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Michael Skakel is preparing to clarify the events surrounding a notorious murder case that saw him unjustly incarcerated for over ten years.
This Kennedy family member, who was convicted for the 1975 murder of teenager Martha Moxley, is breaking his long-held silence in an interview with NBC News for their new podcast, Dead Certain: The Martha Moxley Murder.
In the premiere episode, titled “Mischief Night,” which aired on November 4, seasoned journalist and host Andrew Goldman outlines the series’ intent to meticulously explore the case across 12 episodes, featuring interviews with Skakel and revealing new insights into the nearly five-decade-old murder.
During his brief introduction in the first episode, the 65-year-old Skakel comments, “Um, my name is Michael Skakel and why am I being interviewed? I mean, that’s kind of a big question, isn’t it?”
The case dates back to when Skakel and Moxley, both 15, were Connecticut teenagers. Moxley was found brutally murdered on Halloween in 1975, with investigators determining she had been fatally struck with a golf club the day before.
The case kept its unsolved status for decades, until new investigators zeroed in on Moxley’s neighbor Skakel (whose mother was sisters with the often-dubbed modern day Camelot’s matriarch, Ethel Kennedy). Skakel’s 2002 conviction was already controversial at the time, leading to a split public opinion after he was handed a 20-year prison sentence.
Host Goldman was first introduced to the ins and outs of Moxley’s murder after being tapped to ghostwrite Robert Kennedy Jr.’s 2016 book that proclaimed his relative’s innocence, Framed: Why Michael Skakel Spent Over a Decade in Prison for a Murder He Didn’t Commit.
“Whoever killed Martha Moxley, would have been covered in blood. Nobody’s ever disputed this. Yet, no blood was ever located anywhere besides the crime scene,” Goldman recalled of his initial understanding of the investigation. “At least, that’s what I’d thought—because no one had ever reported otherwise.”
Skakel’s conviction was overturned in 2018, with prosecutors officially declining to pursue another case against him two years later. Despite being cleared, his association with Moxley’s murder has lingered—and it’s not likely to budge as long as this half-century cold case remains unsolved.
“What you’re going to hear in the rest of the season, it’s the result of almost 10 years of research and endless interviews in what I believe will be a full, true, authoritative story of the Martha Moxley case,” Goldman promised listeners. “Trust me, it’s a doozy.”
Episode one of Dead Certain: The Martha Moxley Murder is available now on all major podcast platforms.
(Oxygen and NBC News are both part of the NBCUniversal family)