Known Unknowns

of the last 11 episodes, we've tried every step of Martha Moxley's walk around Bellhaven the

“night of October 30th, 1975, many, many times. And we followed the steps of a lot of other”

players in this case in the ensuing years too. Investigators, suspects, attorneys, journalists. I've done my very best to give you a lot of information about the Martha Moxley case in a manner that doesn't cut corners, doesn't edit out inconvenient facts. In hopes of providing you a new answer to that original question, what do you know? Hopefully, you know, a lot more now than when we started. But at the end of a story like this, if you've come

along the whole way, like Martha's family, like everyone involved in the case, you probably want definitive answers. Closure. I understand. As I was in the thick of production on this podcast, I found myself repeatedly feeling the same question from friends, listeners, the

“press. Exactly. How are you planning to land this airbus, Sally? Are you going to solve”

this case? What to you, Andrew Goldman? Really now. Given the time we've committed to listening, if it's truly a finale, surely you plan to unmasst the real killer, right? Right? As a story teller, I don't want to disappoint. Though ultimately, I'm a reporter, not a detective. And although I have my theories and suspicions about what might have happened that night,

as I'm sure you do too, my own thoughts on the case refused to sit still. They're always

jumping around based on new discoveries, believe it or not, to this very day. For reasons we've explored uncertainty defines this case. Fifty years in, there are still chapters untold, threads on examined, several of which will be exploring today. You've been so patient,

“so let's begin the end with a biggie. With something we discuss a long, long time ago,”

the weight is over. So about that mysterious blood. Call back an episode one, I told you about a 47-year-old woman named Theresa Toronto who worked as a maid in a house in Belhaven. Toronto, in an interview with police, reported seeing smears of blood inside the house she was cleaning the morning of October 31, 1975. The house was one that Martha was very familiar with, a place where she spent a lot of time, nearly

every day of her life for the preceding year and a half. A place where she wrote diary entries hung out with friends. Her best friend, Margie Walker, told me about a small room on the third floor that Martha and pals turned into a kind of clubhouse, where the girls would listen to Alton John or Peter Frampton and clip out phrases and pictures from magazines and paste them on the walls. Like a vision board anticipating their future adventures. Yes,

the house where the blood was spotted was Martha's very own. Theresa Toronto was the moxley's

maid. Here's what Toronto told police on November 6th, a week after the crime, with the

assistance of a translator. On Halloween morning at 8 a.m., she derived at the moxley house to clean it, as she'd done every Friday for the preceding year. Martha had, by this point, been missing for nearly 11 hours, although no one relayed this to Toronto, perhaps because she only spoke Spanish. Shortly after arriving, the police report states, Toronto observed the bedroom door of Martha's 17-year-old brother John Moxley to be open and is bed to be empty.

Toronto recalled hearing a loud crash in the basement at 9 a.m., she did not investigate. Toronto told the cops that she first saw John Moxley that morning around 9.15 a.m.

He was in the first floor TV room, watching television with a friend. They stayed there

until around 11 a.m., at which point she observed the pair go outside to the wooded area behind the house for about 10 minutes. Toronto noted that during this time she heard another crash in the basement. The police report notes John Moxley came back into the house briefly, then the two boys left for good. At this point, Toronto went into the TV room to clean up after them and spotted something on the table, smears of blood as if from three fingers

is how it's phrased in the report. Toronto, still unaware that Martha was missing, didn't think anything of it and proceeded to wipe up the smears and finish cleaning the Moxley home.

a recheck of the Moxley house will be made. Recheck is an interesting term.

“Right after the murder, the Greenwich Police had questioned the entire Moxley family,”

including Martha's mother Dorothy and Father David, as well as Brother John.

However, as far as I can tell, based on the police reports, they never did an initial thorough

search of the Moxley home. Whatever the case, they scheduled to recheck for the following day, and in the meantime, some in John Moxley for a follow-up interview. At the station, John confirmed the outlines of Toronto's story. He had in fact been watching TV with a friend from Greenwich High named John Harvey. As for that blood, John said he had no recollection of seeing any blood. Police pressed. I'll be it gently. My he, or his friend John Harvey, have cut themselves accidentally

while weightlifting? No, John said. He had heard the crashes they asked, the Toronto reported emanating from the basement. John said he had not. Was there any reason for blood to be found in the TV room, investigators inquired? Here, John offered up a theory, stating that quote, "The room is used by all members of the family, and the stains that Teresa observed could have been food stains, as everyone eats snacks in the room while watching the TV."

Greenwich Police proceeded with their recheck of the Moxley house the next day. The report mentions a thorough search of the basement, however, it makes no reference to even setting foot in the TV room, where Toronto said she'd seen the blood. Per the report, the search yielded nothing. And that seems to be where the Greenwich Police is investigation into the supposed blood spotted in the Moxley house just ended.

There's no further mention of it in any police documents that I've come across. Investigators didn't speak to John Moxley's friend John Harvey to ask him about the blood

or the noises, and they never spoke again with Teresa Toronto. In December of 1975,

they brought John Moxley back in for another round of questioning. This time with the help of their favorite investigative tool, the polygraph. John passed. Ultimately, it's impossible to know for sure what Teresa Toronto wiped up off the TV room table that day. But let's take a moment and presume she was right. That the materials should cleaned up the morning of Halloween 1975 was, in fact, a blood smear. That would be significant

in several ways. It would be the only blood found outside the crime scene, yes? But there's more. Photographs of Martha's body taken at the crime scene, also show a smear of blood, clearly visible on the back of Martha's left inner thigh. At Michael Skickle's trial, Dr Henry Lee testified about the mark calling it a contact smear. The arising that a bloody hand or fist could have come in contact with Martha's thigh transferring the blood.

