Chapter 27 fourth quarter

In a conversation with the Sutton Task Force, Ken Littleton said: "The only person I can recall seeing that night was Tony. You may be interested in that because in a way, or At one point, I provided him with an alibi." Ken repeated what he had told police about what he had seen that night.Interestingly, he only emphasized the possibility that Tony was not there from beginning to end, and he didn't seem to be eager to provide any proof for himself. The detectives asked, "Who do you think was the perpetrator?" Ken Littleton replied, "No comment." The detectives asked again: "Do you think the perpetrator was one of the young Scarkers?" Ken Littleton replied: "No comment."

But Ken said he wasn't particularly sure whether Mike actually went to Tyrion's house with three other people, and said he thought the incident should have happened after 10:30, and even speculated that Martha might have been called out of the house, Then killed between 11 and 12 o'clock. The Sutton Report stated that, based on the detectives' observations, Ken Littleton knew more than he told them.The report also highlights that on the night of October 30, 1975, Ken Littleton temporarily stayed in Ruston Scarker's master bedroom, which had a clear view of Wales Street and Mockley from a balcony on the second floor. The front yard of the home.Did he not see something?

The professional ethics of Sutton Private Detective Agency require the investigators of the task force to maintain the confidentiality of their clients.All the detectives involved in the case signed legal documents with Roston Skakel promising to keep them confidential. One day in 1996, Dominic Dahn, the author of the novel "Purgatory Season", received a phone message in the office of his magazine. The message said: "I have materials about the Mockley murder." Dominic made an appointment with this person Meet at a downtown restaurant.The other party's name was Kimmy Blaine, 21 years old, just graduated from university, and was temporarily employed by the Sutton Detective Agency to help sort out the investigation materials related to Martha's murder.He was the only one of Sutton's people with access to the case who did not sign the non-disclosure agreement.Kimi Blaine handed Dominic Dunn a thick stack of the Sutton Papers.Soon, the wind leaked, and the young man asked Dominique for the documents back.Dominic Dunn quietly left a copy for his secretary, telling her to "be sure to hide it somewhere I don't know".

Previously, on November 26, 1995, Lin Levitt, then a reporter for the New York Police Department's newspaper "Newsday", disclosed to the newspaper an excerpt of Tony Skakel's confession from Sutton's report.On December 4 of the same year, Mike Skaker's retraction also appeared in the newspapers.No one is sure where Lin Levitt's information came from, but it is said that Lin Levitt was asked for some material on the case in 1992, when the Sutton Task Force was first working.There may have been some kind of tacit understanding or deal between them. It is not difficult to imagine the shock of these two pieces of news to the Greenwich police circle. Mike Skakel was immediately included in the list of suspects. "If nothing else," said Frank Gall, "he lied to the police for a long time and many times is enough." Check it out.

From what people know about Mike, he is more likely to be violent than Tony, and even more likely to kill.The reason why he has not been listed as a suspect is because he has an alibi.The police never used a polygraph on Mike, but John Skakel passed the polygraph test.John told the police that at about 9:30 on the night of the incident, Mike and Roston Jr. drove Jem Tyrion home with him and stayed at Tyrion's house until 11:20.Therefore, all these dry people are immune.Of course, more importantly, the police have always locked the crime time from 9:30 to 10:00 at night. As the Greenwich police detective Stewart Carroll said: "Tony is a villain, and Mike is a hundred times worse than him." It is said that Mike often went to a sporting goods store in Greenwich and saw the boy he liked. After taking the things and leaving, the shop owner had to complain to his father.Ruston Skakel usually just said, "Send the bill." In addition to Tony's similar problems and troubles, Mike would add another: he was cruel.People on Belhaven Island have seen him tormenting small animals with an air gun, and casually killing cats, dogs or squirrels with a golf club on walks.Once, a patrolman witnessed Mike decapitate a small squirrel with a golf club.He also collected a whole bag of birds he killed.Mike was racing, drinking, and fighting. Neighbors described him as "a dangerous man."His mind seemed to be filled with hatred for everything, including his family.The only girl in the family, Julie, is "terrified to death" of Mike, and the worst thing is the open and secret fight between him and Tony.

