The Journal News from White Plains, New York • Page 4

MOXLEY SLAYING CASE ww.ny journa lnews.com RK 4A Thursday, January 20, 2000 The Journal News of twists, turns followed slaying in Greenwich 'It's a wonderful victim's mother says SLAYING IN GREENWICH Michael Skakel, nephew of the late Sen. Robert Kennedy, surrendered to authorities yesterday and was charged with the 1 975 murder ot his childhood friend, Martha Moxley. Both Michael Skakel, then 1 5, and his older brother Thomas, then 1 7, had been considered possible suspects. Nephew of Robert w. and Ethel Kennerjy 7T Skakel William Kennedy Smith 1991 Dominick Dunne 1993 J985 1990 I I I I 1 'i Martha Moxley 1975 Michael Skakel 1975 Thomas 1975 I960.

I Oct. 30, Oct. 31, 1975: 1975: Martha Moxley is Moxley, 1 5, found dead, and friends The murder slop at the weapon, a home of golf club, is Thomas and matched to a Michael set owned by the Skakel nephews of family. 1978-1980: Michael Skakel attends the Elan school, a substance abuse center. He allegedly admits to some involvement in Moxley's killing other students.

to I May 1998: Former Los Angeles Police Detective Mark Fuhrman publishes a book that asserts that Michael Skakel killed Moxley after seeing his older brother kiss her. Gannett News Service CHATHAM, N.J. Only once has Dorthy Moxley met the person police say murdered her daughter Martha, seeing him for five minutes 24 years ago. The day after Martha Moxley disappeared, her mother went looking for her and knocked on a neighbor's door. Michael Skakel, a 15-year-old nephew of Ethel Kennedy, widow of Sea Robert F.

Kennedy, answered the door of his Greenwich, home. "I asked if he had seen Martha," Dorthy Moxley said in an interview after Skakel was arrested yesterday. "He said, He looked hung over, and he was barefoot It's the image I have today." Dorthy Moxley, 67, who moved to Chatham seven years ago to be close to her son and grandchildren, received a call Tuesday from a Connecticut state prosecutor who told her a press conference would be held yesterday. "I asked if I was going to be disappointed," Moxley said. "He said he didn't think so." So she was ready yesterday for the news that Skakel, now 39, had surrendered to police in Connecticut Skakel pleaded not guilty and will be tried as a juvenile.

Police say he used a golf club to bludgeon Martha Moxley, 15, to death years Golf club that was used in slaying pointed to neighbors as suspects Tho Associated Press The 24-year hunt for Martha Moxley's murderer was slowed by false turns and dead ends, but the weapon a shattered 6-iron pointed in one direction all along: the Skakel home nearby. Summoned on Halloween in .1975, in response to the first murder in Greenwich, in 30 years, police swiftly determined that the 15-year-old girl had been bludgeoned by a golf club, then stabbed with its broken shaft By the next day, in a gated shoreline enclave in one of America's wealthiest towns, police had found the rest of the high-priced set of clubs. They were in the mansion of Rushton Skakel, brother of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy's widow, Ethel Kennedy.

Over the years, investigators were accused of apathy and ineptitude. A special prosecutor quit the case partly in frustration over unproven claims there had been payoffs aimed at thwarting the probe. But yesterday, at last, a murder warrant was issued, and a defense lawyer said Michael Skakel one of Rushton's sons was being charged with the killing. Michael, like Martha Moxley, was 15 at the time of her death. He and his brother Thomas, then 17, both had a romantic interest in their popular, blond neighbor an student voted "best personality" in her junior high school class.

The murder investigation began vigorously, with Michael and Thomas among the suspects, but it ran out of steam after the Skakel family ceased cooperating with police in 1976. Interest revived in 1991, partly because of false rumors there was connection with William Kennedy Smith, another Kennedy cousin who was then facing a rape charge in Florida By 1998, the Moxley case had been the subject of a made-for-TV movie and several books, including one by Mark Fuhrman, the former Los Angeles detective whose racial attitudes became pivotal in the 0 J. Simpson trial. Mark Fuhrman 1995 Michael Skakel 1999 1995 June 1998: State's attorney requests appointment of an investigative grand jury, which in Connecticut consists of a single judge. One is appointed.

