Fourteen years after RFK Jr.'s second wife died by suicide, a new biography reveals harrowing details of their bitter split and the secrets found in his diaries
NEED TO KNOW
- A bombshell new biography of RFK Jr. delves into his bitter split with second wife Mary Richardson Kennedy, who died by suicide on May 16, 2012
- A source told author Isabel Vincent that Mary was terrified of his bullying, especially during the divorce negotiations
- Fourteen years after her death, a close friend tells the author: “I know Bobby well enough to know that Mary’s suicide is a weight he will carry for the rest of his life”
Fourteen years after the suicide of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s second wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy, who died by hanging in the barn of the family home in Bedford, N.Y., at age 52, a new biography RFK, Jr.: The Fall and Rise, by investigative reporter Isabel Vincent, reveals haunting new details of her final days.
The book, out April 14, delves into the Kennedy scion's astonishing rise to power and his private battles: lasting grief over the 1968 assassination of his father, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy; the weight of the family legacy; his past addiction to heroin; and his struggle with what he called his “lust demons.”
In the final months of Mary's life, their looming divorce turned ugly, as she and RFK Jr. fought over money, custody of their kids Conor, Aidan, Kyra and William, and his relationship with actress Cheryl Hines (whom he later wed). In the year following her death, Isabel Vincent was given access to several of his private diaries that Mary had taken "for insurance," a source told Vincent, who was covering Mary's death for the New York Post. In a 2023 Vlad TV podcast interview, RFK Jr. acknowledged the journals as “my own way of trying to live and examine life” and part of his 43 years in recovery.
Below, read an exclusive excerpt from RFK, Jr.: The Fall and Rise:
Kennedy “fell deeply in love” with Mary in 1993, after he became estranged from first wife Emily Black. When Mary became pregnant, he arranged for a quick divorce. They wed on April 15, 1994.
To an outside observer, Kennedy’s life after his second marriage might have seemed idyllic. But, as he confessed to his diary, something was missing. “I’ve been given everything that any person could wish for: A beautiful wife and kids and loving family, wealth, education and good health and job I love. And yet I’m always on the lookout for something I can’t have to wreck it all.”
In a moment of intense self-reflection, he wrote about wanting that undefined “more,” the word thickly underlined in his diary: “No matter how much I have, I want more!” That unbridled desire, his obsession with “more” would become all-consuming and the catalyst for tragedy.
Like one of his favorite heroes, Odysseus, Kennedy traveled the world on his crusade to save the planet. He left Mary to care for their three children, all under the age of five. “I made it through a difficult week without acting out,” he wrote during a trip to the Hamptons in the summer of 1999. “I am proud of myself because the Sirens were on every rock out there.”
Kennedy might have been sober and abiding by his twelve-step program, but he couldn’t resist the random sexual encounters with women that he referred to as “mugging” in his journal.
Credit: Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection via Getty
Mary lived with depression and had her own struggles with alcohol. Like Kennedy, she was in a 12-step program.
“Our bed is an unfriendly place,” Kennedy wrote. “She hates it when I go to bed with her, and will never have sex at night. She rarely speaks to me of anything but scheduling.”
But according to interviews with close friends, much of Mary ’s depression stemmed from Kennedy’s increasing philandering. “He definitely gaslit her and told her that she was crazy and that her accusations about other women were fantasies,” said a source who was close to Mary.
“She was innocent and naive, but she drank, which was classic in the sense of being in pain a lot of the time.”
It’s not clear when Mary became aware that Kennedy was a serial cheater, but she clearly resented his behavior even as she was determined to be a good Kennedy wife. “She was just 200 percent invested in being his wife and living the Kennedy lifestyle,” said a source who had treated Mary for depression during her marriage. Another source [said], “The notion that she would stop being a Kennedy was scary to her.”
After the July 16, 1999, deaths of his cousin John F. Kennedy Jr., Carolyn Bessette and her sister Lauren, Kennedy witnessed the two families fighting over the burial before eventually deciding to scatter the ashes at sea.
Carolyn's mother, Ann Freeman, was very upset” about where the bodies would be buried. She wanted the trio to be buried in Greenwich, Conn. “John Kennedy couldn’t be buried in Greenwich because he had no connection,” he wrote on July 18. Ann wanted her daughters close and “is terrified that they will try to spirit [Carolyn] to [the family plot in] Brookline, or in Martha’s Vineyard.”
