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CNN Live At Daybreak

Trial of Michael Skakel Focusing on Former Tutor in Skakel Home

Aired May 14, 2002 - 05:35   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: The trial of Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel in Connecticut is focusing not so much on the defendant as it is on another person: a former tutor in the Skakel home.

Our Deborah Feyerick is following the very twists and turns in this 27-year-old murder mystery.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The summer after Martha Moxley was killed, Ken Littleton says his life went "down the tubes." He lost his job teaching at a prestigious Connecticut prep school and began having problems with drugs and alcohol. He says he believes Greenwich police targeted him as a suspect because he was the only one in the Skakel house giving them any information.

EUGENE RICCO, KEN LITTLETON'S ATTORNEY: The conduct of the police toward Kenneth Littleton has been a substantial factor in the deterioration of his life.

FEYERICK: Littleton, who did tutoring and baby-sitting on the side, moved in with the Skakels the night Moxley was killed. A key suspect in the murder for two decades, he testified during examination he never met Martha, never knew who she was. Littleton says the night she was killed he went outside briefly to check on a suspicious noise. When he heard a rustling in the bushes he says he got spooked, going back inside to watch a movie.

Littleton appears to have spent most of his life searching for what happened; calling Martha's father 10 years after she died, offering to take a truth serum if Mr. Moxley would pay. Littleton says he wanted to see if he had any buried information in his mind that might break the case. Mr. Moxley never took him up on his offer.

Littleton was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in the mid 80s. Later, in an attempt to clear his name, he went back to the police and met with one of its psychiatrists. In testimony, he said he told the psychiatrist he stabbed Martha Moxley through the neck. But the alleged admission, he says, was an idea planted by his ex-wife.

She testified she wanted to clear her husband. And so working with police and a hidden tape recorder, she told him he had confessed to her during a drunken blackout, hoping to elicit a denial from him. Now, she says, none of what she told him was true.

MICKEY SHERMAN, SKAKEL'S ATTORNEY: It demonstrates the nature of the prosecution. I just think the jury is aware of the lengths to which the state has gone in the past to put somebody in that defendant's chair.

FEYERICK: Littleton did not know until last week that he had been set up by police or that those conversations had been taped.

(on camera): So is this a confession or not, and can the jury believe any of what Ken Littleton says. The tutor seems to have been enamored of the Kennedy-connected family, saying J.F.K. is his hero. But after years of being targeted by police, that changed. Asked whether he commented he was going to "get the Skakel family," Ken Littleton said, "It's possible."

Deborah Feyerick, CNN, Norwalk, Connecticut.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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