The Boy Next Door

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. I'm super stitious. My mother's been dead for over a decade, but I still avoid sidewalk cracks. I knock wood a lot. And part of me always kind of believed in the existence of a Kennedy curse. I'm not a A supernatural explanation for why so many in the Kennedy family have died young. Since I started learning about the Skakles, I began to wonder. Is it possible the Kennedys might have either passed a curse or even caught theirs from their Skakal cousins? We're talking about a lot of generations of Skakals here, so bear with me. First, there's the grandparents generation who came of age in the first part of the 20th century. At least in business, Michael's grandfather George Skakal had extraordinary luck, so much so that it seemed like every business till he touched yielded a fresh fortune. He was the founder of Great Lakes, Colin Carvin, which, as I mentioned in the last episode, he would grow into one of the most valuable private companies in America. In 1950, one of his seven children, Ethel, Michael's aunt, married into the glamorous Kennedy clan, but then George's luck and it would seem the entire family's luck ran out. 1955, Michael's grandparents, 63-year-old George and wife Big Anne Skakal, Perish, when their company plane goes down to Oklahoma. 1966, George's son and Michael's uncle, 44-year-old George Skakal Jr dies in a small plane crash. Just nine months after that, George Jr's 39-year-old widow, Michael's aunt Pat chokes on a piece of Shishgobab in the midst of a dinner party at our home in Greenwich. She dies, orfitting the couple's four children. And then, in 1973, 41-year-old Anne Reynolds Skakal, Michael's mother dies after a year's long cancer battle. It would certainly seem like the family had horrible luck, but Barred in the New York Times article about Pat Skakal's choking death is a detail about the Skakal orphans. Michael's first cousins that suggests at least some percentage of the clans misfortune might have been the result of some congenital recklessness. The article reads, Mark, 13, is still in Greenwich hospital suffering from cuts and burns he suffered while experimenting with explosives. His sister, Kathleen, 17, has been clear to responsibility in the accidental death on December 2nd of a child riding in the backseat of an open car she was driving. The child fell out of the car. The story went like this. Thanksgiving 1966, Michael's uncle George Jr. gave his daughter Kathleen, known as Kik, a sweet 16-present, a Mustang convertible. With a top-down, Kik took three daughters of a family friend on a joy ride. The youngest, seven-year-old Hopo Brian sat on the trunk, her little legs dangling over the backseat. Kik gave the kids a thrill, quickly hitting the gas and break, rocking the Mustang like a coin-operated kitty ride. The children screamed with delight, but then Kik had a speed bump and Hopo Brian tumbled off the trunk and fell onto the road, head first, cracking open her skull. A week later, she died. There was no police investigation to speak of and Kik's cakele was never charged with anything. In fact, on December 1st, 1966, the day after the little girl's death, a newspaper story quoted Greenwich police chief Stephen Barron Jr. saying as much. Barron reckoned the real culprit in the tragedy was made of asphalt. Barron deplores road bumps as girl succumbs, read the headline in Greenwich time. Chief Barron might have been an expert on the subject, this area of expertise in law enforcement was in fact traffic control. But it's hard to imagine that hurt this headline must have caused Hopo Brian's family. To summon Greenwich, the whole thing smelled like a cover-up. It was the first, but not last time that the Skakles and local law enforcement would be rumored to be in kahootes to cover up a crime. My name is Andrew Goldman. No story I've encountered in my 30 years as a journalist has gripped me by the throat, quite like the murder of Martha Moxley and conviction of Michael Skakle. I think it would be fair to say that this story has become an addiction for me. If I can do justice to this unbelievable yarn, I suspect it will become an addiction for you too. From NBC News studios and highly replaceable productions, this is Dead Cert, the Martha Moxley murder. Some 15 Greenwich detectives are investigating the murder. They have questioned hundreds of people and searched the murder site thoroughly. But as of late this morning, they still have no real leads at all to the person who killed Martha Moxley last Thursday night. There's just no nice way to say it. The Greenwich police, they blew it. And that's the reason we're still talking about the Martha Moxley murder. This is not a controversial statement. Over the years, even some of the department's own ranks have admitted as much. But nobody blew it more than Chief Stephen Barron Jr., who you just heard about in relation to the Hopo Brian case. The failure was cemented in the first two days following the murder. Everybody's heard of the first 48. The theory that if a case is installed within 48 hours, the chances of it ever being solved are cut by 50%. Barron, however, seemed to think he was running a marathon, not a sprint. The day Martha was buried, he told reporters, of necessity, an investigation like this one must proceed at a painfully slow pace. Here he is, speaking about the case. Also at a painfully slow pace. While his force was doing its best to learn on the fly how to investigate a murder, the town hadn't had one in a full 20 years. Barron was telling reporters what so many in the granite surely hoped was the case. That Martha Moxley's murderer likely wasn't local, that some deranged killer from some more violent city probably wandered off the interstate and stumbled into Bell Haven with bad intent. But the cops had no actual leads on any out-of-state psychos. So they busied themselves with following up on not particularly plausible tips about Bell Haven outcasts. There was the young woman who was not only a lesbian but also sold pot out of her dad's guesthouse. There was the dad of one of Martha's close friends, whose wife told cops that her husband was a drunk who owned golf clubs and was exactly the kind of sick SOB who'd murder a teenage girl. No surprise, the couple soon divorced. As the first 48 came to an end, one of these leads seemed to get chief Baron to reconsider his outsider theory. His name was Ed Hammond. He was Martha's 26-year-old neighbor. He had graduated from Yale and served in the army but had been living at home since his father died two years before. Some Bell Haven Gossips told police he was a bit of a drinker. Also, neighbors reported. He said really creepy things around women. Margie Walker, daughter of the Beatles Bailey comic strip creator, was Martha's best friend. You matter at the end of the last