The Trial

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 trial of Kennedy relative Michael Skakel begins today in Connecticut with opening statements about whether or not he beat Martha Moxley to death 27 years ago in both or 15 years old. When Michael Skakel's trial began in May 2002, one man had a front row seat. My name is Chris Simpson Steele. I go by Chris currently living here in Sellington, Connecticut. 50 years old. Experience Tours. Been around the world a little bit. I talked to more than 50 people for this podcast. Chris possesses two qualities which might seem at odds. He was easily the friendliest subject I met and also the most physically imposing one. How tall? 6.6, about 3.20. I'm 3.25 maybe. Oh, offensive lineman D-line size right now. Size is an important attribute in Chris's former line of work. Though he's now an entrepreneur for 12 years he was a personal bodyguard to the stars. His most famous client Michael Bolton. Yes, that Michael Bolton, he of the famously weird curly mullet, was another Connecticut resident. Who happened to also be golf buddies with Mickey Sherman. When Sherman landed his most high profile case ever defending Michael's Skakal, the other Michael suggested using Chris's security. Or, as I like to imagine, sang the idea to him in a high seat. So Chris Steele became part of the Michael's Skakal legal entourage. Every day for a month starting in May 2002 he showed up at Julie's Skakal's house in Darian, where he joined Michael, Steven and Julie's Skakal, plus Mickey Sherman and his two young associates. Under Chris's protection they care of and the quick six minute ride to the Norwalk courthouse. After depositing Michael at the defense table, Chris Steele would do what he did best. Make the rounds, charming Ollie came across, lawyers, press and family members on both sides of the aisle. I was the only one who had that type of latitude. Mickey would hold court, but I held conversations. Difference. Okay, so I would talk to people like a real human being and engage them because it was interesting. You're seeing people that are legends in their business. So for myself, why not? Yeah, I was speaking with John Moxley. Okay, I had a relationship with him, very respectful. We still shake hands if I saw the man. Okay, so that'll give you an idea of how it was in that courtroom. For Steele, at least. But Steele's cordial demeanor was hardly reflective of the overall courtroom vibe. Dorothy and Martha's brother, John sat stiffly in the front row behind the state's attorney's desk. Across the aisle, right behind Michael's Skakal, four Skakal siblings squeezed onto a bench, looking morose. Their father, rushed Skakal in failing health, didn't attend regularly and Tommy came only once. And then there was the dourest of them all. Frank Gar. Ha, ha, ha. He had an error of when he first walks into a room, or you encounter him anywhere. You sense a man who has a certain level of error about him that thinks he is a little bit above those around him. I'm being kind. Steele probably shouldn't have taken it personally. Inspector Frank Gar was just having a bad, well, four years. Still smarting from the state's attorney's dalliance with his nemesis-marked firmman, he declined to sit at his assigned place among the prosecutors, but instead fumed by himself in a chair several feet away. Despite Dorothy moxley asking him to, he refused to acknowledge firmman, who, to Gar's disgust, sat in the row right behind Dorothy, at her express invitation. Ferman had been hired to cover the trial by ABC, then ditched following internal backlash, including from minority staffers, but Ferman quickly rebounded, appearing on court TV's coverage of the case. How infuriating it must have been for Gar, that it lunch breaks all the reporters with their recorders in their notebooks, made a beeline for Ferman, not him, to hear his thoughts. Dominic done also kept his distance from Ferman, opting instead to sit amongst the other ink stain members of the press. By now, his order for Ferman had cooled considerably. Ferman, he felt, in his umpteen media appearances, hadn't given him, Dominic done nearly enough credit for his essential role in cracking the case, and let's face it, laundering Ferman's reputation. After all, it was done who provided the Sutton reports to Ferman, handing him the keys to the Skakele Kingdom, and earning him a high profile book deal. So many dirty looks flying around such a small courtroom. One section of the courtroom, however, was notably harmonious. For the dozens of reporters that showed, day one of Connecticut V Skakele, felt a little like the first day back at Summer Camp, with done as honorary cabin leader. Here's Jeffrey Tuben, who was there reporting for CNN. I loved Dominic. I thought the world of him, um, we wound up covering many trials together. Um, him for Vanity Fair, me for the New Yorker and CNN, and I always looked forward to those trials because I'd be seeing Dominic. Chris Steel also recalls being charmed by done. I respect Mr. Dunn a lot. I was so fortunate to have private conversations about, you know, his career and this situation. And because of that, he pushed to include me in a full-color picture in Vanity Fair when he wrote an article about this case. Had the courtroom voted on superlatives, Chris Steel likely would have won Mr. Congeniality and Dominic Dunn best dressed. One man undoubtedly would have run away with the title, lease popular, Michael Skakele. It's perhaps understandable why Jonathan Benedict and the other state's attorneys, like Susan Gill, might have held him in special contempt, even more so than other murder defendants they tried. By his own admission, Michael's behavior in the courtroom was unusual, especially for someone facing life in prison. You've already had a taste of Michael's unique personality quirks, and I can't imagine his morning greeting ritual ingratiated him to the prosecution. At court, I would walk by all the prosecutors and go, hey, shithead, hey, liar, hey, fuckface, good job. I hear the Yankees need a coach. And I remember Susan Gill had this ugly green dress on in these big black shoes and I said, oh my god, Mickey, I know where I've seen those shoes. And he said, what are you talking about? And she turned around and I said, but they were red and they were under a house. But the most important cohort in the room, the one that really mattered was the jury. And