Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to Fixate Today Gone Tomorrow. I'm Nikki and I have ADHD. Joy is autistic and we are letting our hyperfixations fly. Today we are fixating on the Kennedy curse.
Speaker: Hello everybody, welcome back. Hello. So last week we talked about ah Robert F. Kennedy. and We walked through just kind of some of the political scandals, ah his ties to the mob. I guess not necessarily ties to the mob. His unties to the mob.
Speaker: up And then his assassination. Today we're going to focus more on Ethel and pull some of the kind of like I did with ah JFK I'm focusing we're focusing on the curse. Right. So so i extrapolated some of the things that happened to Ethel and around Ethel.
Speaker: We're going to talk start talking about her kids, her and Bobby's children. Yeah, and then I i want to go through and talk about their kids. um One thing we've discussed before is that it's really hard to keep everyone straight in this family because everyone's named after everyone's named after everyone. And then it's like one of Bobby and Ethel's kids is Joe III or Joe the – I can't remember second or third. I think it's second.
Speaker: But Robert's not – Joe Jr. Joe Jr. was Robert's brother. and so Yeah. so i mean So honestly, I have a really hard time keeping track. So i even though we're going to talk about some of their children who um i I suppose were more cursed than others. Right. I can't think of how to phrase it. um Maybe with air quotes. I don't know. Cursed.
Speaker: But I wanted to just pop on each one of them first of all because if you want to know Robert or Bobby and Ethel, the way to know how their life went, I think is reflected in what happens to their children and how your children turn out. Yeah. But also it's easier for me to keep track so I can then put kids to at least parents to some extent. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. And for me, I've been so deep in Kennedy. i went from knowing who every kid belonged to, to completely not understanding anymore who belongs where, with whom, I don't know. I've given up. We'll pop them back in order. And I i have to say that ah one of the funniest things after, so we have our producer, AKA my daughter, and she had no idea that like the current RFK Jr. in the Trump cabinet right now was the son of Bobby Kennedy. She had no idea.
Speaker: Yeah, that's so wild.
Speaker: So anyways, I thought. ah And you know what's weird to me also with that is I, like, she and I aren't, and I guess we are, about 20 years apart. And I was going to say, we're not that far apart in age. And I was like, wait, I'm 41. Yeah.
Speaker: But that generation gap of like, I grew up knowing who Robert Kennedy was and not in the way, like the same way I knew who Jack Kennedy was, like as this mythical character, I guess, in history. And our sweet producer didn't like grew up in the RFK Jr. era. You know what I mean? So it's like that generational thing. Same with really Jack Kennedy,
Speaker: I knew more about John F. Kennedy Jr. yeah So yeah it's just so funny. Like, we go with the generations type of thing. Yeah.
Speaker: So let's do it. As always, all of the sources are in the show notes. We're going to start talking about Ethel's life after her husband was assassinated.
Speaker: Ethel was once called, quote, the greatest of the Kennedys, male or female. This quote super stood out to me because she married in. She wasn't a blood Kennedy. But I felt like she worked so hard yeah to be a Kennedy. She earned that title.
Speaker: Yeah, but almost to a fault. Yeah. i think I think in some cases she maybe overdid it. I think even, you know, that competitive nature. And and she was always said to have a competitive in the athletic nature to her. But, ah you know, even having the 11 kids, she beat out everyone else. Yeah.
Speaker: So despite this public persona, in private, she was really angry after Bobby died. It was known that she had a pretty fragile mental state. She was even known to slap her staff when she would fly into rages.
Speaker: Which is kind of crazy. I mean, because she was known for being kind of fun-loving. Yeah. She would do this. She would know she was wrong, but she would refuse to apologize. And like her kind of moving on from the situation was eventually just backing down and then pretending like nothing happened. And in some cases, they had very close family friends, um lifelong friends.
Speaker: And if they said something or wrote something, that she found disrespectful to Bobby, they would just get cut off from her life.
Speaker: They were dying. Oh, yeah. Yeah. so So Ethel really struggled caring for her 11 children without her husband, of course. Which is understandable.
Speaker: Bobby was said, although he wasn't around much, when he was around, he was known to be a really good father and being fun and playful with the kids, but also being the disciplinarian. Yeah.
Speaker: So... Like even at one point, some people called him more the actual – more the maternal figure in the kids' lives. Oh, interesting.
Speaker: Yeah. He was ah a really great father even though he was very, very busy. um But everything I've seen for the 10 children because she was pregnant with their 11th when he died – None of them ever felt like overlooked or anything like that. Like they didn't get attention. They wanted more time, but they felt like...
Speaker: they were all seen when he was around. And they did a lot with their kids. I mean, they would, um, Ethel would take them to a lot of, uh, like Bobby's hearings. Um, when he, and, um, even would take them to the office when he was yeah secretary of state. So, um, which I, Hey, more power to her for dragging the kids around because as we'll get into,
Speaker: They weren't the best behaved. it was a It was a feat to move around, not just the number, but the personalities. So her oldest son, Joe, was put under the most pressure because of how Ethel was struggling.
Speaker: He was the oldest male Kennedy grandchild. And he got put into a position that he was kind of forced to help care for the siblings. As did his older sister, Kathleen. Yeah, both of them took the brunt of the brunt of that responsibility. Also, Kathleen being the first grandchild, again, Ethel had to beat everyone else to having a yup to having those kids. Yep, absolutely.
Speaker: um So for Joe, he would find times that you know, he was in this weird position that no Kennedy son really found themselves in where he was, you know, taking care of kids.
Speaker: And sometimes he felt like he wasn't, quote, Kennedy enough. And in those instances, he would become a bully to the younger kids. Do you think that many of the family members didn't feel Kennedy enough?
Speaker: Yes. And maybe that was Part of the, part of the curse. Yeah. Yep. Needing to prove themselves. We know that Joe senior's boys all did it, but even they, i mean, even they had to look up, they each one thought their elder brothers were superior.