episode when she spoke of how the case gave her a lifelong distrust of authority. Margie first encountered Ed Hammond at a dinner party at the Moxley House, the Friday before the murder, where she and Martha were tasked with serving the guests. Hammond gave her the willies. It was an adult party and Martha and I were serving and you had to walk from the kitchen on this side through the foyer to the living room over on this side. And so we'd walk through with plates of, you know, or derives and he was kind of sitting there, you know, by the front entrance of the house by himself. So he's by the door, but inside the house with the girls. You know, we'd walk past him and we're like, what's he doing here? Like, who is this guy? We didn't know who he was. He was obviously not our parents age. He wasn't part of the party. But we didn't know why he was there. And he kind of watched us as we're walking through with trays of food. And it just seemed very odd. Remember after Sheila McGuire discovered Martha under a tree, one of the mothers came out of the Moxley home to investigate? That was Margie's mother, Jean, the first adult to see Martha's body. And until her death in 2015, Jean Walker swore she could feel someone watching her at that moment. And whose bedroom window had a direct sight lying to the tree? Ed Hammonds, whose family lived right next door to the Moxley's unwalsh lane. Jean Walker was close with that Hammonds mother. The mother would complain about her son quite a bit like, oh, Edward, I don't know what we're going to do about him. He steals money out of the women's purses when they're, you know, gathered together for like a bridge or or something. And he apparently got into their purses. And he went and spied on Mrs. Wald. And she caught him looking in the window. And she's like, what are you doing here? He's like, I just wanted to see your dog. I mean, it was just kind of odd behavior. I didn't know this guy, you know, my mother knew the family better. Maybe there are these other details like he had jars of semen in his room or something. Tell me about, I keep hearing about the semen. I don't know. I just, I heard that. This wasn't the first time someone mentioned Ed Hammonds semen to me. But the only reference in police reports I could find is that when the cops searched his room in a catalog of items found is a reference to one box of Trojans, three empty, two unused or new, one used. The cops swarmed the Hammond house on Halloween, took away the condoms and catalogued his large skin mag collection. They also seized the clothes that Hammond had been wearing the night before, which included, according to the report, one pair beige colored men's corduroy pants, blood stained left up our leg. It's clear from the reports that the cops were sure they had their guy. And if you ever want to see what tunnel vision looks like in practice, read the police reports on the Moxley case from the first two weeks of November 1975. But then poof, their theory fell apart. Hammond passed a polygraph and the state crime lab finally reported that the stain on his pants wasn't in fact Martha's blood. By mid-November, the cops would have to admit that there was no evidence tying Hammond to the murder. Like the drunk husband in the lesbian pot dealer, the worst crime Ed Hammond committed was offending the sensibilities of his neighbors. Off the list fell Ed Hammond, but there were plenty of oddballs waiting in the wings to take his place. Meanwhile, the clock was ticking. The day after the murder, police chief Baron assigned the Moxley case to Captain Tom Keegan. Keegan worked side by side with the flame haired and Bushy mustache detective named Jim Loney. Loney was huge, well over six feet with the circumference of a redwood. Loney relished the role of bad cop. He loved grabbing lapels and shirts almost as much as he loved riding motorcycles, which he did most weekends. Keegan was a former marine. He had a big helmet, a possibly dyed brown hair, and smoked cigarettes out of a holder, like FDR. Keegan wasn't quite a good cop, but he was the not so bad cop. He was ambitious, a politician. He'd eventually succeed Baron as chief of police, then retired down in South Carolina and served for many years in the state's house of representatives. There's actually a stretch of highway named after him down there. Now, short on suspects, the detectives decided to concentrate on nailing down a solid timeline. Martha's official estimated time of death wouldn't be of much help. Elliott Gross, the Connecticut medical examiner, who performed the autopsy of full 24 hours after Martha was found, had provided a frustratingly broad window, anytime between 9.30 pm on the 30th to 5am Halloween morning. So Keegan and Loney had to narrow it down in other ways, for one by talking to Martha's friends about the night of October 30th. One thing you have to remember, in 1975 there were no cell phones, so plans would need to be made well in advance to talk at a specific hour, and for both parties to be home and near telephones. Which, you might not recall, used to be connected to long curly cords, which I personally can attest were excellent for twirling around two fingers, or even chewing on while talking. Margie Walker had to spend her mischief night with her younger brother, stuck at a boring meeting for Red Cross volunteers. So we went to the Red Cross meeting, and I remember saying to Martha, like, I can't believe my parents won't let me go. So when I get back at 9.30, you know, and that was her curfew. She was expected to be home at 9.30, and you know, I said, you're going to tell me everything I missed, all the fun stuff. So I was, I waited a bit, I didn't hear from her, and then I called her house, and her mother said that she wasn't home yet. And I did think that was a little odd at the time, and this is somewhere between like 9.30 and 10. And so that didn't seem right to me at the time. Martha not being at home by 10 surprised her best friend. She'd broken a phone date. Helen X was one of the first to receive a call from Mrs. Moxley later that night. You may recall from the last episode that Martha showed up to the Skakal House with two friends, Helen X and Jeffrey Byrne. Helen and Jeff sat in the backseat of the Love Mobile, while Martha, Michael Skakal, and eventually Tommy Skakal sat in front. Helen, who owns her own marketing company and is the mother of three grown children, lives with her husband in a lovely house just outside the gates of Bell Haven. The day I was visiting, they were dealing with a common Connecticut problem I've dealt with myself, an infestation of cicada killers in their backyard. They're harmless flying bugs, but huge and super gross. But back to 1975. Helen left the Skakal driveway at 9.20 along with Jeffrey Byrne. As Helen was leaving, Martha told her she was right behind her, she'd be heading home