Published January 13, 2015
Attorneys for Michael Skakel, the Kennedy cousin convicted of killing a neighbor when he was a teenager in 1975, identified two men Monday they say have been implicated in the killing.
Skakel is seeking a new trial based on a claim by Gitano "Tony" Bryant, a cousin of basketball star Kobe Bryant, that two of his friends actually killed 15-year-old Martha Moxley that night.
Skakel's attorneys identified the two men in court papers as Adolf Hasbrouck of Bridgeport and Burt Tinsley of Portland, Ore.
Both men denied any involvement in the killing when interviewed by The Hartford Courant in 2003.
A telephone message left Monday for Tinsley was not immediately returned. Hasbrouck's phone number was out of service, but his wife called the implication "a lie."
"He didn't do anything," she said at the couple's home Monday, declining to give her name. "My husband is a good man."
Prosecutors last year sought the identities and whereabouts of the two men so they could respond to the claim and prepare their case. Skakel's attorneys initially reached an agreement to disclose the names only to prosecutors, but Superior Court Judge Edward Karazin ordered the names be put in public court documents.
Bryant's allegation surfaced in 2003, a year after Skakel, a nephew of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy's widow, Ethel Kennedy, was convicted of bludgeoning Moxley with a golf club in their gated neighborhood in Greenwich when they were both 15. Skakel is serving 20 years to life in prison.
Prosecutors have said they are skeptical of the claim.
According to Skakel's attorneys, Bryant, who attended private school with Skakel, said he was with two friends from New York in the Belle Haven neighborhood of Greenwich the night Moxley was killed. One friend had met Moxley, "had a thing for her" and "wanted to go caveman on her," meaning dragging her by her hair, according to the petition. Bryant left them that night and said one of them later told him, "We did what we had to do."
Skakel's attorneys, Hope Seeley and Hubert Santos, also said there may have been problems among the jurors. One juror discussed the case with a third party during the trial, indicating he intended to convict Skakel, according to court documents.
https://www.foxnews.com/story/skakel-lawyer-two-new-suspects-in-1975-murder