Greentown
Murder and Mystery in Greenwich, America's Wealthiest Community
-
-
3.0 • 3 Ratings
-
-
- $16.99
-
- $16.99
Publisher Description
The first edition of Greentown helped reopen one of America’s most shameful unsolved murder cases, the savage slaying of fifteen-year-old Martha Moxley in an exclusive enclave of Greenwich, Connecticut, the night before Halloween 1975. Soon after Martha’s body was discovered, attention focused on members of the Skakel family, who lived across the street from the Moxleys. Ethel Skakel and Robert Kennedy had married in Greenwich, and the two families were close. Thomas Skakel, Ethel’s nephew, was the last known person to see Martha alive. The murder weapon, a ladies’ golf club, came from the Skakel household. When the Greenwich police tried to pursue its investigation, however, the community closed in upon itself. Lawyers were summoned, walls went up, information was suppressed, and no one was charged. And yet, continuing to haunt Greenwich, the case refused to go away—until, twenty-three years later, following the publication of this book, a grand jury was convened, and two years after that a man—Thomas’s brother Michael—was finally indicted for the crime.
This revised edition now brings the Martha Moxley murder case to a close. Updated to include the indictment, trial, and conviction of the murderer, Greentown offers the suspenseful and chilling account of a terrible crime. More than that, while relating a tale of seductive power, it uses the murder to tell the heartrending story of a family and a community responding to the unthinkable.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
On the night of October 30, 1975, Martha Moxley, 15, was bludgeoned to death in her front yard with a golf club in affluent Greenwich, Conn. Dominick Dunne fictionalized these events in his 1993 bestseller, A Season in Purgatory. Now Dumas, formerly the managing editor of the Greenwich News, recounts the true story of Moxley's death and of how wealth and privilege appear to have been able to subvert justice. After describing the murder in harrowing detail, Dumas documents the investigations of the past 20 years, investigations that have seen information suppressed, once-willing witnesses back away and a battery of lawyers throw a protective wall around the prime suspect, Thomas Skakel, a classmate of the victim and a nephew of Ethel Kennedy. Skakel was the last person to see Moxley alive; the golf club that killed her came from the Skakel household. While the Skakel family initially agreed to cooperate with police, when it became evident that Thomas was a suspect, they closed ranks. While he remains a suspect, it seems unlikely that Thomas Skakel will ever be indicted, according to Dumas. People have moved on with their lives; many hope that memories of the crime will just fade away. Familiar with the area and the people involved, Dumas brings an unusual sensitivity and clarity to this disturbing tale. In the end, his book seems less about a murdered girl than about the devastation visited upon those whose lives were forever altered by the tragic events of a long-ago night. 8 pages of b&w photos.
