Skakel Jurors Listen to Author Interview

NORWALK, Conn. —  Prosecutors rested their case against Michael Skakel on Tuesday, playing a tape recording of the Kennedy relative’s account of the night he is accused of murdering 15-year-old Martha Moxley 26 years ago.

Skakel’s words echoed through the courtroom as a recording was played of an interview he gave to final prosecution witness Richard Hoffman.

Skakel hired Hoffman in 1997 to collaborate on his memoirs, and on the tape, the defendant talked about the October night when Moxley, a neighbor, was killed.

“In the Skakel household, Halloween was the best holiday of the year,” he said, describing the excitement he felt about “mayhem” he would cause on “mischief night,” the night before Halloween, with fireworks and his slingshot loaded with apples and eggs.

“Mischief night to me was what New Year’s was to an alcoholic,” Skakel said.

On the tape, Skakel, now 41, said he had a crush on Moxley.

He said earlier that evening he was drinking and smoking pot and that he and Moxley had been in his father’s car.

Skakel said he drove a cousin home and when he came back, he could not sleep so he went outside and tried to throw pebbles at Martha’s window.

“Mrs. Moxley comes by looking for Martha the next morning. I thought, ‘Oh my God, if I tell anybody I was out last night, they’re going to think I did it,’” he said in the recording.

Defense lawyer Mickey Sherman is expected to focus on trying to establish Moxley’s time of death, which authorities at the time placed in a wide, eight-hour window. He begins his closing arguments today.

The timeline of the murder is important because Skakel contends he was in a car taking his cousin Jimmy Terrien home when Sherman claims neighborhood dogs began barking and howling in agitation about 10 p.m. near where Moxley’s body was found.

Moxley’s body was found on the lawn of her parents’ 26-room home in the affluent Connecticut town of Greenwich early Oct. 31, 1975.

She had been bludgeoned to death with a broken golf club from a set belonging to Skakel’s mother.

Skakel could face life in prison if convicted. Skakel, a nephew of Ethel Kennedy, the widow of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, was arrested in January 2000 after a grand jury investigated the murder.