The House of Kennedy(69)
Despite the allegations, a “nice guy” is how a number of people describe Willie, the second of Jean and Stephen Smith’s four children (his older brother by two years is Stephen Jr.; sisters Amanda and Kym are six and twelve years younger, respectively). A Georgetown friend calls Willie “a regular guy who happens to come from this amazing family,” while a supervisor notes Willie “doesn’t have any violence in him.” An ex-girlfriend says the rape allegations are “inconceivable,” stating that Willie is “a gentle person.” According to an article in the Washington Post, Willie has dated a “harem of women,” including Meg Ryan when they were both in their late twenties and she was filming When Harry Met Sally.
But other sources say Willie’s otherwise “unassuming” personality undergoes drastic changes when he drinks, and according to a sworn statement by James Ridgeway de Szigethy, John Jr.—now a Manhattan assistant district attorney—told de Szigethy that his cousin Willie is guilty, and that the family “‘should have done something about Willie years ago when he first started doing this,’ meaning get help for him when he first started raping women.”
Publicly, the Kennedy family provides a united front, repeatedly declaring themselves “a very close family” who all express their complete support. Privately, one family friend says, “They’ll stick by Willie through thick and thin, but when this is over, and they’re all alone, they’ll beat the shit out of him.”
Throughout the trial, Willie’s extended family take their turns in the limited seats available in courtroom 411, and the press runs warm and fuzzy photos of Willie with his new dog, or out with his family, or kneeling at prayer. James Ridgeway de Szigethy recalls confronting John Jr. over the family staging such photos, thereby indicating “a public expression of confidence and trust in his cousin,” to which he says John Jr. replies, “You just don’t understand the pressure I’m under.” John Jr. reveals to de Szigethy that he doesn’t want to attend Willie’s trial, but is being forced to do so. The older Kennedys aren’t taking any chances; Newsweek reports that Willie’s mother, Jean, “has reportedly imposed a dating and drinking ban on young Kennedys” and Vanity Fair quotes a local hostess as having been told that the Kennedys “have a strategy session every night at dinner at the compound.”
“I’m the one who’s on trial,” Willie tells reporters and spectators at the courthouse, “but it’s difficult not to feel sometimes that my family is on trial for me.”
That certainly does seem true of his uncle Ted.
As Dominick Dunne writes in the October 1991 issue of Vanity Fair, “Senator Kennedy [is] already at the lowest point in his career,” but while “he has been forgiven his trespasses over and over again,” Ted now “has the earmarks of a man who has given up hope, of whom too much has been asked, who wants to abdicate all responsibility. And he drinks.”
Expectations are not high as the Massachusetts senator enters the courthouse, although cheers go up from scores of court watchers who have lined up for hours. But Ted acquits himself well—his voice cracking as he recounts his motivation for taking the boys out that night. How the recent death from cancer of Willie’s father, Stephen Smith, has left him severely depressed over the loss of a close friend. He talks about how close the family is, how he, Ethel, Eunice, Patricia, and Jackie have all rallied around their sister Jean. Willie tears up, too. One of his attorneys offers him a handkerchief.
“I wish I’d gone for a long walk on the beach instead,” Ted says of that Good Friday. “But I went to Au Bar.”
As for Willie, “I was very moved by a lot of things my uncle said,” he tells the press later that day. “I think this process has been unfair to him. I don’t say that in a bitter way. I just mean it in my heart.”
Next on the stand is Ted’s son Patrick, visibly nervous and less polished than his senator father. That same week the National Enquirer has exposed Patrick’s cocaine habit, revealing that he had a stint in rehab at age sixteen. Despite testimony that occasionally contradicts his father’s, after two hours on the stand and no questions from the defense, Patrick walks away unscathed.
Now it’s Willie’s turn. He confidently strides to the witness stand, comfortable enough to make friendly eye contact with the six jurors, four women and two men. Patricia Bowman watches Willie’s testimony from a TV in the prosecutor’s office.
Willie carefully unfolds his version of events. He turns the tables and accuses Bowman of having picked him up at Au Bar, of being the aggressor in consensual sex, claiming she was the one who unzipped his pants, and who “massaged” him to climax before he went into the water for a swim, after which they again had sex.
Then, he says, he accidentally calls her by the wrong name, at which “she got very, very upset, told me to get the hell off her.”
Willie says he walks her to her car and she drives away, yet when Willie meets up with his cousin Patrick back in the house, Bowman is inexplicably there.
By this time, he says, Anne Mercer has also arrived, and Bowman then leaves with her pal.
Moira Lasch attacks Willie’s testimony, but the three-hour cross barely fazes him. At one point, in response to the prosecution’s sarcastic questioning, Willie says, “Miss Lasch, I’ve searched myself every night since March 29 to try to find out why [she] would make an allegation against me that’s not true, that’s going to destroy my family, destroy my career, possibly send me to jail for fifteen years. I don’t know why she would do that. I don’t understand why anyone would do that.” When questioned why Bowman would have made up her accusations, Willie offers several possibilities, then quickly adds, “But that’s not the issue here. The issue here is I’m innocent. And how do you defend yourself from somebody who says the word ‘rape’ over and over again…I’d like you to tell me how to deal with it?”