After their initial conversation over Christmas 2001, Crawford regularly updated Tony on his infuriating saga of official stonewalling. Crawford begged his friend to allow him to use his name, but “Tony refused to come forward and tried to make me understand how important it was to keep his name out of this story. It seemed he was endeavoring to do the right thing but only to the point where his name was left out of it.” Tony’s fears were not misplaced. In 2006 and in 2009, seven black and Hispanic officers sued the Greenwich Police Department for institutionalized racism, citing promotion discrimination, targeting black residents for false arrest, and routine use of racial slurs by officers. In January 2002, Crawford contacted Neal and asked him to encourage their mutual friend to step up. “I was not a great friend of Michael,” Crawford told Neal, “but I feel this is an injustice, seeing him being tried for this murder that he didn’t commit.” Neal had been Tony’s closest friend in Brunswick’s Class of 1979, and Tony frequently visited Neal’s home after leaving the school.
Neal, who also remembered meeting Adolph and Burr, was particularly intrigued because Crawford’s story involved Geoff Byrne, with whom Neal had been very close. Neal called Tony, who fleshed out the story, and implored Tony to go to the prosecutors, but he steadfastly refused. “I might be implicated,” he said. Tony cautioned Neal not to reveal his name. Short of that, he urged Neal to do everything he could to alert the authorities, “but to keep his name out of it.” Neal first spoke to Tim Dumas, author of Greentown: Murder and Mystery in Greenwich, America’s Wealthiest Community. Dumas was only mildly interested and made no effort to follow up. Neal then called Garr, disgorging Tony’s story without impact on the single-minded detective. After hitting that brick wall, Neal tried, unsuccessfully, to reach Sherman. By now, Margie was also barraging Tony with pleas to come forward.
On April 8, 2002, just as Michael’s trial was beginning in Norwalk, Margie visited Garr at his office in the Norwalk courthouse and told him the story in person; Benedict attended that meeting. Margie finally revealed Tony Bryant’s name to them. She impressed upon both of them that “this was a real person that we knew, that had been in the neighborhood, had knowledge of the neighborhood, and it wasn’t a made-up story.” Neither man pursued the lead. A few weeks later, they celebrated Michael’s conviction. Soon after meeting with Garr, Margie provided Sherman with a detailed background of her relationship to Tony. Sherman reacted with now-familiar indifference. Margie recounted, “I felt that they really weren’t interested in hearing more about it or investigating,” she told me.
Tony called Crawford after the trial began to ask who he had contacted. “He knew that some people would want to get in touch with him,” Crawford told me. “I think both of us were amazed that nobody had.” Even the New York Times, which had been following Michael’s trial, wouldn’t return Crawford’s calls. “I felt like an idiot, like no one would listen to me,” Crawford told me in 2003. “This is the first time I have heard of anyone saying they have done it, and yet no one wants to hear about it. It’s been frustrating for me, and I’m sure it’s been horrible for your family as well.”
Crawford was then working as an audio technician at CBS. In spring 2002, the Monday following Michael’s conviction, he found himself miking up Mrs. Moxley in preparation for her appearance on The Early Show with Bryant Gumbel. While attaching her lapel mike, he introduced himself as the guy who had been sending her all the letters about Tony Bryant. Mrs. Moxley stared at him blankly. “She didn’t seem to have any knowledge of this story at all,” Crawford told me. He quickly provided a thumbnail sketch of Tony’s allegation. “Mrs. Moxley, I don’t think Michael did it,” he told her. She remained stone-faced. “I know Michael did it,” she responded. Sherman also appeared on the CBS show that morning. Crawford next introduced himself to Michael’s counselor, waiting his turn in the CBS greenroom. Characteristically, Sherman gave Crawford short shrift. As Sherman left the greenroom for makeup, Mrs. Moxley was angrily reporting Crawford to the show’s producer. Moments later, Crawford was unemployed. Security guards ejected him from the building in the classic bum’s rush.
