Their neighbors, widower Rushton Skakel and his seven children, fit the categories of both rich and famous. Patriarch George Skakel, founder of Great Lakes Carbon, grew rich in the 1920s. The family acquired a glamorous sheen when his daughter, Ethel, married Robert F. Kennedy. When Michael and Thomas Skakel met Martha, they were just 15 and 17. Martha's body was discovered the next day.
Investigators believe the attacker killed in a sexual frenzy.
The killer struck Martha repeatedly with a golf club that belonged to the Skakels' dead mother. Police followed dozens of leads, but soon focused on the Skakels. But police discovered that he had no such assignment and that he'd been drinking the night Martha died. The Skakel family cooperated at first. Thomas submitted hair samples and took two lie detector tests with inconclusive results.