The Out of Towners

"You sure?"

“"The Michael's Cacles killed your daughter. Do you have any doubts at all?"”

"I have not won tiny thread of doubt that Michael's Cacles did this."

"No question in my mind whatsoever. No. Absolutely none." "Who would deny a mother this kind of closure?" She had, after all, suffered for more than two decades not knowing who had murdered her only daughter and following her husband's death in 1988, taken up as her life's work the quest to bring Martha's killer to justice. But not everyone felt quite so resolved as Mrs. Moxley did about what had just happened in Connecticut Superior Court.

And, as fate would have it on her press tour, Mrs. Moxley would run smack into someone who felt very strongly that the wrong man had been convicted for her daughter's murder. One morning in June 2002, Dorothy arrived at the General Motors Building in Midtown Manhattan to appear on CBS's The Early Show. A handsome 40-year-old network audio engineer came over to attach a small microphone to her blouse.

“As he fiddled, he introduced himself as Crawford Mills, from old Grannich.”

A third generation of Mills with the same name, he went by trace, three in Spanish.

Mills had gone to school at Brunswick with the Skakele Boys, and knew the core group of Bell Haven teens. His name even appeared a few times in Martha Moxley's diary. He was close friends with Neil Walker, the younger brother of Martha's best friend, Margie Walker. Here's Margie. Crawford was one of my brothers, best friends.

He was so Brunswick's student also, and he wasn't all the school plays. Growing up, he was sort of an actor, considered himself actor, writer, that type of thing. In fact, Mills told Mrs. Moxley that morning at CBS, Margie had written her a letter, mentioning him several months before the trial. Mills asked if she'd read it. Dorothy shook her head, confused.

“Mills, who'd been waiting for such an opportunity, launched into an explanation.”

There was another suspect in Martha's killing, he said, actually two of them. Mills told her that he'd been trying to get investigators to listen to his claims to know a bell. As he told his story, Dorothy Moxley looked understandably stricken. She'd likely not expected to be confronted on set by a stranger pushing an alternate theory about her daughter's murder. Immediately after her morning show appearance, Mills said she complained to his bosses about what he'd done.

Here's Mills, in recorded telephone conversation that would later become an exhibit at one of Michael Skakels' appeals. Again, the audio isn't perfect. Shortly after his encounter with Dorothy Moxley, Mills said he got kicked out of the building. That is fired. Mills was at his witsend.

For the last year, Mills had felt like the invisible man. He'd later claim he'd reached out to both prosecutor Jonathan Benedict and Defense Attorney Mickey Sherman, even to the judge, trying to get their attention. None of them had followed up, and now his efforts to share the story had apparently cost him his job. In one last hail, Mary, he reached out to the press.

"I call him an airplane, call him on me." Mills said the time's interviewed him, but when he tried to follow up, the paper stopped responding. It was perhaps understandable. As far as most people, the media, law enforcement, the public were concerned, the case was closed.

So many people wanted it to finally be put to rest.

But then, in January 2003, six months after Michael Skakels found guilty and Crawford Mills was escorted out of CBS, Michael's first cousin Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who, as you learned in the last episode, had bonded with Michael in the 80s, over their respective recoveries, offered a long piece of the Atlantic monthly called a "miscarriage of justice." Decrying the verdict and arguing that Ken Littleton was the far more likely killer of Martha Moxley. In the late 1990s, Michael had sworn off his Kennedy kin entirely.

But Bobby had attended Michael's trial briefly and eventually emerged as one of his staunchest advocates, writing in the Atlantic quote, "I support him not out of misguided family loyalty, but because I am certain he is innocent."

Bobby Kennedy, he thought, had gotten one major thing right about the case.

Michael Skakels hadn't killed Martha Moxley, but Mills was sure it wasn't Ken Littleton either. I'm Andrew Goldman, from NBC News Studios and Highly Replaceable Productions, this is Dead Certain, the Martha Moxley part of it. In his apartment in Lower Manhattan, a few blocks from the pit with a World Trade Center had stood just 18 months before. Crawford Mills typed a facts address to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The facts machine in the New York offices of the Atlantic monthly word.

The cover sheet pleaded.

“Will you please be kind enough to see that Mr. Kennedy receives the enclosed statement?”

I have been trying to make this information known for over a year now. Mills facts to Bobby read.

I realize that what I'm about to tell you may at first sound absurd, but if you will take 30 seconds to read this letter, I'll be succinct.

I went to school with Michael Skakel. We shared many friends. One of those friends Mills wrote, was Tony Bryant. He may have heard of his cousin, Kobe Bryant. Mills wrote that Bryant, Tony, not Kobe.

Though I've not been able to formally confirm the family connection, had recently confided in him that he had been in Belhaven on October 30, 1975, along with two of his friends. And Bryant was certain that he had unreported evidence leading straight to Martha Moxley's killer, or rather killers.

“This Tony Bryant, who'd given Mills the tip, in addition to being close with Mills, had also back in 1975, spent a lot of time with the Belhaven teens.”

Bryant was also tight with Margie Walker's brother. Definitely new Tony Bryant. He was a frequent visitor at our house, and, you know, a really nice guy with a big smile and, you know, general nature. Bryant had been a star athlete while at Brunswick. He had graduated from undergrad in law school, and was currently a small business owner in Miami with a wife and young family. In the fall of 2001, a few weeks after 9/11, Mills got a concerned call from Bryant.

He hadn't heard from Bryant in years, but Mills lived near the world trade center, and his old friend wanted to check in. They caught up and discussed the upcoming Sakele trial, which was much in the news. Now that the case has been transferred to adult court, and this may be the first time we hear Michael Sakele officially plead not guilty. Mills mentioned that in the late 1980s, he'd actually written a screenplay about the murder, called little Martha, but had little luck selling it. Mills got the impression from Bryant to he had showbiz cred, that he'd worked as an entertainment lawyer at Hollywood,

and a script that he'd written for the Chuck Norris series Walker Texas Ranger had made it to air.

“So Mills asked Bryant, would you be interested in giving notes on, or even collaborating on little Martha with a hopes of selling it?”

Bryant said sure, send it to me. Mills did, and waited for the Hollywood gears to crank up.

Bryant never did do any work on that script, but he called Mills back some time around Christmas.

Your screenplay got it all wrong, Bryant told him, and then said, "He knew who really killed Martha Moxley." What Bryant had to say was a totally new theory of the case involving not one but two suspects. He believed the two friends he'd been with and grunnaged the night of Martha's murder were the killers. Turns out Mills had actually met these two guys. He'd been introduced to them in Greenwich right around the time of the murder.

One of them had given him the creeps, Mills would later say, "He had a dead eye, you know? It was something wrong with a kid." And all you had to do was look at him to know it. He's a scary kind of guy. As soon as he heard Bryant's story, Mills decided he had a responsibility to get the word out.

If Michael Skickle wasn't Martha's killer, that meant an innocent man was just months away from being tried for murder. But there was one problem. Tony Bryant didn't want to come forward. He'd later say that he thought there was no way Michael Skickle would be convicted, and he wanted to protect his business and family. Keep my name out of it, he told Mills.

