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American Morning
Author Discusses Skakel Verdict
Aired June 10, 2002 - 08:09 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.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Just after we left you on Friday, the jury delivered the verdict in the Michael Skakel murder trial, as you undoubtedly know. Skakel was convicted Friday of murdering Martha Moxley when they were 15-year-old neighbors, back in 1975. Skakel faces 10 years to life in prison when he's sentenced next month.
And Dominick Dunne wrote a book that actually helped reopen the case and he writes about the trial in the current issue of "Vanity Fair."
He joins us now in our bureau, for a change.
Good morning. Welcome back.
DOMINICK DUNNE, AUTHOR: Hi, Paula. Good to see you.
ZAHN: Were you surprised by the verdict?
DUNNE: You know what? I was, I have to tell you. I tell you I thought all the way through wherever I go, people would say to me, how is it going to end? And I said he's guilty, but he's going to walk.
ZAHN: Why were you so convinced he would, in your words, get away with it?
DUNNE: Well, because of all the obvious things -- 27 years, faulty memories, there's no smoking gun, there's no -- but at the same time, Jeffrey Toobin has said this on this show several times -- but it is absolutely true -- the closing argument of Jonathan Benedict was one of the most brilliant closing arguments I've ever heard in a courtroom. He brought it all together and he showed it was really Michael himself, Michael himself talking to the biographer of the book that he was going to write, "Dead Man Talking," before he was indicted.
And that placed him at the scene of the crime, whereas his two brothers and his cousin, Jim Dowdle, had lied on the stand and said that he was at a different house at the time.
And so even after I felt there was hope for a conviction, after this brilliant closing argument, I still was amazed that they found him guilty.
ZAHN: You talked about what you saw as some of the potential deficiencies of the case: faulty memories, 25 years had elapsed and many people were troubled by the fact that there was no physical evidence tying Michael Skakel to the crime. You lost your daughter through a horrifically brutal murder. Do you understand why some people couldn't make that leap...
DUNNE: Yes...
ZAHN: ... even though they found that some of his remarks to his biographer were indicting, but there still wasn't anything tying him to the scene?
DUNNE: Yes, but, you know, I first got onto this case in 1991. I was at the William Kennedy Smith rape trial in Palm Beach, and this false rumor went through that trial that William Kennedy Smith had been at the Skakel house in 1975 at the time of this murder.
I went back to check it out. It turned out to be fake, and he wasn't there. But I thought what happened to this? What happened to this? And I tracked down Dorothy Moxley, who had moved away. Her husband had died. She had moved -- she couldn't -- she said I can't look into the Skakel house. I don't know who did it, but I know that in that house someone knows who did it.
And so that's when I wrote my book "A Season In Purgatory" and that book came out in 1993, and that put the spotlight back on this long-dormant case.
ZAHN: And isn't it true what sparked your interest in writing this book is somehow you gained access to the private investigative records that were actually paid for by...
DUNNE: Yes, by...
ZAHN: ... the Skakel family?
DUNNE: ... family. I got access to that, and I mean that was one of the real remarkable things that happened. It was called the Sutton Report. They were a private agency hired by Rushton Skakel, the father, to take the cloud of suspicion away from his son Tommy, who was the suspect for so many years.
Instead, the very people he hired and paid $750,000 to were the ones who unearthed the fact that Michael Skakel, whom everybody thought was away in some other house, changed his story and said he was in a tree masturbating at the time.
That report was put in the back of a file cabinet. Somebody who became emotionally involved in the story stole that report, gave it to me. I then brought in Mark Fuhrman from the OJ Simpson trial, one of the great detectives of America. He took on the Greenwich police. He took on -- then he wrote the book called "Murder in Greenwich," for which I wrote the introduction, and that brought about the grand jury, after all these years, that indicted Michael.
ZAHN: You've spent some time with Martha Moxley's mother, Dorothy Moxley... DUNNE: Oh, a lot.
ZAHN: ... after this verdict. And I know she tried to express to the press the conflicting emotions she felt.
DUNNE: Yes.
ZAHN: She said this is Martha's day.
DUNNE: Hey, listen...
ZAHN: Share with us what else she had to tell you.
DUNNE: Well, you know something? She's one of the class acts I have ever met in my life. You know, it would have been easy to cheer and do all this stuff in the courtroom after all these years, and she never did. She said this is Martha's day. She didn't have a bad thing to say about Michael, although when we were on TV together later that night, she blamed Michael's father for the terrible way he was brought up, and he was brought up terribly.
ZAHN: This case isn't over. Mickey Sherman, Mr. Skakel's defense attorney, says he plans to file an appeal. He says he has very good grounds on some technical issues. A final thought on that this morning?
DUNNE: The final thought on that this morning is, you know, anything can happen in a court of law. The final thing is that Michael Skakel was found guilty of murder. That's never going to be erased.
ZAHN: Dominick Dunne, good to see you.
DUNNE: Thanks.
ZAHN: Thanks for working your way through the courtroom with us over the last several weeks. Delighted to have your reports throughout that trial.
DUNNE: Thanks, Paula.
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