george zimmerman's attorney is here to answer them. and more from the interview that people are still talking about. >> who do you think killed bonny? >> bonny had people that she burned. how bad, i don't know. >> now the man who sued robert blake and won $13 million for bonny lee bakley's family fires back. this is "piers morgan tonight." good evening. our big story tonight. a familiar headline. a kennedy in the news for the wrong reason. kerry kennedy, ex-wife of new york governor andrew cuomo, was arrested over the weekend. according to the police report, kennedy was involved in a hit and run when her 2008 lux sus struck a tractor trailer on friday morning. police say she drove away and was found behind the wheel of her damaged suv. voluntarily took breathalyzer, blood and urine tests. which showed no drugs in her system. kennedy may have had a seizure and said she told police she might have mistakenly taken the sleeping pill ambien. patrick kennedy, co-founder of one mind for research. patrick kennedy, welcome back to the show. let me just start with the sad news. that came about your cousin kerry kennedy. there's been lots of newspaper coverage. when they're involved in this kind of thing. i'm sure you get sick and tired of reading about the curse of the kennedys and so on. what can you tell me about what happened to her? >> women, piers, as you know, something very similar happened to me when i was in congress many years ago. i was arrested for a dwi because i was under the influence of ambien and feneregen because i had an upset stomach. i was using the ambien to help me with my sleep because i was trying to live without opiotes. when i initially thought i was treating my own addiction through things that i didn't consider to be drugs. this was a prescription, by the way. so i thought, hey, this is all right. i found i got into a lot of trouble. and it wasn't the alcohol or the opiates which i had used previously that got me behind a wheel and driving while intoxicated. it was ambien. so i can't tell you for certain what happened to kerry. i can tell you, in my own circumstance, i was lucky to get mental health treatment for my addiction and depression. and what i'm doing out here, as you speak to me tonight, i'm out in minnesota. the home of paul wellstone. celebrating the paul wellstone mental health parody act. required mental health and addict services to be treated as other physical illnesses are treated. of course as you know, piers, insurance companies discriminate routinely against these kinds of mental illnesses because, as you pointed out at the beginning your show, there's a sensational quality to this. and of course that is what keeps most americans from really seeking mental health treatment. even though they might need it. it's because it's still ma tized. it's discriminated against. and all i know is i think our country obviously would be much better off if we take a lesson from paul wellstone and that historic bill that pete diminicih co-sponsored, republican and democrat together. acknowledging these illnesses are physical illnesses. no different than any other physical illnesses. and need to be treated in the same regard. >> i think it's an excellent campaign. i congratulate you on the work you've done with it. return to kerry briefly. have you managed to speak with her at all? >> i was with kerry last week. we celebrated my cousin, matt's, wedding, himself a week just prior to mine. we were all down as a family on the cape. she is an amazing woman. i -- i don't personally see her as suffering from the same irish flu so to speak that i suffer from. i think this was an out of character-type incident. and i understand she's done all the necessary disclosures. and gotten the necessary tests and the like. and that it's probably a prescription medication or it's a seizure disorder of some sort. and so i know as a society we sensationalize these issues because it does involve a motor vehicle accident. and when it does, these things obviously become very sensationalized. i think, hopefully, at the end of the day, just as in my colleague's jesse jackson circumstance, we don't end up continuing to perpetuate the stigma around anything that is kind of behavioral because we misunderstand that the brain is part of the broad and that these behaviors that often lead to sleepy driving or dwis or any other kinds of behavior, that justy didn't feel comfortable talking about, are all things that i think all of us in our lives deal with to some degree or another. either in our own lives or in our family's life. and i think it's important as a society we begin to talk about these things and actually treat them as the physical illnesses that they are. >> two months ago, your cousin in law, mary richardson kenny, committed suicide, following a long struggle with depression. and a messy divorce from kerry's brother, bobby jr. would you categorize what she went through as the kind of thing that you were talking about in terms of people who get stigma titzed and sensationalized? >> well, listen, piers, if she had been suffering from cancer, or diabetes or some other acceptable illness, she wouldn't have had any problem getting the necessary help. because she wouldn't have felt bad about herself. in getting mental health care. but unfortunately, in our country, we stigmatize mental health care. we treat it as a prejortive. we even call it mental health care as opposed to health care. in a sense, we segregate it. as you know from 50 years ago in the battles for civil rights, who wanted to drink from the colored water fountain? who wanted to go to be treated differently? mental health today is in a similar circumstance. where people are segregated. and what that ends up doing is adding insult to injury. if you have a depression, like mary had, if you're battling, you have the added insult of a society that doesn't accept this as a legitimate illness. and, therefore, you feel smed ofns the depression. as you know, piers, not only did my cousin mary suffer from this, but our returning veterans, many of whom are resorting to suicide as the only way out. it's just unacceptable, piers. we need to come up with a different attitude towards these mental illnesses so that we don't make people feel when they're trying to get help that they're -- it's unacceptable to get that help. >> tell me, patrick, i mean, you are a member of the kennedy dynasty. often described as america's royal family. whenever any member of the family gets involved in any kind of incident, it's always splattered across the papers. it's discussed on television shows. et