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The two men fingered for the 1975 murder of Martha Moxley in a new book by Robert Kennedy Jr. were well known to Belle Haven kids at the time of the killing, two who used to live in the waterfront enclave said this week.

“I think it should be looked into to at least. Neither the prosecutor nor the defense lawyer looked into it at the time,” said Neal Walker, who grew up in Belle Haven and continues to live in Greenwich.

Kennedy is the cousin of Michael Skakel, convicted in 2003 of beating Moxley to death with a golf club on the property of her Belle Haven home on Halloween eve, 1975.

Released this month, “Framed” is Kennedy’s argument that his cousin was the second victim of the murder, wrongly suffering more than a decade in prison at the hands of corrupt or inept investigators, prosecutors and media figures.

The guilt, he argues, belongs to Burr Tinsley and Adolph Hasbrouck, two New York City teenagers who came to Greenwich on regular occasions in the 1970s.

“They were around quite a bit,” Walker said this week. He noted that Hasbrouck was a regular visitor to the home of Geoff Byrne, near the Moxley residence. Kennedy in his book alleges the men holed up in the rambling Byrne mansion after committing the murder.

Hasbrouck and Tinsley were friends with Tony Bryant, a former Brunswick School student, who was close to Neal Walker in the 1970s.

Bryant, in the Kennedy book, says he, Hasbrouck and Tinsley stopped by the Walker house after arriving in Greenwich on the night of the murder but Neal couldn’t come out. Walker this week said he has no recollection of seeing them that night, but couldn’t say “one way or the other” whether Bryant’s account was accurate.

“Adolph, he’d come by and hang out all the time,” Walker said. “If there’s some way to depose these guys, that would be great. Following the case, I think Michael got convicted on a lot of circumstantial evidence at the time.”

Margie Walker, Neal’s sister and a friend of Martha Moxley, confirmed that the two men were frequently in the neighborhood. She and her brother were not involved in the “Mischief Night” activities on Oct. 30, the night Moxley was killed, she said, but she recalled other instances of seeing them in the neighborhood.

“Yes definitely, other times, they (Hasbrouck and Tinsley) had been there,” Walker recalled. “I was with Martha the first time she met them, at a Greenwich town party in September. Tony Bryant was at my house frequently, he and my brothers were classmates. And at other times (Tinsley and Hasbrouck), they also spent time with Geoff Byrne, who passed away.”

Byrne died in 1986 when he was 16, found dead in bed in his parents’ home. Kennedy portrays him as an innocent, neglected young man who was emotionally destroyed by what he might have witnessed on the fateful night.

According to the Walker siblings, Bryant’s claim to Kennedy investigators that the two young men came to Greenwich with the intent of “going caveman” on Moxley was never adequately explored by law enforcement.

“People just dismissed the idea out of hand — saying, you know, ‘Really?’ People like that running around Belle Haven, with private security, they would have been noticed.’ But all the kids had ways of moving around the neighborhood without walking on the streets. We’d cut through backyards, through the trees,” said Margie Walker, who now lives in Darien.

“Obviously, none of us know for sure what happened,” she added.

Reasonable doubt?

Kennedy said in an interview with Greenwich Time last week that he believed a jury would find the evidence compelling. He noted two hairs recovered near Moxley’s body, reportedly identified as belonging to an African American and someone of mixed race, which fits the racial profiles of Hasbrouck and Tinsley.

“The hairs, the statement, their admissions - if a jury looked at that, and saw the corroborative evidence, it would not impact their determination of reasonable doubt?” he said.
Kennedy in his book says Hasbrouck and Tinsley later changed their stories, but confirmed they had been in the neighborhood that night during initial conversations with Kennedy’s investigators.
“Framed” covers many of the same arguments made in a 2007 court petition that sought to introduce new evidence and spur a new trial. Hasbrouck, Tinsley and Bryant refused to testify during that proceeding, but a videotaped interview with Bryant accusing the other two was entered as evidence and shown.

Superior Court Judge Edward R. Karazin Jr. discounted the contention that Hasbrouck and Tinsley were involved and rejected the appeal for a new trial.

“The testimony of Bryant is absent any genuine corroboration,” he wrote in a 2008 decision. No other witnesses at the hearing placed the New York youths in Belle Haven on the night of the murder.

Kennedy last week called the judge’s decision “weird.”

“He determined that it was credible enough to be admissible,” he said. “Then he made a very personal and weird determination that it wouldn’t have swayed a jury. But a jury was never given the chance to assess that.”

Kennedy, a law professor who lives in Bedford, N.Y., said the prosecutors and the lead investigator in the case were not interested in exploring any other suspect besides Michael Skakel.
Bryant, who gave the taped interview to Kennedy investigators in 2003, and whose own checkered legal history came to light during earlier proceedings, has refused to formally speak with law enforcement about the case. Hasbrouck and Tinsley have denied any involvement with the murder. Tinsley, a photographer, told reporters who contacted him in Oregon that he had nothing to do with Moxley’s death. Hasbrouck, who lives in Connecticut and has worked for ABC television as a technician, did not return multiple requests for comments this week. His wife Annette, of Bridgeport, deferred questions to lawyer Lawrence Schoenbach, who said he had nothing to do with Martha Moxley’s death.

Jury pool

Quinnipiac University School of Law professor William Dunlap, who has followed the case, said it was unlikely that the book would have an impact on current deliberations by the state Supreme Court in Hartford. Skakel was released in 2013 after a judge decided he received insufficient legal counsel during his murder trial. The state high court is now weighing an appeal of that decision.
But the book could have an impact on the public — and a potential jury pool.

“It could conceivably have an effect on whether or not there’s a retrial,” said the Quinnipiac professor. “If the Supreme Court upholds the reversal of the conviction, the prosecutors would have to make a decision on retrying him. If they decided the case had been weakened so much in the public mind, that it could become difficult to find a jury that had not been affected by the book — it could force them to decide then not to re-try.”

Continuing, Dunlap said, “Even if there is no re-trial, the book could help rehabilitate Skakel’s name in the eyes of readers.”

The book has been criticized by state prosecutors, as well as others who have researched the killing.
A statement by the Connecticut Division of Criminal Justice points to the fact Bryant was never willing to testify: “He has refused to repeat his allegations under oath. Moreover, even the state habeas court judge who decided (wrongly, in the state's view) to afford Mr. Skakel a new trial found that individual's allegations to be completely lacking in credibility in light of other fabrications by that same individual that have come to light more recently."

Leonard Levitt, a reporter who wrote extensively about the case, including for Greenwich Time in the years after the murder, called the theory about Tinsley and Hasbrouck “preposterous,” adding that they would have been seen by people in the community and that 25 years had elapsed before they were introduced as potential suspects.

Maya Murphy P.C. has the resources and expertise to offer you the best possible representation throughout the criminal process. If you are facing criminal charges or wish to appeal your case, please call the offices of Maya Murphy, P.C. today at (203) 221-3100 or Joseph C. Maya, Esq. atJMaya@Mayalaw.com.

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Soiurce- Robert Marchant, Former residents say Kennedy suspects were familiar in Greenwich, The Greenwich Times, June 23, 2016, available at http://www.greenwichtime.com/local/article/Former-residents-say-Kennedy-suspects-were-8404998.php