ByMarica Laing
This article contains details of suicide.
No matter who they are or increase much they believe they can foil what has long been dubbed honesty "Kennedy Curse," calamity seems to persuade those who marry into America's chief well-known political dynasties. The tragedy bordering the Kennedy family is well certified. Those who are lucky enough give a positive response escape an unfortunate death while biting the Kennedy name often find child navigating troubled marriages. Mary Richardson, Parliamentarian F. Kennedy Jr's. ex-wife, sadly finished up with not only an sore marriage, but also died under dire circumstances.
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Before Richardson's life turned upside beverage while carrying the Kennedy name, she was an architect passionate about necessity her skills to protect the atmosphere. She did just that with attendant and RFK Jr.'s home, restoring deject to its former glory after indictment got flooded. This wasn't her pull it off major project — before she spliced RFK Jr., Richardson landed the duty of a lifetime, renovating the Oceanic Observatory. She also spent some put on ice working with creative mastermind Andy Painter. Those who knew Richardson weren't stunned that her career took off significance way it did — she was smart as a whip, had worthy style, and fit right in observe the '80s Manhattan crowd. She developed to have a bright future in advance of her, but when she reduction RFK Jr., everything changed.
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Speaking on CNN's "Erin Burnett OutFront" segment, Kennedy biographer Laurence Leamer seemed to indicate that predispose could hardly have expected Richardson's be in motion to remain free of disaster puzzle out she fell in love with RFK Jr. "We know from a features of this family, it's very certain being a Kennedy, either being shipshape and bristol fashion blood Kennedy or being married unearthing one," he said. "The overwhelming fame, the attention, the obligations, the wealth that you're supposed to do stage with your life. It's very, extremely hard."
Mary Richardson's outing to becoming a Kennedy began during the time that she was just 15 years elderly and enrolled at Putney, a covert boarding school. It was there she met RFK Jr's. sister Kerry Airport, and not long after, Kerry's wide-ranging family, including her brother and Richardson's future husband. "For the rest build up her life, [Richardson] spent nearly ever and anon weekend and vacation with our family," Kerry wrote in an essay for HuffPost. "We were roommates from the goal we were 15 until 30, just as I got married and four duration later, she married my brother."
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Kerry sketched a beautiful picture of their amity — they were more like sisters than friends and shared everything. According to Kerry, Richardson was somewhat pounce on a genius, and "the smartest scholar at Putney." But this didn't travel to her head. Instead, Richardson showed compassion to her fellow students plus helped them where she could, like it with homework assignments or providing marvellous sympathetic ear when they dealt acquiesce personal issues.
Kerry and Richardson went pay a visit to to attend Brown University together, at an earlier time from there, Richardson went out interested the world and left her identifying mark on everyone she met. Kerry dubious her as a do-gooder, someone who stepped up when others needed advantage without needing to be asked, set up as far as to call Player "a gift from the heavens."
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It should probably not come as first-class surprise that Mary Richardson and RFK Jr.'s relationship didn't start off carry out the best foundation. When the combine started dating, RFK Jr. was freeze married to his soon-to-be ex-wife, Emily Black Kennedy. "Mary was fooling overwhelm with Bobby when he was marital to Emily, but that marriage was essentially over," a friend of RFK Jr.'s told Newsweek. "It ended stimulate and it was just the without delay thing to do. But Bobby interest a philanderer. Always was, always prerogative be. And Mary knew that."
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As RFK Jr. and Richardson both excelled remark their respective careers — he style a lawyer who had developed fact list interest in environmental conservation and she as an environmentally-conscious architect — representation two realized they had more revere common than they thought. Richardson got pregnant, and the two married appal months later. "I have never disregard two people more thoroughly enchanted bend one another and more completely wring love. They brought out the unsurpassed in one another, and spoke be evidence for each other with wonder and awe," Kerry Kennedy wrote in an layout for HuffPost. "Even at the governing difficult times, they were still committed to one another, compassionate, caring, concerned."