Speaker: They, they all looked up to their elder brothers. Right. And, right and I guess the first Joseph junior, Joe and Rose's first son who died in the Air Force, was always the most reveled of all the kids. and No, I think every one of the boys had moments where they didn't feel like they were yeah Kennedy enough. The girls, it was a little different. I feel like they branched out and they took on their own personalities a little bit more. Yeah, they had, a like, interestingly, had a little bit more room to do that.
Speaker: And especially once we, in a few episodes, get to Eunice, we'll see that a lot. So Ethel's oldest boys, Joe, Bobby Jr., and David, would come to be known as the Hyannis Port Terrors.
Speaker: They would just, like, do pranks, be mischievous, get in trouble. It started off as just, like, you know, a toilet papering someone's house, and then it would, like, escalate to, like— petty crime.
Speaker: And Ethel would cover for her boys. So they never really faced consequences for these little things. And then they would start kind of upping the ante. Which, we remember, that's sort of the type of household that that Ethel grew up in in the Skakel household.
Speaker: Yeah. So part of it, I think, is like she grew up like, this is normal. h And then not not... I don't know how much in her own grief she could see What the loss of their father did to them psychologically. And so they've got that on top of like a single mom dealing with lot. And I know she has all the help in the world. Like, let's not forget the kind of privilege she had in raising children. Right.
Speaker: But she's a single parent. And ah those boys knew how to kind of take advantage of her. Right. And they weren't as close to – after she married um Bobby, they weren't as close to the Skakel side of the family. Yeah. They really pulled away from them. So she didn't have also that support. Yeah. Because she felt like she was a Kennedy.
Speaker: Right. that she was no longer a Skakel. She was a Kennedy. But that lost, you're right, that lost that support. Bobby's death split the family apart for quite a long time.
Speaker: Her oldest sons, the Hyannis Port Terrors, took the majority of Ethel's wrath. And at one point, she actually sent them all away. It was like, everybody's going somewhere. And now I would, like, send my kids to their rooms.
Speaker: She sent Joe to Spain, Bobby Jr. to Africa, and David to Austria.
Speaker: You know, um also I'm going to for some foreshadowing. This trip to Africa for RFK Jr. is a big deal. So once we get to the RFK Jr. episodes, we'll get into this trip to Africa.
Speaker: All righty. Ethel and Bobby's home on the Kennedy compound called Hickory Hill constantly had people in and out with the busyness of it all keeping Ethel distracted.
Speaker: And that's again where we see ah flashbacks to the Skakel household with, yeah if you all recall, with the horses inside and the gunshots and the just complete chaos yet inside of this gorgeous mansion. Now, I don't think Hickory Hill was quite as chaotic as as the household that Ethel grew up in, but definitely had a lot of the same traits. And if you watch, um but Roy Kennedy put out a really good documentary called Ethel. Yeah. And they talk a lot about that household and yeah there's videos. Yeah, it is great. I also accidentally watched another side tangent. accidentally watched another documentary by Rory that I didn't realize until the end. ah It was about a volcano erupting. It's on Netflix. I can't remember what it's called.
Speaker: But it was like people were on a cruise and one of the cruise stops was like, you can walk on this crater of a volcano and it erupted while they were on there. Well, and she also just released within the last week, um she put out a documentary on Netflix about Boeing, the Oh, yeah. I haven't watched it yet. but No, I haven't either.
Speaker: Well, that you know Rory's doing great for herself. Ethel never wanted to be alone, which, you know, probably being alone with her thoughts was a lot after losing her husband and dealing with the chaos and then those quiet times. It's like,
Speaker: oh, I don't want to turn, i don't i don't want to be alone with my thoughts. I also see see that as, yeah, she grew up with a lot of siblings and then she had so many kids that she wasn't used to being alone. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: The home became a shrine to Bobby. She even traveled with framed photographs of him and she always wore her wedding rings. She never took them off.
Speaker: Eventually, she did realize that she was kind of living in this heightened sense of anxiety all the time. She definitely had trauma from, you know, her brother-in-law and then her husband being killed. She got tremendously worried about her home and the kids.
Speaker: So at the same time, she was stubborn. She didn't want to live in fear. Basically, how I see this is like she had trauma that she never wanted to deal with. And this was the outward expression of it. But what do I know?
Speaker: So because she was like so stubborn, was like, we don't live in fear. We're Kennedys. We're brave. We go forward. She never installed a security system in their mansion.
Speaker: So one night when her daughter, Rory, that we were just talking about, was 15 years old, an intruder entered her room and asked her where her mother was.
Speaker: Ethel heard screaming and she opened her bedroom door. I guess the man left Rory's room and went into the hallway. She saw just a guy in the hallway.
Speaker: Ethel then screamed, waking up the rest of the house and And her sons like barreled out of their rooms like football players and tackled this man. That's crazy, right? I think after this, she agreed to get a security system. But she's just stubborn. She's like, nah, we don't live in fear. So Jackie and Ethel had interesting, a very interesting relationship.
Speaker: Most of the time avoided commiserating in their experiences of losing their husbands the same way. They had very different personalities.
Speaker: Very, very much so. But they always, like, I think they, on the one hand, like, always bugged each other, but they had deep respect for each other. Yeah, I get that too. um I think that Jackie was extremely introverted, but it always came across as a snooty like superior sort of persona and I think I think it made Ethel feel a little bit insecure and Jackie probably felt kind of the same back because Ethel was so outgoing and competitive and energetic do you got sirens going by or do I have sirens going by
Speaker: No, I do. I'm like, whose house is it? No, that's fine. Sorry. That's okay. um But the one thing that they would do on the anniversaries of both of their husbands' death, they they allowed each other to, like, wallow in their grief and supported each other. It's like...
Speaker: It was like, okay, today you can be you can be sad. I'll be here. I'll watch the kids. I'll do it. Like, let's talk about it. But tomorrow we're moving on. However, this backfired because neither felt that they ever fully moved on.
Speaker: We'll get into Jackie more with her like post White House era. She finally does. She finally goes to therapy. what But I don't think Ethel ever did, though. No.
