{"id":63681,"date":"2025-12-07T23:46:20","date_gmt":"2025-12-07T23:46:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/63681\/"},"modified":"2025-12-07T23:46:20","modified_gmt":"2025-12-07T23:46:20","slug":"kennedy-cousin-michael-skakel-finally-tells-all-in-martha-moxley-murder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/63681\/","title":{"rendered":"Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel finally tells all in Martha Moxley murder"},"content":{"rendered":"

Five decades after Martha Moxley<\/a>, the daughter of an affluent Connecticut family,\u00a0was found murdered\u00a0outside her home, the Kennedy cousin formerly at the center of the case is speaking out for the first time.<\/p>\n

Michael Skakel<\/a>, cousin of\u00a0Robert F. Kennedy Jr., spent 11 years behind bars for the 1975 murder of Moxley. <\/p>\n

Despite being released from prison in 2013 and later having his conviction vacated, Skakel is still looking to assert his innocence in a case that has captivated the nation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the new NBC News podcast titled, \u201cDead Certain: The Martha Moxley Murder,\u201d Skakel spoke publicly at length for the first time since his conviction was overturned to recount his upbringing and explain his side of the murder case.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Moxley was only 15 when she was\u00a0beaten and stabbed to death\u00a0with a golf club in the yard of her family\u2019s suburban Greenwich home on Oct. 30, 1975. She was last seen hanging out with friends on \u201cMischief Night,\u201d an annual evening in which children partake in neighborhood pranks on the night before Halloween.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Michael Skakel, cousin of\u00a0Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is speaking out after spending 11 years behind bars for the murder of Martha Moxley. AP<\/p>\n

An autopsy later revealed Moxley had been killed with the golf club, which was ultimately traced to the Skakel family\u2019s home.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Investigators initially began looking into Thomas Skakel, Michael\u2019s older brother, and the family\u2019s live-in tutor, Kenneth Littleton, before ultimately turning their attention to Michael, who was 15 at the time of Moxley\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

For decades, Skakel had remained largely silent. However, he is now speaking out to tell his side of the story, while recounting painful details about his traumatic childhood.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Moxley was only 15 when she was\u00a0beaten and stabbed to death\u00a0in the yard of her family\u2019s suburban Greenwich home. Getty Images<\/p>\n

Investigators initially looked into Thomas Skakel, Michael\u2019s older brother, and the family\u2019s live-in tutor, Kenneth Littleton, before ultimately turning their attention to Michael. Fox News<\/p>\n

Skakel detailed how his family\u2019s Catholic religion played a large part in his upbringing, while recalling how he was hit over taking Playboy magazines when he was a child.<\/p>\n

He went on to discuss how\u00a0his parents\u00a0primarily showed affection toward his brother, Tommy, when the brothers were growing up. Skakel also pointed to how his parents hardly visited him after he was hospitalized with a broken neck when he jumped off a desk in his childhood home.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When Skakel\u2019s mother was dying from cancer, the young boy was told her hair was falling out due to her shampoo \u2013 not the treatment \u2013 and was ultimately blamed for her illness by his father, he said.<\/p>\n

A Skakel family photo from the trial evidence of the Michael Skakel vs. the State of Connecticut. Getty Images<\/p>\n

Skakel said his family\u2019s Catholic religion played a large part in his upbringing, and that his parents\u00a0primarily showed affection toward his brother, Tommy, when they were growing up. Getty Images<\/p>\n

Skakel recalled a time in which his father, whom he had not seen in weeks, told him, \u201cYou make me sick. If you only did better in school, your mother wouldn\u2019t have to be in the hospital.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI just wanted to die,\u201d Skakel said in the episode, as he recalled how his father barely addressed his mother\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

As his mother struggled with her illness, Skakel began drinking when he was just a teenager. On the day she died, he finished off an entire bottle of Smirnoff on his family\u2019s lawn, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The outside of Martha Moxley\u2019s home. Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cHis alcoholic, abusive father tortured him physically and psychologically throughout his boyhood, including beating him and telling him he was responsible for killing his mother,\u201d Dr. Carole Lieberman, a forensic psychiatrist, told Fox News Digital.<\/p>\n

Lieberman pointed to how the psychological damage inflicted on Skakel likely impacted him in his adult life as his drinking eventually escalated. <\/p>\n

