Kennedy murder case after 26 years

Girl found bludgeoned to death when accused was 15.

A family conspiracy helped a member of the Kennedy clan escape punishment for "furiously" bludgeoning to death a 15-year-old girl in one of America's most exclusive communities, a court heard yesterday - more than 26 years after a killing which has fuelled speculation ever since.

Looking blotchy, overweight and older than his 41 years, Michael Skakel, the nephew by marriage of the assassinated presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy, showed no emotion as the jury was told of "a concerted effort by the Skakel family to disguise the identity of the real killer of Martha Moxley," who was discovered beneath a pine tree near her parent's 26-room mansion in the leafy Connecticut suburb of Belle Haven on the night before Halloween in 1975.

She had been beaten with a golf club "so furiously that the club fell apart, and she was subsequently stabbed with a part of the shaft," prosecutor Jonathan Benedict told the court in Norwalk.

But Mr Skakel, then 15, and his 17-year-old brother Thomas - both of whom had spent time with Martha that evening - were "spirited away", Mr Benedict said, as part of a plan to deceive investigators "when the real truth lay under their nose all along".

The prosecution would show, he said, that Mr Skakel had confessed to the crime several times in the intervening decades.

That the case came to court at all is largely thanks to the campaigning of Martha's mother Dorthy Moxley, now 69.

The golf club was quickly traced to the Skakel household and Thomas Skakel became the prime suspect.

Since then the case has become an increasingly surreal nexus of American celebrity culture, drawing into its orbit a police officer accused of racism in the OJ Simpson trial, a literary agent who helped impeach President Clinton, and the county's most celebrated chronicler of crime among the rich and famous, Dominick Dunne.

Mr Dunne's conversations with Dorthy Moxley inspired his novel A Summer in Purgatory, which pins the murder on a lightly fictionalised Mr Skakel.

The book piqued the interest of Lucianne Goldberg, later famous for persuading White House staffer Linda Tripp to record her conversations with Monica Lewinsky - and eventually prompted a new investigation of the case by Ms Goldberg's client, Mark Fuhrman, best known for his alleged use of "racial epithets" during his investigation of the case against OJ Simpson.

In one final twist, Mr Fuhrman was present at the trial yesterday - in his capacity as a commentator for Court TV.

The prosecution case rests on several witnesses who claim Mr Skakel confessed his guilt to them - including a fellow pupil at a school for troubled children in Maine, who told the grand jury that Mr Skakel said: "I'm going to get away with murder. I'm a Kennedy." The defence, spearheaded by celebrity attorney Mickey Sherman, is expected to argue that Martha was killed by the Skakel's live-in tutor, Kenneth Littleton.

Of the witnesses who say Mr Skakel confessed to them, Mr Sherman told the court yesterday: "It's a hell of a show - best selling authors, the Kennedy connection, a lot of fame, a lot of money, a lot of notoriety - ask yourself: why are they now coming out of the woodwork."