Mike Skakel, on the other hand, was a generous man.His generosity made him make a lot of wine and meat friends on Belhaven Island. Mike always has a lot of money in his pocket. He often buys a pair of baseball gloves or a bicycle as a gift for his friends when he is happy, and takes his friends for a ride across the country on the plane of the Great Lakes Mining Company from time to time. A friend of Mike's, who asked not to be named, let's call him "Fred," told Tim Dumas, the author of "The Wicked House," that Mike was a man with a dual personality, which may have been the same as his Since the age of 12, he has been drinking alcohol and has become addicted to alcohol since then.He can be very bold, and he can be very cruel.At the same time, Mike is the smartest of the seven Skackle brothers and sisters, and he has an endless stream of ghost ideas, one bad idea after another.

On October 31, 1975, shortly after Siena Megall found Martha's body, Mike ran to "Fred"'s house and said to "Fred"'s mother excitedly: "Martha was killed by someone. Killed. They wanted to pin it on Tony." It was odd, because no one had connected Tony to Martha's death at the time.In fact, after Martha's murder, Mike was the first to report to the police that he saw Tony and Martha together at 9:30, and Tony became a suspect in this case. "Fred" wasn't home that afternoon; he had gone to school for soccer practice.When he got home and heard about Martha, he headed for the Scarkers' house as usual. "Fred" was stopped at the door by a stranger in a dark suit and told he couldn't see Mike right now.It later became known that the stranger might have been one of several Great Lakes lawyers who had arrived at the Skakels' home that afternoon.That is, from then on, the friendship between "Fred" and Mike ceased to exist.This may be because, in "Fred"'s own words: "Deep down, I always thought it was Mike who killed Martha."

Mike's suspiciousness is much more than that.Skakel gardener Franz Wiedin noted that after Martha's murder, Mike's siblings treated him particularly well, "as if he knew something." As for Tony, on December 11, 1975, Helen Ickes and Jeffrey Byron said after reporting the intimacy between Martha and Tony to the police: "But in any case, we don't think it was Tony killed Martha." Helen Ickes' mother also told Mrs Mockley: "I don't think Tony would kill, but Mike, that's hard to say." On March 5, 1978, Mike drove to the Windham ski area in New York. He was chased by a police car because of traffic violations and refused to stop according to the police's instructions, and finally crashed into a telephone booth on the side of the road.Mike was arrested on charges including driving without a license, driving under the influence of alcohol and speeding.After negotiating with family lawyer Tom Hiridan and paying bail in full, Mike was spared from jail, but was sent to the Ilan Juvenile Correctional Center in Maine.Years later, people read in the Sutton Report a note written by Tom Hiridan when he talked to Mike about this matter. In it, there is this sentence: "Mike showed no pain or remorse. His only answer was: 'Next time I will never let them catch me again.'”

The Yilan Juvenile Center was opened for problem dandies, and in 1978, the annual fee was as high as $30,000.Since then, Mike has been in and out of this and various other treatment and correction centers for more than ten years.But in the eyes of outsiders, the main purpose of the Scarker family is probably not just to make Mike's behavior more standardized.The strict secrecy of these so-called centers made it impossible for the police to have access to Mike. At one point, the police didn't even know where Mike was.By the time Mike finally ended his therapy or discipline career, he was in his early 30s. After graduating from a college in the mid-1990s, Mike married a professional golfer.He worked in the offices of several Kennedys and represented the U.S. national team in a world-class ski race.

For Mike Skakel, the Sutton report was just the beginning of his bad luck. On February 16, 1996, according to reports on the then-rated TV special Unsolved Mysteries, a man who identified himself as Phil Lorenz called the show's whistleblower line, saying he had During two years of alcohol and drug treatment with Mike at the Elan Juvenile Center in the late 1970s, Mike confessed in front of several people at a group meeting that he beat Martha Mockley to death with a golf club .Mike said that he was drunk at the time. When he was drunk, his mind often went blank and he had no sense of what he was doing.It is said that during the group therapy session, the director of the Yilan Center, Joseph Reich, was also present and recorded the audio.

