Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 15, 1991 TAG: 9104150158
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: FOX BUTTERFIELD/ THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: PALM BEACH, FLA. LENGTH: Long
There are reports that the 29-year-old accuser has offered somewhat different versions of the events at the estate in three interviews with the police, the investigators say. In addition, there are discrepancies in the accounts provided by two friends of the woman who say they picked her up at the oceanside estate at 4:30 a.m. on March 30.
Amid questions raised about the absence of an arrest, legal experts here said the two-week lag between a rape accusation and the filing of charges is not unusual.
"When you have a situation where essentially no one witnessed it, you have to take your time," said Wendell M. Graham, a defense lawyer in Miami.
"It has nothing to do with the Kennedys being involved," Graham said Sunday. "Two weeks is simply no time at all." Generally, he said, the interim is up to three weeks, though in a complicated case it could be a few months.
Among the questions being asked by the police and by Kennedy family investigators is, who took an antique vase and a photograph of the Kennedys from the house that night?
Anne Mercer, 32, a friend of the accuser, has said that after the woman called her from the Kennedy mansion saying that she had been raped and asking to be picked up, Mercer found the woman standing outside holding a vase and a photo. The accuser took the objects, Mercer said, because "she wanted to prove she had been there."
But the first two official reports written after the accusation was made and based on interviews with the woman that afternoon made no mention of the vase or the photograph. The reports, by the Palm Beach Police Department and the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office, were made public Friday.
If the accuser took the objects to prove she had been at the Kennedy estate, why would she not mention them to the police?
Members of the extensive team of lawyers and private detectives hired by the Kennedys said they believe the vase holds an important clue to what happened. They said it may not have been the accuser who took it, but rather Mercer's boyfriend, Chuck Desiderio, who drove with Mercer to the Kennedy estate.
In 1979 Desiderio, 33, was charged with larceny in the theft of auto parts. Court records show that the case was eventually dismissed.
Last week Desiderio's father became incensed when at least two of the three private detectives working for the Kennedys went to the restaurant the father owns to talk to his son. Accounts of the confrontation differ.
Joe Mincberg, a criminal lawyer who is working for Mercer, has said the investigators threatened Desiderio. If true, this would amount to tampering with a witness, a crime. Mark Schnapp, a Miami lawyer and former federal prosecutor who is representing Smith, has strongly denied the charge.
What happened, according to some people familiar with the encounter, is that the Kennedys' detectives mentioned that they knew something about Desiderio's past.
If it was Chuck Desiderio who took the vase and photograph, he could be charged with a felony.
The objects were recovered by police at the home Mercer shares with Desiderio and her father.
In addition to the mystery about the vase, there is also uncertainty about the accuser's actions.
According to the sheriff's report, the woman said that after she was sexually assaulted by the swimming pool, she went back inside the Kennedy house, where Smith tried to persuade her she had not been raped. If she was afraid and distraught, as the report says, why did she go back inside the house?
The woman had driven to the Kennedy estate in her own car, the report said. So why did she not simply get in her car and leave?
Instead, she told police, she called Anne Mercer, who lives at least 20 minutes away. According to the sheriff's report, Mercer found the woman inside the house and "escorted her out of the house." But Mercer has told reporters she found the woman outside the house.
The accuser's account is further complicated by a version told to the press by Michele Cassone, who was with her at the nightclub Au Bar where she met Smith, and who was at the Kennedy house that night.
Cassone had been invited by Patrick Kennedy, the son of Sen. Edward Kennedy and a cousin of Smith. Cassone has said she saw two people saying good night in the parking lot about the time the accuser said she was raped.
Kennedy associates say the only people who were up at that time were Smith and the accuser. Did the woman drive away by herself?
There are other reports from the Kennedy family that the accuser drove away in her own car and then returned. If she was terrified, why would she do that?
Mercer has a sister, Susan Mercer, who lives only a few hundred feet from the Kennedy house. Could the accuser have driven there first and called Anne Mercer from there?
In any event, if the accuser's story is correct, that Anne Mercer picked her up, what happened to her car?
To further complicate the case, there are several reports that Anne Mercer, who was also at the nightclub that evening and who sat at the Kennedy table, became angry at Sen. Kennedy. Nathaniel Read, a local resident who said he witnessed the confrontation, said Mercer was shouting at the senator, calling him arrogant.
The police report on the accuser's rape allegation says the incident was "alcohol related," but does not specify who had been drinking. Was it Smith, or the accuser, or both?
Finally, why have the accuser and Mercer hired prominent criminal-defense lawyers? The accuser's allegations are being investigated by the police and will be prosecuted by the state attorney. Witnesses do not normally need a lawyer.
One theory that some people in the investigation are pursuing is that the case may involve several disconnected elements: perhaps some kind of a sexual assault, but also hijinks in stealing the vase and photograph.
by CNB