A new book Ask Not: The Kennedys and The Women They Destroyed by Maureen Callahan, out July 2 from Little, Brown and Company, examines the scandals that have long been interwoven with the complicated history of America’s most famous political family, From Chappaquiddick, to the death of Martha Moxley and Rosemary Kennedy’s disastrous lobotomy and more.
In an exclusive excerpt below, Callahan writes about Mary Richardson Kennedy, a talented architect, who married Robert F. “Bobby” Kennedy Jr. in 1994. They had four kids together and separated in 2010. They were still technically married when she died by suicide on May 16, 2012.
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The gorgeous, smart, talented Mary Richardson Kennedy — mother of four, married to the most famous Kennedy man aside from JFK Jr., living in a million-dollar house she’d redesigned in the wealthy suburb of Bedford, N.Y. — was now, in the spring of 2011, on the verge of losing everything.
She could barely get out of bed. On the days when she summoned enough energy to take the kids to school, Mary was often in ratty pajamas, her hair unkempt. “You have to pull yourself together,” the other mothers told her. “You’re a Kennedy.”
In those moments, Mary would think: None of you could bear this life.
Bobby was never around. Ever. He didn’t have a job that required travel, yet he traveled all the time. When he did swoop in, he’d take one or all of the children on some adventure and leave Mary behind. She had become persona non grata, despite hosting all the dinner parties, the Fourth of July barbecues, the celebrity-studded fundraisers. Despite raising their children.
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Mary had been seeing a therapist in the city — sometimes alone, sometimes with Bobby. Her name was Sheenah Hankin and she specialized in high-profile clients. When Bobby asked for Mary to be diagnosed as mentally ill, Hankin refused.
“Your wife isn’t mentally ill,” Hankin told him. “She is angry and depressed, but she is not ill.”
Really, Hankin was saying: Get out.
“They could destroy me.” Mary said this about the Kennedys more than once.
By April 2012, actress Cheryl Hines was looking like the next Mrs. RFK Jr.
Bobby was making ruthless moves now. He cut off Mary’s credit card, court-approved for $20,000 a month in living expenses. She was no longer welcome at the Kennedy compound. Her checking account had a zero balance. She was reduced to asking other moms at the school run if they had an extra $20 so she could get gas and groceries. The whole town knew she was broke.
Mary Kennedy, American royalty, had been dethroned.
On the morning of May 16, 2012, a Wednesday, Mary put on her yoga clothes and sandals, walked out to her barn, stacked three metal crates atop each other, then used a metal ladder to tie a hangman’s knot around the rafter.
When she was found that afternoon, Mary’s fingers were stuck inside the rope around her neck. She had tried to save herself.
Two days after her suicide, Bobby and his sister Kerry Kennedy, who had been best friends with Mary since they were teenagers, spoke to the New York Times. They said Mary was a disconsolate alcoholic. “I feel like I’ve lost half my body,” Kerry said, “half my soul.”
“A lot of times I don’t know how she made it through the day,” Bobby said.
In his eulogy, Bobby said that Mary blamed him for “taking her away from her profession” to be a stay-at-home mom. “I know I did everything I could to help her,” he said.
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In Bobby’s telling, here and in the press, he was the victim, enduring a mentally disturbed alcoholic wife who, at a low point in their divorce, was found passed out at the dinner table, face down in her food.
The funeral, though — that was elegant. The service ended with “America the Beautiful,” a nod to all that the Kennedys have given their country.
One week later, in the middle of the night, without telling Mary’s siblings or obtaining the required legal permitting, Bobby Jr. had Mary’s coffin dug up from the Kennedy family plot in Massachusetts and moved 700 away. When reporters found out and asked why, Bobby, through a family spokesperson, said he failed to realize how crowded the Kennedy family plot was.
Mary was left to face traffic, no headstone marking her grave, buried alone.
Excerpted from ASK NOT by Maureen Callahan. Copyright © 2024 by Maureen Callahan. Used with permission of Little, Brown and Company. New York, NY. All rights reserved.
Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed by Maureen Callahan is out July 2 and available for preorder now, wherever books are sold.
