The Joker

Can you all hear me, okay?

The good news here is that you can put the pen as a way there is no citations. This is absolutely the entertainment section of this seminar, hopefully. I also bring the Narcissist TV lawyer definition to a new hive. I'm only going to talk about this one case and having fun with it. On October 18th, 2001, Las Vegas was pretty much a ghost town.

A month before terrorists had flown passenger jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Americans understandably weren't in the mood to fly anywhere or celebrate anything. Casinos on the strip had laid off thousands of workers. Jay Leno came in and performed a few free shows for anyone in town who felt like laughing. But it turns out, the tonight's show host wasn't the only funny man headlining in Vegas.

Michael Skakels attorney, Mickey Sherman, the self-described Narcissist TV lawyer you just heard from. Was standing in a windowless hotel ballroom in front of about 50 defense attorneys who were earning continuing legal education hours, which state bars require attorneys. Michael Skakels' trial was still six months away, but his defense attorney had much to share, about not only his legal strategy, but his philosophy on trying a big case, specifically Michael Skakels.

He began by providing his media bonafights. I'm one of those schmucks every night on one of the shows, talking about, you know, whatever bullshit case is going on, whether it's OJ or Menendez or whatever, and I've had a couple of high profile cases, nothing like this, but I thought that I know how to handle this. I can deal with the media and boy, the Zyroh, the most damnied part about this case is the

“slant and the media bias, and that's what my lecture is about.”

So I'm going to start sure off, I've got a bunch of video stuff to bore you to tears. Sherman proceeded to give his twist on the old expression, "If you love what you do, you won't work a day in your life." I think you got to have fun with it. I mean, too many people just look upon our jobs as

absolute judges and the trenches, and for better perverse, I've never been someone like that.

I certainly have fun with it, and I probably have too much fun, which will probably be the primary criticism you have. Criticism and a lot of it, as you'll learn, is exactly what was heading down the pipe for Sherman. Though, at that time, he probably didn't see it coming. In his Vegas presentation, in an ethically questionable move, Sherman provided a bit of history

of his two-plus years representing Michael in various hearings. How he had argued that because the crime had been committed when Michael was 15, he should have been tried as a juvenile, which would mean that he would serve no prison time of convicted. The state had captured that because Michael was now 41, he should be charged as an adult. We then finally come, we got a reasonable glossary, not a probable glossary, but a reasonable

glossary. I have no idea what that means. I want to do these news conferences outside the court. I was people would say, "Well, in the juvenile court, what happens here?" I don't know.

I've never handled a juvenile court case, which will give my client a lot of feelings of confidence.

My better line usually is, "When asked me a question, I don't know the answer,

“because I don't know. You should check with the legal expert on that." Mickey's jokes glossed over”

the fact that he'd batted a big goose egg in court. Michael was ultimately charged as an adult. For many lawyers, that day might have signal ignominious defeat, but you wouldn't know it from how Sherman depicted the loss. He followed up with an anecdote about yucking it up at a restaurant with Italian-American character actors Vincent, Corritola, and Dominic, Cheyennezzi.

This is really a stable. That night, as most of you would be in a law library researching, instead, I went out to New York with friends and went out to dinner to have fun. And the guys I was with are two of the guys in the show The Supraines. Uncle Junior and Vinny, who's head of the New York mom, and Amitam for dinner, that's the way I research my case. They are railing as Amitiro.

I said, "Would you get the guy got arrested? How can you guys think I'm doing a good job?" "Are you shitin' me the way you got used to look, they're told me to go fuck themselves?"

“That was the best thing I could have ever done. These guys were so, they were so proud of me.”

People were comin' their rest, they said, "Simikitae, yeah, it's the only go fuck themselves." "Oh man, what a lipless test." That's a true story. Sherman hadn't actually told anyone to eff themselves that day, but no matter, he then cycled through dozens of media clips.

He explained he had them all because he had a VCR at the ready at home, so he could hit the record button whenever he was on TV. Everything he played, either featured him, or talking heads talking about him, like Dominic Dunn. Has anyone ever read any of Dunn's books? He hates defense lawyers.

I think so, everybody's guilty. But then Sherman played a clip of Dunn complimenting one of his cross examinations.

He discussed some of the books written about the case. With some surprising capsule reviews. And the last one is Mark Furman's blank book Murder and Grange. You may remember the role this book played in the Moxley case. How it's publication coincided with the state's attorney's decision to call a grand jury,

and ultimately prosecute Michael.

“How could Sherman describe as brilliant the book that God is client-tried for murder?”

Well, he provided an answer. Actually, he and I had become good friends because we do we do all these TV shows together, and we scream at each other and then we go out to dinner and stuff like that. So I guess I'm somewhat hypocritical. He offered insight into his novel media strategy,

relating how he'd recently been pursued by Tina Brown, the magazine editor, who wanted an interview with Sherman for her new magazine talk. I actually worked for Tina and talk magazine at this time. It's a pretty small world we're dealing with. It was Tina Brown who, you might recall,

resuscitated Dominic Dunn's career when she hired him to write about his daughter's murder for vanity fair.

Like I said, small world. Sherman said he initially resisted Tina's solicitations. It's a murder trial. I don't want to piss anybody off. I make too many comments about it. Now I should do it.

So she started having me invited to all the eight parties in New York. I'm getting invited to the launch party for sex in the city. I'm going, I'm just going to the great parties and have it a great time. And I said, Tina, you're playing me like a fine-stradivarius and it's working.

“As I said, the narcissism and that you have to understand that the case isn't”

about you, it's about your client and the defense. Here's where I went into a few states and just totally, totally forgot about that. I still didn't want to do it. So she says, all right, I'll do the interview anywhere you want. Like, anywhere? She says, yeah, okay, the Academy Awards and all the cool parties. And this is what happens.

Sherman says Brown secured him tickets to the 2000 Academy Awards. He acknowledged that he'd been hearing from attorneys who'd represented high profile clients and were concerned about how much they've seen his mug on TV, including Barry's Czech. Co-founder of the Innocence Project and one of O.J. Simpson's so-called Dream Team lawyers. Meanwhile, Barry's Czech was a good friend and a great advisor on these things.

I just sent me an email, make a do-in-a-good job, keep below the radar, keep the public appearances down. Mickey didn't keep below the radar. For years to come, he could be seen splashed across television screens,

“reveling in the media attention of the scaquel case.”