Speaker: No, no. um So, yeah, it was it's an interesting dynamic that they – just think it's so interesting that they support each other in the same way, and that seemed to work for both of them, even though they were both so different. They supported each other maybe, but they were not close in other ways. They were they were not friends. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. Although they were there for each other. Yeah. It's just an interesting – I just think of my own relationships with my sister-in-law and – It's very confusing for me, Jackie and Ethel.
Speaker: It's unique. It is unique. Yeah. So a few years after Bobby died, Ethel began what is called a deep friendship with actor Andy Williams.
Speaker: So was this just a friendship? No. Okay. No, they were they were always, wait like, I don't think they were never going to get married. he Like, they were never going to live together. There wasn't anything like that, but it was like they were companions.
Speaker: um With benefits? He loved, oh, oh yeah. I mean, actually, with Ethel, I don't know. She's, like, the most Catholic. Maybe be the limited benefits. Right. But Andy Williams loved her, like, deeply loved her. but also deeply respected her family and her first, like, her marriage and how much she loved Bobby. And he was fully okay with her love for her dead husband coming first and never wanting to remarry. He just, like, wanted to be around her.
Speaker: It's, like, actually really sweet. Yeah, it is. It is. And I think she really, really loved Bobby. The companionship. And it seemed like it seemed like a very modern kind of thing that like boundaries were set and it worked for everybody.
Speaker: So as Ethel aged, she did soften and wasn't as angry. I think having grandchildren and then great grandchildren really softened her quite a bit.
Speaker: But I think the biggest time we see a personality kind of switch into this, like, an Ethel who can let go a little bit more was after Jackie died. She was at Jackie's bedside.
Speaker: She said goodbye to Jackie in her last moments. And after Jackie died, she decided she needed to have more fun and live her life. That said, if you watch um Rory's documentary on Ethel, Ethel is it actually in it quite a bit.
Speaker: She's still pretty stoic and she definitely up portrays a strong personality. that that Oh, for sure. She didn't become like a big old teddy bear.
Speaker: But I think she like let her grandkids get away with with things. And I think she yeah, I just I think she softened and she allowed herself to have a bit more fun than just being a grieving Kennedy Catholic widow. You know, good for her.
Speaker: I'm fascinated by Ethel. I can't quite peg her down. The combination of the chaos. Yeah. both Actually, both her and the family she grew up in, both are described in these theyre large families. They're very chaotic. They're very active.
Speaker: But I do get a sense there's There is some kind of warmth in that. Yeah. Yeah. I just think it's a little hard to understand. And again, they like wealth and um they were in the upper echelon of society, but then always had this craziness about them that didn't quite fit in more so with her, the family she grew up in but that even that kind of spilled over to their life and
Speaker: together with with bobby yeah we'll actually talk about that quite a bit when we get to the murder of martha moxley because the that situation surrounds her brother's children so the skakel family and there's a lot of that that kind of bleeds into that whole situation as well of like the Skakel boys feeling like they weren't Kennedy's enough or they weren't good enough to be with the Kennedy's and stuff like that. So we'll actually see. And their house was insane.
Speaker: So yeah, it's not just her that kind of experienced that trying to figure out that balance. huh um I do want to tell before we get too much, before we go into the kits, I want to tell this like anecdote about a kidnapping attempt at her home. Yeah.
Speaker: So Ethel and her assistant, Noelle Bombardier, i think, were just really adored each other. They instantly felt an affinity for one another when Noelle started working for her.
Speaker: Ethel wasn't always great to her employees. She actually had a hard time ah holding down employees, including like nannies and babysitters and and those who took care of her kids.
Speaker: There was a constant turnover of the staff within their household. Yeah. And this may explain it. Yeah, right? All right. Go on. So interestingly, Noelle really loved Ethel and she knew how to manage her. She could manage her rages and griefs and demands. Like she just knew what to do to handle this woman. And that made Ethel really like her, I think.
Speaker: But in the spring of 1984,
Speaker: Noelle was in Ethel's Hyannisport home working with the staff to prepare the house for the family's summer stay. ah Noelle's 10-year-old daughter, Danielle, was just at work with mom that day. So I don't believe Ethel was home during this. I don't think anyone in the Kennedy family were home. just It was just Noelle working on the house.
Speaker: At some point, a woman with a child knocked on the Hickory Hill door and asked if she could use the phone. So this woman said that Ted, so Ted Kennedy, Ethel's brother-in-law, had let her on the property before and she'd used the phone before.
Speaker: Noelle knew she was lying and she just sent this woman away. A little bit later, the woman returned, this time without the child, While Noelle was distracted, the woman took her daughter Danielle's hand and just walked away.
Speaker: So Noelle obviously noticed pretty quick and called the police. And then immediately started driving around searching for her daughter. The woman and Danielle were found as soon as the police pulled up. And it turns out that the woman told the police that she had been trying to take Ethel's youngest daughter, Rory. Not Danielle.
Speaker: So silly. So she missed she mistook the child for? And this is separate from that whole break-in man. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it was just another time.
Speaker: So Noelle, of course, wanted to file charges. She wanted, you know, this person to get in trouble for taking her kid. Ethel forbade Noelle from filing charges.
Speaker: And Noelle stood up to her and said she would quit if she couldn't press charges. Now, Noelle had been working for with her for years and they had the a deep friendship and relationship.
Speaker: And Ethel said no. So Noelle ended up packing her bags and quitting on the spot to keep her daughter safe. She felt like she could no longer keep her daughter safe and that Ethel would not back her up to help keep her daughter safe when she was working for her.
Speaker: And I assume it's because Ethel didn't want the publicity? Exactly that. However, in 2009, Noelle and Ethel reunited, and they immediately hugged and were thrilled to see each other.
Speaker: so So it took a long time, but they got back together. Yeah. That was one of the exceptions that was often not not seen with the ah conflicts in Ethel's life.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely. others There's many others that she would never forgive. and and She did not have a problem just being done with someone. And I think she saw that as a form of strength.
Speaker: Yeah, i was just going to say that. Which quite honestly, I believe is the opposite. Yeah. All right. Do you want to talk a little bit about the kids so we can start keeping track of who's who? Because we are going to jump into some of the scandals.
