Skakel Slaying Trial Starts

A prosecutor told jurors in opening arguments Tuesday that Michael Skakel confessed to a number of people--”under circumstances where he felt no fear of being exposed”--that he beat Martha Moxley to death with a golf club more than 26 years ago.

“Sometimes, some people simply can’t keep a secret,” States Atty. Jonathan Benedict said. “That, as you will see, is how things eventually unraveled for Michael Skakel and how this case was solved after so many years.

“As it turns out, he has been talking about his night of mischief since at least the spring of 1978,” the prosecutor said.

Skakel, 41, is a nephew of Ethel Skakel Kennedy, the widow of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. He is accused of bludgeoning Moxley, a high school sophomore and neighbor, to death with a golf club that belonged to his mother.

Moxley and Skakel were 15 at the time.

Her body was discovered Oct. 31, 1975, beneath a pine tree on the lawn of her parents’ 26-room estate in the exclusive Greenwich, Conn., waterfront enclave of Belle Haven. Nearby were the shattered and bloody pieces of the 6-iron.

Benedict said Moxley was repeatedly beaten so furiously that the golf club fell apart, and she was subsequently stabbed with a portion of the broken shaft.

Defense attorney Michael Sherman labeled as “zilch” the physical evidence against his client before attacking the government’s case as “a very shaky house of cards and mostly wild cards and a few jokers as well.”

Sherman told the jury evidence would show that Skakel was not the murderer and was miles away visiting his cousin in north Greenwich when the tragedy occurred.

“He wasn’t in the neighborhood,” Sherman stressed.

Skakel told investigators at the time that, after returning home from visiting his cousin, he went to bed and never left the house.

Sherman contended that some of the prosecution’s witnesses were “coming out of the woodwork” 22 to 26 years after the crime.

“You will find people who have no logical explanation of why they were telling a story other than they wanted to be part of the show,” the lawyer said. “It’s a heck of a show. You can’t deny that.

“You have best-selling authors, celebrities, satellite trucks, movies, the Kennedy connection, the works, a lot of money, a lot of fame, a lot of notoriety that has been derived from [the] state versus Michael Skakel.”

The wood-paneled courtroom in Norwalk’s red-brick Superior Courthouse was packed; reporters from more than 70 news organizations obtained credentials for the trial in this community on Long Island Sound, within commuting distance of New York City.

Central to the prosecution’s case is testimony expected from classmates of Skakel at a school for emotionally troubled youngsters, the Elan School in Poland Spring, Maine. The classmates allegedly told prosecutors that Skakel made incriminating statements about the crime.

Sherman and Benedict clashed sharply over the role of Skakel’s family.

The prosecutor contended that the young men of the Skakel family and their cousin James Terrien “were abruptly and mysteriously spirited away for the weekend” after the attack.

Benedict told the jurors that the state would show evidence “of a concerted effort on the part of the Skakel family in the guise of cooperating with the investigation to prevent the discovery of the actual murderer of Martha Moxley.”

He said the effort began “the very night of her death and resulted in investigators following the wrong trails for many years.”

Sherman painted a different picture. He said the Skakel sons were not spirited away, and their father, Rushton, opened his home to the police. Sherman said whenever detectives wanted to speak to family members, they were available.

“There is no conspiracy,” Sherman told the jury. “And, if there is, let them prove it to you. And make sure it is relevant.”

Dorthy Moxley, who sought for more than two decades to find her daughter’s killer, was the first witness.

In minute and chilling detail, she told of what she thought would be an ordinary evening, painting woodwork and later wrapping the brushes in aluminum foil. She described how she became increasingly uneasy when her daughter failed to return home and sent her son out to search for his sister.

The next day, she knocked on the back door of the Skakel residence, suspecting her daughter could have fallen asleep in a camper parked in the driveway.

“Michael came to the door. I told him I was Martha Moxley’s mother and I did not know where she was,” Moxley said. She testified that Skakel looked “hung over” and said that Martha wasn’t there.

Shortly after noon, Sheila McGuire, who attended Greenwich High School with Martha, came to the door of Moxley’s home.

“She was hysterical. She said, ‘I think I found Martha.’ I said, ‘Is she all right?’ and she said, ‘No, I don’t think so,’” Moxley testified.

During cross-examination, Sherman questioned Moxley’s mother about sounds--voices and barking dogs--she heard near her house during the evening. Moxley said she heard the commotion between 9:30 and 10 p.m., the time Skakel’s lawyers contend he was at his cousin’s home.

McGuire, who also was a witness, testified her mother woke her at 2 or 3 a.m. after receiving a call from Moxley’s mother.

McGuire said she told her mother she didn’t know where Martha Moxley was but later that day started to look for her friend. Near Moxley’s home, she saw what she believed was a “mattress kind of thing” in the distance.

Drawing closer, she discovered it was Moxley’s bloody body.

“She was at the base of a big, huge pine tree,” McGuire said.

“I panicked and I ran and I got to the Moxley home,” McGuire testified, “and I said, ‘Let me in!’”

She returned to the body with one of Moxley’s mother’s friends and the police. McGuire said her mother later came to the scene.

The trial is expected to last five weeks.