The Martha Moxley Murder

At ten o’clock that morning, Dorothy Moxley went to the Skakel’s home. Michael answered the door appearing as if he were hung over and had not slept all night. Dorothy asked him if Martha was there and he quickly answered now without even looking for her. She went home and received many calls from friends offering hope and reassurance. She knew that they were all wondering if something awful had really happened to Martha. Around 12:15 that afternoon, the doorbell rang. Dorothy ran to the door to find fifteen year old Sheila Maguire, a friend of Martha’s, in tears. She pointed to the trees next to the Moxley home and said she found Martha (Murder Case Timeline).

The time of death was also calculated illegibly. Police assumed that Martha had been killed between 9:30 and 10:00 p.m. (Murder Case Timeline) This assumption was based solely on the fact that this was the time that Dorothy Moxley heard dogs barking loudly. If the autopsy would have been used to determine the time of death, the time frame opens up to as early as 9:30 p.m., October 30, and as late as 1 a.m. on October 31.

Dorothy Moxley called the police at roughly 3:50 a.m. Two patrolmen looked all over Belle Haven for hours; they found nothing and no one. At dawn the next morning, the police called Dorothy, hoping Martha had came home. When they found out that she did not come home, they realized that the situation may be more serious than they had originally thought. The Greenwich police turned the case over to the Youth Division and officers from that division continued to search for Martha (Murder Case Timeline).

Standard procedure in a murder investigation is to photograph the victim’s body before it is moved. No pictures of Martha’s body were taken before it was moved. However, Greenwich’s criminologist and photographer was at the scene with a fully loaded camera, but was forbidden to take photos of the corpse (Murder).

nk the killer evaded punishment for more than twenty years because of simple, small town police inexperience; I, on the other hand, believe that the killer’s identity was conveniently covered up to protect a name that is known for scandal, the Kennedy’s.

The youth officers that first reached the scene found Martha’s body under a Japanese elm on the west side of the Moxley property. Her face was obviously bruised and her hair was matted with blood. Her pants and underwear were pulled down to her knees, when the police noticed this, they called for help a short time later the entire scene was full of lawmen and bystanders (Marthamoxley.com). Whoever killed Martha was either interrupted in a rape attempt of left her undressed in that way to humiliate her because there was no sign of sexual molestation. There were also pieces of a broke golf club near the body that seemed to be the murder weapon (Cannon). The first in a series of mistakes was that there was no reprehensive from the corner’s office or the medical examiner’s office at the crime scene, only the Moxley’s family doctor was there; he was called hours after the beginning of the investigation to confirm the victim was dead (Marthamoxley.com). The cause of death was not explained correctly because police seemed to have completely ignored the autopsy findings.

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