As time went on, Adolph became more explicit. Tony recalls that for a month before the murder, his expressions devolved into vulgar and graphic aspirations. “I want to fuck the shit out of her,” Adolph told Tony. He predicted he would “just take her, grab her, and have her the way he wanted her.” On several occasions he said he wanted “to go caveman on her.” Tony said that Adolph took the “going caveman” concept from The Flintstones cartoon. “Going caveman” meant hitting a woman on the head, grabbing her by the hair, dragging her off to the bushes, and sexually assaulting her.
ON THURSDAY, October 30, 1975, Tony, Adolph, and Burr took the train from Manhattan to Greenwich for Mischief Night. “Greenwich is sort of famous for Hell Night, all the pranks and stuff,” Tony said. During the 50-minute train ride to Connecticut, Adolph and Burr talked about “going caveman” on someone that night. They arrived at the Greenwich station at around 5:30 p.m. and hiked to Belle Haven, arriving at Neal’s house at approximately 6:30 p.m. By then, it was dark outside. A hundred yards away, Martha was leaving her house for an evening of mischief. The Walkers had just sat down for dinner. Neal had homework and, as with Crawford’s mother, his mother was reluctant to allow either Neal or Margie out of the house on Mischief Night. “Neal told me to come back,” Tony recalled. “He said he would catch up with us later.” So the boys went next door to pilfer booze. (Tony explained that “[i]n Belle Haven you can go and open up people’s refrigerators in their garage and take their beer.”) Tony said they took about three six-packs that night, “maybe a little more … and we also had marijuana.” Thus provisioned, the trio hiked across the dark street to Geoff’s house. Geoff, who was already friendly with Adolph and Burr, was free from the tyrannies of parental supervision: his father traveled constantly and his mother was largely inattentive. Geoff readily joined the boys in their vandalism spree. “We started going around playing pranks,” said Tony. The teens drank a six-pack and smoked marijuana while they roamed Belle Haven, toilet-papering trees, smashing pumpkins, and throwing eggs.
Throughout the evening, Adolph and Burr continued to talk about meeting girls in the neighborhood. “Where are the bitches?” they asked Tony. “We’ve just got to get into something.” Adolph pledged, “I’m not going out of here unsatisfied.” The boys walked to the Belle Haven Club, at the far south end of Belle Haven near Long Island Sound, and looked for familiar cars in the parking lot. “We went to the yacht club. We didn’t go in. We just looked to see who was there by the cars and stuff.” At that time, the Skakel children and their tutor were just finishing dinner.
Tony and his pals ambled back toward the Skakel house, resuming their delinquent rampage and picking up reinforcements. “We picked up people all along the way. So it could have been maybe at best six people. We’d smash some pumpkins. We threw toilet paper over the lines. We set it on fire. We shaved and soaped up some windows.” They would interrupt their marauding and duck into the woods or behind stone walls to dodge Belle Haven’s roaming security patrol. “The policeman. I can’t remember his name exactly. We would position ourselves because we knew when he made his rounds. We would sort of hide off and go up behind the walls or up into the bushes so he couldn’t see.”
From the Belle Haven Yacht Club they hiked back to the Skakels’ property, arriving at “The Mead” around “8:30 or 8:45.” The Mead, or “the meadow,” as it was otherwise known, was a five-acre refuge of field, trees, and bushes on the Skakel property. The Mead meandered northeast from the Skakels’ back porch and included the Skakels’ chipping range, toolshed, swimming pool, tennis court, and the meadows, woodland, and a small orchard in between. Six Belle Haven houses, including the Skakel house, the Byrne mansion, and the Ix home, backed up to the Mead, where young people in the neighborhood congregated to smoke and drink without being seen by the prying Belle Haven security guard. Tony explained to Colucci that the meadow was a “collection place for kids to sit and smoke cigarettes and marijuana and drink beer” because “the parents couldn’t see” back there. According to Tony, “It was a big enough space so if someone did come a bit close, you could scatter and run, and no one could catch you.” At Michael’s new trial hearing, Helen confirmed that Tony accurately described the Mead and its function as a neighborhood hideout for Belle Haven’s young delinquents. Rucky Skakel Sr. maintained a chipping range behind his house from which guests could hit golf balls up through the Mead. Several weeks before Martha’s murder, Rucky had sponsored a chipping tournament for 100 Mitsubishi Company executives. Detritus from that event remained scattered about the lawn. Michael, David, and Tommy all recall that the golf clubs, baseball bats, lacrosse sticks, footballs, and soccer gear that perpetually littered the area were moved only when landscapers mowed the lawn. Sometimes the sports gear stayed all winter. Helen confirmed that the Mead was cluttered with golf clubs, sporting equipment, toys, and even clothes.