with them, Michael wasn't doing himself any favors. From his seat in the gallery, younger brother Steven Skakele, whom you met a few episodes ago, watched the jurors watch Michael. They looked at Michael as a 267 pound guy. They just looked at him and saw this massive guy. When in fact he was a little kid, they didn't like him at all because he didn't smile. There was no way to rewind time and make the jurors see Michael as an undersized teenager instead of a beefy middle aged man. Or at least no effort was made to do so. For reasons we'll explore later. So the odds already felt stacked. Now it was just up to Benedict, the taciturn trim, white-haired state prosecutor quietly reviewing his notes in his seat right next to the jury box. To convince the jury that 27 years ago on that chilly October night, 15 year old Michael Skakele had taken a golf club and murdered Martha Moxley. I'm Andrew Goldman. From NBC News Studios and highly replaceable productions, this is Dead Certain, the Martha Moxley Marguer. While researching this podcast, I reached out to Connecticut's three primary states attorneys who worked on the Skakele prosecution. Neither Jonathan Benedict nor Chris Marano responded. Susan Gill declined to participate. In media appearances, Dominic Dunn described lead prosecutor Benedict as generally underwhelming and literally too low key. Noting that at one point jurors had to send a note to the judge, requesting that he speak more loudly, even though he was sitting right next to the jury box. Dunn seemed more impressed by Sherman, with his friendly pattern around the courthouse and his ability to appear to like Michael, a man that Dunn obviously loved. Here's Dunn's former assistant Jack Donahue, or almost Dunn as I call him. There is no doubt that Mickey Sherman dominated the courtroom throughout the trial. He made you believe that he actually enjoyed being in the company of Michael Skakele, a 280 pound florid, 41 year old man with desperately unhappy eyes, shirts that are bursting at the seams and two cheap suits that don't fit. Dunn also recognized the inherent weakness of the state's case. No fingerprints, no witnesses, no DNA, nothing but circumstantial evidence. Benedict's right hand, Susan Gill, didn't see it that way. Or at least she didn't admit that she did. As Gill would later say in 2016, Connecticut had substantial evidence of guilt in this case. It's always misdefinity that there has been a myth that has grown up that somehow this was a weak case. It was not. The state of Connecticut had three explicit confessions. We were admitted into evidence at trial. The three explicit confessions Gill just referenced. Those were the heart of the prosecution's case. Two of those confessions came from fellow students at the Alon school, where Michael spent two years. Recall that Michael landed at Alon after crashing his brother's Jeep while loaded in 1978. Skakel family lawyer Tom Sheridan got the court to agree to drop most of the charges. If Michael went up to Maine to the brutal $30,000 year institution, which specialized in treating kids with major chemical dependency and behavioral problems. At Alon, Michael encountered the two men who would testify that he confessed to murder. Barring a recorded confession by Michael himself, their testimony was the next best thing. One of those witnesses was John Higgins, whom you met in the last couple episodes. He's the 39 year old auto mechanic from Lyle Illinois, a Chicago suburb, who'd been one of Joe Richie's gorillas at Alon. Higgins had materialized after unsolved mysteries aired, and when interviewed by Frank Gar, had this to say. Higgins was questioned by prosecutor Chris Marano on May 16th, who asked him about performing Night Owl duty, with Michael one night while they were at Alon together. Night Owl duty meant sitting up with one other student all night, sort of like babysitting for someone your own age. The Night Owls would do periodic head counts on the rest of the students to make sure no one tried to run away. But the rest of the night, they had a lot of free time on their hands. There's no audio of the trial, so we'll have actors reading from the transcripts. Here's Marano questioning Higgins. Do you specifically recall something that Mr. Skakel spoke about with you that night? Yes, he spoke about a murder that he was somehow involved in. And did he, at any time, during the time you were doing Night Owl duty that night, talk about any of the details of that murder? Yes, Higgins said he did. He said that he remembered that there was a party going on. That is house. I don't know what they were doing at the party as far as drinking or drugs. I have no idea, but there was a party of some kind or another. And he related that he later was in his garage, and he was going through some golf clubs. And he related that he was running through some woods. He had a golf club in his hands. He looked up. He saw pine trees. The next thing he remembers is that he woke up in his house, and that's the story he related to me. Marano asked Higgins if the story came out quickly. No, no, it took quite a while. Michael was sobbing and crying, and it was an extremely emotional thing. I call it bleeding out. He was just releasing emotionals. And during this conversation, did you discuss in addition to those facts how he might have been involved in this crime? Yeah, through a progression of statements. He said that he didn't know whether he did it, that he may have done it. He didn't know what happened. Eventually he came to the point that he did do it. He must have done it. I did it. And was anyone present during that conversation? No. On cross, Mickey Sherman attacked Higgins credibility. Picking apart the details of his testimony, and pointing out the fact that, as you may remember, Higgins wasn't exactly forthright with Frank Gar, about Michael's supposed confession when they first spoke. At this stage, if the trial were a boxing match, the fighters would be about even on points in the third round, a little winded, but with no knockout in sight. The next installment of the state's confession testimony came courtesy of another Alon Alom named Gregory Coleman. Michael mentioned him last episode. I haven't decided whether I'm going to have them break your neck. Higgins Coleman. He was another of Joe Richie's prize gorillas, and a participant in Michael's scatel and Kim Freehill's beatings at Alon. Here's