In a tense conference call, the families decided that Ted Kennedy would eulogize John Jr. and that Hamilton South, a good friend of Carolyn, would do her eulogy. When Lisa Bessette, Lauren’s twin sister, suggested that Kennedy should eulogize the couple together since he had known them both well, [Caroline Kennedy’s husband Ed] Schlossberg shot down the idea, even after Kennedy had accepted to do it. “Kennedys do not eulogize non-Kennedys,” he said, according to Kennedy’s diary. Lisa, disgusted by Schlossberg’s reaction, asked him if he made up his rules on the spot and slammed down the phone.
Kennedy and Mary’s marital strain intensified amid their Bedford home renovation and the constant entertaining expected of a Kennedy wife.
“It wasn’t a private place for her and the kids,” said a source close to the Richardson-Kennedy family. It was like living in one of the windows at Macy’s. On Sunday, May 9, 2010 — Mother’s Day — Kennedy told his wife he was going to file for divorce, the source said. A day later, police were called to the home and reported that Mary was “intoxicated.” Mary told them she had had an argument with family members. They also showed up during a second incident, responding to a call about a squabble among the Kennedy children.
On May 12, Kennedy filed for divorce. Three days after that, Mary was arrested for drunk driving. “Bobby used it all against her,” said the source who was close to Mary.
Mary pleaded guilty to driving while impaired. The judge suspended her license and ordered her to undergo an addiction assessment.
Mary did not want a divorce, and she did not want to lose custody of her children. Following her arrests, she attended AA meetings, but most of all, she pored over Kennedy’s diaries. In many ways, she was trying to reassure herself that she had been married to a chronic philanderer for nearly 20 years.
“Mary was waiting and hoping for Bobby,” said a source who had spoken to Mary daily during the last year of her life. “And Bobby was cruel about her weight, telling her that she had squandered her beauty. He would put his arm around her and criticize her. It was ugly.”
She was terrified of his bullying, another friend said, especially during the divorce negotiations. But, Mary fiercely wanted to remain married. “It was the Kennedys or nobody,” said the source.
On May 16, 2012, Mary, dressed in black workout clothes and sandals, was found dead at about 1:30 p.m., according to a police report.
A rope noose was tied around her neck, and she was hanging from a beam in the garage. The 52-year-old mother of four didn’t leave a suicide note — at least not one that was ever made public.
By the time the police and Westchester EMS arrived on the scene at 1:51 p.m., rigor mortis had set in, which indicated that Mary might have been dead for several hours before she was found.
An individual who helped her in the months before she died said she had been sober and trying to resist Kennedy’s pressure to end the divorce negotiations in his favor. It was Kennedy, accompanied by Mary’s friend Shannon White, who found her body in the barn after the housekeeper alerted him that Mary was missing. It was Kennedy who made the 911 call.
White told the police that she had received a call from Kennedy, who had been looking for Mary on the morning she died. “He was worried something had happened to Mary and that she may have hurt herself.”
Hours after her death, when some of her siblings showed up at the house and rifled through her drawers, desperately searching for a suicide note, they were met by Kennedy and his brother Chris. The Richardsons asked the Kennedys to leave and a confrontation ensued. “You have killed my sister,” said the grief-stricken Nan Richardson.
Mary’s remains were taken to the Medical Examiner’s Office. The report noted her fingers were caught between the neck and the noose when she was found dead. “Maybe she really didn’t want to die,” Mary’s doctor said.
Credit: AP Photo/Michael Dwyer
Mary’s family did not attend the funeral and hosted their own private memorial.
Mary was originally buried in a plot at Saint Francis Xavier Cemetery in Centerville [Mass.] next to Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Sargent Shriver, but several days later Kennedy moved her remains to the edge of the cemetery, burying her in an unmarked plot. After the funeral, the Richardsons hired a high-powered private investigation firm and a former homicide detective to help answer some of the “unanswered questions” surrounding Mary’s death. The firm wanted to know where she had obtained the rope used in her hanging and whether she knew how to tie a nautical knot. They also asked about Kennedy’s movements and his relationship with his estranged wife, according to sources who were interviewed by the firm.
But the probe turned up little of any consequence, and any hope of launching a wrongful death suit against Kennedy or anyone else over their treatment of Mary was dashed. Friends say that the death of his estranged wife weighed heavily on [Kennedy], even though he had already moved on with his relationship with Cheryl Hines. Said a former close friend, “I know Bobby well enough to know that Mary’s suicide is a weight he will carry for the rest of his life. That’s going to haunt him.”
From RFK, Jr.: The Fall and Rise by Isabel Vincent. Copyright © 2026 by Isabel Vincent. Reprinted by permission of William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
RFK, Jr.: The Fall and Rise by Isabel Vincent goes on sale April 14 and is available for preorder now, wherever books are sold.
If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988 or visiting 988lifeline.org.
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