It’s been 50 years since Martha Moxley was murdered.
The crime transfixed the nation. The 15-year-old was bludgeoned and stabbed with a golf club the night before Halloween in her back yard, in Greenwich’s Belle Haven section.
She was last seen alive with Thomas and Michael Skakel — nephews of Ethel Kennedy, the widow of Robert F. Kennedy. They were the prime suspects.
Michael — who was 15 at the time of the murder — was convicted 27 years later, and sentenced to 20 years to life in prison. He was granted a new trial 11 years later, on the grounds of inadequate counsel, and released.
In 2020 — 45 years to the day after the crime — the state of Connecticut announced he would not be retried. Too many witnesses had died.
Many people believed — long before Michael Skakel’s first trial — that he was guilty. So did Andrew Goldman.
Andrew Goldman
But a few years ago, when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asked the Westporter — a writer for the Wall Street Journal, New York Times Magazine, the New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Esquire, Wired and more — to ghostwrite a book about his cousins’ involvement in the case, he agreed to meet some of those involved.
Michael Skakel was eager. He let Goldman pore through the entire case file: 50 boxes of police reports, evidence and more.
Eventually, Goldman came to doubt that Michael was the killer.
RFK Jr. — then an environmental lawyer, several years away from becoming President Trump’s Health & Human Services secretary — believed, on word from a tipster, that the murderers were 2 teenagers from New York. One was sexually obsessed with Martha.
Though still skeptical of Kennedy’s theory, Goldman ghostwrote “Framed: Why Michael Skakel Spent Over a Decade in Prison for a Murder He Didn’t Commit.” It was published in 2016.
Robert F. Kenney Jr.’s name is on the book. But Andrew Goldman was the ghostwriter.
But his involvement with the case did not end there.
By that time, Goldman believed Michael Skakel was miles away when Moxley was clubbed to death. And he wanted to counteract 2 influential books — Dominick Dunne’s fictional-but-close-resemblance 1993 “A Season in Purgatory,” and Mark Fuhrman’s 1998 “Murder in Greenwich” — that convinced many of Skakel’s guilt.
The result — after extensive research and numerous interviews, including Michael and Thomas Skakel — was a 12-part NBC News Studios podcast. It premiered late last year.
“Dead Certain: The Martha Moxley Murder” spent several weeks as Apple’s #1 podcast series.
“I spent the better part of a decade immersed in the case,” Goldman says. “It was a story people thought they knew, but didn’t.
“I documented how and why the state of Connecticut tried and convicted a man with virtually no evidence against him. The whole case was built on a foundation of lies. In my 30 years in journalism, no case has ever gripped me like this story.”
It still grips him. Certain elements were not included in the podcast, at NBC’s insistence. Since it aired, more tips have come in.
Martha Moxley
So at 7 p.m. on June 24, Goldman presents a special show at the Westport Library.
The “live podcast” event will include accompaniment by 2 New York musicians, and a song by Jack Donahue — a former assistant to Dunne, who has a unique connection to the case.
The evening includes a panel discussion with friends of Martha Moxley, and people who worked on the case.
“It will be quite unlike anything Westport has ever seen,” Goldman promises.
The potential audience is vast: people who have long been fascinated by the Martha Moxley story; those who listened to the podcast, but want more, and “true crime” aficionados.
And people who (like me) remember the case when it first happened, have not thought about it in years, but are now — with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the headlines, and a Westport author who worked with him convinced of the truth — ready for a deep, deep dive.
(For more information on the June 24 multimedia Westport Library event, click here.)
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Michael Skakel, in a screenshot from Andrew Goldman’s podcast.
This dear girl. I’ve always mourned her as a major Kennedy person most of my life from the 1960s on. Westport always reminds me of Jfk and his passing when I was in 1st grade with Miss Huck at Bedford Elementary.
Her parents passed without ever having real closure about her death and killer. I pray they are reunited now and know the truth, and sending the truth to us. This story has always haunted me. Such a sweet and beautiful girl and someone’s beloved daughter and granddaughter. I have a daughter and little granddaughters and this story still kills me inside.