Dr Lee noted an additional blood smear visible in the photos that could have been left

“by bloody hands. The killer's hands should have a lot of blood when you touch, you should have”

a lot of transfer of blood. These details made little impression at the trial since there was

never any blood tied to Michael Skickle or the Skickle home. But if what Teresa Toronto spotted

in the Moxley's TV room was, in fact, blood, the question remains. Who left it there? When? And under what circumstances? And did Greenwich investigators miss a critical opportunity to hunt down one of the only promising forensic leads in the case? When I first learned about the existence of the Teresa Toronto Police report, I was shocked. No media coverage I'd ever come across even mentioned it. When I spoke with Mark Furman, whose book was so pivotal in shifting public focus to Michael

Skickle, I asked what he thought about Toronto's story. What did you make of the blood in the Moxley house? Well, what kind of blood was it? Was it drops of blood? Was it fresh blood? Was it shoe prints? I read Furman and excerpt from the police report. She observed on one of the tables,

“what appeared to be smears of blood as if from three fingers? Yeah, I know, I think I had the”

redacted report. I didn't ever see that. The redacted FOIA police reports were indeed missing a lot, but not Teresa Toronto. Furman seems to have just somehow missed it, as did most of the journalist covering the case. But not everyone overlooked it. When she was working on Michael Skickle's case in 2000, trial attorney Linda Kenny Bodden picked up on the blood smears from police reports. And in fact, one item on her pre-trial memo where she sketched out all the issues Michael Skickle's

defense team could pursue to try to secure an acquittal. Teresa Toronto. They're made, the Moxley

up and then she was never asked by any better about them. So I felt, look, we should go find her

talk to her. Maybe it was nothing, but somebody should talk to her and see what she found.

“And I think I think I had located her in Florida by just a search. Kenny Bodden says she understood”

that further investigating the reported blood would be a sensitive undertaking, as it could potentially be perceived as an attempt to pin the crime on John Moxley. Everyone was scared to say, "Well, you're going to be saying a John Moxley killed a sister." I said, "No, not, I'm going to be saying that the blood in this house and somebody may have gotten into the house, you know, looking for her. Maybe they were looking for something. Maybe that's where they were in the, you know,

earlier. Maybe it's a friend. Who the heck knows?" Based on how Michael's defense unfolded, it probably won't shock you to learn that no one on a attorney Mickey Sherman's team seems to have ever tracked down or spoken with Theresa Toronto. Unfortunately, it's now too late. Toronto died in 2012. And along with her, went any additional details. She might have been able to share about Halloween morning,

1975 in the Moxley house. But as with so many things in this thicket of a mystery, that's not quite the end of the story. I'm Andrew Goldman. From NBC News Studios and highly replaceable productions, this is the final episode of Dead Certain, the Martha Moxley Market.

“In the early 1990s, you'll remember, at the behest of Rush Skakele Sr. and his attorney Tom Sheridan,”

the Sutton investigation was commissioned. It's mandate was to reinvestigate Martha Moxley's death. And 20 years after the blood was reported by Theresa Toronto, Sutton investigators pouring over the police files seemed to have latched onto it. When it comes to the Sutton reports, it's commonly presumed there were only three of them. One for Skakele Tutor Ken Littleton and one each from Michael and Tommy Skakele. There was, however, a fourth report. The existence of which has been for decades ignored,

essentially unreported upon. It was about John Moxley. John Sutton report is not one of the worst case scenarios compiled by then-recent college grad Jamie Bryan, who leaked documents to Dominic Don and late 1996. It's a more straightforward analysis. John had passed a polygraph back in 1975

and was never seriously considered a suspect by police. But in their reinvestigation of the case,

“the Sutton team took another look at him to follow up on some of, quote, "John's behaviors”

and inconsistencies." Even allowing for post-traumatic confusion, they wrote in their report, "a few unresolved points still demand further clarification and examination." The blood spotted by Theresa Toronto in the Moxley House was one reason that Sutton associates reassessed John two decades later. But there was another issue that Sutton flagged in its report. According to his police interviews, here's how John accounted for his whereabouts on

mischief in 1975. John said he arrived home after hanging out with friends, including John Harvey, between 11 and 11 30 pm that evening, and went to bed. He was awakened around 330 AM by his worried mother, who informed him that Martha had not yet returned home and asked him to go look for her as John later told date line. "My mom was very nervous, my dad was out of town, and she asked me to drive around Bellhaven just to see if I could find anything.

And I drove around, and you know, I didn't come across anything." At Michael's Skakels 2002 trial, John characterized the search as "very brief," lasting only 15 minutes. But in 1975, John had told police that he drove around for two and a half hours looking for his sister, returning home around 6 AM. When he got back, notes the police report, quote, "Instead of returning to his bedroom to sleep, John advised that he was very tired

and fell asleep on a sofa in the family TV room. Go home back to sleep, got up the next morning, she still wasn't there." According to the police report, shortly after John awoke around 9 AM, his friend John Harvey came over to the house, as Theresa Toronto had also confirmed. The sudden team noted this in their report, writing, quote, "It seems a little curious that Harvey, who had been with John for most of the previous night, would arrive at the Moxley residence so early."

John Harvey, but later say he got a call from John Moxley that morning,

telling him that Martha never came home and asking him to come over.

Specifically checking, quote, "Behind an eight-foot wall, directly to the rear of the house, which had a large pile of brush in a pile." This particular detail also aroused the suspicions of Sutton investigators. In reference to the brush pile, the sudden report noted, quote, "On the surface, this is a slightly strange inclination, not to mention an unlikely place to find one's sister."

Back in 1975, the Grand Edge Police didn't specify in the report how this odd brush

pile search came about and Sutton never interviewed John Moxley's friend John Harvey to inquire further.

But I did, and though he didn't want to be recorded, Harvey told me, like John, he recall seeing no blood in the TV room. As for the search that it peaked Sutton's interest, he said John Moxley was simply honoring Mrs. Moxley's request that they look around the property about an acre and three-quarter parcel.

“According to John Harvey, Mrs. Moxley said, "Why do you guys walk around?”

Maybe she passed out somewhere, and we were thinking nothing of it." So he just kind of gave her a courtesy stroll around the yard. In an interview with Dateline's Dennis Murphy, Moxley echoed this sentiment. Did you think anything was wrong with that? No. No, I, I, you just don't imagine anything could do.

Yeah, and your sister was going to be in big trouble when she finally walked in.