Immediately after being fired, Crawford called Tony. It was now after the verdict but prior to Michael’s sentencing. Crawford, who had lost his own job in the cause of justice, told his friend it was time to come clean. Tony replied, “I’m very sorry that happened to you, but there is no way I’m going to do that.” Crawford threw down an ultimatum: “I’m going to out you.” Crawford gave Tony’s name to Benedict, to Garr, to Sherman, and to Tim Dumas. He wrote a detailed, four-page summary of Tony’s story and faxed it to Benedict on June 8, 2002. “I’ve tried to give you this information before and it doesn’t fit with the way you think things went down,” he wrote Benedict. “No one has ever interviewed the guy I told you about—to this day … I still can’t find a motivation for his confessing a lie. Hey, you should at least give the guy a call.” A couple days later, Benedict passed the fax along with a snarky note to Sherman. “Enclosed is the first, but most likely not the last, of post-verdict tips.”
The newly unemployed Crawford even wrote a letter to Judge John Kavanewsky. He called the New York Times and finally talked to one reporter who had been covering the Skakel trial. According to Crawford, the Times reporter responded with a “very polite” yawn. Throughout the summer of 2002 Crawford continued his crusade. No one responded to his deluge of calls and letters. Then, in February 2003, his sister sent him a copy of my January–February 2003 Atlantic article. Crawford faxed me a one-page summary, via The Atlantic, on February 6, 2003. I called immediately. “I got a phone call from Mr. Kennedy out of the blue,” Crawford told the court in Michael’s 2007 petition for a new trial.
AFTER TALKING to Crawford, I called Tony in Florida. I had no idea if any of Crawford’s story was true, but I meant to find out. When I identified myself, he exhaled, “I’ve been waiting 27 years for this call.” Tony agreed to speak again the next day. In that conversation and in three taped conversations that followed, Tony gave me an even more detailed account of October 30, 1975, than he had to Crawford or Neal.
In my first brief call, Tony told me only that he had known Michael at Brunswick School. “Michael and I have a stormy past. I am not his best friend … I am not a friend trying to help a friend. What I am is a person who knows what happened.” He later described himself and Michael as “adversaries.” He explained that he had been reluctant to come forward, fearing repercussions to his family, who were prominent in the African American community. “I have certain relatives that would not like any type of publicity concerning this thing that happened in Greenwich and any connection to it. That would be very bad for them and, actually, very bad for me.”
Tony wasn’t just referring to his NBA brother and cousin. Tony’s mother, Barbara Bryant, is an Academy Award–winning educational films producer and a cofounder and executive vice president of the Phoenix Learning Group, a production company for children’s programming. “Tony came from a family with a lot of aspirations,” Barbara’s friend Esme Dick told me later. “Barbara had two or three degrees.” In 1973, she cofounded Phoenix, with Heinz Gelles, a Holocaust survivor and former McGraw-Hill executive; in 1985, Barbara Bryant won an Academy Award for producing the short film Molly’s Pilgrim, making her the first black person and the first woman to win an Oscar in that category. “Nevertheless,” he told me, “I want to do what I can to help. Because I know, I know what happened to your cousin. He got screwed. He really did. I feel really bad for him. … He is innocent. He is innocent. You are talking about somebody being screwed and, you know … I am not a very loving or caring person but I feel very bad for his situation because I wouldn’t wish that on anybody.”
I brought my findings to Michael’s appeals team. Attorneys Seeley and Santos set me up with Vito Colucci, who had been Sherman’s investigator. Colucci interviewed me and Crawford. In July 2003, Colucci called Tony and asked if he could to come down to Florida to see him. Tony was reluct
ant. First he agreed to a meeting date, and then he cancelled at the last minute. He consented and cancelled again. It was a nail-biter. His reticence was understandable. In our interview, Tony had placed himself in Belle Haven at the crime scene on the night of the murder, with a Skakel golf club in his hand. Finally, Colucci got him to stick to a date—August 24. Tony kept Colucci and his co-investigator, Al Dressler, waiting for hours, but he finally showed up to their Wyndham Hotel room in Coconut Grove. Dressler set up the video camera, and in a little over an hour, Tony told the entire story almost exactly as he’d told me. When Colucci probed and challenged him, he never wavered. I’ve seen the range of witnesses who take the stand. Tony comes off as credible. (The interview is available on YouTube, by searching “Tony Bryant interview.”)
