Jean and her other son, Steve, and her daughters, Kym and Amanda, were present on the first day of testimony. Wearing a lime green linen dress, white heels, and pearl earrings, Jean looked elegant but somehow very tiny, as if dwarfed by the chaos around her. Never before had Jean Kennedy Smith been thrust under such a hot spotlight. If anything, she had done all she could to stay out of the public eye, and even her participation in the Very Special Arts was pushing it as far as her comfort level could go when it came to being the focus of attention. “To go through this so soon after Steve was taken from her was very difficult,” one friend of hers recalled. “She was used to turning to him in times of crisis. Without him, she felt lost.” In the end, the judge ruled that because Jean was a potential witness at the trial, she would not be permitted to sit in the courtroom during testimony.
At the end of that first day, the members of the family who had flown down for the proceedings gathered at the estate on North Ocean Boulevard to discuss how it had gone and what was in store. In all, nineteen members of the Kennedy family would attend the trial, many of them present at that gathering after the first day of testimony.
Perhaps emblematic of the star power of such a large congregation of Kennedy family members, and of how no one is immune to being dazzled by their presence, Mary Lupo, the Florida circuit judge presiding over the Smith sexual assault case, asked Roy Black to take her picture with Sarge on his first day in her courtroom. Of course Eunice was also present, as was her son Bobby. Jackie had also wanted to appear and had actually made plans to do so, but at the last minute Jean called her to say she feared that her presence would cause a media circus that would be impossible to contain. Jackie had to agree. For her part, Joan was just too upset about the matter to be present for it, and Rose, of course, was much too aged at 101. John Kennedy Jr. would show up before the end of the trial, though Caroline would not. Ted wasn’t allowed to be present for the proceedings since he, like Jean, would likely be a witness.
The mood at the manse was serious, but not necessarily depressed. Ethel and Pat added a certain levity to the atmosphere, as they usually did to any family gathering. “Did you see the way we looked on the news?” Ethel asked Pat. “You and I look like dowagers, Pat! When did we get so old?” Pat laughed. “One thing is for sure,” she said, “we could both use new wardrobes and maybe even a fashion consultant.” At that, Eunice piped in, “Where is that Jackie Kennedy when you need her?”
In discussions to determine how the family members should be transported to and from the courthouse in the days to come, the idea of having them show up in limousines was floated by one of the third generation. “Absolutely not,” Jean said. “We will continue to show up in the Mercury station wagon. And it will be driven by Bridey [Sullivan, Jean’s longtime housekeeper].” Jean understood that public relations was as important as any legal strategy at this time when the eyes of the world were once again on the Kennedys, and she didn’t want the family to appear privileged or entitled. That said, it was a curious sight to see the famous Kennedys tumbling out of a beat-up 1989 station wagon driven by their housekeeper. Also, there would be no parties during the time this crisis was going on, no public outings, and, most definitely, no photos taken of anyone coming and going from expensive “in” restaurants.
“We will behave in a respectful way,” Jean told all of the nieces and nephews. “I don’t want to hear a single peep out of anyone,” she said. Ted Kennedy, also present at that dinner meeting, addressed the third generation as well. “This is the time during which we all have the opportunity to show the world what we are made of,” he told them. “We have to stay strong, be composed, and behave in a dignified manner. Is that understood?” Everyone agreed. “We’ll attend Mass at St. Edward’s every Sunday, as always, and we’ll receive Communion, as always,” Ted continued. “Understood?” Again, everyone nodded in agreement. Though they were all adults at this point, there was still a sense—especially given the circumstances—that the next generation had to be told how to behave.