how Coleman became a star witness in Michael's trial. Back in 1998, as the Moxley case grand jury was being convened, the state's attorney's office called up Rochester attorney John Regan, looking for Greg Coleman. Uh-oh, Regan thought, what's Greg done this time? I get a sort of a checkered history, and maybe there was something that they, something he had done or was accused of doing in Connecticut. Regan represented Jack and Mary Coleman, Greg's parents, but he also represented their son. My impressions of him were that he had a bad drug problem. The thing that concerned me the most is that he would sort of defraud his father by bringing people around that he claimed were doctors who were going to prescribe something to him and that needed to be paid, and sometimes Jack would fall for these misrepresentations and write checks to Greg. To the Rochester police, Greg was what cops refer to as a frequent flyer, someone with a long rap sheet who was reliably in trouble. A severe heroin addict, he had a 16-year string of drug arrests, and it served time in New York's notorious Attica Prison for robbery conviction. Um, it's not unusual to get a call from a prosecutor looking to use your client or defendant as a witness, and in general, I had no problem cooperating with something like that, but I also had no problem advising a prosecutor that I didn't think it was a good idea to use one of my clients as a witness. In the most politic way possible, Reagan told the man on the line that he'd be making a serious error in judgment. If he intended to use a drug addict, the long history of deception, as an important witness in a murder case. So that's basically what I told this prosecutor in 1998. I don't think you should be using a robbery and this story he tells in an effort to accuse somebody of murder. So, um, but I think his response to me is something along the lines of, don't worry about it, we have lots of evidence and we're going to get this guy. Michael Schakele remembers Coleman testifying at the pretrial hearings and proceedings. Greg Coleman at the probable cause hearing, I noticed being somebody in recovery, I'm around a lot of people that are recovering heroin addicts, and I noticed in nodding out on the stand, um, I said, Mickey, he's joning. Jonesing or not, the state plan to put Coleman back on the standard Michael's trial. But that plan was not to be. He was a young Marine. She didn't care about convention, they made a life together. Then one night, the Marine died. And then the death investigation took a wild, unexpected, and utterly bizarre turn. I'm Josh Megowitz and this is Trace of Suspicion, an all-new podcast from Dateline. Listen for free each week or unlock new episodes early and enjoy Add Free Listening by subscribing to Dateline Premium on Apple Podcasts. Friday night on Dateline. We don't get too many cases like that. A hit for hire and an undercover sting 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. 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. A key prosecution witness in the murder case against Kennedy Cousin, Michael Skakel, is dead. Police say Gregory Coleman died on Tuesday of an apparent drug overdose. Detective Frank Gar once described Gregory Coleman's addiction to heroin as the monkey on his back. At nine months before Michael Skakel's trial began, the monkey finally won. On August 6th, 2001, Coleman was found sitting in a car in his driveway, a syringe nearby. He was one of seven in the Rochester area who'd overdose that week on a batch of tainted heroin. The untimely death of a star witness would at first glance seem to be a major impediment for the prosecution's case. But dark though it is to say it, it ended up being a major boon. At Michael's trial, Judge Kavanaugh's ski allowed his prior testimony to be read for jurors. Reading out both parts, his own, as well as Coleman's, the buttoned up, clean cut prosecutor Chris Marano came off considerably better than Coleman had or would have had he survived. Plus, as luck would have it, you can't cross examine a dead man. Coleman, voiced by Marano, described how following Michael's failed attempts to run away from a lawn, he was assigned to guard him overnight in their residence hall. Michael Coleman observed was treated differently than other returned discapies and given special privileges. Here again, an actor will play the part of Marano, reading the late Coleman's testimony. Question, what do you mean by special privileges, if I may? Answered. For some reason, Mr. Schaikl was allowed to have stereo equipment, records, books, and he was given special treatment. I made the comment to Mr. Schaikl, boy, this guy can get away with murder. And he said, I am going to get away with murder because I am a Kennedy. I asked him, what are you talking about? And he went into telling me how he had made advances to this girl where he lives, and that she spurned his advances, and that he drove her skull in with a golf club. Question, in the course of this conversation, did he indicate to you whether or not after beating this young woman with the golf club, that he had occasion to return to her body for any purpose? Answered. He made the comment that two days later, he had gone back to the body, and masturbated on the body. That's what he told me. Coleman was echoing the theory of the crime that Mark Furman had set out in his book, though he included an impossible timeline. Martha was last seen alive around 9.30pm October 30th, and her body was discovered at noon the following day. There's no way Michael could have gone back to the body two days after killing her. In the courtroom, standing before an empty witness box, Chris Marano continued reading Coleman's testimony aloud. Question, did he ever indicate to you why he was at Elan in the first place? Answered. Yes, there was trouble with drinking from what I recall, but mainly that he was up there trying to avoid all this stuff. Question, what do you mean by this stuff? Answered. This stuff, it was going on in Connecticut. Question, in terms of the beating of the girl, answer. Yes. The third of the state's three confessions came courtesy of a 34-year-old brunette who worked at her dad's banquet facility. And happened to mention to the court she lived alone in a 12,000 square foot condo in South Boston. 