In the summer of 1974, Martha Moxley and her family moved to Greenwich, Connecticut. Their new home was in Belle Haven, a wealthy gated community in the center of town. The Moxleys had come from California, where Martha and her brother John had been born and raised.

Their father, John David, was a partner in an accounting firm, and their mother, Dorothy, was a homemaker. They were loving parents, and to outsiders the family seemed to live a charmed life.

At school, both Martha and John did well, but Martha in particular stood out. She was popular, made friends quickly, and had an outgoing, lively personality.

By the fall of 1975, Martha was a sophomore at Western Junior High School. She earned high grades, was athletically talented, and had artistic interests, including drawing and sketching.

She was even voted “Most Popular Girl” in her school yearbook. Those who knew her described Martha as confident and easy to get along with. She was optimistic, friendly, and often surrounded by friends both at school and at home.

Like most teenagers, she wasn’t perfect. Sometimes she missed curfew, snuck beer, or was caught smoking.

Overall, however, her parents considered her a good kid and had no major concerns about her behavior. They trusted her judgment and felt she was responsible and level‑headed.

That summer, Martha had made a new group of friends she met at the Belle Haven Club inside the gated community. Together, they spent time at the pool and played tennis.

In her diary, she mentioned a boy she was seeing there, though the relationship was described as innocent.

In the fall, Martha had just gotten her braces removed and tried out for the school cheerleading team. Her diary revealed her excitement about both of these milestones.

Belle Haven was considered extremely safe. It was a gated community with monitored access, and crime was rare.

Neighbors all knew each other, and the children seemed to get along well. It was the kind of neighborhood where parents trusted other parents and felt they had each other’s support.

When kids were out with friends inside the community, it was assumed they were completely safe. No one could have predicted what would happen on the last weekend of October—an event that would tear the community apart.

 

Mischief Night

The night before Halloween, October 30th, was known to local teenagers as “Mischief Night.”

On that evening, Martha was technically grounded, but she begged her mother to let her go out with friends. Dorothy Moxley relented and allowed her to go.

Mischief Night in Belle Haven was supposed to be harmless—prank phone calls, ringing doorbells, maybe some toilet paper on a few trees. Nothing serious and nothing meant to cause real damage.

Martha left home around 6 p.m. with her friend Helen. She was supposed to be home by 10 p.m.

Dorothy stayed up, waiting for Martha to come back. When curfew passed and Martha still wasn’t home, Dorothy called Helen’s house to see if Martha was still there.

Helen told her Martha wasn’t with her. Helen had left the group around 9:30 p.m., and when she left, Martha had still been next door, at the Skakel house, hanging out with brothers Thomas “Tommy” Skakel, age 17, and Michael Skakel, age 15.

After speaking with Helen, Dorothy felt sure she would soon see Martha crossing the street to come home.

As the hours passed, she finally fell asleep in a chair by the window, still waiting.

The next morning, Dorothy checked Martha’s bedroom and saw that her bed hadn’t been slept in. Panic set in.

She searched the house, and when Martha was nowhere to be found, she called the police. Dorothy knew instantly that something was very wrong.

The police, however, were not initially alarmed. They reassured Dorothy that missing teenagers often turned up at a friend’s house.

But Dorothy knew her daughter. Martha wouldn’t simply disappear.

She and her son John decided to go door‑to‑door, asking neighbors if anyone had seen Martha. The first place Dorothy went was the Skakel house.

The Skakels were an affluent family. The father, Rushton Skakel, was a widower raising seven children. Rushton was the brother of Ethel Kennedy, widow of Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

Tommy Skakel answered the door and told Dorothy he hadn’t seen Martha since the previous night. He also said his brother Michael hadn’t seen her either.

Dorothy continued knocking on doors and calling friends, but soon the entire neighborhood was out searching and calling Martha’s name.

It was one of Martha’s classmates who made the horrifying discovery. Cutting across the Moxleys’ yard, the friend noticed a body under a pine tree.

