Speaker 1: You're listening to the Mind Over Murder podcast.
Speaker 2: My name is Bill Thomas. I'm a writer, consulting, producer,
and now podcaster. I am now trying to use my
experience as the brother of a murder victim to help
other victims of violent crime.
Speaker 3: I'm working on a book on the unsolved Colonial.
Speaker 2: Parkway murders, and I'm the co administrator of the Colonial
Parkway Murders Facebook group together with Kristin Dilly.
Speaker 4: My name is Kristin Dilly.
Speaker 5: I'm a writer, a researcher, a teacher, and a victim's advocate,
as well as the social media manager and co administrator
for the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook page with my partner
in crime.
Speaker 4: Bill Thomas. Welcome to mind Over Murder.
Speaker 2: I'm Kristin Dilly and I'm Bill Thomas.
Speaker 6: We're joined today by journalist and podcaster Andrew Goldman, here
to talk about his podcast Dead Certain The Martha Moxley Murder.
Speaker 4: Andrew, thank you for joining us.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's my great pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 6: Start by telling us a little bit about your life
as a journalist. I find journalists particularly fascinating, and your
career sure sounds like an interesting one.
Speaker 4: Tell us a little bit about it.
Speaker 7: It's since I was since I graduated from the University
of Texas one hundred years ago. I'm fifty three years old,
and I can never remember what years things were. But
I've been a magazine journalist, which, as you probably know,
as the years have gone on, has become more and
more difficult to do because the industry doesn't really exist anymore.
But I'm a long form narrative journalist. I started my
career at Boston Magazine. I went to a small but
oddly influential little newspaper in Manhattan called The New York Observer.
From there, I went to the ill fated Talk magazine,
working for Tina Brown. I worked for New York Magazine
for a long pert I wrote for years. I was
like one of the sole male voices at l magazine,
where I started a column where I interviewed men about sex.
And from there I actually went to the New York
Times magazine, where I did there Talk column, which is
the weekly one page interview Q and A. And I
did that for about a little under two years until
I got I got There's a whole other podcast. But
I got fired partially for a bad tweet, and partially
because after the bad tweet, after I'd apologize to everyone,
I did an interview with an influential advertiser who didn't
like how the interview went, and that kind of ended
it there for me. So that was twenty thirteen and
I was, I guess you would call it in Hollywood.
My career was a bit and turnaround because I was
over forty and I was trying to get magazine work
what was left of it. And that was around and
in twenty fifteen is when I started on this Moxley
Martha Moxley journey, which is when I got in touch
with Bobby Kennedy, who was a friend of a friend,
or Bobby Kennedy got in touch with me, i should say,
and said that he needed help writing a book on
his cousin, Michael Skeekel, who his first cousin, Michael Skekel,
who had been convicted of murder in two thousand and
two of a murder that had happened many years before
that in nineteen seventy five, of a neighbor of his
in Greenwich, Connecticut named Martha Moxley. And I think I actually,
I think I answered too much of your question, I
went too far, But so I think that's just giving
a little context as to where my head was when
this project came to me, which was it was a
really enticing project for a lot of reasons, but it
was also a project that I was I had some
major trepidations about doing for a few reasons, one of
which was that I was convinced that I was going
to try to write a book with a Kennedy trying
to exculpate publicly his cousin, who I was convinced was guilty.
It was a very famous case and it came in
two thousand and two, and I definitely followed it in
the media, and it just seemed to me absolutely that
if they had been able to prosecute and win a
conviction in two thousand and two for nineteen seventy five murder,
everything in the media told me that they'd found the
right guy. And I'm fascinated with the Kennedy family, but
I also know enough about the Kennedy family to know
that over the years since the JFK days, they've used
journalists to whitewash their careers in a lot of ways.
The candidates have done have a long history of doing
questionable and sometimes unforgivable things. I think journalists were complicit
in keeping the secret of JFK's infidelity. And I think
that there was that the Kennedys were always really good
at inviting journalists over and having a good time with
them and paaling around with them. And I think that
there were many situations where the Kennedys it feels like
people felt like they got away with murder, not literal murder.
