lights flickered in the rearview mirror. A cop. And I'm like, oh my god, I just want to go home. I just want to go home. I just want to go home. I had never done, I had no idea that they would do this. He's talking about the quailudes here. I just couldn't get it in any more trouble. So next thing, all I do is I think the route 296, it's like a two lane road goes from Hunter New York to Windom. And I've been on those roads driving since, you know, I was like 12. So out ran the state trooper. There was snow squall, so he slowed down. The trooper radio to head. Michael sped through the little town of Hensonville. He was now just two and a half miles from home. He took a left on South Street, which leads directly to the Windom Mountain Club, but soon faced a wall of police lights. With a trooper on foot in front of a roadblock, he didn't stop. I just remember thinking, oh god. So I just, it was a four wheel drive, so I just tried to go around it. All I wanted to was go. That's all I wanted to do. And, you know, you want to hurt anybody and outside the Windom Mountain, so a towel about a mile up the road. I knew I was going to make a corner, so I tried to pull up and hit a double telephone pole. You know, thank god she was okay. I cracked the back of my head open. I'm at the community at 14 or 20 stitches. They're rest to do. Yeah, I know it got and there was a sea of police cars. These were some unhappy cops. In their reports, they claim Michael attempted to run the troopers down with the Jeep, not drive around them. They charged them with unlicensed operations, speeding failure to comply and driving while intoxicated. Debbie deal walked away on skate, but the car Michael was driving wasn't as lucky. And to make matters worse, it wasn't even his. He borrowed his brother Tommy's brand new Jeep Cherokee chief, providing yet another reason for his brother to hate him. As Michael readily admits, his behavior was beyond reckless. Boneheaded might better describe it. His father's attorney, Tom Sheridan, the one who'd later commissioned the Sutton report, paid the bond and got Michael sprung from jail while awaiting trial. Shortly after the accident, Sheridan led himself into the Wyndham House where he found Michael at 930 in the morning, smoking a cigarette and drinking gin and orange juice. Good news, the lawyer said Tom Sheridan made some deal. In fact, he made a deal with the court to spare Michael the DUI conviction, but in exchange, Michael would have to attend a special school. He said, Hey, I've got the school name. It's great. Elon Sheridan told him the school was called. They've got horseback riding and cross country skiing. They've got this and that. It's outdoorsy. I know you like the outdoors. Are you willing to go? I said, absolutely. I said, yeah, I'll go in the fall, but I'm not going to go right now. You're going to go so you're refusing to go. And then all of a sudden, the front door opened 10 minutes later and I hear shuffling footsteps. There's a guy in a leather jacket. Turns out he's the pilot. There's three other guys that are tattooed from head to toe and they said, Hi, we're from the Elon school and they handcuffed me like I was some kind of the criminal and I was dragged out of there like an animal. Yeah. You know, they did a pretty good job working me over in the car and I know exactly where the airport is. I drove by it every time going back up to Wyndham. Small country airport. They had the plane waiting. Next thing I know. I was thrown in that thing handcuffed and flown to Poland Springs, Maine and introduced to a world of utter insanity. Hey guys, Willie Geist here reminding you to check out the Sunday sit down 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 wherever you download your podcasts. Stay informed with the NBC News app. Breaking news just coming in moments ago. Watch, read and listen throughout your day and now unlock even more with a subscription. It's the best of NBC News with fewer ad interruptions, including ad free articles, podcasts and full NBC news shows. Plus deeper access and exclusive content. Let's just take a step back. It's more context and clarity from the reporters you trust. Download the NBC News app now and subscribe for more. Death investigations. Our day line episodes are available as podcasts. You can hear the latest stories of every Tuesday. For more follow Dateline NBC on Amazon Music or just ask Alexa, play the podcast Dateline NBC on Amazon Music. Great storytelling with a twist from the true crime original. It used to be that we had bad kids who were locked away in reform schools and sick kids who were locked away in mental hospitals. But in the past decade, we've been looking for ways to change that behavior. This facility called a lawn claims to be able to do that. Shortly after his quailude fueled car crash in 1978, Michael Skakele found himself being whisked away and sequestered in the main wilderness at the lawn school where he'd spend the better part of the next two years. A lawn was a school where rich parents offloaded their trouble maker