Right. Yeah, I just, you just never imagined, I could never have imagined what happened.

John Moxley may not have been concerned that Moxley hadn't come home, but Mrs. Moxley certainly was, and had been since 330 that morning. In addition to sending out John to drive around in the middle of the night, she'd called the skakele house multiple times and also the police looking for her daughter. And that wasn't all. When Sutton investigators spoke with John Moxley on August 15, 1994,

“they asked him why he believed that the Greenwich Police had asked him to take a polygraph.”

He mentioned the blood spotted by Theresa Toronto, but also another incident that occurred on Halloween 1975. Shortly after he and John Harvey did their search of the brush pile. Here he is, recounting part of the story. I had football practice, so I left for football practice.

No school that day, but you didn't have practice. Right. We had a game on Saturday, and so it was the Friday practice, you know, walk through everything that you hope to do in the game. Coach, hold you a sign at something. Coach, we were getting dressed. Coach called me into his office and said something's happened at your house.

They want you home right away. Upon pulling up to the house, John told Sutton investigators, he saw a sea of emergency vehicles and a crowd gathered and says he called out, "That's my sister over there." Well, perhaps understandable, that he might have concluded this based on Martha being missing.

According to the Sutton report, John believed this "is what led police to suspect he had some knowledge of Martha's death." But it wasn't just that, which troubled Sutton investigators. It was also his morning stroll around the yard with John Harvey. As the Sutton report notes, "If John Moxley was making even a mildly concerted effort

at looking around the property for his sister, it borders on the incredible

that he never noticed Martha's body lying only yards away to the side of the house."

For Sheila McGuire, who discovered Martha's body beneath the pines in the early afternoon on Halloween, the fact that no one else stumbled upon her first is hard to grasp.

“How the hell did they miss her? How did I find her and they miss her?”

She was not tucked under. I mean, like the one portion of her body was in kind of light of day. I mean, there was a limb, but the bigger limb that was covering was the front of her, her head, but it wasn't over her head. You could see her. I did not have to look for her. She was there. In April 1992, after Greenwich Police renewed their efforts to investigate the Moxley case, Sheila sat down for an interview with Inspector Frank Gar. According to the report,

Sheila, "Remembered having no fear of Tommy, no fear of Michael, or any of her other friends, and being horrified of John Moxley." I was afraid of John. It's the only kid I was afraid of, but I wasn't terrified, definitely afraid of him. I couldn't cross him off my list. Not that I thought that he did it, but I thought that he was capable." She also recounted to Gar, an incident she recalled Martha had told her about, which she shared with me. He did not

like Peter Siluca. That's Martha's boyfriend. When we talked about it, length last episode. He did not want Martha dating him, so something happened and he started chasing Peter Siluca around the house with a baseball bat, and was going to hit him. He was going to hurt him with it. Unless there was more than one incident with a baseball bat and Peter Siluca, this event is in fact referenced

to grab the bat. August 9, 1975 John came home slightly drunk, and then Peter and Tyler came

“back and just walked in, and John got really pissed because they didn't knock. So he chased them away”

by swearing at them and telling them that he was going to get his bat, so then they left and he came out with his bat. Later that night he came up to my room and I was so mad that I just started screaming at him. I was swearing my mouth off and started crying the whole deal. As I said earlier,

John Moxley was never named a suspect in his sister's murder. Nor is there any evidence that he

had anything to do with it. And despite devoting one of their four reports to him, the sudden team decided that Moxley wasn't their guy. So why raise all this? At all. Bobby Kennedy touched on it in a 2016 date line interview. Oh, I don't believe that John Moxley murdered his sister engaged in some strange behaviors. And he did other things that if Michael is Skakele had done them,

“they would have, you know, they would have provided fodder for a successful prosecution.”

Linda Kenny Bodden made a similar point regarding the general quality and quantity of the evidence against Michael. The amount of evidence they had against Michael, I mean, could apply it for anybody. The point is they picked Michael out of all these people. In other words, as we've established throughout this series, multiple people in this case, besides Michael's Skakele, behaved in ways that were the Sherlock Holmes magnifying glass trained on them might appear suspicious.

Kenny Bodden thought Greenwich was lousy with potential perps. I mean, you have suspects everywhere. You know, and there may be more. I mean, I'd say the whole town was a suspect. Back in 1975, Renwich police seemed to treat John with kid gloves. Years later, Sutton investigators were somewhat less gentle. John Moxley has left a small but lingering element of doubt to his own credibility in this investigation. They wrote in their report. However,

they also noted we are fairly comfortable concluding at this point. John Moxley had nothing to do with the murder of his sister. In a 1998 interview with NBC News, John Moxley expressed

the deep sorrow and pain his sister's death had rot. You never want to see your mother cry,

like the way I've seen my mother cry. You never want to see your father, who had been, you know, a champion of the world, reduced to being helpless and something that he, you know, something he cared so deeply about, and he had no ability to influence the change. I had one conversation with John in May, 2023. I told him about the podcast and asked to beat sit for an interview. He was friendly, but declined, explaining that since 2020,

when the state decided not to retry Michael, he and his mother decided they were done talking to the media about it. He said, "I've spent too much of my life on this case." When we spoke, John told me, "My mom's 91, she deserves some peace."

Dorothy passed away a year later on Christmas Eve 2024. I never spoke with her directly,

but from talking to John, it seemed to me that at the end of her life she'd achieved that off-sided goal of victim's families, closure. John told me he was resolute in his belief in Michael's skakele's guilt. And that Michael's habeas proved to him that if it wasn't Michael who killed his sister, it was definitely his brother Tommy. He'd set as much in media interviews before Michael's

“2000 arrest. I think there's a strong possibility that the person that killed person or person”

that killed my sister came out of the skakele house. Dorothy Moxley had said something similar before Michael was indicted. Who do you think killed Martha? Someone who lived in the skakele house. Someone who lived in the skakele house. John and Dorothy may have indeed meant one of the skakele boys when they said this, but there were plenty of non-skakles in the house on mischief night. One of them didn't arouse much interest from the Greenwich police,

but he absolutely should have. You can watch Deadline, the heat-true crime series on Telemundo. And now you can listen to Deadline as a podcast, a stories of love and betrayal, of secrets 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, Innis Paiol, wherever you get your podcasts

The Drink with Kate Snow. I sit down with all kinds of celebrity musicians, athletes over a

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Music or just ask Alexa, play the podcast Dateline and BC on Amazon Music. Great story telling, with a twist from the true crime original. On Mr. of 1975, there were all kinds of people coming in and out of the Skakele House. There were the seven Skakele kids and members of their teen social circle, yes, but there were also various adults who happened to sleep or even live on the Skakele grounds.

