Mary Courtney Kennedy, better known as Courtney, twenty-eight, had gotten a job as a producer at the Children’s Television Network and was now married to ABC sports producer Jeffrey Robert Ruhe. The marriage would be over by the late 1980s, making Courtney the first in the third generation of Kennedys to divorce. She would get remarried in 1993 to Paul Michael Hill, an Irishman who was wrongly imprisoned for fifteen years over IRA activity. He was one of the Guildford Four convicted of bombing two pubs outside of London. (The 1993 film In the Name of the Father was based on this case.) They would have one child together and be legally separated in 2006.
Meanwhile, Michael Kennedy, twenty-six, had married Victoria Gifford, daughter of legendary New York Giants halfback, Hall of Famer, and sportscaster Frank Gifford, in 1981. By the beginning of 1984 they had one son, and would have two more children in the coming years. In 1984, he would graduate from the University of Virginia Law School.
Mary Kerry Kennedy, better known as Kerry, twenty-five, was now working as a human rights activist, and in four years she would establish the Robert Kennedy Center for Human Rights.
Christopher George Kennedy, twenty-one, was attending Boston College in Chestnut Hill and would graduate in two years with a BA degree. He would marry Sheila Sinclair Berner in 1986 and they would have four children. Earlier, in 1979 and 1980, he worked for his uncle Ted’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, and in 1988 he would become treasurer of the campaign committee for his brother Joe’s reelection to the U.S. House of Representatives.
Matthew Maxwell Taylor Kennedy, better known as Max, nineteen, was about to enter Harvard, where he would graduate with honors. He would later attend the University of Virginia Law School and then go on to become an assistant district attorney in the juvenile crime unit of the Philadelphia prosecutor’s office. He and his wife, Vicki, also an alumna of UVLS, would go on to have three children.
Meanwhile, Douglas Kennedy was seventeen and Rory Kennedy sixteen, and both were in private schools.
Now, if only the family could get twenty-eight-year-old David on the right track.
“What’s troubling you, David?” Noelle Bombardier asked him one night in early 1984 when he had arrived from the West Coast for a visit. Everyone was gone from Hickory Hill, and David, not wanting to be alone, had asked Ethel’s assistant if she wouldn’t mind staying at the house for a few extra hours before returning to her own home. He might have been almost thirty, but he was still such a little boy at heart. She agreed to stay and have dinner with him, as she often did. “Why are you so very sad?” she asked him. “Tell me the truth.” David then sat down and told Noelle the exact same chilling story of witnessing his father’s death that Ethel had earlier relayed to her. “I was in my room all by myself,” he said, his voice devoid of all emotion. “All the politicians and grown-ups were downstairs, and I didn’t want to go down there, so I stayed in my room. I was watching television and then all of a sudden I saw my dad get shot, and I saw my mother kneeling over him, and I thought, that’s it. He’s dead. It just plays over and over in my head,” he concluded. “Over and over and over…”
“I understand,” Noelle said, taking him into her arms. “I understand.”
The two then had dinner, but there wasn’t much either of them could say after David’s heartbreaking story. It had been just that distressing.
About a week later, David and his mother, Ethel, had another confrontation that spoke volumes about the hopelessness and exasperation everyone was feeling at this time. Actually it was a showdown that had been building all day. That morning, Ethel walked into the drawing room to find a picture of her and Bobby from their wedding day placed on the coffee table instead of hanging in its place on the wall. When she picked it up and examined it, she found powdery traces on it. Clearly, someone had been using the glass as a base from which to sniff cocaine. In her mind, this was one of the most sacrilegious things she’d ever heard of; it was more than she could handle. She broke down into racking sobs in the living room, clutching the wedding picture to her bosom. Noelle recalled her being “absolutely inconsolable for hours.”
That night, Eunice and Sargent were scheduled to have dinner at Hickory Hill and then meet with the third generation of Kennedys to discuss certain philanthropic endeavors in which they hoped to involve them. David didn’t show up for the meal, much to Ethel’s embarrassment. Afterward, he finally made his appearance, looking tired and disheveled. Throughout the time Sargent spoke to the young Kennedys about the importance of being of service, mother and son exchanged angry stares.
Finally, after Sargent finished his talk and was surrounded by eager Kennedys asking him questions, Ethel pulled David into the kitchen by his arm. Concerned about what might happen in there between them, a couple of his siblings followed them, as did two of his friends. “How dare you show up looking like this?” Ethel demanded to know of David. “What is wrong with you?”
David didn’t answer. He just stood in front of his mother looking defeated.
“And was it you who used the wedding picture of me and your father to do drugs?” she demanded. “It was you, wasn’t it? Who else?” she asked. “Who else?”
Still no answer.
“Answer me,” Ethel demanded, looking at her son with angry eyes. But now she was crying. “You answer me this very instant, David Kennedy!” David took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then, seeming very ashamed of himself and with tears in his eyes, he very quietly said, “I love you, Mom. That’s all I got.”
