Kennedy cousin speaks out 50 years after Martha Moxley murder conviction

Fifty years after the daughter of a wealthy Connecticut family was found murdered in the garden of their quaint suburban home, questions remain about the involvement of a Kennedy relative who was convicted of her murder but was eventually released after the guilty verdict was overturned.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s cousin, Michael Skakel, spent 11 years in prison for the 1975 murder of Martha Moxley. But Skakel has maintained his innocence since his arrest in 2000 and speaks for the first time on a new NBC News podcast titled “Dead Continuous: The Murder of Martha Moxley.”

Moxley was just 15 years old when he was beaten to death with a golf club on October 30, 1975. In the hours leading up to the murder, Moxley was hanging out with friends on Mischief Night, known as the evening before Halloween when young people pull pranks on their neighborhoods.

According to friends, Moxley was seen flirting with Michael’s older brother, Thomas Skakel, later that night. At 9:30 p.m., the two were seen “falling together behind fences” near the Skakel family pool, the Hartford Courant reported.

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The next day, Moxley’s battered body, with his pants around his ankles, was found next to a broken golf club under a tree on his family’s mansion. accordingly Associated Press.

An autopsy later revealed that Moxley had been beaten and stabbed to death with a golf club; which was ultimately traced to the Skakel family home.

Initially, investigators pointed to Thomas as the prime suspect in Moxley’s murder before turning to Kenneth Littleton, the Skakel children’s live-in teacher. However, neither man was ever charged with a crime.

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Michael Skakel reacts to being granted bail during his arraignment in Stamford Superior Court on November 21, 2013 in Stamford, Connecticut. (Bob Luckey-Pool/Getty Images)

Eventually, their focus shifted to Michael Skakel, and 15 years later, on January 19, 2000, he surrendered to authorities after police issued an arrest warrant for him.

“I call this the finger-pointing problem when only two people in the family are suspects,” Wendy Murphy, a New England Law professor in Boston, told Fox News Digital. “There are only these two suspects in the whole world and they are family, so they stick together like glue. [If] They both take the Fifth and agree to be each other’s construction with reasonable doubt, you have a problem.”

Michael Skakel was eventually charged with Moxley’s murder and was tried as a juvenile because he was 15 at the time of the murder. The case was then moved to the regular court.

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A photograph from trial evidence showing a close-up of the golf club head. (Pool Photo/Getty Images)

A photo showing a close-up view of the golf club shaft from the trial evidence. (Pool Photo/Getty Images)

Skakel, then 39, pleaded not guilty during his trial and reportedly approached Moxley’s mother and told her, “You got the wrong guy.”

Two years later, on June 7, 2002, Skakel was found guilty of murder by a panel of 12 jurors in Norwalk Superior Court. He was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison.

But questions remained about Skakel’s guilt and his ability to accurately describe a crime committed nearly three decades earlier.

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Moxley residence in the Bellehaven section of Greenwich, Connecticut, in 1975. (MediaNews Group/Boston Herald via Getty Images)

“When he was convicted, it had been 27 years since the murder,” John Clendening, author of “Julia’s Angels,” told Fox News Digital. “So imagine being called as a witness at a trial in 2002. How much of a night when you were 15, 16, or 17 do you really remember?”

In 2013, after multiple unsuccessful attempts to appeal his conviction, Skakel was granted a new trial after the judge ruled that his attorney, Michael Sherman, had not adequately defended him in the first trial.

Skakel’s murder conviction was vacated by the Connecticut Supreme Court on May 4, 2018, and prosecutors later decided not to grant a second trial for Skakel on the murder charge.

Skakel, Sherman and NBC News did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

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Kennedy relative Michael Skakel gets into a car after leaving the courthouse in Stamford, Connecticut, after his murder conviction in the death of Martha Moxley was vacated when the judge ruled he lacked adequate representation at a 2002 hearing on November 21, 2013. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

However, Moxley’s brother, John Moxley, loudly condemned the court’s decision.

“Just because she’s on the street doesn’t mean what we know isn’t true,” she said in “Murder and Justice: The Martha Moxley Case,” a three-part documentary about her sister’s life and death.

“Where we are right now, it’s all about the judges and the technicalities. It’s not about who killed Martha. It doesn’t make any difference to me at this point that he’s out there. And no matter where he walks the streets, he’s going to spend the rest of his life in prison. He’s going to spend the rest of his days in his own prison.”

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After Skakel’s second chance at freedom, the mystery surrounding Moxley’s death remains; listeners are waiting for the chance to hear Skakel’s story in his own words.

“I think what’s going on here [Skakel] “He sees the opportunity to present his side of the story, and I can’t blame him for that at a time when the world is rethinking crime,” Clendening told Fox News Digital. So I think that’s what’s going on. “I think he sees an opportunity to tell his side of the story.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.