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In 1978, he borrowed his brother\u2019s car and, while driving with a few friends, smashed into a telephone pole.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In exchange for not being charged with a DUI, the family\u2019s lawyer concocted a deal in which Skakel was sent to the controversial\u00a0\u00c9lan School in Maine\u00a0in an effort to correct his unruly behavior.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHis alcoholic, abusive father tortured him physically and psychologically throughout his boyhood, including beating him and telling him he was responsible for killing his mother,\u201d Dr. Carole Lieberman, a forensic psychiatrist, said. AP<\/p>\n

Individuals from the\u00a0boarding school traveled to Connecticut\u00a0to pick him up, with Skakel recalling how he \u201cwas dragged out of there like an animal,\u201d before being loaded onto a plane where he was thrown into \u201ca world of utter insanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u00c9lan School had roughly 300 live-in students who were often subjected to harsh physical punishments, prolonged screaming and occasionally wearing dunce caps, according to the podcast. Headcounts were carried out every 15 minutes to keep residents from escaping, which Skakel attempted multiple times.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In an emotional recounting, Skakel described how he was subjected to various punishments, including the \u201cgeneral meeting\u201d and \u201cboxing ring\u201d where students would face forms of physical brutality.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Moxley had been killed with the golf club that ultimately traced back to the Skakel family\u2019s home.\u00a0 Fox News<\/p>\n

\u201cThey sent maybe 10 guys upstairs to get me,\u201d Skakel said, as he recalled a failed escape attempt. \u201cAnd they literally picked me up over their heads and carried me down the stairs like I was a crash test dummy. And when I was probably 10 feet from the stage, they threw me and I thought I broke my back on the stage.\u201d<\/p>\n

After Skakel left the school, he was\u00a0diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)\u00a0<\/a>and spent a month at a residential care facility in California.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He got married in 1991 and established a skiing career. However, his new life in Hobe Sound, Florida, came crashing down in 2000, when authorities issued a warrant for his arrest in Moxley\u2019s murder.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Skakel was convicted of murder in 2002 and later sentenced to 20 years in prison, but was granted a new trial after a judge ruled his attorney did not adequately defend him in his original case.\u00a0 Fox News<\/p>\n

\u201cMy Uncle Tommy rented me a private jet the next morning,\u201d Skakel said. \u201cAnd I flew from [the] Jupiter jet port, the private jet port, to Teterboro, and I\u2019m looking on the news the next morning and it\u2019s all over every station.\u201d<\/p>\n

Skakel did not immediately return Fox News Digital\u2019s request for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On Jan. 19, 2000, Skakel turned himself in to authorities after police issued a warrant for his arrest, 25 years after Moxley was killed. Skakel, who was 39 at the time, was initially arraigned as a juvenile, with the case later ending up in regular court.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Skakel\u2019s conviction was ultimately vacated by the Connecticut Supreme Court on May 4, 2018. AP<\/p>\n

He was convicted of murder by a panel of 12 jurors in Norwalk Superior Court on June 7, 2002, and later sentenced to 20 years in prison.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2013, following multiple failed attempts to\u00a0appeal his conviction, Skakel was granted a new trial after a judge ruled his attorney, Michael Sherman, did not adequately defend him in his original case.<\/p>\n

Skakel\u2019s conviction was ultimately vacated by the Connecticut Supreme Court on May 4, 2018, with prosecutors later deciding to not seek a second trial for Skakel on the murder charge.<\/p>\n

\u201cMichael Skakel should never have spent one day in prison because there was no way to determine that he was guilty beyond reasonable doubt,\u201d Lieberman said. \u201cMany threads were left hanging. From a questionable police investigation to a questionable attorney who didn\u2019t bring the alibi witness in to testify, to media sensationalism and no forensic evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMichael was a victim of torture throughout his life, from his childhood to the court system,\u201d Lieberman said, adding Skakel \u201chas continued to unconsciously play out this victim role until today.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the mystery surrounding who killed Moxley continues to loom over the case, Skakel\u2019s bid to assert his innocence in\u00a0the podcast<\/a>\u00a0adds a new voice to a story that has been marred by decades of silence.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Five decades after Martha Moxley, the daughter of an affluent Connecticut family,\u00a0was found murdered\u00a0outside her home, the Kennedy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63682,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[33467,33468,238,9,11,10,21559,6375,58],"class_list":{"0":"post-63681","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-martha-moxley","9":"tag-michael-skakel","10":"tag-murders","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-headlines","13":"tag-new-york-news","14":"tag-robert-f-kennedy-jr","15":"tag-true-crime","16":"tag-us-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63681\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}