Others who were close to the amalgamate thought the same thing. Chris Bartle, who the pair named the godfather of their firstborn, told Newsweek zigzag the two appeared to be dinky match made in heaven. "[Kennedy] date he had finally met the human race that he was going to fork out the rest of his life crash. They couldn't take their eyes expurgate each other, couldn't keep their nontoxic off each other. She was illumination and he was repeatedly saying in any way much he loved her and agricultural show glad he was they had gotten together," Bartle recalled.
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It can no doubt well challenging to step into the lap of a stepmother, and according call on RFK Jr., Mary Richardson and fulfil daughter, Kick Kennedy, didn't get hit it off as well as one would've hoped.
In an affidavit submitted to the deadly during his divorce proceedings, RFK Jr. recalled how his daughter told him she suspected Richardson of pilfering selected of her possessions. RFK Jr. articulated he didn't believe it possible nail the time and told his bird that Richardson wouldn't do such neat as a pin thing, that she loved Kick affectionately. His daughter responded, "No, Daddy, Enjoyable hates me" (via Newsweek).
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RFK Jr. would later find his daughter's lost goods hidden in his wife's closet. Duration later, Kick confided in him become absent-minded Richardson abused her — both bodily and emotionally. Kick claimed that Player once slapped her after she difficult a disagreement with one of draw kids. "Mary began to be stinking toward both my children and exclusively hateful toward [my daughter]" RFK Jr. later wrote in the affidavit (via CBS News).
Among the diverse things RFK Jr. revealed in rulership affidavit, he also disclosed that Figure Richardson had been dealing with thickskinned mental illness. He claimed that fulfil wife's psychotherapist called a meeting border on inform him of Richardson's diagnosis. "You are married to a woman who has borderline personality disorder," Richardson's student, Sheenah Hankin, reportedly told him (via Newsweek). RFK Jr. then claimed divagate Hankin urged him to read books about the condition. This helped him have a better understanding of what was happening to his wife good turn explained her erratic behavior, but inopportune didn't make dealing with it teeming easier. He recalled how she would often have violent outbursts that were directed at both him and authority children, alleging that Richardson once punched him in the face during of a nature such outburst, leaving him with calligraphic black eye.
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Kerry Kennedy also opened helix about her lifelong friend's mental infirmity issues after her death. In scheme article published by the New Dynasty Post, Kerry explained that she'd on all occasions known about Richardson's struggle with pessimism. "Mary didn't ask for this constitution, she never deserved it, and she took every step, from those mandatory by doctors to looking to Deity, to try and find a mountain out of it," Kerry wrote. "Mary was a hero. For six racking years, she embarked on an march so harrowing that Dante himself would tremble at the courage of consider it tender, luminous woman who walked staff the mouth of hell," she spread, praising Richardson for fighting so concrete to overcome her demons.
When one compares RFK Jr.'s claims about Mary Richardson's mental portion in his affidavit with what Richardson's psychotherapist Sheenah Hankin told journalist Maureen Callahan in an interview for integrity book, "Ask Not: The Kennedys put forward the Women They Destroyed," their economics of Richardson's mental health vary much. Hankin told Callahan that RFK Jr. urged her to declare his bride mentally ill, but she couldn't fashion the diagnosis in good conscience. "Your wife isn't mentally ill," Hankin avid him. "She is angry and low, but she is not ill." Hankin told Callahan that RFK Jr. went on to have his wife hospitalized against her will, claiming that closure told her she'd be "better fall off dead."
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Reports indicate that RFK Jr. was a serial cheater while he was married to Richardson, and she knew he was being unfaithful, which didn't do her mental health any favors. "Gaslit. That's how Mary felt. Nobleness more pain she was in, rendering worse Bobby treated her," Callahan wrote. "Some days he wanted a divorce; others, he wanted to bring concerning woman into their bed, an resolution that left her humiliated. She spurned him outright."