But there was of course Ted Kennedy and Chap Equittic
where Ted Kennedy left drove his car into the drink
with a young woman and basically disappeared and didn't seem
to didn't alert the authorities and tried to disappear and
nothing really happened to him. And then there was of
course William Kennedy Smith, who was who was tried for
murder I think, and tried for rape in nineteen ninety one,
and people feel like he got off because the Kennedys
helped him and that he had a really great defense attorney.
And I think people were convinced that he got away
with rape. And so when you look at the when
you look at people actually going down the list of
all the Kennedy misdeeds, and I've seen this a lot
on social media, always at the end of the list,
and then there's Michael Skaigel kennedy cousin who killed his neighbor,
and so I was I probably felt very much the
way a lot of people felt in two thousand and two,
which is God, finally one of these Kennedys is going
to pay for his crimes. So anyway, so that's how
that I've explained my journalism career. And I've gotten this book.
I'm sorry, it was quite a bit nice, no.
Speaker 6: And I'm I'm definitely happy for the context, and I
will definitely be the first to admit that as soon
as I finished with Dead Certain, I said to myself, God,
I hope he does one on chap Equittic, because I
want the whole story on chap Equittic.
Speaker 4: I want every bit of it. And if you are
willing to do that, please do you let me.
Speaker 7: Currently, I am currently as unemployed as I was when
Bobby Kennedy reached me in twenty fifteen, and there's no
immediate there's no immediate plans for a season two of
Dead Certain, So I am dying to figure out a
new I've had some people approach me with ideas.
Speaker 6: I think dead certain chapiquittic is something great idea could do. Yeah,
if you need a little research assistant on that and
do let me know.
Speaker 7: Would love to get Okay.
Speaker 2: All right, you two are already for fomenting doing business plans.
Speaker 4: Here doing business.
Speaker 2: Before we dive down too far into the case, which
we're both very interested in doing, let me just start
off with this question, Andrew, why a podcast?
Speaker 3: Why a podcast?
Speaker 7: I'd helped Bobby Kennedy write his twenty sixteen book called Frame,
and Bobby had come to me with very specific ideas
about what he wanted to do in the book, and
I feel like fleshed out much of the reporting in it,
and it was not the He hadn't done a great
deal of the reporting, and I really dug into the
documentary reporting and some of the interviewing. I felt like
because of the time constraints of the book, and I
think from probably start to finish, I worked on it
six months, I felt like I had a hell of
a lot more work to do on it, and I
felt and my conclusions were actually considerably different than Bobby's
and As I tell everybody, Bobby is a very controversial figure.
But as I tell anybody who ever asks I say,
I actually had a really I had a very decent
time working with Bobby. We talked every day for many
months during the making of this. He was not nearly
as entitled as I assumed he could be given his name.
Speaker 3: And it was actually a very good experience.
Speaker 7: But the book represents his feelings and the book does
not represent my feelings. He had very specific ideas of
how the crime went down. I disagreed with him, and
I didn't do it forcefully because his name was going
to be on the book. So he wrote his book
and he put out his theory of the crime, and
I felt like there was a lot more reporting to do,
and I felt the last thing I wanted to do
was to jump in and do another book about it.
And so seemed like at the time, because this is
about a ten year odyssey, and from a business perspective,
at that particular moment when I was considering doing it,
it actually seemed like a This was in the years
not long after Cereal, when all the major media companies
were putting a great deal. Like all of the media
companies were taking all of their money out of print
and putting it into this part. They were chasing the
serial money.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 7: There were years where these major podcasting companies would put
the kind of money required for a major reporting endeavor
like Cereal, and I think they did this for a
few years and realized how expensive they were and how
much less expensive it was to have celebrities talking to
their friends and how much money could come much more easily.
