Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has long maintained the innocence of his cousin in the Martha Moxley murder, but that doesn’t stop him from thinking Michael Skakel is “delusional and paranoid.”
Kennedy writes in his 1999 journal that Skakel was planning to pen a memoir called “Dead Man Talking: A Kennedy Cousin Spills the Beans.”
“I feel terrible for Michael Skakel. He is delusional and paranoid and this is self destruction,” he writes on Aug. 4.
The book was never published.
Skakel, now 53, was charged in 2000 with the 1975 murder of 15-year-old Moxley, his Greenwich, Conn., neighbor, who was bludgeoned with a golf club and stabbed with the broken shaft.
Kennedy writes in the following year’s journal, in June, that he was going to accompany Skakel on a “perp walk” the next day, although RFK worries it will harm his reputation to be seen with the accused murder.
“The best thing about it is that it probably won’t ever be appreciated by M.S. who will just devise a paranoid conspiracy theory to explain it. That makes it a pure act of altruism!” Kennedy says.
The relationship between Skakel and his Kennedy relatives soured in 1997 after Skakel reportedly cooperated with authorities investigating whether Michael Kennedy, RFK Jr.’s younger brother, was having an affair with his children’s teenage baby sitter.
Last month, a Connecticut judge ordered a new trial for Skakel, ruling that he had not been adequately represented by his lawyer in his 2002 murder trial.
A hearing is set for Wednesday in Connecticut court on whether Skakel should be let out of prison while he awaits a new trial.