One of the more unusual days of the trial—the third day, during which Patricia Bowman was scheduled to testify—found Eunice Kennedy Shriver being introduced by her nephew William to the press corps outside the courtroom, literally hundreds of reporters. With William at one side of her, Jean at her other side, and Ethel standing behind her, it looked as if the lionesses in the family had come to protect their cub. Standing before a bank of microphones in a soft drizzle, and holding an armful of sweaters and shawls she had brought with her to protect her and the other Kennedy women from the air-conditioning inside the courtroom, Eunice held court. “I’m very happy to be here with my sister Jean,” she told the press in a voice that had almost the exact same cadence as her brother the late president’s. “She is a very courageous woman,” she continued, of Jean. “She has raised four very wonderful children and enjoyed a long and marvelous marriage with a wonderful man, Stephen Smith, who recently left us. She has also started Very Special Arts, which is an international program that gives arts to all disabled people. So I am very happy to be here for her. As for William, he has the same kind of loyalty from his cousins, who he grew up with and who love him very much. Most of them are coming down here to stay with him, thirty of them in fact. That loyalty was taught by our parents,” she continued. If the Kennedys were American royalty, Eunice was most certainly the dowager queen, or at least she comported herself as if she were, especially as she ended her speech in a very royal way with, “So to all of those who are going to watch this trial over the next—this rather sad trial, over the next two weeks, I wish you a happy Christmas and the gift of loyal family relationships. Thank you very much.” In her view, the family was on trial as much as was Willie. She felt a need to remind people of Kennedy family values. Later, she admitted, “There was a lot more I wanted to say, as one can well imagine. However, one has to know when to stop, doesn’t one?”
When Patricia Bowman showed up, the press corps didn’t even recognize her. The single mother of a two-year-old, Bowman had never made any public appearances, so few people even knew what she looked like. Imagine the mad scurry to photograph her when the identity of the attractive yet also ordinary-looking five-foot-six-inch woman in a pageboy haircut finally became clear. Dressed very conservatively in a gray suit, accessorized by a single strand of pearls and a gold pin, she struggled through graphic testimony that was clearly very difficult for her.
Bowman said that she had met William at the bar, thought he was a kind, charming man, and happily gave him a ride back to the Kennedy manse. “I was taking him to the Kennedy home, which I assumed would have security,” she said. “There was a senator there. I didn’t feel I was in any danger whatsoever.” But once at the estate, he allegedly disrobed to take a naked swim, and that’s when things went sour. He later tackled her, she claimed, pinned her to the ground, “and I was telling him ‘no’ and ‘stop’ and I tried to arch my back to get him off of me, but he slammed me back on the ground and then he pushed my dress up and he raped me. I thought he was going to kill me.” During one dramatic moment, she pointed at Willie Smith and said to his lawyer, “Your client raped me!”
Ethel and Eunice sat in the spectators’ section of the courtroom and seemed not to blink the entire time Bowman told her tearful story. Occasionally, Ethel could be seen whispering angrily in Eunice’s ear and shaking her head in the negative. Eunice—her face usually devoid of any expression—would inevitably raise both her palms to Ethel as if signaling her to calm down. When the testimony became particularly graphic, both women looked extremely embarrassed and appeared to wish for a hole to crawl into. At one point, Eunice reached into her purse, pulled her rosary from it, and began praying.
The problem with Patricia Bowman’s testimony was that there were numerous inconsistencies and gaps in her account, which the defense was able to use to its great advantage. Perhaps what many people will remember from the gavel-to-gavel televised trial coverage—besides the graphic testim
ony—is the gray electronic circle superimposed over Bowman’s face, lest her identity be revealed on television.
The day Ted Kennedy testified was of course one of the high points of the proceedings. He looked surprisingly fit, and it was clear that he had been taking care of himself. Bolstered by his new relationship with Victoria Reggie, who was in the courtroom and with whom he would share an occasional look, he was in much better shape than he’d been in prior public appearances. In fact, he’d lost twenty-five pounds and his skin even had a glow to it. Vicki had also helped coach him on his testimony. His sister Pat was also present in the courtroom. Testifying as to the events that led up to the alleged attack, the club he and his family members attended, what they did there and who they met, Ted seemed in complete control, totally commanding the room during his forty-five-minute testimony. He was emotional when he explained why he had been in Palm Beach that fateful weekend—this being because he wanted to spend more time with his sister Jean following the death of her husband, Stephen.
