The Ghosts of Greenwich

0:13After four days of deliberation and 27 years after the crime... Mr. Skakel, do you have anything to say? Mr. Skakel, do you have anything to say? Anything to say, Mr. Skakel? Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel convicted in the murder of Martha Moxley. That's him, that's him. Michael, did you kill her? I know Michael Skakel, and I know he didn't commit the crime. Martha was an extremely popular, attractive girl. She liked everybody, and everyone liked her. A typical teenager in probably the best sense of the term. Martha was found dead under a pine tree adjacent to their home. You know, we knew Michael had done this.

1:00Absolutely no doubt. The instrument used in the striking of the Moxley girl was a golf club. We know that. My name is Steven Skakel, and I am the brother of Michael Skakel. Michael Skakel puts himself with the crime scene. Michael Skakel makes admissions that only a murderer would make. At the time this murder was committed, my brother was on the other side of town. The evidence is much stronger in suggesting that other people may have committed the crime. One of the key pieces of information was that of Tony Bryant. One weekend we decided to go up to Greenwich and hang out and... who says in no uncertain terms that his two friends committed this crime.

1:48They picked up these clubs, and they said that they were going to go out and get a girl caveman style. Why should you believe me? I was there. And it was astounding to me that nobody looked and said, well, wait a second. There's some other suspects here. Our brother Michael's been stolen from us. It's an overzealous, unethical prosecution in my estimation who's politically motivated. Somebody decided that Skakel was going to go to jail. We appealed to the Connecticut Supreme Court, the US Supreme Court, Stanford Superior Court. We've got our brother sitting in jail and we're not going to quit until he's out.

2:35This case has never been connected to any other individual, at least credibly, except for Michael Skagel. Well, I just think he has to pay for what he did. Are you guilty, Michael? He doesn't deserve to be spending 20 years of his life in jail for a crime that he didn't commit.

2:56I'm Troy Roberts. There were dramatic developments in this case that could free Michael Skagel. I'm joined by 60 Minutes correspondent Leslie Stahl as we unravel this incredible story that spans nearly four decades.

3:14Mr. Skakel, do you have anything to say? Mr. Skakel, do you have anything to say? Anything to say, Mr. Skakel? Spring of 2002. And a trial that Dorothy Moxley had been waiting and praying for for nearly 30 years. Dear Lord, again today, like I've been doing for 27 years, I'm praying that I can find justice for Martha. And those prayers were finally answered. Justice in the murder of her daughter, Martha. After four days of deliberation and 27 years after the crime, Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel convicted in the murder of Martha Moxley. For the Moxleys, it was the end of a long ordeal. We knew Michael had done this.

4:02You don't think there's any doubt? No, absolutely no doubt. But for the Skakels, it was the lowest moment yet in their long ordeal. For our family, grieving has coincided with accusation. Michael is innocent. There is no way on earth he could have done this. And I will fight for the last breath in me to get him freed. My heart almost stopped. Stephen Skakel will never forget the moment the jury returned its verdict against his older brother, Michael. I looked down at the floor and my whole world had been shattered. I know Michael Skakel and I know he didn't commit the crime. Michael's cousin, Bobby Kennedy Jr., has long been speaking out in defense of Michael.

4:53You know, people are going to dismiss that and say, well, of course he's defending his cousin. But the facts themselves speak for themselves. Kennedy, a former prosecutor and now a professor of law at Pace University, closely examined the details of his cousin's conviction. His findings were first published in the Atlantic Monthly. That's why I took the time to put together this piece, is that I am utterly convinced that he did not do the crime. I know he didn't do the crime. After the article was published, Kennedy said he received hundreds of letters about the case. I treated all of these things with a lot of skepticism.

5:33But when he got a letter from a former classmate of Michael Skakel named Crawford Mills, Kennedy was intrigued. Crawford Mills told me that Tony had information about the murder of Martha Moxley. Tony is Tony Bryant, cousin of basketball star Kobe Bryant. In 1974, Tony was a classmate of Michael Skakel. He claims two of his childhood friends boasted about committing the murder. They went up to Greenwich on several occasions with Tony. That one of them became obsessed with Martha Moxley. Armed with this new information, Michael's defense attorneys were sure they had found the evidence they needed for a new trial.

6:26Members of the Skakel family, Stephen, John, and David, say their brother Michael could never have committed murder. This is Michael in an earlier, happier time. The father of a young son, a talented athlete. This is Mount Hood, Oregon. This is in Norway. Who was a one-time member of the U.S. National Speed Skiing Squad. Getting medals at both races. And a man, they say, is dedicated to helping others. I wouldn't be sitting here if it weren't for Michael. Our brother Michael's been stolen from us. He's innocent. I know that. We are going to fight until he is freed and reunited with his son. For the Skakels, it's almost ironic that a Kennedy has come to their brother's defense.

7:11They believe it was the Kennedy connection that put them in the spotlight to begin with. They were our neighbors. They were rich. And they were Kennedys. This TV miniseries was won in a long line of books, articles, and TV dramatizations about Martha Moxley's murder. This thing has happened. We can't undo it. A parade led by the late writer Dominic Dunn and disgraced policeman-turned-writer Mark Furman. I think you have a lot of problem with a lot of power and money and politics. The Skakel brothers are the nephews of Ethel Skakel Kennedy, who married Robert Kennedy in 1950. The Skakel family were as powerful and as rich as the Kennedys.

7:57Dominic Dunn calls us all a bunch of rich snobs. He was the only one that I saw coming to court every day in a limousine. Are you all independently wealthy? Well, we're having trouble paying our lawyers now, so I guess the answer is no. They live modest lives, they say. Stephen has focused on charity work. I worked for a humanitarian aid group for 11 years. His brother David works as a county recycling manager, and his brother John sells insurance. I mean, these are not highfalutin jobs. But once upon a time, the Skakels were millionaires, living a life of wealth and privilege. That was a different time, a whole different life back then.

8:42Their father, Rushton Skakel, had inherited a fortune from the family mining company. Forty years ago, the family was growing up in this house in the exclusive Bellhaven section of Greenwich, Connecticut. Was everybody rich? I mean, it was a fairly well-to-do area. It was a very friendly, open neighborhood. There were lots of children. It was a wonderful place to grow up. Michael's the one that's on my mother's knee. In 1973, a cloud cast a shadow over those happy times for this family of six boys and one girl when they lost their mother to cancer. I remember my father said, your mother has died, if you want to go to your room and cry, that's fine.

9:32And it was never discussed again. Unable to cope with raising seven children by himself, Rushton Skakel hired a nanny, and then in October 1975, a live-in tutor named Ken Littleton. I mean, he was a football coach, but he was pretty much a loner. On the day after Ken Littleton took up residence in the Skakel home, Martha Moxley, the Skakel's pretty next-door neighbor, would be found murdered.

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10:49Martha was an extremely popular, attractive girl. Typical teenager in probably the best sense of the term. Martha Moxley was murdered at the age of 15. Moxley murder is still unsolved. Len Levitt, a writer for the Huffington Post, has spent nearly twice as many years investigating her murder. I became an old man doing this case. Levitt's reporting of the case began following Martha's death on October 30, 1975. It was the night before Halloween. Martha does not return home and her mother obviously is concerned. She starts making calls about 1 o 'clock at night. The police start searching in the neighborhood early the next morning, and at 1 o 'clock, a passing schoolgirl finds Martha under a tree at the edge of her property, beaten to death with a golf club.

11:46So severely that the golf club shatters into four parts. The instrument used in the striking of the Moxley girl was a golf club. We know that. It was the first clue Greenwich police had to go on. The day the body was found, the police found a golf club that matched the murder weapon inside the Skakel home. But at the time, it wasn't enough to arouse their suspicions. First hypothesis, nobody from Greenwich could have done this. This is too brutal a crime. Today, Belhaven became even more private, sealed off to everyone but residents and police. Some hitchhiker, perhaps off the thruway. The investigation began by establishing the likely time of Martha's death.

12:30Greenwich police consulted forensic expert Dr. Michael Bodden. It was our opinion that the time of death, based only on the stomach contest, was about 9.30, 10 o 'clock. The police then established who had been with Martha that night. Martha turns up at the Skakel house, perhaps around 9 o 'clock that night, with some friends. Martha got into the Skakel's Lincoln, similar to this one, which was parked in the driveway. She sat between Michael and his older brother Tommy. A short time later, the Skakel say, Martha got out of the car with Tommy, while Michael and a few others drove off. Somewhere about 9.15, Michael goes with his older brothers Rush Jr.

13:15and John and his cousin Jimmy Terian back to Jimmy Terian's house. Around the time of Martha's murder, John Skakel says they were at the Terian's house, watching the U.S. premiere of Monty Python's Flying Circus. At 10 o 'clock, Michael was eight miles away with myself and my brother Rush and my cousin Jim Terry. Meanwhile, back at the Skakel home... Martha's with Tommy. What goes on between Martha and Tommy then is sort of playful, pushing back and forth with sexual overtones. Friends are so embarrassed that they leave. Tommy tells the police he last sees Martha at 9.30 that night when she leaves and goes home.

13:58Martha never gets home. Tommy is seen again shortly after 10 o 'clock with Ken Littleton. Littleton was the family's new tutor who had just moved into the house that day. Littleton is unpacking. He's watching the French Connection on TV.

14:18Everyone Greenwich police interviewed who saw Martha that night had an alibi. Michael Skakel's alibi was so strong, he was not considered a suspect. Several weeks would pass before investigators turned their attention to the person they believed was the last to see Martha Moxley alive, Tommy Skakel. Tommy's story is that he last sees her at 9.30 when she leaves him, and he goes inside home to write a paper on Abraham Lincoln. The police later find out no teacher at Tommy's school ever assigned this paper. By the late fall, they are focusing on Tommy, and they're focusing on him with a vengeance.

14:57What was it like when you all realized that your older brother was a suspect? It was just shock and disbelief. What did Tommy say? He said he didn't do it, and I know that he didn't do it. Tommy Skakel lived under a cloud of suspicion for years. Now married with children, he was the only Skakel family member who refused to talk with 48 Hours. In the end, police never charged him, partly because of his alibi that night. The problem with Tommy as a murder suspect is that if this happened at 10 o 'clock, Tommy's alibi is Ken Littleton. With no new leads, the investigation went cold. But Dorothy Moxley never gave up hope.

15:43We knew it had to be one of the boys, either Tommy or Michael. Right from the beginning? Well, you know, the murder weapon came from that house, and that was the last place she was seen. In 1991, 16 years after Martha Moxley's murder, the case was revived when a new investigator started taking another look at the Skakels. With the focus back on his family, Rushton Skakel did something extraordinary. Trying to clear the family name, he hired his own team of investigators to look into Martha's death. Their results became known as the Sutton Report. The key findings focused on Ken Littleton and Tommy and Michael Skakel, but the effort backfired because the report, for the first time, pointed a finger at Michael.

16:32Michael lied to the police. Michael's story was he'd gone to the Terrians, then he comes home at 1130, and he goes right to bed. But he told the Sutton investigators that's not all he did that night. He's feeling horny. Around midnight, he's drunk. He wants to see Martha. And he goes out, and he climbs a tree outside Martha's window. He throws stones at the window, and he masturbates in the tree. He climbs down right around where the crime scene is. He hears voices, and he runs home, and he goes to bed. I ran home, and I remember thinking, oh my God, I hope Scott and I saw me jerking off. In fact, Michael even made a tape recording of that story in a 1997 book proposal for a tell-all biography.

17:15I remember thinking, oh my God, if I tell anybody that I was out that night, they're going to say I did it. Michael Skakel puts himself with the crime scene. Michael Skakel makes admissions that only a murderer would make. When former L.A. detective Mark Furman, who gained notoriety during the O.J. Simpson case, was leaked a copy of the Sutton report, he wrote the bestseller Murder in Greenwich, naming Michael as Martha's killer. Just one month later, in June of 1998, prosecutor Jonathan Benedict called for a special grand jury to hear evidence about the case. The grand jury heard some explosive testimony.

17:54All right, break it out, break it out, come on. Much of it from Michael's former classmates at the Elan Reform School, where Skakel had been sent after a drunk driving incident. Several of them dropped a bombshell that he had confessed to killing Martha. The first words he ever said to me was, I'm going to get away with murder, I'm a Kennedy. This is former Elan student Greg Coleman telling a reporter what Michael told him about the night Martha died. He had made advances towards her and she rejected his advances. and, quote-unquote, that he drove her skull in with a golf club. In January of 2000, That's him, that's him.

18:35After hearing testimony from several Elan students and others, Michael, did you kill her? the grand jury indicted Michael Skakel for the murder of Martha Moxley. When Michael Skakel went to trial, the rest of his family was convinced he would be found not guilty. After all, Michael had an airtight alibi and there wasn't a single shred of physical or forensic evidence that linked him to the crime. His brother, David Skakel, thought that finally the family name would be cleared once and for all. Mr. Skakel, do you have anything to say? We were worried that without a trial, he could never fully get closure in clearing of his reputation.

19:17So you saw this as a way to absolve him? We all did. Please come to the mics. Please come to the mics. So when the jury returned their guilty verdict, the Skakel family was left shocked and devastated. It's disheartening. I love my brother and I believe in him 100%.

19:39Following Michael's conviction, Bobby Kennedy Jr. began his own investigation and made a stunning discovery. On the night of the murder, They picked up a golf club or some golf clubs from the Skakel Yard. And they said that they were going to go out and get a girl caveman style.

20:24It's 8.30 on Saturday morning, and I'm going up to visit Michael. For the first few years of Michael Skakel's incarceration... This is the last thing I ever thought I would be doing. This is how his brother Stephen spent every Saturday morning. There are some mornings where I would like to sleep in. Making the long drive from his home in Connecticut to visit his older brother in prison. Just let him know we're still here and still fighting for him. Now 46, Stephen is the youngest of the Skakel children. He was just nine when Martha Moxley was murdered. There's only so much people can take, and we've taken it for 30 years.

21:05Since the conviction... I've gone through all of the transcripts, all the police reports. He has taken the lead in the fight to clear Michael and the Skakel family name. Did you ever look Michael in the eye and ask him directly if he killed Martha? No. I know Michael, and I know in my heart that he did not. He doesn't deserve to be spending 20 years of his life in jail for a crime that he didn't commit. Even more outspoken is Skakel's cousin, Bobby Kennedy Jr. For me to come out publicly to defend somebody that basically everybody in the country feels is guilty of murder is from a personal strategy not a good choice for me, but I know he's innocent.

21:48Although they were not close as kids, as adults, Bobby Kennedy and Michael Skakel shared a similar history, problems with addiction. I became close to Michael Skakel in 1983 when I first got sober. And Michael had been sober for a year or two years at that time. Kennedy spent six months investigating the case for the Atlantic Monthly article. What do you hope this article you wrote is going to accomplish? I really wrote that article for Michael's son, for Georgie. Because he's going to grow up with most people in this country thinking that his father murdered a girl, and he didn't do it. Kennedy knew he had hit pay dirt when the letter from Skakel's classmate Crawford Mills arrived, revealing that another classmate, Tony Bryant, said he knew who had killed Martha Moxley.

22:45Tony Bryant is one of the first African American students at Brunswick. I don't know. I see. Bobby Kennedy located Bryant in Florida. Tony's story has a lot of credibility. Bryant told Kennedy that on the night Martha died, he was in Greenwich with two friends from the Bronx. One of them was black and one of them was white, and that these two people were best friends. They went up to Greenwich on several occasions with Tony. That one of them became obsessed with Martha Moxley. Tony told Kennedy his friends had a plan. They picked up golf clubs from the Skakel's yard. They picked up these clubs and they said that they were going to go out and get a girl caveman style.

