March 13th 2001 - POLICE WERE TOLD IN '80 OF SKAKEL SLAY TALK - NY Daily News

STAMFORD, Conn. - At least one person told Connecticut cops as far back as 1980 that Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel had implicated himself in the murder of teenage neighbor Martha Moxley, newly released court documents show.

Skakel's alleged statement was made more than 10 years before he became the prime suspect of investigators.

The nephew of Ethel Kennedy was charged with Martha's murder last year, 25 years after she was bludgeoned to death with a golf club in the tony Greenwich enclave of Belle Haven.

He allegedly told a fellow student at a school for troubled youths that he "might have committed the murder during [an alcoholic] blackout," according to an arrest warrant released yesterday along with hundreds of other documents in the case.

"That is something totally new to me," said Martha's brother, John. "Why didn't they question him back in 1980? I think that is a little troubling."

Martha, 15, was found dead outside her family's Belle Haven home. A broken golf club found near her body was traced to a set belonging to the Skakels.

The arrest warrant shows Connecticut investigators spoke to six students at the Maine school, Elan, that Skakel attended between 1978 and 1980. The other five students, who were interviewed in the 1990s, told accounts similar to the first student interviewed by cops in 1980. Two who said Skakel confessed testified last summer.

Greenwich police have been accused of mishandling the investigation from the start, with some critics charging they were intimidated by Skakel's wealth and Kennedy family ties.

"If in fact they had evidence to suggest that Michael Skakel was responsible, the earlier he would have been confronted with that, the better off we all would have been," said Skakel's lawyer, Mickey Sherman.

For years, Skakel's older brother, Thomas, was suspected of the murder because he was the last person seen with Martha. But in the early 1990s, attention shifted to Michael Skakel.
Skakel, 40, was initially charged as a juvenile when he was arrested last year because he was 15 when the slaying occurred. A judge ruled this year that he can be charged as an adult, which is why the court file was finally unsealed.

The file confirmed reports that Skakel allegedly pulled a knife on a family chauffeur in 1978 and had to be pulled off the railing of the Triborough Bridge.

On the way to his therapist, Skakel threatened driver Larry Zicarelli and jumped out of the car, the file said. Zicarelli told cops that Skakel yelled: "I've done something very bad. I'm in a lot of trouble. I've either got to kill myself or leave the country."

March 12, 2001 - Update On Greenwich's 1984 MURDER CASE

Law enforcement officials have announced a renewed effort to solve the 1984 slaying of Matthew Margolies, a 13-year-old Greenwich boy who disappeared while he was fishing near his home. He was found five days later, stabbed and suffocated. Chief Peter J. Robbins of the Greenwich police said Thursday that his department was working with the state police ''cold case'' squad and that a former state police commissioner, Henry Lee, had agreed to help. Gov. John G. Rowland has increased a reward in the case to $50,000. David M. Herszenhorn

Mar 2, 2001 - Investigator Says Skakel Attempted Suicide in '78 - NY Times

STAMFORD, Conn., March 12 ? In an affidavit last year seeking an arrest warrant for Michael C. Skakel in the 1975 killing of Martha Moxley, the state's lead investigator said he had obtained evidence that Mr. Skakel once tried to jump off the Triborough Bridge after saying "that he had done something very bad, and that he needed to get out of the country, and that he had to kill himself."

The affidavit, among 347 pages of court documents unsealed today in State Superior Court here, suggests that prosecutors in the murder trial will seek to portray Mr. Skakel as having been an increasingly unstable youth, a teenage alcoholic who became infatuated with the pretty girl next door, bludgeoned her to death with a golf club and was later consumed by guilt that prompted confessions and the suicide attempt.

The affidavit also makes clear how the lead investigator, Frank C. Garr, who was a patrolman staffing the switchboard for the Greenwich Police Department at the time of Miss Moxley's death, is now the linchpin in the state's case. Until Mr. Garr began reworking the case in the early 1990's, officials had not regarded Michael Skakel as a likely suspect but had focused on his older brother, Thomas, and on the Skakel family's live-in tutor, Kenneth W. Littleton.