Ethel seemed taken aback. The two just stared at each other for a few moments. What else was there to say? “Oh my God, David,” Ethel said, sounding as if someone had just knocked the wind out of her. Then, with tears streaming down her face, she did what any mother would probably have done in a similar circumstance: She took her son into her arms and held him as tightly as she could.
A Kidnapping Attempt at the Compound
Look, I have tried to talk to her about it,” Senator Ted Kennedy said to Ethel’s assistant, Noelle Bombardier, “but it’s like talking to a brick.”
“But, Senator, it’s ridiculous,” Noelle told Ted. “All the windows are always open, as are the doors. Anyone can get in here. I don’t feel that any of us are safe.”
“I know,” said Ted, who was certainly no stranger to such fears. “You just learn to live with it, you know?”
Bombardier was referring to the fact that neither of Ethel Kennedy’s homes—at Hickory Hill nor at the Kennedy compound—were equipped with security systems. It made no sense to anyone, especially given what had happened to Jack and Bobby. However, Ethel was adamant. She didn’t view the extra security as a precautionary measure but rather as something that would be foisted upon her because of what had happened to Bobby. “I don’t want to live in fear,” she said. “I won’t do it.” Everyone knew this was how she felt, and everyone just had to deal with it.
What spurred Bombardier’s conversation with Kennedy was this: The night before, there had been a frightening break-in at Hickory Hill. An apparent vagrant broke into the main house and actually entered fifteen-year-old Rory’s bedroom on the third floor. “Where’s your mom’s room?” he demanded to know. Scared out of her wits, the girl said, “Down the hall.” At the same time, Ethel apparently heard something in the hallway, turned on the light in her room, and then opened the door to find a strange man standing on the other side of it. She screamed out at the top of her lungs. In moments, the entire household was awake, including all of her sons, who quickly tackled the intruder to the ground. It turned out that the intruder was what Ethel later called “a harmless wacko.” Still, one might think this event would have been enough to frighten her into changing her mind about a security system. It didn’t, though. After that event, Ted did everything he could to convince Ethel that the situation was dire, but she wouldn’t accept it. “There are too many activities going on here,” she told him, “and I don’t want bells going off all the time. It would dr
ive me crazy. So the answer is no!”
About a year later, in the spring of 1984, something even more frightening occurred.
Noelle Bombardier was at the Hyannis Port home getting it ready for Ethel and the family’s summer stay. She was in the process of having it painted by four male students she’d recruited from Harvard to do the job. As the work was being done, a woman with a small child knocked on the door and asked to use the phone. She said that Ted often allowed her to come onto the property. Noelle instantly knew that the woman was lying. However, as it happened, anyone could actually walk up to the house. From the street side, a guard station was in place, ostensibly to prevent tourists from getting to the compound’s homes. But from the beach, all one had to do was walk right up to any of them. Bombardier told the woman to leave the premises immediately or she would call the police. She left, but a little while later she returned, this time alone. Then, while Noelle was in another room of the house, the intruder approached Noelle’s daughter, Danielle, who was about ten. “Would you like to meet my little girl?” she asked. Before long, Danielle was walking off hand in hand with the intruder—the painters all believing the intruder to be one of the household’s maids.
When Noelle realized her daughter was gone, she understandably became frantic. Hysterical, she called the police. She then got into her automobile and began driving down the beach, looking for her daughter. She soon found her, still walking with the intruder. “I drove along keeping my eye on them, thinking, how do I kill this woman and not hurt my child in the process?” Noelle recalled. “I was twenty feet away and ready to push on the gas when, from out of nowhere, I was suddenly surrounded by police. As the cops drew their guns on the woman, I got out of my car and ran to my child and pulled her away from the intruder. She was then handcuffed. ‘What were you trying to do?’ the police asked her. ‘I was trying to kidnap Rory Kennedy,’ she admitted. ‘She thought my daughter was Rory Kennedy!’ ”
After the abductor was carted away by the police, Bombardier drove her daughter back to Ethel’s house, from where she immediately telephoned her boss at Hickory Hill.
“Oh my God, that is terrible,” Ethel said, seeming genuinely shocked.
“And now I have to go down to the police station and file criminal charges against the woman,” Noelle said.
There was a long pause on the line. Then Ethel finally said, “Absolutely not. You’ll do no such thing!”
“But Mrs. Kennedy, she thought it was Rory she was taking,” Noelle said, according to her memory of the conversation. “Of course we must press charges.”
“I said, no!” Ethel repeated. She explained that if criminal charges were filed, the media would find out about the incident, which meant it would generate press. She didn’t want that kind of attention. Moreover, she said she was afraid such publicity would spur copycat attempts. “So let’s just forget it ever happened,” she told Noelle. That might have been something Ethel Kennedy could have done, but arguably not most people. Noelle was very upset. “Okay, fine,” she said. “Then I quit.”