soon. But then, Helen picked up the phone in the early hours of Halloween. It was Dorothy Moxley. Helen knew that Martha had been on thin ice with her mom after blowing her curfew not long before. Okay, and so eventually Mrs. Moxley calls you, yes. And says Martha's not home, is she there with me? And I was like, no, she's not here. And that's when I told her to call the police. I thought she should call the police. Why did you think that she should call the police? Because Martha had to be home, she was leaving when I was leaving. She was leaving right after me. And the fact she wasn't home, and I know she wouldn't have broken curfew again. Martha had broken curfew a few nights before her death, and knew she couldn't mess with her mom again. She knew she had a curfew, she knew she had to get home. Margie might have been surprised, maybe a little peved, but Helen was alarmed by Martha missing curfew again, which seemed so out of character. The friends compared notes and agreed that whoever had attacked Martha must have done it not much later than 930. In the days after the murder, Helenics had a terrible realization, one that seemed to narrow the time frame of the attack even further. Shortly after returning from the Skakles, Helen telephoned her friend Melissa. Just as Melissa was saying she had to hang up for her 10 p.m. curfew, all hell broke loose. Oh, I thought it was talking on the phone, and the dog was like going berserk. I went out to go call the dog. Your dog's name was Doc, right? Doc. Was there anything different about what Doc was doing that night versus? It was very agitated and barking. I mean, literally never stopped barking. I mean, they bark when people go by and things like that, but not as agitated. Any would call the dog, dog would not come in, which is really, really unusual. We still have the same dogs, and they're very obedient. What kind of dogs are? Uschelin Shepherd. He wouldn't come in, he wouldn't come in. And I kept screaming at screaming, and then we always had a live-in help, live in Nanny, but then we had an extra babysitter because my parents were traveling. She's like, you have to come in, you have to come in. So I went in, but the dog was just like crazy, and I couldn't get the dog in. The dog always came in. I could call him, he always came in, and he didn't come in. And he was frozen in a spot, like in, you know, in the, into the driveway, in the middle of the road, you know, at looking at the tree where her body was found, and that's where he was, and he didn't move from there. The X-House is directly across Walsh Lane from the Moxley House. Upon hearing Helen's story, Kiget and Loney consulted a local vet named Dr. Edward C. Flyschley. According to the police report, Dr. Flyschley stated that all indications given, the X-Dog witness part and are all of the murder. He further stated he would be unable to state whether the X-Dog knew the attacker. In her dining room in Greenwich 49 years later, Helen hasn't deviated an inch from her conviction that her dog witnessed Martha being attacked. I'm positive. That's when it happened. It makes no sense otherwise. Margie too. So I definitely believe in that timeline. I believe in the dogs barking, and everything like that. It just makes total sense to me. Captain Kiget and Detective Loney believed it as well. After sending the entire case file to him, they shared this opinion on a late November 1975 call with Dr. Joe Yehimczyk, the chief medical examiner of Harris County, Texas, which encompasses Houston. Dr. Joe, a Connecticut native, was an internationally renowned forensic pathologist with both medical and law degrees. Here's Loney. With a couple of neighborhood dogs born, that's why we believe it would be around 10 o'clock. Dr. Joe, who was considered a god in the world of forensics, concurred. Even Dorothy Moxley agreed. Just before 10 o'clock, she was in the master bedroom, painting some trim, and she reported hearing voices and dogs barking. Is the more she considered it, perhaps even screams. So in 1975, it was unanimous. Martha's closest friends, the cops, a dog expert, and even her mother agreed she'd been attacked at about 10 p.m. Investigating in the case over 40 years later, I agree too. Because the cops watched so many things, as tempting as it might be to say that they blew this part of the investigation too, I just can't. I've turned it over in my head a thousand times and have come to believe that the attack almost certainly occurred around 10 and not significantly later than that. Why do I believe this? Because of some of the findings of the medical examiner. Martha's hymen was intact when she died. No semen was found inside her or flarest on her skin. Toxicology found no drugs or alcohol in her system. Nobody'd seen her in the neighborhood. If Martha had been attacked at, say, 11, 30, 12 or one, where in the world was she hiding? And remember how cold October 30th was. If she wasn't having sex, eating, drinking, or smoking pot, what could she possibly be doing on that 40 degree night? Keep this in mind. Eventually this timeline's gonna come under some significant scrutiny. But in 1975, everyone, including Captain Keegan and Detective Loney, felt confident of the time of the crime. Now came the hard part. There's a good reason murder mysteries aren't called when done it. If Martha had last been seen at 930 and was attacked at 10, Keegan and Loney knew that they needed to drill down on every detail of Martha's last known whereabouts. You might recall from the last episode that on November 15th, Detective Loney brought six of the Skakal siblings to the police station to get their stories on tape. As they sat through those interviews, the police honed in on one crucial fact. As all the other kids hanging around the Skakal driveway dispersed, leaving Martha behind, one boy stayed with her. The Skakal siblings who were in the driveway told the cops as much, and so did their cousin Jimmy Terrien, not to mention Helenex and Jeffrey Byrne. The boy in question didn't dispute it either. Telling cops he was alone with Martha Moxley at 930. Then he said she headed for her house. Did she say anything to you when she left? I'm going to visit somebody, I'm going someplace. You know for a fact that she said to you, I'm going home. Yeah she didn't say she was going home. Yeah she said that I was sensed. Yeah she was going home. Yeah. That voice you just heard, that was Tommy Skakal. She 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 McGuats and this is Trace of Suspicion, an all new podcast from Dateline. Listen for free each week or unlock new episodes early and enjoy AdFree Listening by subscribing to Dateline Premium on Apple 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. I'm Josh McGuats and I'm Josh McGuats and I'm Josh McGuats and I'm Josh McGuats. I'm Josh McGuats and I'm Josh McGuats