Jan. 19,2000: Michael Skakel surrenders. He is charged with bludgeoning Moxley to deam. AP Police initially focused their attention on Thomas, the last person seen with Martha, and on Kenneth Littleton, a 24-year-old tutor living with the Skakels. Littleton, a science teacher at a Greenwich private school, was baby-sitting the Skakel children because Rushton Skakel was out of town.

Only in 1998, when he was granted immunity, was Littleton effectively cleared of suspicion; last July, he was hospitalized in Massachusetts with what his girlfriend said were self-inflicted stab wounds. Rushton Skakel, who had allowed police to search his home and look at school and medical records, abruptly halted access to the family on Jan. 22, 1976. That same day, the elder Skakel was admitted to Greenwich Hospital with chest pains. In 1992, the Skakels hired private investigators in a bid to clear Thomas and Michael.

But a report by the investigative firm, Sutton Associates, instead revealed the two changed their stories about their movements the night Martha was killed. 1991: Murder investigation is reopened after rumors later proven unfounded circulate that William Kennedy Smith was at the Skakel home the night Moxley was murdered. 1993: Interest in the case is revived when writer Dominick Dunne publishes a novel based on the murder. reluctantly joined the parade of witnesses before Thim last September. But it was unclear if the elder Skakel even remembered the night in question; his lawyers said he suffered from a form of dementia and was unfit to testify.

Oct 30, 1975, was "Mischief Night" in Greenwich, and Martha was out with two friends on a brisk Halloween Eve, engaging in some mild pranks. The youths stopped by the Skakel home, and around 9:45 p.m. Martha left for her own house, 150 yards away. She never made it; her body was found the next afternoon under a fir tree in the Moxleys' back yard. She had been struck at least a dozen times in the head and stabbed five times, including once through the neck, with a jagged piece of the golf club shaft Her jeans and panties were down at her ankles, though police found no evidence of sexual assault The 6-iron came from a set of clubs owned by Anne Skakel, the mother of Michael and Thomas who had died of cancer two years earlier.

Greenwich reacts with relief Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. Source: Compiled from AP wire reports In "Murder in Greenwich," Fuhrman suggested that Michael Skakel murdered Martha in a fit of jealousy after seeing Thomas kissing her. Fuhrman claimed police did not aggressively pursue Michael because they were cowed by the Skakels' wealth and Kennedy connections.

In June 1998, a month after Fuhrman's book appeared, Connecticut authorities appointed a grand jury, consisting of a single judge, to hear testimony from principals in the case. Over 18 months, ending Dec. 10, Superior Court Judge George Thim heard testimony from more than 40 witnesses in closed sessions. Some were friends who were with Martha the night she died; others were former students at a residential school and substance abuse treatment center in Maine that Michael Skakel attended from 1978 to 1980. In court papers, several former students at the school indicated Skakel had made admissions there regarding the killing.

Michael's father, Rushton Skakel, lost a long legal battle and The Associated Press GREENWICH, Conn. In the upscale boutiques along quaint downtown streets the arrest of a suspect in the 1975 murder of teen-ager Martha Moxley was discussed yesterday with a sense of relief by many. It also evoked questions of whether the suspect's money and family ties played a role in keeping the case unsolved for so long. Michael Skakel, 39, is a nephew of Ethel Kennedy, widow of Sen. Robert F.

Kennedy. He was 15 at the time his next-door neighbor was found bludgeoned to death with a Skakel family golf 1221 tnu. mui The Auocloted Preii Dorthy Moxley, whose daughter, Martha, was murdered in 1975 in Greenwich, is shown at her home yesterday in Chatham, N.J. on the night of Oct 30, 1975. Moxley said she didn't understand the legal issues involved, but was happy Skakel was charged.

She said she was still trying to understand all her emotions. "This is something we've worked for all these years," she said. "It's a wonderful day I'm looking for time to myself to reflect on this." club. "If the family didn't have money and if they weren't Kennedys he would have been caught years ago," said Alba Fox, a town resident Some Greenwich residents refused to pass judgment on Skakel, but they hoped the arrest would end the story one way or another. Jon Cutler, 25, said politics played a role in the case, since the Kennedy family was involved, and expressed relief an arrest had been made.

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