At the time of Martha’s murder, Tony was 14 years old and living in New York City, where he attended Charles Evans Hughes High School. However, for the previous two school years, from fall 1973 until June 1975, Tony attended Brunswick, which had recruited him during a diversity push. His mother lived in Chicago, so Tony stayed in the Greenwich home of a family friend, Esme Dick. Dick befriended Barbara Bryant through her work as head of the Educational Film Library Association, which ran a documentary film festival. Dick’s husband, Bill, was assistant principal and Latin teacher at Brunswick.
At Michael’s new trial hearing, Tony’s classmates recalled him as an immensely popular student who excelled in baseball and basketball and who was the school’s standout football star. Crawford described Tony as a “very friendly, easy going, kind person who I don’t recall ever saying a mean word about anybody.” Even though he was the shrimp of his family—his older brother Wallace was seven foot one—at 13, Tony was, at six foot one, one of the biggest kids in his class. Crawford, who would top out at six foot five, was even bigger than Tony. Crawford broke down the clique barriers at Brunswick. Because of his size, he played football, but his real love was theater. He was crazy about singing and acting. He and Tony and Neal became bosom buddies. Greenwich newcomer Martha Moxley was among Tony’s Belle Haven friends.
Tony was a mediocre student and a boys’ boy who loved mischief. Some of his classmates called him “Stoney” because of his affection for pot. In 1973, when he was 12, Greenwich Police busted Tony for breaking into a house.
In the summer of 1975, at age 14, Tony decided that he wanted to live with his mother, who had recently relocated to a Manhattan apartment. It was too late to get into private school, so he enrolled in Charles Evans Hughes High School.
After moving to New York, Tony continued to socialize with many of his old Greenwich chums. Neal testified under oath that he, Tony, Crawford, and their friend Geoff Byrne remained particularly close and that Tony frequently took the train up to visit Greenwich. Both Neal and Tony testified that Tony often stayed overnight at their homes. Neal said that Tony had been to his house “20 to 30 times.” Tony’s mother confirmed that when Tony stayed in Greenwich overnight, he would visit Neal. These boys were all friendly with Martha, who frequently mentions Tony, Neal, Crawford, and Geoff in her diaries. During his trips to Greenwich, Tony would sometimes see Michael, although they were not close friends. Michael’s little brother David recalls Tony as a fairly regular visitor at the Skakel house.
At Charles Evans Hughes, Tony made fast friends with two of his new classmates, Adolph and Burr. In 1975, Adolph and Burr were 15 years old, a year older than Tony, and very large for their age. Adolph, a volatile teen from the South Bronx, was African American, six foot three inches tall, and 200 pounds. Burr, who Tony reckoned to be of Asian/American Indian/Caucasian ancestry, was of similar height and build. He hailed from the Pacific Northwest and was living with his brother in the Soho section of Lower Manhattan. Adolph and Burr were inseparable. “They were like twins that were joined at the hip,” Tony told me. “They were never apart. You saw one, you saw the other.” Tony described Adolph as very strong and unpredictable. Both were “wild.” Adolph, in particular, “was crazy; absolutely nuts.” But the pair had a dangerous synergistic dynamic. “They spurred each other on. They fed off each other big time,” Tony told me.
He described Charles Evans Hughes as a “tough school.” Unlike Brunswick, it was not an academic stronghold. “This was a city school in New York. We are not talking about Greenwich. … There’s no Boy Scouts at this school.” Adolph, Tony said “developed a reputation not to be someone to mess with.” Tony told Colucci, “Oh, you could tell. You could say a lot of kids were afraid of him, because he was big and he was explosive.” And while Burr did not share Adolph’s volatile temperament, he often served as the “gasoline” that fueled Adolph’s “engine.” Burr goaded Adolph to do things such as throwing bricks at moving cars, burglarizing buildings, and similar acts of vandal. “It was always the dare between them. They were always trying to outdo each other. And they would just push each other.” Tony described Adolph as dangerously reckless, “Anything you dared Adolph to do, he would do.” Then added, “There was something wrong with him. All you had to do was look at him to know it.” Tony recalled that when the Charles Evans Hughes athletic coach began developing a wrestling team, Adolph was the guy he “really had pegged as being aggressive enough, having the demeanor, and having the killer instinct to be a good wrestler.” Although Tony was unusually big and tall for his age and a champion athlete, Adolph, he said, “could pin me with no problem.”
