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Witnesses: Skakel admitted being at crime scene

Michael Skakel, left, arrives for the trial Monday.

NORWALK, Connecticut (CNN) -- Two former friends of Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel testified Monday he admitted being at the crime scene the night Martha Moxley was murdered, but that he never actually confessed to killing her.

Former friend Michael Meredith -- son of football great Don Meredith -- testified Skakel told him he "climbed a tree outside her window," watched Moxley undress and then masturbated in the tree.

Skakel, now 41, is accused of bludgeoning Moxley to death with a golf club in 1975, when both were 15. He is the nephew of Ethel Kennedy, the widow of Sen. Robert Kennedy.

Meredith met Skakel while helping Joe Kennedy, RFK's son, campaign for a congressional seat in early 1987.

He said he and Skakel spent a lot of time together that summer at the Skakel's home in Greenwich. It was then they first talked about Moxley's murder.

"Michael instigated the conversation," Meredith said. "He said, 'I want you to know, I'm innocent of that.'"

He said Skakel told him that after masturbating in the tree he saw his brother Tommy come from the direction of the Skakel home to the Moxley's property, across the street. After he climbed down from the tree, Michael said he went back home, Meredith testified.

CNN NewsPass VIDEO Prosecutors in the Michael Skakel murder trial will not call Thomas Skakel, the last person known to have seen Martha Moxley alive, as a witness. CNN's Deborah Feyerick reports. (May 15) Play video   EXTRA INFORMATION Timeline: Michael Skakel trial    RESOURCES • Gallery: People in the News  • Court TV.com: Kennedy cousin on trial  • Read Martha Moxley's diary      LEGAL RESOURCES Latest Legal News Law Library FindLaw Consumer Center Select a topic Bankruptcy Discrimination Divorce Estate Planning Landlord-Tenant Personal Injury Taxes

Meredith and Skakel, who were students at the Elan school for troubled teenagers but at different times, at one point filed a class action suit against the facility, a subject that came up during Monday's trial.

"We both felt the place was a concentration camp and it was destroying kids," Meredith said. Eventually, Meredith pulled out of the lawsuit because of his doubts about Skakel.

Meredith told his father's friend, sports broadcaster Frank Gifford, the story about Skakel and the Moxley murder. Gifford alerted Connecticut authorities.

Under cross-examination, Meredith said he left the Skakel home the day after his conversation with Michael Skakel about the murder. Meredith no longer wanted to be around Skakel.

"It was the fear factor. I felt that Michael Skakel had violence boiling under the skin," he said.

Defense attorney Mickey Sherman asked Meredith, who has had his run-ins with the law over the years, about his more than one dozen criminal convictions.

"I had a restless youth, was addicted to drugs, had a famous father ... maybe I just came off the assembly line that way," Meredith replied.

At one point, Meredith was visibly irritated by Sherman's questions. "I just don't like looking at you," he told Sherman. "You're such an ambulance-chasing creep."

Another key witness was Skakel's childhood friend, Andrew Pugh. Pugh described Skakel's romantic interest in Moxley.

"Michael had told me that he liked Martha quite a bit and had a crush on her," Pugh said.

He said he had seen them involved in "horseplay, fooling around ... and saw them kissing one time in the RV." But in what prosecutors hope the jury will view as a motive for the killing, Pugh said, "She didn't seem as interested. She seemed to be not quite as enthusiastic."

Pugh described the adversarial relationship between Michael and his brother Tommy, saying the two were "very competitive, contentious" and even hit each other.

After Moxley's murder, Pugh and Skakel saw each other less and less often. They lost contact completely in 1977. But after they ran into each other at a Greenwich church in 1991, Pugh said Skakel called him and sought to restart their friendship.

"I expressed some reservations. I asked him if he was involved in her murder," Pugh said. "He said 'No, I wasn't. But a strange thing happened. I was up in the tree that night masturbating.'"

Prosecutors asked Pugh to identify the tree from a picture. "I assumed it was the tree where Martha's body was found," he said.

Pugh and Skakel often climbed the tree under which Moxley's body was eventually discovered.

In other testimony Monday, Elizabeth Coleman -- the wife of former Skakel schoolmate, the late Gregory Coleman -- said her husband mentioned early in their relationship that he had "met this kid in Elan who had murdered a girl," later specifying that "kid" was Michael Skakel.

"[Skakel] told him he had murdered her with a golf club," she said. "He said [Skakel] acts like he could get away with murder ... and he said he could, he was related to the Kennedys."

She backed up her husband, who had told two pretrial hearings and the grand jury that Skakel told him about killing a girl.

Gregory Coleman, who admitted in court that he was high on heroin during his grand jury testimony, died of a heroin overdose in August 2001.

On Friday and continuing Monday, jurors heard Coleman testify from the grave, as prosecutors and defense attorneys read from transcripts of his former statements.

Elizabeth Coleman corroborated her husband's story that when he saw the case mentioned on a tabloid television show, he told her authorities were wrong to pursue Tommy Skakel as a suspect in Martha's killing.

"He said it's not Tommy, it's Michael," she said.