Mills agreed at first. When his Michael Skickle's trial date approached, he began sharing Bryant's story and his name with anyone who would listen, including Neil Walker, who in turn shared it with his sister, Margie. So I said, "Somebody should know about this." And, you know, "Is it okay if I talk to them?" Though Margie didn't testify at Michael's trial, she says prosecutors periodically called or questioned her about the case as they were preparing for it.

But, you know, maybe something you should look into. And they didn't seem interested.

“Walker later testified that about a month before Michael's trial began, she personally took the story to both Inspector Frank Carr and Michael's defense attorney, Mickey Sherman.”

She said, "Gar was dismissive. As for Sherman, based on earlier episodes, might not surprise you to learn how you reacted." And he said, "Oh, no, no. Don't worry about it. I'm defending Michael." And that's just extra information that I don't need to get into. At Mills urging, Margie even wrote a letter to Dorothy Moxley. The one Mills would later mention that "Fateful Morning at CBS."

But Dorothy never responded.

Nobody listened. seemed like no one ever would. The train to convict Michael's schedule had already left the station. And then, in early 2003, Crawford Mills facts that letter to Bobby Kennedy. Bobby wasted no time calling Mills, who vented his frustration that Bobby was the first person at all receptive to hearing what he had to say.

For Mills, Bobby taking an interest must have felt like being handed a cold drink after a two-day desert hike. On the phone with Bobby, Mills explained that he considered Tony a friend. He was afraid to disturb him. For Mills, Bobby taking an interest must have felt like being handed a cold drink after a two-day desert hike. On the phone with Bobby, Mills explained that he considered Tony a friend.

He was so hell bent on getting the story out because he believed him. Why wouldn't he?

“I am not a fan of my time, but I don't think that's what he's like.”

Why would anyone say that? I don't think that's what I've got to train. Mills finished his tail and waited. Then he heard Bobby ask, "So do you think that Connie Bryant would be willing to talk to me?" Mills said he thought so.

Less than a week later, in Miami, Bryant's cell phone rang. Tony, the voice said, "This is Bobby Kennedy." Bryant, though still reluctant to get involved, shared his story with Bobby. Bobby was stunned. What Bryant told him was game-changing.

Bobby immediately called Michael's Appeals Attorney, Hope Sealy, who enlisted Fito Colucci. Mickey Sherman's investigator told me he heard from earlier in the series to travel down to Miami to get an official interview. This was August 2003, only a little more than a year after Michael's trial. The Skacles and their attorneys thought that if they could get this story on the record, they could use it to appeal Michael's conviction.

But Bryant was not particularly enthusiastic about talking with Colucci. He didn't want anything to do with the case. He said he didn't like Michael's Skacles, but he said his mother didn't want him to get involved in it.

Finally, he agreed to meet with me when then a couple of times he would call me a cancel.

And I kept saying, "You know, we got to do this. We got to do this." Finally, Bryant agreed to a date. Sunday, August 24th, 2003, at the Wyndham Grand Bay Hotel in Miami. Colucci waited in the lobby for Bryant to arrive. Half hour passed. Then another half hour.

And then yet another. He was an outbound an hour and a half late, and I'm saying, "Oh, this guy can't go in again. This is ridiculous." But then, there he was in the lobby. Colucci finally got a look at this elusive Tony Bryant.

He was a tall, over six feet in good looking 42-year-old with a distinctly athletic bearing. He looked prosperous, with his close cropped hair, and polo shirt, and totally relaxed. Chewing a piece of gum. Colucci led him to a conference room where he set up a video camera. Initially, he didn't want a video tape.

I finally convinced him. He said, "Well, I guess he's all going to come out anyway.

Fine. Did I tell him?" I said, "You help yourself. I have a video tape." So nobody can prove you said something differently. And he agreed to do that. The conversation that unfolded would later become a centerpiece of Michael Skakels' appeals. Colucci began with the basics.

“Can you please state your full name and spell it, please?”

He titled Pierre Bryant. You're here today because you have information in regards to the Martha Mozzley murder case that goes back to the 1970s. Is that correct? And then over the next hour and four minutes out came the story.

Tony Bryant grew up in Chicago, the son of Barbara Bryant, a single mother of seven,

Back when the Oscars had a category for them, Bryant won one.

In 1971, Tony spent a school vacation week in Greenwich with Friends of his mother, and attended classes at Brunswick. Tony liked it. Brunswick liked him, and his talents on the baseball and football fields. So starting in the fall of 1972, Tony moved in with the family friends and enrolled in the sixth grade.

Well, it's two Brunswick for approximately three years. When Barbara Bryant moved from Chicago to Manhattan, her son left Brunswick and moved back in with her. Enrolling as a freshman in the Charles Evans Hughes High School on West 18th Street in Chelsea, an institution which couldn't have been more of an adjustment from Woodzee Preppy Brunswick.

This is a city school in New York. We're not talking about Greenwich Connecticut. My boy scout at the school, and if they were, I didn't learn what they meant. He's not exaggerating. In 1980, a student was shot in the buttocks in front of Hughes in a gang incident involving a dispute over a comb.

Not long after, the city closed the school entirely. When teachers pick it over having to do daily battle with kids in a school with such rampant disciplinary problems. In the fall of 1975, 14-year-old Tony began hanging out with two fellow Hughes students. Eight-off Hasbrook and Burr Tinsley. Like Michael Skakele, Hasbrook was 15, Tinsley a little older.

But according to Bryant, both New York boys were much, much bigger. Your book photos I've seen of the two guys confirmed this. I was probably the smallest of the three-year-old at six feet. Maybe 160, 170 pounds. How about the other two guys about?

They were bigger than you, yes. Burr was probably 6-2, 6-3, and 8-off was 6-3, 6-4. Now, an important question. Eight-off is a black fella, and it's correct. How about Burr?

I would say he mixed this out, probably, Indian, and Caucasian. Or there may be some Asian blood and blood whites.

“How many of the three years come up out to, let's say, hang around the energy area?”

Well, it is all initiated through me. Okay. I still had friends in Greenwich, and when we decided to go up to Greenwich and hang out, and they met some people that they liked, and so we made it sort of like a weekly thing. Bryant introduced Hasbrook intensely to his Greenwich pals, including Crawford Mills.

They also became friendly with a younger kid, Jeff Burr. As you may remember, it was 11-year-old Jeff, who, along with Helenix, slinked out of the scaquelyard on May 9th after Martha and Tommy's driveway of flirtation became uncomfortable. Bryant said 8-off Hasbrook first laid eyes on Martha in September 1975.

I think the first time he met her was with a, they have my street fair in Greenwich, at the end of Seattle. Where are the miller in the September? Okay. In the close-off, the main street and the sort of house, street fair.

Okay.

8-off always had a thing. He had met Martha previously, and he had a thing for her.

He really liked her.

“You remember him ever approaching her to ask her either, or make a play for her or anything at all?”