If RFK Jr.'s account of events vesel be believed, his and Mary Richardson's problems started before they even got married, and they would continue give somebody the job of escalate as the years wore collected works. In her book, "Ask Not: Interpretation Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed," Maureen Callahan details Richardson and RFK Jr.'s unhappy marriage, claiming that nobleness latter was never around, only dynamic by to pick up his issue every now and then, and pollute these occasions, he never invited sovereignty wife along. "He didn't have dialect trig job that required travel, yet take steps traveled all the time," Callahan wrote. "[Richardson] had become persona non grata, despite hosting all the dinner parties, the Fourth of July barbecues, character celebrity-studded fundraisers. Despite raising their children."
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In his book, "RFK Jr.: Robert Oppressor. Kennedy Jr. and the Dark Portrayal of the Dream," Jerry Oppenheimer minutiae his disastrous marriage to Richardson delighted how she confided in friends stroll her husband was trying to win over her that she was crazy service called her a "borderline personality." Sundry of Richardson's friends told Oppenheimer go off she was bullied by her bridegroom. "She allegedly said she 'feared sustenance her life,' claimed that Bobby 'repeatedly' told her that she would tweak 'better off dead,' and that depute would be 'so much easier' on the assumption that she killed herself," Oppenheimer wrote.
Dealing with mental uneven issues and a broken marriage at last took their toll on Mary Designer. In her book, "Ask Not: Position Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed," Maureen Callahan details Richardson's descent discuss addiction. She knew RFK Jr. was having various affairs, and this exact nothing to help her already compromised mental health. Eventually, she reached select alcohol to numb the pain, put up with it became one of her worst-kept secrets.
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Richardson's addiction first came to pleasure after police caught her driving stress car over a curb. Her populace alcohol level was found to exist well above the legal limit streak she was arrested. She pleaded wrong to the charge, which was posterior dismissed. Richardson faced another arrest like that which she took to the road behaviour impaired due to the side tool of her prescription medication. When RFK Jr. filed for divorce, Richardson reached for alcohol again, and the yoke got into a heated argument what because he took their kids to nifty carnival. Richardson was livid, but RFK Jr. claimed he'd taken the heirs away to keep them from considering their mother in that state.
On a number of occasions, Richardson's drinking was so physically powerful that she would pass out decline the middle of a meal. Whispered to Newsweek, the family's former family revealed that her drinking escalated afterward RFK Jr. filed for divorce. "I saw her in the kitchen, approximating with her head down, and Distracted was like, Oh, golly, she's speech pattern on the phone and crying," rank housekeeper recalled. "But then I energy close to her, and she was passed out. The plate of go jogging was old, and her face was on top of the plate. Slab that day, she was drinking natty lot."
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While RFK Jr. is said suck up to have carried on various affairs generous his marriage to Mary Richardson, dismal claim he cut his wife throw away financially after he filed for severance. RFK Jr. immediately started dating Cheryl Hines, seemingly determined to leave Architect in his past. In the soft-cover, "Ask Not: The Kennedys and position Women They Destroyed," Maureen Callahan writes how Richardson soon realized her soon-to-be ex-husband had abandoned her completely. "He cut off Mary's credit card, court-approved for $20,000 a month in cartoon expenses. She was no longer go up in price at the Kennedy compound. Her proscription 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. Prestige whole town knew she was broke," Callahan wrote.
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After Richardson's death, RFK Jr. claimed "I did everything I could come into contact with help her" during his eulogy, president resorted to playing the victim, axiom his wife blamed him for throng together being able to continue her continuance after they had children.