It was the body of 15‑year‑old Martha Moxley.

 

The Crime Scene

Martha had been beaten to death. She had been struck multiple times in the head with a golf club.

The club was later identified as having come from a set belonging to the Skakel family. The shaft had shattered into four pieces during the attack. The handle portion, however, was missing and would never be found.

Martha’s jeans and underwear had been pulled down to her knees, but officials stated there was no evidence she had been sexually assaulted.

Detectives believed Martha had been attacked only about 200 feet from her front door. The first blow appeared to have been to her jaw, suggesting she had been facing her attacker.

There was little evidence of defensive wounds, indicating she was likely caught off guard and quickly incapacitated by the initial strike.

Drag marks in the grass led from the area of the initial attack to the spot beneath the pine tree where her body was found.

After being bludgeoned, a jagged piece of the broken golf club had been used to stab her.

No one reported hearing screams that night. However, some neighbors said their dogs had been barking continuously between 9:45 and approximately 10:15 p.m.

The trees and landscaping around the Moxley property likely obscured the attack from the view of Dorothy and other neighbors who might otherwise have seen something.

There was only a single streetlight nearby, and visibility was poor.

The discovery of Martha’s body sent shockwaves through the community.

As the crime’s brutal details became known, national media descended on Belle Haven. Interest only intensified when it became clear that members of the influential Skakel family were at the center of the investigation.

 

Reconstructing the Night

Detectives began piecing together Martha’s final hours based on interviews with friends and neighbors.

According to these accounts, Martha arrived at the Skakel house around 8:45 p.m. with her friends Helen and Jeffrey.

Michael Skakel answered the door, and the four teens hung out together for a while before Tommy joined them.

At that point, all five spent time together until about 9:30 p.m., when two other Skakel boys arrived and invited the group to go to a cousin’s house nearby.

That’s when the group began to split up.

Michael asked Martha to go with them to the cousin’s house, but she declined. She stayed behind at the Skakel home with Tommy.

Investigators determined that Martha was attacked sometime between 9:45 and 10 p.m. Both Skakel brothers initially appeared to have solid alibis for that time.

Tommy claimed that after saying goodbye to Martha around 9:30 p.m., he went inside to finish homework and then watched television with a live‑in tutor.

Michael claimed he left the house around 9:15–9:30 p.m. to go to the cousin’s home and did not return until around 11 p.m. His story was corroborated by relatives.

In Martha’s diary, she had written about both Skakel brothers flirting with her at various times.

She described one incident where, while she was learning to drive, Tommy put his hand on her knee twice and she pushed it away both times.

She also noted that Michael had been drunk at one point and wrote that he “made an ass of himself.”

Martha’s entries suggested she did not reciprocate any romantic feelings for either of the boys.

On the night of October 30th, friends remembered seeing Tommy and Martha being playful and flirtatious.

Some reported seeing them go behind a fence together and later saw them kissing at around 9:30 p.m.

Because he was last seen with her, Tommy quickly became the primary suspect and was interviewed by detectives.

However, when it became clear that Tommy was under serious scrutiny, the Skakel family intervened aggressively.

Rushton Skakel brought in a team of lawyers and immediately stopped his sons from cooperating further with the police.

No arrests were made. Law enforcement never obtained a proper search warrant for the Skakel property.

Eventually, the Skakels hired their own private investigators to conduct a parallel “internal” investigation, which they claimed was to evaluate any potential risk to the sons.

Meanwhile, Greenwich investigators were forced to look elsewhere.

 

Other Suspects and Troubling Behavior

One person who came under scrutiny was 23‑year‑old tutor Kenneth Littleton, who had recently begun working and living with the Skakel family at their large Tudor‑style home.

Family members said Littleton had stepped outside around 9:45 p.m. to investigate a noise and returned at approximately 10:25 p.m.

Detectives looked deeper into Littleton’s background but found no clear motive for him to harm Martha. He barely knew her and had been employed by the Skakels for less than a month when the murder occurred.

