Mother Fighting for Son’s Release, Writing About Family’s Suffering

To Marilyn Kennedy, the families of men and women accused and convicted of crimes are “the unknown victims of crime.”

“In the first place, you go through the same emotions as when you have a death in the family,” Kennedy said. “Shock that this can happen to your family. Denial for the same reasons. Anger that it’s happened to you. Anger at the person who it’s happened to for causing you that pain.

“But the major difference is that when you lose someone through death, you find acceptance, and you can go on and rebuild your life. In a case like this, you can only rebuild to a certain extent. You still must include this incarcerated person in your life; if you don’t, it’s not fair to you, and it’s not fair to him. He needs our moral support. He needs our love, and he needs our strength.”

Kennedy has come by this knowledge firsthand. On Jan. 16, 1981, her son Michael Edward Kennedy, then 25, was sentenced in U.S. District Court to life imprisonment for the brutal rape and murder of a 19-year-old Mexican woman near the border in San Ysidro--after nearly a year of litigation and two murder trials that ended in hung juries.

Marilyn Kennedy insisted then --and continues to insist--that her son is not guilty of raping and strangling Maria Lopez de Felix, an illegal alien who was caught trying to cross the border into the United States on Nov. 25, 1979, and whose mauled and partly clad body was found near the border crossing the next day.

During a year of trials and legal wrangling over her son’s fate, Marilyn Kennedy, who lives in Chula Vista, never missed a day in federal court. And she was back Monday morning with attorney Harold Glaser, filing a motion to have her son’s life sentence vacated.

According to the motion, Michael Kennedy was convicted because the prosecution hid evidence that could have proven the young man’s innocence, and because his legal counsel was incompetent.

“This is a travesty of justice, what’s happened in this case,” Glaser said. “He’s wrongly convicted because he’s innocent. If the government had not hidden the evidence . . . it would have proven his innocence.”

Marilyn Kennedy has spent the last five years trying to prove her son’s innocence and writing a book about what has happened to her family since her son’s arrest.

“He was held without bail for 319 days before the third jury found him guilty. I know. I marked every day off on the calendar,” Kennedy said.

And life since then has been “a nightmare,” she said. “I have had repeated suicidal tendencies. I’m living day to day. The families of the defendants are the really unseen victims of crime. You think it can never happen to you, to your family.”

According to an FBI affidavit, Maria Lopez de Felix tried to enter the United States at the San Ysidro checkpoint by hiding in her sister-in-law’s car. Authorities said she was trying to cross the border to join her husband, an illegal alien who was living in Riverside. After being discovered, she agreed to return to Mexico.

A Federal Protective Services officer, Michael Kennedy was on duty about the time the young woman was found hiding in the trunk of the car. When questioned by authorities, he said he met Lopez de Felix at an Immigration and Naturalization Service building and escorted her to the checkpoint where she crossed into Mexico.

Lopez de Felix was believed to have been killed and raped in a room in the old Customs Building and then dragged to a seldom-used outdoor corridor at the side of the building. Her body was not found until the following day.

When Kennedy was sentenced, Assistant U.S. Atty. Herbert B. Hoffman called the murder a “vicious crime” committed by a person who used his law enforcement authority to “satisfy his sexual desires and kill one human being.”

Kennedy was sentenced to life imprisonment on the rape count and life imprisonment on the murder count. The sentences are running concurrently, and he should be eligible for parole in five years. He is being held at Raybrook Federal Correctional Institute in New York.

Throughout the trials, Kennedy and his attorneys maintained that the government was prosecuting the wrong man. During the first trial, defense attorney Juanita Brooks accused Kennedy’s former partner at the Federal Protective Service of being the killer.

Kennedy’s defense in all of the trials was based on the theory that Lopez de Felix--whose body was discovered more than 30 hours after the officer last saw the victim--was killed while the defendant was off duty and at home.

Glaser contends that Kennedy was convicted on circumstantial evidence found at the scene: two cigarette butts matching the young man’s brand, three hairs in the woman’s shawl matching his and paint scrapings.

Glaser also contends that a letter written by an expert witness whose specialty was placing time of death was withheld by the prosecution; the letter said that Lopez de Felix was probably killed one to four hours before she was found. At that time, Kennedy was at home and asleep, Glaser said.

Hoffman did not return telephone calls Monday and could not be reached for comment.

“I have found nothing in Michael’s life before or after this (to indicate his guilt) and I have gone over his possessions with a fine-toothed comb, looking for something that showed he was connected,” Marilyn Kennedy said. “I found nothing.”

She has spent the last five years looking, she said. Soon after Michael Kennedy was convicted, she decided to write a book about the pain families go through. But while reading through transcripts of the trial, she said, “there were so many unanswered questions.”

“I feel there were so many things that should have been investigated that weren’t,” she said. “But because I’m a mother, I’m not credible. And as Mother’s Day gets closer, I get angrier and angrier.”

Letters to politicians asking that Michael Kennedy’s case be reopened have either gone unanswered or been shrugged off, she said. Her time once spent writing of her experiences is now spent pushing for her son’s case to be reopened.

His future is now her crusade. “Some days I spend my whole day researching through the transcripts,” she said. “Other days I do nothing because I am emotionally saturated, and I just cannot deal with it anymore, it gets so overwhelming.

“What do I do to cope? I’m practicing my Scrabble game so I can beat the pants off of Michael when he comes home. Sometimes I read. I paint. And sometimes I cry a lot.”

Right now, she said, work on the book has come to a standstill. Although she has written and rewritten her story, the effort to reopen the case consumes most of her time. Ted Schwarz, an Arizona writer who recently published “The Hillside Strangler,” the story of Ken Bianchi, is collaborating with her. She has sent him tapes and rough drafts, and he is working on the book.

Marilyn Kennedy and Glaser, a Maryland attorney, spent Monday in federal court, filing the motion to have Michael Kennedy’s sentence vacated and talking to reporters. And most days, she said, are spent poring over thousands of pages of transcripts, rereading the accusations against her third-born child, finding questions that still need answers.

“We have no timetable for the book,” she said, sighing. “Most of the publishers want to have an ending on the story. I don’t know whether we’ll try to publish without that. We may just have to wait until this whole thing is over.”

Marilyn Kennedy does not know how long that will take.