New RFK Jr book gives big nod to research community

[Paz Marverde]

4 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

Thanks Paz.

My pleasure, Jim

[Kirk Gallaway]

Bobby actually could change. The time was right for him, probably too right, hence what happened.

Bobby had soul.

[James DiEugenio]

There are two good books coming out on that case.

One will be out in a couple of weeks by Tim Tate and Brad Johnson.

Another will be out in the fall by Lisa Pease.  I will be reviewing the former, and I wrote the introduction for  the latter.

I am pretty sure that RFK Jr. wrote a blurb for Lisa's book.  Which is great.

[James DiEugenio]

This of course is May 24th, I wonder if Time will put to a special issue on RFK as they did on the King case.

I also wonder if the National Enquirer will put it on the cover, as they have been doing with JFK.

To me, it is very important as part of that wave of assassinations of the sixties which stole history from us, and also because RFK's murder allowed the anti RFK, Dick Nixon to take power.

And, as they say, that was the end of an era.  The mowed them all down.

[Paz Marverde]

Rumors he flatly accuses the CIA. Legit?

[Michael Walton]

On 5/23/2018 at 2:40 AM, James DiEugenio said:

I am certain it was this book that got an innocent man out.

For what it's worth, Jim, *someone* murdered that girl.  She was bludgeoned to death with supposedly a golf club. That area is an area of rich people.  If you watch enough detective shows (real ones...not the fake CSI ones) you'll find that in a lot of murder cases, it's usually a family member or someone that lives nearby. Skakel knew Moxley.

And as much as I've always admired the Kennedys, when you have high-priced lawyers, you can make things happen in the legal system than if you don't. That's pretty much what happened here and just because RFK's son wrote a book doesn't mean Skakel was innocent. It's just his side of the story.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Martha_Moxley

 

[James DiEugenio]

Mike, please read my review.  Let me post it again:

https://kennedysandking.com/reviews/robert-kennedy-jr-framed-why-michael-skakel-spent-over-a-decade-in-prison-for-a-murder-he-didn-t-commit

What happened was just about contrary to what you describe.  Mike Skakel was ganged up on my the likes of the late Dominick Dunne, Mark Fuhrman, and his own father's lawyer. This incited the media against Mike. The DA then went rogue on him and he used, of all things, a one man grand jury, and a whole series of unethical techniques to convict him.  His own lawyer, Mickey Sherman, essentially sold his client down the river. He dumped his all star team of lawyers, and kept some interns instead.  Why?  So he could  pocket a larger fee.  He even charged the family for media appearances.

That book actually does trace how she died.  Kennedy went as far as to find the real suspects.

[James DiEugenio]

Here is one example of how bad Sherman was for the defense.  From my review:

Let me close with what I perceive as probably the worst failure of the defense. In doing so, I relate another episode that I can hardly believe happened in an American court of law. Again, I had to read this twice in order to fully comprehend it. Prosecutor Benedict knew that he had a problem with the time of death in this case. If Martha was dead by 10:00 PM, and Michael was watching television eleven miles away, then how could a jury convict him? Furthermore, the authorities had brought in an outside consultant, one of the most illustrious forensic pathologists in America, Joseph Jachimczyk of Houston, to certify that time. And he said this was the far end of the time frame, which began at 9:30. (ibid, p. 27) In addition, there were other pieces of evidence that corroborated this time frame. (ibid, p. 28)

To counteract all this, Benedict did something that I have never heard of before. He called the autopsist in this case, Elliot Gross; but he did not put him on the stand. The fact that he did not take the stand indicates that he would not give Benedict the information he wanted to hear. Instead, he put Wayne Carver on the stand, the current medical examiner. Carver said that, looking over the notes, the time of death could be as late as 1:30 AM. The problem was that Carver had never worked on the case. This juggling would seem to present a made-to-order opportunity for a real takedown of Benedict. One could imagine a pointed, detailed, rigorous cross-examination that would expose this as nothing but a ploy. Sherman asked one question in rebuttal: “Could the murder have occurred at 9:30 PM?” Carver replied yes. Sherman sat down. Which should have been the last thing he did. As Kennedy then writes, the obvious next question should have been: “How can you say that the time of death could happen at both 9:30 PM and 1:30 AM?” And that should have been just the beginning. (ibid, p. 28)

When Cyril Wecht read about this, he was stunned. I would have called the actual pathologist and then called the DA himself to the stand.