So by the time I actually was able to do
the podcast, which involved a lot of legal issues with
Michael Skaigel, the gravy train had basically had stopped, and
so it was actually it was incredibly difficult to get
this podcast made. It was turned down by I think
you could name any major podcast distributor and it was
turned down by them. And yeah, like everybody, Like I
had zooms with everybody, and I just and I knew
I I was having zooms with people who I think
were probably on average, probably twenty years younger than me,
who'd never heard of the crime, and I I knew,
after having delved into it, that it was absolutely the
most amazing story I'd ever heard before. And I felt
like I was trying to get that through in these
zooms and I was just looking at these people with
kind of dead eyes, and nobody got it. Nobody got it,
and so I guess I'm still a child. But I
think part of what I kind of love about the
success of this podcast is that we showed them. Yes,
thank god NBC Studios came along. We had it was
a really difficult road to get the podcast made, which
involved me finding a finally finding a partner. It seemed
like the last deal in twenty twenty three in podcasting.
We found a partner, and I didn't anticipate. I thought,
once we found a partner, that means we're making this show.
But what I didn't anticipate is that three months into
the show, they'd send me an email being like, you
know what, we just realized we don't have the money
to make this.
Speaker 2: Oh great.
Speaker 7: Two days two days late, my agent fired me via
email because I think that she knew that she couldn't
sell it, and I don't think she particularly liked me.
But that's a whole other story. But I decided to
self finance the production of a pilot, and that's what
NBC got, and that's what and they really responded to it.
Speaker 6: Wow, and I do when you said you were zuoming
with people twenty years younger. One of the things I'm
anticipating is that we are going to have people listening
who are not going in to who Martha Moxley is
and why we're still why are we still talking about
the case. And I think it is because it's more
than there is that Kennedy connection. I'm a high school
teacher by day, and most of these kids do not
have any interest in the Kennedys, not the way my
generation does. I'm sure that we're going to have people
who ask who's Martha Moxley and why she connected to
the Kennedy's, and also, why do I care for any
of our listeners who may not be aware just give
us a brief friendown of who is Martha Moxley?
Speaker 3: Sure.
Speaker 7: Martha Moxley was a fifteen year old in nineteen seventy five.
She was a vivacious, apparently very kind, really lovely, blonde,
beautiful girl that was I think very popular with in
the minds of many boys in Greenwich. She just moved
from Piedmont, California, eighteen months before to Greenwich, Connecticut, which
is one of, if not It's one of the wealthiest
towns in the East Coast, and it's a suburb of
New York City. So many Greenwich many people who live
in Greenwich, especially in the seventies. I think that when
the seventies, the last thing anybody would ever want to
do is live in New York City, which was a
real hellhole. So Greenwich was a great place where you
could go in on the Metro North and you could
work in the city and then come back to Greenwich.
Martha and her family moved from Piedmont in I think
late nineteen seventy three. Her father was very successful in
the accounting company to Dross and he had been relocated
from California to head the New York office, and it
was a very big job for him, and so he
moved his family from not only to Greenwich, but to Bellhaven,
which is a small enclave of Greenwich. It's only about
one hundred and twenty houses. I guess you could call
it gated, because they do have gates going in and
out of it, although very poorous gates.
Speaker 3: The security people I don't think were very effective. But
it was.
Speaker 7: Probably one of the most beautiful, one of the most idyllic,
one of the wealthiest places on the East Coast that
somebody could live, and presumably one of the safest. Yeah,
you would think one would think one would assume it
was one of the safest, But there had been no
That's the thing. That's the thing that will come into
play with this case is that there had been no
murders in Greenwich in over twenty years, which I think
would mean that you're the law enforcement would be perhaps
unprepared for a murder, which they turned out they were.
But so anyway, so Martha Moxley moved to Greenwich, Connecticut.
She got embraces off about six months before October thirtieth.
As her diary shows, she was incredibly popular among the
boys in Greenwich, and she was, I think her friends
would say, was a big flirt which I think many
fifteen year olds are. And I just want to be
clear that Martha was, from everything I know, incredibly special girl.