and I'm Josh McGuats. I'm Josh McGuats and I'm Josh McGuats and I'm Josh McGuats. I'm Josh McGuats and I'm Josh McGuats. I'm Josh McGuats. I'm Josh McGuats and I'm Josh McGuats. I'm Josh McGuats. I'm Josh McGuats and I'm Josh McGuats. I'm Josh McGuats. I'm Josh McGuats and I'm Josh McGuats. I'm Josh McGuats. I'm Josh McGuats and I'm Josh McGuats and I'm Josh McGuats. I'm Josh McGuats and I'm Josh McGuats and I'm Josh McGuats. Given the facts of the case, it's surprising that Tommy Skakal didn't become the police's prime suspect immediately. As you might recall from the last episode, the day after the murder, Detective Lonnie discovered a Tony Pena IV iron in a bin in the Skakal's back hallway, plausibly the sister club of the murder weapon. But Chief Baren in those first 48 when he was convinced the murderer came from out of town, downplayed the significance of the Six Iron's provenance. Baren told the assembled press on November 1st, kids are always leaving bicycles, tennis rackets, golf clubs, outdoors after playing with them on the lawn. His point was that the Tony Pena had probably just been a convenient weapon of opportunity. But Baren's got couldn't really compete with the reality of the situation. Here's how Captain Keegan put it, to leading forensic expert Dr. Joe. Well, here's the position where there is this individual's last to see the victim. He has access to what we think is the weapon. We think that weapon came from his house. It's circumstantial. It's very circumstantial. And he's got opportunity. The facts of the case traveled quickly amongst the Bell Haven teens. Kids like Chris Gentry, who'd been out with other local boys, Egan Cars on Miss Shift Night, educated the cops on the wild, almost feral nature of the Skakele kids, and the rep they developed at their school. Because we're just here, a bunch of rod and kids. See, they're so rich and everything. They just don't care about anybody. They just do what they want to do. Back on Halloween, Captain Keegan and Detective Lonnie deposited Tommy in the back of a cruiser. Brought him downtown to HQ and put him under the bright lights. Lonnie must have had an excellent opportunity to use this bad cop routine to pressure Tommy into confessing. But Tommy, as Lonnie told Dr. Joe, he was as cool as a Cuc. I mean, we've talked to him for one period of time for almost three and a half hours. We tried to even surmise how it happened and tried to put him into that category. We went into the sexual relationship. Everything we tried. And he didn't bunch. No sweat, no perspiration. His Adam's apple never even moves. His hands don't even move. He just sits there nice and calm. He doesn't stutter. No stammering. Nothing. Very calm, cool, and corrective. Tommy stuck to his story. He had no idea what happened to Martha that night. He said goodbye to her at 930. Watched her walking off towards her house and went inside to do his homework. Apparently nothing about Tommy alarmed the detectives the way Ed Hammond's skin mag collection and used Trojan did. Because after that interview, they made no effort to collect or even inspect the closed Tommy at one the night before. If his demeanor suggested innocence, his polygraph confirmed it. To the cops at least. I spoke to one of the world's foremost polygraph experts and we're going to be talking a lot about them and how seriously we should take the results in the next episode. But the Greenwich cops seem to treat it as an infallible investigative tool. A lot of neighborhood kids got strapped into one. Even though investigators didn't suspect them of anything, it was as if that magic box could solve the case for them. Kumo, the bell haven't son of a surgeon who in the last episode described how magical and cool Martha was, even got a turn in the chair. Look, they were really cool about it and if I remember correctly, they didn't bother me at all. A lot of it wasn't, did you do it? A lot of it was, do you know who did it? And that's a perfectly, to me, perfectly normal thing to ask a bunch of kids in a situation like this. Tommy actually got strapped in twice. As Captain Keegan told Dr. Joe, the first polygraph was a wash and deemed inconclusive. Okay, let me tell you, I got this little thing right here. The first one was the third of November. I had the second one with other nightmares, remember? Right, so six days later. When they gave him the first polygraph examination, they said to us that he was completely drained. They were getting nothing. They were getting no reaction. In other words, he wasn't even moving the needles. But he was completely drained. They said it was like he was up for days. But he's abnormally calm. The November 9th poly examiners reported that on the retake, their machine judged that Tommy was being truthful when he said he didn't know who killed Martha or the location of the missing golf club head. Grinich police decided to give it one more shot. Six days later, Tommy was back at the station, feeling their questions. Did you see anyone attack Martha? No. You suspect anyone of the hitting her. Did you hit her? No. Based on the poly and Tommy's consistent denials, Keegan and Loney moved on. Tommy seemed to have dropped off the suspect list altogether. But meanwhile, the investigation was going nowhere. And in December, Keegan and Loney happens to be re-interviewing Helen X. That's when she recalled a detail that hadn't come out in her previous interview. Tommy and Martha had been flirtatious on mischief night, shortly before the murder, but also physical. Keegan wanted to know more. I'd like to have you tell me. I know people were just following around and I just contemplate Martha and the busses. Okay. What bushy are you talking about? The fact that I lied to her. And uh, he pushed her in there. Did she fall down or... Yes, she fell and she fell and she fell down again. Okay, no. No, thanks you got up. Okay, that's when I do we laugh. The pushing and screaming was clearly playful. So playful, in fact, that Helen felt uncomfortable sticking around for what looked to be moving towards a make-out session. So she and Jeff Byrne took off for home. But police wondered if this could be evidence of something more sinister brewing. Without telling him what it was about, detective Simon Tommy back to the Greenwich police headquarters, I imagine that the cops told him that owing to his past poly, he was no longer a suspect. If I had to guess from reading the report, Tommy was surprised, perhaps unprepared, to be confronted with questions about the pushing. The report reads, Tom was interviewed at length regarding the incident of pushing Martha, and he related at first that he did not remember, and then later on related that he did push her in a joking manner, and that she tripped on the steel curbing and stumbled into the Pakistan-Drip patch. Tom related that the incident was very foggy, and