Dorthy Moxley, whose household title turned linked with the Kennedys because the 1975 homicide of her teenage daughter, Martha, turned a decadeslong media sensation, died Tuesday after she was hospitalized final week with the flu, her son stated. She was 92.
Moxley, who had additionally been identified with colon most cancers, returned to her residence in Summit, New Jersey, the place she died surrounded by family members, John Moxley stated Thursday.
“She was an extremely optimistic particular person,” he stated, including, “One of her nice skills is accepting the help that individuals so graciously supplied to my mother.”
Moxley, who had labored as a instructor, was within the nationwide highlight when Martha, 15, was bludgeoned to loss of life on Oct. 30, 1975, close to her household’s residence in an prosperous neighborhood of Greenwich, Connecticut. Her physique was discovered the subsequent day underneath a tree, and police stated she was crushed with a golf membership and stabbed after it broke.
The merchandise was related to the Skakels, whose kids lived throughout the road and with whom Martha had been socializing.
Despite suspicions forged on members of the Skakel household, the case remained unsolved. But a one-judge grand jury started reviewing the case in 1998 and an arrest warrant was issued in 2000 for Michael Skakel, the nephew of Robert F. Kennedy’s widow, Ethel Kennedy. (Ethel Kennedy died in October at 96.)
Skakel was additionally 15 on the time of Martha’s killing.
His arrest set off intense hypothesis over whether or not his household’s status and connections performed a job within the case; he remained adamant he was harmless.
During his arraignment in 2000, which drew widespread protection, Skakel approached Moxley in a dramatic flip, telling her: “I really feel your ache. But you’ve got received the incorrect man.”
Moxley later instructed reporters his phrases sounded “very rehearsed.”
In 2002, Skakel was convicted in Martha’s homicide and sentenced to twenty years to life in jail. But the case continued to seize headlines as Skakel appealed. He was granted a brand new trial in 2013 based mostly on insufficient authorized counsel at his preliminary trial, and was freed on bail. But in 2016, the Connecticut Supreme Court reinstated his conviction in a divided determination.
That identical yr, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote a e-book defending his cousin, titled, “Framed: Why Michael Skakel Spent Over a Decade in Prison for a Murder He Didn’t Commit.”
Following extra authorized maneuvering, Skakel’s conviction was vacated in 2018 and a brand new trial was ordered. But in 2020, prosecutors stated they would not seek a retrial, telling a decide they didn’t consider they may show the case past an affordable doubt because of an absence of forensic and eyewitness proof.
Dorthy Moxley remained a steadfast presence amid the courtroom battles and nonetheless believed Skakel was responsible.
It was reported in January that Skakel filed a lawsuit in opposition to the city of Greenwich and the lead police investigator in Moxley’s case.
His lawyer alleged within the grievance that regulation enforcement “knew that there have been different extra possible suspects and that there was no possible trigger to arrest and/or keep a prosecution in opposition to” Skakel, “however continued to take action deliberately and maliciously so as to convict a ‘Kennedy Cousin.'”
In a 2018 interview on NBC’s “TODAY” present, Moxley stated Skakel’s imprisonment, a minimum of for some time, had given the household some justice.
“Martha was killed once I was 43, and in only a few weeks, a few weeks, I’m going to be 86,” Moxley stated on the time. “That means half of my life I’ve lived with this.”
“So I feel I can stay the remainder of my life with it additionally,” she added.
Her son, John Moxley, stated Thursday that his mom realized to stay with so many questions nonetheless unanswered. Her husband, J. David Moxley, died 13 years after Martha was killed, in 1988.
“We used to at all times say that you could’t management what occurs to you,” John Moxley stated, “however you’ll be able to management the way you react.”
