Family Ties

October 15th, 2024 Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in Upper Manhattan.

[BLANK_AUDIO] And here to see somebody in Pardier. [BLANK_AUDIO] Michael Skacle, SKA, K-E-L. [BLANK_AUDIO]

Skacle back there, Michael.

“>> Yes, I'm in the physical therapy, we're just working with each other.”

>> Oh, I don't want to, you can't even come with us. >> Me and Drew. [BLANK_AUDIO] >> I literally just pulled poses out of my chest. I'm not too out of my right next to my heart.

>> You're alive?

>> Yeah, that's probably press and tear it, well then.

>> I was kind of worried about you. >> Yeah, what's good reason. >> Yeah, this isn't hyperbole. >> I was truly worried about him. For about a week there, this was pretty close to becoming a podcast in which you hear the

life story of and the murder allegations against a recently dead guy. For much of 2024, Michael had been complaining of feeling lousy, tired and wounded after not very strenuous activities. When he got into see a cardiologist, the doctor was alarmed the extent of plaque blockage in his arteries.

“He was immediately scheduled for an emergency trouble bypass and an aortic valve replacement.”

Steven Skickle kept me a prize and put a decent spin on the news, but it hit home. Over almost four decades, before he died at AB3, my father had a quintuple bypass and countless subsequent heart attacks and artery clearing procedures. Many times he seemed to be on that store. Every few years I traveled up to Portland to offer pre-op last device to him at Main Met.

But he never been out so long during and after an operation.

About eight hours under the knife and on a ventilator for three days after that. I tried to be optimistic when talking to Steven but privately. I felt like Michael's chances of ever waking up were about 50-50. Michael doesn't trust many people. He feels that he's been raked over the calls in the press more times than I can count.

But perhaps because of my work on Bobby Kennedy's book and the time I've dedicated to covering this story since, he's decided to confide in me. While he was dangling between life and death, I re-listened to a couple of his voice emails he'd left me over the years, including this one from 2023. It's just before three on Wednesday, May 3rd.

No. You're gonna see me digging your voice to the bridge, me, peace, and knowing that, you know, you hold the torture truth or no one else must drink and profoundly grateful for your jail. Thanks, Andrew.

Peace by. As the journalist being called the Torchbearer of Truth makes me squirm a little, that's a lot of pressure for one guy with a microphone and a notebook. I've known Michael and Steven for years now. We've texted each other stupid, dad jokes, hit some major impediments to getting the

story out and had more than a few tempered flares and sulks that threatened to derail the whole project. But at the end of the day, the journalist and me has one job to be nosy. To follow the story where ever it leads, no matter how uncomfortable that might get. I was relieved when Michael pulled through.

As I sat with him in the hospital room, our conversation drifted to one of Michael's favorite or maybe least favorite topics, the Kennedy's. In one of the several days Michael was out of it, his last surviving aunt, Ethel Skickle Kennedy, had passed away at 96. I asked if he'd heard.

No, I didn't know that. Steven didn't really have much nice to say about it. But Steven also didn't have the relationship I had with her. She was literally like my mom. What's her?

What's her? I don't know. I don't know. I don't want to get sober. Really?

Yeah, I'd say post when I went, when I held David, we hit it off. That's David Kennedy, one of Ethel's seven sons. We'll be coming back to him in a moment. But it's a prize to hear Michael's reaction to the news of Ethel's death.

“Do you remember that legal pad I mentioned?”

Michael brought along to one of our interviews. The one with the headline culprits, a top list of names of folks he feels a responsible for his conviction? Kyle attorney Mickey Sherman's name was on that list, but if we're talking sheer volume, one name comes up more than any other.

Kennedy. I'm Andrew Goldman, from NBC News Studios and highly replaceable productions, this is Dead Certain, the Martha Moxley Carter.

One I still struggle to fully wrap my head around.

“We're talking a generation of family lore involving snubs, scandals, and a rivalry that”

creates the stuff of legend. In our conversations over the years, Michael has described the relationship as akin to the infamous Hatfield McCoy feud. As we'll get into shortly, Michael has many thoughts on this topic, and a lot of his feelings about his Kennedy cousins and their actions are filtered through this lens of antagonism.

I'm not a Kennedy, I'm a skakele through and through. Michael's been through a lot. For much of his life, he says he's lived through a worst case scenario of circumstances. Family tragedies, physical and emotional abuse both at home and at school, and a conviction for a murder he says he didn't do.

It's easy to understand how these experiences might have changed this world view.

I imagine that culprits list was probably first drafted, at least mentally, during the 11

and 1/2 years he spent behind bars. Many of time for many of his personal theories to harden into rock solid facts in his own mind. We're going to delve into some of those theories in a moment. But before we do, I wanted to do a quick history lesson on the Kennedy's Skakele feud

as documented in the media and biographies.

“Michael may frame it in terms of Hatfield's and McCoy's, but I think of it more like Shakespeare.”

Two houses, both alike in wealth and standing, with 20th century New England, something for Renaissance Verona. Here's how Bobby Kennedy Jr described it in a day-long interview from 2016. They were similar in that they were both Irish Catholic. They were both very wealthy, and spent a lot of time doing wilderness stuff, but after

that the similarities ended, they were opposed politically from the outset. The Skakeles were right-wing Republicans whose money came from oil and coal. The Kennedy's were Democrats. Their fortune amassed by Joseph P. Kennedy's senior through a mix of finance, shipping, Hollywood studios, and liquor distribution.

The two families were miles apart on the political spectrum.

So it did what's always guaranteed to improve relations.

They intermarried.

“The Skakele family couldn't have been thrilled when Ethel Skakele, Michael Skakele's aunt,”

went to the dark side and married into the Kennedy clan. And there are, in fact, snippy tales about the run-up to Evelyn Bobby's 1950 wedding. Fats about where each family would bunk and headsbutted between the strong-willed matriarchs of the respective clans. Ethel's father for Jerry Oppenheimer paints a portrait of Ethel as being stuck between two

worlds. The unrestrained chaos of the Skakeles on one side and the carefully choreographed expectations of the Kennedy's on the other. But it seems pretty clear on which side she landed. As soon as the newly married Mr. and Mrs. Robert F. Kennedy, jetted off for their Honolulu

honeymoon, Ethel shook the Connecticut dust from her feet and wholly embraced being a Kennedy. She was a perfect political wife who seemed more than happy to leave Greenwich and her louder siblings back in the not-meg state. More Kennedy than the Kennedy's was how she was known within her new family. Being embraced so completely by the political clan made Ethel swell with pride and likely

wrankled all the Skakeles she'd left behind. The death of Ethel's parents, George and Bigan Skakele in a 1955 plane crash, seems to have further frayed the fragile ties between the two families. And according to Oppenheimer's sources, Ethel and Bobby made only a brief appearance at the funeral and seemed to continue on with their lives unaffected, arranging Ethel's Skakele can.