Speaker: All right. So the real legacy, Bobby and Ethel, is is their children and how they turned out. So let's start with our eldest, Kathleen. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend. So she was their firstborn. She was actually the firstborn of grandchild um of Joseph and Rose and was 16 at the time her dad was assassinated.
Speaker: She was a politician and an attorney. At one point, she served as the lieutenant governor of Maryland and ran unsuccessfully for the governor of Maryland in 2002.
Speaker: We see this continual pattern of, yes, the curse and these difficult and tragedies happening in all their lives, but we also see The continual pattern of public life and political life.
Speaker: So Kathleen was actually named after after her aunt Kathleen. She went by Kick Kennedy. And she was the one who died in a plane crash. We had previously talked about that. She's my favorite Kennedy.
Speaker: But Kathleen, she had some nicknames and she was always called Klinging Kathleen or the Un-Kennedy.
Speaker: but she had She was an avid horseman. She didn't have too many major tragedies in her life, but she did have some accidents. um She was somersaulted by her horse while competing. She was left unconscious and bleeding and she was rushed to the hospital. During this time, none of her family was with her. They were all traveling and nobody could get a hold of them for hours. Of course.
Speaker: out She married a gentleman um named David Lee Townsend. They had four kids. Megan Maeve. Love that name. Carrie. i love yeah Carrie. And then Rose Catherine.
Speaker: who was again named after her aunt kick who died in that plane crash and they called her cat oh it's like kick cat i love that so their daughter mave had a son named gideon yeah and there was made major tragedy here you want to yeah yeah so let's talk about that quick um Maeve was a public health official and a human rights attorney.
Speaker: She was, like we said, Bobby and Ethel Kennedy's oldest child's daughter. Maeve volunteered with the Peace Corps. She was the first ever senior advisor for human rights within the United States Department of State's global aids program She led teams within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Global Affairs working on human rights policy issues regarding women, children, and LGBTQ rights.
Speaker: Health matters. So she was an incredibly accomplished woman. In 2019, she spoke out against her uncle, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for spreading health misinformation.
Speaker: On April 2nd, 2020, Maeve and her eight-year-old son Gideon were canoeing near her mother's waterfront property in Maryland. Her family was staying there during the COVID lockdown.
Speaker: They were in the canoe trying to retrieve a kickball from the water. So like somebody on on land was playing and a ball went in the water. So they hopped in the canoe to try to find it. High winds resulted in the canoe being swept into the Chesapeake Bay.
Speaker: Fire officials got a call around 4.30 p.m. that day from a man who reported seeing a woman and a boy struggling in a canoe. They were last seen near Herring Bay.
Speaker: Searches ended at 7.30 p.m. that night due to the darkness. On April 3rd, authorities announced that they presumed that both had died. On April 4th, Maryland police resumed the search.
Speaker: Maeve's body was found on April 6th and Gideon's on April 8th. The medical examiner ruled that they had both accidentally drowned. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a public funeral couldn't take place. So what they did was the Kennedy family hosted an online gathering to honor their lives, and it was viewed by over 3,000 people. What a tragedy. Yeah.
Speaker: Yep. From such a normal everyday occurrence like a kickball. Yep. Hopping in the canoe with your kid during during the global lockdown, trying to, yeah, go to a place where like, like oh my gosh, if I could have gone somewhere like that with my kids, like,
Speaker: Yeah. You just can't go on Chesapeake Bay, though. Right. i I know. All right. So I think we're on to the next kid.
Speaker: So next we have Joseph Patrick. He's got a lot that happened to him. Yeah. So we're going to go into him in a little more depth later. But just quick overview. He was the second child and the eldest, as we mentioned, of Robert Nethel.
Speaker: He was 15 when Bobby died. So he was actually on a flight to Los Angeles to join the family when the assassination occurred. He was with his sister.
Speaker: sister Kathleen. So the two older kids were on on the flight. He was expelled from multiple private schools when he was younger. he had He did go on, though, to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2012. Seems like a minor thing and compared to some of the the political controversies we hear now.
Speaker: He had twin boys. Yeah. What I was most fascinated and did not know, that he was on Lufthansa Flight 649 when it was hijacked in 1972. Wow. it was a ah Yeah, it was a flight from New Delhi to Athens.
Speaker: There was five gunmen who seized the plane and forced it to land at Aden International Airport, which was in Yemen. Nobody was hurt, and the hostages were released the next day.
Speaker: These Kennedys and their planes. I know. o Don't ever fly with a Kennedy. no Or maybe as we will go on, maybe even drive with them. Maybe just don't drive with them either. Maybe meet them wherever you're going. transportation. Yeah.
Speaker: Because here we go. And he was in Nantucket. when he was younger and he was recklessly driving when his Jeep overturned. Now his brother, David, fractured his vertebrae in this accident.
Speaker: We'll talk more about him in a moment, but. Yeah, we'll talk about this whole event in depth. Okay. Because this is a biggie. This is a biggie. David's girlfriend, Pamela Kelly, was also in the car and was paralyzed from the chest down.
Speaker: Beyond that, we will talk about it later, but. Let's just say the Kennedys weren't great to Pam Kelly. No. He was, ah he got divorced after 12 years of marriage. And I love this because he fought to have the marriage annulled so that he could remarry in the Catholic church. But his first wife wouldn't agree.
Speaker: um But later found out the Boston Archdiocese approved it. ahha That's crap. Yeah. Yeah. David Kennedy was another biggie. Another biggie. We'll just do some quick overviews here. David Kennedy. So we're going down the the line. He was 13 year old when his ah father um was assassinated. He was in the hotel, right?
Speaker: Yes. He watched it on TV, I think. Yes. Okay. Yeah. But earlier the day that Bobby was assassinated, The family went on an outing in Malibu and David got pulled like by the undertow and was drowning.