Then we even made gestures at her, but I think he was, he didn't have the confidence. It wasn't a very, at that point in time, it wasn't a Medicaid person. I was very immature. Okay. Do you remember any kind of responses that Martha would give to her?

Yeah. She was always sort of cordial, but she sort of blushed him off real kind of. Nicely. You know, really? Real crazy at both of us.

And she was always that way. She wasn't a person that would let you down hard.

She'd let you down gently. Bryant said that Martha's gentle rebuffs did not deter Hasbrook, who seemed particularly fixated on making something happen with her. Seemingly, whether or not she was interested. And someday I'm going to have her all the time. He was all the time.

Everything said he was going to have her. It wasn't going to, it's going to happen. It's going to happen.

“Could these chilling words have been uttered by one of Martha's real killers?”

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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. I'm Julio Vagueiro, anchor of Noticias Telemundo. You can watch Dayline, the Heathrow Crime Series on Telemundo. And now, you can listen to Dayline 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. In a search, Dayline, In a Spiderman, whatever you get your podcasts and start listening. Hey, it's Kate Snow, NBC 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 behind the scenes, bloopers and outtakes from our conversation. Hope you'll listen and follow the drink wherever you get your podcasts. In his 2003 video taped interview with Investigator Vito Calucci, Tony Bryant said that as the fall of 1975 war on, Has worked became increasingly graphic describing his yearnings. A warning to listeners, some of the language that follows is both misogynistic and violent.

Now let me ask you now, and you know, we need you to, to the best of your recollection to say, "Well, you remember him saying, no matter how well it was, this is important." Well, it's a f***ing timer, and he wants to go came in on her. Because no one, what does that mean? Well, how would you do? Just take her grab her and have her in the way he wanted her.

So you mentioned before something about getting her from behind and the driving her? Yes. Oh, you say dragging her by her hair or what? Definitely by her hair.

That's what the whole concept is.

So hitting the sailor's, I can't even get it. Going cave with me, you know, grabbing and pulling off and not just picking up his pulling off.

“Late on the afternoon of October 30th, 1975, Bryant said,”

He and his two New York friends met up at Grand Central. We left from the entrance on the train, we waited to be able to probably get there, 6, 30, 6, 40. Tony said they stopped at a house in Belhaven that he knew how to stop refrigerator in the garage and collected some refreshments to go. Okay.

I swear it says it's a spell start. Okay. Then we got ourselves to the mirror. And we, I know we, we took about 3, 6 bags that tanked. Okay.

Maybe a little bit more. Okay. At this point, the group's numbers began to swell. The firemen's lived across the street right here. This is the firemen's house.

Okay. And we went by there and we picked up the house. That's 11-year-old Jeff Burn. And then we start to do a little bit of shift. We had toilet paper and shaving paint.

We smashed pumpkins. We threw toilet paper over lines. We shaved and soaked up some windows. Many of us were doing this. Oh, gosh.

We picked up people all along the way. So they could have been maybe at that 6 people. Do you remember anybody else? I get either girls in the area. Well, we saw some of the girls.

Then it was like sort of a revolving door. Right. We sort of ran into them in the back. There's a big mead behind this house here. The mead Brian told Kaluchi,

was an undeveloped lot in Bellhaven that abutted the skakele property. That was sort of like our collection place to sit. And smoke cigarettes, smoke some marijuana and drink beer. Okay.

So if you have the parents couldn't see, but it was a big enough space to wear. If someone did clanky, clunk, she could scatter and run. And the one could catch you really. Brian began sketching out the area on a piece of paper.

I've seen the aerial maps. What he called the mead absolutely existed in 1975. Brian's recall of its size and location relative to Bellhaven has his isn't perfect, but it's impressively accurate. The mead Brian said a lot for concealment and evasion.

And if the one, I'm trying to remember the police, and they throw Bellhaven. I can't remember his name exactly.

because we knew what he made his rounds.

So we would sort of hide and I have to go off behind the walls or into the bushes. So he couldn't see. He said that at this point, another major character from the crime scene had made its entrance.

The possible murder weapon. The group had walked through the skakels yard on their way to the mead.

“I think you mentioned in one of these reports”

so they about the gauze club. Huff. Can't wait to touch that club. I should say those clothes. Everybody in Bellhaven touched the club.

At least it involves behind the house. And we self-liquid ball the cars. Whose clubs were these? Who's skakels? Who's skakels?

Who's skakels? Who wouldn't you get up from? Just pick one at the back porch.

They're just laying around.

You can walk in triple orbit. This is important. Exactly one source. The skakels handyman, Franz Latine, had told police in April 1976

that there were no clubs on the lawn on October 30th. He said he'd been out and seen none. But several of the Bellhaven kids I've spoken to have noted that the skakels yard ballfield and pitch for a near-ferral brood in their friends

was consistently littered with sporting equipment. Golf clubs among them. I asked one time Bellhaven team Peter Comerswami about the possibility.

“You might remember Kuma from earlier episodes,”

describing the skakel boys and how magical a girl Martha was. So it seems like the idea that this could have been a weapon of opportunity seems plausible to you that somebody could have picked up a club from the lawn. Absolutely.

Absolutely. I mean, there's probably literally, I'm surprised I weren't four or five clubs laying around the freaking yard. I may have critiqued Greenwich police chief Steven Baron for his handling of the case in its earliest days.

But if you recall, he's the one who said he suspected the club had been picked up near the scene rather than from inside the skakel house. Could he have been right? Tony Bryant seemed to think so.

That night, that Martha died. Did anybody walk around when the golf club? I picked up one. I picked up one. I picked up one.

I picked up one. Jeff Bryant picked up one. And we were like, "Go for a." They were usually as sort of lying walk-loostings. Bryant said that as he and his New York friends got drunker

and higher out there in the Mead, the more uncomfortable he became. It was also getting late. Close to nine p.m. I know in some of your comments about a Kennedy,

something triggers where you want to get away from these guys. Well, I had been in trouble this summer. Okay. And I got in the rest sitting Greenwich for being a little alien. So my mother told me that I had to catch a last train.

Bryant, along with a group of other teams, had been arrested for an incident that involved pulling down signs along the road. He knew he couldn't get in trouble again. And they didn't make some statements also.

You know, we just got to get into something. I'm not going out of here, unsatisfied. Who said that? Burner ran it off. What did you tell me?

What did that mean? Unsatisfied. Well, we had been talking about this night. We had been talking about the caveman. Okay.

And so this was the night that Mark had done. She died that night. And this is the kind of conversation that had been going on since we got out of the train. So then go down, sorry, three and four hours already.

Okay. Both both when you were sober. And now, the big thing that had a little bit more exacerbated because they were like, "We're the bitches." Okay.

And so, I think that a little bit more out of hand. Bryant said that shortly after nine, increasingly uneasy with a conversation and expected home, he announced that he was going to catch the last train into the city. Now, you'll need to go home.

“Is it because your mother says you have to be home a certain time?”

Or is it because of the actions of these two other guys? I had to go home regardless. But their actions helped me make my decision a lot easier. Did they do often burst state and don't have a net net? Yes, they did.