The personal and political animosity's kept compounding. When Ethel became a pivotal player in JFK's 1960 election campaign, a number of the Skakeles threw their support behind his Republican opponent, Richard Nixon. Stories, many of which I suspect to be based in truth, but honed by age and exaggerated for effect, had become part of both families' lore as evidence of the ongoing feud.

A disproportionate number of them involved the hijinks of Ethel's older brother, George Jr. The family's resident Charmer, Troublemaker, and Unapologetic Party animal. It was George, who as the story goes, skipped JFK's presidential swearing in ceremony and handed his ticket off to a stranger, then further ticked off the Kennedys by trying to make

out with Actress Kim Novak at the inauguration party. What might have begun as barbed but harmless ribbing between families turned into something uglier. Her his sources, Oppenheimer writes, "Upon hearing the George Jr. and his wife Pat, had been in a drunk driving accident with their children in the car, Bobby turned to Ethel and

said, "Watch, the law killed themselves, and then we were enough to worry about any of them anymore." Even RFK's 1968 assassination didn't seem to precipitate an interfamiliar thought.

She saw her 11 children as Kennedys threw in through, but when some of them got into Trouble,

which they did, a lot, Teddy, who as the sole surviving Kennedys uncle was called on to help skip her the family through these storms, would share a pet theory about their misconduct. Well, one of the things that I've heard this several times is that when branches of that family, when some of Ethel's children would get in trouble, the Ted would shake his head and say, "That's not the Kennedys side, that's the skakele side.

This is Scott Lehigh, who's covered Massachusetts politics for over 40 years, mostly for the Boston Globe, or he's currently a colonist." Few living reporters have known or covered as many Kennedys as he has.

“I think that people sort of try to attribute some of their misbehavior to the skakele side.”

The riff between the two families continued into the next generation. Julie's skakele reported and framed that Russ Sr. didn't allow the kids to refer to New York's airport as JFK, which it was renamed 1963 following the president's assassination. He insisted it remain idle wild.

All the economists meant that growing up, the skakele kids, Michael and his siblings, never

got to know their Kennedys cousins. Here's what Bobby had to say on date line. Oh, my mother was, I wouldn't say it strange from her family, but there was no contact between the two families and I never knew any skakele. Really, I never knew I would not have recognized any skakele prior to 1983.

I should mention briefly, Bobby and I didn't speak for this podcast. His old email sends an auto reply that he's too busy now to write back, and the HHS press office never responded to my interview request.

“No bad led to my knowledge, but as you know, I did work with him to write a book about”

Michael's wrongful conviction. So at this point, you may be thinking, wait a minute, if the Kennedys and skakeles despise each other, how could that even happen? Like so many things in this story, it all starts with drugs. At the top of the show, you heard Michael from his hospital bed, allude to Ethel Kennedy

growing fond of him because of his efforts to help her son David, who was just a few years older than Michael. David Kennedy, Ethel's fourth of 11 children, right below Bobby Jr, was only 12 in 1968. And his father, then presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, was assassinated in Los Angeles's Ambassador Hotel.

David was in a room upstairs, watching the news of his father shooting on TV. At 144, the morning Pacific Time, the life of Senator Robert F. Kennedy ended 42 years after it began, and 25 hours after he was fell by an assassin.

“The things that David saw that night, and the impacted had on his family, left him and”

his older brother Bobby particularly haunted. Within two years of the assassination, David was in the throws of addiction. By 1979, his drug problems were known to the public. Newspapers reported he'd been mugged in a New York City hotel known as a heroin supermarket and shooting gallery.

Around the same time, Michael's skakeles was struggling with his own drug and alcohol abuse. His stint at the Alon school, unsurprisingly, did little to help.

But in 1982, Michael finally found something that worked for him, and with the help of AA,

he got sober. David, on the other hand, continued to struggle. Michael had met his cousin David in passing, but like most skakeles in Kennedy's, they weren't particularly close. In the early '80s, Michael found himself spending more time in Boston.

While they are, he started to nose around his Kennedy cousins, who seemed as curious about him as he was about them. Michael had one thing that some of his Kennedy relatives didn't. A sobriety success story he wasn't shy about sharing. And David Kennedy's girlfriend seemed to see Michael as a lifeline.

She begged Michael to help David with his substance abuse in whatever way possible. In early 1984, Michael got David into the same facility where he got sober, St. Mary's rehabilitation in Minneapolis. After David's four weeks in treatment were up, Michael says he flew to Minnesota to retrieve him.

Her David rehab didn't take. According to Michael, almost immediately after leaving the facility, David was already off the wagon. In the subsequent weeks, David continued his downward spiral. Michael, who was at that time living in his uncle Jimmy spread in Beller, California, invited

David to crash with him, but David said he needed to be in Palm Beach for Easter, where his alien grandmother, family, matriarch, rose Kennedy, wintered. So I said, if you change your mind, you know where I am. Like a week later, I got a call from Ethel saying, Dave is in trouble.

And I said, yeah, let me make some calls.

“Michael says he called several facilities, searching for an open bed.”

And I told Ethel that there won't be a slot open for another two weeks, but if I tell them who he is, I can guarantee the Letterman tomorrow, they'll make room for him. And she said, absolutely not. So I told her, you know, I would be down the next morning or the day after. And I turned on the TV the next morning and David had died at the Brazilian Court on the

rest of the sister with that. In 1984, at just 28 years old, David Kennedy died alone in his CD Palm Beach hotel room. Another young Kennedy gone before his time.

According to Michael, Ethel never forgot his efforts on behalf of her troubled son.

He would try to do for David transcended the Hatfield McCoy thing, and, you know, addiction doesn't have a prejudice. Addiction may not have prejudice, but it does seem to have preferences.

“It tends to run in families, and the Kennedys were no exception.”

A few months before David's death, Bobby Kennedy Jr. then 28, and having recently resigned from the Manhattan DA's office after failing the bar, was arrested for heroin possession after getting sick from a suspected overdose on a flight to Rapid City, South Dakota. The arrest seemed to shock Bobby into addressing his addiction. Shortly after emerging from rehab in 1983, Bobby was looking for support in his sobriety

and started spending a lot of time drug-free in the great outdoors with the cousin who tried

to help his brother. Michael. So we ended up spending a lot of time together. He lived in Greenwich, I lived in Melchiscon, New York, just a few miles from each other. His family, this guy, he housed up in the Catskills, I took my children up there almost

every weekend. I went during the summers, I did kayaking trips, white water trips with him, I spent a lot of time in doing wilderness trips with him, and I went to literally thousands of 12 satin meetings with him. Hearing Michael described that time in his life, it seems lifted straight from the pages

of an LL being catalogued. In addition to the rafting trips and ski weekends you just heard Bobby describe, there were a pick-up football games on a high-annisport with Bobby, Bobby's brother, and their cousin John Kennedy Jr. Michael grew even tighter with his long-lost relatives, Bobby and brother's Max and Chris

all three sober, served as usher at Michael's 1991 wedding. Michael Skickle was officially in with the Kennedy clan, at least for the moment. Hey, it's Kate Snow, NBC News Anchor, host of the podcast, The Drink With Kate Snow. I sit down with all kinds of celebrity musicians, athletes over a drink of their choice for candid conversations about how they made it there.

