The board's decision could be reversed by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who will determine if the grant is consistent with public safety, a process that could take a few months.
Two of Kennedy's surviving sons, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Read More. We adamantly oppose the parole and release of Sirhan Sirhan and are shocked by a ruling that we believe ignores the standards for parole of a confessed, first-degree murderer in the state of California," said a statement last month from Kennedy's children Joseph P. He took our father from our family and he took him from America," they wrote. Sirhan shot Kennedy in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles following a campaign event in which Kennedy celebrated primary victories in his run for the Democratic nomination for president in Sirhan was sentenced to death for the murder, but his punishment was commuted to life in prison in after the California Supreme Court declared the death penalty unconstitutional.
Angela Berry, Sirhan's attorney, provided sentencing memorandums focusing on her client's youth at the time of the murder -- he was 24 -- and his childhood. The Scene. Type keyword s to search. Taylor Hill Getty Images. Kerry and Ethel Kennedy speak at the 52nd annual Robert F. Kennedy Ripple of Hope Award, held virtually this December.
Joe is like his mother: high-energy, gregarious, with Skakel features. Also, like Ethel, fierce when provoked. Very bright, quick. According to another family friend, the two brothers are especially competitive among a competitive group. Joe, on the other hand, resents Michael because Michael made money, while Joe never did. Often said to be a slow learner, Joe did poorly in school. At the suggestion of former John F.
Kennedy speechwriter Richard Goodwin in , however, he started the socially responsible fuel company called Citizens Energy Corporation C. Wielding Kennedy charisma, Joe persuaded foreign oil companies to sell him modest allotments of crude, had refineries process the fuel and sell all the products except for heating oil, and then used the profits to subsidize sales of cut-rate heating oil to low-income families.
Before long, C. By then Michael had helped found Stop Handgun Violence, an organization which mounted a national campaign of ads and lobbying efforts highlighting the youngest victims of handgun deaths.
Reportedly, he had also begun sleeping with the daughter of Paul Verrochi, a longtime Kennedy supporter, prominent businessman, neighbor in the Boston suburb of Cohasset, and, in , a C. They never seemed to have common goals. Vicki hated politics. Why marry a Kennedy? A spokesperson for the Verrochis denied that suicide was the motive. In hindsight, the strangest detail in press reports of that incident was that Michael Skakel had been on the scene and accompanied Mrs.
Verrochi to the hospital. On April 25, the day The Boston Globe broke the baby-sitter story, probably few readers stopped to consider how curious it was that such a story should rest entirely on anonymous sources.
How, that is, could the story have reached the press when neither the Kennedys nor the Verrochis seemed to wish it to? The Verrochis, after all, refused in subsequent weeks to press charges lest their daughter be subjected to a trial and media circus, and successfully managed to keep her hidden from journalists.
Clearly, though, for such an incendiary story the Globe needed more than just neighbors who spoke of seeing Michael and the baby-sitter around town. Among the Kennedys and their friends, the story that began to circulate was that Michael had been betrayed by his Citizens Energy colleague and cousin, Michael Skakel. His work history, until C. He blew off college until his early 30s, then graduated from Curry College, a small private institution in Milton, Massachusetts, with a program for students with learning disabilities.
Bradley, before going to C. The subtext is that Skakel is, as family members acknowledge, a recovering alcoholic who went to his first rehab clinic as a teenager—at an institution in Maine where he was reportedly beaten, which badly exacerbated his problems. He has, however, remained clean and sober for some time, family members say, and is active in step programs. Indeed, his desire to help others in trouble is what seems to have led him to play a key role in the baby-sitter mess.
When he learned that her relationship with Michael Kennedy had become a romantic one, he tried to discourage it, but without success: neither Michael nor his siblings seemed to feel a Skakel had any business telling a Kennedy what to do. According to one Kennedy-camp source, Skakel also began sharing details of the growing drama with friends in A.
Was he, perhaps, demanding hush money in return for not divulging details of the affair? The first was the murder of Martha Moxley in Greenwich, Connecticut. Martha had been out the evening she died in a van full of teenagers, including Michael Skakel and a brother, Tommy. Assurances were given that the results would prove that another youth was guilty, and that the results would be made available.