The most notable among them, of course, being the tutor, Ken Littleton, who investigators chase for years and home for a long period before Michael was arrested, John Moxley had also considered a suspect. In your mind, Ken Littleton is suspecting this. Absolutely. I don't know if he did it. I don't know if he did do it. But I certainly know that his life has been changed because of it.

As we covered earlier in the series, Ken Littleton was considered a top suspect for at least a decade and a half, starting back in 1976. Littleton had failed multiple polygraph exams, racked up a number of criminal charges, starting in summer after the murder, and otherwise behaved in what most would consider

“highly questionable fashion. Remember the story of him sitting naked on the bed,”

a poor Donna Unger, and then tuck it after trying to force himself on her? Not to mention his disturbing phone calls to his ex-wife. If you think you're going to get away with this shit, you mistaken. Very mistaken. Littleton was abandoned as a suspect in the early 1990s after Connecticut authorities failed to wrench a confession out of him. In all his conversations

with investigators, Littleton always maintained that he never met Mark the Moxley.

But there's reason to believe that might not be true. In the 43-page suspect profile for Ken Littleton compiled by Greenwich Police and the state's attorney's office in 1992, investigators concur, noting, quote, "It has been established that Littleton had been at this cakeful residence on prior occasions during the preceding weeks as a tutor for the skakele boys, particularly for Thomas and Michael. Could Littleton have met or spotted Martha

during one of those visits? It's impossible to know. Littleton died in 2019. Despite trying, I never got to speak with him." Littleton may indeed be an obvious suspect, and we've dedicated a lot of time to him in this series. But he was far from the only non-skakele

“member of the household staff. Remember that the skakeles had all kinds of live in and”

day help, including a cook, a nanny, and a handyman/guardiner named friends with team, who went by Frank. I've mentioned his name a couple of times in the series. We're team was 61 in 1975. Born in the former Yugoslavia, he spoke with a thick accent and had apparently been in Europe during World War II. Here's Michael Skakele. Five days a week he stayed at our house and drove us to and from school. He was the caretaker.

He did the yard work. If something broke, he would fix it. I mentioned what team in the last episode when we circled back to Tommy Skakele. What team had shared some intel in April 1976 about Tommy that certainly didn't dissuade cops from suspicions about him. Reporting that on a few occasions, he'd witnessed Tommy leave the house to walk Gulf Club in hand. You mentioned it, Tommy would carry a golf club

sometimes when he went out of set true. When he went, when he went out for a walk. Yet, but you have seen him out more than one occasion take a golf club. Oh yeah. What team is also the only person as far as I can tell,

Mr. of 1975, there hadn't been any for the preceding couple of weeks.

“At no time did you observe any golf clubs? Did you observe any golf clubs in the yard?”

No, note that time.

This particular statement has always perplexed me.

Basically, everyone else I've spoken to about the topic says the opposite. From the Skakeles to Martha's friends to Tony Bryant, who you'll recall asserted his friends might be the killers. There were clubs. There was stuff everywhere. There was tons of stuff. There's laying around. You can rock in triple or let. I'm surprised there weren't four or five clubs laying around the freaking yard. Why would Frank with team go out of his way to deny something

that most everyone else I've spoken with about it has confirmed? And why would he specifically mention Tommy taking the golf club as a walking stick? In 1991, with team spoken with investigators once more, they again asked him about Tommy walking around Bellhaven with a golf club. He said he had no recollection of making such a statement. But it turns out, his eyebrow raising stories weren't the only slightly hinky thing about the groundskeeper with a heavy accent.

Here's howlinix again. It was kind of creepy too. It's scary. He was kind of scary guy. In the book I helped Bobby Kennedy write, framed, Julie Skakele alleges that with team was, quote, sexually inappropriate with her. Though she declines to elaborate. And she wasn't the only one to raise alarm bells. Two weeks after Martha's murder, Andreas Shakespeare told investigators about an uncomfortable encounter with Frank.

“I think it was that knife there. I never loved him. He asked if he was on the porch and told”

that I was shot there. If you didn't quite catch that, Andreas said that on the night, she thinks that Martha was killed. Julie asked her to go downstairs and turn down the thermostat. They're handy, man, crying. Put a gun on there, me. Ducked out of his wound and walked away. There was some blood out, kept my took it. He put his arm around her. She said, she ducked out of it and since then, she'd kept her distance. The police asked if Frank scared her a little.

She said, yes. He always wants to know to sacrifice her a little bit.

In his 1976 interview with Police, with team admitted he knew Martha. I, you know, I get the shoe over there more than one time. I didn't pay too much to pay. I guess she was over there more than once he said. I didn't pay too much attention. But Michael Skakel shared a story with me from around the time of the murder that suggests

what team might have been paying more attention to Martha than he let on. Around that time also, I was in the bus waiting for Martha. By bus, he means to revcon motor home, where the

Skakel kids and their friends often hung out. And she came in one day and I'd never seen her that

upset. I'm like, what's a matter? She said nothing. I'm like Martha, seriously. And she just, she said, your gardener's an asshole. I'm like, what did he do? And she just said,

“how forget it. I'm going home. I remember feeling really ashamed. Like, what the hell just happened?”

