‘What I Learned From Reading RFK Jr.’s Diaries’

Isabel Vincent: “I gained extraordinary access to the diaries nearly a year after the suicide of Mary Richardson Kennedy, his second wife, who hanged herself in May 2012. At the end of a dinner with a trusted source at an Upper East Side bistro, I excused myself to go to the restroom, and when I returned, the diaries were in a plastic shopping bag hanging from the side of my chair. Nothing was spoken. I knew what I had.”

“Flipping through the unwieldy journals on the subway ride home, I confess I was only looking for the sex. Rather, I was searching for the descriptions of sex that my source had told me about. I found the lists of dozens of women at the back of the books. Beside each name—they are mostly first names—Kennedy had purportedly assigned a number from 1 to 10 to describe how far things had progressed, with ’10’ denoting intercourse, according to my source, who heard the explanation from Richardson Kennedy.”

“Richardson Kennedy had allegedly given the diaries to a friend in case she needed to use them as leverage in their protracted divorce negotiations, at a time when Kennedy appeared to hedge on disclosing his family’s financial assets. The divorce was never finalized, and Richardson Kennedy was still married—still a Kennedy wife—when she died.”

RFK Jr.

The Fall and Rise

by Isabel Vincent · William Morrow · 2026

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