And I think her flirtation, I think that she was
perhaps didn't understand exactly how powerful she was or how
many men and boys were attracted to her. So she
had she had everybody in Greenwich and Bellhaven kind of
pursuing her. Her neighbors. About two hundred yards from her
lived a family called the Scalele family, and the scale
family was like seven kids, big Catholic family, now the Scagles.
Michael Skeagle, who was convicted of the murder in two
thousand and two, is one of the sons, but too
many kids. And the father of the Scalekeles is a
guy named Rushton Skekell, who was the younger brother of
Ethel Skekell, who went on to marry Bobby Kennedy in
nineteen fifty. So when they say that Michael Skeakeell was
a Kennedy, he was indeed a Kennedy cousin because his
his aunt had married Bobby Kennedy in nineteen sixty. And
what I think people are often surprised about is that
the Skeakle family was at that moment in time far
wealthier than the Kennedy family.
Speaker 4: Skegle, I'm surprised by that. Yeah, when you mentioned it.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Michael Rushton's father, father, George Skekell, started a company
called Great Lakes Carbon and Cole And he was just
one of these guys. He's in the vein of the
Koch brothers. It's all like very kind of petroleum kind
of things that you never consider about all these processes.
Everything he touched turned to gold. The man made an
absolute fortune, and I think a lot more than Joe
Kennedy did. And the different it's between I think the
Scaleles and the Kennedy's were a What made I think
that the marriage ethel marrying into the Kennedy's, what made
for some interesting dynamics between the families is how different
the families were. The Scicles were rock ribbed Republicans, as
Republican as you can imagine. I really think that they
thought that George Skekel, the patriarch, thought FDR was like Satan,
whereas Satan in the Kennedy family. And also George Skekel
I think said one of his mottos, ironically, given how
Michael Skekele ultimately was convicted because of his mouth, George
Skekele's motto was you can't quote silence. So whereas the
Kennedy's were ultra into publicity, the Scalles were incredibly quiet
and flew very below the radar. So you know, there
are these pictures that you have. The Kennedy's and the
Scales never got along but there are many pictures of
Jack Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy flying around und in Great
Lakes Carbon's planes, for instance, So they benefited somewhat from
the association, but there was always discomfort between the families.
Does that help it all about?
Speaker 2: Martha?
Speaker 6: Did you actually segued right into the next question I
was going to ask, which is the Kennedy connection? The
big question I guess that I have is to you
feel like this kind of all is adjacent to the
Kennedy curse that so many people have talked about over
the year.
Speaker 7: As I say in the podcast, I think that I've
thought about the scales a lot, and I've thought people
talk about the misadventures of the Kennedys and how all
of them died, and there was a certain level of recklessness.
The scales of Kennedy didn't have much in common except
for I think recklessness and fearlessness and a lot of Scalles.
Speaker 3: The Scaleles were.
Speaker 7: A very big drinking family, and a lot of Scaleles
died in circumstances that I think could be partially related
to their alcoholism. Sholes like dying. I think rush scycle
went partying with his brother in law to celebrate the
birth of his nephew, and they did an all nighter,
a couple of all nighters in the weekend, and his
and his brother in law, his brother in law's daughter
I think, went to wake him up in the morning
and he was dead.
Speaker 3: He died. He died.
Speaker 7: I think he died literally from a hangover. And there's
a number of stories in the Skeyholes background like this.
There was an aunt who died choking on a piece
of shish Kebob George Skaykle, the patriarch, and his wife
Big Anne, were killed in an airplane crash in one
of the great late planes, which was obviously horrible. And
then the person who took over the company, his son,
George Junior, about a decade and a half later, and
I think nineteen sixty eight, died in a small plane crash.
I think that it's I often thought to myself, Is
it possible that in nineteen sixty when these two families
were united, that the church in Saint Mary's on Greenwich
Avenue and granted Its possible that the Scalicell curse passed
into the Kennedys. Obviously there have been Kennedy fatalities before that.