However, he did report having witnessed disturbing behavior from the Skakel boys.

Littleton claimed he quickly discovered that Michael had serious issues with alcohol. He also said he found a dead squirrel that had been killed with a golf club and pinned to the lawn with golf tees through its body.

When he confronted Michael about the squirrel, asking if he had done it, Michael allegedly replied, “What if I did?”

That said, Littleton himself was not a particularly reliable witness. In the years following the murder, he was fired from his job, developed substance abuse issues, attempted suicide, and spent time in psychiatric care.

He also reportedly harbored deep resentment toward Rushton Skakel, which may have colored some of his later statements.

Despite these complications, the case against anyone remained weak, and the investigation stalled.

For years, the crime went unsolved.

 

Cracks in the Alibis

It wasn’t until much later, when confidential Skakel family documents and private investigative reports were leaked, that new light was shed on the case.

These materials revealed that both Tommy and Michael had lied to Greenwich investigators in their initial interviews.

Michael later admitted that, instead of going straight to the cousin’s house, he had actually returned to the Moxley property.

He said he had climbed a tree outside what he believed was Martha’s bedroom window and masturbated there.

According to Michael, he frequently wandered the neighborhood at night, peeking into windows as a “stupid” habit. He claimed this was his first time at Martha’s house and that he had mistakenly been outside John’s room, not Martha’s.

These admissions, captured in private reports, put him on or near the crime scene at a critical time.

Other leaked documents showed Tommy changing his story. He eventually admitted that he and Martha had not parted ways at 9:30 p.m. but had been together until closer to 10 p.m.

He also ultimately acknowledged that they had been kissing and engaged in heavy petting before she left to go home.

Both brothers had now provided explanations for why their DNA might be found on or near Martha’s body.

Michael’s main alibi was Helen, who claimed she had seen him get into a car and leave. But Helen was a close friend of the Skakel family, and no independent witnesses could verify Michael’s whereabouts between roughly 9:30 and 11:30 p.m.

Later, a new witness came forward, claiming Michael had confessed to the murder while at the Elan School, a private rehabilitation and psychiatric facility.

The witness alleged that Michael had said, “I’m going to get away with murder. I’m a Kennedy.”

However, these claims were never fully tested in court at the time, and the witness died of a drug overdose before his statements could be sworn under oath.

 

Indictment and Trial

In 1998, a grand jury convened to review the evidence in Martha’s case. They ultimately concluded there was sufficient evidence to charge Michael Skakel with her murder.

Prosecutors theorized that Michael had developed a crush on Martha and became jealous when he saw her kissing Tommy on the night of October 30th.

According to this theory, Michael later waited for Martha to walk home, attacked her with a golf club from his family’s set, and killed her.

In 2002, previously unreleased audio tapes made by Michael for a proposed memoir were leaked. These recordings had been intended for a ghostwritten book titled “Dead Man Talking: A Kennedy Cousin Comes Clean.”

On the tapes, Michael recounted his memories of October 30th, 1975, in far more detail than he had given police.

He acknowledged being drunk and smoking marijuana that night, and admitted he had been sexually attracted to Martha.

“I wanted to kiss her,” he said. “I wanted her to be my girlfriend, and I was going slow and carefully. The truth is, with Martha I felt shy. I thought maybe if we spent the evening together at my cousin’s house, something romantic might happen between us.”

He then contradicted parts of his previous story about his movements that night.

Prosecutors used these inconsistencies to argue that Michael had lied for years about where he was and what he was doing at the time of the murder.

On January 9th, 2000, Michael was formally arrested and held on a multi‑million‑dollar bond.

Because he had been 15 at the time of the crime, he was initially charged as a juvenile. However, a judge later ruled that the severity of the offense warranted trying him as an adult.

His trial began on May 7th, 2002.

A few weeks later, on June 7th, 2002, Michael Skakel was found guilty of murder in the second degree. He was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison.

 

Appeals, Reversals, and Controversy

Multiple appeals were filed on Michael’s behalf. Many were unsuccessful.

