essay on murder in greenwich
...tenhall said she and her friends had spent the night before Halloween visiting classmates and "just going around Belle Haven." She said she left the group at 9 P.M. and walked home alone along streets where rolls of toilet paper had been scattered as a Halloween prank. Michael Skakel said he saw his brother Thomas talking to Martha outside the Skakel home on Otter Rock Drive-a few hundred feet from the dead girl's home at about 9:30 P.M. The other two teen-agers had apparently gone home already at that time. The police declined any comment on whether Martha had been sexually assaulted, pending an autopsy on the next day. Detectives continued to comb the estate by floodlight for clues in the killing, which shocked this community of wealthy and often well known parents since word of the murder began to spread this afternoon as their children prepared to make Halloween journeys. Worried classmates trying to learn the identity of the dead girl deluged the police with telephone calls all afternoon, and anxious parents called both the police and radio station, asking for advice on whether to allow their children out for Halloween. Chief of Police Stephen N. Baran Jr. said that in his 30 years with the Greenwich Police Department there had been only "one or two" homicides and "nothing of this nature at all." The state police mobile crime laboratory was called to the scene and representatives of the county prosecutor's office were on hand to supervise the collection of the evidence. Both the McGuire girl, who found the body, and her mother, Elvira, refused to discuss the discovery of the body or describe their neighbors, who are not well known in the community. The Moxleys had moved here only a year before the murder. The author, at this point, had not yet persuaded my thought of who killed Martha. Later in the book, he has a whole entire chapter about Thomas Skakel and about Michael Skakel. When I read the one about Tommy, I didn’t think that it was him who did it, and the author didn’t either. Then in the chapter about Michael, he describes the reasons why Michael was guilty. Here are some reasons why Fuhrman (the author) believes that Michael Skakel was involved in the murder of Martha Moxley: 1. His psychological profile reveals a severely disturbed youth with violent tendencies, substance-abuse problems, and an often explosive sibling rivalry with his brother Tommy. 2. He reported seeing the murder weapon “embedded in her chest,” a detail only someone present at the scene would know. 3. After 17 years, he changed his story, placing himself at the murder scene and other areas where the killer might possibly have been observed. 4. He lied to the Greenwich police in 1975 about his actions and movements the night of October 30. 5. He doesn’t remember when he first heard that Martha was dead. 6. According to a fellow patient, Michael once confessed in a therapy session to the murder of Martha Moxley. He quickly recanted. From this book, I learned a great deal about how a murderer thinks. The reason, in my opinion, that people commit murders is because at the same moment you do the crime, you have no self control. Later you’ll find out that Michael beats Martha with a golf club. When he does this, he has no self control. I would recommend this book to any person who enjoys reading about murder cases. This book has many things that are said over and over again, however. It starts out interesting, then it sort of dies out, and then picks up in the end. If you have ever heard about the Martha Moxley story and want to learn more, this would be the book for you. My opinion about this book is simple. People who murder should be caught. Michael was caught after the fact the book was made. I think that Michael did what he felt was the only thing he could do. He was very much in love with Martha, and he was very angry at the world, so he thought that if he couldn’t have Martha, nobody can. The following is an account of how the author thought the night of October 30, 1975 really was. “On the night of October 30, 1975, Martha, Tommy and Michael Skakel, Helen Ix, and Geoffrey Byrne were sitting in the car listening to music. Tommy is touching Martha’s leg very sexually. She tells him to stop and he does. He does this another time and he is told to stop again, which he does. Later the group splits up and goes their separate ways. Tommy and Martha are seen kissing by Mich...