It is probably a cable TV event with his defense attorney, Mickey Sherman, a frequent guest. This also joining us now here in the studio is Michael Sherman, a criminal defense attorney. Joining me now, Mark Ferman, and still with me, Mickey Sherman, who was a prosecutor. A little over a decade after his resounding defeat at the hands of prosecutor Jonathan Benedict,

Sherman once again found himself in a courtroom for the scaquel case, though he no longer represented Michael. The glow of his earlier celebrity had faded and the jovial energy of his vagus seminar was muted, but nonetheless, all eyes were on him. Michael's conviction fought relentlessly by his appellate attorneys was it a precipice.

If the lawyers could prove that Mickey Sherman had provided ineffective counsel to his most famous client, there was a chance Michael's guilty verdict could be vacated. The question that hung in the air, with Michael's freedom in the balance, "Head Mickey Sherman, with his press junkets and celebrity parties, like Icarus, flown too close to the sun?"

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

In Connecticut tonight, a verdict that many seasoned trial washers said would never happen.

Twenty-seven years after a young woman named Martha Moxley was found dead at her home, a jury has convicted a Kennedy relative of her murder. On Friday, June 7, 2002, minutes after the verdict in Michael's scaquel's trial was announced, Sherman stepped in front of the failings of reporters and expressed his deep disappointment. All right, let me make a few comments to save a couple of questions.

Yes, we are bitterly disappointed. There's no way to hide it. It's certainly the most upsetting verdict I've ever had or will ever have in my life. But I will tell you as long as there's a breath on my body, this case is not over as far as I'm concerned. Sherman's quest to fight for Michael's release, however, couldn't begin that day,

because he was doing mid-town to do Larry King Live on CNN, alongside Dominic Dunn and John and Dorothy Moxley. Dunn, of course, had been as pleasantly surprised by the scaquel conviction as he had been

That was high drama. Absolutely high drama. Dorothy Moxley, a woman I admire

enormously, has finally got justice. Dunn couldn't have asked for better timing to be all over the press,

because less than two weeks later, his court TV show, power privilege and justice premiered. Its cover art featuring his face, set in front of an illustration that looks remarkably like the scaquel's bell-haven mansion. A love-mobile in the drive, dozens of hundred dollar bills reigning from the sky. Four days after the verdict, court TV threw a party in Dunn's honor, in a mid-town Manhattan restaurant with sweeping views of the city.

One bold-faced name mentioned in the New York Daily News coverage of the party caught the scaquel's eyes. Mickey Sherman. Dunn was quoted in the paper saying Sherman was the only defense attorney he'd ever spoken to after any trial he'd covered. Seeing coverage of Mickey Sherman at a party, celebrating one of the primary architects of Michael's prosecution disappointed the scaquel family, but didn't exactly surprise them.

One day during the trial, the scaquel's had watched a guest, as Dunn, followed by a smiling Sherman climbed out of the same limousine. And Sherman seemed to spend an awful lot of time clowning around with Mark Furman too. Bobby Kennedy wrote in his book that at one point, he called Sherman during trial and told him that behavior was killing Michael's morale. I can't help it Bobby said he told him, I'm a suck-up. After Michael's conviction,

Sherman did visit him at Gardner Prison in Newtown. Mickey did come to see me, but it was after days and days. And when he did, he called the press conference and he showed up on his Harley, which the prison was really angry about, because they, I don't know, whatever he did really got the angry. You know, and the first words out of his mouth were, again, we'll beat them on a peel. Don't worry about this. We're going to peel this.

He showed up once more a week or two later and never appeared again.

Within a few days of the verdict, Michael brought on a new team of lawyers to handle the appellate process. As I've mentioned, I spent a lot of time pouring over Michael's trial transcripts. One thing I am not is an attorney, but some of the things that happened during the trial seemed odd to me. Starting with those a lot of confession testimonies we talked about last episode. And the more I stood on the trial, the more things I identified that seemed seriously wrong about

what had happened in that courtroom. We're going to talk through all of it. But at this point, I needed some perspective. Mickey Sherman wasn't responding to calls or emails to his office,

“and I've since heard he's an assisted living. So that's how I ended up here.”

All right, with the record show, Linda's wielding the five iron. Six iron. Six iron. It's a rainy Saturday morning. I'm in a high-tech media room in the luxurious Manhattan high-rise apartment building where Linda Kenny Bodden lives. I didn't even know media rooms and fancy buildings were a thing until the door man ushered me in. I thought initially, I would sort of ask you to introduce yourself who you are, what your relationship is to the case.

I usually, I'm pretty okay with microphones, but normally the attached to my left health. Hi, my name is Linda Kenny Bodden. I am a trial attorney. Kenny Bodden was briefly part of Michael's defense team and has been an informal advisor of legal matters since. When I reached out to her, I was surprised that she'd asked me to bring along a six iron golf club. A soon learned why. As soon as I dropped my bag, she grabbed the club and started swinging it at my face in slow motion.

“I was apparently standing in for Martha Moxley. Well, it's a souvenir hit here, right?”

Wack, and that's the imprint. She has striations right here on her chin, right? She's got imprint marks from the golf club. In the autopsy photos, there's a deep horseshoe shaped wound on Martha's forehead. They quite perfectly lines up with the markings on its honypanic club head, as well as scratches on her chin. When I still look through those pictures last night,

first I've seen her in a color. When I look at it, that imprint's not made. It's not made when she's on the

ground. The side of the print because you can't, you can't get there. She's standing up. She begins laying her fingers on the grip of the club. We're called at the handle of the Tony Penis six iron with its leather at grip bearing Anne's Hackel's name was missing from the crime scene. The prosecution argued that there was an obvious reason it would be taken to hide the last name of the murderer. But was there an equally plausible explanation? So why would you take a grip?