“[He] was very special to me,” Ted said of Stephen Smith as Willie brushed away tears. “He was next to a brother, really. We lost a brother in the war. When Jean married Steve, we had another brother. And when Steve was gone, something left all of us when we buried him.”
The jury was completely transfixed as Ted talked about the night on the patio of the Palm Beach estate during which he and Jean became lost in melancholy memories, and how difficult it was for him, preventing him from being able to sleep, and thus his night on the town with his son and nephew. It was as if the jurors were getting an inside peek into the lives of the enigmatic Kennedys; based on the rapt expressions on their faces, they were swept away by the experience.
“Could you tell us who Bill Barry is, what his relationship to the family is?” Roy Black asked.
“Well, Bill Barry was a former FBI agent who now specializes in security matters,” Ted answered. “He was probably Jean and Steve’s—one of their two or three best friends. He was one of my brother Bob’s very best friends. And he provided security for my brother Bob in the 1968 campaign. And he was with my brother when he was killed.” Black added, “In fact, is he not the man who knocked the gun out of Sirhan Sirhan’s hand?” Ted answered, “Yes.” Of course, none of this had anything to do with the trial, but it was all inside information about the Kennedys that seemed to personalize them for the jury and, in a way, help the jury to feel more sympathetic not only to the family but also, by extension, to the defendant.
Black asked if the family had tried to spend more time with Jean after Stephen’s death. “I have tried,” Ted said. “We spend a lot of time together. I think my sister Pat, who is here, and Eunice have spent a lot of time with her too. I have tried to. The other members of the family… Ethel has. Jackie has. We are a very close family.”
Jean’s testimony was brief. Wearing a light blue linen jacket and large glasses, she looked like a college professor—an angry one at that. She seemed confident, poised—and annoyed by the questioning. The only reason her son had been in Palm Beach, she explained, was because it was the first Easter without her husband and she wanted her children to be with her. She didn’t know anything about the events of that Good Friday, she said, and heard no screams or anything else that would have given her some hint as to what was going on below her bedroom window as she slept.
After her testimony, Jean would return to the family estate, where she would watch Willie’s testimony on television while repeatedly saying the rosary.
There was a tense moment in the courtroom prior to Willie’s testimony when Bobby Kennedy Jr. was unhappy with his seat. The Kennedys were allotted three seats in the courtroom, as was the family of the accuser. Kennedy wanted to sit on the aisle for his cousin’s testimony in order to have a better view. However, that seat was taken. “I’d appreciate it if you’d move,” he told the occupant, who refused to do so. Kennedy then went to a bailiff and asked that the person be moved. When he refused to accommodate him, Kennedy went back and persisted. “You don’t understand,” he said, “we’re family.” The person sitting in the seat said, “You don’t understand, we’re family, too!” It turned out that the person sitting in the seat was one of Patricia Bowman’s stepbrothers. Kennedy finally relented and went to another seat. Just as he sat down, he looked over and saw his mother, Ethel, regarding him carefully, a look of extreme disapproval washing over her face.
In his own testimony, which took just twenty-nine minutes, William Kennedy Smith—called “Will” by his attorney in court—admitted to having sex with Patricia Bowman, but claimed it was consensual and that she had even guided his hand along the way. He said that the consensual sex with Bowman turned ugly when he called her the wrong name—“Kathy.” He said, “She sort of snapped… got very upset.” But he also said she apologized before leaving the estate, saying, “I am sorry I got upset. I had a wonderful night. You’re a terrific guy.” But then she showed up at the estate just minutes later claiming that he had raped her, and repeatedly calling him “Michael.” It certainly sounded like both had had plenty of alcohol that night. At one point during his testimony, Willie Smith testified that he had ejaculated twice, once on himself and then soon after while having intercourse with his accuser. “What are you, some kind of sex machine?” prosecutor Moira Lasch asked, her voice dripping with disdain. In the spectator seats, Ethel was noticed shaking her head and scowling.