With actor comedian, host, Joel McHale, I could barely stop laughing. You know Joel from community or the soup, his new show Animal Control, he asked for four bottles of Washington State wine for our interview. He has news about whether there's a community movie coming, he tells the story of how

“he got one of his first big acting gigs by lying about his height, and you have to stay”

through the credits he's so funny. We have behind-the-scenes bloopers and outtakes from our conversation. Hope you'll listen, and follow the drink wherever you get your podcasts. Stay informed with the NBC News app. Breaking news just coming in moments ago.

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"Date Line NBC" on Amazon Music. Great story telling, with a twist from the true crime original. In 1994, Michael Skickle's growing social circle of Kennedy Cousins expanded once again.

Michael.

“Michael called and said, "Hey, is there any way that I can come up to the house in”

Windham, because our plans fell through in Veil or something like that?" And I said, "Yeah, absolutely." I gave him the master's suite and his kids all had rooms and their friends and he said, "Do you have a fax machine?" I said, "Yeah."

And it turns out he was running Teddy's 94 campaign against Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney, as you probably know, became the 2012 Republican presidential nominee who lost to Barack Obama.

But his first run for office was back in 1994 when he ran for Senate against Ted Kennedy.

He'd already made a ton of money in finance and, as the son of George Romney, a popular governor for Michigan, had more potential than the usual Palukas Kennedy faced every six years. Michael Skickle was 34 years old, but fresh out of college and newly married. That weekend at Windham, his cousin Michael Kennedy, whose Teddy's campaign manager asked

“him, like, "What are you doing for work?"”

I said, "Well, I'm trying. I really, really, really want to get in the sports marketing field, but I just keep getting a door sland in my face." And he said, "Why don't you come work for me?" He said, "You'll love it.

It's a blast." He goes, "You stay at my house and go ask it." He said, "I've got, like, 15 bedrooms." Right on the ocean, we're going to be working 18 hour days and I said, "I don't know anything about politics."

He said, "You'll learn quick." And I did. Michael did advance, scheduling VIP stumpers for Teddy, like Alec Baldwin, and driving Michael Kennedy around. I asked the globes, Scott Lehigh, if he knew Michael Kennedy.

Michael? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, not an impressive person, my mind.

“I remember sitting with him at the Parker house, talking about the campaign.”

It was me, him and someone else, and I just, I mean, he talked like a dope. But I remember sort of bragging about all the damage he and a couple of friends had done to a hotel room somewhere, and I'm thinking, "Why did I hell as he telling me this?" Despite his less than impressive hotel room trashing campaign manager, and the strength of his opponent, Ted Kennedy would ultimately win his sixth Senate reelection handily.

"Just a few minutes ago, I fall rang, Mitt Romney called me, and congratulate me on rear-reelected the United States Senate." It might have been the last drags, but the campaign gave Michael Skakele a close-up peak at the magic of Camelot. The world'sest Kennedy cousins inhabited was glamorous and exciting.

He was hooked. It was incredible.

It was absolutely incredible.

You know, to see how people reacted, how the system works. As soon as the confetti and ticker tape from Ted Kennedy's victory party got swept away, Michael Skakele found himself in need of a new job. His cousin, soon delivered. Michael Kennedy had been running the Boston Non-profit Citizens Energy, a household fuel company

providing heat to low-income families. Originally started by his older brother, Joe, Michael Kennedy took it over following Joe's successful 1986 congressional run. Michael Kennedy needed a new international programs director. So Michael Skakele moved to co-hassad, a town on the south shore of Massachusetts Bay,

a wealthy commuter suburb of Boston like Greenwich is to Manhattan. Michael Skakele was now fully inside the Kennedy orbit, and from that vantage point, he had

a front row seat to a scandal that would ultimately blow up political careers, up-end personal

lives, and provide endless tabloid fodder. Recall that shortly before Michael moved to co-hassad, his cousin Michael Kennedy had first reappeared in his life. He wanted to ask if he and his kids could come to Wendon to ski and stay at the house. He didn't bring wife Vicki, but did indeed bring his three-preet teen kids.

Also long for the trip was their babysitter Marissa, who had just turned 16 years old. The weekend that Michael came with his children, while he was running Teddy's campaign, he came with Marissa Varaki, the babysitter. And I thought that it was, I didn't know how old she was because she looked really, really young, and when I was saying goodnight, I came up and say goodnight, you know, they're

sitting very close to each other, and they're both drinking what look like wine. And I thought, okay, that's a little strange. It was more than a little strange as he'd soon learned. Marissa's parents were dear friends of Michael and Vicki Kennedy. They lived in their own seaside mansion right down the street, so close that Marissa could

They were in and out of the Kennedy house and the Kennedy's in and out of the Varaki's. Marissa's father, Paul Varaki, nine years older than Michael Kennedy, was loaded. He'd started a company that sought to consolidate the fragmented ambulance business in 1992,

and six years later sold it for over a billion dollars, which in those days was still

considered a lot of money. All Varaki was also close to Joe Kennedy. He had contributed lavishly to his campaigns and was offered a board seat on citizen's energy, which makes what unfolded even more shocking. Several times a year since his Harvard days, Michael Kennedy would take a rotating cast of

friends and family on white order rafting and camping trips. Michael Skakele, who went on several of these excursions, remembers that his cousin brought his kids and Marissa, but his wife Vicki didn't come along. Michael also noted that on at least one trip Marissa took lead from the kids to partake

in one of the odd or Kennedy camping rituals, the vodka sauna.

They would heat up the rocks and put them in a big pot and pour a bottle of vodka on it and everybody would, you know, inhale, I didn't do it just because I wasn't partaking and that stuff anymore. But there was something else that Michael says caught his attention. The one thing is stuck out the most was, you know, watching Michael's young children see, he and the babysitter go into a tent and they just look very foreloinous, young kids,

and I just, I kind of broke my heart for the kids. Michael says by the time he was with Michael Kennedy and Marissa on the rafting trips, he had started to suspect that the two were romantically entwined.

“Did you talk to Michael Kennedy when you first began to suspect the affair?”

Um, no, I didn't bring it up.

No, honestly I didn't think he was appropriate because I was like, well, maybe this is just me. You know, I mean, I had no proof. Also, Michael says that because Marissa was 16 and legally of age and Massachusetts, he didn't feel it was his place to get involved. That wasn't judging him. I just said, look, what are you doing is between you and God?

As long as if you're not hurting, I mean, she was by the time I was there, she was already of age. Yeah. You know what I mean? At some point, you had to start talking kind of more directly about it, right? Honestly, it was so long ago. I couldn't honestly tell you when I started talking about it. Michael doesn't remember exactly when he and Michael Kennedy started openly acknowledging the affair.

