Case snapshot
On October 30, 1975, 15-year-old Martha Moxley was bludgeoned to death with a golf club in the wealthy enclave of Belle Haven, Greenwich, Connecticut. Her body was found beneath a tree on her family’s property the next morning, dragged from the site of the attack and partially concealed. The murder weapon, a Toney Putter, belonged to a set owned by a neighbor just across the street.
The last night
Martha Moxley spent the evening of October 30 visiting homes in her neighborhood during what locals called Mischief Night, the traditional eve of Halloween. She left her house around 6:30 p.m. with friends, eventually making her way to the Skakel residence at 71 Onslow Lane, directly across from the Moxley home.
The Skakel family was prominent and connected. Rushton Skakel Sr., a wealthy businessman, was the brother-in-law of Ethel Kennedy, widow of Robert F. Kennedy. The household was known for its relative lack of supervision. That night, multiple teenagers gathered at the property, including Martha and two Skakel brothers, Thomas and Michael.
Witnesses later placed Martha in the rear yard and driveway of the Skakel home between 9:00 and 9:30 p.m. Thomas Skakel, then 17, admitted to police that he and Martha had spent time together in his family’s Lincoln Continental that evening. He said they had kissed and engaged in some physical contact before she left to go home around 9:30 p.m.
Martha never made it inside. Her mother, Dorthy Moxley, reported her missing the following morning when she discovered Martha’s bed empty and untouched.
The crime scene
At approximately 12:30 p.m. on October 31, Sheila McGuire, a family friend, found Martha’s body beneath a pine tree on the Moxley property, roughly 100 feet from the house. She had been beaten with extreme force. The medical examiner determined she suffered multiple blunt-force injuries to her head and body. Her jeans and underwear had been pulled down, though there was no evidence of sexual assault.
The murder weapon was quickly identified. Scattered near the body were pieces of a broken Toney Putter golf club. The shaft had been used to strike Martha repeatedly, then driven through her neck in what appeared to be a final, brutal act. Investigators traced the club to a set belonging to Ann Skakel, Thomas and Michael’s mother, who had since passed away. The set had been stored in the Skakel home and was accessible to anyone in the household.
Despite the proximity of the crime and the clear connection to the Skakel family, the investigation stalled almost immediately.
A stalled investigation
Greenwich police interviewed Thomas Skakel multiple times in the weeks following the murder. He remained the primary focus early on, largely because he admitted to being the last known person to see Martha alive. His timeline was scrutinized. He claimed he went inside around 9:30 p.m. to write a school report and later drove with his older brother, John, and their live-in tutor, Kenneth Littleton, to visit his cousin’s house.
Kenneth Littleton, who had started working for the Skakel family the very day of the murder, also drew suspicion. He failed a polygraph test and displayed erratic behavior in interviews. He became a secondary focus for investigators, though no physical evidence linked him to the scene.
Michael Skakel, Thomas’s younger brother, was 15 at the time. He told police he had been elsewhere that evening, out with friends. His alibi was noted but not aggressively pursued. For more than two decades, the case remained cold.
Theories circulated. Rumors of a cover-up spread through Greenwich and beyond. The Skakel family’s wealth and connections to the Kennedys fueled suspicions that influence had been used to shield suspects from prosecution. No arrests were made. The investigation became a symbol of privileged immunity and investigative failure.
A case reopened
In 1991, writer Dominick Dunne published a thinly veiled fictionalized account of the murder in Vanity Fair, reigniting public interest. Then, in 1998, former Los Angeles detective Mark Fuhrman published “Murder in Greenwich,” a book that argued Michael Skakel, not Thomas, was responsible for Martha’s death.
Fuhrman’s investigation highlighted inconsistencies in Michael’s statements and pointed to behavioral red flags. Michael had a documented history of substance abuse and anger issues. He had been sent to multiple rehabilitation facilities and private schools in the years following the murder. During his time at the Elan School, a controversial therapeutic boarding school in Maine, he allegedly made incriminating statements to other students.
According to testimony later presented in court, Michael told classmates he had climbed a tree outside Martha’s window the night of the murder and masturbated in it. In audio recordings made during a book proposal session in the 1990s, Michael appeared to place himself near the crime scene and made ambiguous comments that prosecutors later argued amounted to a confession.
In January 2000, a grand jury was convened. By January 2001, Michael Skakel was arrested and charged with the murder of Martha Moxley.
The trial
Michael Skakel’s trial began in May 2002 in Norwalk, Connecticut. The case was circumstantial. There was no DNA evidence, no murder weapon definitively tied to Michael, and no eyewitness to the killing itself. The prosecution’s case rested on motive, opportunity, and statements Michael had made over the years.
Prosecutors argued that Michael had become enraged after seeing Thomas and Martha together that evening. They presented testimony from former classmates at the Elan School who claimed Michael had confessed. One witness, Gregory Coleman, who had since died of a drug overdose, had told investigators that Michael admitted to the killing. His testimony was introduced through prior statements.
The defense countered that Michael’s statements were taken out of context, misinterpreted, or coerced by the high-pressure environment of the Elan School. They argued that Kenneth Littleton remained a more plausible suspect and that the case against Michael was built on decades-old hearsay and conjecture.
On June 7, 2002, the jury found Michael Skakel guilty of murder. He was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison.
Appeals and reversal
Michael Skakel’s legal team launched a series of appeals. In 2013, a Connecticut judge granted him a new trial, ruling that his original defense attorney, Michael Sherman, had provided inadequate representation. Skakel was released on bail after serving more than 11 years in prison.
In 2016, the Connecticut Supreme Court reinstated the conviction, but two years later, in 2018, the court reversed itself. The justices ruled that Sherman’s performance had been constitutionally deficient and that Skakel had been denied a fair trial. The conviction was vacated.
In 2020, the Connecticut State’s Attorney announced that the state would not retry Michael Skakel. Prosecutors cited the age of the case, the death of key witnesses, and the difficulty of meeting the burden of proof in a retrial.
Michael Skakel remains free. He has not been exonerated, but he has not been convicted again.
The questions that remain
The murder of Martha Moxley has never been conclusively resolved in the eyes of many who have followed it. Dorthy Moxley, Martha’s mother, has consistently stated her belief that Michael Skakel killed her daughter. She has expressed frustration with the legal system and the decades of delay.
Others point to the lack of direct evidence and argue that the case was circumstantial at best, tainted by media influence and prosecutorial overreach. Kenneth Littleton has never been charged, though he remains a figure of suspicion for some investigators and true crime analysts.
The case has become a study in privilege, justice delayed, and the limits of circumstantial evidence. It poses uncomfortable questions about how wealth and connection can shape the course of an investigation, and whether closure is ever truly possible when doubt lingers in the record.
Martha Moxley was 15 years old. She was killed steps from her own front door. The golf club that ended her life came from a neighbor’s home. Someone knows what happened that night. Whether the right person was ever held accountable remains, for many, an open wound.
Where to dive deeper
- Documentary: “Murder in Greenwich” (HBO)
- Book: “Murder in Greenwich” by Mark Fuhrman
- Podcast: “The Murder of Martha Moxley” (“Crime Junkie”, Audiochuck)
