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Lineup of 'confession witnesses' begins at Skakel trial

Zicarelli testified that Skakel confessed in 1977 that he had "done something really bad."

NORWALK, Connecticut (CNN) -- Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel told his family chauffeur in 1977 he had "done something really bad" and had to either kill himself or leave the country, then tried to jump off New York's Triborough Bridge, the driver testified in Skakel's murder trial Thursday.

Lawrence Zicarelli, the former Skakel family chauffeur, said that Michael Skakel, who had been arguing with his father in their Greenwich home, demanded to be taken to New York City. Skakel wept on the way to the city, Zicarelli said, and while crossing the bridge on the way home, Michael jumped out of the car twice and began running toward the edge.

Zicarelli said he pushed Skakel back into the car and tried to calm him down, asking him what he had done that was so bad.

"He said if I knew what he had done, I'd never talk to him again," Zicarelli said.

Zicarelli was the first in what was expected to be a day of "confession witnesses" -- those who say Michael Skakel made admissions of some sort that would link him to the slaying of Martha Moxley, who was beaten to death with a golf club in October 1975. Skakel and Moxley were both 15 when she was killed.

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Skakel, now 41, is the nephew of Ethel Kennedy, the widow of the late Robert Kennedy. He is charged with killing his 15-year-old neighbor, Martha Moxley, with a golf club on October 30, 1975.

Defense attorney Mickey Sherman tried to attack Zicarelli's credibility, asking him why it took him until the 1990s to tell authorities the story. Sherman also asked him if he knew what "bad thing" Skakel was talking about.

"Did you know that the night before, Michael Skakel slept in his dead mother's dress?" he asked.

Later, Sherman told reporters that Skakel had slept with, but not wearing, the dress.

In other testimony, a former classmate of Skakel's at the Elan school for troubled teenagers said Michael had told him he was "stumbling drunk" on the night of Martha Moxley's death and might have done it during a blackout.

Chuck Seigan, who attended Elan with Skakel in 1978-79, said headmaster Joseph Ricci disclosed Skakel's involvement in the slaying during a student assembly after Skakel had been captured trying to escape form the school.

He said he remembered seeing Skakel weep during therapy sessions when he was asked about his role in the killing. Either he would be annoyed at being asked or "he would cry and shake his head when asked if he did it. He said he didn't know."

Seigan described the boot-camp mentality of Elan, where incoming students were often brought in "kicking and screaming" and had to undergo beatings and other types of confrontations meant to humiliate them.

During cross-examination by Sherman, Seigan acknowledged that he never actually heard Skakel confess to the murder, but he did not hear him deny it, either.

On Wednesday, Michael Skakel's father, Rushton, said he could not recall having a reported conversation that was said to occur around 1981 in which he allegedly told a friend that his son might have killed Moxley, a grand jury transcript revealed.