12,000 square feet. Donald Trump's apartment in Trump Tower is just 11,000. That South Shore events business must have been crushing it. Jaron, Jaron, Jaron. What to say about self-described part-time model Jaron Ridge? As I've mentioned, I grew up in Maine in a high school with lots of kids with chow-to-thick New England accents. The Boston and Maine accents are close cousins, with practically neighbors. Jaron was a late and unhappy addition to the state's case. Five years earlier, she testified, at a gathering in the living room of her oversized condo, she briefly met Michael Skakel. He was there with the mutual friend named Marissa Veracchi. Remember that name? We'll be coming back to it in a later episode. This encounter, which by Jaron's own telling lasted less than 30 minutes, seemed to have acquired a special currency as Michael's trial date approached. Jaron had some hot insider goss about a story dominating the headlines. She confided in a friend, fashion photographer Matt O'Tanian, that not only had she met Michael Skakel, she overheard him confess to murdering Martha Moxley. O'Tanian, who was about to become Jaron's former friend, shared the story with a buddy on the police force. Shortly after, O'Tanian's phone rang. A tip-hungry detective Frank Gar was on the line, and he wanted to hear everything. O'Tanian did his civic duty and spilled. Gar reached out to Jaron, and they met in the hospitality suite of her father's bank would haul. She was freaked out. Who shared her story with the cops? Gar didn't say. Afterwards, Jaron called O'Tanian and left a message on his answering machine. You have one. Oh, so if we can go out at all. Who's begging me if we end? You're saying you're going to work at the back of Skakel one. Why were three people coming? You were in my three-year concautions, and he admitted to the murder of Martha Moxley. We talked about a very cruel case, very tragic case, and I worked on it for 20 years, and it took 20 more years. I made it in your work and he was so fucking angry. I was shaking. Gar, it seems, applied a lot of pressure to Jaron, goading her to say more. She wasn't alone. As Len Levit would later write, many witnesses complained of being cajold, harassed, or threatened by Gar. I said, I'm sorry, I can't help doing any other way. I'd want him at my 40 minutes, and I would go now to conversation, and the lots of Martha Moxley would come up, and I said, and jokingly, he mentioned, you know, the murder. I said, I really can't help doing any more, and I'm sorry. Anything really, I can do any of this case, not over. And now the calling you. Bye. Matt O'Tanion could be forgiven for not knowing what to make of that message. When he'd last heard Jaron relate the story, Michael Skakel had confessed to murder. But now it seemed she was saying he'd merely joked about it. A Tanion called her back. In an echo of the Mary Baker operation you heard about it in an earlier episode, Gar had convinced him to tape the call. Hi. How you doing? How you doing? You a message? Yes. What do you think? I'll picture a wide. I didn't really lie. I said, I don't remember, you have the conversation, and I said he was drunk, and that's what he said. I said, you know, he told us, you know, that he had it with it off-flow. There's no evidence that Jaron said anything to Gar about Michael hitting Martha with the golf club, though the reports are admittedly sparse. And it wasn't likely he was drunk. According to Michael, he hasn't touched alcohol or drugs since October 25, 1982. You told me on your message that you told him you were in the kitchen and didn't hear anything. No, I told us in and out. In and out Jaron meant a Verkondo's living room during the party. And then he said, then why would three people tell me on three different occasions that you were with Michael's schedule three times? And I said, I don't know why. I said, I was only with him once, and it was less than 30 minutes. So what did you tell him that you actually heard? I told him that I shouldn't have had my phone. Well, good not to happen, you're from true. They're not tapping your phone, Matt told her. Of course, that wasn't exactly true. I told him that I, he was drinking and he was talking about going to the drug we had. And I didn't hear what the golf club said. And that's all I said. I didn't say about masturbating in the tree right away. We masturbating in the tree. At this point, Jaron decided it was best to switch to using an alias, rather than Michael's schedule's actual name. Out of an abundance of caution, she'd already thrown to the wind. Jando was watching this particular girl, a better window changing. And he was up on a tree masturbating as he liked her. She went and had sex with his brother Tommy that same night. After he found out that Jando's brother had sex with this girl, he got so violent and he was so screwed up, he did that to her. Wow, they told you to that? Yeah. A tanning was obviously perplexed. Jaron was now telling an even more salacious story that a tanning had never heard before. That Michael, drunk, and she would also suggest, possibly on cocaine, had come to her apartment and vomited out a confession that included the tree story, jealousy about Tommy, and the cornucopia of drugs he'd taken before murdering his friend. The story keeps changing. You're talking about your ass. Jaron, I think you're talking about your ass. A tanning seemed not to believe his future former friend Jaron. Did Frank Gar, or Jonathan Benedict, they believed her enough to add her to the witness list. Ridge testified on May 21st of 2002. She was obviously nervous, drinking glass after glass of water in the witness box, as if she'd come to court directly from a new-day stroll on the surface of the sun. She flailed on the stand under intensive questioning by both the prosecution and defense, retracting nearly everything she told both Gar and A tanning. Both sides seemed equally exasperated by her rapidly imploding testimony. At one point, Michael's attorney, Mickey Sherman, voiced here by an actor, pushed her to clean up the messy, garbled version of events. As she was sitting here today, you were telling the jury that you lied to Mediterranean. And when you told him that stuff, you knew it was not true. In that conversation, you made up stuff. Jaron's reply, I did make up stuff, trying to appear to be knowledgeable from things I heard from Marissa and from magazines. All of it, she explained, was done to impress titanium, her close friend who, quote, always bragged about who we knew. But