kids at a cost of about 30 grand a year. Though it was less than a decade old, the school had developed enough notoriety that in 1980, NBC News aired a special about it. A lawn likes to call itself a last resort facility for troubled kids who have not been helped by other more traditional methods. The man who runs a lawn is Joe Richie. Himself a former delinquent and heroin addict, Richie has strong opinions on why so many families no longer seem able to control their own children. You know, we've gone through some serious craziness regarding adolescence in the last two decades. We have gone through the free school concept of it's not important that a child has structured. Well, that's nonsense. Everybody knows that successful people are people who are disciplined. I grew up in Portland, Maine, and though I didn't know Joe Richie, I knew of Joe Richie. Everyone in southern Maine knew of Joe Richie. He owned Scarborough Downs, Maine's biggest horse racing track. He mounted a delusional campaign for governor, and he was widely rumored to be mobbed up. He certainly looked the part of a mafia capo. Joe Pesci short, he wore a black pompadour, lots of gold chains, and black leather jackets. Richie strenuously rejected the mafia rumors. In fact, much of his wealth came from a $15 million settlement paid in 1987 by a local bank that had shut off his line of credit owing to the pervasive scullabuck. Richie was born poor in Portchester, New York, and was in trouble virtually from the time he could walk. A teenage heroin addict, he was arrested for robbing a male truck. And, like Michael, he chose alternative sentencing and ended up at Daytop, then famous for its focus on confrontational encounters. Daytop's methods were based on the original notorious Tufts Love Drug Treatment Program, Sinonon, which has a long and sorted history of abuse. Clips I've seen of Sinon? Sound a lot like how a lot of students were talked to yell. Here's Chuck Seagun, one of Michael's fellow Elon alums. It was a way to yell so that you don't burst your blood vessels in your face, so you have to learn how to breathe when you yell. So you had imagined 30, 40 people yelling at the top of the lungs like, can I do this? Right with you! Daytop's Sinonon-like confrontations got Joe Richie sober and spoke to him. He teamed up with an older clinical psychiatrist from Boston named Gerald Davidson and opened the Elon school in 1971. By the time Michael arrived there, the school was thriving, with about 300 students or residents as Elon preferred they be called, each spending an average of 17 months there. Elon is a leader in an expanding coast to coast industry. The growth of that industry has been spurred by the availability of government money to pay for an alternative treatment. Prophecy from Elon have helped make Joe Richie a millionaire. Despite spending his life evangelizing for programs like Daytop and Elon, Richie's own sobriety was tenuous at best. In 1989, his shrink partner Davidson sued him, claiming he was tanking the business with his paranoid behavior. Perhaps not surprising given that Richie admitted it in the early 80s, he was in fact drinking heavily and snorting scar face mounds of cocaine, financed by the fortune Elon was raking in. By the mid-90s he'd been charged twice for a cell. Once for biting a woman. Yes, you heard me right, biting a woman at a local restaurant. Elon shut down in 2011 and Joe Richie died a decade before that, so I couldn't speak to him for this podcast. But the so-called therapies employed at Elon remained fresh in the minds of the Elon alums I spoke with. Chuck Seagun educated me on several of them. Haircuts, 21 guns, salutes, blasts, verbal rubber bands, scoldings of different kinds, different names. Primal screen therapy is intended to release a youngster's deepest fears and emotion. But Elon also uses older techniques, like physical punishment for misbehavior, and dung scaps for scholastic failure. Joe, you make no bones about it. There is corporal punishment here at Elon. First of all, corporal. It's a harsh term. Actually, from what I've learned, harsh is a serious understatement. One of Michael's fellow students at Elon was a Lanky, rebellious 17-year-old named Kim Freehill. Her dad, a prominent New York lawyer, caught her smoking pot and decided it was one rebellion too many. He told her he was taking her on a business trip. But instead, dropped her off at a complex of dilapidated farmhouses in the main woods. The Elon school. As soon as her father left campus, Kim was led from the admissions office directly into a long three, the largest of the buildings, which was used as a dining hall and gathering space for current residents. It was obvious. Something was brewing. They took me in and the houses in an absolute frenzy, complete state of chaos. It must have been 200 people dining on a minimum of packed house. Everybody was screaming general, leading general, leading. The term general meeting meant nothing to Kim yet. But by the end of the afternoon, she'd find out that it was one of the many severe