If it's broken off, because you want to take your fingerprints away. I mean, everybody knows

“it's a telling me kind of golf club. The only thing here worried about is the fingerprints on the”

golf club. I haven't expected all this action. As she simulated killing me over and over,

defended Michael at trial. I was getting a glimpse of what might have been. I've known Kenny Bodden for now close to a decade, where I ever arrested for murdering someone famous. She would absolutely be the recipient of my one free jail house phone call. Kenny Bodden's a Jersey girl. She's flashy, patent leather shoes with a big buckle spelling Chanel or eye catching. But not quite as eye catching is their oddly shaped pointed fuchsia those nails. I was just in my eyes like a metallic kind of

a fantastic. Thank you. They're actually called often nails. I went to crime cons, so I had them reshaped for crime cons. I'm not at all surprised to learn that Linda Kenny Bodden was booked to crime cons. She's a big deal in the true crime world. Both for her own resume, on the defense teams of big-name murder defendants like Casey Anthony and Aaron Hernandez. But also because she's part of a true crime power couple. Since 2000, she's been married to famed

forensic pathologist Michael Bodden. He's a contributor on Fox News and when we spoke in 2023, she was a host on the lawn crime network. Everybody wants to be on TV for some reason, but what

“will get you on TV is being prepared and being a good lawyer. I think I mean, I would be embarrassed”

if I went to a case on prepared. Kenny Bodden hasn't just been on TV plenty. Her work has also been portrayed on TV. In the 2013 HBO movie Phil Spectre, they're going to convict him if I just don't like you. Well then, he's going to need a good lawyer. Kenny Bodden served as Spectre's attorney in his first murder trial. An earned his freedom. I'll be at temporarily. After a hung jury led to a mistrial. Al Pacino played the title role of the music producer

with a love of crazy wigs and handguns. And Kenny Bodden? That's not forgotten. Hell and mayor. I know. That was very honored to be played by her and very honored. I gave it a map. It took the time to write a screenplay about my client. I say my client. He says about me. I say my client. The distinction Kenny Bodden makes may sound like a small point, but in whole world it is incredibly important. Top to your trial attorneys in high profile cases get a lot of attention

and can develop enormous egos. A pitfall is forgetting that their clients must always be the

priority. Because there are few responsibilities I imagine are more daunting, frightening even. Then preparing to defend someone against the charge is serious as murder. One that could deprive them of their freedom for decades or even the rest of their lives. The ones who are truly great at it, sweat the details and prepare is if their own lives depend on the verdict. And that's

“why the one thing I lack in my life is sleep because I do prepare. Preparation is pretty much”

everything. And I'm never as prepared as I want to be even though I'm probably overly prepared or more prepared than many people. Mickey Sherman, as you may have ensued it from that lecture

we played at the top of the episode, is a different kind of defense attorney. And he always had

been. And he might have just remained a hammy made for TV lawyer with a raging ego. But the thing about seeking the spotlight is sometimes it shines where you don't want it to. Welcome to Ashfield Place, the safest, safest town in America. This is Lecrazy, starring Emmy Award winner Kiki Palmer. So what's the deal with that old Victorian house? There have been whispers of murder murder. Our small towns just the best, just given it get out.

“The birds, streaming now, only on peacock. So I'm going to go in. Do white ladies love salads?”

Hell yeah we're going in. Arriving every week. Just search, they'd like an inspired whatever 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 celebrities 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

wherever you get your podcasts.

After squeaking through you con law with straight season the early 1970s, Mickey Sherman struggled to make ends meet working public sector jobs in Stanford. With a wife and two young kids to feed, he decided to try his hand at being a professional game-show contestant, but soon realized the money wouldn't be steady enough. So he returned to private practice, developing a reputation as a courthouse gesture. In 1985, he represented the pro wrestler at the Iron Cheek, charged with

roughing up a gas station attendant on the Connecticut turnpike. And hosted a video taped appeal for a leniency featuring a number of wrestling stars like classy Freddie Blassie.

Your honor is well aware that the chic has been charged with assault in the third degree in

Bridgeport Connecticut. Right now we have Freddie Blassie his well-known manager. I'd like you to tell Judge Rahman and the prosecutor what you're just a man in your best will not get going and interrupt me. Keep quiet, Sherman. Once Sherman was defending a man charged with shooting a duck from his yacht and shut up to court with two webbed feet sticking out of his briefcase. Sherman was a jokester whose bread and butter was defending Connecticut residents pop for drunk driving.

Linda Kenny Button was also aware of another facet of Sherman. I knew of his reputation

“winning the case of the PTSD for the veteran and I think that's how everybody knew”

me because that was a big deal to win that case. In 1989, in Stanford, in broad daylight, a 41-year-old Vietnam veteran named Roger Lygon shot an unarmed 22-year-old man three times in the chest, back, and head, killing him, following an argument over a parking space. Siding PTSD from the horrible things Lygon witnessed at war, Sherman secured a not guilty by insanity verdict. The case was broadcast in full by the just launched court TV. Sherman was overnight

both a legal star and a star in the new business of TV lawyers. So when Sherman called Kenny Button in early 2000 about the scaquel case, she was happy to hear from him. Sherman wanted her help on suppressing statements Michael had made at the Alon school and knew she'd had prior success with similar issues. When Kenny Button arrived at Sherman's Stanford office for a meeting with a legal team, she came loaded for bear on not just the Alon issue,

but the entire case. I know this because I've marveled over a memo she prepared and distributed to Sherman and the five other attorneys crowded into his office. It would be more than two years before the trial commenced, but Kenny Button had already pieced together a roadmap that could have

guided the entire defense strategy and possibly led to an acquittal. Ultimately, she wasn't

retained as part of Michael's defense team, but she continued to observe from the sidelines. I was watching what was going on in the case because Michael was still as far as I was concerned my client, even though I was not part of the case. So I wanted to keep watching and I would send notes

“and things and calls say you should be doing this, you should be doing that. And they're just”

being, you know, nowhere. The first two weeks of September of 2001, 8 months before Michael's trial would commence. Kenny Button and her husband happened to be speaking at a biological sciences conference into brotherhood Croatia. Steven Skakele, then working for AmeriCarees, using DNA to identify Bosnian word-dead discovered in mass graves, also happened to be there. Kenny Button asked to have a word with him. You know, I hemmed it all, then I said, I see that I talked to you,

and your brother is going to be convicted if he keeps Nikki as his attorney. What's the answer? He saw it and he said, Linda, there's not much I can do about it. Michael was so wedded to Mickey. He rides his motorcycle with him. He's like he's his friend, and Michael's so invested in what Mickey has told him about that the case that I can't, there's nothing I can do better. Sherman instilled great confidence in Michael. Who at that juncture would have certainly been

yearning for some. I'm not a lawyer. I can only take, I was confident because of people I had confident and trust in, trust in him. I asked Steven Skakele about his thoughts on Sherman. He keeps kind of hitting me because I said, I was talking to Linda about it, and she said, Michael, you know, they were riding motorcycles. Michael was, he was believing what Mickey was

“telling him at the time. We the whole family, we are. Yeah. What was he telling you?”

