Martha, R.I.P.

On

Oct. 30, 1975, at around 10 in the evening, a young man beat a young woman to death with a golf club on her front lawn. When the club finally broke — on a backswing, sending the bloodied steel head flying backward across the yard — the young man kept going, stabbing the girl with the sharp splintered shaft. One stab drove a lock of her long blond hair right through her neck, like a thread through a needle. The girl was Martha Moxley. On June 7, 2002, a Connecticut jury decided the young man was Michael Skakel.

Skakel is a Kennedy cousin — nephew of Ethel, Robert Kennedy's wife — and his money and connections have given the trial a lurid, surreal quality. At times it has read like a collage pieced together from tabloid clippings and TV-movie outtakes — a Kennedy here, an O.J. witness there. But the crime in question was very real, and the fact that for some it seemed to be solved at all — after 27 years on the books — is a triumph over hazy memories, bad luck and, above all, time.

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In September 1975, Michael Skakel wasn't a murderer; he was just another rich kid--"a total a______ in his actions and words," Moxley wrote in her journal. She and Skakel, both 15, were neighbors in tony Greenwich, Conn. He had a crush on her; she flirted with his older brother Tommy, 17. That September diary entry included the words "I really have to stop going over there"--meaning the Skakels' house. Her torn and bludgeoned body was found at noon on Halloween, face down under a pine tree, with her pants and underwear around her ankles.

After that bloody first act came a 16-year intermission. The search for the killer flagged, and the Moxley family argued that the Skakels were using their wealth and their Kennedy connections to stifle the investigation. But just when all hope seemed lost, it was, ironically, the Kennedy name that revived it. The 1991 rape trial of William Kennedy Smith created a voracious demand for Kennedy scuttlebutt, and when the trial was over, the media turned to the Moxley case for more. A string of books, articles and TV shows about the murder followed. Goaded by the media coverage, detectives began reinterviewing people connected with the crime, gathering new evidence. By 1998 they had found enough to convene a grand jury. On Jan. 18, 2000, a judge indicted Michael, by then a 39-year-old husband and father, for the murder of Martha.

When the trial began, the defense had a quarter-century head start. There was no physical evidence linking Skakel to the scene. Michael's father Rushton now suffers from dementia. And there were two suspects besides Michael: his brother Thomas, who was the primary focus in the early days of the investigation, and the Skakels' live-in tutor, Kenneth Littleton, who was an alcoholic and a manic-depressive. Two of Michael's brothers and a cousin testified in near unison as to his whereabouts at the time of the murder: he was a 20-minute drive away, watching Monty Python at his cousin's house. Skakel never took the stand, but those present say he mouthed words at witnesses while they testified: "I love you." "Good job." "You f______ liar!"

When the evidence against Skakel appeared, it was all circumstantial. The murder weapon, a Toney Penna six-iron, came from a set owned by Michael and Tommy's mother. Witnesses — a family friend, a hairdresser, a chauffeur — came forward with suspicious remarks Michael had made over the years. Neighbors remembered the young Skakel whacking the heads off squirrels with a golf club for fun.

Prosecutor Jonathan Benedict extracted reluctant testimony from Skakel's sister and played a tape Skakel made in the mid-'90s, when he was working on his autobiography. Both cast doubt on Skakel's alibi but without demolishing it. Classmates from a private school Skakel attended in Maine — really a glorified rehab clinic where Skakel was sent after a drunken-driving arrest — said he talked about the murder. The accounts ranged from helpless uncertainty — he was drunk, he blacked out, he couldn't remember what had happened — to dumb arrogance: "I'm gonna get away with murder. I'm a Kennedy."

It was Benedict's summation that turned the tide. A tweedy, silver-haired George Plimpton type who shuns the limelight, Benedict was soft-spoken for most of the trial. (At one point a member of the jury even had to ask him to speak up.) But his closing argument was a tour de force. Orchestrating a barrage of tapes, photographs and flashing transcripts, Benedict wove dozens of disparate facts into a simple scenario as chilling as any thriller: Skakel, jealous because Moxley flirted with Tommy, beat her to death in a drunken rage, masturbated over her body, then crept back to his bedroom.

After the verdict, Judge John Kavanewsky denied Skakel bail and refused his request to address the court. Outside the courthouse, no one was celebrating. Martha's brother John called the victory hollow, saying: "It doesn't bring Martha back." Mickey Sherman, Skakel's lawyer, declared himself "bitterly disappointed" and discussed grounds for appeal. Said brother David: "Michael is innocent. I know this because I know Michael like only a brother does."