And Frank was kind of a scary guy. So I didn't, I didn't say anything. I didn't know what it meant. Martha may have memorialized those feelings. In 1978, Hellenix's mother, Sissy, specifically recalled being asked by Greenwich cops who Frank was, because they'd come across a diary entry in which Martha mentioned being afraid of someone so named. This entry did not become a state's exhibit, so I can't confirm whether it ever existed. There are several other

Franks, not with team, mentioned in the pages that I do have access to, though non Martha said she was afraid of. In April 1976, after eight years of working for the Skakels, and five months after Martha's murder, with team retired. With team was one of the few people close to the case who didn't take a polygraph in 1975, due to medication he was taking for diabetes. But during his November 1991, re-interview with investigators, which team did submit to a polygraph at state police offices

near his home and upstate New York. He passed it, and as with so many others in this story, that was the end of the line. But there are a few undeniable facts about France with team, the suggest he should perhaps have been looked at harder, starting back in 1975. He was a member of the Skakel household, quite familiar with Martha Moxley,

He'd apparently exhibited some creepy behavior around teenage girls. He was also seemingly

“the only person who denied the ubiquitous presence of golf clubs on the Skakel lawn.”

For many years, police were laser-focused on Tommy Skakel, precisely because he was the last known person to see Martha that evening. But what if he wasn't? On the night of the murder, Franco-team claimed he'd gone to bed alone between 930 and 10. Police seemed to take him at his word, but no one else witnessed him go to bed. There's no actual accounting of what he might have been doing after he left the company of the Skakel kids that evening.

Franco-team died in January 1997, so I never got to ask him any of my burning questions.

But he represents just one of the many potential investigative blind spots in this case. Someone who perhaps should have been looked at harder. Blind spots, tunnel vision. In a case

“like Martha's, with decades of police reports, multiple viable suspects, and a wealth of”

dead ends, blind spots are perhaps inevitable. It's easy to get bogged down in the details to miss the forest for the trees. But every so often something comes along that forces you to zoom out to question everything you thought you knew. Something that jolts you from complacency and drives you to ask, "What if I've had it wrong all along?" Welcome to Ashfield Place. The safest, safest town in America.

This is Lecrazy. Starting Emmy Award winner Kiki Palmer. So what's the deal with that old Victorian house? There have been whispers of murder. Murder. Murder. Our small town's just the best. Just giving it get out. The birds, streaming now, only on peacock.

So I was gonna go in. Do white ladies love salads? Hell yeah, we're going in. Down low the NBC news app now and subscribe for more. Over the decades, the police and Sutton investigators looked at so many possible suspects in Martha's murder. Including some, we just don't have time to delve into in this series. Maybe it was somebody we've named. But of course, there's a possibility that Stephen Baron

Grunge's police chief in 1975. Could have been right when he initially posited that Martha's killer was probably a psychotic visitor from parts unknown. Just dropping by at Bell Haven. It's a theory John Moxley entertained in a date line interview years ago before he became convinced of Michael's guilt. The unknown, the stranger someone who comes in and I'll find any fun inside the gates. Exactly. You haven't dismissed that as possible. No, I haven't. Can't.

Will we ever know who killed Martha Moxley? As we've talked about at length, one of the biggest

problems with the case has always been that since the very beginning, it's been plagued by

lack of forensic evidence. There were those hairs found at the crime scene, which matched back to no one. Dr. Henry Lee told Grunge time in 1993 that there was so little physical evidence collected from the crime scene in 1975 that he couldn't even run DNA tests. In 1997, the state, in a last ditch effort to produce some kind of forensic results, had the FBI tests several items found near the crime scene, a gum wrapper, a cigarette butt, Martha's shirt. But once again, they came up dry.

The case against Michael Skakele was largely circumstantial, which is one of the reasons his attorneys including the late hubi Santos thought his guilty verdict should be vacated, as it eventually was. There are no forensics. There's no DNA, there's no trace evidence. There's no one, no evidence

“at all that can be analyzed. That's what the conviction is so terrible. But there was one piece of forensic”

evidence that might have held an answer. Back in 1975, when Dr. Elliott Gross performed Martha's autopsy, he collected swabs from Martha's body for examination. Here's a attorney Linda Kenny Bobby. They take swabs of her vaginal and her anal areas. They were looking for sperm.

in its infancy. Dr. Gross used the swabs to create slides, which were then examined under a microscope

“to see if any sperm cells were present. None were, so sexual assault was ruled out. But as Kenny”

bought and pointed out, you could still have a sexual act and not have sperm. The innocent's project has made a whole career of finding these swabs from people that supposedly there was no ejaculate on or anything. At Michael's trial in 2002, neither the slides nor the original swabs from Martha's autopsy were introduced as evidence. Beyond a brief mention during the medical examiner's

testimony, the state never acknowledged whether the slides are swabs still existed or had been

further tested. Which led Kenny Baudente conclude? The slides are swabs, both of them, and been lost. They were lost. But in the very last days of putting together this podcast, as we were finalizing our fact-checking, our production team reached out to the Connecticut Forensic Lab to inquire about the swabs and slides. The response we got was a total surprise. While they didn't provide information about the swabs, it turns out that the state did have the original slides from Martha's autopsy.

And in May 2018, just two and a half weeks after a judge ruled that Michael's skakele had earned the right to a new trial, they sent them off for DNA testing. The DNA report dated March

2019, describes the samples collected as originating from a single female. And based on a comparison

to Dorothy Moxley's DNA, the report states, the DNA on all three slides was most likely Martha's and only Martha's. It was yet another and possibly the last forensic dead end in Martha Moxley's case. A year and a half later, amidst the chaos of the coronavirus pandemic, the state of Connecticut announced they would not retry Michael's skakele from Martha's murder. Looking at the evidence your honor, looking at the state of the case, it is my belief that the state cannot prove this

case beyond the reasonable doubt, so therefore the state is going to enter a knowledge. Meaning, the state would not proceed. We determined that there was again 51 potential witnesses and 17 of them are deceased. And with that, 18 years after Michael's skakele's conviction, the case against him was officially over, leaving Martha's case once again unsolved. In the final weeks of production on this podcast, as much as I tried to drown out the noise

and just focus on finishing out the series, I have to confess that I did read the online comments, often through my fingers as I shielded my eyes. I also scanned the social media posts and a lot of strangers reached out to show their thoughts. The most common theme of these notes, many people out there say they still struggle to accept the possibility that Michael's skakele could truly be innocent. And the number one thing that bring up as the prime impediment to

getting to that place, the masturbation in the tree story, why they ask, would Michael put himself so close to the crime scene, so close to the time of the attack masturbating. What a weird thing to do, they say, and what an even weird thing to share, as state line correspondent Dennis Murphy once articulated. And after years of Tommy likely being guilty, here it is, Michael Michael,

