STAMFORD, Conn. — The retired Greenwich, Conn., police detective who dusted off the Martha Moxley murder case in the mid-1990s and closed it with the arrest of Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel denied Tuesday that a book he collaborated on influenced his investigation or motivated him in any way.

Frank Garr, the lead investigator for the state prosecutors who won a murder conviction against Skakel in 2002, withstood a barrage of questions from lawyers for Skakel, 46, about the 2004 book "Conviction: Solving the Moxley Murder" by veteran journalist Leonard Levitt.

The testimony in Stamford, Conn., is part of a hearing on Skakel's motion for a retrial based on evidence his lawyers uncovered since he was found guilty in 2002 of killing his 15-year-old neighbor Martha Moxley in 1975.

Skakel's appellate attorneys claim that if Garr had disclosed that he had agreed to help Levitt with his book before Skakel's trial, Skakel's defense attorney could have used that information to provide further support for his unsuccessful claim that the prosecution wanted to solve Connecticut's most-famous murder case at any cost.

Attorney Hubert Santos repeatedly referred to a line in Levitt's book in which he claimed he and Garr made a "pact" in 1998 to write the book so that both could get credit for keeping the cold case alive. Garr denied helping Levitt in any detail until after Skakel was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

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"I discussed nothing with him that he would not have already known from other sources ... He had an abundance of information," Garr said.

Skakel's trial lawyer, Michael Sherman, was called back to the witness stand Tuesday to further describe his efforts to get prosecutors to turn over information about possible book or movie deals by witnesses and state employees working on the case. Sherman said the issue went to the "credibility of Garr and the integrity of the investigation." He said he would have argued to the jury that Garr expected a "pot of gold at the end of the rainbow" following a successful prosecution.

Most true-crime books actually pay very little to authors, and Levitt has said he and Garr didn't make much. But if the pair thought they stood to earn a profitable motion picture option, it would have represented a major incentive for Garr to do whatever it took to get Skakel convicted, Sherman and Santos have argued.

Garr testified that he never told prosecutor Jonathan Benedict about his agreement to help Levitt with his book after the trial.

"He asked for my help. I was glad he was writing a book about this case," Garr testified. "Any agreement I made with Mr. Levitt was after the proceedings was over."

The testimony about the book is part of a civil court proceeding in which Skakel, a first cousin of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is seeking a new trial on multiple grounds. Chief among them is Skakel's former Brunswick School classmate Gitano "Tony" Bryant statements to the defense that two other teenagers boasted of having gone "caveman" on Martha on Oct. 30, 1975.

Martha was murdered with a golf club linked to a set belonging to Skakel's mother, whose death from cancer in 1973 led him to years of alcohol abuse and erratic behavior.