ID of Kennedy-Home Rape Case Suspect Likely Soon : Crime: Photo of man to be shown to alleged victim. A Palm Beach newspaper contends that a police document lists him as the senator’s nephew.

Investigation of an alleged rape at the oceanside mansion of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s family has been hampered by inconsistent statements of witnesses and difficulty in obtaining a photograph of the “tentative” suspect, a police captain testified Thursday.

Palm Beach Police Capt. Brian B. Roche said positive identification of the suspect could be imminent. The woman who said she had been raped at the compound early Saturday morning was finally scheduled to be shown a photograph of the suspect late Thursday, he said.

A local paper reported Thursday that a “police document” lists the suspect as William Kennedy Smith, a nephew of the senator, but Roche offered no confirmation Thursday.

Roche testified in a suit by two newspapers and a local television station to force police to release the victim’s description of the alleged crime.

Roche cited “a lot of inconsistency in statements gathered so far” and said it was important to resolve them before more information is released. A number of interviews need to be conducted locally as well as questioning of witnesses “out of state,” Roche said, and releasing more information before then could interfere with those interviews.

Kennedy, his son, Patrick, 24, a Rhode Island legislator, and Smith, 30, were among family members spending Easter weekend at the guarded mansion here.

The three partied late Friday and early Saturday at Au Bar, a posh Palm Beach establishment only minutes from the family compound. The victim, a 29-year-old woman who lives in nearby Jupiter, was reported to be at the club as well, but other customers were unable to say that she left with the Kennedys. She alleged to police that the attack took place on the Kennedy grounds between 3:30 and 4:30 a.m. Saturday.

Police would not comment Thursday on reports that the alleged attack took place on the beach below the Kennedy house.

Kennedy’s spokesman said that the senator “had absolutely no involvement in the alleged incident,” and Patrick Kennedy told the Associated Press that he was asleep at the time of the alleged attack and that he did not know the woman.

“She was not a guest of mine,” he said. “I assume she was a guest of one of my cousins.”

Smith, a fourth-year student at Georgetown University Medical School in Washington, is the second son of Jean Kennedy Smith, the senator’s sister, and Stephen Smith, who managed the family’s multimillion-dollar holdings until his death last August.

In a statement issued through a spokesman for the Joseph P. Kennedy Enterprises, which his father ran in New York, Smith said: “Any suggestion I was involved in any offense is erroneous.” He dismissed news reports of the incident as “inaccurate” and said they had unfairly embarrassed his uncle and his cousin, Patrick.

Circuit Judge Richard L. Oftedahl said he hopes to rule today on whether details of the allegation should be released.

Cristiana Simon, arguing for the newspapers, the Palm Beach Post and the Palm Beach Daily News, and local TV station WPTV, contended that police are withholding details they customarily release only because the Kennedy family is involved. The family has spent part of the winter here since Kennedy’s late father, former Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy, purchased the property in the 1930s.

Simon showed Oftedahl a four-inch thick stack of “incident reports” that included victims’ statements, which she said Palm Beach police had immediately made available in other cases.

The newspapers and TV station are not seeking release of the alleged victim’s name, conceding that rape victims are not covered by Florida’s public records law.

But Roche and Peter A. Sachs, attorney for the police, said that releasing further details might taint information from witnesses who would be able to read details of the police case. The information could also “sway a potential defendant’s” story, Roche said.