Speaker: And his father saved him. On the night of the assassination, it was said he was ah alone and he was supposed to be asleep. From the excitement of the day, he was still awake. He was sitting in the hotel room alone when ah while everything was happening. And yeah, he watched it on TV. But in the confusion, no one came to check on him for several hours, actually.
Speaker: Astronaut John Glenn? And author Theodore White where the came in and discovered it. um And he was sitting by himself before the television set, unable to speak.
Speaker: So I thought this was super sweet. So that biographer Theodore White, who was with John Glenn, and i'm not sure why they were there, when they found him, um he ordered him. He didn't know what to do. And so... In the moment, he ordered him hot chocolate from room service and cradled and comforted Oh, my goodness. I mean, as he was shaking in his arms. Oh.
Speaker: So, you know, after the traumatic event, he suffered all sorts of addictions, heroin, alcohol, and was experimenting with marijuana and amphetamines.
Speaker: Yeah, he had a tough, tough life. At first, he did not seem to be in any great trouble. So he made it through boarding school. He went to a Middlesex School in Concord, and he graduated in 1974.
Speaker: Did begin experimenting with drugs, actually not too long after his father's assassination. Yeah. He was just a baby. yeah Yeah, he was.
Speaker: He often would use drugs with his older brother, Bobby, and his cousin, Chris Lawford, who was the son of Peter Lawford, the actor who was married to his aunt.
Speaker: So um he began shooting heroin in the fall of 1973 in his senior year School. middlesex school He eventually dropped out of Harvard, worked as a news reporter, had undergone treatment for and alcohol addiction, but the the drug habit just became really noticeable in his Harvard days, and he eventually dropped out of school.
Speaker: They actually trace um his drug use back to A 1973 accident in which he was seriously injured when his in his back and he started taking painkillers at that time.
Speaker: And he he said that they gave him the peace that he never had known, which led to his addiction. Yeah. He ended up um in Massachusetts General Hospital with bacterial endocarditis, um an infection like lining of the heart. And a lot of times it's caused by dirty needles and drug injections.
Speaker: So he died at age 28 from an overdose. He had checked into a hotel with other family members and they gathered for some vacation time to visit Rose Kennedy, their 93-year-old grandmother, um whose mansion was about five miles from the hotel.
Speaker: And it was said that while he was at the hotel, he little bit He actually had bought a bottle of vodka and grapefruit juice from the hotel bar and spent one day straight through midnight drinking.
Speaker: However, he also visited his grandmother every day and went to mass with the family. A little irony here is that within the family there were children multiple suicides and for being very devout Catholics.
Speaker: Catholics, they can't have a Catholic wake and are said not to go to heaven if you commit suicide. i wonder if a lot of the accidental drug overdose causes of death or or whatever was a way around that. Yeah. Technicality. be Well, yeah. It was a drug overdose, not a suicide.
Speaker: And we don't know. I mean. Yeah. Yeah. But that would that actually you saying that I was like, that makes a lot of sense. Although it is it is. i do think somebody who perhaps accidentally overdoses on drugs.
Speaker: A lot of times it's not necessarily an accident or it's not not that it's even planned, but it's it's an accepted possible outcome for. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. All right. So Mary Courtney, ah all the girls are Mary so-and-so. So we'll just call her Courtney from here on out. She was their fifth child. um So she was 11 when her father died, like a very formidable age. Yeah.
Speaker: She's quieter and less public than her siblings. Don't hear about her as much. um She did struggle also with alcohol abuse. It became public after several incidents. arrests and family interventions Yeah.
Speaker: so she married an irishman named paul michael hill um who had been wrongly convicted as one of the gu for four in connection with the nineteen seventy four pub bombing in england So I have this in my notes too. And all I, like, I put that, this I put like that sentence that described it. And then underneath in all caps, I just put, we have no time. yes All we will say is he was, he was incarcerated for 15 years.
Speaker: um But his conviction was overturned in 1989. Yeah. Cause I felt myself going down a rabbit hole. And so that note was more for me being like, rein it in. Just, just stop. Stop there. no time.
Speaker: Um, you want to talk about Courtney? Courtney had, um, an only one child. Um, And this was major tragedy in the family. So Courtney and Paul's child, was her name was Shersha Kennedy Hill.
Speaker: on august first On August 1st, 2019, 22-year-old Shersha died of an accidental drug overdose at the Hyannis Port Kennedy compound.
Speaker: and Just for timeline's sake, Ethel was 91. Yeah. when she lost her granddaughter. Toxicology report showed methadone and ethanol at toxic levels and other prescription medications in her system.
Speaker: She was set to graduate from Boston College in 2020, she had always been very open about her mental health. In a 2016 school essay, she wrote, quote, My depression took root in the beginning of my middle school years and will be with me for the rest of my life.
Speaker: Although I was mostly a happy child, I suffered bouts of deep sadness that felt like a heavy boulder on my chest. We just keep finding the Yeah, and i remember that one. that definitely remember that one. Oh, do you?
Speaker: No, you know what? I do, too. I'm lying when I say do you. I do, too. Okay, so we have Michael, which I'm sure we're going to get into later. deeper so much about i know so let's well actually in two separate topics oh my gosh we will just skim michael though so he was the sixth of the 11 kids um he died on us in a skiing accident in colorado when he hit a tree on new year's eve i do specifically remember this one too do you remember this are you two no i don't remember it
Speaker: I might remember stuff in my mom's people magazine that I would look at the cover all the time. Like I have, we like I have um a visual of like a ski suit. um But I think I was too young to know any of them. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: Well, and I remember, I don't think I put together who he was, but I do remember the event. And I remember thinking, That's got to be pretty difficult.
Speaker: Yeah. I mean, a pretty hard crash to hit a tree skiing and to lose your life. A rough way to lose your life. I can imagine. So like all their family members, though, he did go to Harvard Law School before getting admitted to the bar in 1985. Yeah. He began his career in politics and activism.
Speaker: Big trend. um By the way, he was 10 when his father was assassinated. Got married to a former NFL player's daughter, and they had three kids, Michael, Kyle, and Rory. In 1997, there was allegations of him having an affair with their child's underage babysitter. Which, no, it's not an affair. That's rape.