“But he does remember clearly that in January 1995, right around the time of Rose Kennedy's death,”

when the family was gathered at her compound, he got a call from Michael Kennedy. I mean, huge trouble Kennedy said, Vicky caught me with the babysitter. He called me halfway up from high-end, a sport back to co-asset saying, "Holy shit, man. Holy shit. Holy shit. I got caught with Marissa by Vicky." And he said, "She's definitely going to go to the press. She's going to."

And he said, "I don't know what to do." I said, "Just meet me in my house." Michael had already guided some of his other cousins through recovery journeys. In Michael Kennedy's desperate phone call, Michael Skickle says he saw another opportunity to help. I called Father Martin, who was a guy in the treatment industry, who had one of the best treatment centers in the country,

and had a great Maryland. And I gave him Michael an ultimatum. And I said, "Well, you know, you could continue on doing what you're doing. And you're just going to destroy you. You're going to destroy your family and your wife. And it won't be good." I said, "Oh, are you could take a 30-day time out and learn something about yourself?" Michael Kennedy's 1995 rehab stint was for alcohol.

The Michael Skickle says he hoped it would also lead his cousin to stop the affair. I did talk to Michael about the affair once he went to Father Martin.

“I said, "You need to end this shit. You're going to destroy your life."”

Michael Kennedy didn't end the affair. But a year later, in 1996, Kennedy went back to rehab. This time for sex addiction. Kennedy seemed to be trying to repair his life in marriage. What he probably didn't foresee was that both were about to come crashing down. In the fall of 1996, Marissa Varaki, now 18 years old, headed off to college in Boston. I know the sleuthiest among you have already caught it.

Yes, Marissa Varaki is the same Marissa Varaki who was staying at Girondridge's south Boston loft, the site of Michael Skickle's non-existent admission that he killed Martha.

who attracted her testimony on the stand, the one who left this voicemail on her friend's

“answering machine. I said he was drunk and that's what he said. I said he told us,”

"You know, he's going to worry about what?" Back in 1996, Michael Skickle's connection to the moxley murder was not yet headline news, but the effects of the affair and carrying the secret weighed heavily on Marissa. One of the few people she could talk to about it was Michael Skickle, who'd by then become her friend and confident.

I got a call from Marissa and she said, "Michael, I don't know what to do. I'm in trouble. I've lied to everybody. I'm feeling extremely depressed." And I said, "Well, when my wife at the time and I have problems, there's a woman in Cambridge, Massachusetts,

who I think is good. I think she's helpful. I think she could help you."

Michael says he made an appointment from Marissa with his therapist and dropped her off. And then again, another three weeks later, four weeks later, she called me and said, "The doctor says that I need to tell my parents and I don't want to." She hadn't told her parents the truth about it. She hadn't said anything. I said, "Look, you need to take care of Marissa.

“If that's what the doctor says to do, then that's what you should do."”

Michael says Marissa followed his guidance. Not long after, all hell broke loose. A few nights later, I got a call at 11 o'clock at night from Marissa saying, "My mom has gone off the wagon and is calling everybody who will listen." And she's screaming about how Michael raped me.

So, I got on the car, I drove into Boston from Cohacet, went to their apartment that was right across from the Rose Garden. The door man let me in, they had the pen house. Michael says he tried to calm Marissa's mother, June for Oki Down, but eventually she locked herself in a room and crawled out onto the roof.

Cops and firemen were called for fear she might jump. June was transported to the hospital. We got a call about 45 minutes later from the head of the ER saying that, you know, there's going to be an investigation. They wanted Marissa down there and so Marissa and I went to Mass General.

For Michael Kennedy, it must have been a moment of pure panic. The affair just ended and now the girl's mother was causing a public spectacle. Earring is dirty laundry to strangers and possibly inviting the attention of law enforcement. It must have felt to Michael Kennedy, like he was suspended, a mile above Oki Canyon with a piece of rapidly fraying dental floss.

Behind closed doors, Vicky and Michael Kennedy's marriage was in the process of imploding, but the press hadn't yet caught wind of his marital troubles or his affair with Marissa. As winter became spring, the Kennedy name was back in the headlines for a different reason. Michael Kennedy's eldest brother Joe was preparing to launch his campaign for governor of Massachusetts. Here's the Boston Globes Scott Lehigh.

“I think publicly he was perceived as the next big Kennedy political success story.”

Though he hadn't formally announced, the media was already reporting that Joe was a likely shoe in. Joe is very popular and it looks like he's going to run. So that's about the time that the babysitter story starts coming up. The babysitter story. It officially began on April 25, 1997. When the Boston Globes broke the news on A1, carrying Lehigh's buy line and the headline,

Kennedy Ken allegedly had a fair with sitter.

In addition to revealing the affair publicly for the first time,

the article reported that it had been a source of trouble from Michael and Vicky Kennedy for at least two years. Ever since Vicky discovered her husband and bed with Marissa in early 1995. A more salacious scandal New England had rarely seen the town was obsessed with it. It was an all-consuming story for some months as you tried to track down the various aspects of what had happened with with Michael and the babysitter.

Lehigh's not kidding. I remember following every trip trip detail of it from the couple of my first writing job at Boston Magazine. Every day the respectable establishment globe, then owned by the New York Times, did battle for scoops with a grimeer tabloid the Boston Harold, once owned by Rupert Murdoch. It was like Boston Media was doing a trial run for the Clinton

Lewinsky affair. Then the question quickly became, had there been a sexual relationship with a babysitter before she was 16 in which case it would have been statutory rape and serious problems

Boston globe, the Norfolk County District Attorney announced a preliminary investigation into whether the relationship between Michael and Marissa had actually begun when she was 14. Wherever the truth lay, Murse's father Paul Verokki reacted to the situation as any father, especially a very rich one would. He went on the war path and made the seriousness of his fury apparent when he hired Bob Popio, one of the most politically connected lawyers in Boston to

represent him. So it was two families with money and two families with publicity, I want to say publicity managers because it wasn't exactly meant that way but people who were very media savvy kind of going to war over over this story. As the chaos unfolded, Michael Skickle says he suddenly found himself caught in the crossfire. A quick note to listeners, the audio you're about to hear is compiled from different conversations I had with Michael. I went back to him repeatedly

to confirm all the details. When the story broke, Michael asked me, he said, "Oh my God, what do I do? What do I do?" When I said, "Look, dude, I've been warning you forever, leave her alone." And that's when he said, "Well, you've got to go after."

“What did he say specifically? He said, "You have to go after Paul,”

publicly and Marissa." And I said, "You know what? I'm not going to do it." I said, "I'm not going to tell the truth about you or lie about them." That is, he would protect his cousin's secret, but he wouldn't participate in trying to bury Marissa or her father in the press.

