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WHAT HAPPENED IN GREENWICH
by Christine Alice Corcos
The latest in an unending series of docudramas ("cases ripped
from today's headlines") is Dominick Dunne Presents
Murder in Greenwich, a dramatization of Mark Fuhrman's
(yes, THAT Mark Fuhrman's) reconstruction of the death of Martha
Elizabeth Moxley on October 30, 1975. Fuhrman, who became infamous
through the real life televising of the trial of O. J. Simpson,
faded from sight after his conviction for perjured testimony
during that trial, moved to Idaho and eventually wrote a book
about the case, Murder in Brentwood, which became a best-seller
(though not a tv movie). Re-inventing himself as a kind of private
investigator-cum-true crime writer, Fuhrman (who tells us in
Murder in Greenwich that he "never stopped being
a detective") decided to re-open the decades old unsolved
murder of a pretty Connecticut teenager, the neighbor of Kennedy
in-laws.
Murder in Greenwich should have been Martha's movie. Certainly
the filmmakers try to make her the center of attention, by using
that hokey old method of presenting her as the narrator of her
own tragedy. The actress who plays Martha is cute enough, and
certainly resembles Martha, but in these scenes she seems like
an older woman trying to play a coy teenager, a jarring addition
and one that was certainly not needed. In addition, we are treated
to swooping camera work over the crime scene and through various
houses as people discuss the murder. The implication is that
Martha is an angel, or an otherworldly spirit leading us to the
truth about her murder. Was this a concession to the family's
firmly held Catholic faith? It's possible, but it is also possible
that the writers simply took this opportunity to increase the
pathos of the story.
The film introduces some serious issues, mainly the miscarriage
of justice so long ago. The question of whether the rich are
different enough to consistently buy immunity from prosecution
is an abiding one. Fuhrman's arrival on the scene with requests
to interview witnesses and examine documents stirs up old antagonisms
and fears, causing one police officer to remind him that the
case "is still open." Some of the residents remind
him that he is a convicted perjurer, a comment which he takes
like a man. Our hero Fuhrman barrels through the wealthy and
cloistered town of Greenwich demanding that its inhabitants search
their souls for the truth about Martha's murder. At the same
time, he makes loud and obvious comparisons to the deaths of
Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, telling one former detective
who worked the Moxley case that he "let a double murderer
get away" because he lied on the stand. "I didn't want
it to be about me," he asserts. His new found friend consoles
him that it ended up "being about you, anyway." Ah,
shucks.
Ultimately what is indigestible about Murder in Greenwich
is its presentation of Fuhrman as the savior the town needs to
face up to its past, salvage its present and redeem its future.
Even if the O.J. trial was not really "all about Mark Fuhrman",
this movie certainly is. Undoubtedly there was little choice;
the film is, after all, based on Fuhrman's book. The very real
questions about the lack of energy with which the Greenwich police
investigated Martha's murder are disposed of with the assumption
that the police were honest but the Skakels and their friends
(including the police commissioner) ran the town in 1975 and
continued to run the town until the day Mark Fuhrman arrived.
Like a gunslinger of the Old West he makes his opinions known,
managing to insult the very former detective whose assistance
he will need later. But Mark knows how to apologize when he is
in the wrong, and he manages through force of personality and
rightness of cause to get the information and the interviews
he needs. Mark is incredibly attractive too; he gets the come-on
from an attractive but alcoholic socialite who helps him by getting
him, the lower class, discredited out of towner, into contact
with the wealthy and diffident villagers. Before he leaves town,
he eventually takes her to task for her excessive drinking in
the mornings, without accepting her obvious invitation to distract
her at night. Good man, that Mark Fuhrman, and a loyal husband.
Magically he overcomes all obstacles. Against all odds, he solves
Martha's murder.
Fuhrman and his sidekick, a young and educated type who seems
more at home in Greenwich than he does, eventually construct
a plausible explanation for Martha's seeming disappearance after
9:30 on October 30 and the slippery time of her death: was it
9:50, 10:30 or later? As Fuhrman points out, and this is an important
issue to keep in mind, the police who investigated the murder
originally tried to determine the time of the murder from the
times during which their prime suspects had an alibi. Since the
Skakel boys seemed to be accounted for after 9:30 and the initial
coroner's report and earwitnesses suggested Martha died before
10, the police were stumped. Rushton Skakel's willingness to
allow them to search the Skakel house was another psychological
red herring. The police could not believe that anyone who consented
to a search might know anything about the murder (and the film
does not suggest that the elder Skakel in fact did know anything).