Oh, this would be a slam dunk. He'll probably be an easy case. There's no evidence. No eyewitnesses. Michael makes that analogy sometimes and it seems kind of ridiculous, but you

Despite some early red flags, Michael stuck with the guy flying his plane, even as Sherman

“continued to eject his copilot. By the time Michael Skakele's trial began, Sherman's dream team”

consisted of four lawyers. himself, his sudden mark, just three and a half years out from passing the bar with limited criminal law experience, 28 year old Jason Throne, who graduated the University

of Florida Law School, and only two and a half years prior had passed the bar. And finally,

there was a 27 year old Canadian emigrate named Stefan Sieger, who at that point had get to work on a murder case. Sieger told me he was a little freaked out to discover he'd stepped into some legal equivalent of the hunger games. Linda Kenny's great, you know, I really enjoy her style, sort of like more consistent with the way I would approach a case and then she's there one day and then she's gone the next. Gridberg's there one day and then he's gone the next. That's attorney David

Gridberg, who is part of Michael's defense team. And as a young lawyer and I think I've told people this before, like I would wake up every day and think, man, we got a meeting today, maybe I'm on the chopping block today. I mean, you know, if they can chop Gridberg or they can chop Linda Kenny, I mean certainly I could get shot. I don't know. You might have a guest or two, hold tight. We'll come back to that. But what's clear already is that things were looking a bit

strange in Sherman's trial preparations. Still, even if Kenny Botten was gone, Sherman had her memo, all he had to do was read and follow it. One of the items at the top of her list was jury pool and jury consultant. Whenever I try a hard profile case or where I have a big case, it's with a lot of money, I have a trial. It used to be called jury consultant. It's now called trial consultant, really. What is our jury pool going to be? So I had said right off the

“bad that that's what we should be looking at to start with. But Sherman did exactly the opposite.”

Operating solo without the help of a trial consultant during four-year jury selection,

Mickey Sherman, Nariah dream team in sight, did something incredible. On April 4th, 2002,

a 40-year-old man named Brian Wood stepped into the box. Sherman looked over his jury questionnaire, but he didn't really need to. They already knew each other a bit. Wood was a dairy and cop. Here's how the interview began. There's no audio, so I'll read both parts. Sherman, and I'm trying to remember, I can't even tell you the cases that you and I have dealt with. Anything that I should remember, anything significant? Wood. Tuchinardi.

Got assaulted 11 years ago by him. Sherman, my client assaulted you? Wood. Yes. Sherman continued by asking if Wood knew any Greenwich cops who had worked on the Moxley case. In fact, Wood told him he wrote motorcycles with his friend Jim Loney. You might recall that Loney was the Greenwich cop, who, along with his partner Tom Keegan,

was the first detective assigned to the Martha Moxley murder in 1975.

And who stayed on the case for 12 years, through his 1987 retirement. Loney was the bad cop of the duo, the one who liked grabbing lapels. He was also a longtime partner of none other than detective Frank Gar. So what did Sherman do about the dairy and cop, who had once been assaulted by one of his clients, and was close friends with a detective who had spent years of his life trying to put his

scapegoat away. He picked him for the jury. Vito Calucci was Sherman's primary investigator on the scapegoat case. He'd been a long time detective with a Stanford police department before becoming a PI and had deep ties in the Fairfield County law enforcement community. He wasn't in court that day, but he heard what happened later. I knew many people on the theory of police department. I remember the night that

one of the top cops here called me up and said, "You better talk to Mickey Sherman." I said, "Why?" He said, "He just put Brian Wood on the jury." I said, "What?" He said, "The scene that's for some." I called Mickey late that night. I said, "You put Brian Wood?" He said, "Yes, yes. That's going to really look good that we won the case." And I had a cop on it. I said, "Oh, Mick, I don't know what you're doing."

And the more I talk about it now, the more I drink to myself as I'm talking to you, that this was craziness by him. And what I wondered was Kenny Bodden's reaction when she heard this news? The reaction was, "What the fuck are you doing?" That meant the reaction.

“I mean, I hate to be vocal, but that's the reaction. And what the fucking you're doing?”

Putting a police officer on the jury. Why don't you? Because we all know that there's a commodity with police officers. You're not going to put him on the jury. I don't care what they say. I could be fair or not. You're just not. It's the most ridiculous thing. He wasn't done, though. Sherman failed to use one of his 19 parental re-challenges to dismiss

with Dorothy Moxley. Copeland became jury number six.

“Why would you do that? They're invested in the case. How are they going to go back to the”

friend and say, you know, I found them not guilty? They can't. Sherman would later say that he had Michael way in on every juror, but Michael, of course, was not the criminal defense equivalent of the adult in the room. But Sherman wasn't done setting out apparently to run a completely backwards defense. Back to Linda Kenny Bodden's agenda, which laid out such a clear effective trial strategy. Another of the items on our list,

picks of Michael back at the time of the crime to show how small he was. During the investigation, the state seemed to be of the opinion that their killer or killers would be capable of great force. Connecticut's chief criminalist, Dr. Henry Lee, told her reporter in the mid 90s, "We do know there's a lot of strength involved, okay? Because it is brutal, brutal murder,

“and you need a lot of strength." Anyone who's seen the autopsy photos would have to”

compare. You see that wheel in that golf club knows those wounds. That's somebody, you know, that's not like a little runt. That's somebody who's angry and strong and also because she had to be dragged, 80 feet. So that wasn't somebody who could drag somebody who's at that point

basically dead weight, 80 feet. You know, if you saw Michael, who was, was he 41 at the time he was

tried. I mean he was a big hooking guy by then. But in 1975 he was a big hooking guy. He was a little tiny, you know, kid. I mean basically he was a kid. I mean he was just as much a kid as more of the moxley was a kid. Recall, when Michael arrived at the along school in 1978, three years after the murder, fellow classmates Kim Freehill was shocked at how undersized he was. He was a weaklet. He was a short. At trial, the prosecution introduced a family photo that Michael's childhood

“friend Andy Pew testified depicted Michael looking just as he had in the mid 70s when Martha”

Moxley was murdered. In the photo taken with his father and siblings, Michael's good looking curly-haired surfer-type team. And he's strapping, perhaps physically capable of the crime. But there was a problem. The photo wasn't taken in 1975. It was taken four years later. When Michael was 19. Sherman only introduced one photo of Michael. Taken in 1977. So sure,

there's still never got to see what Michael looked like in 1975.