the whole situation was very unclear. Then, Detective Loney sprang something else on Tommy. They interviewed Ken Littleton, the scakel's 23-year-old tutor-slash-mindor. Ken told them at 9.45, he walked all around the house and poked his head into each of the rooms. He climbed the stairs to Tommy's third floor bedroom, empty at 9.45. If Tommy had, like he said, come into the house at 9.30, but wasn't in his bedroom at 9.45, the approximate time of the murder, where was he? And what possible motivation would the tutor have to implicate Tommy in such a way they must have thought? On this question, Tommy's memories were considerably more clear. He told Loney that after saying goodbye to Martha, he went up to a guest room on the third floor to find a book about Abraham Lincoln and log cabins he needed for an extra credit paper for history class. That's where he must have been, when Ken found his bedroom empty. Keegan and Loney made a note to check with Brunswick about this Lincoln paper, and with a grunnage kids about this odd teen whose memory only sometimes seemed to work. Detective's were starting to eye Tommy. He'd gotten I'd a lot, but in a totally different way, by a lot of fluster grunnage girls. Tommy was considered the hot scachal brother, especially among Martha's 15-year-old cohort. One former classmate told me he remembered Michael seemingly always having a snot-crusted nose, but his brother Tommy, by contrast, consistently looking dapper, put together. Here's Martha's friend, Helen Ix again. I mean, I think so many people had a crush on Tommy, so he was a good looking guy and they're Gucci shoes and it was extremely popular with his older. In photos, he's always smartly dressed. He has longish curly hair, it looks like it's dying to become an afro, but Tommy did his best to fight nature and tame it with a side part. But as Kumo said in the last episode, Tommy was different, but he never really seemed like one of the gang. You know what I mean? There may be an explanation for that. Remember Hopo Brian, who fell out of the car kick scachal was driving in 1966, four years before in Greenwich, Tommy, just like Hopo Brian, had fallen out of a moving car. It happened around 1962 when Tommy was four. Cops tracked down the scachal's former chauffeur to recount what happened. James Mar, who went by bunny, remembered that it occurred while he was driving on Field Point Road, the main artery connecting Bel Haven to the rest of Greenwich. Four-year-old Tommy and five-year-old Julie were riding in the back seat. As the police report reads, Mr. Mar was not sure who opened the door, allowing Tommy to fall out. Here are the cops filling in Dr. Joe on their findings. And right now we're going in a psychological background, we've got to release that record, and we're going to head injury and problems in school, problems concentrating. He fell out of a car and fractured his skull. Approximately five years old, he started going through temper tantrums. As he got a little over into eight years old, they got worse. Sometimes they'd last for three hours, destroying things. He was taken to a neurologist, which we just found out today, so we haven't really talked to him. He had a lot of guidance work. Last year, while he was in the 10th grade, he was doing sixth grade work. Very emotional time. Right. Bed wedding, night, nail biting. There's so many things that, you know, are starting to come out now. The cops learned that after the accident, Anne Skakel hoped prayer would take care of Tommy's problem. This is a Roman Catholic family. How you either neurologist? Yeah, but this is a Roman Catholic family that seems to think that they can pretty much handle everything with religion. When we talked to Dr. yesterday, he told us that the mother was extremely religious. Right. And they have religious relatives. All right. And this was the thing that they sort of set with the stage in his life, and I would pass by. And I think they were relying on the religion part of the family, if they maybe bring him through, there's five years old to 10 years when he was given them this trouble. You know, they figured maybe it would wear out. But Tommy's issues persisted beyond childhood. During my reporting on this case, I've come across multiple references to his history of violence. Police learned that in one instance, it's unclear exactly when. Tommy was accused of slashing a painting with a broom handle. But mainly, he terrorized his siblings. According to Michael, Tommy once stuck a fork in their brother, John's forehead, while at the dinner table. But his favorite target was Michael. One time, Tommy chased Michael around the house, threatening to bash him with a large glass ash tray. I spoke to one of Michael's bell haven friends, who asked not to be either recorded or identified. He described an incident that occurred sometime around 1975 when Tommy pounded on Michael's bedroom door in a rage. So hard that he feared the woodwood splinter. The exact words he used to describe teenage Tommy, a scary, scary dude, and very, very strong. The stories police collected about Tommy were compelling, behavioral troubles, horseplay with Martha the night of her murder. Tommy pushed Martha into the bushes. On December 16th, just a few days after Tommy told them about the Abe Lincoln report, Keegan and Lonnie had huttfooted it over to Brunswick. Tommy's teachers were mystified. A paper about Lincoln and his logs? No such thing was either assigned or submitted they told them. Whether he remembered committing the crime or not, Tommy had lied to them about his whereabouts at the time of the murder. And given Tommy's poor academic performance, an extra credit paper was a pretty weak lie at that. But it was a fabrication nonetheless, one that Tommy had delivered straight face to investigators. Suspissions were starting to stack up. This individual is the last to see the victim, the weapon. We think that weapon came from his house and he's got opportunity. On February 3rd, 1976, Dr. Joe weighed in with his written conclusions about the case. Quote, the facets of this case suggested Martha Moxley's attacker had a probable unstable personality, homosexual inclined. Either panicked, following what may have started out as a prank, or became so angry upon being rejected that he engaged in an overkill. The probability of this being the act of a stranger is, in our opinion, very remote. End quote. There was no other way that Captain Keegan and Detective Lonnie couldn't interpret Dr. Joe's conclusions. Tommy was their guy. It made sense. Tommy was no stranger to Martha. It all began with a prank. Tommy pushing her into the bushes. The flirtation looked to be heading towards a proposition. Given his established anger issues, how might Tommy have reacted? Had he been rejected? Dr. Joe wrote that the Grunnish cops had put too much stock in the