But I think that if you're looking at body counts,
I think the Scaleles definitely are equal to the Kennedys
in terms of body count for misadventures.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Mind over Murder. We'll be right back
after this word from our sponsors. We're back here at
mindover Murder. Funny when you mentioned the private plane thing,
I just winced, because a lot of moneyed people end
up dying in these small plane accidents, whereas traveling on
a major carrier rarely do you end up dead. But
it's amazing how many people, including members of the Kennedy family,
have been killed in small plane crashes.
Speaker 3: I know, isn't it?
Speaker 7: And rock stars and helicopters. I've never want to get
in a helicopter. No, I yeah, it's no. It's absolutely amazing,
And I think it brings up a point, which is
this is I think people I think naturally, having never
heard Michael Skickle's voice or never heard and tell a story,
I think it's very difficult, considering the privilege that these
people were brought up in to have anything any kind
of empathy. But I think Kristin, you've listened to the podcast.
I think that Michael has a really tragic story. It's
a bit poor, little rich kid, but really horrific in
so many ways he did.
Speaker 6: And when I went into the podcast, I went into
it with the I think the same level of understanding
that a lot of people have just said.
Speaker 4: It had happened.
Speaker 6: He had been accused of murder, he had been convicted
of it, and he had served time in jail, and
I didn't know much beyond that. I also knew that
Mark Furman had written a book about it, and I
grew up in the age of the Sims trial.
Speaker 4: I definitely knew who Mark Furman was.
Speaker 6: But I was incredibly surprised listening to your podcast to
learn to Terre is virtually no evidence against Michael Skakel
for the murder her mostly, and I think a lot
of people beyond virtually.
Speaker 7: I think it's like there's no it's certainly there's no
forensic evidence in the case, but there's I think no
evidence really, uh, And yeah.
Speaker 6: That was crazy. I was listening and I kept going,
there's where's the smoking gun. There's got to be a
smoking gun. What got this guy convicted in the first place?
And the more that I listened, the more that I realized,
Oh my god, it said he had a crappy lawyer.
Speaker 7: He did have a crappy lawyer, and he had a
very and I think I think he also had a
very motivated public, which put a lot of pressure on
the state of Connecticut. And I think that one of
the people I interview in this is Linda Kenny Bowden,
who was part of Michael's defense team at some point.
She's very well known defense lawyer and she at one
point was working on Michael's team, and she's brilliant and
if only Michael had hired her, he would have been acquitted.
But what Linda told me was, and I think that
this gets into some of the themes of the podcast,
is that when the law is concerned defense attorneys who
work for high profile clients, they call it a high
profile exception, in that frequently the law will be ignored.
In the case of this, Michael should have been tried
as he was fifteen years old when the crime occurred,
but he wasn't tried as he was tried as an adult.
And the reason he was tried as an adult, the
reason why the judge, the juvenile judge passed it up
to the superior court. Was she said, even though if
he had been tried as a juvenile, I think the biggest,
most extreme sentence would have been two years in prison.
They said, given that he's forty three years old, we
wouldn't have any facilities in the state of Connecticut to
put a forty three year old adolescent.
Speaker 2: Oh so these are for practical considerations, not but the
law would work exactly.
Speaker 7: Yeah, but this is the high profile exception because nobody
wanted this guy to Nobody wanted another Kennedy to go free.