As you might be able to guess by now, Michael's alcoholic father, Rush Skakele, wasn't the kind of man who kept meticulously cataloged photo albums. So after the guilty verdict, his brother Stephen Skakele went hunting to find someone who might have an actual picture of Michael from 1975. We had gone for years every thanksgiving down to Florida to a place to see the spending with my grandparents. And another family that the father worked with my father.

So him and his family would come as well. And they took photos every year. I asked them to look through to carousels of slides. And they couldn't find any from that contemporary year. I said, "Do you mind if I look?" Going through each slide, Stephen II thought he'd come up short. But then he squinted into one showing two people playing doubles on a tennis court. The figure on the right was clearly his brother Rush

Junior. The skinny last with a long hair on the left? I thought it was a girl. But I looked at that and I looked in the light. I was like, "Don't have to be Michael." Is the slide dated? Yes it is. You can show me the date. I mean because people last, they'll say, "Oh, you're playing fast and loose." Stephen showed me that slide, which has a stamped imprint of the date it was developed.

December 1975. When I laid eyes on it for the first time, I gasped.

Stephen was right. Michael looked like a girl and not even a very big girl. I know from experience that 15-year-old boys could be big. My son Charlie's 15. He wrestles. He lifts weight. He's 5-11 with huge size 11 feet and a 34-inch waist. He's a little gauky, but he's basically adult size. But the Michael in this photo looked so tiny next to his own 19-year-old brother Rush Junior, skinny legs, likely prepubescent. If I had to gas, he's no taller than 5-7 with a waist

certainly no bigger than 29 inches. Stephen subsequently found another photo taken on a sailboat and then tuck it in the summer of 1975. Same thing, feminine, slight, and tragically sweet look at. Showing the photo years later during an appellate yearning, Sherman didn't even recognize that it was Michael. Sherman blew it again.

screw ups. I could spend an entire season enumerating the things that Mickey Sherman did or more accurately failed to do that doomed his client. But here are just a few. He didn't explain the concept of, or for that matter, even utter the words, reasonable doubt, during his closing arguments. Something that floored Tommy Skakele's attorney of 20 years, many Margotless. I kept waiting for reasonable doubt. Any time you're in a criminal case, reasonable doubt,

you start with that, you end with that. I never heard it. Not once.

And then there were the two Rochester New York cops who Mickey's investigator, Fido Colucci, later testified in a post-conviction hearing, he asked Mickey to reach out to. Mickey didn't even tell me to do it. I just know my own as that was uncovering things. I spoke to both of them. They knew Greg Colman. They didn't, and they thought maybe it was a

“crane call, because when I told him he was the key witness for the prosecution, they said,”

"No, no way. This guy's a heavy duty drug addict. You can't believe anything he says. They had a ton of dealings with him and the past arresting him." And they said, "Well, gladly go to court, testify or let out for your veto." So, as soon as I ended the interview, I literally ran into Mickey's office. Just to tell Nick, you got to talk to these two guys through Rochester Policemen, they can blow the case open on the star witness, Greg Colman.

He said, "Okay, no problem. No problem, guys. No problem, guys." No problem, Guy, became a Mickey Sherman mantra whenever Colucci asked for updates on potential witnesses. Colucci told me that in addition to the two Rochester Policemen, he also visited with Greg Colman's mother and brother before the trial. Colucci says they told him that they overheard Colman's conversation with Gar,

with as Tim say he heard Michael Skickle confess it along. They said it shocked and confused them. Yeah, um, after Frank Gar left the interview with Greg Colman, Greg's mother and Greg's brother said, "What the heck were you talking about? We didn't know anything about that. You, you know, you made that all up. You know, that was true. Why didn't go into all of that?" And his exact words were at least what they told me was, "Be quiet. I'm going to get a reward for this."

Did you tell Mickey that you'd had a conversation with the mother and the brother and

“presumably these would have been witnesses? No? But yeah, yeah. I don't really remember how he handled”

that. But he didn't bring them in. So he got closer to the court. I would say, "Mek, you've got to call this this person here. You've got to call that person there." Yeah, I don't worry. It came to where it was the week before the court started. And I would ask him, "You didn't call any of these people?" And he said, "No, he didn't." And he thought in his mind the case he was going to be a flam dunk. That he would need that. Sherman also failed to hire an expert witness to contextualize

the Alon Confession testimony. And there was an obvious choice for this, Richard Offsha, a University of California Berkeley sociologist, considered the go-to expert on the topic of coercive social control and so-called influence interrogation. Offsha had specifically studied how the power structures and social dynamics of institutions like synonyne, which Alon was modeled upon,

“can breed false confessions. At one of Michael's appeals, Offsha testified that Sherman”

instead of bringing in a real expert tried to play one in the courtroom, offering his own analysis

on how Alon functioned. The judge shut him down so that Jerry never got any expert insights.

And for years, Steven Skakele has been telling me that right after Michael's conviction, he went to Sherman's office to collect all the case materials. There were three boxes of police files. One had pages that look like they'd been reviewed. There were wrinkled, thick the way pages get after they'd been handled. But the other two boxes? Don't even look like they were had been gone through when you go through papers that they seemed as if they were just copied

that FedExor can cause. It didn't look like there were any doggears on the papers. It didn't look, it didn't look like there was no notations on them. Steven believes that Mickey

may have never even looked at a substantial chunk of printed discovery. If he's right,

it would be just one of the many indicators that Mickey wasn't totally on top of the evidence in Michael's case. I recently came across a letter on prosecutor Jonathan Benedict Stationary

R informs me that no one from your office has yet reviewed or copied any of the large number of

“cassette tapes that were made in the course of witness interviews during the investigation of the case.”