[Michael Walton]

1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said:

What happened was just about contrary to what you describe.  Mike Skakel was ganged up on my the likes of the late Dominick Dunne, Mark Fuhrman, and his own father's lawyer. This incited the media against Mike. The DA then went rogue on him and he used, of all things, a one man grand jury, and a whole series of unethical techniques to convict him.  His own lawyer, Mickey Sherman, essentially sold his client down the river. He dumped his all star team of lawyers, and kept some interns instead.  Why?  So he could  pocket a larger fee.  He even charged the family for media appearances.

Not according to witnesses, Jim, who talked to Skakel:

Two former students from Élan School, a treatment center for troubled youths, testified they heard Michael Skakel confess to killing Moxley with a golf club. Gregory Coleman testified that Skakel was given special privileges, saying Skakel bragged, "I'm going to get away with murder. I'm a Kennedy."

Just because he had a bad lawyer, Jim, doesn't mean he's innocent.  Look at OJ - I hope you're not going to say he, too, was innocent and his Dream Team was just icing on the cake. The point I'm trying to make is Skakel knew the girl; he was up in the tree jerking off and peeping into her house; the club was from his family's home. So yeah, maybe if he'd had a Dream Team from the very beginning they'd have come up with some legal bullxxxx to get him off. But they did find him guilty the first time.

And yeah, I know you love the Kennedys and it seems you border on worshipfulness with them. Even I don't like them that much. But take away all of the lawyers and xxxx and this is what we're really talking about here. That's the girl who got her head bashed in with a Skakel family 9 iron...

[James DiEugenio]

Mike:

You did not read my review did you?  And then you try to smear me by saying my judgment is clouded because somehow I cannot see straight because its about the Kennedys.

Its not about the Kennedys.  Its about the evidence.  And you have just proven that you do not want to hear that evidence.  Sorry about that.  I guess then by your own measure you must like Mark Fuhrman. He is the one who dug up the Elan students.  Here you go Mike. Here is Fuhrman's work.

Fuhrman visited Élan and talked to several people there. This was the beginning of the so-called Skakel “confessions”. During the preliminary hearing and at the trial, two of the very worst denizens of the Élan horror show testified that Michael had told them he had killed Martha and he would get away with it since he was a Kennedy. The two who actually testified at the trial were Greg Coleman and John Higgins. To explain why neither man should have ever been called to testify in the first place, and then to explain why they had no credibility, would take about ten pages of text. Kennedy does a nice job destroying them in about 13. (pp. 188-200) The cofounder of the place, Frank Ricci, said this about the matter: “The notion of Michael’s confession is just preposterous. I was there and I would know.” He continued by saying that everyone on the faculty would have talked about it. He then would have called the lawyers and asked them for advice on how to proceed. Neither of those things happened. (ibid, p. 193) Coleman named a student, Cliff Grubin, as a corroborating witness. He was not interviewed by the defense until 2005, after the conviction. When he heard Coleman’s testimony, he said the whole thing was invented. Grubin was never in the position Coleman put him in to hear that “confession”. He labeled both Coleman and Higgins as liars. (Ibid, pp. 199-200)

Note, the guy who was the so called corroborator was not contacted until after the trial.  Do you need Alan Dershowitz to advise you to talk to him before the trial? 

Edited May 25, 2018 by James DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

More on the students and the school and the so called "confession".  This is from a Hartford newspaper from three weeks ago:

Among the obstacles is new evidence that further discredits a principal prosecution witness at the fist trial, Gregory Coleman, whose credibility has been under attack for decades.

Coleman has admitted that, in 1998 he injected himself with heroin before telling a grand jury that he heard Skakel confess five or six times to clubbing Moxley to death with a golf club in 1975. At another hearing, before being rushed to the hospital with withdrawal symptoms, Coleman testified that his recollection had evolved: Skakel confessed only once or twice. 

What the jury did not hear at the first trial is that, a decade after Skakel’s conviction — after Coleman died of a drug overdose — the Coleman family’s lawyer described him as an incorrigible addict, always broke, in danger of losing his home and certainly interested in the reward in the Moxley investigation. Part of that reward went to his ex-wife, after his death. The family’s lawyer warned the Skakel prosecutors, years earlier, against calling Coleman as a witness, according to court records. 

“It would be fair to say that no one in their right mind, knowing Gregory, would put the slightest confidence in his contentions concerning the supposed admissions of Michael Skakel,” the lawyer said, in an affidavit read into the record at a post-conviction hearing. (Emphasis added.)

Note in the above, the Coleman family lawyer warned the prosecution about how bad Coleman was as a witness, he was drugged up and doing what he did for the money.  The prosecution knew that and they still put him on the stand. Where was the defense lawyer?  This guy could have been impeached to the moon.  

