LETTER FROM AMERICA/Patrick Smyth: Normally the defence in a murder trial introduces the alternative suspect to the jury to cast doubt on the case against the accused.
But prosecutors in the Martha Moxley trial this week themselves put the "alternative" in the witness box in order to discredit the strategy and get tutor Ken Littleton off the stage early. It was not a resounding success.
The trial in Norwalk, Connecticut, of Mr Michael Skakel (41), nephew of Bobby Kennedy's widow Ethel, on charges that he beat a 15-year-old neighbour to death with one of the family golf clubs 27 years ago, is truly bizarre.
Time, death, dementia and substance abuse have cut a swathe through witnesses or their credibility, while out of the blue a barber has recalled a 27-year-old confession. Or has he?
Then there was the barking dog (unlike Sherlock Holmes's dog that did not bark). And more than one prosecution own goal.
To start with, Mr Ken Littleton. Once the prime suspect, the family tutor to the Skakels, who arrived to stay in their home on the night Moxley was murdered, admitted to a psychiatrist he had committed the murder but told the court he had only done so because his former wife persuaded him he had already confessed to her in a forgotten, drunken conversation.
In 1992, the police had persuaded Ms Mary Baker to try to cajole a secretly-taped confession out of their main suspect. Early on in the tape, Ms Baker tells him that in a drunken fit in 1986 "you were saying, you know, 'I hope they don't find it. I hope they don't find my pants ... I didn't do it. It was an accident."
But Mr Littleton insists he didn't do it and "wasn't anywhere near the murder site".
Strangely, however, a rambling Mr Littleton, who is heavily medicated for a severe form of manic-depression, and has suffered from drug use and alcoholism, did not appear to disbelieve his wife. He admitted he may have made such a statement because of the huge pressures he was under but then rejected the idea that he could possibly have committed a murder on his first night in a new home and job. "Oh. Here I am, going to wander out, meet some girl, you know, find a golf club, you know, butcher her head."
"I never ever hurt a woman or child in my life," he said, according to the tape transcript. "That night I was perfectly sane and I was perfectly normal. I know I didn't kill the girl."
Mr Littleton's underwhelming performance on Tuesday was followed by an own goal on Wednesday. Following the sad testimony of the accused man's partially demented father, Mr Rushton Skakel, who remembered nothing, a neighbour repudiated her own earlier grand jury testimony about what the father had told her - that his son had expressed the belief that in a drunken fit he may have committed the murder.
To the horror of the prosecution, Mrs Mildred Ix, under cross-examination, said that when she reread her earlier testimony she was "flabbergasted" by it. "I was thinking all those things and I didn't realise when I read it that I had attributed all those things to Rush.
"I know Rushton never, ever heard from Michael that he ever, ever killed anyone," Mrs Ix testified. (Mrs Ix's dog it was that barked ferociously that night, according to her daughter. She testified that the dog particularly disliked the accused man, who fired pellets and threw apples at it.
More evidence of alleged confessions by Mr Skakel followed, the substance of the prosecution case as there is no physical or eyewitness evidence to link Mr Skakel specifically to the killing.
A barber, Mr Matthew Tucciarone, testified that Mr Skakel said, "I killed before," in a visit to a hair salon in either 1975 or 1976.
Mr Tucciarone said he was working alone in the salon when a young woman and two young men entered and he gave a haircut to one of the young men, Mr Skakel.
He initially said Mr Skakel told his companions, "I'm going to get a gun and I'm going to kill him." After the woman told him, "You can't do that," he replied, "Why not? I did it before. I killed before." The woman then said, "Shut up, Michael."
On cross-examination, the story changed slightly, with Mr Tucciarone eliminating the phrase, "I did it before," from Mr Skakel's answer.
A former chauffeur for the Skakel family testified that Mr Skakel once told him he had done something "very bad" and had to either kill himself or get out of the country.
And then Mr Charles Seigan, a former classmate of Mr Skakel in a substance-abuse centre, testified on Thursday that Mr Skakel had told classmates he had been drunk on the night in question and did not know whether he killed her.
Mr Skakel's alleged involvement came up on several occasions at the special school during the late 1970s. "He would generally come to tears, shake his head and say, 'I don't know'," Mr Seigan said. "And there were other times when he was irritated with the questions."
The court admitted the former grand jury testimony of another classmate, Mr Gregory Coleman, who died last year after using drugs. Mr Coleman admitted during pretrial hearings that he was on heroin when he told a one-judge grand jury that Mr Skakel confessed. But Mr Coleman stuck by his statement that Mr Skakel told him: "I'm gonna get away with murder. I'm a Kennedy." Grist maybe to the media mill, but there's plenty of room for reasonable doubt. The trial continues next week.