Friday April 20 12:09 PM ET Judge Rules Kennedy Nephew to Be Tried for Murder

STAMFORD, Conn. (Reuters) - A judge ruled on Friday that there was enough evidence to put Kennedy family nephew Michael Skakel on trial for the murder of his neighbor Martha Moxley 25 years ago in Connecticut when they were both 15 years old.

Stamford Superior Court Judge John Kavanewsky made his ruling on one of America's most stubborn unsolved murder cases after two days of hearings on the evidence. During the hearings, a key witness admitted to being on heroin when he told a grand jury in 1999 that he had heard Skakel confess to murdering Moxley.

Skakel, now 40, is the nephew of Ethel Skakel Kennedy, the widow of former U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy. He faces up to 60 years in prison if convicted of the 1975 murder in the affluent town of Greenwich, Connecticut.

Moxley was found bludgeoned to death with a golf club on the lawn of her parents' Greenwich home on Oct. 31, 1975. The club was part of a set that belonged to the Skakel family.

Decades after the original probe stalled, Skakel was accused of beating Moxley to death some time on the night of Oct. 30, 1975. Skakel has denied any involvement.

In January, a judge ruled that Skakel should be tried as an adult, not as a juvenile. He would have faced little or no jail time if he had been tried and convicted as a juvenile.

At the start of the investigation, authorities focused on Thomas Skakel, Michael's older brother and the last person to admit to seeing Moxley alive on Oct. 30, 1975.

But the probe stalled until 1995 when investigators found discrepancies between Michael Skakel's statements to police 20 years earlier and those he made to private investigators hired by his father in 1992 to clear the family name.

-- (16@years.later), April 20, 2001

Answers

i can add i swear

-- i mean (25@years.later), April 20, 2001.