Dorthy Moxley, whose family name became linked with the Kennedys as the 1975 murder of her teenage daughter, Martha, became a decades-long media sensation, died Tuesday after she was hospitalized last week with the flu, her son said. She was 92.
Moxley, who had also been diagnosed with colon cancer, returned to her home in Summit, New Jersey, where she died surrounded by loved ones, John Moxley said Thursday.
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"She was an incredibly positive person," he said, adding, "One of her great talents is accepting the support that people so graciously offered to my mom."
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Moxley, who had worked as a teacher, was in the national spotlight when Martha, 15, was bludgeoned to death on Oct. 30, 1975, near her family's home in an affluent neighborhood of Greenwich, Connecticut. Her body was found the next day under a tree, and police said she was beaten with a golf club and stabbed after it broke.
The item was associated with the Skakels, whose children lived across the street and with whom Martha had been socializing.
Despite suspicions cast on members of the Skakel family, the case remained unsolved. But a one-judge grand jury began reviewing the case in 1998 and an arrest warrant was issued in 2000 for Michael Skakel, the nephew of Robert F. Kennedy's widow, Ethel Kennedy. (Ethel Kennedy died in October at 96.)
Skakel was also 15 at the time of Martha's killing.
His arrest set off intense speculation over whether his family's prestige and connections played a role in the case; he remained adamant he was innocent.
During his arraignment in 2000, which drew widespread coverage, Skakel approached Moxley in a dramatic turn, telling her: "I feel your pain. But you've got the wrong guy."
Moxley later told reporters his words sounded "very rehearsed."
In 2002, Skakel was convicted in Martha's murder and sentenced to 20 years to life in prison. But the case continued to grab headlines as Skakel appealed. He was granted a new trial in 2013 based on inadequate legal counsel at his initial trial, and was freed on bail. But in 2016, the Connecticut Supreme Court reinstated his conviction in a divided decision.
That same year, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote a book defending his cousin, titled, "Framed: Why Michael Skakel Spent Over a Decade in Prison for a Murder He Didn't Commit."
Following more legal maneuvering, Skakel's conviction was vacated in 2018 and a new trial was ordered. But in 2020, prosecutors said they would not seek a retrial, telling a judge they did not believe they could prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt due to a lack of forensic and eyewitness evidence.
Dorthy Moxley remained a steadfast presence amid the courtroom battles and still believed Skakel was guilty.
It was reported in January that Skakel filed a lawsuit against the town of Greenwich and the lead police investigator in Moxley's case.
His lawyer alleged in the complaint that law enforcement "knew that there were other more likely suspects and that there was no probable cause to arrest and/or maintain a prosecution against" Skakel, "but continued to do so intentionally and maliciously in order to convict a 'Kennedy Cousin.'"
In a 2018 interview on NBC's "TODAY" show, Moxley said Skakel's imprisonment, at least for a while, had given the family some justice.
"Martha was killed when I was 43, and in just a few weeks, a couple of weeks, I'm going to be 86," Moxley said at the time. "That means half of my life I have lived with this."
"So I think I can live the rest of my life with it also," she added.
Her son, John Moxley, said Thursday that his mother learned to live with so many questions still unanswered. Her husband, J. David Moxley, died 13 years after Martha was killed, in 1988.
"We used to always say that you can't control what happens to you," John Moxley said, "but you can control how you react."
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