These are essentially all recordings of interviews that are recited in the body of police reports with which you were furnished in the state's initial disclosures. Benedict included a 24-page inventory. 85 cassettes and 11 real-to-real tapes, some of which you've heard in this series. With only weeks until the biggest trial of his career commenced, apparently neither Sherman nor anyone from his office had bothered to even look at them. I kept coming across more and more

obvious signs that Mickey might have been a bit distracted. Steven's cake will recall some

becoming more and more disengaged as the trial went on. He's been, you know, at lunch time every day,

in the beginning, he ate with us. Then I'd worked and we didn't see him. He was either giving

“interviews or hanging out with the media at lunch and not us, which was infuriating and going out,”

you know, I'm not like party. I don't know what he was doing. I didn't see him. Sherman's had just didn't seem to be in the game. Steven mentioned that on more than one occasion, Sherman showed up to court looking exhausted. I asked Chris Steele, the bodyguard Mickey hired, who was also there before court every morning. Steven said to me once that they showed up at trial in the car, and he kind of had this feeling that Mickey might have actually even been up all night,

like out all night. Easily. Really? The man was living a rock star lifestyle to try and mirror

and keep up with his rock star best friend. That rock star best friend being steals other client, Michael Bolton. I don't want to damn anyone's behaviors, but anything is possible when you are living it up on someone else's dime. The more I learned about the case, the more unbelievable it became. Mickey's defense of Michael wasn't just weak. It was baffling. And just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, it did. 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 deadline episodes are available as podcasts. You can hear the latest stories of every Tuesday. For more, follow dateline NBC on Amazon Music, or just ask Alexa, play the podcast dateline NBC on Amazon Music. Great story telling, "With a twist from the true crime original." Stay informed with the NBC News app. Breaking news just coming in moments ago. Watch,

read and listen throughout your day. And now, unlock even more with a subscription. It's the best of NBC News with fewer add interruptions, including Adfree Articles, podcasts, and full NBC News shows. Plus, deeper access and exclusive content. Let's just take a step back. It's more context and clarity from the reporters you trust. Download the NBC News app now and subscribe for more. One of the more bizarre stories I heard about Mickey Sherman was told to me by private investigator

Vito Colucci. In the lead-up to Michael's trial, Colucci said, sure and had a fling with a female client who, after one of their dates went south, was furious. The following day, she walked straight into his office and stole his laptop from his desk. Here's Colucci. Now, I got a call, a panic call for Mickey. They get off. They don't pee. She took my computer. Well, I don't know where the heck she is. I got to all my notes. I got my closing on there. Everything. You got to get it back.

She was going to make copies of everything and Google the best to hurt him in some kind of way. Colucci went to the woman's house where he encountered a frantic man in his underwear, who said that not only had the woman stolen Sherman's laptop, she had stolen his car. Cops were called. And after several hours, both car and laptop were returned to their owners. Track that. You know, that's a little bit of how the cage went. Andrew, you know.

There were just so many wild stories about Mickey. I had a hard time wrapping my head around. How someone could operate this way and still expect to win a high-stakes murder trial. I wondered, was it possible he didn't actually care whether he lost? Could there even have been some hidden incentive for him to tank the case? I asked Fito Colucci about it.

“Is there any possibility that you think Mickey might have thrown this case?”

Ah, no, no. He had too much of an ego. He needed a wanted this cage so bad.

or his real good friends, hey, you know, when I'm going to do after I win this, now I'm just going to

do TV and whatever right books and the whole bit. Stefan Sieger, one of Michael's attorneys whom you heard from earlier in the episode agrees

“that would be unlike him to throw a case. And I think Mickey would want to win the case one way or another.”

He'd get a lot of media attention if you won the case that had the Kennedy monitor. So when it comes to Sherman's many mistakes, I flirted with sabotage, but then settled on ineptitude, folly, and hubris. Given all we've covered so far, you probably won't be shocked to learn that Sherman wasn't a responsible steward of his own funds or the fees clients paid him.

Best I can estimate by the time he made his Vegas speech in October 2001,

the skakels had paid over $2 million in legal fees for Michael's defense.

Most of that went to Sherman, who'd later say he guess he'd been paid between one and one and a half million dollars. It's pretty easy to see how Sherman had blown through a million five. Before the trial, Michael was living with his father in Hobbsown, Florida, where Rush had moved

“after selling the bellhaven house. Sherman would fly down, a steps up lead to meet with his client.”

But Sherman didn't stay in Hobbsown. Instead, Michael says, Sherman chose to bunk in the playground of the rich, Palm Beach, 40 minutes south of Rushton's condo. He stayed at the breakers hotel for five, six, seven weeks, had his Harley Davidson flown down. Rushton's skakel was built for the bike's transport. Who was this time believable?

Cuff thoroughly lodged at the swanky breakers, where the dinky is sweet will now run you about a couple grand a night. Sherman roared down worth having to adopt his Harley. From 1998 to 2000, the period leading up to an immediately following Michael's arrest, Sherman built Rush skakel senior for around 16 separate trips to Florida, most of those during the winter months. Under oath at an appeal hearing,

Michael said he met with Sherman in Florida no more than five times. By the time the skakels were shelling out for Mickey's work trips, they weren't as flushes they'd been in prior decades. Sherman was billing the monthly for his and his subcontractors hours and expenses. The bills were exorbitant, and to Stephen and his siblings, it seemed like shockingly little progress was being made. With their coffers running low,

they eventually told Sherman he'd need to put a cap on his fees. Five months before Michael's trial started, Sherman wrote a letter saying that he would no longer nickel and dime the family, sending them itemized bills for his hotel stays, or for that matter bills from expert witnesses, jury consultants, or subcontracted deterrents. He wrote,

“"I will accept a lump sum of $450,000, which I believe is a fair sum."”

That might be one possible reason that Sherman decided to go at a loan, neither hiring expert witness Richard Offsha, nor bringing along experience co-castled like Linda Kenny-Bod. He didn't want to share the doubt. The less he spent on Michael's defense, the more he got to keep. Under oath, Sherman would deny he skipped unnecessary resources. Michael's skakele doesn't buy it. Witnesses weren't called because Mickey Sherman had spent

the money. He spent the money on cars for his kids, trips. Michael is not the only one on the record saying he thinks Sherman is a crook. The IRS officially can curse. In March of 2011, Sherman reported to Otisville Federal Prison to serve a year in a day for tax evasion. Notably, the Federal charges related to $420,000 in taxes. He owed for 2001 and 2002. Two years that the skakeles were paying him to prepare for and try Michael's case.

