Defense begins in Skakel trial
NORWALK, Conn. (AP) – Two relatives of Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel testified Wednesday that he was with them the night Martha Moxley was beaten to death with a golf club. As he began calling witnesses Wednesday, Skakel attorney Michael Sherman attempted to show that Skakel was at cousin James Dowdle’s estate in another part of Greenwich between 9:30 and 11 p.m. the night his neighbor was killed.
Skakel, 41, is charged with beating Moxley to death with a golf club that was traced to his family. Both Skakel and Moxley were 15 at the time. Skakel is a nephew of Robert F. Kennedy’s widow, Ethel.
Skakel’s younger brother, David, testified that he heard the frantic barking of a dog in the direction of the Moxley home about 9:30 or 10 p.m., an element in the defense’s case aimed at establishing Moxley’s time of death.
“It was ongoing and incessant,” he said of the barking. “I would describe it as distressed and prolonged.”
Dowdle, the first defense witness, testified that he, Michael Skakel and Skakel’s two other brothers, John and Rushton, went from the Skakel home to Dowdle’s Greenwich estate at about 9:30 p.m. He said the brothers left for home just before 11 p.m.
In a tape played Tuesday by the prosecution, Skakel said he was in a car with Moxley before leaving with his brothers and Dowdle.
Skakel had said his brother Rushton was too drunk to drive and that his brother John took the wheel.
But Dowdle said Rushton appeared fine, and Rushton denied he was drunk.
Prosecutors have not pinpointed the time of Moxley’s death but have said it occurred between 9:30 p.m. on Oct. 30 and 5 a.m. on Oct. 31.
Rushton Skakel Jr. testified that he was among those who went to Dowdle’s home that night between 9:30 p.m. and 11 p.m.
On cross-examination, he had trouble remembering other key details, including the commotion associated with the slaying the next day or his giving statements to investigators.
Dowdle also said he couldn’t remember taking a trip to Windham, N.Y., with the Skakel brothers immediately after the murder.
The prosecution rested its case Tuesday with Skakel’s own voice – an audiotape on which he detailed his attraction to Moxley and his activities the October 1975 night she was killed.
Skakel described a night of drinking and smoking marijuana at his cousin’s house. He said that after returning home, he became sexually aroused and went to look for Moxley by climbing a tree on her property.
He moved under a street light when he heard a disturbing noise in the dark and said he felt panicked when Moxley’s mother asked him the next day about her daughter.
“That’s as close to a confession you’re going to get out of Michael,” the victim’s brother, John Moxley, said outside the courthouse on Tuesday.
“It’s Michael in his own voice putting him at all the wrong places at all the wrong times.”
The tape, recorded in 1997, was seized by investigators from Richard Hoffman, who planned to write a book with Skakel. The book, about Skakel’s life growing up with the Kennedys, was never published.