“Michael, what's going on with this kid up in a tree? The truth is, wondering about it,”

is perfectly understandable. You're not alone. I have, too. I've turned it over so many times in my head trying to make sense of it. Perhaps in the chaos and trauma following the murder, Michael's timing got mixed up. Maybe the masturbation in a tree story took place on a different night, and over the years the two nights became conflated. Michael, for his part, insisted his memory hasn't failed him, that his story and its timing are rock solid. But there are other reasons

that at times I've considered that maybe I was being too credulous, maybe I've gotten dupped, co-opted, could Michael's cake, in fact, be guilty, and I was just too deeply invested in my

contrary take that I came down with my own case of tunnel vision. Never had I experienced that

feeling more than when, during my reporting, I stumbled upon a police report authored by Inspector Frank Gar, dated November 20th, 1997, about seven months before the grand jury would

“ultimately convene. It chronicles a visit by Gar to the X household. Remember, CCX? Good friend”

a neighbor of Rushcakele's senior and mother of Martha's friend Helen. During the meeting, CC reiterated her long-held belief that Tommy's cake will had nothing to do with Martha's murder.

about Michael, which she said she "did not know if she should share." But CC did share. Although somewhat hesitant the report reads, "MrsX revealed that sometime after the murder, she believes around 1981, but was not at all sure of the date. Rushcakele came to her house and informed her that his son Michael had confided in him, that he believed he may have murdered Martha moxley." According to Mrs. X, Michael told his father that he'd been drinking on the nighten

question, had blacked out and may have murdered Martha. When I read this, I gasped. Michael himself had at one point wonder if he'd killed Martha? I confronted Michael about it. Presuming that, as with some of CCX's other recollections, he might refute it. But no, it was absolutely true, he said. It all went down shortly after he was finally sprung from the Alon School and was living back in his father's house in the early 1980s.

"You know, you were told that Alon, when you leave Alon, you're going to feel great and you'll have no life will be Nirvana. They have a 98% success rate. And I came back and I'm like,

I still feel like shit. I'd been through no therapy, no treatment. I'd never been able to

grieve my mother's death. I'd never been able to grieve Martha's death. We never were able to grieve anything. I went and I was seeing a guy docked with Stan and Lessie and Manhattan,

“because that's all I knew that I had." Dr. Stanley Lessie. Remember him?”

The psychiatrist from Columbia Presbyterian who, as you heard last episode, after two weeks of prodding and probing and injecting Tommy Skakele with Sodium Amethel in 1976, pronounced he had nothing to do with the murder. Michael wondered if Lessie might be able to help him. Well, I asked him. I said, "Look, I have all these bad feelings. These people have just blamed me for two years." By these people, he means Joe Richie and is Alon Gorillas.

First they say, "It's Tommy." Then they say, "It's me. I'm confused. Can you please help me?" And he said, "Yes, I can. I will give you Sodium Penethel, true serum, and you won't be able to lie." I'm like, "Okay." And that's what I did. I mean, I thought my learning, well, maybe I'm doing so shitty in school, maybe I just maybe I was drunk. I didn't remember. I don't know. Meaning, Michael found himself wondering if perhaps there was some remote possibility

“that he could have killed Martha while drunk and didn't remember. Michael said that before”

Alon and all the trauma he endured there, he'd never questioned himself or whether he could be involved in the

crime. But now he found himself unsure. He wondered if he'd experienced some kind of brainwashing at Alon, but still the uncertainty not at him. Michael says that with his father's approval, he went to see Dr. Lessie who, after a round of true serum testing, allayed his fears that he had anything to do with the murder. Afterwards, Michael says he was able to move on, his conscience and psyche cleared. Michael may have been reassured,

but as for me, given that Lessie had not assessed out Tommy's lies about his interactions with Martha on mischief night as you heard about last episode, I find any conclusion from Lessie to be less than Rock Solid. And there was another stumbling block from me along the way, Dennis Asorio. You heard the name, I'll be at briefly a few episodes ago. Asorio was the one-time boyfriend of Michael's cousin, George Ann Terriot.

At Michael's habeas proceeding, Asorio had testified that he remembered Michael being present at the Terriot's mansion, Sirsum Corda, on mischief night, watching Matty Python with a rest of the gag. Asorio could have testified at Michael's original trial, but Michael's defense attorney

Mickey Sherman never reached out. Michael was left with only family as Alibi witnesses,

whose testimony jurors were told they could treat as less reliable than testimony from non-family Alibi witnesses. Michael felt Asorio's testimony was revelatory. Dennis Asorio said,

“"Look, I've got no skin in this game. I believe it's psychologist who helped the abused women."”

So, if it's the first night he's met me, why would he lie for me? Another person who apparently found Dennis Asorio's testimony revelatory, Judge Thomas A. Bishop, who partly based on Sherman's failure to track him down ruled that Michael likely would have been acquitted, had Asorio testified. But, but, but, there go those troublesome butts again. As part of my reporting, I did a deep dive on Asorio. He'd been interviewed by a private investigator at his home in

interview, Asorio said, he'd indeed been at Sirsum Court on mischief night, 1975, and remembered seeing Michael there. But then, the PI called Asorio three days later and conducted a more detailed phone interview. One line from the PI's report left out at me. Mr. Asorio remembers the night in question when he encountered Tommy and Michael's skakele at the Terry and House. So, the best of his recollection, he saw both Tommy and Michael there. Think you'll likely see the problem here.

Tommy, as we know, didn't go to Sirsum Courta. He never left Bell Haven.

