Skakel is who Michael’s wife, Vicki Gifford Kennedy, calls when she finds Michael in bed with the family babysitter. He’s who she entrusts to drive her husband straight to rehab, and the one who takes the heat from Aunt Ethel about the unexpected change in plans. He’s even the one who helps Marisa’s distraught mother, June Verrochi, when she’s found bewildered on the roof of their town house due to “some very disturbing news.”
“In hindsight, the strangest detail in press reports of that incident was that Michael Skakel had been on the scene and accompanied Mrs. Verrochi to the hospital,” Vanity Fair notes.
Although maybe not so strange, given that—odd as it may seem—Skakel is also a close confidant of Marisa’s. He’s apparently the one who futilely attempts to discourage the teenager from having a romantic relationship with the much older and married Michael (in fairness, he also tried unsuccessfully to convince his cousins to intervene, but “neither Michael nor his siblings seemed to feel a Skakel had any business telling a Kennedy what to do”), and the one who sets Marisa up with a therapist, further incensing his cousin and his aunt. “That is not your place,” Ethel reportedly chastises her nephew.
“He’s been trying to save everyone, left and right,” Bobby Jr. says of his cousin. “But you know what they do to saviors,” he notes. “They crucify them.”
Skakel’s attempts at diplomacy are partially why suspicions fall on him as the leak on Michael’s inappropriate relationship with the teen. Plus, Skakel’s known to speak openly at his AA meetings—and quite possibly has been oversharing the details of his cousin’s drama, and someone in one of those meetings likely contacted the media. According to a source in Vanity Fair, “he [the fellow AA member] admitted to me he did [contact the press].” And when authorities come looking for corroboration on the statutory rape accusations, Michael Skakel is the only one willing to talk.
The family feels betrayed.
“Nobody can stab you in the back quite like the guy who says he loves you,” Joe Kennedy sneers.
* * *
The cold shoulder that the Kennedys turn on Michael Skakel in 1997 in the wake of the babysitter scandal couldn’t have come at a worse time for him.
While down in Palm Beach, Florida, reporting on the William Kennedy Smith rape trial for Vanity Fair in 1991, author Dominick Dunne heard and repeated a rumor that Willie might’ve been at the Skakels’ home sixteen years earlier, on the night of Martha Moxley’s murder. “I checked it out, and it was a bum rap,” Dunne says—unsurprising, since aside from his aunt Ethel, Willie had never met any Skakels—“but it got me interested in the story again.”
So interested, in fact, that Dunne goes on to write a bestselling roman à clef inspired by the case, A Season in Purgatory, a novel in which the scion of a Kennedy-esque family covers up the murder of a young woman. In 1996, the book is made into a TV miniseries, sparking further interest in the original Martha Moxley case. At first, Dunne tells the press that he’s convinced Thomas Skakel was the killer, but over time switches his suspicions to Michael. “I firmly believe that Michael Skakel is guilty of this murder,” he tells news outlets.
More nonfiction books on the case follow shortly, keeping public interest stoked, and even Michael Skakel considers writing a tell-all about his family, going so far as to shop around a book proposal in 1999 under the title “Dead Man Talking: A Kennedy Cousin Comes Clean.”
It backfires spectacularly.
In January 2000, Michael Skakel is arrested and charged with Martha Moxley’s 1975 murder. Excerpts from taped conversations between Skakel and the ghostwriter he planned to use for his memoir feature heavily in his prosecution. While there are no actual admissions of guilt, prosecutors deem it “a web in which he has ultimately trapped himself.”
With no physical evidence or eyewitnesses, “the state’s case is entirely circumstantial,” the New York Times points out when the case goes to trial in 2002, yet they convincingly cite opportunity and means, alleging motive as “unrequited feelings” between Skakel and Martha. They also bring in fellow former students from the Élan School, who state that they recall Skakel making oblique confessions to the murder.
During the monthlong trial, Marisa Verrochi is called as a witness for the defense to rebut testimony from a former roommate of hers who claims that Skakel had attended a party at her condo in 1997 where he joked about committing the murder. Marisa denies that any of that had taken place and confirms to prosecutors that she and Skakel had been “close friends” at the time, and that he’d provided her with support, protection, and comfort during her own scandal.
Surprising some and thrilling others, Michael Skakel is found guilty of the 1975 murder and given a twenty-year prison term. But in 2013, his conviction is vacated, citing poor representation by his legal counsel. Then in 2016, his conviction is reinstated…and again overturned in 2018.
“The state of Connecticut had a very, very, very good case, and we absolutely know who killed Martha,” Dorthy Moxley, Martha’s mother, declares in January 2019. “If Michael Skakel came from a poor family, this would have been over. But because he comes from a family of means they’ve stretched this out all these years.”
“The evidence shows that Michael [Skakel] spent eleven years in prison for a crime he did not commit,” Skakel’s attorney, Roman Martinez, rebuts. “The Supreme Court’s decision rejecting review should end this case once and for all.”
Throughout his cousin’s trials, Bobby Jr. stands by Skakel’s side, convinced of his innocence. In 2016, he writes a book called Framed: Why Michael Skakel Spent Over a Decade in Prison for a Murder He Didn’t Commit.
“Michael dished some pretty nasty dirt on [the family],” says Timothy Dumas, a Greenwich local and former classmate of Martha’s, and author of the book A Wealth of Evil: The True Story of the Murder of Martha Moxley in America’s Richest Community. “But the Kennedys are known for their loyalty and for drawing together in times of crisis.”
Chapter 51
Despite Norfolk district attorney Jeffrey Locke’s willingness to pursue the allegations of statutory rape, if it can be shown that Marisa Verrochi was under sixteen when her sexual affair with Michael Kennedy began, by July 1997 the investigation is dropped due to lack of cooperation.
The Verrochis release a statement citing fears of the same media hysteria that dogged the William Kennedy Smith rape trial a few years earlier, pointing out how “a protracted investigation and trial, accompanied by unrelenting media coverage, would cause potentially irreparable harm to the victim of this outrageous conduct.” So while “Michael Kennedy has caused us great pain and suffering by his outrageous conduct and his breach of the trust we placed in him as a neighbor and friend,” their priority is their daughter’s “health and well-being [which]…cannot be further jeopardized.”
Michael’s wife, Vicki, steps in as well, denying any knowledge that her estranged husband committed a criminal act.
“Without the willing involvement of the victim, there is no basis to proceed further,” Locke concedes, and Michael quickly issues a statement, saying, “I deeply apologize for the pain I have caused. I intend to do all I can to make up for the serious mistakes I have made and to continue to obtain the help I need.”