STAMFORD, Conn. (AP) – A man who attended a reform school with Michael Skakel in the late 1970s challenged a claim that Skakel confessed to murder, saying the classmate who reported it was jealous of the Kennedy cousin.

Skakel, a nephew of Ethel Kennedy, is trying to win a new trial after he was convicted of killing Martha Moxley in wealthy Greenwich in 1975 when they were 15. Skakel is serving 20 years to life in prison.

Skakel’s attorneys on Monday played a videotaped deposition of John R. Simpson, who attended Elan School in Poland with Skakel and Gregory Coleman.

Coleman testified at hearings before Skakel’s trial in 2002 that Skakel confessed to killing Moxley and said he would get away with murder because “I’m a Kennedy.”

Coleman admitted to being high on heroin during his grand jury appearance and he died in 2001 after using drugs, but his testimony was read into the record during Skakel’s trial.

Simpson said he and Coleman were guarding Skakel at Elan when Coleman announced, “He just admitted that he killed this girl.”

Simpson, who is deaf in one ear, said he looked up and said to Skakel, “Did you just admit killing this girl?”

“No,” Skakel said.

“Greg, what are you talking about?” Simpson said he asked Coleman. “He just said to me, ‘No, he didn’t say that.”‘

Coleman responded, “I asked him straight out. He didn’t say yes or no. He just had that (expletive) grin on his face.”

“That unto itself doesn’t mean he’s admitting anything,” Simpson said on the tape.

Simpson said Coleman was jealous of Skakel.

“I remember him saying once to me, ‘Hey, you know, the guy is a Kennedy, you know. He doesn’t have to work for anything. Look at that. He gets everything, you know, handed to him,” Simpson said.

Simpson said Skakel denied killing Moxley when he asked about it another time. But he also said Skakel told him he was drinking that night and did not remember everything.

“There were, you know, times that I may not, you know, remember,” Simpson said Skakel told him. “But he says, ‘but I certainly don’t remember doing anything like that.”‘

Skakel’s attorneys also introduced a transcript of an interview with another Elan student, A. Everette James, who also said Skakel never confessed. Coleman testified that when Skakel made his admission, either Simpson, James or another student was present, according to Skakel’s attorneys.

Skakel, 46, is trying to win a new trial by challenging Coleman’s testimony as well as on a claim by Gitano “Tony” Bryant, a former classmate of Skakel’s who implicated his two friends in the killing in 2003.

To win a new trial, Skakel’s attorneys must prove that new evidence not available before his conviction could have changed the jury’s verdict. The non-jury hearing is expected to conclude Wednesday or Thursday, but a judge does not plan to rule for weeks or months.

Bryant has said his friends, Adolph Hasbrouck and Burt Tinsley, told him they got Moxley “caveman style” in Greenwich’s exclusive Belle Haven neighborhood.

Prosecutors have said Bryant’s claim is fabricated and that nobody saw him and his friends in Greenwich the night of Moxley’s murder.

Skakel’s attorneys played a videotaped deposition of Bryant last week. All three have invoked their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.

Also Monday, two private investigators testified that Bryant’s mother told them that her son didn’t return from Greenwich until the night of the murder.

The investigators, employed by Skakel’s defense team, also said Barbara Bryant told them that Bryant told her the two friends he implicated stayed in Greenwich the night Moxley was murdered Oct. 30, 1975.

The testimony by Michael Udvardy and Catherine Harkness was based on an untaped, unscheduled interview and contradicted what Bryant’s mother said in a videotaped deposition played in court on Friday. In the video, Barbara Bryant said her son went to Greenwich with his friends, but he returned during the day.

“She stated they had gone to Belle Haven, Connecticut, that night,” Harkness said. “She didn’t state a time. She just stated he came home that night.”

Skakel’s defense also tried to show that Barbara Bryant and her son first discussed the murder in 1975, when she showed her son a New York Times article about the murder. Bryant then told her that his two friends stayed overnight in Greenwich, Harkness said.

AP-ES-04-23-07 1733EDT