They stayed with the burns. They did. Yes, they did. You know, for a final effort, fact.

You could stay in the house and they would never do them.

Okay. The parents would never do. Okay. It was a huge house. Did they stay there?

Yes. They did. And Jeff told me that they had also spent the night and night. Okay. So Jeff told you that they stayed there.

And they'd also burst out. They stayed at the house. That's correct. Before I left, they were like, I said, "Well, you guys can do it. We're going to stay at the burns."

Okay. I'm out. Back. See. In that Miami hotel room,

Tony Bryant had just recounted that less than an hour before Martha Moxley was last seen alive. He left two high school friends. Eight often burr in Bellhaven, drunk, high, and talking about taking a girl by force.

Okay.

So you and just say I'm out of here.

You're the last. I'm out. Okay. When was the next time you saw them? I saw them that Monday.

The following Monday. Okay. And it was not a pleasant experience. Because there were some returns made about. Well, I got mine.

Okay. And we'll set that. Ain't all set it to me. That day.

And then burn it around about ways.

It says, "Yeah, we did. We had to do a lot of fire." You got to get found enough. It's tough. I mean, whatever they did.

We achieved the game. They set that. Yeah. Yeah. And different situations, yes.

Okay. So do you believe that they killed her? Either the two of them?

“Or possibly, I think they were definitely involved.”

Okay. And you don't have to burn. Yes. There's no doubt in my mind that they were involved. I think they were there.

Oh, no. There's no. They were there when the murdered took place. Calucy then posed the question. I imagine you're probably asking right about now.

For one or two years, why didn't you come forward to anybody? For one thing, I was afraid of being automatically painted in the suspect. My family didn't have money to defend me from a lawsuit that, you know. It'd be easy if they could fit in Michael's vehicle on circumstance 11th.

“I think I would be an easier conviction than Michael.”

My mistake in judgment is, I mean, how is I sat on this story the whole time during the trial? Because there's no way, there's no way we ever thought that Michael would be convicted. Brian would later claim that in the days after the murder, he shared the story with his mother. Keep your mouth shut. She told him.

Margie Walker says she'd later heard something similar from her brother. Neil and Tony have talked over the years and Tony's mother seemed to verify the story that he was out there. And she was terrified of what was going on and didn't want Tony to ever go back to granted or anything. Could Brian's story be true? When Calucy and I spoke in 2023, I asked him if Brian seemed credible.

Oh, he seemed very credible because he named specifics. And for me, just as a side note, of all these statements that I've taken over the years, both as a cop and many, many as a private detective, it was the best statement that day. But Brian didn't just sound credible. There were also some tantalizing hints in the police reports and interviews that back up Brian's story and suggest what you might call some real there there. After Martha was found, her body was removed from the scene wrapped in two blue sheets.

The Connecticut State Police scanned those sheets for trace evidence and discovered a few hairs which they sent off to the FBI's crime lab. On December 5, the lab weighed in officially on one of the collected hairs like this. "A dark brown to black head hair possessing negroid characteristics." There was a logical explanation for the presence of a hair having black characteristics on that sheet. One of the pair of youth officers who was first to respond to the crime scene was black, Daniel Hickman.

So naturally, cops sent a sample of Hickman's hair to the FBI, as well as hair from the son of Ethel Jones, the skakeles black cook who lived in servant's quarters. But the FBI ruled out Hickman and Jones as the source of the unidentified hair. So who's head had it come from?

And there was another mysterious hair recovered on the other blue sheet, one that had never been reported in the press.

When the state crime lab sent it off for analysis before trial in 2002, the scientists reported back that the donor had an Asian background. Recall Bryant said he thought Tinsley might have some Asian ancestry, although that's never been confirmed. And obviously, Tinsley did not for up his DNA for testing in the case. Then there was the crime itself. Not only did the attacks suggest great strength, but Martha was dragged 80 feet to be deposited under the tree in the corner of her property.

“Could this even have been accomplished by a solitary attacker?”

Granted investigators wondered this themselves for a certain purity investigation, according to Martha's friend Helenix, who sat for numerous interviews with cops over the years.

Helen's husband, Dan, sitting in on the interview also weighed in. Yeah, and they said it was definitely two people. And they had experts, you know, confirm that there was no possible way that one could have done it. By the time the grand jury was convened in 1998, the multiple suspects theory seems to have been breezyly dismissed. But for years, it was the dominant thinking about the case.

Both Dorothy, Moxley, and Dominic, had said so in media appearances in the years before Michael Skakels arrest. Do you think two people were involved here?

“I think at least two, and we could have been more.”

Martha Moxley once killed was taken from one location and put into another very hard to do with one person. Mrs. Moxley and Domin, of course, were hinting at some combination of Skakel brothers and Ken Littleton. Not Tony Bryant's friends from the city, but the point stood, the brutality and ferocity of the crime suggested more than one person's involvement. As for the identity of these multiple potential suspects, other details left by Martha herself seemingly corroborated elements of Tony Bryant's story.

In a diary entry from September of 1975, she mentioned going to a block party on Brennish Avenue, which sounded a lot like the party that Bryant said was where Hasbrook first got a look at Martha. Tony is mentioned in other entries, as are Tony's friends. Still, none of this really proved anything.

Ultimately, Tony Bryant's account was just one guy's story.

On a Wednesday afternoon, two weeks after his interview with Tony Bryant, private-eyed Vito Kalushi rolled up to a modest single-family home in a working-class neighborhood in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Adolf Hasbrook's house. Writing shotgun was crystal. Remember him?

“Popstar Michael Bolton's one-time bodyguard who Mickey Sherman used as security during the Skakel trial.”

Kalushi and steel had grown tight during the trial, so Kalushi started bringing steel to help with investigative work. They knocked on the door. A man answer invited them to talk on his stoop. Steel might be a sweet guy, but man, the description of Hasbrook in the report he wrote was brutal. A appearance?

Six-four. 275 pounds. Black. Pair-shaped and sluggish-looking. Here's steel.

Yeah. Not a gentleman who looked like he was happy with life. Very, very sluggish-tucked, very slow in his communications. Over an hour, Kalushi did most of the talking. At some point, Kalushi told Hasbrook of Tony Bryant's allegations.

They didn't tape the conversation, even serapticously. Connecticut requires both parties to consent to being recorded, and the pair didn't want to unnerve their subject by whipping out a recorder. What we do have is steel's type for port of the interview, which states, Adolf was remarkably calm when Fito told him of the accusations Tony Bryant made against him. He didn't demand Tony's telephone number.

He never called Tony a liar.

In fact, according to Steel's report, Adolf has worked set something that only served to cement, Kalushi's and Steel's suspicions. The Tony Bryant might be on to something. That afternoon in Bridgeport, he admitted he was in Bel Haven on October 30th, 1975. Hasbrook did not, however, admit to being in Bel Haven at 10 pm.

The alleged time of the murder, not exactly. According to Steel's report, Hasbrook was all over the place, changing his account three times when describing when he returned to the city. First, he told him he left Granted Around noon. Then he said he left in the afternoon before nightfall.

