Boston Herald

by Margery Eagan Thursday, August 29, 2002

NORWALK, Conn. - The two family matriarchs offered a black-and-white contrast in coping with nearly unbearable loss.

Martha Moxley's mother, Dorthy, surrounded by family and friends, sat on the left at the front of the courtroom.

Michael Skakel's aunt, Ann Skakel McCooey, sat on the right in the courtroom's front, surrounded, too, by five of seven children of her dead sister-in-law, all but the eldest and Michael Skakel, the convicted killer.

He entered court shortly after 10 a.m. with his hands and feet shackled, his once-ruddy face pale, almost gray, except during the many moments when he cried. Then his wet blue eyes were red-rimmed and his round, thick face flushed.

``For years I prayed that she did not see the first blow from the golf club coming, and that she died immediately after that,'' said Dorthy Moxley, slightly stooped as she stood to read her victim-impact statement with a calm and grace that belied the horror of her words.

``I couldn't stand the thought of her suffering. I know now, that isn't the way it happened.''

``I remember her voice. The words she used.'' So said John Moxley, now 43, the same age as his late father was when Martha was murdered. He spoke of his guilt over his inability to protect his little sister, about his aching search for a normalcy that never returned, about his father's ``broken heart'' and the ``frightening . . . intensity'' of his mother's pain.

``I miss her very much,'' John Moxley said before a packed, hushed courtroom, then turned to walk back to his seat. That is when he passed Michael's Aunt Ann, the younger sister of Ethel Kennedy, at the end of the front row, a cloth handbag embroidered with a dozen dancing monkeys at her feet.

``You son of a bitch,'' she hissed to him. That is what the dead girl's brother heard, what those close to them heard as well.

It was startling to newcomers to court, who saw in the Skakel family rows yesterday handsome young men in blue blazers and women in good linens. They stood together to say ``I love you Michael,'' and ``God bless you Michael'' as a subdued Skakel first came into court.

It was startling, too, to read Ann Skakel McCooey's letter to the judge, begging for lenience. Like so many others who wrote a pack of letters maybe 3 inches thick - Skakel's A.A. colleagues, a former manager of Aerosmith, two Jesuits, a Trappist monk and a retired bishop of New York - she spoke of Michael's ``quiet generosity . . . kindness . . . and spirituality.''

This despite a hellish childhood when Skakel children were not only ``not heard'' but ``not seen'' and if they were heard or seen they were likely tortured by a ``rage-alcoholic'' father, letter writers said. Rushton Skakel, his own children claimed, beat and kicked 6-year-old Michael - even burned him with matches.

But Ann McCooey's public hostility to John Moxley did not startle those who've watched these proceedings from the start. They saw McCooey, in court on the arm of her nephew, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., call author Dominick Dunne ``a jerk.''

They saw Michael Skakel himself mouth obscenities at witnesses. Yesterday, they saw Julie Skakel, Michael's only sister, get up from the front row and walk out of court moments after Dorthy Moxley began to address the judge.

``I would hold (infant Martha) and look at her and daydream about the life she would lead . . . what she could have been and done . . . married and had children . . . I was very proud.''

After the day's session ended without the expected sentencing of Skakel, Dorthy Moxley greeted and hugged friends, supporters and reporters who've covered her 27-year quest for truth. She was asked her reaction to Ann McCooey's remarks to her son. ``Oh, I don't know,'' she said. ``Maybe (McCooey) just broke a fingernail or something. I'd like to think people aren't mean.''

This from a woman whose only daughter died when her killer raised a golf club in his hands and beat her skull with such ferocity that the club's shaft snapped in two.

``I'd like to think people aren't mean,'' Dorthy Moxley said.

``You son of a bitch,'' said Ann Skakel McCooey, the aunt of the murderer, who lives. Who married. Who fathered a child.

This is what McCooey said to Dorthy Moxley's lone surviving child, the brother of Martha, who did not live to age 16, who never married, never mothered a child, and never came home on Halloween night 27 years ago.

-- Anonymous, August 29, 2002

Answers

What a bitch!

Throw her in jail, too.

-- Anonymous, August 29, 2002

Oh, no, BF! Have pity on the other prisoners!

-- Anonymous, August 29, 2002

One thing you can depend on...the Kennedy clan always runs true to form. Taz

-- Anonymous, September 05, 2002