cetera, et cetera. how much of a pressure does the family feel about that kind of thing? >> well, pierce, like i said in my own circumstance, i was very fortunate. my constituents in rhode island knew me. they knew i had challenges. but they also knew that i worked hard and i cared. and i got re-elected. after the arrest and the dwi. but i got re-elected because i talked about it. i spoke openly about it. because i knew that that's what my constituents wanted. and that's what they were anxious to hear. and, in fact, many of them started talking to me about their own sets of challenges that they felt ashamed about. and in a sense, piers, you know, even though i grew up in a very different way from many of my constituents, they related to my experience of fighting not only a mental illness but the stigma that comes with that mental illness. and i think, pierce, the greatest solution is that we need to open up the dialogue. we can't stigmatize these illnesses anymore. and i think not only in my own family's case, which is just another family out there struggling, this is a common struggle. there's not a family in america that doesn't have a child with autism, a parent with alzheimer's. a brother or sister with depression, addiction. you know, these are all illnesses that affect our behavior. and then we can't reject our family members because they act strange. and of course we do because we call them crazy. nuts. psycho. these are all the prejortive terms we use to describe people who are suffering from a mental illness. and who would want to be acknowledged as having suffered from a mental illness if they're called those words? we need to change the dialogue and open up our arms and our hearts to all around us. because as i said, piers, it's every single family in america. >> well, patrick, i've interviewed you twice now in the last few weeks. you speak with great candor, great passion. great intelligence. and i really admire what you're doing here. and i think, you know, you speak from your family's experiences but also, as you say, this is something that touches almost every family in america. in some way. and it has to be taken more seriously. and i do wish you all the best of luck with your campaign. i thank you for coming back on the show. >> thank you, piers. >> coming up next, the latest on the trayvon martin case. explosive development that nobody saw coming. george zimman's attorney fires back at shocking accusations against his client. ♪ ♪ i want to go ♪ i want to win [ breathes deeply ] ♪ this is where the dream begins ♪ ♪ i want to grow ♪ i want to try ♪ i can almost touch the sky [ male announcer ] even the planet has an olympic dream. dow is proud to support that dream by helping provide greener, more sustainable solutions from the olympic village to the stadium. solutionism. the new optimism.™ ♪ this dream [ ding! ] losing your chex mix too easily? time to deploy the boring-potato chip decoy bag. then no one will want to steal the deliciousness. [ male announcer ] with a variety of tastes and textures, only chex mix is a bag of interesting. trouble with a car insurance claim. [ voice of dennis ] switch to allstate. their claim service is so good, now it's guaranteed. [ normal voice ] so i can trust 'em. unlike randy. are you in good hands? somebody didn't book with travelocity, with 24/7 customer support to help move them to the pool daddy promised! look at me, i'm swimming! somebody, get her a pony! [ female announcer ] the travelocity guarantee. from the price to the room to the trip you'll never roam alone. shocking new developments in the trayvon martin case today. witness number nine charges that george zimmerman started when they were both children and continued till they were teenagers. none of these charges will be admissible in trial. contending it's not relevant to the issues of the case. so what will all this mean in court, if anything? joining me now exclusively is george zimmerman's attorney mar o'meara. these are potentially damaging allegations. what can you tell me about them? >> on the face of it, you're right, they seem damaging. of course as you mentioned my frustration is they're absolutely not relevant to anything that is at hand in the true case. they're not admissible. not going to get it into a courtroom. nor will they get before a judge in any way. the frustration i have is these allegations which george contends are untrue. now we need to spend our resources and time rebutting them. and actually to put it in a difficult if not delicate position of deciding how much we attack the source of these -- this story, or just leave it be and move on to what really counts. >> the woman is now in her 20s, from orlando. she is described in various newspaper reports as somebody whose parents were close to the zimmerman family. do you know if she is actually a relative or not? >> according to the court's order, allowing for the release of her statement, i'm allowed to state the relationship. and we state it as what it is. which is he is a cousin to this woman. >> so it's his cousin. and she says that over a period of a number of years george would molest and grope her when she went to the zimmerman family home. it's actually on audio. this has been released too today. let's listen to what she says in her own words. >> it started when i was 6. he's about -- almost two years older than i am. he would reach under the blankets and try to do things and i would try to push him off but he was bigger and stronger and older and -- it was in front of everybody. and i don't know how i didn't say anything but i just didn't know any better. >> clearly very emotional testimony there from this woman on this recording. it's hard to work out who her motivation is. do you have any suspicions yourself as to why she came forward and said this now? >> there actually were some other events that happened in the family dynamics that we will get into if we need to. i will remind you, piers, as i'm sure you're aware of, her first statement was the day before. she called anonymously. and said the whole zimmerman family were a bunch of racists. that all them were racists. and that george was. though she could not come up with any indications hoff examples of how he was it the fbi who seemingly has completed their report has said the exact opposite. that george is not a racist. and even with their intense looking into him, they cannot come up with one example of it. so i would suggest that maybe her first statement suggests racism questions her credibility. the next day she makes up allegations about sexual abuse. also seemingly