That trial was a circus.  And it was a complex circus for the simple reason that the MSM was so utterly irresponsible in their reporting on it.  Bobby Kennedy tried to get at least one journalist interested in it.  But the Rush to Judgment, caused by Dunne and Fuhrman--something we should all be aware of--was too strong.  So he had to do it himself.  Being a lawyer he knew what to look at in the evidence. 

 

 

Edited May 25, 2018 by James DiEugenio

[Michael Walton]

Here's a pretty good report of the story:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/michael-skakel-was-convicted-of-murdering-martha-moxley-so-why-is-he-free

I saw the URL of your review Jim and didn't read it because the URL alone tells me what it's going to be. It's going to be all about how RFKJ strived to get his innocent relative off, why the case is weak against MK, how the lawyers did their thing and on and on until he got off. You'll write you're usual wrap arounds of the review supporting it and that'll be your review.

I think there's far more to this story than you or I will know but won't because that's what high-priced lawyers are paid to do. Instead of it being way over here or there, there's some kind of middle ground. I just find it hard to believe that MK or his brother were not involved some how. As I mentioned in those other crimes, they tend to be the victim and killer knowing each other, and it's certainly not some black, deaf, drug-addled person who just wandered into the neighborhood and killed her randomly.

I never said I like Fuhrman or anyone for that matter.

[Paz Marverde]

Any confirmation on the rumors?

Edited May 25, 2018 by Paz Marverde

[James DiEugenio]

Mike:

That link of yours to the Daily Beast shows just what the problem is in this case and its a perfect illustration of what I was talking about. The author is Len Levitt.  Talk about bias.

If you read my article, which you refused to do, you would learn that he was the recipient of family lawyer Sheridan's investigative files.  And then started to write a series of articles based on those files, which Sheridan had rigged to make the worst case scenarios--Warren Commission style.  That was  a part of the Rush to Judgment in the first place. In other words, he was Fuhrman pt 1. It would be like linking to an article by David Belin in 1967.

The whole idea of non fiction writing, at least I always have felt, is that you are supposed to try to find the most revealing and reliable information, and then try and inform the public about what has been withheld from them.  Bobby Kennedy's book is full of forensic facts from people like Henry Lee. And at the same time it describes a whole litany of legal abuses which originated from public pressure induced by Dunne, Levitt and Fuhrman.

Paz, as I wrote in my review, in the book, he spends 13 pages utterly demolishing the students at Elan.  And what went on there from students like Coleman.  It got so bad that kids who survived formed an organization to get it closed down.

 

[James DiEugenio]

Let me address this issue of alleged bias.

As I replied above, I like to think of myself as a writer who abides by the evidence.  To give you an example, up until about five-seven years ago, I was like everyone else and I more or less accepted the view of Kennedy as a kind of moderate liberal.  It was not until I started reading things outside the field, for instance Kennedy's Middle East policy, that I rearranged my thinking about that.  In other words, it was more evidence that altered my view.

Another example, I am not an admirer of Nixon.  In fact I think he was a pretty bad president all the way around.  But when I began to look at the Watergate scandal for a special issue of Probe Magazine,  I began to see that Woodward and Bernstein had left out a lot of relevant material, and had not explained some of the outstanding questions of the Watergate case e.g. Hunt being at the CIA front Mullen Company before Colson hired him.  And so after some further study I came to the conclusion that Watergate was a set up.  And it worked. And the worst thing about it is that it gave America the illusion that the system had succeeded, when it had not. It also made  heroes out of Woodward and Bernstein. When they were not.  In fact Woodward is still dissembling about Deep Throat being only Mark Felt. As proven by the book In Nixon's Web, the best recent book on that case, that is not true. Deep Throat was a composite. Hollywood made it all worse this with first Bob Redford presenting it straight on, and then Tom Hanks doing that more recent Mark Felt as Deep Throat film.  

As I said, I think Nixon was a very bad president.  And what he did in Indochina was horrendous. But I will be one of the first to say that Watergate was pretty much a trap and we still have not gotten to the bottom of what happened there.  I will  further add, the Republican minority on the Ervin Committee was closer to the truth than the Democrats led by the country bumpkin Ervin and Sam Dash. To me the overarching problem in both cases, Watergate and the JFK murder, is that the system failed.  That is the press, Washington, and legal authorities.  And that is really important because it led to a non belief in government.  Which, I hate to say, was well deserved.

 

Edited May 25, 2018 by James DiEugenio