Skakel Jury Hears Excerpts From Slain Girl's Diary

NORWALK, Conn. – A friend of Martha Moxley read entries from Moxley's diary Thursday as prosecutors detailed the days before the teenager was beaten to death with a golf club.

In the entries, Moxley discussed pool-hopping, parties and informal gatherings at the family home of Michael Skakel, the Kennedy cousin accused of killing her on Oct. 30, 1975. At one such gathering, Moxley wrote, Michael Skakel was "out of it" and behaving like "an ass."

"I really have to stop going over there," she wrote in one entry read by Jacqueline Wetenhall O'Hara.

Skakel -- a nephew of Robert F. Kennedy's widow, Ethel -- and Moxley were 15 when she was killed near the Greenwich homes.

Moxley also wrote that Skakel's older brother, Thomas, had flirted with her several times. Prosecutors have said both brothers were romantically interested in Moxley.

During defense lawyer Michael Sherman's cross-examination of O'Hara, he suggested the prosecution was trying to establish a motive for the killing.

"Did you attach anything unusual to the behavior of the teens back then?" Sherman asked.

"No," O'Hara replied.

James Lunney, a Greenwich detective at the time of the killing, testified that he had seen a golf club in the Skakel home that appeared similar to the murder weapon.

He said he returned to the Skakel home the day after the slaying and obtained permission from Skakel's father to search the house. The murder weapon was traced to a set of golf clubs owned by Skakel's mother.

Testimony was expected later Thursday from Kenneth Littleton, a live-in tutor to the Skakel children who had moved in the day Moxley was killed.

Littleton was once considered a suspect and the defense has claimed he made incriminating statements in the years after the slaying. The judge has not yet decided whether Sherman can enter those statements as evidence.

On Wednesday, Sherman questioned renowned forensic expert Henry Lee, who said he found no direct evidence linking Skakel to the killing through DNA taken from semen, blood or material found under Moxley's fingernails. But he said there was indirect evidence of a link.

Also Wednesday, a retired Greenwich police chief testified that he unsuccessfully sought an arrest warrant in 1976 for Thomas Skakel.

Thomas Keegan, who at the time of the killing was a captain in charge of the investigation, said prosecutors rejected the request because there was not enough evidence to establish probable cause.

Thomas Skakel was the last person seen with Moxley the night she was killed and was an early focus of the investigation.