Also among the papers released today was a defense motion, yet to be considered by a judge, to have the murder charge dismissed. In it, Mr. Skakel's lawyer, Michael Sherman, argues that in 1975 Connecticut had a five-year statute of limitations on felony charges, including murder, that were not potentially punishable by death. Mr. Skakel maintains his innocence.

The case files had been sealed after the January 2000 arrest of Mr. Skakel, who is now 40, because he was initially charged as a juvenile. Both Mr. Skakel, a nephew of Ethel Kennedy, and Miss Moxley were 15 at the time of the killing. In January, a juvenile court judge ordered that he be tried as an adult, and the file was automatically unsealed today, 10 business days after his arraignment.

Amid the stack of mostly procedural documents, Mr. Garr's affidavit provided a dash of drama. Mr. Garr did not identify witnesses by name, but most of their identities were readily discernible to anyone familiar with the case. Among those he described was a "former employee" of the Skakel household who was involved in the incident on the Triborough Bridge in 1978.

The employee, a gardener and sometime driver named Larry Zicarelli, had driven Mr. Skakel to see his psychotherapist in New York City. According to Mr. Garr's affidavit, Mr. Skakel had been involved in "some sort of dispute" with his father, Rushton W. Skakel Sr. When the employee got into a car at the family's home in Greenwich, Conn., to take Michael Skakel to New York, Michael was holding a knife.

"He asked Michael, who was displaying a knife, why he was so upset, at which time Michael stated, `Shut up and drive, or I'll stab you,' " according to the affidavit. At one point, Mr. Skakel opened the door and told the driver "that he had done something very bad" and had to kill himself, Mr. Garr said in the affidavit.

Later, on the way home, Mr. Skakel jumped out on the Triborough Bridge. "Michael jumped out of the car and began to climb the bridge," Mr. Garr stated, recounting what he said the employee had told him. "He reported that he ran to Michael, picked him up and put him back in the car. Michael then exited the vehicle from the opposite side and again attempted to climb the bridge, stating that he was going to jump off."

The employee again put Mr. Skakel in the car and drove him back to Greenwich, the affidavit said.

Another witness in the affidavit described the teenage Mr. Skakel as a peeping Tom who tried to catch glimpses of naked women through their bedroom windows. The witness said Mr. Skakel had told him he had been sexually aroused on the night of Miss Moxley's murder and had masturbated in a tree before hearing a noise and running home. Miss Moxley's body was found under the tree the next morning.

A lawyer involved in the case identified this witness as Richard Hoffman, a writer who helped Mr. Skakel prepare a proposal for a tell-all book about the Kennedy family.

Several of the witnesses described in Mr. Garr's affidavit were former classmates of Mr. Skakel's at a school for troubled youths in Maine who testified at a juvenile court hearing last June. Their testimony ? that Mr. Skakel confessed to killing Miss Moxley ? led Judge Maureen D. Dennis to find that there was "reasonable cause" to believe he had committed the crime and to transfer the case to adult court.

Mr. Skakel's lawyer, Mr. Sherman, said today that he doubted the credibility of the state's witnesses and called the episode on the bridge "a skeleton of an incident that happened 23 years ago that had absolutely nothing to do with the murder of Martha Moxley." He added, "I know he did have a very difficult ride to New York to see his therapist with his driver."

Mr. Sherman also repeated a complaint he had made about the affidavit's referring to witnesses by numbers rather than names. "It gives them an undeserved air of credibility," he said.
A secretary in the Bridgeport state attorney's office, where Mr. Garr is an inspector, said he would not be in this week and could not be reached.

Jonathan Benedict, the state's attorney in Bridgeport, who is the lead prosecutor in the Skakel case, said he expected several of the witnesses mentioned in Mr. Garr's affidavit to reappear at a probable-cause hearing scheduled to begin April 18.

Although prosecutors called fewer than a half-dozen witnesses during the hearing last June, the numbering of witnesses ? up to 45 ? in the affidavit suggests there are dozens of people the state may seek to call during trial.

Some of those witnesses may never be heard by the eventual jury in the case. Mr. Sherman is certain to ask the judge to exclude evidence and testimony for many reasons. Mr. Benedict would not discuss specific witnesses or evidence, saying only that it was "all pertinent information that we would probably expect to develop at trial."