William Kennedy Smith

It's the most celebrated court case of the year.

The William Kennedy Smith trial.

Live coverage throughout the day.

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What followed was a year-long assault on the prosecution and prosecutors.

Epstein had assembled a world-class legal team, including Alan, I kept my pants on, Dershowitz, Kenneth Starr, and Roy Black, best known for having defended William Kennedy Smith against rape charges in Palm Beach.

One member of the defense team warned me that the office's excess zeal in forcing a good man to serve time in jail might be the subject of a book if we continue, Acosta writes.

In his view, excessive zeal more aptly describes the actions in Epstein's camp.

Yeah.

Well, in 1991, William Kennedy Smith was tried and acquitted of rape.

And it was then, so that's like another cousin, I think, is what I read.

So it was then that rumors surfaced that he was present at the Skakel house the night that Martha was brutally murdered.

So the Skakels were well-known in this area.

But a lot of families, despite their connection to the Kennedys and their wealth,

didn't love their kids to be associated with them because they

were pretty much wild children.

Kennedy Cousin Comes Clean.

So he wanted to write a memoir just about being a part of the extended Kennedy family.

He talked a little shit, apparently, in this about the other Kennedys.

But he also wanted to clear the air on the Martha Moxley accusations.

So in 1991, the same year that Michael got married to his wife, there was some more drama within the Kennedy family.

William Kennedy Smith, a member of the Kennedys, he was involved in a very highly publicized rape trial.

He was being accused of raping a woman and I believe was acquitted.

But everybody was keeping their eyes on this case because it involved A member of the Kennedy family, obviously.

Then in 1991, renewed publicity surrounding another member of the Kennedy family brought the case back into public discussion.

William Kennedy Smith had been accused of rape in Florida, an allegation he denied and for which he was subsequently acquitted.

But during the publicity, an unfounded rumor circulated that William had been at the Skakel residence on the night Martha died.

Although the allegation proved false, the attention encouraged renewed examination of the murder, and in 1991, Connecticut authorities reopened Martha Moxley's case.

I was not familiar at all.

It's also interesting to me to compare this, the case that inspired this movie to also something like the William Kennedy Smith trial, which was a rape trial that people were absolutely riveted by at the time that it was happening.

And it also raised questions of how much and whether to identify the the victim um and or you know if we want to be legalistic I guess the alleged victim in a trial like this that was getting so much media attention and that again that's like a story that people don't reminisce about and have kind of taken out of maybe the collective memory of a period in an interesting way because you have something like the OJ Simpson trial and no one ever really forgot about that one um but stories like this you know seem to have um Yeah, been maybe a little bit repressed.

And also, you know, Jodie Foster won an Oscar for

She had four children, two biological and two adopted children.

The one that is probably most well known is William Kennedy Smith.

So he was commissioner of the District of Columbia from 2015 to 2020.

However, in 1991, he was accused for a sexual assault charge.

It was just so interesting and random that I wanted to bring it to you real quick, but there were also two other instances that really made people start talking about Martha's murder again in later years.

The first incident was that one of the members of the Kennedy family, yes, you heard me right, the Kennedy family, was brought up on rape charges in early 1990s.

He ended up being acquitted, but him being on trial for a violent sexual crime got people talking and got the rumor mill chilling... churning, not chilling, churning out information.

And a rumor started going around that William Kennedy Smith, the one who was brought up on the rache- rape charges, had actually been at the Skakel house the night of Martha's murder and had spent the night.

Now, we're going to get into why the Kennedys would in any way be, um, hanging out with the Skakels very shortly, 'cause we still haven't gotten into who these people are.

Who they are does matter, I think.

Um, but this was looked into, and it was found out to not be true.

He was not at the Skakel residence at the time Martha was murdered, but that rumor definitely got more people talking about the case again and realizing that it was still open.