tactics that Joe Richie had devised to break students who were slow to get with the program. Richie stood in front and directed the frenzy teenagers like a symphony conductor. Chuck Seagann was at the same meeting that Kim Freehill just referenced. It was a jam packed. There must have been a couple hundred people there at the time. Everyone's sitting against the walls and it's almost like they're doing some kind of show and they're getting the crowd riled up. What I mean by that is that the director will come out and say something to the effect of, hey, all you people out here that are doing their best to stay in the rules and working hard and talking about your feelings and figuring out what it is you need to do and change. There are some people here that just don't want to do it and they spit in your face. So it was a way to get people all revved up and riled up and they a lot of times that they have people stamping on the floor. You know, because we want the victim. Come on in. You're being sacrificed to King Kong. The victim of this general meeting was now presented to the crowd. Michael Schaiko, his offense, trying unsuccessfully to escape Alon, a feat that both Kim Freehill and Chuck Seagun recall as daring but risky. Michael had just been returned from running away for the third time. Now I couldn't believe how brilliant he was because the first thing I did was case but let's find out how to get out. As you knew, I already was saved to get out. Hat counts were taken every 15 minutes in that place, 15 to 20 minutes. You know, if you ran away, it was what Joe Richie hated the most. Joe Richie believes that much of Alon's success can be traced to the resident's knowledge that they cannot escape. Even if a youngster manages to allude the expediters and run away, he can look forward to being tracked down and brought back. No matter how many times you run away, we will go and get you. As the packed room looked on, Michael was carried in over the heads of about 10 guys and thrown down hard on a raised stage in front. Kim Freehill's first thought, the guys doing the throwing were big. Not so Michael, the unlucky kid getting thrown. Michael's got 55 and 90 pounds. He was a weak one. What's his show? Michael has a lot of bad memories from Alon. But the general meeting is the one that's most difficult for him to recount. They sent maybe 10 guys upstairs to get me and they literally picked me up over their head and carried me down the stairs like I was a crash test dummy. And when I was probably 10 feet from the stage, they threw me and I thought I broke my back on the stage. Um, I was just took everything I had to be able to stand up. And Joe Richie said, do you guys have anything you want to say to this fucking piece of shit? And people just kept spitting in my face and punching me and kicking me. They grabbed me because I was just piece of meat and just started hitting me with a paddle. They just wouldn't stop. And then they just, when they all got tired of hitting me then, they just got in a circle. That's how they did a boxing ring. The boxing ring, another brutal tactic Joe Richie used to subject his students, remains the most notorious disciplinary tactic of Alon. One kid would remain in the circle, in this case Michael, while another boy would put on the boxing gloves and hit him until he got tired. Then pass the gloves to the next. Five, six, seven, even 18-agers could take turns pummeling the kid in the middle. Here's Chuck Segan again. There were rings for girls, you know, okay, you know, you know, that's all the whole arms together to make a ring and oh punch, punch, punch, girl, prize. But with guys, it was more savage than that. I mean, guys are gonna try to defend themselves if they could fight. If they can't fight, they're not gonna actually defend themselves. Michael didn't, he didn't fight. Often, the gloves would end up on the hands of what were known as gorillas. Strong boys who became favorites of Joe Richie's for showing absolute fealty turn and meeting out punishment to those who didn't. Chuck Segan, who would literally spit-shine Joe Richie's boots, had a much easier time at Alon than Michael because he was one of those kids. Michael remembers Joe Richie throwing a pair of gloves to one of the larger boys. They put some on me and if he fights, it's even worse. So then they just, he got his anger out and hit me till he was too tired. And then another guy and another guy and another guy and another guy and another guy. He just can't win. And then in between rounds, they put you over a chair again. It's paddle you more. And then they'd have people come scream it you more. And Kim reminded me. She said, you know, they had ripped almost all your clothes off of you. I said, I know. I remember looking at Joe Richie, he just kept saying, I fucking hate you. I just fucking hate you. And he said, you know, I haven't decided where I'm going to have you murdered right here right now. I haven't decided whether I'm going to have these them break your neck. Higgins Coleman. I was like, Jesus fucking Christ. I