Sister
Today we’re served up the second death in a row of a guy whose sister married into a royal family and whose death was announced by a lawyer. Patterns.
I don’t think I have to bang this lesson over your head: one look at the headline will give you the shiver and the motivation to spend some quality time with your kids before they decide to bludgeon a neighbor with a golf club. Fore!
January 7, 2003
Rushton Skakel Is Dead at 79; Father of Killer
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Rushton Skakel, whose son Michael was convicted last June of the 1975 killing of a neighbor, Martha Moxley, in Greenwich, Conn., died on Thursday in Hobe Sound, Fla. He was 79.
He had frontal lobe dementia, a brain illness, said his lawyer, Emanuel Margolis.
Mr. Skakel was the brother of Ethel Kennedy and the head of a family business that was once one of the largest private companies in the country.
Mr. Skakel was one of seven children born to George and Ann Skakel. His sister Ethel married Robert F. Kennedy in 1950. Senator Kennedy was assassinated in 1968.
Mr. Skakel took over the family business, Great Lakes Carbon, in the 1960’s, after the deaths of his parents and his brother George Skakel Jr. in separate plane crashes. The company manufactured carbon coke.
That wealth was on display in the Tudor-style home in the Belle Haven section of Greenwich, where Mr. Skakel and his first wife, Anne Reynolds Skakel, raised their seven children. She died of cancer in 1973 at 42.
Martha Moxley was 15 when she was bludgeoned to death outside her family’s home. Michael C. Skakel, who is serving 20 years to life in prison, will not be permitted to attend his father’s funeral, state prison officials said yesterday.
Mr. Skakel is survived by his wife, Anna Mae Skakel; his daughter, Julie Skakel; his sons, Rushton W. Jr., Thomas, John, Michael, David and Stephen; his stepdaughters, Elizabeth Mallozzi and Jennifer Kennedy; his sisters, Ethel Kennedy and Ann McCooey; 13 grandchildren; and two stepgrandchildren.
Copyright 2003 New York Times (Registration required)