After the supposed victim told them she had been raped by Sen. Ted Kennedy’s nephew William Kennedy Smith, a full day went by before Palm Beach police came to ask questions. Then, on Easter Sunday, the police didn’t mention rape; they said they were investigating the theft of an urn, which hadn’t been reported stolen. When a friend of the family said he wasn’t sure where the senator and Smith were, the police left. The crime-scene unit did not show up to cheek for evidence until 13 days later, after repeated rains and mowings of the grass. Last week State Attorney David, Bludworth said it could take another three weeks to decide whether to file charges. Why the confusion? Said the police spokesman, Officer Craig Gunkel: “When this is all over, you’ll understand why.”
Possibly. An antique and one of a set, it was taken from the mansion when the alleged victim’s friend Anne Mercer and Mercer’s boyfriend came to get her in the predawn after the reported rape. The victim’s friends said the urn and some photographs were taken as evidence that she had in fact been there, in case the Kennedy family disputed that. Kennedy sources hinted that it was simple theft. The urn was returned, but Smith’s lawyers hope to use discrepancies in the episode to discredit her account.
The rape supposedly happened around 4 a.m. Saturday, and the woman said she phoned her friends to come and get her after Smith tried to persuade her that he hadn’t assaulted her. It isn’t clear why she didn’t immediately drive her own car home, or what happened during the 20-minute wait, or who among the dozen or so people in the mansion may have known what was happening, or what went on in the house all next day. During that time, the alleged victim was consulting a rape-crisis center, telling her story to the police and being treated at a hospital. Early reports said she had a “possibly broken” rib, but police now say it wasn’t. On Easter Sunday Ted Kennedy and Smith lunched at a bar, Chuck & Harold’s, where an eavesdropper says she heard the senator say: “You know, she’s going to say it’s a rape.”
Kennedy sources strongly hint that there were. Guests at the mansion that night included Smith’s mother, Jean; his sister, Amanda; a former FBI man, William Barry, his wife, two sons and a daughter-in-law; a caretaker and Nellie McGrail, the cook, who has said she was awake from 4 a.m. on and heard nothing. Kennedy lawyers hint they have new witnesses, either in the house or among people the victim and her friends may have talked to. Local newspapers have printed a shaky story that someone saw Smith kissing the alleged victim good night.
There has been a long-standing resentment of the Kennedy clan by the family of the victim’s stepfather, a retired Midwest industrialist. But nobody believes that the pickup at Au Bar and its aftermath were any novelistic plot to embarrass the senator and his family. The antagonism may have contributed, however, to her stepfather’s quickness in hiring lawyers to represent her-and his reported tenacity in pushing her case.
Private investigators continue to troll for evidence to discredit the alleged victim and her story. His lawyers haven’t disputed that he had sex with her, so the much-discussed wait for medical evidence to prove that is a red herring. At the weekend, the lawyers were debating a key move: whether to hand over their client for questioning and share with police the evidence they have gathered, in hopes of fending off an indictment, or to stay buttoned up and save their ammunition for the trial.