And for me, the greatest irony in this case, and
I'm sorry if I'm skipping around a bit, the gretest
the greatest irony in this case is that is my
perception of the case, was that Michael was indeed another
beneficiary of all of whatever gifts the Kennedys have to
free for To get, for instance, Teddy Kennedy, do you
have to be able to forget about chap equintic to
get Teddy Kennedy not charged for cheap equitting to get
William Kennedy Smith to walk on rape charges. The great
irony of this is that Michael Skagald, when he was
in tried in two thousand and two, was in heated
battle with the Kennedy family that Kennedy's hated him, Bobby's
brothers hated him. Bobby's brothers literally Bobby's older brother Joe,
who was the who was a congressman from Boston, he
had taken he had inherited the seat from Tip O'Neil,
who had taken Jack Kennedy's seat because Bobby Kennedy, Bobby
Kennedy was probably smarter than his older brother, and he
had the name. But the fact that Bobby Kennedy in
the early eighties was arrested for heroin possession, I think
it was deemed by Ethel, who I think was the
one who probably made a lot of decisions about who
was going to be the next Kennedy to go all
the way, decided that it was not Bobby's turn, and
that Bobby, as somebody who had just been arrested for
heroin possession, was unelectable. So I went to Joe, and
for a variety of reasons that I go into in
the podcast, Joe Kennedy believes that Michael Skakele was responsible
for his political career ending. He was going to run
for governor of Massachusetts, and because of a scandal that
he was engulfed in that involved his brother, Michael Kennedy
sleeping with a babysitter who he may have been sleeping
with since she was I think fourteen or fifteen years old,
his campaign was engulfed and it died, and Joe Kennedy,
and this was very shortly before all this stuff happened
with Michael's prosecution, Joe Kennedy was very much convinced that
Michael Skakell had been the source of this story that
had brought down his own political career. And ultimately, after
this scandal broke, about six months after this scandal broke,
Michael Kennedy, who was the the Kennedy brother who had
supposedly been having an affair with his fifteen year old babysitter,
skied into a tree and died on I think New
Year's Eve. And certain members, as Michael has told me,
and I absolutely think this is true, certain members of
the Kennedy family, including some of Bobby's brothers, including Joe Kennedy,
think that Michael Skeakeele was not only responsible for killing
his political career, but Michael Kennedy would not have killed,
not have skied into that tree, had that scandal not broken,
that his head was elsewhere or something. And so there
were certain members of the Kennedy family who not only
thought that Michael Skeakell was responsible for the death of
Joe Kennedy's career, they also thought that he was responsible
for the death of their beloved brother. And this is
where we were in two thousand and two when Michael Skeakell.
When I assumed that Michael Skekele was getting all the
benefits of being a Kennedy, the Kennedys, I think, I
don't Michael Skekele is convinced that Kennedy's had something to
do with prosecution. I I tend to think that maybe
there's something to it. But what I do know is
that there are a lot of Kennedy who would have
been happy to see him behind bars.
Speaker 2: And do you think it's credible to make the claim
that somehow the Kennedys were pulling the levers of power
behind the scenes in order to see Michael Skeakell.
Speaker 7: Charged for murder that had happened decades before. I think
the timing if you look at the timing. You know
what's greatly it was very ironic about this, and Bobby
wrote about and framed is that this is I think
the one conspiracy that Bobby Kennedy puts no stock in
is the fact that his family had it in Michael Kennedy.
But I look at the timing of and certain political
machinations that happened. Basically, one of two things had to
have happened. That Mark Furhman came out with a book
in nineteen ninety eight or maybe late ninety seven that
for the first time blamed Michael Skekel publicly for the murder.
Speaker 3: Now, the one.
Speaker 7: Theory is that this book was and I don't think
it ever made the New York Times bestseller list.
Speaker 3: It was a big book.
Speaker 7: But I think that on its face, you could say
Mark Furman came out with this book and put a
lot of pressure and did a lot of media and
put a lot of pressure on the authorities. And he said,
he went on TV and said, I've given you a
roadmap for the prosecution. All you have to do is
take this book and run with it. The primary investigator
in the case has said that there's no validity to
that that Mark Urman's book had nothing to do with
our decision to prosecute Michael Skekeel, but the timing is
so interesting. Michael Skekell has a very specific theory about
how it worked, and it's actually not that crazy when
he goes into it and involves several figures, several prominent
Kennedy figures and several prominent Connecticut politicians. And I have
to say I didn't believe it for many years, but
actually just putting the dates down and looking at the dates,
it was just so peculiar. When it came late in
my reporting. I'll just share this very briefly. Late in
my reporting, I came across an unpublished story that was
actually entered into evidence. And I don't know if anybody
ever really figured, really understood the significance of it.
Speaker 3: Michael Skekell.
