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American Morning

Jury Selection Gets Under Way in Murder Trial of Michael Skakel

Aired April 02, 2002 - 07:50   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.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: We turn now to a 26-year-old murder case that goes to trial this morning. Jury selection gets under way in the murder trial of Michael Skakel. He is the Kennedy cousin charged with the 1975 brutal murder of a 15-year-old neighbor named Martha Moxley.

CNN's Deborah Feyerick looks now at the long and broken trail investigators had to follow to bring this case to trial.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Martha Moxley smiles, a timeless smile, a childhood cut short when she was 15 years old.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They hit her so hard that the golf club broke, and then they took the shaft and they stabbed her with hit six or seven times.

FEYERICK: 1975, the night before Halloween in well-to-do Greenwich, Connecticut. Martha Moxley was visiting neighbors. Kennedy cousins, Thomas and Michael Skakel, nephews of Ethel Kennedy and the late presidential candidate, Robert Kennedy.

For years, police suspected Thomas, the last person they thought to see Martha alive. But two years ago, police cited new evidence, charging Michael with murdering Martha when he, too, was 15 years old.

MICKEY SHERMAN, SKAKEL'S ATTORNEY: Michael Skakel has always said he was with her that night for a short period of time, that they were together, and that he went to his cousin's house, and then she was murdered. He has never said anything other than that.

FEYERICK: But several former classmates at the Élan School for Troubled Teens are expected to testify, as they did at an earlier hearing, saying they heard Michael Skakel put himself at the scene of the murder.

(on camera): Witnesses have testified that Michael had black outs during certain periods. Is there a remote possibility, no matter how slim, that maybe Michael doesn't really remember exactly where he was when this murder happened that night? SHERMAN: This is not a situation where Michael doesn't know if he did it. Common sense point of view, if he didn't know and if he was in a black out, where is the blood? Where is the blood? No one who committed this crime could have walked away without having blood all over them, and we haven't heard anything about Michael Skakel being covered with blood or anything of that nature.

FEYERICK (voice-over): But prosecutors are convinced their case is strong.

JON BENEDICT, CT. STATE ATTORNEY: Michael Skakel has admitted his presence at the crime scene. It's the nature of a crime scene where the only person who could be present is the perpetrator.

FEYERICK: According to police, there is no physical evidence directly linking Michael Skakel to the murder, no blood, no fibers, no fingerprints.

Police say the bloody pieces of a golf club found near Moxley's body match a rare set of clubs found in the Skakel home. Yet police never got a warrant to fully search the house.

Emmanuel Margolis is the lawyer representing the Skakel family since 1975 says about the clubs:

EMMANUEL MARGOLIS, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: They were all over the place. They were available to anybody, to any stranger, to pick it up and go anywhere with it.

FEYERICK: Journalist Timothy Dumas is one of several writers to have penned a book on the murder.

TIMOTHY DUMAS, AUTHOR, "GREENTOWN": The prosecution has no silver bullet in this case. There is no one piece of evidence that's going to proclaim Michael Skakel definitely committed this crime. It's more like a jigsaw puzzle, kind of the classic jigsaw puzzle where you put all of the pieces together, see who they fit, and then take a good, close look at what that picture is telling you.

FEYERICK: A picture for Martha's family frozen in time.

Deborah Feyerick, CNN, Greenwich, Connecticut.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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