In the days following the murder, Steven Hartig of 180 Otter Rock Drive, told Detective Lunney that he had seen a group of unfamiliar teenagers, 14 to 16 years old, congregating near the Skakel property on Walsh Lane only a short distance from Martha’s driveway around 8:15 p.m., when he was returning from work in New York City. Hartig described the gang of youths “standing on the shoulder area of the dead-end section of Walsh Lane closest to the Skakel property.” The teens were loitering a few feet from the Skakels’ golf tee and near the boundary of the Mead where Tony places himself and his six companions at that time. Although he was a longtime Belle Haven resident, Hartig didn’t recognize the teenagers. Helen, Jackie, and Martha, whom Tony recalls seeing, also spent that part of the evening in the same area around the back and side of the Skakel property, throwing toilet paper in the trees.
“When we were coming back to the Mead,” Tony remembers, “there were other refrigerators that we knew on the way back, so we collected more beer. Probably, when we got to that meadow, we probably had another … two six-packs,” Tony told Colucci, “I had a good buzz. Not slightly buzzed, I would say lightly drunk. Adolph and Burr? Lightly drunk. We had smoked some marijuana and we had also drank.” The three boys spent the rest of the evening in the vicinity of the Mead stoked on weed and at least three six-packs of beer with Adolph and Burr escalating their banter about “going caveman” and expressing their resolve not to leave Belle Haven “unsatisfied.”
At precisely the time Tony recalls arriving back at the Skakel Mead (8:30 p.m. to 8:45 p.m.), Michael and his family returned to the Skakel house from their Belle Haven Club dinner. The boys in Tony’s group picked up golf clubs that were lying on the grass and started fooling around with them. Tony had previously told me, “I was surprised that they didn’t get my prints off those clubs.” As they wandered across the Skakel lawn, everyone in Tony’s group grabbed a golf club. “I picked up one. Burr picked up one. Adolph picked up one. Geoff picked up one. And we were, like, goofing around. … I had swung it and I put mine down. I didn’t even put it down; I slung it back to where the bag—there was like a bag that was sort of lying there and so I slung it back toward the bag. Adolph and Burr were using them as sort of like walking sticks.”
In 1997 Michael gave a tape-recorded interview to author Richard Hoffman and recounted that at 8:45 p.m. on the night of the murder, soon after he had returned from the Belle Haven Club, he was handing cold Heinekens to his cousin Jimmy and to his brother John as they sat on the back porch overlooking the meadow, playing backgammon. Michael noticed a group of “large guys” brazenly walking through the golf tees alongside the pool. They were barely visible in the light from the house. Michael pointed out the gang to Jimmy and John with some alarm, “Hey, who are those guys?” Jimmy and John, focused on the board game, hardly looked up. “Who gives a fuck!” Jimmy said. Michael said he would have gone out alone to confront the trespassers but was intimidated by their large size. This is precisely the time window during which Tony places himself and his large friends in the Skakel yard. It’s impossible to corroborate Michael’s recollection, beca
use, since that day in December 1998 when Garr illegally seized the tapes from Hoffman’s house, Benedict’s office has steadfastly refused to return them to either Michael or his attorneys, or even provide them copies.
Tony reported looking up at the Skakel house and thinking that there was a party. The only time that there was a large crowd at the Skakels’ was around 8:45 p.m. after the six Skakel cousins, Littleton, and Andrea Shakespeare returned from the Club and before the boys left to see Monty Python.