And then finally, he said he returned to the city at nine or nine thirty. Noting his mother would have, quote, "tanned my high," had he stayed in Bel Haven overnight. Kalushi asked if he might consider taking a polygraph. Hasbrook told the investigators that he's a nervous guy, and he suspected he'd fail him. Steel's conclusion in his report?

From speaking with him, it was obvious that he was not being straight with us.

Steel's notes of the meeting are far from exhaustive, and Kalushi never wrote a report of his own.

But both men are adamant about what they heard. I asked them both a number of different ways. I want to ask you again.

“Chris, is there any possibility that you misremembered whether he acknowledged that they were there?”

Many, is there none whatsoever I remember getting back in the car and Vito and I going, "Holy cow," this guy said he was there.

Are you absolutely a hundred percent positive that he admitted that he was in Bel Haven on October 30, 1975,

what we interviewed him on that porch? Oh, yes. Didn't Chris feel say the same thing?

“He did. Yeah, myself and Chris feel heard that.”

Yeah. Exactly one week after their September 2003 interview, Steel got has broke back on the phone. Again, he didn't record the call. Steel's goal? To convince Hasbrook to provide his DNA and allow them to record a video tape statement.

This time, according to Steel's report, Hasbrook was telling a different story. He was now adamant that in fact, he'd not been in Bel Haven on October 30, 1975. He told Steel he'd looked at a calendar and realized that October 30, 1975 had been a Thursday night.

And his mother would have never let him go to Greenwich on a school night.

Tony Bryant, he told Steel probably had something to do with a murder. It went similarly with Bertinsley as Vito Kalushi would later testify. Kalushi said that he got tensly on the phone at home in Portland, Oregon, in September 2003. And that day, tensly confirmed that he'd been in Bel Haven on October 30, 1975. Only to reverse himself on a subsequent call, saying he'd checked in 1975 calendar and said he'd goofed in saying so.

That he wasn't there after all. With Tony Bryant's story in hand, Bobby Kennedy was sure he'd cracked the case. He shared his findings with the media. In the fall of 2003, news trucks descended upon Brian's house in Miami, but he was done talking. The cat was out of the bag, though, and Michael's lawyers quickly seized on Kennedy's discoveries, telling a Stanford judge that they had newly discovered evidence of Michael's wrongful conviction.

In 2006, a pair of PIs hired by the Skakele family tracked down Tony's mother Barbara Bryant, outside of her apartment building in Manhattan. According to their report, she said that her son had indeed been in Bel Haven the day of the Monksey murder, with Hasbro intensely. She also told the PIs that the two boys had stayed in Bel Haven that night.

“In 2007, remember how slow those wheels of justice move? Michael was granted an appellate hearing.”

We talked a bit about this hearing in an earlier episode. Michael's attorney's brought up potential Brady violations by the prosecution, but another big part of their argument was that new evidence had been uncovered in the form of Bryant's story and the interviews conducted by Colucci and Steel. Over the course of a week, Bobby and 21 other witnesses testified. Notably absent from the witness list, Tinsley hasbrook and Bryant.

All three declined to appear, citing their fifth amendment rights. The judges watched Tony Bryant's recorded interview with Fito Colucci, but without his and the New York guys testimony, they were not convinced. In the court's decision, Judge Edward Carrison wrote, "The testimony of Bryant is absent any genuine corroboration. It lacks credibility and therefore would not produce a different result in a new trial. Michael, who had by then served five years in prison, would remain there for the foreseeable future.

While Michael might have lost his appeal, Bobby Kennedy refused to give up the fight.

In fact, he doubled down, continuing to investigate on his own, making media rounds, and ultimately publishing a book about it all,

the one I helped him right, entitled framed. After it came out, he repeated his convictions about the case in an interview with date-line. By relationship with Michael, I strongly believe that he's innocent.

“I believe that the facts demonstrate that these two men murdered Martha Moxley.”

They admitted being a graduate that night, they knew the characters the people. Bobby was asked, "Didn't Hasbrook and Tinsley later changed their story and denied being there?" Yes, and they took the fifth amendment when I came time for them to testify at Michael's hearing. If they're innocent, they should suit me. Pretty convincing, right?

And I want to say this now. I realized he's controversial, but I have good memories of Bobby Kennedy. He was easy to work with. When I was helping him put together his book in 2015, we talked several times a week, often several times a day. I wouldn't consider Bobby a friend, but we did some stuff friends would do.

He drove me around Southern California in his seriously beat up minivan. We hiked with his dog. I went to his Kennedy memorabilia Feldhausen Malibu. Watched him shower his emu with a garden hose. Met his famous wife, Cheryl Heinz, who I subsequently read was regularly attacked by said emu.

As a result, Sue's eventually showing the door. The emu, not Cheryl Heinz.

But, but, but.

“The story has so many sizable butts in it.”

You might mistake it for a certain mix of life video. But, while Bobby wholeheartedly believed he'd solved the moxley case, I had some serious questions. Concerns, even. About some of his methods and his conclusions.

Bobby called the chapter about the New York guys, The Killers. He echoed Mark Furman's earlier play to pressure the state into action writing, using the evidence I've cited in this book. Prosecutors have sufficient cause to untie Burton Tinsley and Adelph Hazbrook for Mark The Moxley's murder.

And he basically tried them without a trial writing.

In my opinion, that evidence suggests that the two men are guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. I didn't write that part of the book nor would I have. Based on everything I'd seen, I had some doubts. Sure. The story of the New York guys was intriguing.

“Arguably, it should have been looked into when it was brought to investigators”

by Crawford Mills and Margie Walker before Michael's trial began. It would have been easy to do. Hazbrook's house is literally a ten minute drive from Frank Garz office in Bridgeport. Considering the stakes, a short drive to knock on Adelph Hazbrook's door seemed mirrored. But the authorities weren't interested in pursuing the lead.

So Bobby took matters into his own hands.

In 2015, as we were writing the book, Bobby and I tried to get in touch with Tony Bryan.

But not long after those cameras shut up at his house in 2003, Bryan had seemingly vanished into thin air. Even years later, as I was working on this series, I couldn't track him down. Turns out, there's a reason for that. Welcome to Ashefield Place, the safest.

safest town in America. This feels crazy. Starting Emmy Award winner, Kiki Palmer.

“So what's the deal with that old Victorian house?”

There have been whispers of murder murder. Our small town's just the best. Just giving it a get out. The birds, streaming now, only on peacock. So are we going to go in?

Do white ladies love salads? Hell yeah, we're going in. If you ever needed to be persuaded that bad things can happen anywhere, then take the journey with us. From compelling mysteries to in-depth investigations,

our dayline 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.

Earlier in the episode, I described Tony Bryan as a law school educated business owner. And that's true. What's also true is that by the time Michael's habeas appeal rolled around in 2013, some pretty serious cracks and started to appear in that clean cut facade. According to court testimony from a former colleague,

around 1991, Bryan landed a job with an Austin law firm with documents suggesting he passed the Maryland in Washington DC bar exams, which he hadn't. Hired on the condition that he passed the Texas bar. Bryan didn't let the firm know when he failed it.