Speaker: Two, because she was 14 years old, and he was in his later 30s. Yeah. And that was the same year he died. Oh, wow. Big year. Yeah. and And it's not, I don't want mean to link the two events as like, this happened, so this happened. It was like, just like you said, it was a year.
Speaker: Well, and he ended up taking a three polygraph test where he claimed he had not had sex with her until she was at least 16. Yeah. oh Well, that's better. yeah ah Okay.
Speaker: um You may not be surprised to to know Michael and his wife separated soon after that. Yes. After the statutory rape, the babysitter was not cooperative in the investigation.
Speaker: It also came out that he'd previously been treated for alcoholism and sex addiction 1996. Okay. Side note, do you think sex addiction is a thing?
Speaker: I do not. Okay. Me either. Okay. But I just was kind of, I was just kind of wondering. I think were that having difficulties with impulse control is a very real thing. And how one decides to satiate those impulses is also a thing.
Speaker: However, I do not believe you can be because because addiction is chemical. Like ah addiction is a brain thing. I don't know that that is something one could be. addicted to
Speaker: okay And but and to be that was just a side point. But OK, so um yeah, so this all happened. on I mean, then his ski accident happened on New Year's Eve. And he was with his kids. because Like his kids were with him.
Speaker: And they were playing, and I hate to say it, but such a Kennedy thing. They were playing football while on skis with other members of the family. And they had been asked several times to stop yeah because it was so dangerous.
Speaker: They even called Ethel Kennedy that night to ask her children to stop playing the game. yeah You know, Michael insisted they play and even brought a camera to record it. He, of course, didn't have safety equipment on. And as he went to catch a pass, he slammed into the tree.
Speaker: Yeah. He was like he could have gone into the Olympics for skiing. didn't know that. yeah Yeah. He was like he could have been a professional skier. um But I think that adds to the Kennedy hubris of it all. of being so confident that nothing will happen and then something terrible happens. No, i agree.
Speaker: His younger sister, Rory, was with him, and she did try to resuscitate him until Hup arrived. Rory and Michael had been especially close. um He was actually Rory's godfather, and it was said that they would talk nearly every day. Okay. ah One of his daughters did, um his daughter's Kyle,
Speaker: Francis gave birth to a daughter in 2014 and who died in infancy. so You know, as we go down the list, though they do get less and less troubled or it for the most part have less and less.
Speaker: Yeah. Or I was getting tired. Right. Well, I do think like even just it took talking bigger picture generationally, it feels like Generations are perhaps starting to learn from the ones before. So I do also think that like that kind of trickles down maybe in families like this, that those younger ones maybe are like, okay, I saw my older brother or my older sister go through this. I'm going to just –
Speaker: be a little more discerning about my choices. I don't know. Yeah. It would also be an interesting to study to know how trauma at certain ages in life and yeah this family actually is a, demonstrates it since there was basically a child born every year, you know, that were affected more or less. So then there's Mary Carey. Okay.
Speaker: Kind of a funny name. Mary Carey. She was a lawyer, author, and human rights activist. And let me do say, almost all of them did human rights activism. Yeah, yeah. That was a big- I didn't get into each one, but a lot of them did. That was really big part of their family throughout was serving people. It was like part of the Kennedy family motto was you serve others. Mm-hmm. And I think that the later, you know, everybody, especially Eunice, see her passion for that.
Speaker: um But a lot of these of this generation, the parents, and so you will see how much they instilled that in their their children. Yeah, definitely.
Speaker: So one interesting thing about. We're going to call her Carrie. don't think she went by Mary. She was married to Andrew Cuomo from 1990 to 2005, which in and of itself could be a curse.
Speaker: ah We'll talk about it, actually. so yeah. She walked down the aisle alone out of respect to her father, even though several family members offered two do so to walk her down i think ted kennedy walked just about every single one of his nieces down the aisle yeah and but carrie said no yeah the wedding was actually attended by galaine maxwell who later became um an aide and cocu co-conspirator of jeffrey epstein
Speaker: They had three children, twins, Kara Ethel, Mariah Matilda, and Michaela Andrea. In 2012, she had an accident. She allegedly sideswiped trailer and was found on the morning of July 13th in her white Lexus. Police at that time reported that she had trouble speaking and was swaying.
Speaker: She told the police officer she may have accidentally taken a sleeping pill. I think she took Ambien. Earlier that day, which is a little strange because it was in the morning, but.
Speaker: Well, listen, we know that happens. That's why J.P. Miller says he fell out of his truck and sobbed on his ex-wife's front lawn. True. So it happens because I fully believe everything that man says.
Speaker: And true story, when my son was 10, I accidentally gave him an Ambien instead of his Zyrtec and sent him to school. and got I didn't know that. And got a call from the school nurse saying he was walking down the hallway swaying, to which I thought he was being fully dramatic. So I went to go pick him up and no, he was. It was definitely swaying.
Speaker: Didn't know what happened, there but soon in my mind did figure out what had happened. He did have to. He had to sleep it off. It was a one-time deal. Yeah. Yeah. I'd say It was not the start of any addiction.
Speaker: No. um No, he's good. So that they did find some ambient in her toxicology report, and there was no other traces of drugs in her system. Yeah. um they think she may have had a seizure.
Speaker: She has no actual memory of the accident. um A judge did rule that they would move forward on a drugged driving trial.
Speaker: Yeah, full trial. Ended up that she was, she wasn't present for the trial. She was away on a human rights advocacy trip, but she was ah acquitted of all charges. Then we get into the,
Speaker: Matthew Max. Well, he goes by Max. I had never even heard of this guy. at own he's He's got a pretty, pretty straightforward. He doesn't have a ton happen. He was a ninth child. He was a lawyer and author. He was a wild youth. Imagine that.