Speaker 7: The Grand Jury was convened to look into Michael Skekele
and Michael Skekell only in nineteen ninety eight. I found
an unpublished article that was written by Len Levitt, who
was the journalists who covered it most. He's now dead,
but he worked for Newsday and he did a lot.
He had a lot of scoops on the thing, but
he had I found this unpublished article from It has
to be based on all of the identifying details in it.
It has to be in either November ninety six or
early nineteen ninety seven, in which Frank Garr, who was
the only primarily and only investigator in the Michael Skekele case,
is quoted as saying, and this is about a year
before the grand jury was convenient on Michael Skekell. I'm
ninety nine point five percent convinced Thomas Skekel did this. Now,
Thomas Cake would be Michael Skeakele's brother, and he was
for the first decade of the investigation the prime suspect
in the case. Michael Skekele only became a suspect in
the case around ninety seven or ninety eight, and for
a decade his brother had bene suspect for a decade.
Another person in benic suspect a guy named Kenneth Littleton,
who had been a tutor who was staying with the
Scalhles on October thirtieth, nineteen seventy five. It was his
first night in the house and based on a lot
of real creepy, horrible things he did subsequent to that date,
I think the police started looking at him as a
likely suspect because he had a long history of mental
illness and and I think crimes that you would say
had a sexual nature very much. But so just the
idea that Michael Skeekeell, that this was a twenty something
year investigation, Michael Skekell was not a suspect until the
very last minute, to me, is curious.
Speaker 4: It definitely is?
Speaker 6: It definitely is that every episode that I listened to,
I was just waiting for the smoking gun, and I
never got one because it's very clear that there isn't one. No,
there's so and every other suspect that your name sounded
more credible to me than Michael. Yeah, absolutely crazy ahead.
Speaker 2: So this tutor, why wasn't the tutor ever charged?
Speaker 7: The tutor was not charged because the Connecticut investigators the
most compelling evidence they had against the tutor was the
fact that he kept blowing polygraph after polygraph. And I
consulted for the podcast A guy was considered, I think,
probably the foremost polygraph expert in the country, and after
talking to him, I don't put much faith in a
lot of polygraphs except as a tool to use in
a room to basically wrench a confession from somebody for
the cops to leave the room, come back in and
say to a guy, pull the paper out and say, buddy,
you totally failed this. And somebody who was legitimately guilty
might get freaked out and confess at that point. But
in terms of actually pronouncing somebody guilty or innocent, I
don't think that scientifically they have much validity. So the
only thing they really had on Ken was a bunch
of disturbing behavior that had very little to do with
Martha Moxley's murder but had a lot to do with
crimes that they'd committed elsewhere. And all they had were
these polygraphs, and I think that they never had a
enough They kept working on him.
Speaker 3: They had a.
Speaker 7: Variety of ruses that involved his ex wife trying to
get him on the phone. They taped him for hours
and hours trying to get him to confess. They had
no case unless they got a confession, and I think
that the way that they convicted Michael Skeykeele, I think
that by the time they convicted Michael Skekele in two
thousand and two, they knew that the case had been
so botched there were no forensics to speak up. The
only way that they could get any conviction on this
was going to be through some sort of confession, and
the only evidence they had against Michael were two witnesses
who Michael had met at I guess you could call
a reformatory.
Speaker 3: Michael had.
Speaker 7: Like many of his relatives, Michael had major alcohol problems,
especially after his mother died in nineteen seventy three. And Michael,
I think he said he probably became an alcoholic when
he was thirteen or fourteen. He's certainly a troublemaker. And
when he was I think seventeen sixteen, at seventeen, he
had a really bad drunk driving accident in upstate New York.
And the way that the Scapehald attorney got him got
into escape prison and conviction was to send him off
to a school called the Alan School in Maine, which
was you hear a lot about these schools now Paris.
Hilton did a lot about the school that she went to.
There are these schools that I think very wealthy parents
would send their kids off to. They would send them
a lot of money, and these places, I think I
remember they used to call it tough Love.
Speaker 3: Do you remember?