He was ultimately fired. One year later, in 1992, Bryan was apprehended in Beverly Hills after an armed robbery, where he and two others pretended to deliver flowers to a woman, only to steal more than $100,000 jewelry while holding her at gunpoint. Originally, Bryan told cops he'd been kidnapped by the other men,

but eventually pleaded no contest to being an accessory to a felony larceny, which earned him six months of house arrest. In September 2003, two weeks after Bryan sat down with Vito Colucci, the New York Times ran an article revealing that Bryan's tobacco importing business had been shut down by state regulators.

Later, I would discover that right around the time-popping night, we're searching for him for the book. Bryan, already on probation, found himself back in legal hot water for grossly underpaying taxes on imported cigars. On December 19th, 2016, five months after Framed was published,

Bryan pleaded guilty to a single count of mail fraud. Unlike his prior scrape with authorities, this one came with a hefty price tag.

Four years in prison, and a $9.4 million restitution bill.

Back in the early 2000s, on Bobby first reached out to Tony Bryan, Googling someone's entire life history was not yet really a thing.

Bryan didn't mention them when they first spoke in early 2003.

But even after he found out that Bryan was less than squeaky clean, Bobby was unmoved. If I had to boil down his justification for continuing to believe Bryan until at least 2016, when I last spoke with him about the case, it's contained in the phrase that my wife sometimes uses to address the fact

that humans shouldn't be judged on isolated mistakes. Popeye's nerfed. Bryan might have been extremely far from... ...perfect. But Bobby still found his story about the two New York guys

a hundred percent believable. They met more than Maxley, a planned her murder, and were there with her assault. And on the way up on Halloween Eve, they picked up golf clubs from the Scaglia Heart, killed more than Maxley.

Only Tony Bryan saw them that night.

When I started reinvesting in the case on my own, I still wasn't quite sure what to make Bryan's or his story. The things to his credibility were undeniable.

“But did they automatically mean he wasn't telling the truth about Martha's murder?”

I brought it up to Stephen Skakele one day in early 2024. What do you think of Tony? Do we know where he is right now? I don't know where he is. He is... I mean the interviews that Vito did with him are very compelling. His story is beyond compelling, considering that one of the hairs...

You know, the date set for testing was an African American hair, which would fit into Tony's rendition of the deaths. I proposed to Stephen the times being what they were in 1975. If there had been reports of any black strangers in Bellhaven, the Greenwich Cops, as inept as they were, would likely have been all over it.

He seemed to think I wasn't giving Greenwich jeans enough credit for being colorblind, nor Tony Bryant enough credit for being stealthy. It got dark early. Tony, it was easy. You knew where to hide. You know where the police were making the rent.

You knew where places on. You know, my stole all some stuff. You could easily hide. And to think, "I don't think anybody there really could." Nobody was looking, "Oh, you know, is your friend black enough?"

There's a difficulty of Tony's story, basically, the partying in that need.

“And nobody being able to remember if there's like a dozen people”

that they couldn't find somebody. "Well, you've also got Steve Harding and Maria Krumashwami, talking about a group of unknown teens at the end of Walsh Lane." Stephen's right. During Michael's 2007 appeal,

as attorney spoke to a few of the neighborhood kids now well into middle age, about what they'd seen in 1975. On the stand, the little sister of Belhavenite Kumo, who you heard from earlier in the episode, did report seeing large amorphous blobs of teens

that she didn't recognize or couldn't remember. And back in their 1975 police interviews, a few other Belhaven teens mentioned seeing a lot of kids and a crowd near Walsh Lane. At the time, cops didn't press them for more specifics.

When I asked Michael about all this, he mentioned that he'd seen several unidentified men on Mr. of 1975. "We had, at the end of the house, there was a four-season porch,

glassed in with a fire place. When I walked into the room from our library, I looked out and there was two of the biggest apple trees you've ever seen. And I saw three large men walk one under another

and then up our hill. Head up our hill towards a garden and a tennis court." So why not tell us to police back in 1975? Like many of the interviews the Greenwich cops did with the Belhaven teens.

Michael's was a perfunctory at best. But Michael says he did share this story. When he sat down with writer Richard Hoffman in 1998, three years before Crawford Mills and Tony Bryant came out of the woodwork.

I said, "On the tables with Richard Hoffman, I saw three large men walk by our pool through the floodlights and up to our hill. My point is, is can I have a crystal ball? How would I know that?"

But even if Michael did see three strangers that night, there's no proof they were Tony and his friends from the city. Over the years, I uncovered several other tantalizing clues that would seem to suggest there might be something

like a Bryant story. Like the 1975 police interview of a 11-year-old Jeff Burn,

“who Bryant described to Vito Kalucci as a key figure in the story.”

He's the one I mentioned earlier in the episode who fled the Skakele driveway after Tommy and Martha got flirtatious. Turns out, when police asked Jeff to review what he'd done that night, he replied,

In 2003, Tony told Kalucci that after Martha

was killed, Jeff seemed afraid.

“He had made mention to me several occasions”

that some of the bad habits were bad guys and he was sort of reaching out to me to help him. I said, "Jeff, I can't do anything to help you. What am I going to do?" What am I going to do?

What do you know that I don't know? Right. And it was after the murder. He was just Tony. You guys stayed clear of their bad guys.

Okay. Jeff didn't mention this to police and it's 1975 interview. Did you nor did he specifically mention Adolf Burr or Tony?

Did you see anyone attack Martha? No. Do you suspect anyone of getting hurt? No. Do you know Bashur who would get hurt?

No. Did you hit her? No. But then I stumbled upon this portion of the interview. Anything else you want to tell us

that maybe we haven't asked you and you think it might help us in some way? Can't think of anything.

“Have you pretty much been thinking about this for the best weeks?”

Nothing's for me in my and where. You have no suspicion on anybody. Not really anything. Not really anymore. We're even even more.

No, I don't. You know. Not really anymore. Could the 11-year-old have known more than he was letting on? Obviously, I'd love to hear him elaborate.

Sadly, asking Jeff about this or anything else was going to be impossible. One weekend in 1981, the Walker family was going skiing in Vermont and Jeff Burn, now 17, was planning to drive up with his brother and join them. Margie Walker remembers the call from Jeff's brother. His brother called us and Vermont and said, you know, I'm really sorry to tell you this.

But this is what happened at Jeff. What did he say? That, you know, that he had passed, that they found him in the morning, that he had passed away. And that was really shocking. What happened?

I don't really know. A horrible tragedy.

And one that meant that Jeff would never get to confirm his version of events on mischief night.

Twenty-three years later, while investigating the story to present new evidence to earn Michael in appeal, Bobby Kennedy called Jeff's sister Darrell, and related the tale of Hasbro intensely bunking in her house in an attempt to substantiate Brian's claims. Unlikely, she thought, but said she'd ask her mother to weigh in. When she called Bobby back, she had this to say.

She was never shocked. There's absolutely no way, ever. And it could be that we had his black friend. It wasn't that we had any news later. We could agree to do it.

