feature
MONEY, POWER, AND LIES
Beaten to death in 1975, the girl’s killer was convicted in 2002: Michael Skakel, RFK’s nephew. Why it took so long to catch him, and how he got out of prison afterwards, is shocking.
Leonard Levitt writes regularly about the police for NYPD Confidential. From 1995 to 2005, he wrote the column "One Police Plaza" for Newsday. Before joining Newsday, he worked as a reporter for the Associated Press and the Detroit News, as a correspondent for Time Magazine, and as the investigations editor of the New York Post. His work has appeared in Harper's, Esquire and the New York Times magazine.
Levitt is the author of six books, the most recent of which is NYPD Confidential: Power and Corruption in the Country's Greatest Police Force. He received the 2005 non-fiction Edgar Award for Conviction: Solving the Moxley Murder.
A graduate of Dartmouth College and the Columbia School of Journalism, Levitt served two years in the Peace Corps in Tanzania, East Africa, and has been the recipient of a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation for the Humanities.
The roots of this seeming abuse of power start with the trauma of Sept. 11, writes Leonard Levitt.