to be honest, Jaron said she didn't recall Michael confessing, quote, because it didn't happen. Unquote. So about that confession, it didn't happen. Earlier, you heard state's attorney Susan Gill refer to three explicit confessions admitted into evidence. I suspect you won't object if I now amend that number to two. But as Gill would later articulate, prosecutors weren't done throwing everything they could at Michael. We had strong evidence of motive. We had strong evidence of consciousness of guilt because the petitioner gave at least three very different versions of his activities that night. The state put on many more witnesses. One of them, Michael Meredith, had been at a lawn five years after Michael. The Michaels, Meredith and Skakel, hoped to file a class action lawsuit that would shut down a lawn and Michael Meredith spent the summer of 1987 staying at the Skakel House while they plotted. It was during that stint, Meredith claimed, that he heard the masturbating in a tree story straight from the horse's mouth. Meredith, the near-do-well son of Dandy Don Meredith, the Dallas Cowboys quarterback of the 60s, turned Monday night football color commentator, was a particularly lively witness. On the stand, he seemed to relish recounting his lengthy arrest record, which included an incident in which he blew up a Ferrari using a machine gun. When questioned by Susan Gill, Meredith testified that at the end of that summer, Michael brought up the Moxley murder but offered a variation on the October 30th tree story. One that involved deciding, Michael hadn't included when he shared the story with certain investigators. Here's an actor reading Meredith's testimony. He told me that he was not involved in the murder itself, but on the evening of the murder, he had climbed a tree outside of Martha's house where he could see through her windows. Throughout that conversation, I got to feel like it was something that he had done before because he said, I could see her when she was getting dressed or undressed or coming out of the shower, and that he had masturbated on the evening of the murder in the tree. At one point, he'd seen his brother Tommy crossing the yard towards Martha's house, and he, of course, didn't want to be seen. After he was out of sight, he climbed down the tree and went back down to his house. That was the last time he saw Martha alive, and that he had no involvement in her murder whatsoever. This was new. Meredith was reporting that Michael told him that when he was in the tree, Martha was still alive, and that Tommy was in the Moxley's yard. It wasn't immediately apparent why the prosecution would want to put on a witness who not only heard Michael denying any involvement in the crime, but also placing Tommy at the crime scene. Right after Meredith, Michael's childhood friend Andy Pugh took the stand. He testified that Michael also told him the masturbation story, but, unlike what Meredith had moments ago described, he recalled that Michael told him he did it not in the tree closest to the house, which would have afforded a view into the windows. But rather in the tree on the corner of the Moxley property under which Martha's body was found, with no view of anything. A curious place to go to pleasure oneself. Martha's brother John had testified that the tree closest to the house, a cedar, was not even climbable. Whatever the prosecution was trying to achieve with these witnesses wasn't entirely clear. It was all a bit of a muddle. However, the defense's case was no less muddled. For whatever reason, Mickey Sherman decided to focus his third party culpability argument on only one man, Ken Littleton. Here's Jeffrey Tuben. One of the strange strategic choices that Mickey Sherman made was to point all of his energy at trying to prove Littleton guilty. It just made no sense to me. Ken had been granted prosecutorial immunity during the grand jury proceedings, which jurors knew. Why jurors likely wondered, would the state of granted immunity to someone unless they were 100% sure he was guiltless? And because polygraphs are inadmissible in court, Sherman had little on Ken except the Mary Baker tapes, which, as you'll recall from episode 3, proved nothing but confusing. Why the hell would you say he wouldn't die? I just had to stab him in death. That was when I was blacked out. Sherman's other main defense strategy hinged on challenging the credibility of confession witnesses. Jurors heard almost nothing about the cops' years-long pursuit of Tommy's scatle as suspect. And in what I think could have been Sherman's best legal decision, he didn't put Michael on the stand in his own defense. Having known Michael as long as I have, and based on Michael's behavior in the courtroom, I can almost guarantee it wouldn't have gone well. For jurors trying to wait through all the evidence, I can imagine it was a little bit like drinking alphabet soup through a straw. Lots of words in every sip, but nothing remotely coherent. But the state offered one more crucial witness. And it seems that this particular witness was the one that cut through all of the confusion and handed the prosecution's drowning case a lifeline. 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. 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 storytelling with a twist from the True Crime original. 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. Andrea Andy Shakespeare. Does that name ring a bell? It's been a while since I mentioned her. Let me bring you back to that boozy dinner at the Bell Haven Club on October 30th, 1975. In addition to four scaquel brothers, there was cousin Jimmy Tarion, as well as Tudor Ken Littleton, on his faithful first night on the job. But there were also two others at the table. 