And he just said, "Well, then you're off the reservation." And I said, "Well, I was never on that

reservation." And so that was the end of your employment? No, because he wanted, he made it impossible for me. He made it almost impossible for me to work. He also got angry at me. He says he tried to reason with his cousin, Michael. I played it through them to just please sign a non-despairagement clause. I said, "I'll sign one and you sign one. I'll show you legally that I'm serious. I don't want to fight you. I don't want to fight anybody. I just want out. Pay me seven to three months,

like you've been doing with everyone else, and I'm out of here." He says Michael Kennedy refused. Shortly after, Michael Skakele says he found that his keys no longer worked at the office, his company credit card was turned off. And with that, the fragile bridge that had been built between himself and his Kennedy kin crumbled. Michael says he was kicked out of Camelot.

His cousin Bobby remembers it differently. I never stopped dog name, but Michael stopped talking to me

at all the members of my family. Whoever was giving home the silent treatment, things were about to get much worse. In the wake of the Michael Kennedy babysitter controversy, rumors of all kinds began to fly, including some that centered on Michael Skakele. In August 1997, Vanity Fairpeace reported Michael Schneerson wrote, among the Kennedy's and their friends, the story that began to circulate,

was that Michael had been betrayed by his citizens energy colleague and cousin Michael Skakele. As in, Michael Skakele leaked the babysitter story. Here's Boston Globe call him to Scott Lehigh again. Well, it was pretty obvious that Michael or his lawyer was quite a good source for the hero,

“I think. You can't read the stories and look at that without thinking that.”

I've asked Michael numerous times about this accusation, and he has always vehemently denied it.

I never broke the story. Did you or your lawyers speak to the press subsequently after the story broke? Absolutely not, never. Regardless, what Michael did next didn't exactly calm the Kennedy family's nerves. When prosecutors mulling statutory rate charges against Michael Kennedy wanted to talk, Michael agreed. I sat with the prosecutors for four hours, and answered honestly to the best of my ability. What I knew and didn't know. That question,

who knew what about the babysitter affair and when was exactly what prosecutors and the public wanted to know. Here's Scott Lehigh. The question became when had there been a sexual relationship, and but it also became what had Joe Kennedy done about this, meaning had Joe Kennedy tried to do something to stop the affair between Michael Kennedy and the babysitter. Joe,

“hoping to be Massachusetts next governor found himself in the hot seat. Originally, I think you said”

he hadn't known that Michael was in a relationship with with this person. Then I think later, it became he hadn't realized that there was an allegation of an underaged relationship. Scott Lehigh remembers that the press coverage framed Michael's cakeel as having at least attempted to intervene to stop the affair. Skikele, I think, he was one of the people who objected to this

he had tried to do the right thing. Michael Skikele says that long before the story broke

in the papers, he had voice concerns to both Bobby and Joe Kennedy about the relationship, and was told in no uncertain terms to mind his business. Whatever Joe or Bobby had said to Michael, done or not done about the affair, the public blowback for the Kennedy's was swift.

“I think it's fair to say that it wasn't hugely convincing that they had”

they had done much that would earn the public's admiration. And there were more headwinds of foot. The same month the babysitter's story broke, Joe Kennedy's x-wife began promoting her upcoming book about her troubled marriage to Joe and their painful, very public separation. The memoir also criticized some of the Kennedy family for protecting Joe's political image at her expense. For Congressman Joe Kennedy, son of Robert Kennedy, the last 10 days have been a nightmare,

headline scream of clouds over Camelot, to Kennedy and must feel more like a tornado. In Massachusetts, seeing the Kennedy legacy tarnished by scandal involving women is hardly new, but so far Joe Kennedy seems to be paying a higher than usual price. Joe Kennedy may have been down, but he wasn't totally out yet. On June 18th, 1997, Kennedy spoke to reporters at a news conference

on Capitol Hill saying, quote, "I've made it very clear that I never heard other than in

“press reports that any relationship took place prior to the woman's 16th birthday."”

While Joe Kennedy worked to repair his public image in the meantime, the criminal case against Michael Kennedy was withering on the vine. Marissa and her family had decided not to co-operate, setting a desire to protect Marissa from the scrutiny of such a high profile trial. And then on July 8th, the Norfolk County District Attorney dropped all charges. That same day, Vicki Kennedy issued his statement through her lawyer saying, quote,

"The district attorney's decision to close his investigation will help put an end to a nightmare for me and my children." As I told the District Attorney's office,

"I have no knowledge and I do not believe that Michael ever committed any criminal wrongdoing.

I hope that the media will now respect my privacy and my children's privacy and allow us to move forward with our lives." Charges may have been officially dropped, but the damage to Joe's gubernatorial ambitions was already done. The one-two punch of the babysitter and his own marital problems had eroded the public's trust. With his pulse cratering in the governor's race,

Joe took his medicine on August 28th, 1997. In recent weeks, I've come to the conclusion reluctantly that if I am a candidate for governor next year, the race will focus on personal and family questions. Therefore, I've decided not to be a candidate for governor in 1998. By the fall of 1997, some of the highest profile candidates had seen their

reputations irrevocably damaged. Michael Kennedy was in the process of getting divorced. Joe Kennedy's political career was in ruins. He would not seek reelection to Congress in 1998 and hasn't run for office sense. As for Michael Skakele, he was out of a job and on the outs with his Kennedy cousins. And whether rational or not, he became increasingly convinced that there was more to come, the members of the Kennedy clan would seek some kind of revenge

against him for meddling in the babysitter affair. As I've already mentioned, over the years, Michael Skakele has developed an acute sense of persecution.

“And what was about to happen caused a major flare-up?”

We haven't talked much about Martha Moxley in this episode, but in the background, as the babysitter controversy was unfolding, the investigation into Martha's murder was rocketing along on a parallel track. The unsolved mysteries episode in early 1996, and then the reward money bumped that summer, had renewed public interest in the case and given inspector Frank Garneu leads to follow. But once the babysitter scandal broke in April 1997, the 22-year-old

cold case got an exponential boost. The media was writing about the Kennedy's in their Skakele cousin, yes, but also about how that Skakele cousin had been linked to Martha Moxley's murder. I remember in the press they were saying, "Michael Skakele's a potential murderer," and I just went, "Wow." And I just felt that my reputation was just being trashed. Whether true or not, behind the media coverage, Michael believed he sensed the unseen

hands of Michael Kennedy and his family's machine. Michael decided it was time to take ramp to action. And I said, "You know, if you guys are going to keep lying about me, then I'll start telling the truth about other stuff."

damning details about his Kennedy kin, a kind of literary collateral. He might never have

followed through on the idea, but for the Kennedy curse. So what's the deal with that old Victorian house? There have been whispers of murder murder. It's just the best. You can watch the deadline. The heat-true crime series on telemundo.

“And now, you can listen to the deadline as a podcast. The stories of love and betrayal of secret”

revealed of the men and women who stand between evil and justice. Every twist and turn can now be heard in Spanish, with new mysteries arriving every week. Just search, deadline,

in-est by your wherever you get your podcasts and start listening.