So, while it might be possible that Asorio did see Michael that night, it's hard to say with certainty, because he said he also saw someone else who absolutely wasn't there. During the habeas proceedings, prosecutors failed to get Asorio to reveal this in their cross-examination. I shared with Stephen Skakele what I knew would be unwelcome news. This might seem like nitpicking,

“but if he could remember such that if he remembers Tommy there, he had to legitimate boy.”

It was obviously deflating, but Stephen countered. Tommy, Johnny, brush, all say Michael is in the car.

The prosecution letters to jam-checked the French psychologist, numerous letters back and forth,

including the, you know, suspect profile. It has been established. Michael is in the car. It's true. All these people vouched for Michael being in the car, but I admit the Asorio report shook me. I began thinking about Michael's brother, John, unable during the grand jury proceedings to recall Michael going to Sirsum Courta, even after being shown his 1975 police report saying exactly that. I had a moment of reckoning, accompanied by, frankly, a touch of panic.

And then I took some time to reflect on what I really knew and believed. I went back through countless police reports and documents, none of which cited Michael as

the suspect until years after the crime. I studied the picture of Michael from late 1975,

a shrimp. I tried to envision him possessing the strength required to commit such a brutal, forceful assault and then drag a body of his own size 80 feet. I couldn't do it. I reviewed Michael's alibi and all the people who vouched for him back in 1975 in the days after the crime. His brothers, his cousin, other Bellhaven teams. I reflected on Michael's trial as a whole. His attorney, Mickey Sherman's failure to introduce the concept of reasonable doubt to the jury.

How jurors heard almost none of the circumstantial evidence against anyone but Ken Littleton, while Tommy Skakeles' name was barely mentioned. I thought about all the individuals in the case over the years. From Ed Hammond to Ken Littleton, and all the potential suspects, Martha's boyfriend, the Skakeles handyman, who may have been overlooked. I thought back to the conversation I'd had with Michael's ghost writer Richard Hoffman and the reaction he'd had to a question.

“I'd asked him. You asked me before about why am I convinced that Michael didn't do it?”

I was a little bit stunned by the question because I think that that's back-ass words. That's exactly what happened in the trial. It's like, well, what do you mean? Who did it then? How can you say he didn't do it? Well, wait a minute. I can't say he didn't do it. I can say I have seen absolutely not an I/O/R or a Centilla of Evidence that he did it. But even supposing for a moment that Michael did kill Martha. I thought about that too.

How it would require a conspiracy of silence from at least some of the seven Skakeles siblings. Having spoken with five of them and emailed with a sixth, I have my doubts that this is a group of people that could carry a secret like this for 50 years. Michael alone, I think, would have blown it immediately. This is a man who seems to have rolled off the assembly line with zero filter.

We have logged dozens of hours together on the phone, over Thai and Indian lunches, on long drives around suburban Connecticut. I know a lot about this man. And at moments I thought, maybe a little too much.

“If he had a deep dark secret to share, I can't imagine that he wouldn't have gotten it off his”

chest by now. In order for me to live a life on the right path, I have to be fully responsible for my actions. Good, better and different. If I killed Martha Moxley, everyone would know because I wouldn't be able to stay sober. I wouldn't be able to live as a human being. I wouldn't be able to love. I wouldn't be able to be with my kid. So that brings us back to the masturbation and a tree story.

But if that's the only thing holding you back, then I ask you this. What if it wasn't Michael Skakele? But it was someone you knew personally. Your brother, your neighbor, your friend, maybe even your kid, sitting at the defendant's table, facing these charges. Would the same evidence that was brought against Michael be enough to convince you

“of their guilt? Could you confidently say, I believe beyond a reasonable doubt that this person”

killed Martha Moxley and would that be enough to justify a sentence of life in prison?

From where I stand, and for that matter where the justice system ultimately landed,

it's not enough. The standard for putting someone in prison for life should be higher. Michael spent 11 and a half years behind bars for the murder of Martha Moxley. But as he's told me many times, the pain of the story didn't end the day he walked out of prison, or after the state decided not to pursue a retrial. It continues to follow him to this day. Even to the place which he sees as a lifeline, a safe space, his daily AA meeting.

I've heard a woman in a meeting recently say, "Oh, you're from Connecticut,

“where you from," I say, "Gronach." She said, "Oh, that's where that damn Michael Skakele's from."”

So I hear that regularly too. But I'm a human. I'm just trying to live more like a human every day. I just want this to be gone. It's an experience that only a select few members of an unfortunate club can lay claim to, which led me to track down this person. My name is Amanda Knox. I'm most notoriously known for having been accused of my roommate's murder

when I was studying abroad in Italy in 2007. I was ultimately acquitted of that crime.

I'm Kullivaketo, Anchor of Noticias Telemundo. You can watch the online, the Hit True Crime series on Telemundo. And now, you can listen to the online as a podcast, a story of love and betrayal, of secrets 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, daylight, ines, by your wherever you get your podcasts and start listening.

Hey, it's Kate Snow and BC 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 McCail,

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 listen and follow the drink wherever you get your podcasts. If you ever needed to be persuaded that bad things can happen anywhere, then take a journey with us. From compelling mysteries to in-depth investigations, our data line episodes are available as podcasts. You can hear the latest stories

of every Tuesday. For more, follow "Date Line NBC" on Amazon Music, or just ask Alexa, play the podcast "Date Line NBC" on Amazon Music. Great story telling, with a twist from the true crime original. Few people are more intimately acquainted with the experience of being publicly accused, and then cleared of a high-profile homicide than Amanda Knox.

In 2007, after the then-20-year-old was charged with murdering her roommate while studying abroad in Italy, the case became a global sensation, and she, a figure of media obsession. The Foxy Knoxy of countless British tabloid headlines. The Italian authorities alleged an irresistibly taught-free storyline, a sex game gone wrong. A peruged jury bought it, and Knox spent nearly four years in prison before Italy's Supreme Court

overturned her conviction in 2015. What a wrongful conviction is, is another victimization that occurred as a result of the police or the detectives or the prosecutors directing

but then a different wrong thing happens as a consequence, and it leads to other victims arising.