18-year-old Julie Schakele, the only Schakele girl, and her best friend and classmate at Convent of the Sacred Heart High School, 16-year-old Andy Shakespeare. Recall that after the crew left in the Love Mobile, Julie rushed Andy back home after 930 between commercial breaks of Ellery Queen, so she could make it home to see the killer unmasked. Andy's background and pedigree were similar to the Skakles. Her father Frank was what I'd call a VICC, a very important conservative Catholic, a successful television network executive turned political operative. He was eventually appointed US ambassador to the Vatican by President Reagan. Julie and Andy were super close in high school. Both named checked the other in their senior yearbook write-ups. Both went off to college as in Boston, but then Julie settled back in Connecticut with a guy whose family also had a place at the Windom Ski Resort. An Andy stayed in Massachusetts and married a real estate agent. As high school friends often do, Julie and Andy drifted apart. Shakespeare drove in from her home in Westford, Massachusetts to testify at Michael's trial. On direct examination, she dropped a bombshell. Recall that Michael had long maintained, heated company to his brothers and cousin Jimmy Tarion to the Tarion family's estate, Sir some quarter. They left an 11-mobile just before 930, and the three Skakle brothers returned to Belhaven shortly after 11. When he sat down with Sutton investigators, Michael changed his account of what he did when he returned home, but stuck to his story of making the journey to smoke pot and watch Montepython at his cousin's main home. Recall that every cop would ever worked on the case, Frank Gar included, had memorialized in reports that Michael went to Sir some quarter. Even Mark Furman, Michael's most ardent accuser, never doubted that he made the trip. His theory was that Michael killed Martha after returning from the excursion. But under questioning by Susan Gill, Andreas Shakespeare introduced an idea that radically altered the possibilities of how the murder might have occurred. What if Michael hadn't gone at all? Here again are actors reading from the trial transcripts, starting with prosecutor Gill. Now, at the time when you were in the house with Julie having tea, did you see members of the Skakle family going through the mudroom out to the side driveway area? Yes. And who did you see? Rush, Johnny, and Jimmy Terryen. And at some point earlier that evening, was there a Skakle car parked in that side driveway? Yes. And after that car left, you left, correct? I left after the car left, correct. Was Michael Skakle in the house after that car left? Yes. And have you ever had any doubt in your mind about the fact that Michael Skakle 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. On cross, Mickey Sherman tried to challenge Shakespeare's memory of events. When is the first time you told anyone that Michael Skakle was not in the car that went to the Terryen home? I don't remember. Was it in 1975? Possibly. Do you know who you told that to? Don't think I was asked that in the police station. She's right about this. The interview that cops conducted with Shakespeare in 1975 was perfunctory at best. Who went to Sir some corridor and who stayed in Bell Haven was never even broached? The cops likely didn't feel the need to ask her. After all, they had a half dozen other witnesses confirming it already. According to police reports, the first time Shakespeare said anything about this to police was in 1991, when speaking to Jack Solomon and Frank Gar. We'll be discussing exactly what she said before too long. But on the stand, she was unequivocal. Michael hadn't gone. She was sure of it. Shakespeare's testimony was an unexpected twist in the state's narrative. If Michael was at the Skakle house all evening long, he would have had the opportunity to attack Martha at the exact time that investigators had always believed Martha was killed. The precise hour Martha's closest friends and Dorothy Moxley all believed the attack occurred just before 10pm. At the time the dogs around the neighborhood were howling. At the time, Michael always seemed until this moment to have an alibi. Tommy Skakle's attorney, Manny Margolis, who had himself once tried a case against Jonathan Benedict, saw Shakespeare as a point for the state. It was very damaging. Mickey Sherman did everything he could to Shaker, but he couldn't Shaker. Damning is this new theory might be. Michael certainly must have assumed his family's testimony would contradict it. After all, back in 1975, all the teens who had been in the Skakle driveway, John, Tommy, Rush Jr., and Jimmy Terrihan had corroborated Michael's version of events. But there was one Skakle sibling who hadn't been outside, Julie, and would have had no idea who went. On the stand, the prosecution confronted Julie Skakle with an interview she gave Greenwich police on November 15, 1975. During that interview, she described sitting in the car in the Skakle driveway with Andy Shakespeare, and seeing someone dark through the darkness in front of them. Andy and I were in the car, and I forgot the keys of the car. Andy opened up the door, and someone ran through the path across the driveway. This would actually take place in front of your house. And again, you can't describe it to us other than that it was a shadow of a figure, and still what, something about it. So, Andrea had opened up the door, and then the figure had darted out. Because I thought it was my phone, I said, finally, you know, from back here, and no one answered. And I just kept going, and I couldn't see her on the car in the other. I know it's hard to hear. What Julie said was this. The figure had darted out, and I thought it was Michael. No one answered, and they just kept going, and I couldn't see very well, because the car door was open. This was hardly a definitive sighting of Michael and Bell Haven after the love mobile left. Julie told me in 2015 that calling out for Michael, the family scam, was basically a reflex when someone was screwing around. And just as she told Detective Loney in 1975, she said she really had no idea who the dart figure was, what size it was, or even if it was a young or old person. Still, the recording was certainly not helpful for Michael's defense. Michael's brother, John, wasn't much help to the Michael went to surf some court of cause either. In 1975, John's position had been clear. It was myself, Michael, Jimmy, and Rush. We're in the red car, the driving way by the back door. In 1998, while testifying in the grand jury proceedings, however, John's recall of the evening had all but evaporated. Confronted with a transcript of his 1975 police interview, he was asked if it refreshed his memory. No, he said it did not. By the time trial rolled around in 2002, his recollection seemed to have faded even further. He couldn't remember who was in the love mobile. He couldn't recall if an attorney came to their house after the murder, if there was press in Bell Haven, when his father returned from his hunting trip, or if