We could agree to do it. We could agree to do it. If you couldn't quite make that out, she said Jeff never had any black friends. And in those days, there were no blacks in Bell Haven. If someone had seen any, she said it would have been so highly unusual that they would have said something.

But, but, but. When Bobby Kennedy had talked to Bertinsley in 2003, he seemed to have a surprising amount of detail about what the inside of the burn family house supposedly looked like. Tinsley described how immense it was with its two kitchens,

and described in detail a refrigerator like he'd never seen before,

with a single button you pushed that would make the door pop open like something from a sci-fi flick. His description of the home matches those of other Bell Haven kids who had spent time in the burn mansion. Margie Walker, though she doesn't recall seeing Tony or the two New York guys on Mr. tonight,

“does remember meeting them in Greenwich.”

I had met them at least one time, and that's when we were at in the fall in September. They would have sort of just like a community gathering like a pumpkin fest or a fall festival. And, you know, I have this recollection of being with Martha and seeing Tony and the two guys and meeting them. You know, we all met together. Margie also remembers that Bertins Tudor mansion the way that Tony Bryant described it.

How so big the parents might never know who was staying there. Jeff delivered in this very large house. I had a lot of kind of secret rooms and places that they used to go in the coal shaft underneath the front of the house. You could access and there was a iron door and you could crawl in through there. Jeff Burns' mother, like many of the Bell Haven parents of the era, may not have been totally attuned to the particulars of her son's social life.

And given the sprawling floor plan of their home, the burns could perhaps be forgiven for simply not noticing has broken tinsley hanging around.

Crawford Mills, who was responsible for outing Tony Bryant and his story in the first place.

But like Jeff Burns, Mills is another one of those people in the orbit of this story who met early and tragic ends. Margie Walker told me that Mills had a host of problems. Around the time he testified in Michael's appeal, he was diagnosed with cancer, which everyone suspected was related to him living so close to ground zero. But his slide had really begun when he got fired from that CBS job and had to move back to Connecticut and take a job with a local cable company.

“You know, and this is part of the story, I think, what happened to the moxley thing is part of what happened to trace.”

Trace, of course, being Crawford Mills the third. In October 2008, at age 47, Mills took his own life. About seven years after he thought he'd learned who killed Martha Moxley, and one year after a judge dismissed the story, he'd worked so hard to bring to light. There are stubborn, not easily dismissed aspects to Tony Bryant's story, which seemed so credible because it was so packed with details. But details, as we know, is the name of the town where Satan keeps a condo.

With Bryant having vanished into thin air, I assumed all of this would forever remain a mystery. Then, on Tuesday, November 12th of 2024, Steven Skakele called me.

You're never going to guess who I was just talking to, he said.

Tony Bryant, now three years since it's released from Federal Prison Camp, Pensacola, had called Steven out of the blue.

“He explained he'd lost all his contacts while in prison.”

He asked for Bobby Z-Mell. I found the timing of the call interesting. It was exactly a week after Trump's second term victory. Trump had installed Bobby on his transition team, which was tasked with making cabinet recommendations. And by November 12th, when Bryant reached out to Steven, press reports made it look increasingly likely that Bobby would be nominated to serve as Trump's health secretary.

As he was, officially, two days later.

Pending Senate confirmation, Bobby would soon be one of the most powerful men in Washington.

Did Bryant want something from him? Turns out, I would get to ask him myself. 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 ad interruptions, including ad free articles, podcasts, and full NBC News shows. Plus, deeper access and exclusive content lets 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.

Hey, it's Kate Snow, NBC News anchor host of the podcast The Drink With Kate Snow. I sit down with all kinds of celebrity's musicians, athletes over a drink of their choice, for candid conversations about how they made it there. With actor comedian, host, Joel McHale, I could barely stop laughing. You know Joel from community or the soup, his new show Animal Control. He asked for four bottles of Washington State wine for our interview.

He has news about whether there's a community movie coming. He tells the story of how he got one of his first big acting gigs by lying about his height.

“And you have to stay through the credits. He's so funny.”

We have behind-the-scenes bloopers and outtakes from our conversation. Hope you'll listen and follow the drink wherever you get your podcasts. In December 2024, Tony Bryant joined me on a video. In December 2024, Tony Bryant joined me on a video call from his home in Florida. It had been 21 years since Bryant sat with Vito Calucci almost 50 years since the crime.

Well, let's talk about October 30, 1975. As he told Calucci, Bryant said that after he and his friends arrived in Bell Haven, they joined with other mischief seekers in the meat. Remember going back across the street and going down into the meat and drinking smoking, there's a bunch of people coming and going though.

Back in 2003, Tony had told Calucci that some of the girls who'd been in the meat, Martha included didn't stay long.

You said that some suggestive comments were made that made some of the girls in the circle uncomfortable. Well, of course suggestive comments made by Al and Alexander were they getting into the sexually aggressive language like the caveman stuff and all that. They were getting into that and then, you know, gestures and just things that are inappropriate and makes company. And I think that you said that they'd laughed right at the circle.

“Yes, that's why I'm trying to tell you there were people were coming intentionally because we were hanging out and then after the conversation, they were listening to this conversation like, what the hell?”

I'm outta here and I don't blame them.

This detail is always perplexed me.

Two one familiar teams making Bell Haven girls uncomfortable with sexually suggestive remarks just yards from the murder scene. After Martha's death, credits was in a state of panic, yet none of these girls ever reported that encounter to police. One would think that in their travels, the Grunge police would have maybe encountered somebody who would have said, well, there were these guys that were being kind of gross. No, I don't know what happened. I don't know what happened with this whole thing. And I don't know why they never, I mean, at least call my mom and say, listen, is it okay if you and your son come and we have a conversation because we understand that he may have been a Greenwich.

And it just doesn't, none of it makes sense. He's right. It doesn't make sense. But how would Grunge police have known to reach out to him since no one specifically reported seeing him or his two friends on mischief night? As to why Tony didn't consider coming forward to law enforcement, he says his mom had reservations.

“It's in the papers and she's like, you need to tell me everything that you know. And we had that conversation. She's like, this is the problem.”

Because eight off is black, I'm black. Burr is a mixture. Where are the three minorities? My mom's thinking, okay, this is going to fall. I want to eat three. His mom may have worried that their race could put Tony and his friends in police crosshairs. But on the subject of being black and Greenwich, Tony seemed to fall squarely into the Steven Skakele School of Todd. One of the things that's been said about this case is

Any black people in Belhaven would stick out like a sore thumb and attract the attention of everybody that it's bizarre that we're even talking about this because Why is it? Why do you say it's bizarre? Because unfortunately, that construct exists in certain people's minds. And it's just how you see people. I mean, everybody knew that we were in Greenwich. Well, we were in Belhaven. 9 Greenwich. We were in Belhaven. Even if you didn't see us there that night, you know that we existed. We would be there during the day. We'd be at the Belhaven at the club.

I mean, it's just, it doesn't mean the same as it means now. Back in 2003, Tony had been adamant that Jeff Burn, along with Burn Tinsley, all said the New York guys selected the Burn Mansion after the murder.