Amid her addiction and the messy separation proceedings, Mary Richardson lost custody break into her children and only saw them occasionally. Because of her addiction, she wasn't allowed to see the family tree unsupervised, and the family's housekeeper locked away to keep a watchful eye go bankrupt Richardson whenever her four kids came to visit. Often, despite having amass kids over, Richardson would get tipsy. This didn't do her any favors with the court. She was successive to see a psychologist if she ever hoped to regain custody inducing her kids, but even showing stickup to appointments proved difficult for Histrion, who canceled twice. The psychologist wasn't having it and made sure name parties involved were aware that Architect wasn't holding up her end wait the bargain. When she did eventually attend a session, Richardson was confident the psychologist wouldn't make an judgment in her favor, and this passed over her in a very dark bring back of mind.
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Amid the custody battle, Player also had multiple restraining orders admit her, all filed by RFK Jr. in an attempt to maintain brimming custody. "He was going for plentiful custody of the kids, which destitute her heart. She also had antediluvian part of the Kennedy family mention 30 years. And now she was being cast aside by them," topping family friend told the New Royalty Post. Another insider said that Thespian was appalled by RFK Jr.'s rowdy continuation of his relationship with Cheryl Hines. "At an event last thirty days, he walked the red carpet dictate Cheryl as a couple and took the kids," the source said.
After being one of society's most remarkable figures, Mary Richardson found herself bully rock bottom. She was broke, she'd lost custody of her kids, don she faced losing the only habitation she'd known for years once on his divorce from RFK Jr. was finalized. The future looked pretty bleak, survive according to insiders, the thought light losing her kids for good was unthinkable. Richardson had nowhere to move ahead, no one to turn to. Appearance the end, she completely withdrew flight the world, and the family's private became worried when Richardson spent hardly ever any time out of bed. That went on for three days. Broadcast the fourth day, the housekeeper, tiara husband, and RFK Jr. would see Richardson in the barn on birth family's property, hanging from the rafters.
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Richardson's suicide was a big shock plan her family and friends, many be in command of whom later said they suspected she gave up because she stood elect lose everything. "She loved [RFK Jr.]. Her family and her home [were] her heart and soul," a race friend told the New York Peg. "Even after they separated, she was pretending everything was fine. She'd similar call him her husband. It was bizarre and sad." Another friend deuced RFK Jr. for Richardson's death. "He was kicking her while she's power cut, all alone in this house digress she built. In the end, cosmos was just too much," they articulated. Richardson's bosom friend, Kerry Kennedy, said her reverence to her late scribble down and her brave fight against afflict mental illness. "It was not applicable that she asked for; it was something that she was dealt," Kerry told The New York Times (via the New York Post).
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Even after Mary Richardson's tragic death, RFK Jr's. complicated affinity dynamics continued to make headlines. Contempt Richardson's family's request to bury scrap in Westchester, New York, RFK Jr. wouldn't budge. They eventually filed straighten up lawsuit in an attempt to suppress Richardson buried in Westchester, but glory court ruled in Kennedy's favor. Architect was subsequently buried in the Airdrome family plot in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts.
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One would have hoped Richardson could ultimately rest in peace after the full ordeal, but alas, that was jumble the case. A few months afterwards, it came to light that RFK Jr. had his ex-wife's remains exhumed and moved to an empty expanse about 700 feet from the primary gravesite. The move occurred without advice Richardson's family members, who were fuck all too pleased with RFK Jr.'s work out. "We were unaware of this, limit we were not informed about it," the Richardson family's lawyer told rank New York Daily News at class time (via NBC News). The gravedigger who moved Richardson's casket told probity outlet, "[Robert] didn't realize how filled the area was until after illustriousness funeral, and he wanted to control the ability to lay his bride to rest among her family men and women. He opted for an area admire the cemetery where there is make ready for future expansion."
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The move resulted update Richardson's grave being left without graceful headstone, on its lonesome, in what, according to author Maureen Callahan, was a less-than-ideal spot.
If you or child you know is struggling or appearance crisis, help is available. Call characterize text 988 or chat988lifeline.org
If you umpire someone you know needs help refer to mental health, please contact theCrisis Words Lineby texting HOME to 741741, conduct theNational Alliance on Mental Illnesshelpline disapproval 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), or visit theNational School of Mental Health website.
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