he got to the Wyndham ski house the weekend after the murder. As he put it, a little clumsily back in 1998, I think what I guess what I'm saying. If I had said something in a previous statement, my memory of events from 23 years ago is a lot crisper than it is right now of events at that time. In John's fault-firing recollection, prosecutor Benedict saw an opportunity and seized it. John's story became a blank canvas for Benedict to paint. Since John could no longer remember Michael being in the car over to surf some quarter, in the eyes of the prosecution, clearly Michael wasn't there. Remember when I told you, memory can be tricky? Closing arguments get underway today in the murder trial of Kennedy relative Michael Skakel and B.C.'s chief legal officer. On June 3rd, 2002, all the players gathered in the courtroom once again. Witness testimony was over, and some of the questions that hung in the air weighed heavier than the answers. The final chapter of the trial, the closing arguments, were the last chance to tip the scales and both sides knew it. Here's how Mickey Sherman, voiced by an actor, began his close. He didn't do it. He didn't do it. He doesn't know who did it. He wasn't there when the crime was committed, and he never confessed. That's the whole case. There is no great mystery here. This was the theme. Michael didn't kill Martha Moxley. Ken Littleton might have. Sherman also attacked the confession witnesses. The state's witnesses have seemed to cause more questions to be raised than answers to be found. If you heard somebody confess a murder to you, would you do something? Or would you do nothing? You would do something. You would tell somebody in authority and you would do it quick. Coleman and Higgins testimony was questionable. Mickey told the jury. But bringing in Geron Ridge was practically an insult. I think they should be apologizing to you for that. That was a shame. They knew she was going to come up here and lie or they knew she already lie. That's not the quality of evidence you prosecute a murder case with. For an hour and a half, Sherman swatted down the particulars of the state's case. Don't make the wrong decision he concluded and find Michael Skakel guilty of murder. Dominic Don thought what he heard sounded tired. As he'd later write in Vanity Fair, Sherman's closing wasn't special. It was the same thing he'd said into every microphone he had passed in the last two years. It was lightweight. On special though it might have been, it didn't sway Don's opinion about how the jury would likely rule. The morning's leading up to June 3rd when Jonathan Benedict pretended to discloseing Chris Steel made his usual rounds in the courtroom. By the end, that whole courtroom Dominic done on down. Anyone from court TV, you named the names. They all were believing it was going to be not guilty. This was all unanimous. From the conversations I've had, Steel's absolutely right. At that stage, pretty much nobody, including Michael himself, thought there could possibly be a guilty verdict. Here's Mani Margolis again, followed by Jeffrey Tuben. I don't know that the observers in the courtroom ever expected that there would be a conviction. The evidence in this case was so flimsy. I remember, I do remember thinking he was going to be acquitted. I mean, this was not an open and shut case. Even prosecutors must have been worried. The state had spent years and countless tax dollars going after Michael's scat go. The pressure for that investment to pay off was immense. Jonathan Benedict would have to come up with something tremendous. And that's exactly what he did. On June 3rd, Benedict delivered his closing arguments. As soon as he began speaking, the courtroom was transfixed, as Don later wrote in Vanity Fair. When Benedict stepped over to the table in front of the jury and looked them straight in the eyes, he became a man inspired. He was like Gregory Peckin to kill a mockingbird. Benedict, voiced here by an actor, began by thanking the jury for their service, then got straight to the point. I'm going to present to you what I submit is the most reasonable construction of the evidence in this case. Does that mean that the evidence answers every question that could arise? Certainly not. Benedict suggested to jurors that they could choose any theory of the crime they liked. That's one might select an on-try option at a cafeteria. Provided it was within the 930-530 time of death window established by the medical examiner. They could choose to believe that Michael went to Sir some courta and killed Martha upon his return after 11pm. Or they could decide that what Andy Shakespeare had told them was true. That Michael had never gone to Sir some courta and thus could have killed Martha at 10. As long as everybody's time came up between 930 and 530. And you were convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that Michael's scatle murdered Martha Moxley, you must convict. Benedict went on to repaint for jurors a picture of the gruesome scene and circumstances of Martha's death, describing how blows delivered by the golf club culminated in a vicious stabbing. Martha was dead, Benedict said in an echo of Mark Firmman's theory, but Michael wasn't quite finished. He administered the ultimate and sickest of humiliations. He had masturbated in the vicinity of Martha Moxley's body. Jurors, prosecutor Benedict urged, should see Michael's masturbation in the tree story, told to friends and sudden associates, as part of a darker and more calculated excuse arrived upon in the 90s to explain away any new biological evidence that might be found. The defendant for the last 27 years has been trying to put some spin magic on his meandering on the night of October 30th, 1975. And not knowing what traces may have been recovered from her body, he needed some kind of an explanation. No DNA, of course, had been located on Martha's body or the evidence from the crime scene. Benedict had an explanation for that, too. Martha's body had been dragged across the ground, rubbing off all remnants. But the semen, or lack thereof, was just the tip of the icebergs at Benedict. He spoke about how, unlike Ken Littleton, who consistently denied involvement, Michael's scacaled blabbed about it repeatedly over the years, including, but not only, to Greg Coleman and John Higgins at a lawn and Jaron Ridge at a Southy loft party. And then, there was the matter of the alibi. Benedict