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."