The difference between Smith’s testimony and his accuser’s was glaring. Whereas she sometimes seemed confused and unclear as to the chain of events, he was precise and specific. Some argued that the victim’s memory would have been understandably foggy due to the traumatic experience she’d been through, and Smith’s would have been sharper since he was a public person, accustomed to being in the spotlight, and also well rehearsed by his battery of Kennedy attorneys. Others just felt that she was lying and he was not.
The trial lasted from December 2 through December 11, 1991. The outcome was swift. The jury of six (four of them women) deliberated just over an hour—including the time it took to pick a foreman—before returning with a verdict of “not guilty.” Only reasonable doubt had to be shown, and in their estimation, it had been. Jean was in the courtroom for the verdict and seemed close to tears when it was read. Willie looked over at her and smiled broadly. As she left the courtroom, she seemed to be on shaky legs, as if the ordeal had finally gotten to her. She had been a rock throughout the entire trying experience, but now that the matter was finally concluded, it was as if she had nothing left. “Yes, I am relieved,” she told one reporter. “I am also exhausted, as you can imagine. But above all, I am thankful. I never doubted my son, not for a second.”
Forty-five minutes later, Willie stood before a bank of microphones in front of the Palm Beach County Courthouse. “They say that gratitude is the memory of the heart,” Willie told the crowd of reporters and other onlookers after his acquittal, referring to a quote from Jean-Baptiste Massieu, the eighteenth-century French priest and scholar. “And I have enough memories in my heart to last a lifetime. I want to say thank you, most of all to my mother. I don’t think it’s possible for a child ever to repay the debt they owe their parents. I only hope I can be as good a parent to my children as my mother has been to me.” Jean looked on, seeming exhausted and, finally, almost at the verge of collapsing. “My life was in their [the jurors’] hands and I’m so grateful for the job they did and the seriousness with which they took it,” he said. “I have an enormous debt to the system and to God and I have a terrific faith in both of them. And I’m just really, really happy. So we’ll see you guys later.”
“It’s the [best] acquittal that money can buy,” Patricia Bowman told Dominick Dunne when he interviewed her after the verdict. “They had nine months to come up with their story. I had to give five statements. My deposition took three days—720-some pages—and there were three defense attorneys and two prosecutors and one of my attorneys. And this is over a period of eight
months that I had to give these statements. When did Willie ever give a statement? He had nine months. He had five of my statements and everybody else’s statements. He had the forensic evidence. He had all kinds of resources, which they’ve already testified that they used. He had all this material with which to concoct a story. And that’s what he did. He concocted a story. He fit every nook and cranny. Everything I couldn’t remember, because of rape-trauma syndrome, he could come up with something for. Everything that fit in with the forensic evidence, he found an answer for it.”
She continued, “I’m now standing up and saying, ‘No, I am not crazy. I am not a drug addict. I’ve never been treated for any drug problems. I’ve never been treated for any alcohol problem, because I’ve never had one. I’m not nuts. I’m not a prostitute. I’m not promiscuous. I have a small child. I have a life, a beautiful, full life that was tampered with, that a man tried to destroy on March 30, and that a group of men tried to destroy after that through the criminal process. But they haven’t destroyed me. I’m a survivor. And I will stand up each and every time and say, ‘What you did to me was wrong.’ ”
In 2004, a former employee of the Center for International Rehabilitation alleged that William Kennedy Smith had sexually assaulted her five years earlier when he was her superior, and she brought a civil action against him. Smith denied the charges, calling them “outrageous” and saying that “family and personal history have made me unusually vulnerable to these kinds of charges.” Her attorney, moreover, had to acknowledge that the employee continued to work for Smith for the next six months, and during that time had consensual sex with him on a number of occasions. It didn’t make sense to a lot of observers that she would continue to be intimate with him if he had raped her. On January 5, 2005, the court dismissed the lawsuit.
Today, William Kennedy Smith leads a quiet life of service, practicing medicine and heading an organization he started, Physicians Against Land Mines, a laudable venture that calls to mind Princess Diana’s commitment to land mine eradication.
After Camelot: A Personal History of the Kennedy Family--1968 to the Present Page 42