Yellow Brick Road

 The full title of Mark Fuhrman's "Emerald City" movie is Dominic Dunne Presents Murder in Greenwich. It's an apt title because Fuhrman's Murder in Greenwich book began with Dunne  covering the William Smith rape trial for Vanity Fair in 1991. Smith's trial was newsworthy because of his Kennedy family ties. He was the nephew of  John and Robert's younger brother Edward Kennedy. 

Dunne latched onto that aspect of the case. He soon found himself privy to a rumor that Smith was visiting the Greenwich home of Rushton Skakel in 1975 when someone murdered Dorothy Moxley's 15-year-old daughter Martha. The rumor proved to be false but it sparked Dunne's interest in the Moxley case. He sought out  Dorothy, who was now living in Annapolis, Maryland. With her cooperation he began his version of a journalistic investigation. Predictably, he concluded that "a Kennedy" did it, even though it wasn't Ted's nephew William Smith. Dunne figured that it was Ethel Kennedy's nephew Thomas Skakel. He had the passion of his suspicion to write about it, but not the courage of his belief to use the names of the real people involved.

During the 1995 O.J. Simpson murder trial, Dominick Dunne became an admirer of LAPD Homicide Detective Mark Fuhrman. Fuhrman's first book so impressed him that he decided to pass on the metaphorical torch of his Martha Moxley murder investigation to Fuhrman, the now retired LAPD detective. In Fuhrman's movie, his character's first meeting with Dorothy's character makes it clear that she is on a quest when she says, "I won't question why you came. I just want justice for Martha."

Speaking metaphorically, the yellow brick road becomes easier to see when Dorothy thanks Fuhrman who is standing next to a yellow brick wall. She thanks him for bringing her to the end of that metaphorical road with the successful prosecution of Michael Skakel for her daughter's murder.

Dorothy Moxley didn't walk all the way down that road alone any more than Dorothy Gale did, not in Fuhrman's movie, anyway.

                

The movie had the Scarecrow in a still shot of O.J. Simpson trying on the killer's glove in Judge Ito's court. The setting is the most important thing about that picture (which was also on the front page of the Greenwich newspaper) because it's where O.J. was heard singing the Scarecrow's song, "If I only had a brain."

To seal the deal you need a Dorothy connection to O.J. You have one. It's Dr. Michael Badin. When Fuhrman and Weeks go to her house and tell her what they need to proceed, she lets Fuhrman know that she wants Dr. Badin to handle the forensic evidence.

Upon leaving the Moxley house, Fuhrman is visibly upset. Weeks asks him if it's because because Badin helped get O.J. off. Fuhrman introduces brainlessness into the subject by assuring Weeks that his problem is with the "idiots" who were either too lazy or too stupid to do their job."

The movie had the Tin Man in the form of Fuhrman with pictures of himself on his home office wall wearing  the tin badge of a uniformed LAPD officer. That's on top of the 1997 photo he posed for in Vanity Fair holding an axe and wearing a watch with a red bezel

He makes no explicit mention of The Wizard of Oz but, on page141, he leads off a listing of family sit-coms he watched in his youth with Ozzie and Harriet...  L. Frank Baum's sister Harriet introduced him to his wife. Baum family legend had it that his wife's mother convinced him to write down the stores he told that became The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The rest, of course, is literary and cinematic history.

There is much more to Fuhrman as the Tin Man than that. But really, how much more do you need?

The movie  had the Cowardly Lion in the form of Edward Kennedy with the mere mention of Chappaquiddick. In 1969 he was driving off of Chappaquiddick Island over a bridge with a female staffer as his passenger. Somehow, the car went off the bridge and settled upside down under water. He saved himself. She drowned.

Although he recovered enough of his political reputation to be called "The Lion of the Senate" in the December 31, 1999 issue of Time and elsewhere, the cowardly shades of Chappaquiddick never faded completely away. With any mention of the name, Ted Kennedy's name came with it.

This is how that story gets slipped into Murder in Greenwich:

 Martha and her friends Charity and Lucy are at the Belle Haven Club sitting on the tiled deck of a wading pool next to the swimming pool. They are sipping soft drinks and talking about Tommy and Michael Skakel. Lucy warns Martha that, "Bad vibes emanate from that house." She says, "They have a whole Catholic curse thing going." Charity agrees.

Lucy: "Mr. Skakel's folks died in a plane crash. His brother died in a plane crash.

Martha: Total coincidence.

Lucy: Uh-uh.  His sister Ethel marries Bobby Kennedy.  JFK is shot.

Charity:   RFK is shot

Lucy: Chappaquiddick.