U.S.

Witness: Skakel At Scene But Innocent

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

June 20, 2000 / 8:49 AM EDT / CBS

A childhood friend of Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel testified Wednesday that Skakel admitted he spent time at the scene where his teen-age neighbor was slain in 1975 but claimed he was not involved in her death.

Andrew Pugh said Skakel told him years after the beating death of 15-year-old Martha Moxley that he had masturbated while up in a pine tree in Moxley's yard the night she was killed. It was the same pine tree under which Moxley's bludgeoned body was found the next morning, Pugh said.

Skakel, 39, was accused of beating Moxley to death with a golf club on the night of Oct. 30, 1975, in their exclusive neighborhood in Greenwich, Connecticut. Skakel's father is the brother of Ethel Skakel Kennedy, the widow of Robert F. Kennedy.

Skakel and Moxley were 15 and neighbors at the time she was killed. Following the hearing the judge will determine if there is enough evidence to try Skakel, of Hobe Sound, Fla., and if so, whether he will be tried as a juvenile.

Pugh said that when they were kids, he and Skakel frequently climbed an enormous pine tree on the Moxley property, which was located across the street from the Skakel family estate in Belle Haven, an exclusive gated community in Greenwich.

Pugh said he lost touch with Skakel after Moxley was murdered.

He said that Skakel tried to renew their friendship in the early 1990s, but that he told Skakel he was reluctant because he had some concerns about Skakel's possible involvement in Moxley's murder.

At that point, Pugh said, he asked Skakel if he had anything to do with Moxley's killing.

Pugh said Skakel told him that he had been in the pine tree masturbating the night Moxley was killed, "but that he had nothing to do with her death."

That account is similar to what Skakel told a private investigative firm hired by his family in the early 1990s. That was a change from the story he originally gave to police: that he was at his cousin's house at the time investigators believe Moxley was killed.

On cross-examination, Skakel's defense attorney, Michael Sherman, grilled Pugh on why he waited until 1998 to tell police about Skakel's story about being at the scene of the crime.

"At that time, there really was no evidence that Michael was involved," Pugh said. "Perhaps I should have done that. Perhaps it was an error on my part."

Pugh said Skakel had "an attraction, an infatuation" with Moxley. "He had interest in Martha as a girlfriend," Pugh said.

Earlier Wednesday, a one-time fellow student of Skakel's at a Maine school for troubled teens testified that it was common knowledge Skakel had killed a teenage girl.

"It wasn't a hidden thing," Gregory Coleman, a former schoolmate of Skakel's, told a Connecticut court on the second day of the hearing.

On Tuesday, Coleman testified that Skakel told him he beat Moxley's skull in with a golf club after she rejected his romantic advaces. He said Skakel told him: "I'm going to get away with murder. I'm a Kennedy."

Coleman said Skakel made the statements in the late 1970s, while they both were students at the Elan school, a residential substance abuse treatment center in Maine.

During cross-examination Wednesday, Coleman admitted that he had told the grand jury that Skakel confessed to him five times, although he said on the stand Tuesday that Skakel had confessed to him twice.

Coleman also admitted he sometimes has trouble with his ability to recall. But he adamantly stood by his testimony that Skakel told him he killed Moxley.

"I am sure of that—not 99.9 percent but 100 percent," Coleman said.

Under the law in effect in 1975, Skakel could face a maximum of four years if he is convicted as a juvenile. If he is convicted as an adult, he could get 25 years to life.

The hearing will resume June 28, when the defense will begin presenting its case. Sherman said he plans to call several former students at Elan.

The hearing before Stamford Superior Court Judge Maureen Dennis is scheduled to last up to five days.

Skakel, who has maintained his innocence, remains free on $500,000 bond.

The Moxley case has spawned nonfiction books, a Web site, and Dominick Dunne's 1993 best-selling novel, A Season in Purgatory.

No arrests were made until Jan. 19, after the Connecticut judge who functioned as a one-man grand jury ruled there was enough evidence to arrest Skakel.

Skakel and his older brother, Thomas, were among the last people to see Moxley alive. Soon after the slaying, police matched the 6-iron used in the killing to a set of golf clubs owned by the Skakels, who lived across the street from the Moxleys.

The original investigation fell dormant in the early 1980s partly because Greenwich police were unused to dealing with homicides and the initial detective work was flawed.

For many years Michael Skakel was not considered a suspect because it was thought he had a strong alibi. But in the 1990s word began to leak out that he had apparently changed his story about his whereabouts on that night and his alleged confessions at Elan also surfaced. So prosecutors took another look and a grand jury was appointed.