“But when I asked him about it, Tony waffled. And how did you find out that they stayed with Jeff?”

They didn't come back. So they had to stay with Jeff. So did Jeff ever say, oh, the guy stayed with me that night or is this something you just intuitively? It's just, I know that's where they were because they had no place else to go unless they're sleeping on the street. Yeah, so they didn't say or Jeff didn't say they slept at my place. It was just something you know. Yeah, it's just something I knew. This particular detail had evolved from something that Tinsley, Hasbrook and Jeff Burn had expressly told him into something that Tony just knew.

Tony also told Vito Kaluchi back in 2003 that after the murder, Jeff Burn had on several occasions mentioned that something bad happened after Tony left Belhaven that night.

But when we spoke, Tony told me that Jeff had never made any such ominous pronouncements.

And there was another discrepancy. Bryant had told Vito Kaluchi that he remembered bumping into Hasbrook only once after leaving his high school. I saw Vito, I was with my mother. We were at the Bombay Palace, which is an Indian restaurant and my mother and I were leaving. And he was the dormant at the movie theory and I just sort of, and my mom's like, "You were shocked. You were like, "You look like you're about to...

Why? Because of this murder? Because of the murder, because of their...

They were just... they were unpredictable. The Indian meal came up again when Tony and I spoke, but with a significant and I would venture pretty memorable detail changed. It was Bombay Palace and we walked across the street and as we were walking, we ran into Adolf. And he was living in Central Park. He was homeless. His mother had thrown him out and put him out in the street. So my mom gave him some money.

We got him some food and we said our device and she looked at me and she's like, "What the hell was that?"

“I remember you sang you bumped into him. Was he also working at a movie theater or is that a different time? That's a different time.”

It's possible that Tony's shifting stories were just a byproduct of time distorting his recollections. Memory and its disintegration over time is a recurrent theme in this case. Or was there something else going on? During Michael's 2013 habeas proceeding, prosecutor Jonathan Benedict had flown in one of Tony's former colleagues, an attorney, who testified that Tony had lied about passing multiple bar exams.

My opinion of his veracity, the attorney testified, is that he cannot be trusted. I asked Tony about this. You know, the guy in Austin came up and said that he lied about being in the bar, not only did not pass the bar in Texas, but you hadn't passed the bar in either Maryland or DCs.

And never took the DC bar and never took the Maryland bar.

They went on a recommendation and never placed it on my resume. In 2013, Bryant's Austin colleague had testified otherwise. Bryant's been a bit of time explaining to me that his alleged lies were just a misunderstanding, but ultimately he admitted, I did not pass the Texas bar because I mean, I took it while I was working with them and I failed.

And then when the notification came, I went to them and said I didn't pass. I failed in my personal responsibilities to study. I was too interested in doing my job. I put my aspirations over my qualifications. That was my mistake.

Mistake or not? It wasn't the only blemish on his record. It's hard to see how you could go from starting an entertainment division of a firm in Austin to being the following year sitting in a van while two of your buddies robbed somebody at gunpoint. How does that happen?

I don't know and it happened. When I left Austin, I wasn't doing well. And I made a lot of bad choices. I made choices that I'm just putting to rest right now. Did the desire to put his choices to rest?

“I wondered, have anything to do with the timing of his coming out of the woodwork after all these years?”

Are you looking? Are you hoping for a pardon on the federal charges? No. No. No.

I mean, you do know somebody and you have friends in high places now? No. I don't know.

I would never put my friendship.

My friendship is not something that I'm looking for any type of, that doesn't make sense to me. And it's not related. I would never ask anybody to do anything like that. Maybe he wasn't looking for redemption from Bobby, but Bobby had very publicly defended

Michael and hired me to help him write a book based on Tony's story. So Tony's answer to my next question stunned me a bit. Let me ask you plainly.

“Do you think that Al Hasbrook and Bertinsley killed Martha Moxley?”

I wouldn't feel comfortable today making an investment because I don't know. I have suspicions. Do you think that they were present? Do you think that they witnessed something? I wouldn't know.

So the man who'd once been certain of something was now not sure what happened or if you ever really knew. I had to wonder how we'd even gotten here. Was there something else Tony was hiding? In the media, I think that there was an interview with Al Hasbrook.

And he actually said, "I think Tony has something to do with this." Let me just ask you plainly.

No, I didn't. I didn't witness it and I did not touch a hair on Martha Moxley's head. I'm still not sure. I know what to make of Tony's story. Or as motives and sharing it, then or now.

True or not, it yielded some terrible consequences.

I keep thinking back to what Crawford Mills said when he and Bobby first spoke.

I don't know about that, my colleague. I don't mean that. Why would anyone say that? Why would anyone say that?

“Crawford, I think when he testified, said,”

Tony knew me well enough to know that I wouldn't be able to keep my mouth shut with this information. Is that the case? He, I don't agree with that. I think that he understood that I needed him to be quiet about it. And that was stressing him with something that was very, very, very sensitive.

It was a big risk for me. I could have been quiet in my life would have been a lot more peaceful.

I reached out to Bertinsley but never got a reply.

Adolf Hasbrook's attorney said that there was absolutely no chance his client would speak to me for this podcast. But in 2016, 13 years after Bobby first amplified Bryant story and right after the publication of Framed, Hasbrook gave an interview to one time newsday reporter Len Lebitt. After graduating from Hughes, he'd served three years in the Army, then graduated from SUNY Brockport, had been married for 20 years,

had a grown daughter, and had taken the Metro North into the city every morning for 15 years for his tech job at ABC. Hasbrook said the press coverage totally upended his life. It affected me mentally and physically. He said, I see people looking at me.

“There was a change in attitude when they hear my name.”

People drive by my house. They park in my driveway. They knock on my door. They camp outside for hours. Before I enter my house, I looked to see if anybody is lurking.

I keep my curtains drawn so people can't look inside. I can't sit out in my backyard. My wife gets physically sick whenever this comes up. I don't want to be near anyone with a camera. In an interview for a 2019 oxygen channel special about Martha's case,

Hasbrook's attorney echoed his client's sentiments. I'm a horrible impact. People now look at him.

People who would never know the name, Al Hasbrook,

or know his face. No exactly what he has accused of. And they look away from him. I recognize these symptoms. It's a lot like what Michael Skakele describes feeling

every time he leaves the house. Now that you've heard about Michael and Tommy Skakele and Ken Littleton and the mysterious out of towners, you may be under the impression that you've met all the potential suspects. Or at least all of those who behaved suspiciously.

I have some news for you. On that particular subject, we're not quite done. You're about to hear from Martha herself.

“Could the work she left behind possibly be the key”

to finally identifying her killer? Next time, on Dead Certain, the Martha Moxley Martyr. He knew his father would be very upset if he said that he had sex with Martha. Peter was kind of a live wire or a little unpredictable.

After I got out of a long, I had to ask him. I just said, "Look up it. If you did this, I should give you." From NBC News Studios and highly replaceable productions, Dead Certain, the Martha Moxley Martyr,

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