NORWALK, Conn., May 21 (UPI) -- Kennedy kin Michael Skakel admitted he was in a tree peeking into Martha Moxley's bedroom the night she was killed, according to two witnesses at his trial in Connecticut.
The trial of Ethel Kennedy's nephew entered its 11th day Tuesday with prosecutors expected to call their final witnesses.
Skakel, 41, is accused of killing his neighbor with his mother's golf club on Oct. 30, 1975, when they were neighbors in fashionable Greenwich, Conn. Both were 15 at the time.
Testimony in Norwalk Superior Court turned testy on Monday after Michael Meredith, 34, son of former Dallas Cowboys quarterback and "Monday Night Football" broadcaster Don Meredith took the stand.
Michael Meredith testified that in 1987 Skakel told him he had been in a tree masturbating while peeping at Moxley through her bedroom window. Moxley's body was found beneath the tree the following morning.
"At one point he saw his brother Tommy crossing the yard toward Martha's house," Meredith said. "Once Tommy was out of sight, he (Michael) climbed down the tree and went to his house" across the street.
Skakel's childhood friend and neighbor Andrew Pugh also testified on Monday, corroborating other testimony.
Pugh said Skakel "had a crush" on Moxley. "He liked her very much and said he would like to have a relationship with her," Pugh said.
Pugh said he and his "best friend" drifted apart but met again in 1991. Pugh said he told Skakel he had reservations about renewing the friendship because of questions about his involvement in the Moxley slaying.
He said Skakel told him that he wasn't involved in the killing, but said: "'but a strange thing happened. I was up in that tree that night masturbating,'" Pugh testified. "I assumed it was the tree where her body was found."
Meredith said he met Skakel in 1986 when they were involved in the re-election campaign of former U.S. Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II, D-Mass. Skakel and Meredith had been students at the controversial Elan School for troubled teens in Maine, but not at the same time. Last week several students from school testified Skakel either confessed to the crime or incriminated himself.
Meredith said he lived in the Skakel home in the summer of 1987, but left after Skakel told him about the tree incident. Meredith said Skakel told him he did not kill the girl.
Meredith noted his father was friendly with the Kennedy family and worked with Greenwich resident and fellow sportscaster Frank Gifford, whose daughter, Victoria, was married to Michael Kennedy, who died in a 1997 skiing accident in Colorado.
Meredith testified his father told Gifford in the mid-1990s about what Michael Skakel had told him. Gifford passed that information on to Connecticut investigators, Meredith said.
The Kennedy family reportedly was upset with Skakel for telling Massachusetts authorities Michael Kennedy had sex with his children's teenage babysitter. As a result of that affair, Victoria Gifford divorced Michael Kennedy.
Defense attorney Michael Sherman tried to attack Meredith's credibility under cross-examination, questioning him about his "very lengthy, vast arrest record."
At one point Meredith called the lawyer "an ambulance-chasing creep."
