Skakel Nanny Speaks after 50 Years

Fifty years ago Marie Kane departed Ireland’s County Antrim for America, leaving behind Protestant-Catholic conflict and a sheltered life. 

Just 21 at the time, she landed at JFK on May 1, 1963 and was greeted by her aunt Eileen, whose husband was the caretaker of Victor Borge's waterfront estate in Greenwich. 

Fifty years later, sitting at the dining room table of the modest apartment in Norwalk she shares with her husband Richard Horelick, Marie reflected on her younger self.

"I fell off the cabbage truck," she said as she petted her orange tabby cat she took in as a stray three years ago. “’Don't use the same towel as your dad or you'll get pregnant,'" Marie recalls her mother having warned her.

When Marie arrived in Connecticut, she joined her aunt, uncle and several cousins in the caretaker's cottage on the Borge property in Belle Haven, a private gated community in Greenwich. The first order of the day was to repay her aunt MaryAnn for AerLingus plane fare. 

"I got a summer job at the Belle Haven Beach Club at the snack bar. 'Sure, I'll eat all your ice cream,'" Marie remembered thinking. When the season ended, she headed to Brennan Employment Agency at the top of Greenwich Avenue.

"That's how I ended up with the Skakels in 1964. It was a full time, live-in nanny job, but they called me a governess," Marie explained. 

Marie signed on to care for the youngest of Anne and Rushton Skakels’ seven children, Thomas and Michael, who is out on bond after serving 11 years in prison for the 1975 murder in Greenwich of 15-year-old Martha Moxley. Michael Skakel won a new trial and was released on $1.2M bail after a judge decided he hadn’t had adequate representation in his 2002 trial.

Marie moved in with a family who was not only one the wealthiest in the country, but also an extension of the Kennedy clan. Rushton Skakel’s sister Ethel had married Robert Kennedy in 1950. Marie’s two charges were cousins of Robert F. Kennedy Junior.

"I had a bedroom near the children's bedrooms,” Marie recalled. Thomas and Michael Skakel were five- and three- years-old in 1964. “The cook and housekeeper had her own room on the same floor. They had a chauffeur too.”

"Mr. Skakel used to take the older children and the housekeeper to the city for baseball games,” Marie recalled. "One time when they'd all gone to the ball game and I stayed behind with the boys, Jackie Kennedy called on the phone. I had no idea who it was. I just wrote a message down on a piece of paper. I’m not sure of JFK had been killed yet.”

Summarizing what went wrong with the job back in 1964, Marie said, "They didn't like discipline – the kids or the parents.”

"It's not that they were unkind to me...," she said, at a loss for words to describe her employers. “I was sick all the time and they did keep sending me to the doctor. I think I was allergic to their kids," she chuckled. 

Asked what took her most by surprise when she arrived in Greenwich, Marie responded without hesitation. "Power," she said emphatically. "The power overwhelmed me. And money. Money can move mountains," she added.

Marie describes Anne Skakel as the picture of health. “She loved to play tennis,” Marie said of her employer, who later died in 1972 of cancer at the age of 42, when Michael was 12 and Thomas was 14.

"I was raised with discipline,” Marie recalled. “I thought it was very strange that they didn't give me anything to discipline their children... especially if they (Rushton and Anne) weren't going to be there all the time.”

Marie’s inability to mete out discipline to the Skakel boys had very real consequences for her. "They used to kick me. Michael and Tommy. My legs were black and blue."

Marie recalls showing her bruises to her aunt Eileen. 

"I said to her, 'I don't have to take this,' and she said, 'No you don't.' So, I told the Skakels, ‘I’m leaving. I'm not coming back,'" Marie recalled. “I lasted with them in Belle Haven five or six months.”

"Years later... when Michael Skakel had his second trial for the murder of Martha Moxley, a prosecutor tracked me down. I think his name was Carr... We were living with friends in Rowayton at the time," she said referring to herself and husband Richard. "But it was a mix-up. I was not employed by the Skakels when the murder happened. I had married Richard on June 14, 1975. But the prosecutor from Bridgeport Court was asking me questions." 

"They were inquisitive," Richard said. "They were trying to get information. But Marie wasn't even on the property when it happened."

Asked for her thoughts on the murder and court proceedings, both Marie and her husband Richard threw up their hands. 

"I won't comment on that at all," Marie said. 

"There was no material evidence," Richard said and Marie nodded her head in agreement. 

Asked whether the youngest two Skakel boys, despite their cruelty to her, were otherwise kind, Marie reflected for a moment before replying. "They were never happy."

Asserting that the truth may never come out, Richard said, "It's like JFK's murder. It's part of our history that just won't go away... They were all kids when this happened. They tried him as an adult," Richard said, shaking his head disapprovingly. 

After resigning as the Skakel governess, the young Marie Kane returned to Brennan Employment Agency. "I'm there and June Crabtree said hello and introduced herself and said she'd just gotten remarried to Bobbie Crabtree and had a baby," Marie recalled, referring to the family whose car dealerships bear their name. "'Are you looking for a job?'" Marie recalled her asking. “’You can come work for me.,’ she said."

Marie moved in with the Crabtrees in back country Greenwich and worked for the family for 16 years. In her Norwalk apartment, Marie grew animated as she shared a stack of photos of herself with the Crabtree family and a Christmas card that had just arrived from June Crabtree.

"Michael Crabtree was a ring bearer at our wedding," she said with a smile. "And I used to sing at their parties. They loved to entertain. Bobbie used to like to say, 'I stole her from theSkakels.' They treated me like one of their own. I ate my meals with them whereas with the Skakels, I ate in the kitchen with the help."

"And, yes, they let me discipline those kids," said Marie of Robert and June Crabtree. 

Like the Horelicks, Michael Skakel is living in Connecticut as he awaits a new trial.

Related Stories:
Greenwich's Skakel Walks Out of Stamford Courthouse Free on Bond 
Michael Skakel Gets Court OK to Visit Son, Relatives 
Skakel Wins Bid for New Trial in Greenwich's Martha Moxley Murder 
Moxleys Support CT Prosecutors Decision to Appeal Ruling on Skakel Conviction