In today’s world, thoroughly drenched in the cynicism of the Epstein affair, it is difficult to recall that a quarter of a century ago the notion that powerful elites could indulge in the vilest crimes and evade justice was largely relegated to the realm of conspiracy theory and Hollywood fiction. When such events did, however improbably, erupt into public scandal, they were so rare that they were mercilessly exploited by a voracious media, true-crime publishers, and television producers. One such example is the criminal case that serves as the basis for Murder in Greenwich, a 2002 television film directed by Tom Loughlin and originally aired on the USA Network. The film is a product of that earlier, perhaps more naïve, era of true-crime storytelling, where a single narrative could be presented with a certainty that later legal reversals would utterly undermine.
The film’s very provenance is inextricably linked to one of the most notorious figures in late-20th-century American jurisprudence: LAPD Detective Mark Fuhrman. As a central investigator in the 1994 O.J. Simpson murder case, Fuhrman’s failure to disclose his history of racist remarks is often cited as a catastrophic blow to the prosecution, contributing directly to Simpson’s acquittal. Disgraced, retiring from the LAPD and pleading no contest to perjury, Fuhrman reinvented himself as a true-crime author. His 1998 book, Murder in Greenwich, was his first foray into this new career, applying his investigative lens—now forever tainted by the Simpson trial—to another unsolved murder with connections to fame and power. The film adaptation thus carries the heavy baggage of its author’s infamy, a fact it never satisfactorily grapples with, instead attempting to rehabilitate Fuhrman as a dogged, misunderstood seeker of truth.
The case itself began in the affluent Belle Haven enclave of Greenwich, Connecticut, in October 1975. Fifteen-year-old Martha Moxley was found brutally clubbed to death with signs of sexual assault. From the outset, suspicion fell upon two teenage brothers, Thomas and Michael Skakel, nephews of Ethel Skakel Kennedy, widow of former US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. For decades, the case remained officially unsolved, a state of affairs widely attributed to the immense political and social clout of the Kennedy family, allegedly deployed to shield their own. This tantalising backdrop of wealth, privilege, and impunity provides the film with its core tension, positioning Fuhrman as an outsider challenging a entrenched, powerful system.
The plot, written by Dave Erickson (later showrunner of Mayor of Kingstown), adopts a straightforward, no-nonsense approach. It follows Fuhrman (Christopher Meloni) as he arrives in Connecticut in the mid-1990s to investigate the 22-year-old cold case. Meeting with local hostility due to his notoriety, he gradually wins over the initially sceptical original investigator, Detective Steve Carroll (Robert Forster). Their procedural work is intercut with flashbacks to the 1975 events, where Maggie Grace portrays Martha Moxley, and Jon Foster and Toby Moore play the Skakel brothers. The narrative engine is simple: Fuhrman’s relentless digging forces the case to be re-opened, leading directly to the 2002 trial and conviction of Michael Skakel. The film presents this as a tidy, linear triumph of justice.
This telefilm was not the first to mine this tragedy for drama. Author Dominick Dunne, himself haunted by his daughter’s murder, became obsessed with the case, convinced of Michael Skakel’s guilt and a Kennedy cover-up. His 1993 roman-à-clef, A Season in Purgatory, and its 1998 television adaptation preceded Murder in Greenwich, creating a cultural echo chamber that likely primed audiences for Fuhrman’s more journalistic take. Where Dunne’s work was novelistic and saturated with class resentment, Erickson’s script is resolutely procedural, mimicking the structure of Fuhrman’s investigation. Tom Loughlin’s direction is uninspired but serviceable, effectively functional yet entirely devoid of stylistic flair or psychological depth. It is television film-making by numbers, competent but forgettable.
The film’s most significant flaw is its uncritical, even hagiographic, adoption of Fuhrman’s perspective. It positions him as the lone wolf who cracks the case that lazy or compromised local authorities could not, a narrative that conveniently ignores the complexities of the actual investigation and the profound reasons for local scepticism towards him. The film unequivocally points the finger at Michael Skakel, a stance hammered home by textual epilogues detailing his conviction and 20-years-to-life sentence, inserted just months before the film’s premiere to maximise topicality. This creates a jarring sense of certainty, a closed loop that the subsequent legal history would violently rupture.
An interesting, if ultimately unsuccessful, creative choice is the use of Martha Moxley as a spectral narrator. In the final scene, Maggie Grace breaks the fourth wall, directly addressing the audience. While Grace delivers an impressively poignant performance—one that undoubtedly helped her secure the role of Shannon in Lost two years later—this device feels tacked-on and sentimentally manipulative. It attempts to grant Martha a voice and provide emotional closure, but it comes across as a contrived effort to elevate material that is otherwise relentlessly procedural. It is a moment of stylistic ambition that the surrounding film hasn’t earned.
Ultimately, Murder in Greenwich is undermined by the messy realities of the case it portrays. As the film itself notes, real life lacks neat endings. Michael Skakel, with the steadfast support of his family including his cousin, the future US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., never ceased fighting his conviction. Kennedy Jr. wrote articles and authored a 2016 book professing Skakel’s innocence. In 2018, after multiple appeals, Skakel was granted a new trial, and the prosecution, its case weakened by decades, declined to pursue it further. The case is now officially unsolved once more. This reversal renders the film’s triumphant, case-closed finale not merely dated but intellectually dishonest. It stands as a fossil of a brief moment when a particular narrative—Fuhrman as redeemed detective, Skakel as guilty aristocrat—seemed plausible. Viewed today, Murder in Greenwich feels less like a definitive account and more like a curious, flawed artefact in the long, cynical exploitation of a girl’s murder, a testament to the perils of adapting true crime before the final chapter is written, if it ever is.
RATING: 5/10 (++)
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