October 31, 1975. Greenwich, Connecticut. After she fails to return home the previous night, the body of 15-year old Martha Moxley is discovered in her backyard. She has been stabbed in the neck and bludgeoned with a golf club and pieces of the shattered club are traced to the residence of the Skakels, a prominent family from the neighborhood. Decades later, one of the family’s children, Michael Skakel, who was 15 at the time of the crime, is charged and convicted of Martha’s murder. However, Michael’s conviction winds up being vacated on two separate occasions due to ineffective counsel at his trial, so he is released from prison. In 2020, the state announces that they have no plans to retry Michael, meaning there are no conclusive answers about what happened. Did Michael Skakel actually kill Martha Moxley or was someone else was responsible? This week, “The Trail Went Cold” will be releasing the first part of a special two-part episode about one of the most controversial murder cases of the past half-century. Special thanks to listener Jeremy Indick-Connelly for narrating the opening of this episode.
Additional Reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Martha_Moxley
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/who-killed-martha-moxley/
https://unsolved.com/gallery/martha-moxley/
https://unsolvedmysteries.fandom.com/wiki/Martha_Moxley
http://thesuttonreport.com/The%20Sutton%20Report/campysuttontoc.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20130315150324/http://www.marthamoxley.com/news/050502gt.htm
http://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-skakel0522.artmay22-story.html
https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/2003/01/kennedy.htm
https://caselaw.findlaw.com/ct-supreme-court/1455643.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/24/nyregion/skakel-gets-new-trial-in-75-killing-of-teenager-in-connecticut.html?ref=nyregion
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/12/30/nyregion/michael-skakel-martha-moxley-timeline.html
http://nypost.com/2017/09/17/i-tutored-a-kennedy-relative-and-wound-up-accused-of-murder/
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/04/nyregion/michael-skakel-conviction-reversed.html
https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/30/us/skakel-no-retrial-moxley-murder/index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/article/skakel-moxley-murder-case.html
“The Trail Went Cold” is on Patreon. Visit www.patreon.com/thetrailwentcold to become a patron and gain access to our exclusive bonus content.
“The Trail Went Cold” is doing a weekly livestream show on Vokl every Thursday from 7:00-8:00 PM ET as part of their “True Crime Thursday” line-up. For more information, please visit their website.
The Trail Went Cold is produced and edited by Magill Foote.
All music is composed by Vince Nitro.
The Trail Went Cold – Episode 377 – John Glasgow
The Trail Went Cold – Episode 376 – Monika Rizzo
The Trail Went Cold – Episode 375 – Vernon Shipman, Charles Glass, and Louise Davis Shumate
The Trail Went Cold – Episode 374 – Malakia Logan
The Trail Went Cold – Episode 373 – Tommy Gibson
The Trail Went Cold – Episode 372 – Anne Barber Dunlap
The Trail Went Cold – Episode 371 – Ginni Wood, Kelly Gaskins, and Ervin Williams
The Trail Went Cold – Episode 370 – Jeffrey Digman, Billy Ray Hargrove, and Mike Carmichael
The Trail Went Cold – Bonus Episode – Mysteries on the True Crime Express
The Trail Went Cold – Episode 369 – Update, Part 5
The Trail Went Cold – Episode 368 – Lynne Harper, Part 2
The Trail Went Cold – Episode 367 – Lynne Harper, Part 1
The Trail Went Cold – Episode 366 – Patricia Viola
The Trail Went Cold – Episode 365 – Phylicia Thomas and Jennifer Barziloski
The Trail Went Cold – Episode 364 – The Lane Bryant Shooting
The Trail Went Cold – Episode 363 – Heidi Seeman and Erica Botello
The Trail Went Cold – Episode 362 – Margaret Dash, Retha Hiers, and Donyelle Johnson
The Trail Went Cold – Episode 361 – Jack Brown
The Trail Went Cold – Episode 360 – Patrick Mullins
The Trail Went Cold – Bonus Episode – New Year New Binge
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