A teenager was bludgeoned to death the night before Halloween in 1975. A Kennedy cousin was arrested – and then exonerated
For nearly 50 years, a quiet, affluent community in Connecticut has been haunted by the unsolved murder of Martha Moxley, a 15-year-old who was bludgeoned to death with a golf club.
It happened on the night before Halloween, known to some as the “Night of Mischief” in which teenagers celebrate the holiday one night early by terrorizing the neighborhood with relatively harmless pranks like egging and toilet-papering houses.
Martha Moxley, who lived in Belle Haven, a gated community in Greenwich, Connecticut, joined in on the fun with her friends on October 30, 1975.
But when she missed her curfew, her parents became worried and set out to look for her.
The next day, Martha was found dead in her backyard. Pieces of a broken six-iron golf club were found near her body. An autopsy revealed she had been bludgeoned and stabbed with the club.
While some residents assumed the murder was the work of a someone just passing through town who saw an opportunity to kill, the broken golf club led investigators to a house just across the street where the prominent Skakel family lived.
Michael Skakel, who was also 15 at the time of the murder, and his brother, Thomas “Tommy” Skakel, 17, nephews of Robert F. Kennedy’s widow, Ethel Kennedy, were both seen with Martha on the night she was killed.
For months leading up to her murder, Martha wrote in a diary about the neighbor boys, many times ranting about having to dodge Michael’s unwanted romantic advances.
The case drew international attention because of the prominent and wealthy Skakel family, their connection to the Kennedy dynasty, and the countless theories about who killed the teen.
But for decades, no one was charged with Martha’s murder.
Then in 2000, Michael Skakel was arrested. He was 41 years old when he stood trial in 2002.
Prosecutors argued that Skakel became enraged with jealousy over an alleged relationship between Martha and his brother Tommy, which led to him killing her in a drunken rage on that fateful night before Halloween.
When Martha’s body was discovered in her own backyard, she had been bludgeoned to death and her jeans and underwear were pulled down around her knees.
However, according to Jack Solomon, Easton, Connecticut’s Chief of Police at the time, there was no evidence of sexual assault.