A Shaky Case In Greenwich

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By Suzanne Smalley

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Martha Moxley was only 15 when she was bludgeoned to death on the night of Oct. 30, 1975--and the unsolved murder, in the middle of a gated community that is home to some of America's wealthiest families, has hung like a dark shadow over Greenwich, Conn., for the past 27 years. Now the state is prosecuting her next-door neighbor at the time, Michael Skakel. The trial, in Norwalk, Conn., is attracting maximum media attention, partly because of the confluence of scandal and social privilege--Skakel is one of Ethel Kennedy's nephews--and partly because Moxley's mother has spent years in a quest for justice. So the stakes are high and the prosecution is under the gun--especially since so far, at least, the case looks like a ghastly mess.

For starters, as a prosecution expert testified last week, there is no physical evidence linking Skakel to the crime. Worse, the case has always suffered from too many suspects--including Thomas Skakel, Michael's older brother, and Kenneth Littleton, the Skakels' live-in tutor. The cops shifted to Michael Skakel late in the game; investigators were still pursuing Littleton into the 1990s.

Skakel's lawyer, Michael Sherman, insists Skakel was at the home of a cousin when Moxley was killed. Last week prosecutors produced a witness to dispute that alibi, which may be pivotal in the case. But their real challenge may be overcoming the weakness of a very old investigation--which was, sad to say, botched from the start.

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