A sad beginning to this new year for the Kennedy family, a family that has been haunted by tragedy. Michael Kennedy, a son of the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy, was killed last night in a skiing accident in Colorado. On New Year's Eve 1997, less than a year after the baby sitter story broke, Michael Kennedy, who'd been playing football on his skis with no helmet on, crashed into a tree and died. As with every Kennedy tragedy, the press warmed.

“Michael Kennedy had led a mostly private life until scandal tarnished his image earlier this year.”

He was accused, but never prosecuted for an alleged affair with a teenage baby sitter.

The rumor sowered his brother Congressman Joseph Kennedy's bid to become governor of Massachusetts. By then, Michael Kennedy had become a punchline in Boston. His shocking death ended the press pie long, but the damage to the family reputation outlived him. And Michael's cake will came to believe that some of his Kennedy relatives faulted him, at least in part for that damage. Do you think that the Kennedy family believes that you are instrumental in either ending the

political career of Joe Kennedy or causing the death of Michael Kennedy? Absolutely. Michael said one of his cousins has even said so to his face. Several times, let's see said,

“you know, that it was because of me that Michael died. It's like I was in New York.”

Michael skied into a tree. Michael skied recklessly. He was very reckless. In everything he did, it's hard to argue that point. Michael Kennedy's recklessness tore his own family apart. Michael's staco was concerned that it would tear his life apart as well. Michael's perception, whether accurate or not, was that some of his Kennedy kin saw him as a villain in the latest dark chapter of their history. And based on that,

he says he began to worry that some of them might seek revenge against him. Perhaps in the form of a smear campaign that could hurt his future career chances. So in January 1, 1998, the day after Michael Kennedy's death, Michael signed an NDA with a now retired writing professor named Richard Hoffman. I met with Hoffman in the study of his sale of Massachusetts home in June, 2023. Did you feel like Michael was doing this as a defensive move that this was possibly

certainly partly, partly yes. Can you talk about that move? He thought they were coming for him. And I think he believed that look, I'm not going to go quietly. I have stories to tell. You force me in the position of being a whistleblower. I'm going to blow it loud. Michael spent three days hold up with Hoffman, spilling his guts. We went on a kind of retreat to his family's place up in Wind of New York. And I just got him talking on tape. Three days is a long time and Michael

had a lot to get off his chest. He didn't just limit his storytelling to act grinding about his Kennedy relatives. He mapped out everything that had happened in his life so far. His difficult childhood, the trauma of his time at a lawn, and of course Martha Moxley's murder. Hoffman thought Michael's life story had all the trappings of a great memoir. But the book that I envisioned, you know, I was looking at the poster. How could it be that someone with that wealth and that

privilege could live a decency and boyhood? But Hoffman said his book agent had a different notion. He instructed Hoffman to toss in every bit of dark side of Camelot's sleaze Michael had alleged.

the agent wanted was more and more salacious each draft. Hoffman put together a proposal for the

“book titled Dead Man Talking. A reference to the turn of phrase Dead Man Talk,”

Michael sets Ethel Kennedy once used with him, vowing him to secrecy when they met for lunch and Boston to discuss Michael Kennedy's growing troubles with the baby sitter. The proposal is a pretty dodgy document. It teases an insider's look at the baby sitter scandal. Joe Kennedy's alleged efforts to hide his knowledge of it, and Michael skiggles opinion that his cousin had indeed had sex with the baby sitter when she was 14. There's also a promise to divulge another scandalous sexual

exploit involving a Kennedy, and a conspiratorial tidbit about efforts to dig up dirt on babysitter Marissa's father in order to silence him. If it fulfilled a proposal's promise, the book had the potential to unleash a firestorm. But Michael's skakele says before he even began shopping the book in earnest, it appears some of his Kennedy relatives got wind of it. There's no question

“of my mind they got wind of it here, because a certain a famous person came to my house in Florida.”

Following the babysitter affair, Michael had abandoned co-hassette. Not only had he even staked out many times by the press as the scandal broke. He was now unemployed and couldn't keep up with a mortgage. Not long after that, he and his wife Margo, now pregnant, decapped to his father's house in Hobesown, Florida. Michael says that in early 1998, the doorbell rang and a familiar figure was at his doorstep, a prominent businessman and friend of generations of Kennedy's.

He had a question from Michael. "Are you or are you not writing this book?" And I said, "If they, if they sign in on disparagement clause and I sign one, we walk away from this, this

stuff will never see the light a day ever." Then this person who I love and respect highly said,

so you're writing a book. And I said, "So you're telling me that they're not going to stop and he got up and left." He flew, flew, you know, hours back to where he was going. "When a member of our production team reached out, the businessman now elderly, praised Michael as a good guy with a great heart, saying he believed he was innocent, but he denied knowing about the book or inquiring about it to Michael or being asked to speak

with him on behalf of the Kennedy's. Two weeks after that alleged visit, Michael says that same doorbell rang again. And I opened there two men that look like guys for men in black with dark glasses on and dark suits and as he can help you. And they said, "Yeah, we're with the

“secret service." Michael said they showed their badges and their guns. They said,”

"We believe you sent a death threat letter to President Bill Clinton." He says it was promptly sorted out as a misunderstanding, but the agents posed a question. They said, "Do you have any idea why somebody would do this to you?" I said, "This sounds like these guys just trying to make me look bad because they think I'm hiding a book about them." By these guys, Michael told me, "He meant some of his Kennedy relatives." "Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It can say we're trying to

just credit me." I wasn't able to independently corroborate all of the details of Michael's surprise Florida visits, but I've spoken with several people who said Michael told them about them at the time. So what did the visits mean? In Michael's eyes, there were a warning from some of his

Kennedy relatives who he believed wanted to ensure the book never saw the light of day.

But Michael didn't back down. His agent proceeded with shopping the proposal. Several months later, in June 1998, a grand jury was convened in Martha Moxley's case with Michael as its target. In this timing, Michael sees something suspicious. Though I've not been able to verify his claims, he believes that his retribution for the book proposal for his role in the babysitter scandal, some members of the Kennedy clan use their political sway to influence the Moxley investigation,

specifically turning its focus towards him. You thought perhaps maybe the the the the Kennedy's were behind your prosecution or something that you always suspected.

Absolutely always suspected. Because of the things on those tapes are could put potentially put some

of them, they wouldn't be liked very much in. They covet their reputation. Michael has shared his theory with me time and time again. It's complex, convoluted even, but he's told me names of influential people whom he thinks pulled the levers of power

here. The tough part about reporting on alleged backdoor deals is that they're hard to substantiate,

though I will say I tried. However, there is one thing I keep coming back to in my own reporting. And it's that there does appear to be a sudden investigative shift towards Michael after years of persistent efforts to buttress the cases against his brother Tommy and also Ken Littleton. The case file gets sparse in the late 90s, so it's hard to identify the exact moment when Michael became the primary suspect in this investigation. But in a March 1998 interview with

“Dateline, Frank R. kept his options open. Who were the suspects in this case in 1975?”