But instead of paying off his taxes, much less hiring expert witnesses, with that conveniently size $450,000 fee, Sherman found another way to spend his money. In the sentencing memo for his tax evasion case, the government lists some of Sherman's questionable expenditures. The timing of one of his purchases caught my attention. The very month, the skakeles agreed to pay him $450,000. Sherman showed up at a Greenwich Cardiola ship and paid $54,000 cash for two new

jeeps for his kids. When I shared what I'd found with Steven Skakele, he nearly put his fist through a wall. Instead of paying for professional witnesses, he was continuing to pay his ex-wife's mortgage. He was paying country club dues out of the money that we paid him. Not doing the work. We got

attracted him for. As I mentioned, I was never able to speak to Sherman. Someone I spoke to told

me they'd spotted making bumbling around Greenwich in the decade before COVID looking frail.

criminal defense lawyer who some might consider to be reasonably intelligent have screwed my

self-pubso bad?" I asked the same question every night at about four in the morning, making continued. I don't have an answer. Clearly, the skakele family made a big mistake hiring, Mickey Sherman. And can you believe I still haven't even mentioned the biggest mistake Sherman made defending Michael? I'm looking at Linda Kenny Bodden's memo again.

Another one of her notes reads, "Theme of others who could have done it." That kind of defense has a name she told me. You can point to a third party that there was called the Saudi defense. Some other dude did it, okay? Sherman chose Ken Littleton and Ken Littleton alone for his Saudi defense. It proved a colossal mistake. Not least because jurors were aware that the stated granted Littleton immunity,

which signal that the authorities were confident he had nothing to do with the murder. In the media room for building Kenny Bodden and I discussed the variety of people who Sherman might have considered in addition to, or instead of Littleton, to use for his Saudi defense. And then we arrived at the most obvious one.

You can point to Tommy, last one to see her. For some reason Sherman never added Tommy to the

Saudi defense. Why? I wondered. I asked Stephen and Michael, they both sworn to me repeatedly that the family never, ever made any kind of request to avoid the subject of Tommy and Michael's defense. This they said was entirely Mickey Sherman's call. I haven't found any evidence to contradict this claim. But why would Sherman make such a decision? I discovered a possible clue right there at the top of Kenny Bodden's memo, the list of meeting attendees. The fourth is a familiar name.

Many Margotless, Tommy Skickle's attorney. Kenny Bodden remembers that Margotless came to every meeting of Michael's original defense team. Some of the meetings even came to him.

“We did also have, I think, one of the first meetings at Mandy Margotless's office.”

And I was concerned about having a meeting and I told Mickey this, in Mandy Margotless's office when he represents Tom Skickle. No one from the family ever said, don't point to Tommy. But I don't know having said that what Mickey's relationship was with Mandy Margotless. I asked even Skickle about the family's process in hiring Michael's defense attorney. And do you have any recollection of how, how he did not to be Mike Mickey?

Many Margotless put them. But I mean, was our meeting? We're Mandy said, I'd be dead, you know. Dad tended to be hands off that kind of stuff. And deferred, you know, Mandy. So, Mandy said, I should get Mickey. It's the one that brought him in. That's absolute track. It is a fact. Margotless confirmed to himself on date line in 2003. Is it true that you brought Mickey Sherman to the family and recommended him as the defense

attorney's true? Maybe you wouldn't need to be trained to Quonico to make the next logical leap. But personally, I wanted to hear from someone with G-Man cred who knew all the players. I asked something associate's Jim Murphy. Do you have an opinion by when Mickey Sherman was deciding how he was going to do his case, how he decided to use Ken Littleton as his culprit, rather than Tom Skickle? Yeah, I do. It was to throw a referral from Mandy.

“Mandy Margotless. And if you want to use your imagination or just some downright logic,”

maybe there's an agreement between these two attorneys. I'm going to get you this job. You're going to make a lot of money on it. Don't call Tommy. Don't call my guy. Naturally, this got me thinking. Maybe an aptitude following in hubris didn't fully explain Mickey's disastrous representation after all. Perhaps that had been some sort of gentleman's agreement. Nothing explicit, but something more implied and agreed upon with a wink.

Margotless died in 2011. So I couldn't ask him about this directly, but dateline tackled it with him in 2003. Do you have anything like an agreement with Mickey Sherman when you recommend it in that? Look, here's an argument you're not going to make in core. If it starts to go down on you, then ladies and gentlemen, the jury, Tommy Skickle is your likely killer. Not my client here.

Never. Absolutely, never. Why did I get in his guy off? Why did he cloud it enough?

“Never. Never. I would have never done that. I think Mickey was entitled to represent his client,”

to represent his client with a maximum vigor required. No agreement that Tommy's name is going to stay. It's no such agreement while so at right. What kind of marks do you give Mickey Sherman? It's defensively earlier. I'd really rather not say. Just having answered your questions is directly as I have, I think, as to tell you, it was a serious disappointment. I saw things that

In the wake of Michael's conviction, Mickey Sherman's antics might have remained just a

“bewildering footnote in the history of Michael Skickle's case, but in them, Michael's appellate”

team saw an opportunity. In 2013, having exhausted all of his appeals, Michael's legal team tried one last Hail Mary to get him out of prison. They filed a written of habeas corpus, arguing that by keeping Michael behind bars, the state of Connecticut was violating his six amendment constitutional right to affect of legal counsel. Their thesis, Mickey Sherman's representation had been so flawed that the case should be thrown out.

habeas petitions are rarely successful. Best numbers I can find say that only between one and 10 percent are granted. Traditionally, habeas appeals that do succeed are typically filed by indigent clients claiming ineffective assistance of counsel by their overworked public defenders. Not defendants paying millions and legal fees to semi-famous television lawyers. In fact, this was exactly the state's position on Michael's habeas appeal, which in a 2013

brief wrote the following. A full review of the record shows that the defense team's efforts far exceeded the standards of most non-capital defenses. They spent years preparing the defense, challenged the state on legal issues large and small, consulted with the experts, hired three sets of investigators, and assembled a full team of lawyers to assist in the defense, including some of Connecticut's most distinguished practitioners. Simply put,

if the level of representation the petitioner received, fall short of six amendment standards, no Connecticut conviction can be considered reliable. Test testimony in Michael's habeas corpus appeal began on April 16, 2013, in Rockville Superior Court. This was the same courthouse where two years later,

I'd spend months pouring through thousands of pages of case files. The first witness

ambled up into the witness box. Mickey Sherman Michael, who by this point had been in prison for over a decade, looked on from his seat a few feet away. He hadn't set eyes on his former lawyer in years. Two seats to Michael's left, Satfuber J. Santos, the veteran Hartford Defense and Appellate Attorney, who died in 2021. Right next to Michael, Satf Santos is then 36-year-old co-castle, Jessica Walker. Walker, who in an earlier episode was dumbfounded by Rush Cacles senior's decision to commission

the Sutton report, vividly recalled the day a few years before that Seely showed up at the office with a huge fine. The recording of Sherman's Vegas Seminar. I listened to it, I was stunned, and then I sat with Hubby, and I had him listen to it, and he was stunned. For a number of reasons,

first of all, this seminar was six months before Michael's trial. Six months before a murder trial

of that magnitude, your bottom should be on your seat in your office preparing for this case, not doing a seminar in Las Vegas. Secondly, you don't reveal confidential client communications with a seminar full of individuals, but the most