Instead, after receiving the reports, Skakel lawyers held on to them and reminded the investigators of their confidentiality agreement. Somehow, copies leaked to Newsday reporter Leonard Levitt. The investigators, Levitt wrote, felt both Tommy and Michael were suspects, because both had changed their original stories.
Both brothers have hotly asserted their innocence. One Kennedy-camp source points out that forensic studies indicated that the murderer was left-handed.
Michael is reportedly right-handed. Citizens Energy had been downsizing: selling off several of its for-profit offshoots, most recently an electricity-brokering operation started with Lehman Brothers that employed 50 people. But even if Skakel was enough of a loose cannon to talk to the Globe about Michael Kennedy and the baby-sitter, he could not have been the only source.
The April 25 story describes the girl in question as the under-age daughter of June and Paul Verrochi. The Verrochis, despite their claim of wanting to avoid publicity that might further hurt their daughter, would seem to have cooperated. The Verrochi daughter began baby-sitting for Michael and Vicki Kennedy when she was 14 or younger, and, as the Herald has reported with glee, the daughter accompanied Michael and various Kennedy children on several family rafting trips that included many friends and relatives but not, oddly enough, Victoria Kennedy.
No one in the Kennedy clan—relatives, friends, lawyers—is denying that Michael and the Verrochi girl slept together, or is suggesting that the affair was morally defensible. But the news may have had a psychological effect on Paul Verrochi. Initially, says one Kennedy source, Paul Verrochi was willing to focus his ire on Michael alone. But Michael appeared unfazed enough to attempt to visit the Verrochi girl at least once that fall at Boston University, where she had enrolled as a freshman.
When Verrochi sent an emissary to Joe to urge the congressman to get involved, the emissary was rebuffed. But both Skakel and Verrochi would have been able to corroborate the story. For the Globe, the most critical element was the age of the baby-sitter when she began sleeping with Michael Kennedy. Only if she were under-age—and the affair a crime—would the story be front-page news. Otherwise, it was a gossip item. Then they found out that was the age of consent. In a mid-June meeting with District Attorney Jeffrey Locke, Michael Skakel apparently repeated a story he said the baby-sitter had told him: that she had had under-age sex with Michael Kennedy several times, including the night of a rock concert in September As for the suggestion that she may have been as young as 14 when the affair began, these sources say, that could only have been willful misrepresentation.
A family spokesperson for the Verrochis says that Paul Verrochi has never spoken about his daughter to the press on or off the record. But according to one closely placed source, the Verrochi camp conducted a campaign of ongoing leaks to keep the scandal in the papers as a way of punishing both Michael and Joe Kennedy. Therefore, he did not downwardly revise the estimate. Verrochi clearly seems to have the upper hand. The Verrochis say that if there is any attempt to disparage their daughter or interfere with her in an unacceptable way, such action will be met with severe legal consequences.
Michael Kennedy has remained mum since the baby-sitter scandal began—neither acknowledging that the affair took place nor denying that the baby-sitter was under-age. The surprise is that Joe, who seems to be stepping up his political career, is still so press-shy. Exasperated, I lob a few: What was it like being the eldest son in your family after your father died?
Why did you decide to run for Congress in ? What are you proudest of having achieved there? Why do you want to be governor next year? Fluffy softballs, every one. Two days later comes the reply: the congressman declines. The Kennedy who hopes to be governor in the state his family has dominated politically for nearly half a century prefers not to answer pre-set questions about himself with a reporter whom six of his siblings have met and judged harmless enough.
The statement, of course, implies that a crime has been committed, but the Kennedys, for all their vaunted power, cannot even make that point in public for fear of inspiring Verrochi to bring suit after all. For the R. Are you going to seek political power? In fact, it has nothing to do with their human quality or how they carry on their lives. Nor, as easy as the assumption is to make, is there anything basically wrong with the R. Well, perhaps one thing: the Irish flu—the propensity, in two long lines of Kennedys and Skakels, toward addiction, with those two lines intertwined to create a doubly susceptible generation.
But for several of the R. And for all except Michael, life has gone fundamentally right since the early s. Only , are registered to vote, and only , of them will probably vote.
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