don't have any corroboration to them. >> she is also on the audiotape talking about the racism claim. she doesn't make it specifically about george so much as his family. let's listen to this. >> i was afraid that he may have done something because the kid was black. because growing up they always made -- him and his family have always made statements that they don't like black people, if they don't act like white people. >> on that specific point, could that be admissible? a family member alleging racism from george's family? >> i think that if they could tie that to an event of george's and if, in fact, they had some other evidence supporting a suggestion of racism. we know this case began with the suggestion that george profiled trayvon because he was a black male. it seems the state has left that behind. or the trayvon martin family representative left that behind. but if they were going back there, then potentially that part could be relevant. nothing about the sexual abuse allegations but that one issue, it might be. >> there's been a fairly extraordinary response i think from trayvon martin's family by their attorney benjamin krump which says as follows. witness number nine would be a rebuttal witness, very similar to that in sandusky trial, showing that george zimmerman has a history of violence and manipulation. zimmerman's mentality is very relevant to this trial. because it seemed pretty gratuitous to lump in the name sandusky into all this. because everybody obviously associates him and that name with serious child abuse. >> well, you know, mr. krump has said in the past my client was an racist murderer. he has said then my client shouldn't have gotten out of the car. he feels as though he needs to say these things to represent the mart family and that has a benefit to his position, he has the right i guess to say that. this is a charges of second degree murder case. the question is did george zimmerman act in appropriate self-defense. we know he has the broken nose and the head. i think if we focus on those objective facts all they periphery, which, again, will never make it into a courtroom, needs to be left just there, on the periphery. >> you tried to have judge lester removed. i presume after this huge dump of stuff today. that feeling has been reinforced, is it? >> well, actually, i had asked the state. we filed a motion this morning asking the state not to release the information and here's the reason. if judge lester grants it, i certainly think he should based on the rule. if he grants it, then all of his recent rulings, including the decision to release witness ne's statements, would be subject to review or reconsideration. so we had asked the state this morning to just delay since there was no rush to do this, delay till we had an opportunity for the subsequent judge to review it. they decided not to. >> mark o'mara, as always, thank you very much for coming on the show. we appreciate you giving us the first response it it's certainly a fascinating twist in what has been a fascinating saga. thank you. >> great to be here, piers. >> cnn spoke to the father of the witness on the line and he says no one from the family will be speaking to the media about the allegations. next, a winning or losing strategy. people accuse you of a crime, you have every reason to go after them pretty hard. i'm going to continue going after him. i'm very proud of the record i had in my business career. helping turn around the olympics. and as the governor of the state of massachusetts. but what does it say about a president whose record is so poor that all he can do in his campaign is attack me? >> mitt romney on fox taking exception to the way president obama's campaign has characterized his role at bain capital. is this an issue that will get him traction with voters? here now are our other big story is president obama's former chief of staff william daley. a lot of heat stoked up by the democrats about apparent criminal mitt romney hiding all sorts of dark secret from us. clearly deliberate campaign to smear him. is it valid? >> i would disagree with you, piers, on that comment to smear. nobody has said he committed a felony it the question is, as you know, you've reported, there is a disagreement about some -- his statement, whether he was in charge of bain, whether he was running bain, whether he was therefore responsible. has done nothing wrong in his tenure as bain. filed certain documents that said he was ceo at the time. so either you take credit and responsibility for that period or you weren't running it. so just explain what happened here. either there was a mistake. it wasn't true. you weren't running the company. or if you were running the company, then take credit or responsibility for what happened during your watch, the way governor romney has spoken about his tenure and his pride in being a business person. then talk about what happened in your company during that period. there's no allegation that anything wrong happened during that. so talk about it. and be responsible for it. and done run away from it. >> what is clear is that president obama and his team had decided that mitt romney's number one vulnerability is his record at bain capital. at the same time, mitt romney is trying to turn this into his number one strength. in other words, ran a very successful company. i created thousands and thousands of jobs. i made a lot of money. i'm a proud american. what's wrong with that? it comes down to whether the american public are going to agree with your guy, who says that romney was a job wrecker, you know, buying companies, destroying them, fleecing them, making money. or whether they believe mitt romney. why do you think it's this issue that president obama feels so strongly is the key one? >> well, look it, governor romney from the very beginning has said i have the credibility to be president because i ran a business. that's been basically the sum and substance of his argument as to why at this difficult time economically he should be put in by the american people as president. as though being ceo of a company is somehow a qualification and sets you apart from other people to be president. the truth is, having spent a year as chief of staff, this analogy of the president to a ceo or because someone's been a ceo, therefore, that's a great qualification to be president, is ridiculous. >> yeah, but hang on, hang on -- >> presidents in our -- great presidents in our history who have been ceos of companies, it doesn't -- >> let me jump in. you may say it's ridiculous. it doesn't necessarily mean it makes him u