past polygraph, especially given that Tommy had a week to prepare between the two. Dr. Joe wrote that it was possible Tommy had consciously set out to beat the poly. But he also offered an alternative explanation, writing, even if he has knowledge of the crime, he may have developed a bona fide abnesia about the events that occurred during the evening of the young lady's death. When I first read Dr. Joe's theory that Tommy might have killed Martha and forgotten it, owing to abnesia, it seemed absurd, like a plot line from a lifetime movie. But he did initially tell cops he'd forgotten all about shoving Martha. Given his injury, could he have both forgotten pushing her into a bush and also forgotten beating her to death with a golf club? And then I came across this bone-chilling line from a police interview with Bunny Mar, the former Skakele chauffeur. Mr. Marr further related that Tommy would also be subject to periods of time when he would just stare into space and not remember anything. The final straw for Grunnish investigators might have been on April 10th, 1976, when the Skakele's gardener, Franz Witteen, was summoned to HQ to sign a written statement. While there, Witteen casually relate to investigators that on several occasions he'd observed Tommy leave the Skakele house to go walking, taking with him a golf club. An arrest felt imminent, it looked like they'd have the whole thing wrapped up by Easter. Tommy would be locked behind bars. All they had to do was make sure their case was airtight. Recent Taylor Swift song, you can get our conversation now for REET, wherever you download your podcasts. Cell phone data suggested that he was near his ex-girlfriend's burial site. Recent true crime obsession, Low Country South Carolina's sociopath Alex Murdoch, was buried by technology in his double murdered trial. Prosecutors argue a cell phone video taken by Paul Murdoch places his father Alex Murdoch at the crime scene minutes before he and his mother were murdered. Defense attorneys might challenge interpretation of electronic signals, but the data supplied by modern technology provides something approaching objective evidence. I was born in 1972, so I can't say I remember much about 1975, but I do know all about the cool stuff we have now that we didn't have back then. In 1975, not only were there no cell phones or ring cameras or onboard car computers, there was barely even cable television. It existed but wasn't yet widely adopted. CNN wouldn't launch for another five years. The only objective technological data that Greenwich cops had at their disposal came from the same low-tech TV of my childhood. Growing up, I remember crabby teachers referring to TV as the idiot box, but in this case, it provided the most intelligent evidence available. The closest thing to geolocation that existed on the night of October 30th, the night that Martha Moxley was killed. TV, being the only screen in existence, was an essential part of life in the 70s. Kids planned their lives around watching their favorite shows. Julie Skakel was no different. From 9 to 10 pm on October 30th, NBC aired Ellery Queen. The formula was that every episode, someone would die of violent death, and every week, the eponymous young mystery writer slash detective would solve the crime in the last 10 minutes of the show. Julie Skakel watched Ellery Queen the night Martha was killed, and her movements were dictated by her desire to catch the big reveal of the murderer. On the show, that is. The Skakel boys had different viewing plans that evening. Rush Skakel Jr. had been turned on to British comedy troupe Monty Python at Dartmouth, and wanted his brothers and cousins to check out their series, so they planned to watch it at their cousin Jimmy Terrians house together. It aired on PBS from 10 to 10.30 pm. If you were anyone else in Greenwich in front of a television set on the night of Martha Moxley's murder, you're almost certainly watching the French connection on CBS. Airing from 9 pm until 11.07, the Gene Hackman detective drama that swept the 1972 Oscars featured, in the words of October 30th's Greenwich time, one of the best chase sequences in the history of film. But it wasn't the subject matter of any of these shows that was of interest to Captain Keegan and Detective Loney. It was when the programs aired that was complicating their perfect theory. In the same interview when Ken Littleton, the tutor, reported that Tommy wasn't in his bedroom at 9.45. He added that he did, however, recall seeing Tommy shortly after that. Ken recalled having the French connection on TV and Rush seniors when Tommy came in. Just before the beginning of the famous chase scene, Tommy plunked down and watched it, then left right after it ended. The cops learned from CBS that the chase scene began at 10.26 and ended at 10.33. In the same interview when Tommy introduced the imaginary Lincoln paper, without prompting, he too mentioned watching a bit of the French connection with Ken, then returning to his room at about 10.30. Even more importantly, Ken recalled nothing out of the ordinary about Tommy's appearance. Tommy seemed relaxed, and to the best of Ken's recollection, he was wearing the same clothes he had on at the Bell Haven Club, minus jacket and tie. He was not covered head to toe in blood, as Martha's murderer would be expected to be. CBS had thrown Tommy a lifeline. Now it was NBC's turn with an assist from a forgetful sister and a sticky door. Recall Julie's Skakles was watching Ellery Queen, which ran on NBC from 9 to 10. Her friend, Andy Shakespeare, who joined the Skakles for dinner at the Bell Haven Club, needed a lift home before it ended. So Julie decided to run Andy home during a commercial break, so she could race back home to see the killer unmasked. Julie's station wagon was parked in a spot that afforded her a clear vista to the front door of the Skakles house. The two girls hopped in the car, but then Julie realized something, which she related to detectives during her November 15th, 1975 interview. I get it somewhere between 9 and 10 or so, then I went back on the porch, I'll say it's funny, he was about to go. In case you couldn't quite make that out, Julie said she went back to the porch and told Andy they needed to go. He was about 930 when Andy and I got in the car, to leave for Andy home, and I forgot my keys. Julie told cops she asked Andy to run back up to the front door to fetch the forgotten car keys. Andy finds the front door stuck, so she rings the doorbell. Who opens the door, but Tommy Skakles. But the ringing doorbell hasn't only summoned Tommy. Ken Littleton and 9-year-old Steven, the youngest Skakles, also stand in the doorway. Tommy hands Andy the keys as Ken looks on. Andy returns to the station wagon, hands Julie the keys, and Julie speeds off towards Andy's reverse-eyed neighborhood. Julie then manages to