told jurors that they should consider carefully who was vouching for him, close relatives with an interest in him scurrying justice. Yet, even despite their efforts to protect Michael, Benedict argued, those family members had stumbled. Brother John, last week, said he simply can't recall. He somehow really can't remember everything, or can't get the facts together anymore. That is absurd. Benedict then pivoted to Michael's enrollment at the Alon School. Michael, he said, was being hidden from the police by his family, who sent him to Alon as, quote, a last resort. A family's response is, what can we do to make sure this doesn't happen again? That's what they decided that they had to do with the killer living under their roof. Prosecutor Benedict's performance thus far had been brilliant. But if jurors weren't quite convinced yet, what he did next was perfectly designed to push them over the edge. He turned on a machine that projected a multimedia presentation prepared for the state at a cost of more than $55,000 by a Massachusetts company called Win Interactive. Watching it today, the presentation seems pretty cheesy to be honest. A glorified PowerPoint slideshow with some audio layered underneath. But back in 2002, it was a cutting-edge technological marvel. As jurors at Spellbound, color photos of Martha flashed across the screen, and Michael Skakele's voice captured on the audio tapes he'd recorded with a ghost writer several years earlier flooded the courtroom. We got home and all the lights, lots of lights were out. We were walking around half, nobody was on the porch. I went upstairs, my sister's room was her door was closed, and I remember that Andrea had gone home. So it's fucked up. Martha lights, and I'll go get a kiss from Martha. I'll be bald tonight. You know, booze gave me courage again. Jurors had heard a portion of the tapes earlier in the proceedings, but this time, as they played, prosecutor Jonathan Benedict inserted his own sharp commentary. Michael Benedict asserted, went outside, murdered Martha in cold blood, masturbated on or near her body, then slept soundly until being roused the next morning. I woke up and this was Mark, saying, Michael, have you seen Martha? Here, a photo of Martha at school, beaming, holding her books to her chest, flashed on the screen as Benedict offered his finale, what sounded like a confession in Michael Skakele's own voice. I was like, still hot in the night before little drunk from the outside, what? I was like, oh my god, did they see you last night? What the jury might not have picked up on was that here, in a maneuver well known to reality TV producers, Benedict had made a misleading audio edit of Michael's words. In the original tape, Michael had expressed fear that he'd been observed masturbating by Dorothy Moxley, not murdering her daughter. And I remember just having a feeling of panic, a close shit, you know, like my worry of what I went to bad with, as Nate, I don't know, you know, I had a feeling of panic. As the audio played, a shocking image appeared on the screen. It was Martha face down but ex-exposed, just as her friend Sheila McGuire found her under the tree. Dorothy Moxley bellowed with pain. Stephen Skakele immediately felt ill. They had taken Michael's words completely out of context, made it seem like he was admitting to the crime, and then overlaying crime scene footage. I mean, very graphic crime scene footage. While the courtroom took in this horrible site, Benedict delivered his final blow. How could this site of Dorothy Moxley possibly produce the feeling of panic in an innocent person? Only a person who experienced that poor girl lying under the tree, not in his dreams, but firsthand, would have a cause to panic on awakening that morning. The evidence was clear, Benedict concluded. Michael had murdered Martha beyond any reasonable doubt. Had Benedict been holding a mic, he might have dropped it. Here's Jeffrey Tuben. Jonathan Benedict's summation was the best summation I ever heard in a courtroom because he did pull a lot of disparate evidence, including the timeline, opportunity, motive, and disputed, but apparent confessions, to make a package of evidence that pointed to Gil. Michael's bodyguard, Kristiel Concord. It was brilliant. And at the end of the story, using Michael's words edited and shaped for the story, it showed exactly what they wanted. And at that point in time, it's really hard to say you didn't see what you saw, right? That's a big difference than hearing what you heard. It's more impactful to see what you saw. What the jury was seeing and hearing was terrible news for Michael's scatel. Even his own attorney knew this. We are back live in Norwalk, Connecticut. The case has wrapped up in the trial of Michael's scatel, the Kennedy nephew. Both prosecution and defense presented closing arguments. Now we're joined by Mickey Sherman, the attorney for Michael's scatel. Now Mickey, I have said on this program again and again that I thought this jury was going to come back with a not guilty verdict. But I have to tell you, after listening to Jonathan Benedict's argument today, it sure does sound like Michael's scatel had some information that he wouldn't have had if he wasn't there. I've got to say, John rose to the occasion today. I've always said he's a damn good lawyer and I think he proved that today. Are you less confident today than you were yesterday? No, but I'm a hell of a lot more nauseous. Next time on Dead Certain, the Martha Moxley Marga. All those times that we were talking and drinking he never once mentioned that he heard a confession. His life has been held for 27 years. It's clear that the consciousness of guilt followed him wherever he went. Michael would never admit it. He would cry and I always thought, why is he crying? What is the struggle here? 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, fat checking by Simone Butteau, production assistance by Brendan Wiseau. Sound designed by Rick Kwan, Mark Yoshizumi and Bob Mallory, original music by John S.D.'s. Amanda Moore is our production manager and Marissa Riley is the director of production. Liz Cole is president of NBC News Studios. I'm Craig Melvitt here. Cheers. Cheers. I've always been a glass half-volt 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-volt. Search Glass Half-volt with Craig Melvitt from today on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts.