Thinking Sideways: The Murder of Martha Moxley

welcome to another episode of Thinking Sideways. I'm Joe, joined as always by Devon and Steve, and we're gonna guess what We're gonna talk about cooking, not really okay, of course, a mystery, another groovy mystery. Okay. Our mystery began on Halloween Day. Yeah, it's forty some years um, but actually there's still a little movement on this one, believe it or not. Still stuff going on there is. Yeah. First of all, I want to thank Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Who suggested this mystery to us. Laughing right now, but really really genuinely. Yeah. He just published a new book and uh, and his publishers sent us a copy. And I love it when people give us free stuff, which it's cool. The book is called Framed Again by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And it's a really good roundup of the story and all the suspects. And this case has actually received a lot of national attention for a long time. Lots of books have been written about it, not just

arf Kase. And also there's another book that was written in the nineties by Mark Furman. And he may have heard of Furman. He was the LPD homicide detective who was assigned to the O. J. Simpson murder. Yeah, you remember that guy. He did a really good job with. Yeah, yeah, I didn't work out so well. And so the murder of O. J. Simpson's wife and her boyfriend remains unsolved. Um Ferman's book, it's got some good information in it, though I don't really agree with all of his conclusions.

He did a lot of reconstruction of the crame scene. He did. He did. He's got some drawings in there and stuff and and so. And he's a professional, obviously, he knows how to read his crime scenes better than the Grantwich p D. By the way, our murder takes place in Granwich, Connecticut. So thanks to rfk and thanks to Ferman for suggesting this mystery to us. Yeah, well Furman didn't, yeah, I said, I sent an email to his publisher to see if he be willing to talk

to me. In surprise, I never heard back. Yeah. Yeah, Well back to our mystery. Halloween October thirty first, about noon on that day, the body of a fifteen year old girl named Martha Moxley was found under a tree in her family's yard in Granwich, Connecticut. She had been bludgeoned on the head with the golf club, and the club then broke into several pieces, which was either either from the force of the blows to her head or maybe from the deliberate action of maybe the killer actually

broke it deliberately. It's hard to say, but it wasn't. It was in basic four pieces before you go on. Probably should warn people if there's munchkins around. Oh yeah, pause from here on forward. Yeah, it's kind of a brutal. Yes, yeah it is. I know. I was just thinking, how maybe we should have just said that earlier. I realized this, I know what's coming. Yeah, okay, so yeah, So it's three pieces of the club were found laying in the

grass in the Boxley yard. That was the head, you know, that the part that you actually whacked the ball with, and then two pieces of shafts stainless steel shaft. And then the fourth piece was a piece of stainless steel shaft with the handle attached to it. You know, it's the part that you grip with your hands when you swing the golf club, the rubber grippy bit. Yeah, that that part. That part was used to stab her in the next several times. And the last one went all

the way through and it went through her windpipe. And it is believed that even if she survived all the blows, she would have died anyway from drowning in her own blood. Yeah. Yeah, and uh, the killer at that point. Uh, And I'm getting out of hand here. It's like there was one blow delivered in the driveway. If you look at you look at an aerial of the house, it's the house where it took places at thirty Walsh Lane and Grantwich, Connecticut. If you go to Google you can get a look

at an area of it. But they've changed up the driveway a little bit. It used to be east to run on the west side of the house north to Walsh Lane, and then a little semi circular piece breaks off and branches out and goes also to Walsh Lane. So you have a sort of semi circular driveway there. So that Patrick grass in the middle is where the initial attack appeared to have taken place. In the middle basically a round about, yeah, kind of a roundabout thing. Uh.

And then apparently it's a half circle. Yeah, it's like a quarter circle. Actually, when you think about it, it's not a round about, a quarter about. It's like a it's like a U shaped driveway, yeah, except it's not quite you shaped. It's like this like this right. Yeah, you can't see what I did, but when when when the murder happened, not anymore, it's totally it's a total horseshoe shape now. Yeah, and I guess it's probably worth noting that this is a gated community, so there's no

street view. You have to just look at who the earth right now. I know that's so frustrating that anyway, So the attack happens on the quarter circle, the initial attack. Yeah. After that point, the killer dragged Martha south Based down, grabbed her by the feet, basically a drugg her face down across the driveway, and we know this because there were lots of gouges in her face, took her to a place over by a Japanese maple todjest to the south of the driveway and resumed beating and stabbing her.

This was the main attack took place, because there was a major amount of blow that was found there. And then uh, and then last of all, you drugged her don like eighty feet south to a big pine tree and left the body under the pine tree. It's in

Mark Ferman's book. He says that the wounds were such that they would have would have been ouzing rather than gushing blood, so he believes the killer actually left her laying next to the Japanese maple for about half an hour and then came back and administered the kuda gras

with the handle and then dragged her away. For me, that vastly changes the total zone of this thing, right, you know, because it's one thing to say, Okay, yeah, somebody went a little crazy statement pretty quando crazy, and you know, beat this girl a lot, and you know, stabbed her and killed her and then dragged her body to hide her, versus somebody beat this girl, left her and then came back and continued to do some like

took a union break in the middle. Yeah, but but of course I could I could be wrong about that too. He might have actually done all and she did all the bleeding there, and then he came back later decided to move the body, but didn't actually attack her anymore. So we don't really know, yea. And the broken bits of golf club where were they next to her body? So they were moved as well? No, no, we were

with the initial attacks. There were two of them were with the initial attacks side the circle in the driveway, and then one of them was fairly close to her body. It was a piece of shaft. And then the fourth one was the handle itself was sticking out of her neck. Remember that to you, by the way, I looking at the golf club handle, because that becomes an important little clue later on. Yeah, when much of this body was found, her jeans have been pulled down and her panties have

been rolled down. She was faced down. There were two smears of blood on her in her thighs, and there was no evidence of rape, by the way, or sexual assault of any kind, right really, Yeah, except for except for the blood smears on our thighs, which we probably put there by the murderer, you know, doing something, But he didn't actually complete any act or anything like that. I thought I had read that in the Corners report there was no signs of any kind of assault or

trauma in her genital region. Yeah, it was that she was she had not been, so either there was something like totally consensual that had happened, or that's I don't I don't think about anything sexual activity. That there was some sexual activity earlier in the evening, but it wasn't earlier. Yeah,

but it wasn't full intercourse. And I think that that's that's what it's probably what you're why it's it's coming up as Joseph, there's no assault that way, there's no evidence of it, right, Yeah, I want to clarify that

as well. But yeah, that's but the fact that her panties were rolled down and the fact that they found blood spatter on the inside of the panties told the police and the medical examiner types that she had probably been attacked by somebody that she knew, in fact, not just not just somebody that she knew, was somebody that

she'd be willing to roll her panties down for. So wait, I don't understand how the blood on the inside of the panties leads to that that understanding, Well, because have you beaten there with their pants up and everything, the blood would have gone all over her pants outside and the outside of her pants. Not The point is her pants were down, and then she was treated as a pincushion. Yeah, okay,

that's that's the distinction. I wasn't quite gidding. And I think the further distinction on that is that it looked like she had done it, not that they had been like torn off her, so her pants weren't pulled double or anything crazy like I got it. I got it. Yeah, So at this point I described that to described the murder. Let me tell about I'll tell you guys all about

our cast of characters. It's a big one. Yeah, there's a lot of people involved in this story, and so I'm going to try to keep this to a manageable number of people. First of all, Martha's family, the Moxley's, they've been living in bell Haven. But then I mentioned this is in bell Haven, Connecticut. Bell Haven is a like a neighborhood within Greenwich, Connecticut, and it's like the richest neighborhood in Greenwich, which is also, by the way,

a fairly wealthy city. Itself. It's so it's posh. The aerial pictures of this is kind of one of those things where you look at it and you're like, how one yard is that a country club? Do people live there? I don't have that many pools tennis court and three pools? Okay, oh yeah, Well, like one of the one of the families here, this SkELL family, they have this huge tract of land for an area where I'm sure land is

incredibly expensive. They have like a tennis court and a chipping tea with two golf golf holes in and everything, and in a swimming pool and it's just just this big area, this meadow to wander around in and huge house and yeah, it must be nice. Yeah. So basically this is the kind of neighborhood where they wouldn't let you buy a house. They would specifically, but it's also the kind of neighborhood where like, really horrible murders don't happen,

not very often. Now. Yeah, Maxes had been there about a year and a half. Moxyes were David and Dorothy. That's mom and dad. They had two kids, John and Martha. At the time of the murder, John was seventeen and Martha, his little sister was fifteen. Across the street to the north across Walsh Lane was a large piece of land on whether Skagles again with a big, big house and lots of other cool stuff on it. And Russians Sr. Also known as Ruckie Um was a winner with seven kids.

He had six sons and one daughter. Yeah. Russo's kids were Rushton Jr. A k A. Rush Julie, John, Tommy, Michael, David, and Stephen USA. But the two characters out of all the all the siblings to really remember, Tommy and Michael middle boys, Yeah, because they were the They were the ones who became the suspects. Tommy, of course was was the major suspect and his murdered for years and then in the late nineties, Mark Firman wrote his book Murdering Greenwich,

which pointed the finger at Michael. Michael Skea was eventually convicted of Martha's murder in two thousand two and he was sentenced to twenty years to life. Do you know how how old those boys were? Uh, Michael at the time was fifteen and Tommy was seventeen. Then Michael, by the way, was a Ronto. He was like five five ft two at the time, waited about twenty pounds. Actually he actually grew up and became a big guy, but at the time he was pretty small. Maybe he's small

to committed murder. I don't know, Well, I don't know of fifteen year old girls, not exactly. I don't think Martha was exactly hulking now she was. She was actually about about as tall as Michael at the time. Michael said late when many years later than that, if he had attacked her, she would have kicked his ass. I'd actually also mentioned one other major character in this story,

which is Ken Littleton. He was hired by Rush Senior to look after the Sco kids and also to be a living tutor to Tommy and Michael because their mother had passed away. Yeah past Friday. There was not much in the way parental supervision. She died about three years because from cancer. So yeah, he was kind of like living nanny basically, right. He cleaned, he took the kids out,

but he also tutor. Now they actually had other servants that did the cookie and the cleaning, but he took the kids out, He took them out, and he was he was there to provide a little supervision and tutor Tommy and Michael. I think the politically correct term is staff. They had a lot of servants. Must be great house staff. Okay, so Ken Ken's first day on the job was October Yeah, when he moved into the scake house, and talk about your bad timing. He's kind of like the maid in

the hinter Kai fact case. Remember that. Yeah, it shows up the day of That turned him into a major suspect for years, and police harassed him and tried to try to get him on this for years, and they did everything from his telephone and and cooking up sketchy deals with his ex wife to try to get hurt, get him to implicate himself and on. And I I just feel like your first day on the job, really like, who's going to go out and kill somebody the first

day on the job? The girl that lives literally across the street on the first day of the job. Really really like, I might not understand the impulse of um, you know, serial killers or anything like that, but really it's on the list of things not to do on day one, just like getting drunk the night before your your first day on the job, not something you do. Dyeing your hair a crazy color or crazy cuts. Things you don't do. Murdering the neighbor girl also also a thing.

Don't do it now, I know, I know. And there's actually even though he was such a major, there's actually no evidence that he ever even met Martha. Yeah, but yeah, they hunted him down. But they did this with all of their suspects. Oh yeah, they were asked a lot of people. They went after everybody. They thought it could be super hard and frankly they did some some kind of sketchy things. The police did talk a little bit

more about that later. But anyway, Ken had his life went really downhill after the murder, and there he had a lot of drug drug and alcohol abuse and that some mental illness and stuff. And it's hard to say, you know, he had a promising future at that time, but then that stuff might have happened anyway. He might have known habits and the drug habits. And how old was he when it happened. He was twenty foward. He was teaching at Brunswick School, which is a very exclusive

private school in bell Haven or not. I don't think it's in bell Haven, but it's not far away. And where Tommy and Michael were both going to school. So it's one of those places where the rich people senior their kids to school. So Ken had a good future ahead of them. Oh and one last thing you need

to know about the Skego family. They were related to the Kennedy's as in you know John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy and all that Russian ske Senior ruk Ruckie the dad was the brother of Ethel Skeko who married Robert F. Kennedy Senior. And you remembered him. He was He was JFK's brother and he was assassinated in Yeah, that's and so Tommy and Michael ske Are cousins of RFK Jr. Which is why he wrote the book. And

obviously he doesn't believe Michael committed the merger. He's got he's got a vested interest in having his family be cleared of this murder. He's been good buddies with Michael for many years and and uh and he but he presents some some actual pretty compelling evidence and so but we'll talk about that. And one of the most recent twists in the case is in a Connecticut judge named Thomas Bishop. Throughout Michael Skegle's conviction and ordered a new

trial based on the argument of incompetence of counsel. Michael's attorney for his two thousand two trial was a guy named Mickey Sherman, and RFK has some pretty harsh words for him in his book. I don't know if you guys read the book or not. No, I skimmed it. I'll be honest with you. I we had so much stuff going on. I didn't. Yeah, that's two books I was. I was stuck in so I did not. I'm sorry.

That's okay. Uh, Mickey's defense. I have to say that even if he didn't cross every t I still really don't see how the prosecution in this case got a conviction. It seemed like a lot of it was circumstantial. Well, yeah it was. There was no physical evidence. I mean, there was linking him to the crime. There was some physical evidence at the crime scene. One of the things I forgot to mention, by the way, that the golf club handle that was sticking out of her neck. Yeah,

two police officers and one doctor saw that thing. The police officers sought sticking out of her neck, and a doctor who was examining the body to make sure she was actually dead, saw it laying on the ground next to her body. So it looks like somebody pulled Yeah, yeah, so he so it should have been in until Yeah, he probably should have been it. You can see, you can understand why somebody might want to pull it out, but they didn't. The police didn't actually do a great

job of securing the crime scene. And apparently there were a lot of people hanging around. Yeah, I know, yeah it was they the Greenwich ailie had not actually investigated a murder in decades, and obviously it never happens in that town, and so it just wasn't there kind of thing, and so they didn't really. There was other stuff found near the body of a pair of jeans with a size thirty six waist that was all soaked in blood

was found near the body. Some beer cans were found, a golf ball, and all that evidence was apparently collected but but lost. Yeah, well, please lose stuff. I mean, it happens, I mean, but usually not like key pieces of evidence. You know about dB Cooper's cigarette butts, Right, Devin, Remember this is twenty seven years later by that point,

when when this case comes up. All I can say is that I hope that when I'm blundened to death and they find some soaked genes in my blood next to the body, they hold onto those until like hundred years later. We will we will go ahead and store them in Joe's basement, because everything is in Joe's basement and it never leaves perfect. That's a great spot. I

hate throwing stuff out. Yeah, they had the most important piece, of course, that I was saying was the golf club handle, and and the prosecution in Michael's trial managed to spend that fact that that this this thing was missing as the killer took it with him when he left the crime scene. Right. Wait wait, wait, wait wait, wait back up.

So we have witnesses that see it in her initially and then on the ground next to her later, and then when it's disappeared twenty seven years later, that's because the killer took it out of the body with them at the time of the murder. Yeah, that is the

dumbest thing I've heard all day. Well, you know, I read I didn't have time to read the entire transcript of the entire thing of the entire trial, but I read the summations of both the prosecution and the defense, and so they went to all their arguments and talked about all the evidence. So, you know, I really didn't need to read the entire trial transcript. It was all there. All the arguments were there, and the execution's theory was

a little strange. And they talked about the gulf the missing murder weapon, because the thing about it is is this was what's called the brand on this golf club is Tony Panna. Apparently they're not It's not a really common brand. And it had been owned by by Russian Senior's wife Ann, who had died, and every every every one of the clubs was embossed with her name, said Mrs R. K. Skagill. And but by the way, was that in the was that carved into the metal or

was that in the rubber of the handle? I believe it was in the medal? Yeah, And so so that the prosecution's theory was that the killer must have been a skag because it would have been somebody from somebody else. Then they wouldn't have had an interest in taking that handle away because because it wouldn't be embossed with their mother's name on it. Yeah. Yeah, and so obviously he took that, he took the fact that this thing was not in evidence that obviously that points a guilty finger

at somebody in the Skag family. I could see that, except I also seemed to remember that these teenagers being teenagers, left stuff lying around all the time, and if I remember correctly, wasn't it it wasn't uncommon to see several of the clubs just sitting on the on their property, just hanging out. It wasn't as if they were always put away and cared for. Yeah, that's that's that's true.

I mean they were apparently, so it's not as if it was under lock and key and only by having access to the home could you get one of those. So now we have really good arguments for why the case has been overturned. Yeah, so sorry, Yeah, but actually

Michael is not totally out of the woods. Obviously, the prosecutors appealed his decision, and and they but it was upheld on appeal, and now it's in front of the Connecticut Supreme Court, and we should be hearing any day now whether Michael gets to remain free or if he's going to go back to prison, or if he's going to get a new trial, and I think that he's not gonna get I don't think they're going to retry him.

I would be amazed. Yeah. Yeah, it's incredible. The number of people who are serving serious time for crimes that they literally didn't commited. Happens a lot more often they'd like to think. It really does, Yeah, which is scary to me. Yeah. It just goes to show you when anything like this happens, to be really careful what you say to the police. Yeah, this is why I was. Yeah. Just yeah, that doesn't look guilty at all. Yeah, you just got it, you know. Dump them in a swamp somewhere. Yeah,

that's it. Take them up to the marshes on tape. Yeah. You know. Actually there's a book on how to get rid of dead bodies. Yeah, I've seen it on your bookshelf. I guess i'd better hide that. Let's go back to the previous night. October thirty is ken Littleton pork In

first day in the job. He took the scgle kids to the bell Haven Club, which is one of those super exclusive places that wouldn't let somebody like me join because you wouldn't be able to own a house there, so yeah, yeah, I've seen aerials and stuff of it, and it looks like a pretty possible club. They returned to the chicle house about Martha Moxley had left her house across the street around sixty seven, joined up with their friends Helen X and Jeff Byrne. October thirty in

Belhaven is what's called Mischief Knight. Apparently, Mischief Night happens in a lot of places. I mean, it's never a really better thing in places that I've lived, I've heard of it. It's it's common enough that though I never was in an area that it happened or partook in it, I knew of it. Yeah. Yeah, but that's Halloween Eve and the tradition of the neighborhood is for the kids to go out and and bull pranks. You know, they like ring people's doorbells and run away and like a

bag of dog poo and run away. That's a good one. Yeah. Houses and trees and houses, yes, egg cars stuff, Oh my god. I know one time when I was home alone without my parents over a Halloween, somebody egged our house and they were like gone, you know, and I didn't know how to deal with it, and it was the worst and I had no idea. Uh well, now you know, and for anybody who's listening, the first thing you do is get out the garden hoses starting hosing

off the house because it's gonna stick. Yeah, and also it can wreck your pain job in your car, so you gotta get cleaned. Yeah. Yeah. All these hijaks were accepted with good humor by the local homeowners because, after all, they were rich, so they weren't cleaning up the mess house needed a new paint job again anyway, big deal, right shack you kind of you kind of wonder if that's the sort of tradition that gets started by the staff or like painters, you know where they're like, you

should go to egg that house. So I found out how to get onto that that property and go ahead and just egg every house you can because I need we need some work winners coming. It's gonna be slow. Yeah, oh yeah. And they were always in the Bell Haven, by the way, if you were on foot, it's just that if you're on car, they had these guardhouses and gates at the you know, at the community. Yeah, it's like that in every community. No, no gated community is

completely sealed off. Oh no, it can't be. Yeah, So Martha Moxley, along with her friends Helen and Jeff, stopped by the Scag House um since they were buddies with Tommy and Michael. But of course Tommy and Michael weren't there. They were at the bell of Haven Club with Canon Littleton. They laughed, but they returned a little after nine pm, and Michael took them out to the family's Lincoln Continental in the driveway and they all climbed in and started

listening to eight track tapes and smoking cigarettes. The eight track. We eight track? That the worst format ever. Have you ever listened to an eight track tape? They never stopped, They just well, I think the thing that drives you crazy is it always happens in the middle of your favorite song on the tape. You're going along along, there's all of a sudden dead and then you just jump and standing, reverses and starts playing back the other direction. Yeah,

terrible format. Don't buy an eight track. Well, they're pretty they're still pretty popular. I'm sure everybody's good at one there called eight tracks dot Com. Oh really, is it like the Museum of eight Tracks? No, you just make playlists, got it? Okay, that's my only experience with eight tracks. You've never actually seen one in real life, too young. Yeah, so you see that book right there, that that's the

size of an eight track because big big cartridges. Yeah that was anyway, your young kids today don't know how good you got it with your fancy iPod. Okay, So Martha, Tommy, and Michael are in the Lincoln. Yeah, back to our thing. Well yeah, well the four of them were almost and then yeah, Tommy comes out of the house supposedly to get one of those hawk and big tapes out of the car, and he wind up joining them in the car.

But then not long after that, around Rush Junior brother, yeah the oldest one, and his cousin Jim terry and came out and told them they were gonna have to get out of the car because they needed to take Jim to his house, which was about when eleven miles away. Michael, by the way, had been planning to go to the terry In's house because apparently Rush Junior had seen an EPI. So do Monty Python's flying surface. He was in a

test group. He was he was away at college at Princeton or somewhere like that or Yale or something, and apparently he'd gotten that chance to see this and he thought it was really awesome. It was Monty Pythons flying Surface was a great show. Yes it was weird, but it was fun. Yeah, it was totally off the wall,

but it was great. But apparently that it was the American premiere of the Flying Circus was taking place that night, and so they were going to all just go back to the Harrians and hang out and drink a beer and watch it. Because this was the time when you couldn't just DVR it and watch it later. You had to see it then or you weren't going to see it again. Pretty much. I guess maybe I don't know why they couldn't just stay there. I'm going to guess that it was Wow what it would it was seventy

five cable access. It had to be antenna TV, but it might have been a station issue. In other words, they may not have gotten the same station at one house to the next based on the antenna set up. Yeah, it could have been that in a neighborhood. Like even I assume that they have everything you would think, but you're it's it's antenna television. You might be rich, but you can't change air waves, So that could have been It could have been something as simple as they were

just going to kill two birds with one stone. Jimmy had to be home at a certain time, and then you know, he had a massive stash of weeds. Yea, his parents weren't home. Yeah, they didn't know if Kenna let them drink yeah, uh oney, way, Michael, before Martha exited the car, asked her if she wanted to come along, but she said she couldn't because she had a nine curfew. So then Tommy and Martha, Helen and Jeff get out

of the car. Michael stays in Russ, John and Jim climb and they leave for Jim's house, which is called Cirsam Corda. I'm sorry what Corda? No, I'm sorry. I was more reacting to the fact that his home has a name. I know, I know because his Jimmy, Terry and his family is also really sticking rich and they had imagine so huge when they get to a certain size to get to have a name of their own. I really got to come up with a name from my house. Yeah, and then put it on Google I

think your in your house has a name already. Pee what I don't even make sense. I was going to say something way less flattering. Okay. So that left Tommy, Martha, Helen, and Jeff standing in the driveway, and apparently, according to what Helen and Jeff said to the police afterwards, Tommy and Martha were engaging in flirtatious behavior with one another and it was kind of making them uncomfortable. Is that an euphemism for flirtatious behavior? Yeah, like, were they like

going at it. They were just flirting. They were flirting and there was a little a little pushing and horseplay and stuff like that. It's always weird to me when fellow teenagers are like it was making me uncomfortable. Yeah, it was like, actually felt like a third wheel. Well, I was just saying, as as a dude watching another dude hitting on a girl and he might be maybe getting some traction. It's weird you're just standing there and you can't have a conversation because every time you make

a joke they ignore you. It's it's awkward. Yeah, like I said, Helen's hell, I felt like a third she said, and so that and she had to care for you anyway, nine thirtyes, so she took off one with Jeff And so that means Tommy was the last known person to see Martha alive to seventh Michael's fifteen there was and that's that's one reason he was a suspect for so long. Yeah, Tommy was. So this was about nine twenty and Tommy told police the following day after her body was found.

The police came by the Sago household and they interviewed everybody there that afternoon. But yeah, oh yeah, he said that he and Martha chatted for a little while, that she left around nine thirty and then she went back and said the house to work on a report for school about Abraham Lincoln, which turned out to be a lie. Uh yeah, yeah, I guess. Police check to Tommy's school. They found out Tommy hadn't been assigned any such report. Uh. And also Cam Littleton, the tutor he was also supposed

to be keep an eye of kids. He did a bed check, uh and about five and uh he said that Tommy wasn't there. Tommy said that while he stepped across the hallway to a guest room to get a book for his report, he stayed there to work on it. Probably probably also another line um that was just big enough. Though he could have theoretically been anywhere, he just wasn't in bed. Yeah, yeah, just it just wasn't his bed. And he changed his story in summer the summer of two.

More about that later. But he was with Martha longer than he actually said, six seventeen years, okay, yeah, yeah, it's been a while that he finally changed his story. A lot of people in this story. A lot of people change their stories in this one. I mean a lot, I guess. I mean it does. We're talking about like kids, really, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, Like these people are kids, and they may not totally understand.

Especially I'm sorry if any of our listeners are, you know, super rich, but like the super rich kids that I've ever met really have that mentality of like like like I'll get away with it doesn't matter, or they don't understand the like severity of if you're fifteen and you're trying to not get in trouble for like sleeping with a girl, you're not necessarily going to be like, oh, yeah, well we had sex, and then you know this, Maybe it's not the accurate example, right, But you're not going

to say, oh, yeah, we had sex and then I came home. You're going to say like, no, no, no, I'm perfect. Right, And then what fourteen fifteen years later, when you kind of realized like, oh, not that that was dumb, you might come out and admit that. I mean, yeah, it's shady, but it's not such a huge problem to me. I guess, well, yeah, now there's that. Well we'll talk a little bit more about that. But yeah, he he was.

What turns out it really was with Martha for about twenty minutes longer than he said, which pushing with Martha were right about the time of the murder or right up to it one timeline, Yeah, according to one, I mean what I meantime, of course, Russ Junior, John and Michael were over Jimmy Terran's watching Monty Python and they got back home around and twenty pm, And they gave that statement to the police on the thirty first, and Michael la later changed his story to which is what

landed him in jail. Eventually, at the same time that the skateboys got home, John Moxley's markin Who's Martha's Brother seventeen, also arrived home and his mother, Dorothy, told him that Martha wasn't home yet and that she was wordy worried. And I saw an interview with John on Unsolved Mystery. It was done years after. There's a little bit of

humor in this. I like, yeah, yeah, and he said that when she first said that, his initial reaction was, and I'm paraphrasing everything, he said, well, well, for once, it's a little bits perfect his home lade, not me unquote, which obviously it was not a good thing after the fact, but yeah, And I'm making note of that because a lot has been made about Martha's curfew and how scrupulous she was about obeying her coup curfew kind of a big bone of contention, because if she would have or curfew,

she was obedient to a curfew, she would not have stayed out until way, way late, right, in order to be murdered by Michael. Well, God, with maybe like one exception, right, I mean right, I mean you can say this was the first time she stayed up late. Yeah, it could were the one of the first times. Yeah. Well, there's a lot of arguing about that. Mark Ferman claims his book that she had violated her curfew by many hours just a week before. But he doesn't sign any actual

sources for that or documentation. That's gonna say. I'm glad you said sources because in your script you say documentation, and that's like my favorite thing. Like Dorothy the mom was sitting there, you know, with a nightly Bob ten fifty four pm, Martha still not home. Yeah, I didn't mean that kind of thing. I just said, he doesn't say where he got Yeah, yeah, right, No, I mean I think you know, again, it's like she's fifteen. She's probably starting to push the bounds of her curfew a

little bit. Seems like maybe it's an early curfew, and especially on a night like that or if she was getting involved with someone or something like that, she may be trying to test it a little bit. Um, But staying out till two in the morning, I'm not so sure. Well, yeah, probably not staying out til two in the morning, and probably not like all the time, you know, like once every couple of weeks by a half hour. It's it's it's it's relevant just to the establishment of the time

of death. Yeah, so what is what is the official time of death? Well, the police said it at ten pm, right around to maybe ten to maybe his latest ten fifteen. They're using a kind of a half hour window, yeah, right in there. And the reason they're putting it at that is that the X dog, Helen X, lived across

Walsh Lane in in a nice big mansion. Of course, she and her family lived across Walsh Lane to the north and they had an Australian shepherd named Zach and apparently Zach was a bit of a barker, but that night, at about nine pm, he started barking really furiously and super intensely, and so that's it's thinking, this thought that the assault was beginning right about the time when he

started barking. Yeah, the dog did bark. Yeah. Also there's Mark Berman, the decided and said that he thought he she had violated a curfew by a lot because he wanted to be able to expand the time window for the time of death. And I you know what, I

kind of agree with him a little bit. I think that the police is reasoning for this timeline is like weird to well, actually, the police, the police want and got themselves one of the primary forests medical examiners in the country guy, the guy from Houston, Texas who had done thousands of not tens of thousands of murders and everything and and presented all everything though the autopsy reports and and all the reports about dogs barking and everything else.

And he's at the time of death at ten PM. So it wasn't just the local grainichpdo did this? I mean, did that based on contents? Well that's the part that kind of gives me a bit of a pause. Well, yeah, because Martha had had a grilled cheese sandwich about six thirty six thirty, so that was gone from her stomach. So the stomach takes two to four hours to clear food, so that means she could easily have been killed around ten.

But her stomach also had three ounces of fluid in it, and she had had a coke at the Skags, or at least part of a coke, and the stomach obviously clears liquids a lot faster than it clears solids, and so she's still So the fact that she still had that after drinking all a part of a coke at the Skkles indicates that she was not murdered hours and hours and hours after unless she had been somewhere for hours and hours and then drank three or four ounces

of something which would then be in her stomach. There's there's a little bit of there is. The logic isn't completely perfect because it assumes that that coke at the Skeggles was the very last thing she drank. You don't know what she was out and about doing. I also but that the reason I think the time at the time of death was around Tin is that if she was seen anywhere, if she was out and about, she

was a sociable person. She wouldn't have just wandered around the darkness and not met up with somebody, and she would have been seen by somebody, and she wasn't about not by anybody. Um And so that's my major reason for thinking that she could not have dropped somewhere else.

Right around Tin was the time of death. This, this whole thing actually has me asking this very morbid question of like, yeah, but when you're going undergoing um an assault, like a really severe assault like she underwent, is your body still processing food? Right? Is your body still processing liquid? So like, if she was being beat over the period of you know, ten to fifteen minutes, does that affect the time. That's just something that like popped into my

head to read. That doesn't change the timeline that much. But I just started to think about that as a really maccab question, as they should ask one of our experts about what I was about to suggest. Yeah, yeah, I don't know a good question. So listeners, if you weren't just like totally turned off by that and you had the answer, email us, please do Back to the night of the thirtieth, Dorothy Moxley fell asleep in her cach that's Martha's mom, remember, and we woke up around

one thirty. Martha still wasn't home, and Dorothy was getting pretty worried by this time, so she wakes John up uh and asked him to go out looking for Martha, and John said he drove around for a few hours looking but found a sign of Martha and anyone home and went to sleep in the TV room in the basement apparently. And during this time Dorothy is calling all around for basically anybody that knows Martha and called the called the scats obviously in a lot of other people.

And this is the next morning, this is the wee hours of October two I'm sure they were all really happy about Yeah, I'm sure they were. I'm sure they were understanding about it. Actually had reason to be scared, you know that. And then about eight thirty in the morning of the thirty one, Roarthy went over to the

skate goes to ask if they had seen Martha. Michael Ska had fallen asleep in his clothes on his bed, and when Dorothy saw him, she said that he was pale and looked a little fraid around the edges, but he had had a lot to drink the night before. I didn't maybe mention what. They went to the bell the bell Haven Cloud, they drank alcohol and stuff and continue to drink after they got back to the house. As teenagers, they don't know what they're doing. Yeah, oh no,

they know what they're doing. Getting drunk is what they're doing. They don't know what they're doing when Yeah, well, yeah, so Michael had just woken up, and so he and he was wearing his clothes. He was wearing his clothes from the night before. Yeah, so he had passed out, Yeah, he passed out. He was They took his shoes off and then just conked out. But also, like i'd like to clarify he was wearing his clothes from the night before. He wasn't like missing his blood soaked pants somewhere now.

I mean, I don't know if he was wearing the exact same clothes that he was wearing the night and that night before when he went over to the Terran's house he was wearing clothes. Theoretically he was wearing the same clothes if he will went to sleeping is closed though, Yeah, probably, and theory, I mean, there's no reason to come home, take off your bloodstained clothes and then and then get redressed and go to bed. Yeah, you would put your PJS on probably, or just you know, go to bed

in your underwear or something. Anyway, Michael searched the house and the grounds of the end of the house, and then their gardener, Franz, and the teen wentn't checked their RV. They had this r V called a rev Con. I don't know what brand that is, but check that because oh, I'm sure it was the best there was. Yeah, but apparently you know she uh, well, apparently Martha and the kids like to party in the rev can occasionally, so that was worth checking. But Martha was not there, so

about noon. Martha's friend, Sheila McGuire, who was also fifteen uh, and she lived in the house just to the south of the Moxley house. He was cutting across the Moxley yard headed towards Walsh Lane. Once she spotted Martha's body under the big pine tree. And so she goes to the Moxley house to tell them what she's seen, because by the I didn't mention, by the way, the whole neighborhood knows. By this time, and the whole neighborho was out because they were woken up at like three o'clock

in the morning. Yeah, yeah, So a lot of people were out looking for Martha, and and then she just happens to find her by accident. You'll be happy to know. She was never a suspect, by the way, and that of course the police are called. Then again, the first two Greenish policemen have showed up, confirmed that she was dead, called for more troops, and then again they noticed the handle of the golf club sticking out of her neck. And in fact, one of them mentioned it to his

wife that night when he got home. Yeah yeah, and she remembered him saying that too. It's pretty crazily. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's pretty brutal murder. And of course the Moxley family doctor was called in to confirm her that she was actually dead, and he noticed the golf club handle laying in the ground next to Martha. Um, so he can remember the golf club handle. And Dorothy, for her part,

did not go outside is to view Martha's body understandably. Yeah, yeah, she didn't want she didn't want that to be her last memory of Martha. You know, I can't blame it for that. And the initial theory by the police of the people who Granwich was that it was committed by some random transient who had wandered through the neighborhood. So we're not quite there, but that was that was the

initial theory. It was the police. Yeah, I mean that was what everybody because everybody thought, I mean, oh my god, this is this is Belle Haven, Connecticut, this is like, these are the best people in hon earth. There's no murderers living in our town. But maybe there was. Of course, Tommy Skill was the last person to see Martha alive,

so he was grilled pretty good. In fact, the night of the thirty feet they hauled him down that After questioning Tommy and all the other kids, they hauled Tommy down to the police station and grilled him for about six hours. Well that's it's gotta suck because you know, he has to put a lot of work into his Halloween costs and we didn't get to use it. Well,

I know, the poor guy. Well that kind of sucks from Michael, Kasie and Martha had made plans to go trick or treating on the night oft one, and well his date was gone. So scotch that the police while they were over on the thirty one at the Skill household. Of course they are already a stabbed last by finding the pieces of the golf club that it was a Tony pen of golf club. Yeah, and to a couple of grandish police but noticed that there was a Tony penn of golf club which was a fore iron. That

the murder weapons was a Tony pen a six iron. Uh, they've noticed his fore iron in a barrel in the family's mudroom. Had the barrel head to you know what whatever you have in your mode room, you know, umbrella. Yeah, yeah, so they noticed this. Two days later they came back and they asked permission to search the house number one, and they asked permission to take the fore iron which was still there in the barrel, and so they took

that sand. Of course, it was engraved with the words Mrs R Case Skegle on the handle, and they did serious to According to the police, they searched the Skagle house pretty thoroughly and didn't find anything. So eventually this case kind of kind of went cold. I mean, they

investigated Tommy for a long time. They questioned him many times, they gave him polygraphs twice which we were inconclusive, and they they really went after a bunch of other people to mentioned Candle, a Littleton and all talk about a

few others also. But then eventually the case went cold until the nineteen nineties, and then there was a sentence from I don't want to get too deep into the weeds here, but there there was this rumor that came out during the rape trial of William Kennedy Smith there was another Kennedy cousin. There's a lot of Kennedy cousins, Yeah, yeah, there are, and so he was on tropic rape and

of course that received national attention. Some of the tabloids for some reason started circulating a rumor that he had been present at the Skegal household on the night of the murder. And it's the tabloids. You gotta love the press, I know. But but of course it wasn't true. But that brought some more attention back to this case, because it was long, long since cold at that point. Yeah, yeah, police announced they were going to like look into the

case again. I mean at this point rushed and senior, a rookie, was really tired of living under this cloud of suspicion. It was mainly over Tommy. And that's right. He commissioned the report. Yeah, I had two. He hired a group called Sutton Sudden Investigations too, and they were easily were a bunch of former FBI agents and stuff, and they were private investigation organization. He said, we want you to solve this case. You know, sky's the limit

on one time it comes to the cash. And so they fully expecting that it was going to exonerate his entire family. Well yeah, because yeah, because if he if he knew it was a member of his family, why the hell would you do something like that, right, I mean, so, yeah, he hired them to do this and that's when things kind of like got out of hand. They they were they were questioning Tommy and Michael, and Tommy, well, Michael changed his story. It turns out he didn't just go

straight to bed when he got home. He actually went back out and I want to go window peeping. There was this this lady Michael did Tommy. Yeah, So Michael went out to go window peeping. Apparently there's some local lady who liked to walk around naked and sometimes after dark and so, you which to a fifteen year old boys is just irresistible in the seventies particular, right, I mean for the Internet, that's not good point to Yeah, And it turns out her her lights were out and

there was no action there. So he said that had this thought that, well, you know, maybe I'll go by the go by to the Moxley's house and see if I could wake up Martha, you know, and Sean want to see he wants to make out or something. Actually, I think there's are his words, woul Maybe I'll see if can get a kiss from Martha. She likes me.

So he climbed a tree that outside and then in the front of the house and tosses a few pebbles at her window and calls that her name and gets no response, and its believed that she He actually was outside a second story window that was actually John and her brother John's bedroom. But that wouldn't have got a good Yeah, if somebody been home, he would not have been happy with the results he got. Yeah, not really. Uh.

And Martha's bedroom was actually on the third floor. She had the entire third floor to herself, and so he was he had totally had the wrong room. But John, John, I think was at that point was downstairs watching the evening news with his mother, So he wasn't that he wasn't in the bedroom. Uh So Michael at that point, uh um, I don't tact the way to put this. He masturbating can be said just like sitting in the

tree outside of John's bedroom. Yeah, he decided to just start playing a little pocket pool and according to Mark Ferman, he reached orgasm. According to RFK Jr. He did not. He realized he suddenly realized what a stupid thing he was doing, and so he put it away, a climb

back down out of the tree and left. He walked towards the question, Yeah, why does it matter what's that if he reached because if he reached completion, then he would have listened DNA evidence at the scene, which nobody collected anything at that treanch in a tree like next to a window on the other side of the house. Yeah, well it was sudden and Mark Ferman uh and there there was one of the guy have an old childhood

classmate of Michael's name, Andy Pugh LF but yeah by Andy. Yeah, Andy re established contact with and with Michael, and Michael was thinking like, you know, hey, let's let's start hanging out. You know, it's been too long with we should get to know each other again and all yeah, the YadA, and Andy said, look, you know, I really have to know what's what really happened with Martha before I can really in good conscience to do this. And and so

Michael told him this story. This was back about I think, And it turns out the guy was still a prep school jerk. Yeah, and Andy, Andy Pew. When he heard about the climbing the tree, he assumed it was the pine tree underneath which the body had been done. Okay, because well, for one thing, I mean, all the kids in the neighborhood climbed that tree. It was a big tree with a big, big, strong, well space branches, and it was a great climbing tree, but it was a

hundred and sixty ft away from the Moxley house. So you can't exactly climb that tree and toss pebbles at Martha's window. That's not a good spine tree. And it's also on the wrong side of the house. And so the tree evening. Yeah, okay, so it's kind of just like Ferman is just like dragging his name through the mudel a little bit by saying like and he reached orgasm and and and and and got it all over the body, look at look at this guy, Yeah exactly.

And well, and what what he was saying is that Michael changed his story in because at that time DNA evidence was becoming a thing. Yeah, so he was trying to explain We're trying to explain away the presence of his semen. But I don't think there was seen on the body. No, there wasn't. Great, just wanted to clear quick. Yeah, but you know, interestingly, at the trial in two thousand two, the prosecution said that there was yet, but it was lost.

Let me guess it was lost. Well, I don't. I haven't seen any evidence that there ever was any semen that was even collected. Yeah, you would think that if they had collected it, they would have gone ahead and had it run and just marched into court and said, printed up the results on a giant placard and said guess who. Yeah, well, yeah, I mean they could definitely, even before the advent of DNA, they could still get all kinds of information out of that stuff. Bodily fluid.

You can get blood type and other stuff. You know that you're calling it the advent to DNA. Yeah whatever, But testing, Yeah, I guess the testing asking't been around for at least several hundred years at least. Yeah. Okay, So so anyway, that but that's that's Burman's theory of it is that is that that's what that's why he made up this story in and so suspicion. Michael had never been a suspect in this case, and suddenly suspicion shifted to him because he admitted to being a peeping

tom Bessie because he there was no trying. It really looked. And when I first heard this story, and I I heard that tale about about the whole thing, in the tree and everything. I thought, that's he's guilty as sin. He's obviously trying to explain away the presence of DNA, and so he actually had an explanation for it. He had actually talked about this, like I said to NDP, I think in the mid eighties, and he asked, I had another guy named Michael, Michael Meredith who was the

guy that he had been. Michael, by the way, not too long after the murder was shipped off to the school for troubled children called Elon. It's in Maine, and there they had this for brutal regiment where they you know, they didn't beat people and got in their faces and everything for kids that had drug and alcohol problems. The boot camp situation kind of yeah, Bootcamp, except like even more brutal. Well, it was the tough love was bloody

your nose. Yeah. And so in nine seven, Michael Meredith was living temporarily with Michael Scagell because they were working on they're working on the possibility of like the sort of tell all book about about Elon and schools like Elan and a little scandal but not that and and so at that point he told Michael Meredith that story also, which don't ask me why it's not a story I would be telling anybody. Uh yeah, no, yeah, no, yeah. And also rf K Jr. Says he told him that

story back in the early eighties. So you know, again, Michael, Michael maybe talks a little bit too much. I was gonna say, he may just have a very poor filter. Yeah, it sounds like he doesn't have very good filter. Yeah, I know guys that tell you things and you're like, what, why don't don't ever tell anybody that again. Alternately, you know, somebody did say to him. Those are situations where they said, well, what really happened with the home? Martha Moxleer, like you

you know something more, don't you? And he said, yeah, okay, yes, I you know this is actually what happened. I was trying to protect myself. You know, I was seventeen, seventeen, I was fifteen. You know, I didn't know better. I thought I was going to get in huge trouble for being this peeping tom. You know, he'd have been serious trouble. But so I'm sure that you know, in his fifteen year old mind, it was better to just lie than

tell the truth. And you know, again. Later he realized, like, all right, I'll just you know, I've told enough people. I can say, hey, I had this problem when I was child and it's better now, and that's fine. Yeah. I So I don't think there's all that suspicious that he lied and then that the day after the murder. Yeah, I don't think it is. I mean, yeah, I wouldn't be I wouldn't be telling that story, but I just

wouldn't have changed my story later. Yeah, not really. Should we get into theories here, yeah, okay, and yeah, I think I think we've we've got the whole thing laid out. Yeah. So there's a lot of suspects here. First off, of course, the random transient theory, which is silly. Yeah, that's my favorite. Yeah, because, as I said, Martha was found with the panties rolled down, um, which indicates that the attack it was somebody that she knew.

That's what That's certainly the inference that the police and drew from this. And so there I was stranger in the dark night, dark cold night. You're gonna just roll that pulling your pants and rolled in your So the one thing that Okay, I was joking when I was saying this my favorite theory, but I don't necessarily agree with the had to be somebody that she knew. I mean, it could very well have been a threat that was

going to lead to a sexual assault. I mean, somebody could have had a knife to her throat and said you pulled down your pants and you pull down your underwear or I'm gonna slit your throat. Okay, but yeah, question if somebody had a knife to her, why beat her with the golf club and stab her with the golf club? Why not just kill her with the knife. Maybe they had the golf club across her neck, I don't know, choking her saying I will choke the life out of you if you don't pull your pants down.

Seems like there would be some markings there. I don't know. I mean, I'm just saying that. Well, I mean, I don't think that it is so outlandish as the both of you do. Well, there's an alternative theory, which, of course, she got whacked once on the head, which is enough to know disorient, dis orient or maybe even kao her

pretty good. And then her pants and panties get pulled down and then and then a more brutal beating takes place after that, because something happens, right, yeah, yeah, So even though I kind of suspect it was some of issue knew, you know, I got I gotta say it. It is possible. Well, and and I will fully admit that a random trans you just happening to wander into this gated community and not be seen by anybody and

not raising any alarms. I find that very suspicious. I don't think that it probably happened, But I also can't say that this evidence of it couldn't have been. I don't say, I just don't agree with it. Yeah. But the other the other reason is there's so many other good suspects there. They're really okay, let's let's have one. Okay. Our next guy, Franz Vatine, who I think was born in Yugoslavia, had served in the German Army in World War Two and all around weirdoh yeah, kind of a

strange guy. He lived in a basement apartment. He was a gardener, this cakeless gardener. He lived in an apartment in the basement and h his wife at that on that weekend was away, so just him in the apartment. So and he had he had an exit from the house that would have allowed him to get out murder

Martha come back undetected. It doesn't doesn't prove anything, but the scate kids said that sometimes dry He would tell them really strange stories from World War Two about how they would you know, that he and the other German soldiers would go around raping women and stuff, which is kind of a strange thing to be saying to a bunch of teenage kids. Teenage dudes. Though, Yeah, well but you got you also remember that he he probably was

messed with a lot by the kids. They probably made fun of him, and they probably screwed with him a lot. He if he was in the war, it wasn't uncommon for guys to shell shock, to have shell shocks, so he's got some issues because of that. So he's just like, you know what, I think it's okay to tell you a little different word. I was gonna use a little jerks who were screwed with me all the time a story that I know is gonna really screw you up a little bit and get you back. Maybe I don't know.

I mean again, this is this is right up there with with Mr. Ed as a reasoning. Yeah, he's well and well, the only other thing that makes him look even possibly good is um No, there were no there were diary entries in Martha's In Martha's diary, don't mention. I didn't mention Martha had a diary. No, you brought this up yet Martha had a diary. Yeah, and eventually wound up in the hands of the prosecution. But there

were entries in their relating to France. He was referred to as Frank in there, and she talked about how she was really creeped out by Frank and and thought he was really a scary guy. And understandably afterwards, before well, Dorothy Moxley started reading Martha's diary after the death. Let's see if there was any good information in there, obviously, and she asked some of some of Martha's friends, who is Frank because she seems to really be really afraid

of Frank. I believe it was Sheila McGuire who had entified him as Franz Beatine. That was that what that that could only be Franz. It was Frank And apparently after the prosecution of the police took the diary and kept in an evidence for many years, Dorothy spent years lobbying to get it back. By the time she got it back, the pages relating to Frank had been removed. Yeah yeah, but Franz did. He did take a light detective test, which he passed, and so they dropped him

as a suspect. Nazi of course he passed. Yeah, Suli didn't have sociopath I don't. I don't think he's a good for this. There's not really much of anything to tie him to this crime. So let's move on to our next suspect here, which is Ken Littleton to live in Tutor. Yeah yeah, yeah yeah he um. Well, there was again no physical evidence connecting Kenny to the crime

at all, and no, not not nothing that connects anybody really. Uh. The thing about Kenny is he uh he lost his job with the Skegles a few months after of the murder because he was drunk and he crashed their car and left apparently left the accident scene. So he kind of got fired by Rookie, and so he after that he was sort of drifting around. He got a job as a bouncer and a bar up in and Providence

or somewhere like that. It's weird that he went from working in a high class school and being a tutor to quite quickly not doing that kind of work, and I wonder if he's weird. I was wondering if he got blacklists because because the Skaks were like this guy. Now, the Skaks didn't blacklist him. Now what happened is he kept his job teaching. But then in the summer, while as a teacher, you know, you go he wanted to like I can't remember where if it was, it wasn't

Fire Island, and I can't remember where it was. But yeah, but he he went to this beach community where he'd hung out the summer before and got a job as a bouncer in a bar and hung out and stuff. It was just kind of a summer job, kind of summer job, kind of daily But he went on a little crime way if you broke into some some houses and businesses and stall stuff. He was he was. He broken the one woman's apartment, she had left the window window opened, He removed the screen, climbed in, and she

woke up to find him lying naked on top of her. Yeah, he did a lot of stuff like that. He has described more time between that and the things had a bit of a mental breakdown. Yeah, his behavior was his behavior was strange. And and so what happened is that what eventually the police found out about these crimes. The Greenwich police did, and so they they rated about to the school that he worked at, and so immediately got

fired and okay, so now he gets blacklisted. Okay, and didn't well he didn't get blacklisted then, but then he got a job teaching at another school and yeah, and then and then the police went immediately went down there and rated him out again. So he got fired again. And so yeah, things kind we're kind of going downhill for Ken. Yeah, it stayed like the that. I'm happy that the Internet exists so that like the police don't

have to actually track Pool anymore, that there's like a database. Hey, don't hire this person because they like to break in and lay naked on strangers. Because sadly, there was a time where there was a lot of departments that just were overworked and they couldn't do it. Yeah. Another another odd thing that happened is that Tommy went into Kid's room in the house. Canada's sitting there watching the French Connection.

Remember that movie Gene. Yeah, back in those days, I don't know if they even still do this, because I don't watch TV anymore, but the networks in those days would run theatrical release movies, you know, like say nine to eleven or whatever. Yeah, they don't do that anyh Yeah, and so, but they used to do it back in

those days. So The French Connection was showing on TV, and so Tommy went into his room at about ten fifteen and started watching the movie because there's just a big, huge, famous chase scene in the movie, and so he stayed for the through the end of the whole chase scene.

So that sort of maybe it kind of kind of makes Tommy look a little better as far as because I mean Tommy, because he do you have a had time to murder Martha and then get all cleaned up and then go in there and watch TV with Can. Well we'll talk about that, but so he so Tommy was able to provide an alibi for Ken each other.

They kind of allied by each other. But one of the things that Tommy noticed that it was kind of strange is he said it was warm in the room, and yet the whole time that he was there watching The Fresh Connection, Kenny was covered with a blanket from head to toe. I mean not not his face, but I mean from his from the bottom of his chin all the way. He was covered like he was laying in bed. Now he was now he was sitting in a chair, but sing a recliner or something like that.

But he was covered with a blanket. Tommy thought that was a little strange. But you know what, I have laid around and watched TV, and it is very easy to get a bit of a chill. It's October. Yes, the heat is on, but it's a little little bit of a chill, and I'm just gonna throw a blanket on. There's a conversation. I have actually a lot with my boss because we share an office and he his job

is very like get up and go right. He gets up, He's often like around and then he comes back into the office, whereas I'm sitting at my desk the whole time, and I'll have the heat on, yeah, and he comes in and he's like it is boiling, and here, what are you doing? And I can also imagine that it's that sort of situation that you know, Tommy has been out, he's been drinking back. You know, He's like, well, it's warm in this room and Ken's been sitting in there

and he's like, it is cold. I'm gonna put a blanket on. Yeah, it doesn't necessarily prove much of anything. Well, there's also a little weird and there's also the there is a huge body temperature difference perception of teenagers to the rest of the adult world. Metabolis been slowing it out a little bit. Yeah, you know, I see, I see, you know, teenagers this time of year running around it's sixty degrees and they're a pair of basketball shorts and that's it. And then like, man, it is so hot.

What But also again, you know, again, I presume that Ken knew to his job, hadn't been drinking nearly as much as the rest of the kids. Probably not right. He was trying to take responsibility. So if Tommy had been drinking the whole night, or had been making out with a girl and came back in, yeah yeah, uh so yeah, so can's uh he's he seems to have

been pretty much cleared. I think there was there was some discussion that among police and everybody that he maybe it was a serial killer dumb well yeah, I mean not overall, just people like like some some some women got blood into death in various places that were not far from places that he was living. But that doesn't necessarily mean much. I say, women have been blooded to death not far away from places that you've lived. And yet as far as I'm aware, it wasn't, you know,

I don't think it was. And that guy who's serving time, he seems to have probably been the culprits likely. Well, I think Kenny has been kind of cleared because in a grand jury, and that in Connecticut law, you can have what's called a grand jury of one where you basically the judge, there's a one judge who was the jury. He decides that there's probable cause, and so it's really worth you know, indicting somebody. And so they brought Kenny

Littleton in. But under Connecticut law, he had to be immunized so he could confess to killing Martha, and there would not have been a thing they could do because as long as he told the truth, you know about whatever, and I as you have to assume that they asked Kenny then oh, immunity, Sorry, he's got to get a shot. Yeah, judicially, yeah, he uh so, presumably they asked him if he had murdered Martha, and presumably Kenny said no, of course he

could have lied. I guess you know, I'm saying, you're telling a guy he has immunity and that guy believing it can be very two different things. I've seen t s. I. I know what's up. I watched Law and Order. I know. Yeah, let's say that Kenny. Let's say that Kenny really did do it, but he wanted to lie about it. But at this time, this is like hard times for Kenny. He's had a rough life, right, He's been sort of like in a floating from job to job, in place

to place. I suppose he really did did it. You know what I would do if I had been Ken, I would have gotten the cakeles and I would have said, Hey, tell you what, if you give me a suitcase full of cash, I'll go into that jury room, the grand jury room, and I will tell them that I murdered Martha Moxley and that'll be the end of it for all of you. Yeah, and just make sure it's cash in twenties. Uh yeah, and just do that well. And I'm amazed. I mean, you say that with a bit

of humor, but I'm amazed. That there's always this talk of Kennedy families having all this money and they can buy whatever they need. And I'm amazed that nobody has walked up and said it was me having been paid for said testimony. I mean, I'm not trying to cast anything negative against him. It's just that there's you know, you've got a lot of money. You can just have a you can convince a guy that for X amount

of money, you take the fall. Dude. Well, you know, especially you know, in the case of Kenny, suppose Kenny didn't do it, they still you know, you kind of suppose somebody in the Skag family did do it. And they're rich, and they're of course all powerful and everything, and wouldn't they wouldn't they have offered him like a suitcase full of cash in order to do you know, you think they would have, you know, well, even today, I mean, if they have all this money in power.

Of course, the Skates are not wealthy anymore unfortunately, but you know, if they had all this money in power, they could they could give somebody a suitcase for the cash to confess to the crime. And since somebody has already been convicted of the crime, well good luck getting a commission of somebody else, right, Yeah, okay, Tommy's skeg well again a favorite for a long time. He um, well,

let's see last to see Martha alive. Tommy had a head injury when he was young, very young, and that caused a change in his behavior when he was prone to violent outbursts. I mean very violent where he had to be physically restrained and he would damage things, break things, and um did he but that seems like the sort of thing that takes hours to calm down from right, usually not necessarily, but I think it was either his

sister or his brother, or maybe it was Michael. He said that he was like like milk boiling out of stove. Every seen everything ever boiled milk, You know how it looks like totally calm, and then the next second that's just said boost, It's up over the sides of the pan and all of them all. Yeah, he said that was he was like that. So it took nothing, apparently to set him off. And also ken Lyttleton was not sure afterwards. He he thought that perhaps Tommy had changed

his clothes. He couldn't really remember. Yes, said something you'd pay attention to unless it was you went from a really nice sound fit to a crappy one, or from a crappy one to a really nice just changing your shirt or your jeans from one fair jeans to another. Yeah, it's not really something you'd note. Yeah, No, not really. Uh, you know, I don't know if there was a dress code at the bell Haven Club. I'm sure there was.

There probably was, if you want to come back and change out of your your slacks and your tie and it into something a little more casually. Was Tommy a thirty two inch waste? Tommy was He was pretty athletic. He was not a you were thinking of the thirty six inch waiste jeans. Yeah, Now, I don't think Tommy was nearly that big. Yeah, I mean he was seventeen years old. You know you're usually skinny at that age, right, So yeah, I'm sure it wasn't Tommy. But one of

the other reasons. I mean, of course he lied about the whole book report thing. He was not in bed, but and that's so for that and many other reasons. But they spent a lot of and yeah, he failed his first well I didn't really fail his first polygraph. It was inconclusive. Well, so here's a question. I guess right.

One of the big things from the um allegations was that when Ken did his bed check at five, Tommy wasn't in his bed, but wasn't that because he was in Ken's room with Ken watching a video TV room. He didn't, he didn't go into Ken's room to watch the door. He was in the TV room, but he was with Ken when Ken was reportedly doing this bed chack. No, no, he was not. It's after. It was after the bed check.

It was like quarter after he started watching the movie. Yeah, yeah, and well Ken was already watching the movie and then Tommy just sort of wandered in and sat down and watched it with Yeah, you know, a getting no physical evidence, I mean, one of the things that would indicate to me that maybe it was Tommy is that, of course, after there's that whole thing about the roll down panties,

Tommy was a real ladies man. He was larting. Yeah, yeah, and uh, you know, he definitely of all of our suspects, Martha is excuse me, Tommy is the most likely to roll pull out her pants for him. So I don't want to get too graphic here, but correct me if I'm wrong, Joe, I swear I remember there was some discussion of the use of hands in a sexual manner from one or both of Martha and Tommy at sometime. Is that correct? Yeah? There was they're playing with each other.

H yeah, that's that story changed in summer. Okay, So I'm not misremembering because that I'm kind of I'm kind of looking at this in two ways. I'm looking at Tommy as a suspect up until he changed his story, and then Tommy as a suspect after he changes. So let's let's see. Okay, so we've done before he changed his story. Yeah, but the before is he had an inclusive It's kind of a uh. His polygraph results were never really all that conclusive, you know, one way or

the other. And you know, there were reasons for the police to be suspicious, but obviously they couldn't get an indictment. The prosecutor refused to sign an indictment of him because, I mean, they just didn't have any evidence. The evidence was he was the last person to see her alive, and he had had some psychiatric issues, some violent outbursts. I mean, so what doesn't mean it doesn't prove anything, right, That didn't stop him from being a suspect. No, not

at all. But we'll come back to Tommy in a minute. Okay, let's talk about another suspect, Martha's brother, John Moxley. After he went and drove around a bit, he was outside searching and Julie Skeegle came out of the house and she was wanted to look too. That's them now. Julie is Michael's older sister. She was It's hard to keep track. There's a lot of names in here. Um, so John was He was actually polygraphed by the police. I think he passed, and so he was removed as a from

the list of suspects. But one of I think it was Sheila, said that she was actually afraid of John Moxley and he was known for violence. He went after He was known to go after people with baseball bats a couple of times. Of course, he was a teenagers, seventeen. You know, I'm privilege. There's no repercussions to my actions. Yeah, possibly not. But when he was out with Julie, Julie didn't really remember this until much later, when she was

hip she wanted her hypnosis. She suddenly remembers. Okay, remember something, yeah, yeah, remember me with it. He was kind of over over the scage place, kind of calling Martha's name, and he says to Julie, you know you should go. We're looking our lawn. And Julie was like why, I mean, she could see you're you're yelling her name. She'd be able to hear it from over there if she was over there, right, you know, And and he was like, he was kind of insistent, he really wanted to go over to the

Moxley yard and look around. She thought it was kind of creepy and strange in retrospect. Uh. The next thing that happened is in that that that came out of hypnosis. Yeah, that was a recalled memory. And nobody can see this but us in the studio. Yeah, which I do through every episode because everything is air quote. But memory is Memory is a really tricky thing, and it can be It can be really seriously altered by just cheer repetition

if nothing else. And that there's probably at least a few witnesses in this case who have had their memories altered. Every time you remember something, you're altering it, you're overwriting it, and that's a known fact. But what you're remembering is actually the last time that you're remembering nothing. Yeah, you don't actually remember that thing anyway. You're overwriting the file every time you access it. Yeah, so it gets it

gets a little de great at every time. So but the next thing that happened is a friend of his came over that nine o'clock the morning of ten thirty one, and John was of course had been asleep in the TV room. But this is something that got the guys at Sutton Associates, you know, the private investigators, got them kind of interested in John is a suspect, and that is that he and his friend we're thinking, well, we

gotta go out look for Martha. Martha's missing. So they had out the house, out of the house and the Moxle house, and then they head towards the back of the house, which would have take and them like right by the pine tree where Martha's body was. And this is something police will tell you is that if there's a search party for a body or for somebody who's missing, then if a family member is part of that, they're part of organizing it or they're out participating with it.

You want to watch them, because if they're the murderers, they're going to lead you straight to the body. And the reason being is they can't stand the idea of animals getting to the body and chewing it up and carrying it away or whatever. So that's always that's something

you want to do, is watch those guys. And it looked like John was trying to lead his friend towards Martha's body and also maybe Julie the night before exactly because yeah, he wanted the body to be found, he just didn't want to be the one to find it himself. But again I'm not Oh yeah, there were also some potential but blood stains in the TV room on the table in there that were apparently cleaned up by the maid before the police could look at them. That's about

it for the avidence against John Marxley. There's really not much there that that is really paper thin. It is it is, I think, so. Yeah. I mean some other questions right as to like how did he get the golf club, Well, I mean, like we said, they left him laying about, they were readily available. He would have had to gone over to the other house and get it and then brought it back it's not as tho it would be laying about the Mocksley property, right, Yeah,

maybe not. But think about this neighborhood too, is it. It really wasn't much in the way of fences in the neighborhood and people all just sort of crossed each other's property all the time. It's it's much like you know, it drives me nuts. It's very It makes me think of my neighborhood, which is not nearly as ritzy or large.

But understatement of the air, yes, but the kids in the neighborhood, uh, you know, they run through my yard, my front yard, and then they run across my neighbor's front yard, and then that neighbor's front yard, and then they veer onto the sidewalk, and then they veer across the street, and then they veer into somebody else's front yard, all of this at top speed. Yeah. But how old are they? Uh? Twelve to fifteen? Okay, all right, Well, the problem is is that I can't keep them off

of my yard. I am not that old man. I have to I have to physically restrain myself so that I don't go running out there and saying get off of my grass. But I mean, it happens. I watched this all the time, and I'm like, do you not understand? And then I realized they don't. They don't get it, and I think that the same thing is that it's it's communal to them at that point. Oh yeah, the the CAA goals. They left the golf club. I picked

up the golf club. I carried it home. I'll wander back by in a couple of days and just chuck it on their lawn or the garden will pick it up. That weird old guy, I'll do it. There's I mean, I guess there's some I can explain away why John might have gone the way he went right to go out back. I mean her Martha's body was discovered by her friend who was cutting through her property, which means that like, that's how those friends got to each other's property,

usually right. It was probably a route right, so one would assume that, But also one would assume that if you were going to go investigate that way, you would see the body, depending on that light at the time that you're walking through. If it's if he's wandering about four in the morning and it doesn't fall into his flashlight beam, he's not going to see it. No, but it was my understanding that that was the search. The search with his male friend was like eight or nine.

It was about nine, and it was very brief. Basically, they want it, just went out back and sort of took a look, you know, and yelled. Probably I don't think they even yelled. They just sort of looked and yeah. But you know, again, I'm not going to try to accuse John. I've seen a couple of different interviews with him on the on the tube, and he seems like a reasonably decent, sincere guy. Yeah. I don't see any any of cases he's a psycho killer. Next step is

Martha's boyfriend at the time, Peter's of Luca. She had boyfriends, You had a boyfriend. I think I think Peter was sixteen at the time. He has since deceased. A lot of people involved with this case. By the way, he died young for some reason. Um, you know, usually a drug overdoses or just whatever, heart attacks. Martha's father is dead living in an indulgent lifestyle. Yeah, Well, Martha's father was actually not indulgent. He was he was a workaholic.

He's one of those guys you know, never stop type a personality. You know, you know who died in his fifties I believe, maybe maybe sixties. I don't know he died. He died fairly young, though unfortunately Dorothy Age of my knowledge, is still alive. Back to Peter's Luca the boyfriend. Uh, there were some diary entries in Martha's diary about Peter, apparently that he had some really bad moods. He said hateful things to Martha. He was a violent he had

reputation as a violent person to fighter. How old was he? I think he was sixteen, Dade. That explains that, got it? Yeah? I know, six year old dudes. They're dumb, they say stupid stuff. Got it, Okay? Yeah, But apparently Martha god into her diary at least was planning to break up with Peter, which indicates nothing. Okay, but Peter, I understand. It indicates that she may have done it that night and that he reacted badly. But or perhaps you know,

he has an alibi, which is his mother. That which is not the tightest alibi I've ever heard. Yeah, that's a pretty common. Yeah it is, and not an a tight one. But if you if you look at it. He apparently said that he worshiped Martha. He was apparently really gaga over over Martha. Imagine a scenario where he went out. He didn't actually stay home at all with his mother, because why would he stayed on with his mother? Stayed on with his mother and watch TV, you know.

I mean, imagine he went after Ristef and I imagine he made he's made his way over towards the Moxley house and it was maybe crossing the Cakele's land with they had a fairly decent sized parcel and happened to see Martha and Tommy going at it, fooling around. Uh huh yeah. That that they explain exactly how he changed his story. I'll talk to all to Tommy. Yeah, Tommy, no, you decided to break him up, so you haven't. You haven't told us a second story. They had a sexual encounter.

Um yeah, well they hung out remember the hands pants Yeah, hands and pants conscription. That's that's what he means by a sexual encounter. Yeah, they sexually. According to Tommy, they engaged in a mutual masturbation. Yeah yeah, hants pants yeah, pants yeah. And supposing if he witnessed us uh, and if you're, you know, sixteen and head over heels and love and something like that. You see that. I mean obviously that I could see where that would cost somebody

to flip out. Yeah, I can all yeah, I can see the violent rage. I can also see the sobbing, blubbering mess. I mean that could go either way. Yeah, but it's also it would also be interesting if the dude in that scenario, the extra dude in that scenario, didn't bear some of the wrath that you would think. You would think that he would be good after Tommy, even for yeah, yeah, and then Martha maybe not. Ye. Well, anyway, Peter's Luca took a polygraph and passed apparently, And I'm

not so sure how ironclad polygraphs really are. Yeah, they're they're not They're not the best ever. But okay, so Peter's Peters cleared. So that leads us with one and a half suspects. Yeah kind of. Well, you know, Michael changed his story, um, and eventually the Sutton the Sutton

investigation was closed down. Tommy had a lawyer ever since, ever since, like nineteen seventy six, he had an early seventy six, he had a lawyer shocking named Manny Margolas, and he was present when when Tommy changed his story. That was in summer nine and that's when he shut down the Sutton investigation. And but then there was somebody

that Sutton had hired. They had hired this college this yeah, and this guy was about three and his job was to distill all the information in the pilots into a nice, co hair out, well written report. And he is the guy who leaked the report to Dominic Dunne. I remember

him and story for Vanity Fair. Yeah, yeah, Yeah, he leaked a copy of that report to Dominic Dunn because he felt that, you know, this report really implicated the Cagles, especially Michael, And of course Dominic Dunn eventually gave the report to Mark Furman, who used this the basis for

a lot of charges his book. So we talked about how Michael changed his story and when he when talking to that was it was for the Sutton Yeah, so that was not the first time he had actually changed his story, which we talked about, which we talked about, Yeah, but it formed it formed the basis for the Ferman book, which again was the blueprint for the prosecution case. The major difference between the prosecution of Furman's book is at least Furman was honest enough to acknowledge the golf club

handle was present at the crime scene. I mean he and he insinuated that there was corruption in the Granwich Police department, that perhaps a corrupt cop had had gotten rid of the evidence, but at least acknowledged that that it was president at the crime scene, which the prosecution didn't do. The prosecution said that the murderer, whoever he was, had carried it away with him from the crime scene. Michael's also made statements to a guy named Richard Hoffman

who was a ghostwriter. He was going to write a book since he had been come back into the microscope. He was gonna gonna write a book about yeah and tell the story and all that, and and so they made a bunch of tapes, and in these tapes he made some various statements, like he talked about the whole climbing of the tree thing. And he also talked about when he woke up the next day and Dorothy Moxley

was standing outside his bedroom door. He said it's His statement was basically like, oh, mared, what if she saw me last night? You know? And they played that, and that the prosecution played that in closing arguments. They played that, they played the tape and they had selectively edited and stuff, and they played the tape and along with the picture of Martha's dead body laying in the yard some kind

of like power audio power point. There was a power point. Yeah. Yeah, and apparently that was a very yeah, that was very effective. So that was part of their closing. Their evidence was basically the nonexistent seamen, which said that the prosecution actually stated he had he had purposely ejaculated on Martha's body as a final act of disrespect. And I read that, I read the closing. That's what he said, even though

nothing was found on her body. Man, Michael should have just stuck to the shaggy defense no matter what they say, wouldn't I But who Yeah, alright, so much for that. But and there was a little a little more evidence. But obviously the statement of the tape was taken by the journey. I mean, what if she saw me murdering Martha? Oh no, no, that that that that was that was as stitched together as some of our past episodes, totally totally put together. And you know, and obviously if she

had seen Martha being murdered. I don't think she would have waited till eight thirty in the morning to come over and say, hey, Michael, I want to talk to you about you murdering my daughter. Yeah, but that seems to be the implication from that. I mean, that's totally the application. Yeah, Okay, this guy is so going to be out of jail by the or the decisions gonna have come through by the time this episode post. I hope I am so. Based on what we've talked about

and I've read. I hope you guys resolutions. Good lord, you know I can't. I have to break it to you, guys, but I gotta tell you this. Judges are more concerned about process than they are, for the most part, about justice. They are, but the process was ruined because they said they had evidence, which that evidence has never been presented.

Well exactly, they like so much evidence and and and and to take the loss of the golf club handle, and to make so much hay out of that, like the points a finger at our at the and I just lost it. To say you have a piece of evidence, but not make that available to the defense, To then say, well you didn't want to do any testing on but let me do testing to see if I can prove my client innocent. I mean, that's a process problem. This

whole thing is just so yeah, okay, so that's Michael. Yeah, the uh yeah, Well the other evidence they had is the ad testament. I remember I said elon the school where they the drug adult kids and stuff like that. There are two guys that were at that school with him who testified at his trial. One of them was John Higgins. And John Higgins actually doesn't get very good

character references. I've read a lot of trial court transcripts of various people that want to belong with him and then had very low opinion of him, and then he was honest or trustworthy. But the states State of Connecticut is an investigator. Frank gard Uh was apparently contacted by somebody in need Higgins and said that he should call Higgins because at this time there was a fifty dollar

reward post posted by the Moxley family. Yeah, and so Higgins apparently contacted them or maybe guard contacted Higgins, and John Higgins basically said, look, you know I didn't I I don't know, I know nothing because you know, I Michael never told me that he confessed to you, never said he never told me he murdered Martha Moxley. And so then Frank Garr spells out to him very carefully. Do you know about the reward? This is a policeman again. Frank Carr says, do you know about the reward? And

Higgin says, yeah, I hear it's fifty thousand bucks. And at the time the reward had just been raised to a hundred thousand bucks. And so Garr says to Higgins, well, it's a hundred thousand bucks, and Higgins says to him, Oh, that's special. And then Gar explains to him, you know, like you know, the terms of it pretty much what he needs to tell him, you know, and then calls him back, calls him back in a later time and says, hey,

have you thought about that? I thought about all this that And then Higgins changed And how do we know that? By the way, is this on tape somewhere? Yeah, Frank Guard taped the conversation, so we hear him leading building the witnesses story and then having the witness and then he changes his story, and he doesn't change his story. He doesn't change his story to Michael, saying I did it. He changed his story to Michael saying, yeah, it was all kind of in a haze. It was kind of

like in a dream. I was in the garage pulling a golf club out of a set and the next thing I know, I was running through made into a dream scene. Yeah, TV show. Okay, I was running through some pine trees, you know, with the golf club, and that's you know all I remember. That was enough for the jury. But he never actually told Higgins never actually said Michael said I did it. I mean, because he was so he was willing to shade it in order

to collect some money. But he was not willing, apparently to go over the line and say that Michael had actually said I did it. Uh. There was another witness is Greg Coleman. All it is for again Michael. This was against Michael. Yeah. Uh, similar kind of guy. Not he was a heroin addict and uh and you know, you know heroin addict people. I don't want to sound judgmental,

but they're not the most trustworthy people, you know. But he said that Michael had confessed to him while that alone, he said that he had done it, and and he changed his story up a little bit. Uh, He's at one time he said that Michael confessed to him like six times and then finally if he wintled it down to maybe two times. But you know, nobody else said a lot. Everybody else that want to along with Michael said that if he had fessed up it along, it

would have been all over the school. There was a small school, about a hundred students, and they were all anything at any school spreads like wild. Yeah, they were all. They were totally encouraged to write each other out too, and so you know, and so for the other people, there were other people that testified for defense, the defense that said this was completely laughable. This whole idea that he this, this guy would have kept it to himself. Yea,

he ridiculous. So the other thing about Michael is is, you know, they interrogated them on the day of the body being discovered, and they didn't give him all polygraphs. But I saw Michael's brother, John, who was in the car that went to the Terryans and provided him with

an alibi. I saw him on the two. He seemed completely honest and sincere, and he said, look, you know, I mean I was with Michael, and that's what I told the police the day of and I took a polygraph test and I passed it and that was good enough. Now now they complaiming that we're all liars. I mean he was, he was. He was sincerely a little outraged by the whole thing. Yeah, but I do think that Michael Skegle is innocent. I don't think I think his

alibi is solid. But one thing I forgot to mention is that Ken Littleton was it was routinely being picked up by the police. And it's nineteen seventy six. He told Greenwich police that Russian Jr. Told him at about nine fifteen and the night of the thirtie that he was going to take Jimmy Terryan back home and then he was taking his brother's John and Michael with him. He told that to the police and that was in

the police files. The police withheld that from the defense. Again, Yeah, they withheld that from the defense, along with some other tidbits. So basically Michael's innocent, apparently because they could not have gotten a conviction without undermining his alibi the way they did. But his alibi and my and they found one there was one other witness that was not president at the trial at all, who also confirmed his alibi that he was arrians. So essentially, you know, that's it. He's innocent.

That doesn't mean that the Supreme Court is gonna is not going to toss him back in jail, because you don't know the way the lawyers think. But anyway, sorry, lawyers out there, by the way, let me get on. So Michael's out, let's get it. Get on to the next ones. These ones were put forth by, first of all, a guy named Tony Bryant. RFK Jr. Talks about him in his book. Tony Bryant actually went to granted, he claims on the day of the murder. Tony is, by

the way, his brother of Kobe Bryant, the basketball player. Yeah, and you can see his He was interviewed by detectives that were sent by Mike else defense team to to interview him. And it's it's two it's a two part video. It's on YouTube. If you go to and type in Tony Bryant interview you'll find it. Have you seen it? Uh?

Start ringing a bell? Okay, Uh, So you talked about these two guys that he went to high school with Tony used to actually go to school and live in Grantwich, but then he moved to New York City and he was going to a much rougher high school, and he knew these two big dudes. They were like sixteen years old,

Adolf Passbrooke and Burton Tinsley. The three of them like to actually occasionally go out to bell Haven and hang out since he used since Tony used to live out there, and apparently he said He says in his interview that Adolf became obsessed with Martha. He met her apparently a few times, and he believes that from things that he said that Adolphinburg said before and after the murder, he

believes that they did it. I don't want to get into great detail, by the way, there I do want to say, by the way, there's no corroborating evidence I was for those two. Yeah, there for him, there is. Yeah, there is not again, not much in the way of evidence. But apparently these guys did did lawyer up and they're not talking. But and again I'm not I'm not saying they're guilty of anything because frankly, I I really don't see much of a motive here. So let's move on

to our last suspect, Tommy's giggle. Tommy, as as we've noticed, had a history of violent outbursts. He changed his story. Like Michael, he changed his story. But here's the deal. Michael changed his story a lot sooner, before DNA was a thing. Tommy waited until out there there were a couple of couple of sudden investigators has had him down for an interrogation summer of one of them, Billy Krebs, I think he was x NYPD, said look, Tommy, you

gotta you gotta understand this. We're gonna be doing some DNA testing and so you know, if there's anything that you haven't told us before, you should tell us now.

That's standard procedure to rattle somebody. Okay, yeah, yeah, And that is when Tommy changed his story and said that they spent on extra twenty minutes between nine thirty and nine fifty out back behind the tool shed in the yard doing their whole hands hands pants thing and they were leading on a pretty hard Apparently that from what I can, what I understand is the investigators were they were they were after he changed his story, and apparently Tommy looked like he was about to cry then want

him to suggest that they that they take a break. Billy Krabs was infuriated by this because it broke the whole It broke the whole tension thing, and also it allowed Manny Margolis, who was present lawyer, to basically put an end to the whole interview. So they never got any further with Tommy. But I gotta say, I mean, I mean, all the suspicion has been cast upon Michael because he changed his story, because that would account for see human being present when it was. Yeah, when Tommy

did the same thing and the exact thing. And the thing is he didn't do it until here's the other thing. Tommy lied the night of or I should say he he lied the day after. Now I can see why Tommy would leave a few silaous details out. I can see why why he would leave out the party about the hands pants. But you don't have to lie about when you actually parted ways with her, and that would be useful information for the police who are trying to establish the time of death and what her movements were.

But he lied, and well, Hamm, there's no conceivable reason to lie when he could have just sanitized his account, except he wanted to remove himself as far away in time as he could from the actual time of death, which he knew. He but he no, he doesn't have to have known the time of death. We talked about

this earlier. You're of seventeen year old kid. You've been playing tickle with a girl, and you know that's not going to go down well with your family, led loan the cops now that she has found with a golf club stuck in her neck. But of course you're gonna You're gonna try foolishly because you don't think clearly in the heat of the moment. You're you're you're putting your all of your investigation time to say, well, obviously it would make sense, but you don't know that at the time.

For him, did you go, I don't know. I no, No, We kissed and we walked away. We were doing anything, untoured, nothing at all. But there's the deal. Is that again, Tommy didn't he could just sanitize his account. All you needed to do. Let's say, yeah, we hung out, we sipped beers, we smoked a cigarette, we parted way as a ten minute still ten and you're giving Billie because again at this time, but if Tommy didn't do the crime, then Tommy had no clue what the time of the

murder was. As far as tommy, it was midnight, it was three and three am. He had no idea. Well, he went on TV show at some point and he may have done really crappy man as to what time he left her. But I don't know that I understand that you feel that it is really really important that he changed his story the way he did. I don't see it the same way. I think it casts a lot more suspicion on Tommy than it does on Michael. Michael had better reason to leave out his account of

climbing the tree and playing pocket pool. Tommy had no reason to not tell the police the time that he parted ways with Martha. I want to clarify when he told police that was it after they found her body or before they found her body. That was after they found a body, but before before any time of death had been established. Yeah, established that it does with a

good solid window. Yeah, it does, and so and so Again, that's a little bit of a head scratcher when he could have provided them with a little more solid information

that he chose to lie instead. Um, you know, well, realistically, I have a really crappy sense of time, and I couldn't tell you like, you know, this episode feels like it's been literally ten hours, but you know it's been what like too So I think, you know, for me, as somebody with a really bad sense of time, it's reasonable to say like, I don't know, we hung out for ten more minutes. Well then, but then I thought we had a bad sense of time. Then how do

we know we parted ways from Martha ten minutes? Still tenn and not we don't We don't really know that, But it just seems to me that the later it goes the like later her time of death is. You know, for me, it's just saying like, I don't know. I mean not to sound like a jerk, but it could have been that he hung out with her for five or ten minutes and she talked to him the whole time and him being a tiple. Go dude, it's like this has been going on for so long, she just

won't stop talking. It feels like I've been here for like twenty minutes. Alternate alternately, right, Um, you ever been like having sex and been like oh my god, this is the most amazing hour of my life. And you look at the clock and you're like, it's been five minutes,

Like do you ever do that? Though, Like ever in your life have you been like, wow, this is like amazing And then you're really So there's also I guess, some reality to him, you know, them engaging in whatever we're calling it, hands pants or whatever, right, and them both thinking like oh my god, or him particularly being like, wow, that was an amazing ten minutes, but actually it was like an hour, or even vice versa where he says and then you know, Ken says, no, dude, you were here,

you know, ten minutes later, and he's like, oh really, Well, honestly, I don't I don't know how Tommy kept track of time. They might have had clocks, he might have glasced at clocks the whole time, and he might be off something. But the fact of the matter is is that he deliberately chose to put himself as far away from the time of murder as possible, which, in my opinion, is behavior. You can't say that Joe cannot a he deliberately did it.

Of course, you don't know that. You can't say that you don't know that you had no reason to do otherwise, he may not have done it intentionally. How can you say that, because we just had the conversation. If he may have a crappy sense of time, so you can't say he's doing it intentionally. I think it was Peter, Peter Man Peter. Yeah. The nice thing about Peter is he's one of the dead ones, so you can keep

him of all kinds of stuff. So, in fairness to Tommy, Tommy has lived under a cloud of suspicion for many, many years. I think a lot of people still suspect Tommy of being the killer, and you know, we don't really know. I mean, Tommy is uh. I still like Tommy as a suspect. But I have to tell you if I were sitting on a jury, I would not vote to convict Tommy of anything. I wouldn't know. There's yeah, there's no there's no solid evidence anywhere now there isn't there.

And so whoever killed Martha? You know, I think that he has gotten away with it, but that happens. Yeah, Well, let's do some of that housekeeping stuff. Do we do with the other episodes? Yeah? Uh, First of all, our website Thinking Sideways podcast dot com where you can find our episodes. You can't come anymore unfortunately, but you can still listen to the episodes. Uh. And there's always links out there also uh for two various stories and things

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have your final thoughts. Yeah, yeah, it wasn't me either, So anyway, too bad about Martha, that too bad about Michael. Anyway. That's it for this week. Guys. Let's see you next week. But