Speaker: um He was just expelled from one. Just the one. Private school. Just one. So he does come up at some point. I don't remember when, but it's like this tiny blip of a thing, so I'll say it now. When he was 12, he almost fell down an elevator shaft at one of the, I believe, Kennedy Compound homes. Yeah, it was actually the elevator of his aunt and uncle, the Eunice and Sergeant Shriver's house. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Which... an elevator in the house. Guessing it was pretty big house. Yeah. Yeah. um So even though he got, so he got expelled from that one school in 1983, but he is said to have been sober since 1985.
Speaker: um He married Victoria Ann Strauss, whose grandfather was one of the founders of Levi Strauss. No. oh no. got so excited. Pep boy auto parts.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: I wanted her to be a denim heiress. I don't how much... I don't know how the Pep Boy Auto parts like it. No. Fortune.
Speaker: But hey. I mean, probably, actually. I was going to say more than we have. So they have one son. His name was Matthew Maxwell. They never came up with new names in this family. His daughters were Caroline Summer Rose. And Noah Isabel Rose. got that rose in there.
Speaker: Got to have. Beyond that, that's about it for him. we have Douglas Harriman, who is the 10th child. He was just a year old at the time of his dad's assassination. He went on to be a journalist and reporter, including time when he worked at Fox News.
Speaker: He had five kids. ah He was in 2012 acquitted of a misdemeanor, physical harassment, and child endangerment in connection with an altercation with two nurses in a hospital. okay This was two days after his son was born.
Speaker: ah So he attempted to take his newborn baby off the maternity ward for some fresh air. Oh, that's it. And the nurses told him that was against the hospital policy. They claim they claim that he assaulted them when they tried to stop him.
Speaker: Once again, a little hubris. I was going to say, I would absolutely believe that. No, I do too. um the The incident was separately investigated by Child Welfare Services, but they found no signs of child abuse. Yeah. And declared declared the allegations unfounded. so He and his brother, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., offered their support for the um paroling Sirhan Sirhan, the gentleman who assassinated their father.
Speaker: And that was in 2021. Ultimately, he was denied parole. And we'll actually get into that more when we talk about the RFK conspiracies. There are not as many as JFK. Right. I know. I find them boring. But okay, okay. Christopher, so he's pretty boring beyond a couple things. He he was a businessman, obviously successful um president of a commercial property management company. He was the eighth child.
Speaker: He was born on the 4th of July, um which is the same birthday um as his eldest sister, Kathleen. I like when that happens. That's cute. Especially when it's 4th of July and you're the Kennedys. Yeah, right.
Speaker: It's kind of perfect. He did in 2018. He was a candidate for the Democratic primary for governor of Illinois. So obviously he was just the primary. He didn't make it too far.
Speaker: Interesting sidebar about him. He was married to Sheila Sinclair Berner. And try to follow this. Who's maternal. Levi Strauss. No, no, no.
Speaker: And not Peppa. So she was the maternal aunt of Anne Reynolds Skakel. Okay. Okay. And she had been married to Chris's maternal uncle, Rushton Skakel.
Speaker: So to be clear, no blood relation between this marriage. No, but we will talk so much about Rushton. i like that name too. In the ah Martha Moxley murder.
Speaker: Okay. And so that just made a big old connection. Okay. To be told later. Okay. So Chris and Sheila shared a first cousin. Okay. Michael Skakel.
Speaker: Rough one to share. Allegedly. Allegedly. And finally, we have Rory Kennedy. kind of was like the person was always on the periphery of a tragedy. Yeah, very much so. Yeah. She was the 11th born. So um Ethel was pregnant with her at the time of the assassination.
Speaker: um She married Vardis. I'm going to try this. Varda Neone. Yes. That's great. She was married. She was married to a gentleman named Vardis with a long na last name, a long Greek last name that starts with a V. He was a Greek billionaire. So their wedding was scheduled for July 1999 in Port,
Speaker: and Obviously, the family compound, but had to be postponed because that was the trip where nephew like JFK Jr. and his wife, Carolyn Bessette, died in a plane crash on route. Yeah. And they debated what to do.
Speaker: Ethel and Rory really wanted to do the right thing. And they had a time trying to figure out, like, do we go forward? Because he was missing. He wasn't pronounced dead at the time. So they they really... And then I think they were struggling with, like, everything's paid for. It's set up. People are traveling. Like, they were really, like, trying to figure out. And Rory and Ethel both decided they just both couldn't do it.
Speaker: And they turned, I think, the tent and became more of a... waiting spot for as they waited. And then what they also did was they sent all of, they packed up all of the wedding food and sent it like Ethel called a local hotel and was like, I need every room. I need your ballroom.
Speaker: I need the stat. And basically sent all of the guests to this hotel, sent all of the food to the ballroom and was like, y'all party. We're going to hang out here. Oh, wow. Yeah.
Speaker: Wow. Well, they went on to have two daughters and a son. And as we said, Ethel was three months pregnant with her at the time of the ah assassination. she She's the, as we were speaking about, the documentary filmmaker. And most of them focus on social issues, except the one that um is titled Ethel. And that is on...
Speaker: HBO. It is really really good and I suggest going to watch it. What I found the most interesting, so throughout it, multiple of the her siblings speak and they all have a very similar speech pattern. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: um Like all of them. So very unique cadence and which is a lot like their mother. Yeah. ah Her godfather was actually her older brother, Michael, who died in the skiing accident. And Rory was with him at the time. She was the one who tried to resuscitate him.
Speaker: um while they were waiting for emergency services. They were close. um but She took it very hard. Other than that, she was arrested during a protest outside the South African embassy as a teenager.
Speaker: Beyond that, she... Not a pretty normal. Weirdly normal life for the Kennedys. But then like this extraordinary life of like traveling the world and making films. and of course. Well, yeah I mean, and if you think so, that's 11 kids, right?
Speaker: um If you think about almost all of them married somebody who was famous, wealthy, and known in For some reason, they, i mean, obviously many of them entered politics.
Speaker: All of them were involved in activism of different types. And then of course yeah there's the tragedies and the curses that happened. So definitely see a pattern throughout.
Speaker: So I was thinking one more thing. So I was thinking as we went through this list, so they had 11 kids. i come from a family of six For those of you who do not know, i am Nikki's aunt. And I was trying to think, so, i mean, it's half as many, but how many crazy things have happened in our family? Yeah.