make it back to the Skakles house at about 945, and time to see the big reveal. Apologies for the spoiler, but guest our Larry Hagman, who would go on to play JR Uing on Dallas, is revealed to be the murderer of the Broadway producer. Loney tracked down the precise time of that commercial break from Channel 4, the local NBC affiliate, 9.23 pm. So Keegan and Loney had Andy Shakespeare and Ken Littleton corroborate that there had been a carkey handoff at the front door between Tommy and Andy close to 9.30, meaning Tommy was inside the house right around or shortly after the time he'd been telling cops he'd said goodbye to Martha near the driveway. Here's Andy Shakespeare. We learned about 9.30, chillin' at, we probably got a minimum of keys on the car and so on, back to the house, and Tommy and Ken, and Tony, Steve, never in the door, caught me the keys. Tommy now had two alibis from two non-family witnesses. One at about 9.30 at the front door by both Andy Shakespeare and Ken Littleton, and one at about 10.20 in his father's room, also by Ken Littleton. Over the years, this part of the story has become almost like a play in my head, with these various characters rushing around the stage in order to make their marks and follow this fast choreography. What I always come to is this. Based on all the information the cops had in 1976, it's an incredibly tight timeline. Assuming the attack is shortly before 10 pm, after handing the keys off to Andy at the front door at 9.30, Tommy would have 50 minutes to either reunite with, or chase Martha, beat her with the Tony Pan at golf club, and drag her almost 100 feet to the hiding place under the pine tree, all while the x-dog is barking his head off. And then, reappear in his father's room at 10.20, looking to Ken unmasked, unperturbed, and blood-free. Not to mention at some point, he'd have to get rid of both his bloody clothes and the golf club grip without being noticed. It would be a challenging feat of athleticism and cold-blooded composure for even a train killer. Was it even humanly possible for a 16 year old? Still, as the fall of 75 turned into the winter of 76, Captain Keegan and Detective Loney were convinced that they could nail us on Tommy, if only they could get him to confess. And remarkably, Rush Skakel seemed to think giving the investigators full access to his kid was an excellent idea. One of the great conards of the Moxley murder investigation is that Rush Skakel's stone walled the cops. This idea totally permeates the media coverage of the case. Any defense lawyer worth her salt would have told him under no circumstances should he allow his teenage son to meet with police, at least without an attorney present. But Rush allowed cops to interview Tommy for almost four hours straight on Halloween without an attorney or any other adult in the room. And then again on December 13th. I mentioned the two polygraphs Rush consented to both. The police didn't need a search warrant. Rush signed a consent to search the Skakel home, which specifically acknowledged he was waving his constitutional rights and provided they could remove anything they wished. He also turned over the keys to the family's ski house in Windom, New York, where several of the Skakel kids spent the weekend after Martha was found. Rush must have loved having cops around. For the first six weeks of the investigation, he allowed them to use his house as their bell haven HQ. Ethel Jones, their cook even fed them. Steven Skakel, his youngest son, who was nine years old at the time, remembers the house being full of Greenwich PD. I remember one or more cops almost on a daily basis. At the house, I mean, that's what would make him breakfast, would make him lunch. They'd free reign of the house. I remember crawling into one of the in the basement. There was a crawl space, would be hard for an adult to get into. I remember crawling in there, looking for golf clubs. I think it was a game. You'll notice Steven's voices on. After 9-11, he was working for AmeriCares, a relief organization, and spent months in the rublet ground zero. He's had a host of health problems as a result, including throat lesions and scarring that make it so he can't speak above a whisper. I've known Steven for almost 10 years and it took me almost 10 years to learn that. We talk exclusively about the case, and that's the way he wants to keep it. I'm not talking about it on this. That's pandering. You think? I do. Nothing to do with the case. You'll be hearing a lot more from Steven. Although I imagine he'll scoff at suggestion, I think of Steven as a man who's devoted his life to trying to reverse what looks like the latest manifestation of this cacole curse. This time, not premature death, but his family's nearly 50-year entanglement with a brutal murder. Maybe, finally accomplishing what his father couldn't. Rush's cacole senior died in 2003. The cause of death? Frontal lobe dementia. When I discovered that in January of 1976, he signed an authorization to allow cops access to Tommy's medical and school records. It occurred to me that he might have been cognitively impaired even back then, or his alcoholism was so severe that it had blown out even basic decision-making ability. Given Tommy's violent fits, what possible conclusion could his father have drawn by the police's intense interest in picking through Tommy's medical records? A father who's not quite all there. It's something I'm personally familiar with. My family called my father, his name's Ed Goldman. They call them special Ed. My father was not like, he missed a lot. And sometimes when I read about your father, I kind of get, was your father, I mean, it didn't seem like he was, it seemed like he drank a lot. When my mother who was the center of his world passed away, it devastated. And it wasn't something that happened overnight. It was years of her being ill and it just warmed down. And then overnight being stuck with seven kids. I just don't think he knew how to handle it. It took an outsider to show Rush's senior that he goofed trusting the cops. On January 19, 1976, Greenwich police still on the hunt for enough evidence to finally nail Tommy, stopped by the Whitby school, a private elementary, to take a gander at Tommy's file. What investigators may not have realized was that Rush's senior's older sister, George Ann, Jimmy Terriens mother, had been instrumental in founding Whitby, a lay Catholic school that started the Montessori education craze in America. And it even provided them with a corner of her Greenwich estate for their schoolhouse. Whitby administrators immediately recognized what Rush's senior had not. His actions were allowing police to build a case against Tommy. Whitby's headmaster in the school's legal counsel called Rush in and explained gingerly that the school thought his decisions to give the cops cart blotch had been