In 1997, Dominic Dahn gave copies of two Sutton reports to the Connecticut Department of Justice and to author and former LAPD detective Mark Fuhrman.The latter published the book "The Greenwich Murder" in 1998 based on his own independent investigation and research.The book refers to Mike Skackle as the real murderer of Martha Mockley's murder, and in its reconstructed case, it is believed that Miss Mockley did not leave Tony Skackle at 9:50 that night, They stayed together at Scarker's house until 11:20, when Mike and others returned from Tyrion's house.Witnessing the intimacy between Tony and Martha again, Mike was furious and quarreled with Tony.Martha left angrily, but was hunted down by furious Mike on the way home and killed on the spot.Meanwhile, Ken Littleton happened to be on the balcony of the master bedroom. He was nearsighted, and even with glasses it was difficult to see clearly in the dark.Through the streetlights on Welsh Street, he vaguely saw two figures moving on the Mockley lawn, but he couldn't be sure who they were or what was going on.At the same time, Mike also saw the figure on the balcony.The book believes that what Mike told the Sutton task force about masturbating on the big tree in front of Martha's window was actually the murderer's masturbation on the corpse after stripping off the victim's pants under the big pine tree.This argument was later cited in court by the prosecution.Although the author was criticized by the local investigators for exaggerating the incompetence and corruption of the Greenwich police in the book, it was later proved that the analysis of the case in this book had a certain impact on the final conclusion of the case.In the same year, "Evil Giants" was published, and it is not difficult to see the author Tim Dumas' tendency from the title of the book.Although the book does not clearly determine who the murderer is, it promotes the process of the case on the other hand. Since the Skakel family broke off cooperation with investigators, Greenwich police have repeatedly applied to the Verfield District Attorney's Office, to which they belong, to request a grand jury to forcibly subpoena them for what they believe to be relevant to the case. witnesses, but each time was dismissed by Attorney General Don Brown as insufficient evidence.Don Brown's concern is that, under Connecticut law, number one, if the subpoenaed witness thinks that testifying before a grand jury might get him burned, get him into trouble, and invoke Section 5 of the Constitutional Amendment to remain silent, the grand jury In order to win its cooperation, the regiment must pardon its crimes in advance.This means that if this person is indeed the murderer, after he testifies truthfully, the Attorney General's Office cannot prosecute and convict him.Second, the grand jury in Connecticut is a so-called one-shot deal. If the results of the arraignment investigation still do not have enough evidence to indict anyone, the case will be closed forever and become a death case. Under no circumstances shall the case be reopened.Therefore, unless the state's prosecutors are very sure, they dare not easily consider using the grand jury.Since the murder of Martha Mockley in 1975, during his more than 20 years in power, Don Brown has repeatedly rejected the application of the police and the families of the victims to set up a grand jury. Inevitably aroused all kinds of opinions. Tim Dumas wrote in the book "Evil Powers", if the Scarker family really wants to use power and money to influence the local police and judicial circles, so that the case will never go to trial, the best way Just bribe Don Brown. In April 1998, two weeks after the book was published, Don Brown suddenly announced his resignation, citing "Dumas's book" as the reason.Afterwards, Tim Dumas said that what he said in the book only reflected the speculation of reporters and public discussion. In fact, he personally believed that it was impossible for Don Brown to accept bribes, because in 1991, it was Don Brown who approved the Martha Mockley homicide investigation reopened.Tim Dumas also added that Don Brown is just waiting for more conclusive evidence and a more mature and favorable time. Don Brown's successor, Jonathan Benetti, was not ambiguous at all. The first thing the new official did after taking office was to apply for the establishment of a grand jury, which is rare in Connecticut.In the previous ten years, there were only 15 applications in the state, and more than half of them were rejected.The attorney general who files the petition must submit a summary of the evidence involved to a specialized panel of state judges and pass a plea, convincing the judges that the results of the grand jury inquest investigation will lead to an arrest and indictment. In June 1998, a panel of judges granted Jonathan Benetti's application.And so, less than two months