Murder in Greenwich: Who Killed Martha Moxley?

Mr. Stuttaford is a writer based in New York City.

Murder in Greenwich: Who Killed Martha Moxley?, by Mark Fuhrman (HarperCollins, 283 pp., $25)

SUMMER reading is supposed to be light. But those who prefer a bit of darkness, to give them some shade from the heat of the sun, may wish to consider this fascinating book by Mark Fuhrman, whose theme may put them in mind of Shakespeare. Yes, Shakespeare. Yes, that Mark Fuhrman.

"Murder," wrote the Bard, "moves like a ghost." For a ghost always leaves trails of ectoplasm behind it, and so in its way does murder. Its victims haunt us, and it has long been believed that their restless spirits wander the earth calling for revenge. And that is the real subject of this book. Murder in Greenwich is about the revenge that the Moxleys of Greenwich, Conn., have yet to enjoy for the savage murder of their daughter, Martha. It is about the continuing revenge of Dominick Dunne (who inspired this book) on the criminal-justice system that freed the killer of his own daughter after the shortest of sentences. And it is about Mark Fuhrman's dreams of revenge for a career destroyed by O. J. Simpson's vicious carnival.

The Moxleys moved to Greenwich in 1974, when Martha was 14. Blonde and vivacious, she settled easily into a life of country-club fun, high-school success, and Ice Storm - style high jinks. Within little more than a year she was dead, her skull shattered by that most Greenwich of weapons, a six-iron.

But an unusual six-iron, a "Toney Penna" in fact. A rare brand, but one favored by Martha's neighbors the Skakels. The Skakels were rich, well connected (Ethel Skakel had married Bobby Kennedy), and wild. And theirs was a wildness which could have, some said, a dangerous edge.

Martha was with two of the Skakels, Tommy, 17, and Michael, 15, the night she died. Tommy is the last person known to have seen her alive. The murder itself took place not far from the Skakel property, a property that was never systematically searched by a police force that was curiously diffident in interrogating its inhabitants. Well, they were royalty, sort of. The boys (who have denied any involvement in the killing) were RFK's nephews, after all. Were the police, perhaps, just a little too deferential?

Dominick Dunne thought so. His 1993 best-seller, A Season in Purgatory, is a fictionalized version of the Moxley case. The golf club is turned into a baseball bat and the murderer becomes young Constant Bradley, scion of a family that is part Skakel, part Kennedy, and all Borgia. The hero bears some resemblance both to Kenneth Littleton, the Skakels' tutor, and to Mr. Dunne himself. He is a writer who "like[s] to cover trials. [He is] specifically interested in people who get away with things. People who go free."

Which is where Mark Fuhrman comes in. Dominick Dunne had grown to admire him in the aftermath of the Simpson fiasco. Meanwhile, Mr. Fuhrman himself was "looking for an unsolved murder to write about." So Mr. Dunne passed the baton, handing his files to Mark Fuhrman. As he explains, "Say what you want, the guy is a great detective."

Or at least a good prosecutor. Murder in Greenwich is just one side of a case that has yet to come to trial. We never hear from the defense. Nevertheless, Mr. Fuhrman runs briskly through the facts. Not quite a literary classic, Murder in Greenwich is still a compelling read, a real-life Agatha Christie novel. Drawing on his years of police experience, the author reviews the evidence, the alibis (he is unconvinced by Michael Skakel's), and the rival suspects, to come to his conclusion. The only "N word" he uses is "nephew."

At the same time, however, the reader is left in no doubt that Murder in Greenwich is another chapter in the O.J. wars, "the Simpson case all over again." And, so far as Mark Fuhrman is concerned, that means that, once more, the rich have got away with it. The author reveals enough class hatred in this book to launch a Gephardt presidential campaign, reinforced, doubtless, by the somewhat cool welcome he received in Greenwich.

Which should have come as no surprise. The O.J. trial turned Mr. Fuhrman into a pariah, but, in the phrase of America's prim totalitarians, he still doesn't quite get it. A Valjean who thinks that he is a Javert, he seems to believe that a case like this will give him back his respectability. He is wrong. It may be sweet revenge, but it will never restore him to what he was and what he wants to be again: "Mark Fuhrman, Detective."

Nor, one suspects, will another trial, another conviction, and another sentence bring peace to Dominick Dunne. He is a crusader now, raging against the cruelty of his daughter's fate and its unjust consequences. He picks at his psychic wounds, unable to let scar tissue form. He prefers to return to the scenes of other crimes to ensure that they, at least, have an appropriate ending. Obsessive, certainly, morbid, perhaps, but who are we to judge a parent's grief?

Martha's mother, Dorothy, can. And she has welcomed the publication of Murder in Greenwich. "That's my life, these days," she has recently been quoted as saying. "The hope that someday we'll know who did this." She may get her wish. A Connecticut judge has now been appointed as a one-man grand jury to investigate the Moxley case. In early August that judge heard testimony from Kenneth Littleton, the Skakels' tutor. Once seen as a possible suspect in the murder, Mr. Littleton testified in exchange for immunity, which suggests that the field of suspects is narrowing still further.

And if, after all these years, there is a trial and a guilty verdict? Maybe, finally, Mrs. Moxley can put Martha's spirit to rest.

aaFor our ancestors were right. The murdered do live on as ghosts, but they are phantoms that haunt our minds, not our homes. For a killing brings grief, but also uncertainty. A "foul, strange, and unnatural" ending, it leaves our world askew. The restless souls belong to the survivors, not the departed. A trial and a verdict can restore the illusion that things are as they should be. If Murder in Greenwich can hasten this process for Mrs. Moxley, Mark Fuhrman will have written a very good book indeed.