Thereafter, Adolph and Burr walked around wielding their golf clubs like walking sticks, telling Tony that they had their “caveman stick,” and that they were going to “grab somebody and pull them by the hair and do what cavemen do.” Adolph and Burr promised each other, “I’m going to get me a girl.” There were just a few people in the Mead when Tony and his posse arrived, between 8:30 and 8:45 p.m. The teenagers were talking, drinking, rolling joints, and smoking cigarettes.
Tony recalls many of the Belle Haven residents he saw that night, including Martha, who, he said, joined them in the meadow for a time. “We saw Josh [Ingals] that night. He had gotten into trouble, so he got grounded and he couldn’t really hang with us that night.” Tony also saw Helen Ix and Lisa Rader Edwards and a few other Belle Haven girls, and he waved to Julie, who, according to her usual practice, did not stay in the meadow to socialize. He also recalls seeing Tommy and Michael, although neither of the Skakel boys recall seeing him. When asked 27 years after the fact, Helen, Lisa, and Julie do not remember seeing him. It’s quite possible he saw them without being seen. The area around the Skakel home was illuminated from the house lights and by floodlights that hung on the back porch, on the side kitchen door, and in a grove of apple trees near the pool. On October 30, it was dark by 6:00 p.m. with overcast skies. So the meadow would have appeared pitch black to the Skakel children and their pals hanging out in the driveway. They, on the other hand, would have been visible to the kids congregating in the Mead. By about 9:00 p.m., Adolph and Burr, inebriated and “out of control,” began making sexually charged comments to some of the girls. Their boorish vulgarity made the girls uncomfortable. Tony, who considered himself their friend, felt awkward. Brandishing the Skakel golf clubs, Adolph and Burr worked themselves into a frenzy. Tony said, “It was loud. It was very, very rowdy. They had embarrassed some of the girls that had come into the circle. Just making comments about, just like sexual overtures and stuff. It was uncomfortable. And I knew those girls. Martha was one of the girls that was there. I think she got fed up with what was going on and she went over to a group that was sort of standing over by the Skakel house.” This would have been around the time that Martha, Helen, and Geoff joined Michael and Tommy in the Lincoln Continental. Shortly afterward, Tommy and Martha would disappear for their dalliance behind the toolshed, an area Tommy recalls as dimly lit.
As the Belle Haven kids migrated away from the Mead, due to curfews or to escape their crude antics, Adolph and Burr became increasingly frustrated and out of control. “Where are the bitches?” they were now demanding. “We’ve just got to get into something.” Tony describes their state as desperate, reckless, and dangerous. According to Tony, Adolph kept repeating, “I’m going to get me a girl!” and “I’ve got my caveman club” and “I’m going to grab somebody and pull them by the hair and do what cavemen do” and “I’m gonna get some of that.” Tony remembers the frantic mood: “It’s around 9 o’clock. I know I was buzzing. This was Hell Night and everybody is excited. The purpose of Hell Night is to do destruction to property and to vandalize and to sort of leave your mark the night before Halloween. We were wild.”
Tony feared the combustible mixture of alcohol and drugs with the violent personalities of his two friends. By 9:15 p.m., he felt they were capable of “Anything. Anything. It was always the dare between those two. I mean, they were always trying to outdo each other. And they would just push each other.” Tony had a loose curfew, but he said that Adolph and Burr’s antics on the night of the murder made his decision to go home “a lot easier.” He sensed they were headed for trouble and says, “I didn’t want any part of it” if things went ugly. “Well, I had been in trouble that summer and I had gotten arrested in Greenwich for being a little hellion. So my mother told me that I had to catch the last train.” By the time he departed, Adolph and Burr were “at a fever pitch. … They were sort of ready to blow up.” Adolph swore, “I’m not going out of here unsatisfied.” Tony told them that he had to leave due to his mother’s curfew. “The last train was like either 9:35 or 9:40 [p.m.]. I already had my ticket. And I asked them, you know, ‘Hey, I’m leaving. Do you guys want to go with me?’ ‘No. No. We’re going to stay the night. We’re not going anyplace.’” They asked Tony, “‘Are you sure you don’t want to stay?’ ‘My mom wants me to go.’ Because, you know, mom was an excuse. But I knew better. I knew that I needed to go, because this wasn’t a situation I really wanted to be in. I didn’t feel comfortable with being that out of control.” Tony left the group at 9:15 p.m. and hitched a ride to the train station. He barely made the train to Manhattan. Adolph and Burr intended to stay the night with Geoff.