after Don Brown left office, Connecticut Supreme Court Justice George Sand was appointed as a one-person investigative special grand jury judge in the Martha Mockley homicide trial.After the murder of Martha Mockley, the grand jury system in Connecticut underwent major reforms in the 1980s. In addition to the regular grand jury consisting of one judge and 12 to 14 jurors, the new A special grand jury presided over by only one judge is added for the purpose of investigation. The reason why the "jury" is preceded by "Grand" is because it has the authority of a general grand jury. Or enjoy the same rights, such as the above-mentioned right to forcibly summon witnesses, the right to special pardon, etc.Because it is composed of only one person, this kind of single-person investigative grand jury is nicknamed "one-man show" in the judicial circle of Connecticut.The panel of judges also decided that the arraignments and hearings of the special grand jury will be held in Court C on the third floor of the Judiciary Building in the center of Bridgeport, the capital of the Verfeld region, for a period of 18 months. In the early summer of 1998, the Connecticut Department of Justice issued a list of witnesses to be called. On July 10, the first day of the grand jury hearing, four witnesses were called: Doris Mockley, Jon Mockley, Dan Heckman, one of the first police officers to arrive at the scene, and Static Wilke.Also to follow: Xena Megall, Helen Ickes and several of the detectives who were at the scene that day.It is not difficult to see that the grand jury basically summoned witnesses according to the chronological order of the development of the case: Martha disappeared, the body was found, the police arrived, and the scene investigation... During the entire hearing process, the door of Court C was closed.The reporters who were turned away gathered outside the judicial building under the scorching sun, doing whatever they could to inquire about the news, or chasing and intercepting the witnesses who came in and out. On August 4, a gray-haired, slow-moving, emaciated, and slightly nervous witness walked into Court C, turning a deaf ear to all reporters' questions along the way.If they hadn't inquired about the list of witnesses who appeared in court that day, it would be difficult for the reporters to compare the "old man" in front of them - in fact, he was just in his early 50s - with the heroic and personable Ken Leigh 23 years ago. Toton connected.A few minutes later, accompanied by several lawyers and officials, Mr. Littleton transferred from Court C to the open court.Attorney General Jonathan Benetti explained to Judge John Roman that Ken Littleton asserted his Title Fifth Amendment right to remain silent and asked the judge to order Mr Littleton to compel his testimony. Judge John Roman so ordered. Now, Ken Littleton had two options.Or continue to remain silent against a court order, which could result in prosecution for contempt of court.Or testify as ordered, and automatically obtain "agreement immunity" according to the law, that is to say, even if the final grand jury finds that Ken Littleton is the murderer in this case, he will not be held criminally responsible (this is why the grand jury does not Prepare to subpoena Tony and Mike Skackle).The move also demonstrates Attorney General Jonathan Benetti's belief that Ken Littleton is innocent. The Skackle family were summoned to court were Julie, John and Steven, and two cousins ​​of their great-aunt Georgiana Tyrion. On September 24, a luxury concierge car with a Maine license plate quietly parked at the side entrance of the judicial building.By the time the reporters who had been waiting for a long time at the front door with cameras on their shoulders found out, the owner had already disappeared in Court C on the third floor.This person is the rich man who made his fortune from the Yilan Juvenile Management Center and the director of the center, Joseph Ruixi. Soon, Mr. Ruixi came out of Court C angrily, and he was also transferred to an open court.Afterwards, he told reporters on the steps of the front door of the Judiciary Building that in view of the nature of the Yilan Juvenile Juvenile Center and the professional ethics of keeping clients confidential, he would request the court to allow all staff and clients of the Yilan Center, including himself, Student patients are not subpoenaed by the grand jury.Joseph Reich explained to the reporters that due to the needs of treatment, the staff of the center always inspire and induce the student patients to speak out all their thoughts, and assure them that there is no possibility of leaking the secret.The motto of the Yilan Center’s treatment work is: “Telling the truth will set you free.” If a grand jury compels the center’s staff or students to testify, it will discredit the Yilan Juvenile Center and lead to serious consequences. Economic