“Once someone is accused of a crime, Knox told me, "It's hard to turn the ship of public perception”

around." It's more that their guilty until proven innocent, not their innocent until proven guilty, because there's a need for a sense of closure, there's a need for a sense of certainty. In fact, despite another man being convicted of the murder and no forensic evidence connecting her to the crime, the mother of the slain roommate until her death in 2020 continued to

harbor doubts about Knox despite her full exoneration. The family has never made any

conciliatory overtures to her. And what a lot of people in the true crime space say is that if you start expressing concern or tell the story of the wrongfully convicted person, that somehow negates or takes away from acknowledgment of the original victim. She's actually coined a term for this phenomenon. The single victim fallacy. Michael says he's experienced it himself. The idea that even raising questions about his guilt

is somehow an affront to the memory of Martha Moxley, a pointless exercise that only serves to retraumatize her grieving family. Knox says this is a familiar dynamic. I felt that personally in my own life to the extent that I've had people who even are supporters of mine say things to me like, "Well, you know, I'm glad that you're free and I'm glad that you're living your life." But can you be a little bit like less visible because it's kind of an

offense to the memory of your dead roommate that you get to live your life as if like me being a life. Just the very fact that I am alive today is somehow an offense to the memory of the original victim. Being murdered or being the loved one of a murder victim is obviously the ultimate trauma, but it's far from the only trauma a human can experience. And I think, as you've seen,

“that this case is wrought endless pain to many, many people. The only way to really provide”

justice to both Martha and all the collateral victims of the case would be to finally get a

definite incontrovertible conclusion about who killed her and crucially who didn't. But until that happens, for stories like Martha's, there is no happy ending. Her savage murder took a profound toll on all who knew and loved her. None more than her parents, Dorothy and David and her brother John. Nothing is ever going to bring you sister back. No, nothing's ever going to put a bomb on the pain all these years. What would you like to happen?

It's anything makes sense for you at this point. I'd like to wake up and find out that I'm 17 and yeah, I have a whole life in front of me. Nothing will ever change. There'll be no satisfaction. There'll be no closure. It's something that will live with every day of our life. It's part of who we are and what we are. Martha's father died of a heart attack at age 57 in 1988. I asked John McCray to about his former boss and friends relatively premature death.

McCray, you may recall. Pressently told David Moxley on the day Martha was found that he feared the grudders police were not up to the task of solving her murder. He then spent years advocating on behalf of the Moxley family with authorities. David died very young. He died at 57. Do you think that this crime, do you think that this had any effect on him? Oh yeah, in fact, I think it killed him. I think the fact that he, with all of his

brains and all of his energy and all of his relationships, the fact that he couldn't solve this,

“you know, I broke his heart. You know, when you go through something like that, you never forget it.”

And of course, it's never over. You're reaching out was a reminder that this has never really been

solved. So it's one of those things that hangs over you. And it's a big, big disappointment because we didn't solve it. We couldn't work our way through the fog. Over and over in my reporting, I've heard people tell me how this case is left in an indelible, painful mark on them. Former Bell Haven teens Peter Comerswami and Sheila McGuire told me that this event 50 years ago continues to yield aftershocks and in many ways has determined how they engage with the

world. Not a lot of people that go through something like that and come out with a world view that is like it was before. And I don't think people are willing to understand

there's just so much that wasn't done. I mean, there's just so many questions that I have

“that sometimes make me want to just scream into the wind. When Michael Skakele's father died in”

2003, the headline of his New York Times-O-Bit Red rushed and Skakele is dead at 79,

father of killer. And regardless of how the world ultimately comes down on his

guilt or innocence, when Michael dies, he'll likely experience something similar. Newspapers will inevitably link his name with a girl he'd only known for a few months and it will appear that the sum total of his life occurred on one single tragic evening 50 years ago. Somehow he's able to be philosophical about it. Being Michael Skakele has been a blessing and a curse. I've met some profoundly great people in this world, kind people, good people, and yet at the same time,

because of what this trial, this case did to me, people only know what they know. They only know what that box and they're living room tells them. And most of it's just been bold face lies. That's all I'm going to say. I don't want to shine the light on somebody else. It's been a long journey bringing this podcast into the world. A year and a half in production

before that years and years of reporting. This case has been my life's work. Since first digging

in my two little boys have grown to man size, I've lost a lot of hair and the little the remains has gone totally gray. I've been so deep in this for so long that as it finally winds down,

“I'm honestly at a loss as to what I'm going to do with myself for the rest of my life.”

I can't imagine that I will have the energy to pursue anything else as long or as hard as I have chased this story. Ultimately, I didn't uncover the identity of Martha's killer and I'm not particularly optimistic that anyone ever will. But who knows? Hope springs eternal.

Maybe this exercise will serve to finally dislodge something stuck in the universe.

I do think someone out there knows what happened. And if there ever are some new revelations, thanks to some signs that doesn't yet exist, a guilty conscience finally relieved, well, I expect you'll hear from me again. Until then, I'm Andrew Goldman and it has been my

“honor to present to you dead certain the Martha Moxley murder.”

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 Patel is our story editor. Fact checking by Simone Vuto and Laura Hongkodea,

production assistance by Brendan Wiesel, sound designed by Rick Kwan, Marc Yoshizumi and Bob Mallory, original music by John Esties. Amanda Moore is our production manager and Marissa Riley is the director of production. Liz Cole is president of NBC News Studios. The production would like to offer very special thanks to Robin Goldman, Darren Winslow, Michael Toney, Mary Nunan, Paul Ryan, Andy Bird, Ethan Goldman, Allison Benedict,

Marcie Cleary, Andrew Rice, Vanessa Grigoriades, Alex Zacardi, Layling Jew, Dominique Donahue, Nick Oftenberg, Susan Nahl, Veronica Fulton, Abby Bushe, Lauren Andrew LeVitch, Miranda Patterson, Garrett McCloskey, Drew Roger Conrad, Franny Kelly, Anne Shilly, Kevin Lockhart, Roger Rhodes, Lauren McDowell, and George Shiro. This podcast has been a production of NBC News Studios and highly replaceable productions.

(gentle music)