ain't getting here. Higgins, you heard that name last episode. It's the same John Higgins who in 1996 would tell Frank Gar that he heard Michael confess. He and Gregory Coleman whom you'll learn more about soon were two of Joe Richie's prized guerrillas tasked by Richie to intimidate other students owing to their size and strength. Kim Freehale recalls watching horrified as Michael was brutalized. What they did to Michael, I will never forget long as I live. Beating him, spitting at him, screaming at him, being as the meaning as humanly possible to him. Few left Alon unscathed. But for kids like him Freehale, who, like Michael, never got with the Alon program, severe punishment was the norm. Freehale recalls once receiving a beating with a wooden paddle at the hands of Richie's guerrillas, so severe that witnesses remember her bottom bleeding through her pants. Eventually, the repeated abuse broke her down. I would beat him basically into cyclosis. So I was airlifted out of Alon. Would it be in spend three months in a psychiatric hospital? Supposed to have been institutionalized for life, thank God I was taught to speak and feed myself once again. Against the odds after Kim got out of the hospital, she went to college and became a high level recruiter for the investment banking industry. Then there was Phil Williams. In 2016, Maine State Police opened an investigation into the 1982 death of Williams, a ward of the state of Maine. He died of an aneurysm that witnesses believe may have been brought on by the boxing ring at Alon. He was 15 years old. Michael was never hospitalized for the physical abuse he endured, but he was eventually diagnosed with a PTSD caused by it and spent a month at a residential facility in California that specialized in treating the most severe post-traumatic stress cases. Despite these psychic wounds, he turned his life around. Michael got sober in October of 1982 with the help of alcoholics anonymous and says he hasn't touched drugs or alcohol sense. He got married in 1991 and then in 1993, graduated from Curry College, a private college in Massachusetts catering for learning disabled. That same year he graduated, he was named to the U.S. National Speed Ski Team and represented the U.S. on the World Cup Circuit for the next four years. In 1996, at age 36, Michael skied his personal fastest time at Les Arkin, France. 136 miles per hour. That's really, really fast. That year, he was ranked the third fastest speed skier in the U.S. and 18th fastest worldwide. Alon, though stubbornly still on his thoughts, was 16 years back in the rearview mirror. While Michael was concentrating on getting his life back on track, there was all this other stuff going on that he was paying scant attention to. The Sutton report, Dominic Don, Mark Furman, he didn't have the slightest inkling that he was about to get hurled right over a cliff. Michael Skakal surrendered to authorities in Connecticut on Wednesday after a warrant was issued for his arrest on a 25-year-old murder charge. Skakal says he is not guilty of beating his 15-year-old neighbor Martha Moxley to death in 1975. In January 2000, when his arrest warrant was issued, Michael and his family were staying with his father at his house in La Blale. A development on a golf course in Marina in Hope Sound, Florida. Do you remember the day that you had to fly from Florida? Absolutely. Can you tell me everything you remember about that day? Yeah, I just put my son down for a nap. I got a call that law enforcement here in the state of Connecticut had just said, get your tail out of Florida and up to Connecticut because they're coming to arrest you right now. I said, what are you talking about? During the grand jury proceedings, the secret sees surrounding them kept Michael from worrying that he was in the crosshairs. As a precaution, he'd hired a lawyer, a confident, granite criminal defense attorney named Mickey Sherman. Over and over, during the 18 months of the grand jury, Sherman told him he had absolutely nothing to worry about. He did. He'd teach said, no, don't worry about it. You're never going to get indicted. You're never, you're never, you're never. Now that never had in fact come to pass, Sherman had arranged with prosecutors to allow Michael to surrender in Connecticut on his own recognizance to avoid an ugly raid and arrest. Michael Tommy rendered me a private jet the next morning. And I flew from Jupiter Jetport, the private jet port to Teterboro. And I'm looking on the news the next morning and it's all over every station. They're storming, lob-lolley, thinking that I'm in the house there and they had no idea. The guards told me that a half hour after I left they all showed up out front and it's parked there all night. So it was an orchestrated cop news event that is just such bullshit. Frank Gar was at the car to meet Michael when he was delivered to the Greenwich Police Department. And as cameras clicked, Gar and Mickey Sherman trailed Michael for his perp walk. His fashion choices would be much more lined. The outfit? Oh, they said