Tony’s departure occurred at the same time that Michael, his brothers, and his cousin expelled Tommy, Martha, Geoff, and Helen from the Lincoln and departed for Jimmy’s house. The crowd in the Mead was dwindling. The ubiquitous 9:30 p.m. curfews were clearing the area of witnesses, and Martha and Geoff had migrated to the Skakel driveway where they stood with Tommy and Helen, illuminated by the kitchen door spotlight and visible from the Mead. Adolph and Burr might easily have watched Tommy and Martha “playing flirtatiously” in the light of the Skakel driveway and then spied on the couple as they retreated to their secluded love nest behind the toolshed. Tommy and Martha’s sexual encounter would have been dimly visible from the Mead. It’s possible that the two lovebirds were observed by Adolph and Burr without knowing it, which could very well have enraged someone obsessed with Martha. Tommy told me that he last saw Martha as she walked across the golf tee and disappeared into the darkness just short of the apple trees on her way toward her house on Walsh Lane.
Here, the witness testimonies come together to support Tony’s story. In 1975 interviews with police and in 2003 at Michael’s criminal trial, Julie and Andrea testified that, at approximately 9:30 p.m. on the evening of the murder, after the Lincoln departed for Sursum Corda and Martha and Tommy were dallying around the driveway, they saw an unidentified person run past the kitchen window in the darkness. At that time, according to the police report, “All members of the Skakel party were accounted for.” Julie stated that a second figure ran across the driveway and disappeared into the hedge adjacent to the driveway. It was too dark to see who it was. Although Andrea did not see the second person, she told the police that she had heard footsteps on the driveway as she was walking back to the house to get the keys. For years, detectives puzzled over these early sightings by Julie and Andrea. The girls thought it might be someone out for Mischief Night. That figure, who Julie described as a large man—bigger than any of her brothers—fits the profile of both Adolph and Burr, who may have been stalking Martha as she rendezvoused with Tommy.
Julie told me that, after dropping off Andrea, she pulled back into the driveway at 9:50 p.m. At that moment, Tommy and Martha would have been completing their sexual horseplay behind the toolshed, and Martha would be preparing to return home. Julie was hurrying to catch the last few minutes of the detective show Ellery Queen. As soon as she turned her headlights off, she saw a dark figure running the length of the house from right to left in a crouched position, carrying an object in his left hand. She recalls that he was large and possibly hooded. He dashed across the driveway and disappeared between the trees behind the toolshed. This would put him within a few feet of Martha and Tommy, just as Martha was leaving for home. Julie says she was so shaken by the sight of the man running that she stayed in her car for a few minutes and missed the end of Ellery Queen. By the time she turned on the TV
in the sun room, the credits were rolling.
Martha’s path home would have required her to go left onto an unlit Walsh Lane, walk 75 feet parallel to the Mead, and take a right into her dark driveway, which was framed by groves of bushes and trees on either side. The driveway would be a perfect place for an ambush by golf-club wielding attackers who had watched her from the Mead and stalked her home. Forensic investigators say that this is precisely where the assault began.
TONY FIRST learned of Martha’s murder from his mother, who confronted her son after reading an article in the Saturday New York Times reporting the discovery of Martha’s body the previous afternoon. “Don’t you know this girl?” she asked him. Tony answered, “Yes, I do.” Concerned that Tony would become implicated in the crime if the authorities discovered that he was in Belle Haven that evening, Bryant admonished her son, “There is no way you are going back to Greenwich.” She ordered Tony not to speak with anyone about the trip to Belle Haven on the night of the murder and forbade him from returning to the neighborhood ever again.
Framed: Why Michael Skakel Spent Over a Decade in Prison For a Murder He Didn't Commit Page 37
