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Witness: Skakel admitted killing Moxley

NORWALK, Conn., May 17 (UPI) -- Prosecutors planned to present more testimony Friday that Kennedy kin Michael Skakel admitted to fellow students at a school for troubled youth that he killed Martha Moxley more than a quarter century ago.

Skakel, 41, is on trial on charges he killed Moxley when both were 15-year-old neighbors in Greenwich, Conn., on Oct. 30, 1975.

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While a student at a Maine school for teens with substance and behavioral problems between 1978 and 1980, Skakel allegedly confessed to killing Moxley with a golf club from a set belonging to his mother.

Three former classmates at the Elan School testified on Thursday and more were scheduled to take the stand Friday at Skakel's Superior Court trial in Norwalk, Conn.

One of the students called by the prosecution on Thursday said Skakel admitted to killing Moxley, while two others said they never heard a clear confession.

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John Higgins said one night while he and Skakel were on guard duty to keep other students from running away from the school, Skakel, in a rambling two-hour tear-filled monologue, talked about the night Moxley died.

"There was a party of some kind or another and he related that he later was in his garage and he was going through some golf clubs and related that he was running through some woods, he had a golf club in his hands, he looked up. He saw pine trees. The next thing that he remembers is that he woke up in his house," Higgins testified.

"Through a progression of statements he said he didn't know whether he did it, that he may have done it," said Higgins. "He didn't know what happened. Eventually he came to the point that he did do it, must have done it, I did it."

On cross-examination, defense attorney Michael Sherman attacked Higgins' credibility, saying he previously had lied to investigators. Higgins admitted when he first talked to prosecution investigator Frank Garr, he repeatedly said he did not know whether Skakel ever confessed.

Two other Elan students -- Charles Seigan and Dorothy Rogers -- said they never heard Ethel Kennedy's nephew specifically confess. Seigan said when asked whether he killed Moxley, Skakel would reply, "I don't know."

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Rogers said Skakel told her he was too drunk to remember what happened the night Moxley died.

Also on the stand Thursday was a former driver for the Skakel family, Larry Zicarelli. He testified he drove Skakel to New York City in 1977 for a doctor's appointment, and that Skakel was upset. On the drive back, Zicarelli said Skakel jumped out of the car at a tollbooth on the Triboro Bridge and ran to its side.

Zicarelli said after he was able to get Skakel back in the car, he asked him what was wrong.

"He said if I knew what he had done, I would never talk to him again," Zicarelli said. He said Skakel tearfully told him, "'I've done something really bad and I've got to get out of the country or I'll kill myself.'"

Sherman told the jury the "bad thing" Skakel had done was sleeping with his dead mother's dress the night before the trip to New York. Sherman said Skakel was traumatized by the 1973 death of his mother.

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