Tommy Skakele, Michael Skakele, Ken Littleton, fell about an amen at Hammond. To be clear, Michael Skakele was not considered a serious suspect by police until the 1990s. 1898, who were the suspect. Same. Same people. Nothing has changed with the suspect last. 23 years. Same then. It's possible Gar was just holding his cards close to his chest. But just three months later, in June 1998, an investigatory grand jury was convened.

A surprising new development tonight in the unsolved murder of a granite teenager, a one-person grand jury has been appointed to probe the killing of Martha Moxley. This was a rare form of grand jury in Connecticut made up of a single judge. In this case, 56-year-old George Thym, who had been appointed to the bench in 1985 by the state's then-governor Democrat William O'Neill. In Connecticut,

“these one-judge investigatory grandjuries are used to dig into difficult, long-stalled cases,”

because they have a power the police do not. The ability to issue subpoenas, meaning anyone who refuses to appear can be jailed for contempt. The judge also had the benefit of an 18-month mandate to investigate wherever the evidence led. Yet no witnesses were called by the state to testify about the longest-running prime suspect, Tommy Skakele. The same was true for Tudor Ken Littleton, although unlike Tommy, he did testify at the grand jury and was granted a immunity in exchange

for his cooperation. Michael was the only item on the lunch menu. The grand jury did arrive right on the heels of Mark Furman's media blitz, during which he appeared on every outlet willing to amplify his investigation and his conclusion that Michael Skakele was marked the Mark's least killer. Former LAPD detective Mark Furman believes he now has solved the mystery of this murder in grandjuts and Michael the 15-year-old is the prime suspect in Mark Furman's book.

But prosecutor Benedict and investigator Gar consistently poo-pooed the notion that Furman's book had anything to do with their pursuit of Michael. Here's Gar in a date line interview

years later. Mark Furman has nothing to do with this investigation never did and never will.

His book didn't produce the indictment that resulted in the trial. I doubt I almost don't even want to dignify what a comment, but absolutely not. I mean there is no way that any law enforcement authority would take the writings of anyone,

“Mark Furman or anyone and use that as a guide. And that's what makes this part of the story so hard”

to pin down. Causing effect, correlation versus causation gets incredibly muddy here. Many players had the power to influence the Moxley case. The police, the press, the public, it's hard to entangle what or who led to what. Sutton Associates Jim Murphy, with whom Michael has stayed in touch over the years, has his take. He thinks it's strange that Michael suddenly found himself in the crosshairs of the state of Connecticut in 1998. You don't think

it was enough that Mark Furman comes out with his book and starts beating the drum and the newspapers.

He never made any sense to me that it got to the point that it did where they could

indict Michael and then he'd go to trial and be found. I found guilty of this and do a so much time in jail. It just didn't make any sense. I reached out to both Bobby and Joe Kennedy directly. As I mentioned earlier, Bobby didn't respond. And through his attorney, Joe replied to a list of questions we sent, stating they were promised on fabricated and disproven rumors, but included no specifics beyond that. But in his 2016 interview with dateline, Bobby had this to say.

For Michael, who had never had anything to do with the Kennedy, he's never acclaimed any advantage from being a Kennedy was never considered himself a Kennedy. It became somehow confused in his mind that this tendential connection that he had with the Kennedy family had gotten him into this terrible terrible trouble. Bobby, who'd gotten to know Michael well through their shared recovery journeys, had an explanation for his cousin's thinking. The thing that's important to understand about

he spent in a reform school in May. And one of the indicia of that illness is that he sometimes gets a kind of a vaguely paranoid world view. And part of that worldview was that the Kennedy was awe-inspiring to jail him. And in fact, there was a plausibility to it because every time he was mentioned in all of the prosecutorial interest in him, thus directly related to his connection to the Kennedy family. Here's Michael's attorney, Stefan Sieger. Michael has been through a lot. And, you know,

a man who serves 11.5 years for a case that he should have involved in the first place. Probably

thinks about a lot of different things. He probably sees people who were as friends before are as enemies

“now, and a lot may go through his mind. Do I think that his connection to the Kennedy family”

you know, put the the guilty verdict into the into the jurors' mouths? I don't think that. But I do think that there are political aspects of this case that stem all the way from the grand jury. But Sieger says he's not seen proof that Michael's theories are right. Before I would implicate anybody on something like this, I would love to have evidence of that fact because that would really turn the whole system upside down. In one of the great ironings of this story, by the time he was

arrested in 2000, Michael Skakele had fully broken with the Kennedy family. Sworn them off, cut all ties. Yet, in the minds of the media and public at large, Michael in some ways became a proxy for the Kennedy family's bad behavior. It was a compelling narrative, a rich kid with a privileged

“upbringing and a connection to America's most famous family tangled up in a grizzly murder case.”

The coverage of his trial in some ways seemed like a kind of referendum on the well-documented

compendium of Kennedy misbehavior that never seemed to result in any serious consequences.

The 1969 drowning of Mary Joke Peckney on Chapter Quidditch Island off of Martha's Vineyard after Teddy Kennedy drove his car into the drink and failed to alert the police until the next day. Teddy got a slap on the wrist. The 1973 Pam Kelly crash. Twenty-year-old future congressman, Joe Kennedy flipped a Jeep full of Kennedy cousins in their friends on an in-tuck at road, leaving 18-year-old Pam paralyzed. A $100 fine and no criminal charges.

And then, of course, in 1991, William Kennedy Smith was acquitted a rape for a high-profile trial. So by 2002, when Michael Skakele was put on trial for Martha Moxley's murder, the public was ravenous for something that looked like justice. Bobby Kennedy, though Michael didn't want him to, attended the trial for two days. The two men had once been close and Bobby felt an obligation to show his support. He later told dateline he believed the Kennedy

Association absolutely contributed to Michael's guilty verdict. I don't think there's any question that it was used in a prejudicial way, but it was used. Because people hated the Kennedy family,

“but because it kind of fed the press interest, I think that Michael Skakele would not be in jail.”

If people had not been able to call him Kennedy cousin. And maybe that's one of the things we can say definitively here. Michael's connection to the Kennedy family, briefly close, mostly distant, still ended up shaping the path that led to his arrest. And whether his suspicions about some of his Kennedy relatives involvement in his prosecution are valid or the product of years of trauma, there is a lot that is strange about this case. So his Michael just

incredibly unlucky or is there more to this story than meets the eye? There are pieces of Michael's theories and stories that he's told me that I simply can't corroborate. Does that mean they're not true? I can't say. As you heard Michael say earlier in the series, his recovery-related way of life requires him to tell the truth or risk falling off the wagon. I have to be honest about everything or I'm screwed. If I'm not honest, then I'm in pain. For his friends, it's sometimes been challenging

to believe this to be the case. But I've tell you, like my ex-wife used to say, I get off the farm and I'm like, man, I just can't believe that that guy's gone through right now. And she'd say, oh, that's got to be just made up. This is David Slai, a Boston-based real estate professional who's been a friend of Michael's since the '80s. And then six months later, it would, you know,

you'd find out it was true. I never had any reason to doubt him. But if other people heard these things,

they'd be like, well, that's crazy. Or all that would never happen. Or that's not the way the

I like it. Yeah. This phenomenon rings true to me. I'd like to share an illustrative anecdote.

