NORWALK, Conn., April 25 (UPI) -- A judge on Friday is expected to hear arguments on defense motions that a live-in tutor killed Martha Moxley in 1975, not Kennedy kin Michael Skakel.
Jury selection was completed Wednesday for Skakel's trial, scheduled to begin May 7.
Michael Sherman, Skakel's attorney, filed motions late Wednesday outlining the defense case against Skakel's former tutor, Kenneth Littleton. Sherman wants that information allowed in at the trial to cast reasonable doubt on his client as the killer.
Littleton, a former suspect in the Moxley slaying, was granted immunity from prosecution for his testimony before a grand jury that indicted Skakel in 1999.
Skakel, a nephew of Ethel Skakel Kennedy and the late U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, is accused of killing Moxley with one of his mother's golf clubs in 1975 when both were 15 and neighbors in Greenwich, Conn.
Littleton and Skakel's older brother, Tommy, then 17, were considered suspects during the initial investigation, but no one was charged with the crime until Michael was indicted following the 1998 publication of a book, "Murder in Greenwich," in which former Los Angeles police detective Mark Fuhrman named Michael as the killer.
Sherman, in his motions, disclosed for the first time transcripts of taped conversations in which Littleton allegedly confessed to his ex-wife Mary Baker that he could have killed Moxley.
Littleton was 23 when hired by Rushton Skakel in 1975 to be a live-in tutor for his sons. Littleton's first night in the Skakel home was the night Moxley was killed, Oct. 30. Her body was found on her family lawn the following morning.
According to transcripts of a 1992 taped conversation orchestrated by prosecutors between Baker and Littleton, Baker tried to get him to recall that he had confessed to her that he had killed Moxley.
Baker claimed Littleton told her: "I mean, who could forget the graphic description of, you know, she wouldn't die. I had to stab her through the neck. I mean, it's not something you forget easily ..."
In the transcript, however, Littleton does not confess to the crime, and indicated he did not remember making such incriminating statements to Baker.
Littleton did say that after Moxley's death, pressure put on him made him believe at one point that he may have committed the killing.
According to court documents, Littleton said: "They really burned it into my head that I could have possibly done it, well you know, I'd sit there thinking, and I'd say, 'Well could I have, could I have been sleeping somehow gotten up in a blackout ... and done this without even knowing it.'"
Prosecutors said Wednesday none of the information revealed in the defense motions pointed to Littleton as Moxley's killer.
"None of this information is new," Deputy Chief State's Attorney Christopher Morano said. "We gave all this information to the defense. We will respond to their claims in court on Friday."
Superior Court Judge John Kavanewsky Jr. will take up the motions at a hearing Friday.
