Kennedy nephew jailed for 'cold-blooded evil murder'

Kennedy nephew Michael Skakel was jailed for 20 years to life today for murdering the girl next door in 1975 when they were 15-year-old neighbours.

He wept as he testified for the first time today and insisted he was innocent in the death of Martha Moxley.

“I would love to be able to say I did the crime so that the Moxley family could have peace,” he said in the Norwalk, Connecticut court, sobbing. “But to do that would be a lie.”

Skakel, 41, a nephew of assassinated Senator Bobby Kennedy’s widow Ethel, was convicted in June of beating Moxley to death in their luxury Greenwich neighbourhood of Belle Haven when they were both 15.

Her battered body was discovered on October 31 1975, under a tree on her family’s estate, next door to the Skakels. She had been bludgeoned with a golf club - later traced to a set owned by Skakel’s mother - and stabbed in the neck with the shaft of the club.

Prosecutor Jonathan Benedict today called the murder “cold-bloodedly evil.”

Under the sentencing guidelines in effect at the time of the killing, Skakel could have received a minimum sentence of 10 years to life in prison and a maximum of 25 years to life.

Judge John Kavanewsky said he was giving Skakel “a more substantial sentence” because, “for the past 25 years or more the defendant has been living a lie about his guilt. The defendant has accepted no responsibility, he has expressed no remorse,” he said.

He will not be able to apply for parole until her has served 10 years. Skakel planned to appeal.

Before the sentencing, defence lawyer Michael Sherman read letters from numerous supporters, including Robert F Kennedy J, who said Skakel helped him fight addiction.

Sherman also noted a pre-sentencing report compiled by a probation officer, which Sherman said did not recommend a life sentence.

“She agrees he does not pose a threat to society and he is an entirely different person than he was at 15,” Sherman said.

At trial, prosecution witnesses said Skakel was romantically interested in Moxley but suggested he was upset because his older brother, Thomas, an early suspect in the slaying, was making advances on the attractive blonde.

The case went unsolved for decades, creating speculation that wealth, privilege and the Kennedy connection had protected the Skakel family. Meanwhile, Benedict said today, Skakel “thumbed his nose at this family of grieving neighbours.”

Attention turned to Michael in the early 1990s, when he gave new details of his activities the night of the murder to a private investigator hired by the Skakel family. Books about the case were written by Dominick Dunne, former Los Angeles police Detective Mark Fuhrman, and journalist Tim Dumas.

Skakel was arrested in 2000 after an investigation by a one-judge grand jury. He declared his innocence and fought to have the case heard in juvenile court, only to have a judge rule the state had no juvenile facility in which to lock up a middle-aged man.

The case was transferred to adult court in January 2001.

Prosecutors had no eyewitnesses and little forensic evidence. Instead they presented about a dozen people who said they had heard Skakel confess or make incriminating statements, starting the day Moxley’s body was found. Among them were a Skakel family chauffeur and former classmates of Skakel at a substance abuse treatment centre in Maine.

One witness, Gregory Coleman, was dead of heroin use by the time Skakel’s trial began. But prosecutors were permitted to read Coleman’s pretrial testimony into the record, including an allegation that Skakel once told him: “I’m going to get away with murder, because I’m a Kennedy.”