For years, I'd heard snippets of a story Michael likes to tell about sitting across a desk from Fidel Castro inside Havana's Palace of the Revolution, the seat of the Cuban government. He claimed he told Castro that prior to the 1959 Revolution, before the land seizures and nationalization of private property, the skiggles had owned a sprawling ocean front estate there. Here he is telling me again. And he looked at me. That would be Fidel Castro.

And I said, when are we going to get our house back? And he said, we nationalize that.

“I said, yeah, if that's what you want to call it. He said, as soon as he embargoes lifted,”

you can have your house back, but not until then. I said, yeah, well, the way I look at it,

you asked 40 years of rent. I said, I like your tobacco, pay up in Cohibus. He was like, who the F is this guy? And for many years, I thought Michael was out of his mind, surely a fabulous. And then a couple of years ago, I asked him to elaborate. And he said that it had been reported in the New York Times. So I dug around and I found it. Right there on the front page of the February 19, 1996 edition, above a story about a citizen's energy sponsored mission to Cuba,

was a photo of Michael, flanked by Bobby and Michael Kennedy, beaming across a desk from Castro. The story specifically mentioned a lively conversation about the Skakula state that was

“nationalized after Castro came to power. So there you have it, an unbelievable Michael story that”

ultimately turned out to be true. And one of Michael's specific rips relating to the Moxley case

also has some evidence to back it up. Frank R stole my property. I got a call one day that Frank R has come up with his search and seizure warrant with state police with guns and demanded my property. The property Michael's talking about here are the Hoffman tapes. A topic that still hits a nerve for him. At trial, they played a major role in shaping how the jury saw Michael. But the story of how those tapes ended up in the prosecutions hands is itself

one of the many strange twists in this case. Author Richard Hoffman says that six months after the grand jury was convened, there was a knock on his door. It was a Connecticut state's turnies investigator, Frank R. Little guy in a black suit with a ponytail and a Massachusetts state trooper in his full regalia, smokey to bear hat and everything. Frank R shows me a piece of paper with the seal of the state of Connecticut on it. And they said they had a warrant to get this

information about Michael Skakele and I invited them in, sat him down at the kitchen table and I poured the meat to coffee and sat there. And I really thought what was going to happen was, I would say, "Okay, I find you came here with this and I'll give you the stuff." And you'll see that you're barking up the wrong tree here. When I hesitated at one point, I said, "What is it that you want from this material?" And he said, "Look, we can do this to easy way or we can do this to hard way."

Hoffman later testified that he believed that Inspector Garth was telling the truth when he said he had a warrant. He was not. What Garth had was a summons for Hoffman to testify at the grand jury, not a warrant for the tapes of his sessions with Michael. But Hoffman, who says he didn't fully understand what was happening, gave them up. As well as a copy of the unpublished book proposal and a box of family Mementos and photos, Michael had left with him. A week later, the Boston

“Harold published an article that teased a secret project penned by Michael Skakele about the”

moxley case and life as a Kennedy relative. And I called Garth. I had his car, did he give me his car? I called him, I said, "What the hell?" I mean, this is a grand jury. How does his reporter suddenly have this book proposal and he said, "Well, you know, I don't know. You know, we get a lot of people coming and this place could be the cleaners, you know, maybe maybe one of the secretaries, you know, just, and I thought, "Okay, this is not any up enough."

This was a turning point for Hoffman. He'd wondered at moments whether Michael's fears of persecution were valid or perhaps paranoid. He says this episode settled it for him. I will say, here's where I began to really believe Michael. This all starts to look like the KGB.

In other words, defense attorney Mickey Sherman would likely have lost any motions to keep them

“from being introduced to trial. All that to say, too bad, tough luck. Once the tapes were in the”

States hands, they were fair game. But what about after the trial? When the state vacated Michael's conviction in 2020, he requested that all of his property be returned, specifically the tapes. It should have been an easy ask. The clips that were played at trial, some of which you've heard in this podcast are public record. But there are only a fragment of the many hours of tape

that Michael recorded with Richard Hoffman. To this day, now they're the original tapes,

nor any copies made by the state have been returned to Michael. For a time, while Michael's case was still in limbo, the state claimed the tapes had evidenced your evaluation. In the wake of his conviction being vacated, the state now says it's unable to find them. I asked Michael's attorney, Stephon Seeger about it. The state has been unable to produce the so-called Hoffman tapes. They were, you know, the centerpiece of the closing. Does that seem surprising to you? The

state loses evidence. They lose evidence conveniently sometimes, but in this particular case, Andrew

I can tell you it's absurd to believe that somebody charged with the custody of the evidence

“in this level of a murder case. Everybody in the country knows about that a key piece of evidence,”

something that the state itself proports is a confession would be left out of the lead investigator's site in any way whatsoever. So for me to believe that Frank guard is not nowhere these tapes are, it's just, it's, I can't fan them in. As of this recording, Michael is still in a lawsuit against Frank guard and the town of Granch to get the tapes back. Wherever you land on the question of Michael's grander theories about the candidates, the Hoffman tapes serve as a reminder that there

are many questions about how this case has been handled over its long and winding history, missing

“evidence, tunnel vision, unexplored leads. Martha's case is a tangle of peculiarities and unforeseen”

twists. And in 2003, a year after Michael's conviction, it took yet another unexpected turn when a new figure emerged in the case. Someone who had been close to the tight-knit group of Bellhaven teens at the center of this story, someone who is adamant that everything that happened in the case up to that point was all wrong. Someone who said he had information about who really killed Martha Moxley. Next time on Dead Certain, the Martha Moxley murder. You're here today

because you have information in regards to the Moxley murder case. It's that correct. The police told us that they knew for sure it wasn't one person who did it because it was so brutal and would take extraordinary strength. From NBC News Studios and highly replaceable productions, Dead Certain, the Martha Moxley murder, is written, reported, executive produced and hosted by me, Andrew Goldman. Alexa Danner is executive producer, writer, and head of audio at NBC News

Studios. Megan Shields is senior producer and writer. Rob Heath is our producer. Nora Betel is our story editor. Fact checking by Simone Buto and Lauda, Hongkadea, production assistants by Brendan Wiesell, sound designed by Rick Juan, Mark Yoshizumi, and Bob Mallory, original music by John Estes, Amanda Moore's our production manager and Marissa Riley is the director of production. Liz Cole is president of NBC News Studios.

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