In one of our later conversations, I asked Tony why, if Adolph was so dangerous and mercurial, he had nevertheless associated with him. Tony responded that, as a rebellious adolescent in 1975—he was only 14—it was precisely those aspects of Adolph’s persona that had attracted him. “You have to understand, at that point in our lives that was what I was attracted to. He was a rebel. He was dangerous. He was fearless, in terms of, like, doing, I mean, you could dare him to do anything and he would do it. Anything. We, you know, we were into being athletes and smoking weed and drinking beer and chasing girls.”
The two accompanied Tony to Belle Haven five or six times between mid-September and October 30, 1975. Tony told me, “Imagine coming from the inner city into Greenwich in the mid-70s. That is the difference between Beirut and Cape Cod. It’s the difference between have and have-nots. It’s that the whole concept that we are dealing with is forbidden fruit here, big time. Big time.”
Martha’s diary recalls that she met Tony through Neal the previous January. Adolph and Burr first met Martha at a United Way block party on September 20, 1975. The street fair was a milestone social event in Greenwich attended by over 12,000 people. Virtually every resident of Belle Haven was there, including Martha, who described in her diary wandering the festival with Helen, Neal, Crawford, Geoff, and Michael.
From his first sight of Martha that day, Adolph became infatuated with her. Although he was too awkward to make direct overtures, he became “obsessed” with Martha. According to Tony, he “had this thing for her” and Adolph “would just say things that were just really, looking back, you would just be, oh my God, why didn’t I say something, and it just, it bothers me.” Tony told me that Adolph met Martha again, once or twice, at church mixers that fall. Tony was familiar with the dances from his Brunswick days, and attended them with his New York City friends and Neal, at the Sacred Heart girls’ school. On at least one occasion, Martha was there. Tony explained that Adolph “would make gestures at her, but … he didn’t have the confidence” to pursue a serious friendship with her. “He wasn’t a sophisticated person. He was very immature. She was always sort of cordial, but she sort of brushed him off real kind of nicely. She would never say, ‘Get out of my face.’ She was really just, you know, ‘Hey, we’re all friends here.’ She wasn’t a person who would let you down hard.”
On October 4, 1975, Martha recalled the dance in her diary: “Tonight was a Sacred Heart dance. I went w/ Margie & Jackie.” Martha specifically mentioned seeing Neal and Tony at the dance. She wrote that two strangers were there with Tony and Neal, and one of
them had approached her when she entered. “When we walked in some guy asked me to dance. It was ‘Stairway to Heaven.’ At the fast part he wouldn’t even let go!” Tony recalled how, at that same mixer, Adolph became jealous of other boys talking to Martha. Adolph told Tony, “I don’t understand why she’s spending her time with those guys when she could be with me.” Tony explained that while Adolph didn’t know how to cultivate a relationship with Martha, he would talk about her constantly in a sexually explicit manner.
Fantasies of Martha mesmerized Adolph, whether he was in Greenwich or Manhattan. Tony recalls that he “talked about her, and that was Adolph’s main focus. From the time he met her until the murder, that’s what he would talk about,” Tony recalled. Throughout October, Adolph’s infatuation with Martha “built up with him, it built up tremendous.” Adolph would make comments about Martha even when they were not visiting Greenwich. “During the week if we weren’t going to Greenwich, he would sort of mention it, you know, a couple times: ‘Yeah, I really like her. She’s pretty, blah, blah, blah.’ But if we were going to Greenwich, it would just, just really be exacerbated. I mean, just really hyped up. He loved her beautiful blond hair. He was completely, completely intrigued with this woman—I think obsessed. We just started laughing and, you know, saying, ‘You need to think about something else. You need to think about somebody else that is more obtainable, because it is not going to happen. She’s not even interested in you.’” But Adolph would reply, “She likes me,” and vowed that it was “going to happen.” Occasionally, he would use a more menacing tone, promising “I’m going to have her.” Burr, in contrast, would encourage Adolph in his fantasy. “No, you can do it,” Burr would say. “You can get her.”
Framed: Why Michael Skakel Spent Over a Decade in Prison For a Murder He Didn't Commit Page 36