During this period, prominent figures—including his cousin, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—publicly argued that Michael had been wrongfully convicted and was being used as a scapegoat because of his last name.

Kennedy insisted that if not for the Skakel–Kennedy connection, the case would never have gone to trial on such evidence.

In 2013, a judge granted Michael a new trial, ruling that his original defense attorney had provided ineffective assistance. Michael was released on bond.

Later, the Connecticut Supreme Court reinstated his conviction, sending him back into legal limbo.

Then, in 2018, that same court reversed itself, vacating Michael’s conviction and upholding the ruling that he had not received adequate representation.

The state ultimately declined to retry him, citing the age of the case, the deterioration or loss of evidence, and the death of key witnesses. Michael Skakel was, and remains, a free man.

 

Problems with the Original Investigation

Looking back at the 1975 investigation, it is clear that Greenwich police were inexperienced in handling a murder of this nature and complexity.

Critical errors were made early on. When the murder weapon was identified as belonging to the Skakel family, no thorough, court‑authorized search of the Skakel property was conducted.

The missing handle of the golf club—a piece that could have contained fingerprints, blood, or other forensic evidence—was never found.

There are questions about whether Martha’s clothing was ever re‑examined with modern DNA techniques, or whether her body might yield new forensic evidence if exhumed.

Her body had been dragged roughly 80 to 90 feet, a distance likely to have left trace evidence from the attacker.

Over time, some items of evidence reportedly went missing. Autopsy photos that were once catalogued later disappeared, along with other samples collected by the medical examiner.

Each missing piece of evidence makes it harder to reconstruct what happened and to definitively identify Martha’s killer.

There have also been persistent accusations that the Skakel family received special treatment because of their wealth and political connections.

From the lack of a early search of the property to the abrupt end of police access once lawyers intervened, many see a pattern of deference that would likely not have been extended to an ordinary family.

These factors fuel the belief that someone with power and money was able to influence, delay, or deflect the course of justice.

 

A Mother’s Perspective

Over the years, Dorothy Moxley has remained a calm but resolute voice in the pursuit of justice for her daughter.

In one interview, she was asked about her reaction when Michael approached her outside the courthouse after his conviction was overturned.

“I was very surprised when he came up to me,” she said. “I remember thinking, I don’t know what to say. So I thought the best thing was to say nothing.”

Her first instinct was that the encounter had been orchestrated for publicity. “It seemed like something his father would have done,” she said, referring to what she saw as a long pattern of image management by the Skakel family.

When asked if she believed the right person had been charged, Dorothy answered simply, “I really do.”

She pointed to several reasons: the murder weapon came from the Skakel home, Martha was last seen alive with Tommy, and the family stopped cooperating with police after a few months.

“Why do you stop cooperating if you have nothing to hide?” she asked.

Dorothy has also noted the testimony of people who knew Michael at the Elan School and later in rehab, some of whom claimed he had confessed or made incriminating statements about Martha’s death.

She has acknowledged that much of this is second‑hand and that some statements would not be admissible in court. But taken together, they reinforce her belief about who killed her daughter.

 

Where the Case Stands

Today, Michael Skakel is a free man. The state of Connecticut has said it has no plans to retry him, citing insufficient forensic evidence and the passage of time.

Many key witnesses are now dead. Physical evidence has degraded or disappeared.

Martha’s case is technically unresolved. No one stands convicted of her murder.

If Michael Skakel had not belonged to a wealthy, politically connected family, many believe his case would never have drawn such intense national attention—or, conversely, that he might never have avoided a swift and aggressive prosecution back in 1975.

What is clear is that the true killer of Martha Moxley may still be unpunished, and that the full truth of what happened that night remains clouded.

Had she lived, Martha Moxley would be 63 years old this year. Instead, she will always be 15 in the memories of those who loved her.

Her father, who died in 1988, never knew the full story of what happened to his daughter. Dorothy, now in her nineties, continues to follow every development in the case, supported by her son John.

 

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