Speaker 7: That was the But this was this was a place
that was run by a guy named Joe Ritchie. I
grew up in Maine and the Alon Schools in Poland, Maine,
which was in the sticks of Maine. But Joe Ritchie
was a kind of a famous character in Maine.
Speaker 3: He was.
Speaker 7: A he looked like a mobster, although he always claimed
he wasn't a mobster. But he was this thirty five
year old former junkie who had gone to prison early
in his career, early in his life for robbery, but
somehow turned his life around, didn't really turn his life around,
but turned its life around and created it and came
up with the school based on the Sinanon, based on
the principles of Sinanon.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you guys know a thing about sinatmas.
Speaker 4: Oh yes, yeah, oh yes.
Speaker 7: So this was this was a school that had that
involved a lot of violence, a lot of humiliation, and
it was a I can't describe the horrors of the
Alon School.
Speaker 6: You described it in the podcast, and my job was
on the floor.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I believeable. The famous essay is David Sedaris. I
was just going out reading an essay his sister. I
think it was his younger sister had gone to a
lawn because she'd run away from school, and Sidara said
that there wasn't a day that his sister didn't mention
the trauma that she'd experienced at Alon, and she ultimately
committed suicide. And I think I think she might have
been in her late fifties. But the trauma that people
experienced at Alan was so horrible, and Michael absolutely experienced this.
But the two witnesses that they found to say that
Michael had confessed at Alan were two people who had
never gotten sober, Unlike Michael, Michael got sober in nineteen
eighty three. What they found were I think the equivalent
of what do they call them, I'm.
Speaker 4: Sorry, sound like Joie house snitches to make.
Speaker 3: Exactly That's what I was looking for. The term.
Speaker 7: They were essentially jailhouse snitches since they weren't in jail
the prossect. The investigator instead dangled money in front of
them and said that there's a currently one hundred thousand
dollars reward leading to the conviction of Michael Skakeel. And
these guys got up and testified that they had heard
a confession many other Alan students who testified in the
trial said on the stand what I heard many times
from many skkell from many Alan students, which was that
even though Michael was beaten, and even though Joe Ritchie
basically had taken it upon himself to try to wrench
some sort of confession from Michael by having people beat
him and say you confess to this murder, that all
these other Alan students said, Michael never confessed. The only
they would beat the living shit out of him, and
the closest he would get was to say, I don't know,
I don't know. And Michael told me that he found out.
He realized that the only way he could get the
beatings to stop was to give them some sort of answer,
and I don't know, for some reason got the beatings
to stop. I'm convinced that the prosecute, I'm convinced that
the investigator, Frank gr after listening to the interview with
the first with one of the two guys who testified
against Michael, and listening to the interview when initially the
man says, I got to tell you, Frank, I never
heard a confession, and the prodding the prosecutor, the prodding
that the prosecutor does to him. This man was going
through some medical issues, and Frank Garr, this cop from Connecticut,
gets him on the phone and says, oh, I've heard
you got your wife told me you have some medical issues.
The guy said, yeah, I've got some shoulder issues. And
he said, yeah, I can't do my job anymore. I'm mechanic.
I'm not gonna be able to do it. And Frank
Carr says to him, you got to make some plans,
don't you. And the plans he made, yeah, and so corrupt. Yeah,
incredibly corrupt. So the only evidence they had I think
I found after going through this case, I find it
very difficult to believe that the Connecticut authorities honestly believed
that they had the right guy. That's the biggest unanswered question.
None of the people, none of the people who prosecuted
the case, would talk to me. But if I really
the big question I have for them, assuming that they
went through the same material that I did, was did
you really think that you had the right guy? And
why did you do this? Why did you not there's
something called prosecutorial discretion. Why did you take this case?
Because I think that they had to know after going
through the evidence that they were very much trying to
convict an innocent man, and I find that really disturbing.
Speaker 2: Join us again next time as we continue our conversation
with journalist Andrew Goldman discussing his new podcast, Asked Dead
Certain the Martha Moxley Murders. That'll be next time here
on mind Over Murder.
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