What Fuhrman does contribute is a lesson in deduction. As he
points out, barking dog evidence, which the police took to be
contemporaneous with the crime, is not proof of anything. Of
course, the famous barking dog in the Nicole Simpson/Ronald Goldman
case set the time of those deaths (but that is another story).
Instead, Fuhrman and his colleagues set out to reconstruct the
murder. They have no choice. They have no formal investigative
power. Much of the evidence is either secret, mishandled, or
lost. The film attributes this not to sloppy police work (that
would be too reminiscent of the O.J. case) but to undue influence
and deliberate tampering in order to hide evidence of guilt.
The legal system has failed Martha for 25 years, but Fuhrman
will do her justice.
Thus does anti-hero detective Mark Fuhrman, who became a familiar
face through a televised real trial dealing with a real-life
double murder, reinvent himself as hero private detective Mark
Fuhrman, avenger of the innocent, in this fictionalized television
version. The actor who plays Fuhrman is attractive. He plays
the detective with a touching macho sensitivity, leaving flowers
at Martha's grave, meeting with Martha's mother to assure her
that she did not hear her daughter's death agony at 9:30 that
night, and looking on with quiet approval as Dorthy Moxley quietly
celebrates the end of a nightmare on the steps of the courthouse.
The film seems to take at least some liberties with the story
as it has evolved in the press and in court. One of the other
prime suspects, Ken Littleton, the Skakel boys' tutor, becomes
someone named "Morris", perhaps to defend against a
potential defamation suit. The suggestion that Fuhrman single-handedly
focused enough attention on the crime to re-open the investigation
would come as a surprise to Timothy Dumas, a resident of Greenwich
at the time of the murder, who has since written his own version,
A Wealth of Evil (1998), well written and thoughtful,
and to Dominick Dunne himself, whose fictionalization of the
story appeared in his 1993 novel A Season in Purgatory.
In spite of the attention that the movie gives to Martha's last
weeks and the speculations surrounding her death, it uses her
as much as anyone else in this sordid story, except her family.
It explains this sad, perverse tale of a would-be Romeo and Juliet
ends as the killing of Juliet by her unknown Romeo, with the
entire town closing ranks against the accusation of a murderer
among them. Martha's life was not nearly as important as her
killer's, says Murder in Greenwich. The town sacrificed
her to its peace of mind. The film, and Fuhrman, may be correct
in their analysis. But Fuhrman surely uses Martha to rehabilitate
himself. The film presents him as the smartest, the most dogged,
the most incorruptible investigator ever to hit town. But he
is not the only person who seems to use Martha for his own ends.
Even Dominick Dunne, who has known the tragic loss of a daughter
inserts himself into this story; the title of the movie is Dominick
Dunne Presents Murder in Greenwich. Using a 15 year old murder
victim in this way makes this film ultimately quite unpalatable,
even if it were well written, well acted and well intentioned.
It may be the last of these three, but it still does Martha a
disservice. The movie compresses the actual trial-the vindication
that we are led to believe is the purpose of the exercise-into
a few minutes. After all the speculation about the absence of
justice for more than two decades, we do not see how justice
is finally achieved.
At the conclusion of the trial, Dorthy Moxley addresses the crush
of journalists crowded around to hear her reaction to the guilty
verdict. "This is Martha's day," she assures them.
It should have been. Martha Moxley, who was pretty and funny
and eager to enter into young adulthood, had so few days to call
her own. Murder in Greenwich tries to give us a sense
of the reasons for Martha's short stay on earth, and of the meaninglessness
of her sudden and violent death. It tries as well to give us
some understanding of the motivations of a lonely and troubled
boy, who 27 years later was convicted of the murder. To some
extent it succeeds, in spite of the trite dialogue, the false
drama and the intrusive presence of media celebrities Dominick
Dunne, who "presents Murder in Greenwich" according
to the film's title, and Fuhrman himself. But the presence of
those celebrities is just a reconfirmation of Martha's ultimate
meaning to others: Dunne and Fuhrman have used her, just as the
film suggests Tommy Skakel used her during that last summer of
her life.
She deserves better than that. Murder in Greenwich is
Mark Fuhrman's movie. It should have been Martha's.
Posted October 27, 2002
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