Posted on 08/30/2002 9:25:34 AM PDT by GunRunner
Edited on 05/26/2004 5:08:19 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
August 30, 2002 -- IT WAS an eerie experience that so often occurs in the intense climate of crime and punishment.
Michael Skakel, minutes before his sentencing, said to me: "Don't forget about me. Don't forget about me.
"I won't forget about you."
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
There is no doubt that the killer came from the Skakel household, Tony Pena golf clubs are not too common and the set was missing the iron that killed Moxley. Michael Skakel's repeated changing of his story puts a big guilty sign around his neck, and that's probably what got him convicted.
You gonna confess Steve, 'cuz if Michael didn't do it, you did!
Total frustration that he thinks he didn't do it or total frustration that a Kennedy has to pay for his crimes against women.
I watched a news program last night on how many times Skakel's story changed to fit new evidence. He first claimed he wasn't around and then when someone saw him he said he went over, but didn't see her. When he found out that DNA evidence might be produced he suddenly claimed he had masturbated in the tree.
F the Kenndy's. Bring on the Hard Candy.
That last item is a hard one to swallow (sorry). "Like, man, I always jizzed the upper branches in my teen years. " Helloooooo-oh?
For years, Tommy Skakel, Michael's older brother, was a prime suspect because he was the last person known to have been with Martha the night she was killed. So if Michael really is innocent (which I don't believe) then Tommy is the killer, and Tommy is willing to see his brother do the time for him. On the other hand, it was Michael who originally threw suspicion on his own brother when he told police at the time that Tommy had been with Martha that night. And there is no question whatsoever that their father, Rushton Skakel (and perhaps later others in the family), did everything they could to cover up the crime.
Yesterday, in the post-sentencing news conference, Mrs. Moxley said she wished there could be other prosecutions, but that the statute of limitations had run out. The coverup is what she was referring to, as well as the possibility that Tommy may have been an accomplice immediately after the murder by helping to hide the body and dispose of that missing piece of the golf club.
It is important to note that there were two other victims to this crime: Martha's father, who spent the rest of his life trying to uncover the truth, and who died at about 50 of a massive heart attack. And Ken Littleton, the live-in "tutor" whom Rush Skakel had hired to keep his kids in line. Ken had just started the job the day of the murder and had just moved into the Skakel house that afternoon. He was upstairs unpacking and watching a movie on TV at the time of the murder. In fact, Tommy used Ken as his own alibi by telling the police he watched part of the movie with Ken. Remember, there were no TV videos at the time, and the story of what movie was on TV at the time checked out. Yet despite the fact that Ken Littleton was unquestionably innocent, the Skakels allowed suspicion to fall on him. He was hounded for years by the cops as a suspect in this case. It ruined his life and he died a broken man.
Some scurvy bunch, those Skakels. But to be scrupulously fair, they are NOT KENNEDYS. Robert Kennedy married Ethel Skakel, Rushton's sister. Their children are, of course, first cousins on their mother's side to Michael Skakel and his siblings.
For anyone interested in the case, the two most prominent books are Murder in Greenwich by Fuhrman, and A Wealth of Evil by Timothy Dumas.
I totally agree that Ken Littleton was a scapegoat of the Skakels. The Dumas book all but exonerates him as a potential suspect (even if he was a suspicious character himself).
I wish I could have seen the trial however. It seems inconceivable to me that they could have convicted Skakel after so many years. Some say that the whole grand jury and trial is a reation to Fuhrman's book.
In my mind, it had to be Michael's confession at the Elon school along with his "masturbation" story that did him in.
By covering up for his son's crime rather than letting him face the consequences as a 15-year-old, Rushton Skakel turned the terrible, but drunken and impulsive act of an out-of-control kid into a quarter-century of hell for everyone personally touched by this crime.
In the second most ironic aspect to the case, Michael Skakel now must live with a stiffer sentence than he would have faced as a juvenile. And perhaps most tragically of all (except for the senseless death of Martha) the consequences now impact Rushton's own grandson. Michael's little boy will grow up without his father — and probably will be taught the bitterness of the adults around him and will believe in his father's innocence. Who knows the affect it will have on the boy.
Not only does Skakel compare himself to Christ but he shamelessly uses his son in a pathetic bid for our sympathy. Too bad Skakel is too stupid to realize that NO three year-old on the planet is as verbally adept as he makes his kid out to be in these obviously contrived conversations.
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