Whirlpool of Doubts
"Truth exists, only falsehood has to be invented."
-Georges Braque
What is more enchanting than Halloween in a small New England town, when little goblins and witches criss-cross each other 'neath the leafy prism of colors and geometric gables of brooding clapboard houses? Mix into the diorama a whiff of salt-taffy air, a whisp of the Atlantic mist and a harvest moon, and we have true Americana caught as if in an old, sepia-toned photograph come to life. There it is, Norman Rockwell on a living canvas.
But what happens when, just as the trick and treaters are ready to head out, a killer sneaks onto the scene? The whole mystical scenario falls flat before it begins, the magic disappears under chaos and the tranquility that is called the American Idyll seems to rot quicker than the windowsill pumpkin. The Jack O'Lantern grin becomes sardonic.
When 15-year-old Martha Moxley was killed on the until-then-safe streets of Greenwich, Connecticut, on October 30, 1975, no one simply knew how to react. The neat and pristine-clean confines of Belle Haven, the richest corner of town, had never anticipated murder. Its citizens became frightened and perplexed. And its police force, totally unprepared for this, found itself in a new and foreign world where issuing a simple parking ticket and fining a rouster for drunk-and-disorderliness couldn't wipe away the misdemeanor.
Martha Moxley was savagely killed in a manner that Belle Haven townspeople would have expected only in a Stephen King novel. Suspicion pointed not to a vampire or werewolf, but to one of the most powerful families on the East Coast; a family that had connections that reached loftily to the Kennedys of Hyannisport, a family that wined and dined the town officials, a family that...well, a family that you just didn't accuse of murder.
For more than 20 years, the killer has evaded punishment, although suspicion heavily points to at least one member of this family, the Skakels. Because Rushton Skakel, the patriarch, is the brother of Ethel Kennedy (widow of the assassinated Bobby Kennedy), many believe that the identity of the killer has been known by authorities these past decades — but conveniently covered up to protect a name that was already pockmarked by enough scandal. Others are of the opinion that the unsolved murder is merely a case of simple small-town police inexperience. Factions support each theory.
http://www.marthamoxley.com/news/051702gt2.htm
No comments:
Post a Comment