losses. When asked by a reporter about Mike Skakel's confession that he killed Martha, Joseph Reich said he had never heard of it and threatened to track down the person who called Unsolved Mysteries.Joseph Ruixi said that those who were sent to the Yilan Juvenile Detention Center were all people with one or another problem. Some of them were successfully disciplined or cured, and later became judges and big bosses. Hopeless. "Who's sure this guy wasn't drinking or doing drugs when he called Unsolved Mysteries?" On December 10, after more than two months of long litigation, the court ruled that Yilan Juvenile Detention Center does not enjoy any special exemption.All those who may provide clues to the murder of Martha Mockley must be arraigned by the grand jury according to law.At the same time, the court will keep the Yilan Center as confidential as possible without affecting the normal legal order. In late July 1998, two weeks after the grand jury began hearings, Mike Skakel hired defense attorney Mickey Sherman for himself.By this time, Mike and his family had moved to Florida, and his wife was expecting their first child.When a reporter asked how Mike reacted to the grand jury hearing, Mickey Sherman said that Mike had lived in the shadow of the murder for more than 20 years and had become numb to everything.As long as the facts of the case can come to light, it will be a relief for Mike.So no matter what the result will be, he will accept it calmly. On December 10, 1999, after arraigning 53 witnesses in secret, the grand jury hearing concluded. Spanning the turn of the century, on January 19, 2000, Grand Jury Judge George Sand submitted his hearing report to the Connecticut Department of Justice.According to informed sources, George Sand said in the report that "explosive leads" were obtained during the hearing.Soon, Attorney General Jonathan Benetti signed the arrest warrant, and Mike Skakel flew from Florida back to Fufa, Connecticut on his own initiative.By this time his wife had divorced him, and his son, George Scarker, had just turned one year old. On March 14, 2000, defense attorney Mickey Sherman petitioned Juvenile Court Judge Maureen Dennis to allow Michael Skakel, then 39 years old, to stand trial in the juvenile court on the grounds that Martha's murder occurred at the time of , Mike was only 15 years old.Cases from 25 years ago should be treated as if they were 25 years ago.According to people in the judiciary, if Mike Skakel was the real murderer of Martha Mockley's murder, if he had been tried in 1975 when he was a minor, he would have been sentenced to a maximum of 5 years in prison.In other words, Mike Skakel will be released from prison and regain his freedom when he is 20 years old. On January 31, 2001, Judge Maureen Dennis ruled that the Martha Mockley murder case would be heard by an adult court for the simple reason that there is no juvenile incarceration facility in Connecticut that can house a 40-year-old adult.The defendant refused to accept the appeal and was dismissed by the Connecticut Supreme Court on November 19, 2001. On April 2, 2002, the deliberations for the selection of jurors began. On April 19, a jury of 12 members, six men and six women, was formed.All the jurors were not only all white, but all white collar, including a police officer, a Spanish teacher, a hotel executive, an investment consultant, a restaurant manager, a marketing expert, a corporate legal adviser, the executive of a large company that trains drivers, and There was a nurse whose daughter worked for the New York City Attorney General's Office. On May 7 of the same year, the Martha Mockley murder case officially opened in the state court in Norwich, the capital of Connecticut.CBS reported on the TV news of the day: After 27 years and thousands of news reports, the suspect in Martha Mockley's murder and Isaac Kennedy's 41-year-old nephew Mike Skakel was finally put on trial today. ………… As he walked into the courtroom with his defense attorney, Mike Skakel refused to answer any questions from reporters.The prosecutor general of the prosecution, Jonathan Benetti, confidently told reporters that he was very sure of winning the case. ………… More than 60 media sent reporters, and they set up tents behind the court building and set up camp, adding a bit of lively atmosphere to this tragic scene. ………… Mike's cousin Courteney Kennedy will appear as a witness for the defense, although defense attorney Mickey Sherman said the Skakels never used their relationship with the Kennedys to exert any influence in the case. People speculated whether Mrs. Kennedy would also attend the trial during the trial to increase the leverage of the defense.To be sure, another woman, Doris Mockley, the victim's mother who fought tirelessly for 27 years to make today's day, commanded much respect and sympathy both inside and outside the courtroom. …………