RFK Jr.

People -  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.