“egregious thing I think is that Mickey said that when he was preparing for a case like this,”

he likes to have a good time. I'm not going to talk about this one case and having fun with it. On the second day of his testimony, Sherman sat stone-faced as those words rang out in the court room. Judge Bishop listened carefully a few feet away. Bishop had been on Judge and Connecticut for 19 years, 12 of those spent hearing appeals. Bad and corrupt luring was a personal interest to Bishop. While in private practice, he'd served as chairman of the New London County

Bar Association Ethics Committee. I can tell you the look on Judge Bishop's face when those words were uttered. And it really set the stage for what was about to unfold. I got the impression that Walker has a pretty cool temperament, but heard discussed for Sherman pushes it to its limit. If you're

“gonna sign on to be a criminal defense attorney, then you have to make certain sacrifices. Because”

somebody else's freedom is in your hands. And if you don't do a good job, they're going to be in a cage for the rest of their lives. And that's not something I take lightly. On October 23, 2013,

Judge Bishop's decision came down and he finally got to express what he must have been thinking

hearing Sherman's words six months before. His 136 page of opinion was merciless, alluding to many of the issues we've discussed in this episode, including Sherman's failure to review

witness Gregory Coleman, and much more. Specifically, Bishop's opinion stated that

“head Sherman done just two things made a case for Tommy Skakele being the culprit and presented a non-family”

witness to corroborate Michael's alibi. The verdict would have been not guilty. And there was a non-family witness that fateful night at the Terrian home. His name was Dennis Asorio, and he was a one-time boyfriend of Michael's cousin, Georgian, Jimmy Terrian's older sister. At the habeas preceding, Asorio testified that he specifically remembered seeing and speaking with Michael Skakele at Sir some Korda as the gang watched Monty Python. He also testified that now their police,

Normaki Sherman, had tracked him down in the aftermath of the murder. The testimony was short, but the impact on Michael's bid for freedom was enormous. In his decision, Judge Bishop wrote, "Defense Council was in a myriad of ways ineffective." The defense of a serious felony prosecution

“requires attention to detail, an energetic investigation, and a coherent plan of defense”

capably executed. Trial counsel's failure in each of these areas of representation were significant and ultimately fatal to a constitutionally adequate defense. As a consequence of trial counsel's failures as stated, the state procured a judgment of conviction that lacks reliability. The habeas petition is granted. Michael Skakele got a new trial because he was denied his sixth amendment right to counsel. The way Judge Bishop sought, Mickey Sherman's one and a half

million dollar representation amounted to no representation at all. The stunning reversal of fortune

for Kennedy cousin Michael Skakele, Ethel Kennedy's nephew, while today he walked out of prison. A month after Judge Bishop's decision, Michael, now 53 years old, and having spent 11 and

“a half years in a cage was released on bail. Needless to say, the press was not pleased.”

With Dominic Don now four years dead and buried, reporter Jeffrey Tube and channeled his dead friends out of rage at the decision, writing for the New Yorker that Skakele finally found a judge who bought his story, and that there were really no other plausible suspects. Tubeins article resonated. Certainly with me. I read it when I first began work on Bobby Kennedy's book two years later in 2015. Owing to Tubeins' reputation as a journalist, I nearly backed off

investigating the case. Tubeins, as much as any other writer who covered the trial, convinced me that Michael was guilty. Though that opinion would soon change. As I've mentioned before, the wheels of justice moved very slowly, and it would take a full five years of back and forth in the courts until, in 2018, the Connecticut Supreme Court formally vacated Michael's conviction. This decision really seemed to set Tubein off, inspiring him to tweet.

I covered the trial of Michael Skakele. He was guilty as hell. The reversal of his conviction is a disgrace. My late pal Dominakton weeps and rages from above on behalf of the Moxley family, hashtag rich people justice. Tubeins isn't the only one who feels this way. It's a common sentiment echoed on forums, and in the comments of any post mentioning Michael Skakele. There are cries to put him back in prison or worse. But officially, as of 2020, the case against

Michael is well and truly finished. That year, the state of Connecticut announced that Owing to the age of the case, and that many witnesses were now dead, they would not pursue a retrial. In the eyes of the courts at least, Michael was no longer a guilty man. But the media, and by extension, the public, was not so easily convinced. For Michael, it was a bitter sweet outcome. I would have rather had them say, vindicated, he didn't do it. It wasn't what I was expecting.

Michael had 4,103 days behind bars to think about who was most responsible for the fact that despite all the reasons we've already explored, and those yet to come, he was prosecuted and convicted for the murder of Martha Moxley. He shut up to one of our interviews with a legal

pad covered with writing. I caught sight of the heading on the first page.

culprits, it read. Mickey Sherman's name is on that list. Given what happened, no surprise there, and there were other names on that list, like Frank Gar, that I could have predicted. But there was another name on there, and it appeared multiple times. It's a name with a storied and at times tragic history. A name deeply entwined with the fabric and

and even in this podcast. Kennedy.

“Still to come, in the remaining episodes of Dead Certain, the Martha Moxley murder,”

I'm not a Kennedy. I'm a scaquel through and through. My name is Amanda Knox. I'm most notoriously

known for having been accused of my roommate's murder. He knew his father would be very

“upset if he said that he had sex with Martha. Do you believe that they killed her?”

I think they were definitely involved. What kind of blood was it? Was it drops of blood? Was it

fresh blood? Was it true friends? He just said, "Well, then you're off the reservation."

“And I said, "Well, I was never on that reservation."”

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 and head of audio at NBC News Studios. Megan Shields is our senior producer, Rob Heath is our producer. Nora Battelle is our story editor. Fact checking by Simone Buto and Laura Hongkadea, production assistants by Brendan Wiesell,

sound designed by Rick Kwan, Marc Yoshizumi, and Bob Mallory, original music by John Esties. Amanda Moxley's our production manager and Marissa Riley is the director of production. Liz Cole is president of NBC News Studios. (gentle music)