Speaker: And there's not many. Yeah. Compared to this. I know. No plane crashes. No plane crashes. I mean, I'm sure there's been car crashes, but... Nothing to the the magnitude of permanent injury or death or anything like that.
Speaker: To be perfect. I mean, is it my dad? Yeah. that Not a laughing matter, but we. It really is. It's not. it's it's like I think that's the biggest scandal.
Speaker: It is. Nikki lost her father. um He took his life in 2017. Everything's fine. I'm fine. But beyond a that, out of ah me having five siblings and lots of my parents have lots of grandkids, one divorce?
Speaker: Two. Two? Okay. Okay. But that's, yeah, including, yeah, that's with the grandkids. I mean. Yeah. And I think your kids are the only ones who have not, only there are only two grandkids left who have not been married.
Speaker: Yeah. So, I mean, things could still go awry. But but that's 16 of us. Like, that's astounding. That is pretty good. um What else? Drug overdoses? Maybe one with drug-related drugs.
Speaker: yeah health issues like there's a little bit of addiction um but we're not we're not cursed like the kennedys i know yeah so i just i was thinking of it in an interesting way like yeah in a lot of ways i always say it like we say it's not cursed it's a kind of their way of living i mean that being said not one of us is married to a greek billionaire correct somebody could have done that for us but it's fine but now you know you're too you're too still i still i still have two that are floating out there so they get out to greece um they can really anywhere like any billion any billionaire would be fine i to actually take that back not any billionaire so uh arrests i don't think we've ever had a single arrest of anyone ah i don't know
Speaker: Us versus the Kennedys. A lot of ways we lose. i think we're doing oh less soono less curse, less fame, a lot less money. Right.
Speaker: A lot less money. So anyways, that was our quick wrap up of Ethel and ah Robert. We still, Bobby, we're going to go back and talk about ah their offspring in depth more, but I did, I did want you to like kind of get a rundown of overall how they all.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. So i I had a couple more small things that I didn't really know how to. No, no. I didn't really know how to fit in. ah The first is because we did not really talk about RFK Jr. no.
Speaker: Well, you said him, and but then we were like, we're getting into oh that's true. i Did I even? I didn't even really mention him in the lineup. Or I can't remember if I did. ah He's in there. He gets his own episodes. He's fine. So just an anecdote about him.
Speaker: You narrowed it down to just one anecdote about him? Yep, I did. This is just the just the thing. Just a little palette. This is a thing that I put in Ethel's timeline, actually, because he was still a teenager. And and I was thinking of like her as the single mother having to deal with these these boys of hers. So this this thing ended up in her timeline.
Speaker: He's like I said, he's got quite a few episodes coming up. But so i but I just want to talk about this quick. ah In 1970, Bobby Kennedy Jr. and Eunice Kennedy Shriver's son. So Ethel's sister-in-law, Bobby's sister, um her son, Bobby Shriver.
Speaker: So two Bobbies were arrested for marijuana possession. They were both just 16 years old. Right off the bat, Ethel and Eunice both believed fervently that their sons had been set up.
Speaker: But Bobby Shriver's father, Sarge, who is, i don't even want to call him one of my favorite Kennedys because he was a Shriver. He was not a Kennedy. um But he's one of my favorite in the family, Sarge. He knew that the boys had been smoking weed, but he knew that their mothers would never accept that.
Speaker: The boys, ah so Bobby and Bobby, their defense was that their Uncle Ted could get away with things like this. Why couldn't they too? They both ended up getting a year of probation.
Speaker: Ethel, of course, moved on and never brought it up again. Or if it did come up, her excuse was always that Bobby Jr. just didn't have his father. Of course things like this are going to happen.
Speaker: Eunice and Sarge kept their Bobby. moving forward away from Ethel's oldest sons. They kept him kind of on the straight and narrow. There wasn't anything else that really happened in his world besides this. And they decided that they needed to keep all of their kids away from the Hyannis Port terrors.
Speaker: little less time with the cousins. A little less time of the cousins. Now, this was ru it was rumored that the Nixon administration... actually was responsible for leaking the arrest information to the media.
Speaker: mean, just a Just, you know, Nixon did a lot of things. So, i you know. This would be kind a little on his list, but hey Well, aren't we in a timeline where, you know, sometimes administrations share stories about things that don't really matter, like trying to change the name of a lake?
Speaker: to cover up the other things that they're doing that they don't want the media to talk about. Oh, I hadn't noticed. I hadn't noticed that. So, you know, it's not crazy. It's not the craziest thing. All right.
Speaker: Something to think about. Well, let's finally wrap up Ethel. Just I want to talk about her death really quick. ah She lived at the Kennedy compound and Palm Beach for the later years of her life.
Speaker: A week after suffering a stroke, Ethel died on October 10th, 2024 at the age of 96. Eulogies at her funeral were given by current president Joe Biden and former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.
Speaker: And she is buried at Arlington National Cemetery by her husband. She was the ultimate matriarch for the family in the end, which is ironic because she worked so hard to be that.
Speaker: Yeah. And Rose loved her. Like I would, i would, I don't know. i I would think that Rose would almost feel like territorial of her role as matriarch. But I think she was like, see, like I did it right. Ethel knows what she's doing. She's doing it like me.
Speaker: Well, that is, we're moving on from Bobby Kennedy's family to your favorite of mine, Conspiracy's. I always say this. I think we'll do one episode on conspiracies, but we know that'll probably be two.
Speaker: It will not be eight.
Speaker: I personally do not find ah conspiracies as interesting With him, I still have not dug too deep. So that can change. and i'll See, this gets into the stuff like Manchurian Candidate, that the Project MK Ultra, all that like all that stuff that I'm so fascinated by. Listen, I think Sirhan Sirhan did it.
Speaker: I don't think it's it was anything's incorrect with who did the assassination. But there's a lot around that. All right. But you're going have to wait for next week.
Speaker: Well, thank you for joining us. Talk to you soon. bye Bye.
