Michael Skakel, who happens to be a Kennedy cousin, was accused of the murder of Martha Moxley, his teenage neighbor back in the day. The accused has vehemently refused to appear for a second trial, according to the prosecutors in Connecticut. Skakel pleaded guilty to the murder back in 2002 and was sentenced to 20 years of imprisonment. The currently 60-year-old Skakel was released in 2013, after multiple appeals were registered, on $1.2 million bail.
During a hearing in the Stamford Superior Court, Chief State’s Attorney, Richard Colangelo Jr. claimed that, “the case could not be proven beyond a reasonable doubt at a new trial because of the death of witnesses”. Stephen Seegar, the lawyer who is representing Skakel in this particular Moxley murder case, stated that Friday was “a day for justice for a lot of reasons.One of them one of them is that you have an innocent man. And I have said many, many times I was looking forward to the day when we would walk out of a courtroom and this case was behind Michael.
And that’s what happened today. We are glad the result is what it is. And he is happy that it’s over”. John Moxley, brother of the victim, Martha Moxley, claimed that he still believed in his heart that Skakel had brutally murdered his sister, but was contented with the prosecutor’s decision, stating, “[Skakel’s] life will never be the same. Mine will never be the same. I wouldn’t want to walk a mile in his shoes”.
Martha Moxley was murdered on 30th October, 1975, with the aid of a “a 6-iron golf club owned by the Skakel family and stabbed in the throat with a piece of its shattered shaft”. During the trial, the prosecutors presented the argument that Skakel was presumably angry with Moxley since she rejected him and instead was involved sexually with his brother, Tommy Skakel.
At the time, Tommy Skakel had confessed that he and Moxley had a sexual encounter a few moments before her death, owing to which an arrest warrant was issued to nab him. But the warrant was not signed by the chief, which led to the case going cold for several years now.
The sudden interest arose in the case in 1993, when “A Season in Purgatory” was released, which is a book that documented the Moxley murder and the OJ Simpson detective, Mark Fuhrman published another book, “Murder in Greenwich”, which explicitly accused Michael Skakel for the murder of Martha Moxley.