23:37And that Tony understood the girl to mean Martha Moxley. Now what is caveman style? What is that? What he says is that it meant that they were going to hit her over the head and drag her into the bushes. Bryant wanted no part of their plan and claims he left. When he read what happened to Martha Moxley, he feared the worst. He's saying that they confessed to him a couple of days later that they had killed Martha Moxley? Well, they never actually said that they had killed Martha Moxley. but that they were in some ways boastful about it and were kind of egging him on to inquire to them about the details.

24:25They would say things to him that were suggestive, like we accomplished our mission and we did it. Why would he wait 28 years? His mother urged him not to talk about it publicly. That was prompted by her fear that as a young black man in Greenwich, that he would be a target for prosecution. When Bobby Kennedy spoke with the two men, he says neither of them acted as though they had anything to hide. I asked them to confirm some of the basic information that I'd heard, that they were friends of Tony's. that they... They did confirm that? Yes. Yeah. That they had been to Greenwich with him on several occasions.

25:19They confirmed that? Yeah. Bobby Kennedy, however, did not ask them if they had anything to do with Martha Moxley's murder. I didn't tell them that Tony had accused them of committing the crime at that point. Both men have denied any involvement in the death of Martha Moxley. And despite attempts to challenge Tony Bryant's credibility, the man who went to prep school with Michael Skakel stands by his story. Somebody decided that Skakel was going to go to jail and that all of the other evidence, the abundant evidence against other people were going to be ignored. Kennedy says these new developments support his arguments that the prosecution simply had the wrong man.

26:03Michael! Michael! Michael! The strongest piece of evidence is that Michael has an alibi. Monty Python's flying circus. Michael's alibi, that he was across town watching Monty Python when the murder occurred, has always been supported by several relatives, Hey, Smiley. including his brother John. I took a lie detector test in which I was asked who was in the car that went to my cousins, the Tarians, who live about eight miles away, and Michael was, in fact, in the car, and that was my response. John's 1975 polygraph results, however, were inadmissible in court. What did make it into the trial, though, was the testimony of two former Elan students.

26:46The two most damaging witnesses against Michael were Greg Coleman and John Higgins. The prosecution contended that when 17-year-old Michael was at the Elan school, he talked openly about the murder. Greg Coleman testified that he had heard Michael confess to having murdered Martha Moxley five or six times. When he came up in front of the preliminary hearing, Greg Coleman testified that Michael had only confessed to him actually once or twice. When Michael's defense attorney, Mickey Sherman, asked Greg Coleman why he had changed his story, Coleman admitted that prior to facing the grand jury, he had taken 25 bags of heroin.

27:27Greg Coleman died of a drug overdose just before the trial, but a tape of his previous testimony was played for the jury. Higgins was an Alland bully who tortured Michael when he was at Alland. John Higgins did testify at the trial and said Michael had also confessed to him. Higgins refused our requests for an interview. Why couldn't Michael's attorneys have destroyed their credibility? I think Michael could have gotten better representation. I would ask Mickey, why aren't you bringing this or that up? Everything's fine. We're going to have a good day. But the worst day of all for the Skakels and Mickey Sherman was June 3rd, the day of closing arguments.

28:13Prosecutors in the case used a very, very sophisticated multimedia technique. We needed to connect the dots, and that's what I did. Prosecutor Jonathan Benedict transcribed and played Michael's own words from that book proposal over gory photographs from the crime scene that we have blocked out. Then I woke up to Mrs. Moxley saying, Michael, have you seen Martha? I was like, oh my God, did they see me last night? John Skakel, who was in the courtroom, feels it distorted Michael's own words into a confession. We all felt sick. And I remember just having a feeling of panic. Like, oh, s***. Like, my worry of what I went to bed with.