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Jack Being Jack
November 25, 2019
Right-wing reporter and Fox News contributor John Solomon has been described as a central figure in the impeachment hearings of President Trump. He is accused of being a conduit for wild and discredited Ukrainian conspiracy theories that have been pushed by a bad Ukrainian actor named Yuriy Lutsenko and pursued by Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.
Well, Solomon’s dad is Jack Solomon, a longtime criminal investigator for the state of Connecticut. I don’t know John but I do know Jack. Let’s just say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Jack was the lead investigator in Connecticut’s reinvestigation of the murder of Greenwich teenager, Martha Moxley, which occurred on Oct. 30, 1975. Then 15, she was beaten to death with a golf club at the edge of her property, which was adjacent to that of her neighbor, Rushton Skakel, the brother of Ethel Kennedy. She was beaten so savagely that the club shattered into four pieces. The killer then used one of the pieces to stab her through the neck.
Local Greenwich police described the beating as “overkill” and a “rage reaction,” both indications that the killer knew Martha.
Rushton’s 17-year-old son Tommy was an early suspect. He initially told police he had last seen Martha outside the house at 9:30 PM when he returned home to write a school paper on Abraham Lincoln, a paper, police learned, that no teacher at his posh private school had assigned. He later changed his story, saying he returned to meet Martha again, and that the two had engaged in what he said was “mutual masturbation to orgasm” before he left her shortly before 10, when Greenwich police believed she was killed.
His 15-year-old brother Michael initially told police he had returned home from his cousin’s house around 11 PM, and went to bed. He, too, later changed his story, saying he had gone out again around midnight, climbed a tree outside Martha’s bedroom window, masturbated to orgasm in the tree even though she was not there, then ran home, passing through what turned out to be the place where Martha was killed.
The state, with Solomon as chief investigator, took over the case in 1991 from the Greenwich police after they’d failed to make an arrest after 16 years. Disregarding common sense, Solomon pursued the theory that Ken Littleton, a live-in tutor for Michael and Tommy, who had moved into the Skakel house the night of the murder, was her killer. So obsessed did Solomon become that he befriended Littleton’s ex-wife and persuaded her to set up Littleton in a bugged motel room to trick him into admitting he had killed Martha.
Unfortunately for Jack, Littleton repeatedly denied killing Martha.
Colleagues said Solomon’s weakness as an investigator was taking things a step too far. They described this as “Jack being Jack.”
After Solomon retired from the state’s attorney’s office, Michael Skakel was convicted of Martha’s murder. But Solomon could not let Littleton go. In an extraordinary twist, Solomon testified as a defense witness for Michael against Littleton. Again, people who knew Solomon said that his testifying for a murder suspect in a case in which he was the lead investigator was another example of “Jack being Jack.”
Solomon subsequently became chief of police for the Connecticut town of Easton. In 2008, a self-described exotic dancer, identifying herself with a false name, telephoned Easton police telling them a local man, Ronald Terebesi was involved in drugs and pornography. Based on this flimsy evidence, Solomon called in a SWAT team from surrounding towns. Nine heavily armed officers broke down Terebesi’s door and fatally shot Gonzalo Guizan, who was watching television with Terebesi. Only a miniscule amount of drugs was found.
Shortly afterward, Solomon resigned as Easton’s police chief.
In February 2013, those towns agreed to a $3.5-million-dollar settlement with the estate of Guizan. It was the culmination of Jack Being Jack.
