Episode 87: Sex, lies and the topless coffee shop Part 1

When a topless coffee shop — yup, exactly what it sounds like — opened in Vassalboro, Maine, in February 2009, it caused international titters. But four months later, when it burned down, things got serious.

We also update Martha Moxley (Episode 17), Breonna Taylor (Episode 77), Ghislaine Maxwell (Episode 78), and, of course, the Massachusetts Drug Lab Scandal (Episode 29).

Rebecca also rates the documentary “Class Action Park.”

Episode 17: Martha Moxley, the murder case that just won’t go away

 

Martha Moxley was bludgeoned to death, then stabbed through the neck with the broken end of a golf club when she was 15. If it had happened in 2015, an arrest probably would have been made almost immediately. But it happened in 1975 in an exclusive gated neighborhood in Connecticut and the man finally convicted in 2002 — Michael Skakel — came from a rich, powerful family that did everything it could to make sure police couldn’t do their jobs. And now, 15 years after his conviction, his money and relationship to the Kennedy family means the legal acrobatics JUST. WON’T. STOP. We take you through the nigh of October 30, 1975, and what happened in the ensuing decades, right up to now, as the Connecticut Supreme Court waits to consider a motion to appeal Skakel’s conviction, which it upheld in December.

It’s a story of wealth, power, privilege, kow-towing cops and warring writers. It’s a story of two families, one that had it together and another that was falling apart. Mostly, though, it’s the story of a teenage girl who died for no good reason, and the failure of the system to do something about it for a long, long time.

Join us for Episode 17!