utter madness. How did Rush react to this? Besides reaching for the scotch, I imagine him holding his face in his hands and weeping. That very day, he hired a seasoned Stanford criminal attorney to represent Tommy, a manual, many Margolis, who told the cops their backstage passes into the Skickle family had been revoked. They had free and open access to the house and all of us until many Margolis stepped in and did what any lawyer would have done. After many Margolis cut the cops off, Detective Lonnie took the hunting down Tommy on the streets of Greenwich and yelling trash talk, saying it was only a matter of time before they nailed him. For Rush, that seems to be about the time when reality finally started to sink in. Shortly after realizing that Tommy was the police's prime suspect, he was next door at Sissy X's. Sissy was the mother of Helenex, Martha's friend who was with her at the Skickles on mischief night. The X's were the Skickles closest friends. Sissy and Ann Skickle have been tight since their days at Manhattanville. The preferred women's college for Catholic girls would mean. She was one of my mother's best friends. After my mother died, my father had a very difficult time and one of the you know side effects was trink. When her friend Ann died, Sissy did her best to look after Rush. It was Sissy who would come over and dump Rush's booze out while he was off on his periodic trips to rehab. Sitting in her living room, Rush began to hyperventilate. Sissy called an ambulance, which sped him to Greenwich hospital. Rush told doctors he thought it was his heart, but it was more likely a panic attack. It's understandable. Skickle family legal papers I've reviewed confirmed that at this juncture, Rush had started to believe the cops when they told him Tommy had killed Martha and that he was harboring in the words of one memo, a monster in his household. Soon after, police presented Rush with a psychological profile of the killer. According to a legal memo from Tom Sheridan, the profile quote, literally scared the wits out of the father of six young children. In the face of his continuous denials, Tommy was brought in for a complete neurological examination to a leading psychiatrist, Stanley Lessie MD. Tommy would stay under the shrinks care for two weeks, during which time Lessie would inject him with sodium amytal, a truth serum, and interview him about his activities the night Martha Moxley died, to test the cops it requested. Many Margoles explicitly advised against the trip, but Rush still seemed unable to resist giving the cops everything they wanted. Tommy wept as the needle slipped into his arm. Cryed out, please take it out. When it was all over, Lessie told Rush that based on everything he'd seen, Tommy had absolutely nothing to do with Martha Moxley's death. For obvious reasons, things had been a bit strained between the Skickles and the Moxley's, but Rush bounded over to the Moxley's house and excitedly shared the news. Here's Detective Loney again. He made that visit over to Mr. Moxley, and said, for your benefit only for your peace of mind, and I have some peace of mind today, I wanted to tell you my son was tested, he didn't commit this murder, the doctors are saying it, and I want you to know that. It must have been a perplexing visit. Rush was certainly relieved, but it suggested the Moxley's that perhaps they were no closer to prosecuting Martha's killer. These suspicions were confirmed when Captain Keegan and Detective Loney visited them one evening three days later on April 1, 1976. Bad news, they reported. They'd made their case to Don Brown, the Fairfield County State's attorney, and he pronounced the evidence against Tommy's Skickle too flimsy to try. There was no way they were going to get a conviction based on dog barks and a fib about homework. Brown told them. The investigators were frustrated, they'd felt so close, but they must have understood Brown's point. They'd failed to get a confession or any evidence that could really pin this murder on Tommy. Square one, it seemed. At least for the investigators, the whole experience seems to have taken quite a toll on Tommy. In April 1976, not long after Don Brown opted not to charge him, Tommy showed up to the Greenwich hospital ER, doubled over with stomach pains. Hemorrhagic gas stridus was the diagnosis, bleeding from the stomach that's often brought on by excessive drinking or stress or both. By that time, investigators were already sniffing out a new lead, courtesy of Sissy X, who appeared at the police station the day after detectives met with the Moxley's to tell them they wouldn't be arresting Tommy. Few were as devoted to Rush Skickle as his late wife's best friend, but Sissy was also about as chatty as they come. And it's clear from police reports that over the years, cops came to see Sissy as a reliable correspondent to the goings on within the Skickle House. Sometimes interlocutor, other times informant. Here's Sissy, years later. Sissy's sorry for me because Dorothy was a good friend of mine. The Skayne was a good friend of mine. I mean, I was just sick about that. I mean, the hard thing was so terrible to meet her, and I love her, you know, she lived in my house. She's not really sorry for me. So I even tried to figure out who in the world could have done this. At the station, Sissy told Captain Keegan and Detective Loney all about Tommy's visit to Columbia Presbyterian. She said she'd even seen the needle marks up and down Tommy's arms from the sodium amytal injections. While telling them that she never suspected Tommy, she did also let it slip, that the reason that the Whitby School had been so protective was that his school records included accounts of blackouts. It was that day that Sissy put a bug in their ear about someone else in the Skickle Household, a person they'd never once considered. Did they have any idea what a weirdo you was? The tip turned out to be a good one. Was the person she described indeed a weirdo? Unquestionably. A psychopath? Quite possibly. Soon, Newcofs would take over the case and they'd pursue Sissy's hunch for the better part of a decade. Next time, on Dead Certain, the Martha Moxley Marguer. I see myself as a very complicated individual who got involved in a mass that screwed up his life. The whole thing for me was a bit of a shock to policemen out of the blue. If you think you're going to get away with this shit, you mistaken. Very mistaken. 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 Sheel's and Rob Heath are producers. Nora Patel is our story editor, fact checking by Simone Buteau, production assistance by Brendan Weissau, sound designed by Rick Kwan and Marquio Shazumi, original music by John Estes. Bryson Barnes is our technical director. 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 Melvin. 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.