that. Would you wear it? I, it was 12 degrees when I landed. You can check the weather and I've been living in Florida. So the only suit I had was a cotton suit and or a linen suit. And I had a button down shirt and a tie. And the only thing I had to keep me warm was a cashmere sweater that I bought on sale in the off season. So yet the news said that how dare I wear an ass-god. I've never worn an ass-god in my life. Oh, how that yellow zip-up sweater would dog him. It's hard to say why, but it's undeniable. That sweater under his black suit gave the impression that he was wearing an ass-god. It looked like something Mr. Monopoly might wear to be a reigned. He was portally. His hair a little too long and stringing and combed over his balding head. In the photos, Michael wears a slight smile, arguably a smirk. Later, Sherman would say that Michael's fate was sealed on that day. Those ass-god pictures did him in. One look and every potential juror and Connecticut would naturally hate him. I don't happen to believe this, but as stagecraft goes, his surrender couldn't have gone much worse. As I mentioned earlier, the day of Michael's arrest was when I first heard the name Skakel. I can't imagine I'm alone in thinking this, but the name has an oddly sinister ring to it. For me, it brought to mind the schizix, an evil crow whose space you never wanted to land on in Uncle Wiggly, a board game I played as a kid. But in the media coverage, the name Skakel might have gotten drowned out by another more famous name. Kennedy nephew Michael Skakel, now 39, charged with murdering his Greenwich Connecticut neighbor, Martha Moxley, in 1970's, Connecticut neighbor of the Moxley's, and a nephew of the late Robert Kennedy. The investigation was less than perfect, but is there enough evidence to convict Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel? Steven Skakel couldn't escape that constant refrain. Virtually every article on this case began with Kennedy Cuzz, which is infuriating unto itself. As you'll hear a lot about in future episodes, the families were hardly close, especially in 2002. After he was arrested, Michael says Mickey Sherman's promises morphed from, you'll never be indicted to, you'll never see the inside of a courtroom, which legally speaking wasn't ridiculous, though it was naive. High profile cases I've learned often don't hue to the law when the law favors the defendant. An argument could have been made that Michael really couldn't even be charged with the murder. Until 1976, hard though it might be to believe, Connecticut had a five-year statute of limitations on all crimes, including homicide. So according to 1975 law, Michael could only have been tried for the murder of Martha Moxley through October 30, 1980. The defense had been used successfully in other Connecticut murder cases. Sherman filed a motion arguing this, which was rejected. And there was another thing. Michael arguably should have been tried as a juvenile, which would have meant that if convicted, he'd face a maximum sentence of four years. Once again, Sherman filed a motion. In response, states attorney Jonathan Benedict told the media that were the case to land in juvenile court, he wouldn't even bother trying it. An outcome desired by few outside the Skakal family. Sounded a lot like he was issuing a public challenge, maybe even a warning directed at the juvenile court judge, Morning Dennis. On January 31, 2001, Dennis opted to toss the hot potato and transferred the case to Superior Court. After months of debate, a Connecticut judge makes a decision. Kennedy nephew Michael Skakal will be tried as an adult in the 25-year-old Martha Moxley murder case. Judge Dennis' curious justification? That should Michael be convicted, the state of Connecticut had no facility appropriate to house a 39-year-old juvenile. Mickey Sherman had failed at every pretrial effort to protect his client, which meant that the biggest case of his career was about to take place on the biggest possible stage. Michael Skakal's attorney says he expected this decision from Judge Maureen Dennis. I'm not exactly into spare. I believe he will be found not guilty. Mickey Sherman basically proved to be the anti-Nostradamus. Every one of his predictions turned out to be dead wrong. Next time, on Dead Certain, the Martha Moxley murder. There has been a myth that somehow this was a weak case. It was not. They just looked at him and saw this massive guy when in fact he was a little kid. The budget that big means that they want convictions. So you better come up with something that is tremendous. 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. Megan Shields is our senior producer. Rob Heath is our producer. Nora Patel is our story editor, fact checking by Simone Buteau. Production assistance by Brendan Weissau. 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. As the day wraps up, get the scoop on what's been happening. With here's the scoop, a new podcast from NBC News with Meet Your Host, Gazzle and Disugion. 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