“Now, you are really overreacting, Noelle,” Ethel said, trying to stay calm. “Just go get a good night’s sleep and we’ll discuss this tomorrow. But do not file charges.” Very early the next morning she telephoned Noelle as she was packing her things to leave the compound. “But if you leave now, who is going to let the maids in later this morning?” Ethel wanted to know.
“Do you think I’m worried about your damn maids?” Noelle shouted into the phone, raising her voice to her employer for the first time in seven years. “Why, three cops had to spend the night here with me and my child because we were so afraid. Don’t you get it?”
“But the woman is in custody,” Ethel exclaimed. “I don’t understand what you are so afraid of!”
The two argued for a while longer before hanging up. Noelle then left the compound to drive herself and her child back to Virginia. The next day, she showed up for work at Hickory Hill. “I certainly hope you have changed your mind about quitting,” Ethel said to her. “I really don’t want to lose you, Noelle.” She was clearly making an attempt at smoothing things over.
“Then let me press charges,” Noelle insisted.
“Absolutely not,” Ethel said. “I explained to you my reasons and you’ll just have to accept them. Now that’s the end of it!”
“Well, I’m sorry, Mrs. Kennedy,” Noelle said, “but I can’t act like this is okay. This was my child. And it could have been Rory. I’m afraid I have to leave.”
“But it’s just such a shame,” Ethel said, seeming to really mean it.
“Yes, it is,” Noelle agreed. “It’s such a shame.”
The two then parted company. “It wasn’t necessarily on bad terms,” Noelle Bombardier said many years later. “I just couldn’t stay on after what had happened, and after the way Mrs. Kennedy had reacted to it. I was heartbroken by it and, I have to say, very concerned about Mrs. Kennedy’s safety under the circumstances, and that of her family.”
Always Tomorrow?
Most people who knew David Kennedy point to the then-imminent publication of The Kennedys: An American Drama by David Horowitz and Peter Collier as being the catalyst to David’s final meltdown. In his interviews with Horowitz, David had been very candid about not only his drug use but also that of other family members. In fact, he had been critical of just about everyone, especially his own mother. The authors quoted him liberally. Worse yet, pretty much all of Bobby’s and Chris’s drug exploits were in the book as well. Perhaps venting about his family’s dysfunction had made him feel better in the moment, but afterward David was racked with guilt about it, and very sorry he had ever participated. Paula Sculley was with David when he reviewed excerpts of the book for the first time, which were published in Playboy along with a photo of David shooting up. “He bent his head over and said, ‘My God, this is awful. It’s trash,’ ” she remembered. “He felt betrayed and used.”
On March 19, 1984, David entered the drug program at St. Mary’s Rehabilitation Center in St. Paul, Minnesota, his fifth stint in a rehabilitation center. “This is it, David,” his uncle Ted had told him. “I’m very serious. We’re running out of solutions here.” Now he was as frustrated as he was sad. “It’s time for you to be a real Kennedy,” he told him, falling back on elements of the family’s standard credo as a last resort. “Kennedys don’t quit,” Ted said. “Kennedys don’t fail. Kennedys don’t let each other down.” It was all well-meaning, of course, but the senator was basically verbalizing David’s worst fears about himself: David did feel like a quitter, he did feel like a failure, and he did feel as if he was letting everyone down.
Unfortunately, the program at St. Mary’s was just a twenty-eight-day program—certainly not enough time to make much of an impact, especially given that the first excerpt of the dreaded Kennedy book hit the streets in Playboy pretty much as soon as David got into St. Mary’s.
After David finished his stay at St. Mary’s, he was scheduled to join much of the family in Palm Beach to spend Easter with his grandmother Rose. Since she was not well, the Kennedys wanted to be sure to celebrate this particular holiday. In fact, they were sure it would be her last. (Actually, the ever-tenacious Rose would live another ten years!) Because there were so many relatives present when David arrived on April 19, there was no room at Rose’s mansion, so David stayed at the nearby Brazilian Court Hotel and Beach Club—a luxury destination for affluent tourists—as did several of his siblings.
While in Palm Beach for the next six days, David would visit daily with his grandmother. He hadn’t seen her in some time and was deeply saddened by how much she had deteriorated. He loved her, as did everyone, and hated seeing her so small and fragile and sick.
Meanwhile, back in Virginia, Ethel Kennedy was still frantic as to what to do about her son. On Monday morning, April 23, she called her nephew Michael Skakel. “She told me that David was back on drugs,” Michael recalled. “I wasn’t surprised. I didn’t think t
wenty-eight days at St. Mary’s was going to do anything for him. She begged me to find another place for him, so I started checking around. The problem was that she didn’t want me to use the Kennedy name. She was afraid that if I was canvassing rehab centers and using the Kennedy name it would get out, and she didn’t want any more bad press about her son. She was adamant about that. ‘You must be discreet,’ she told me. In the end, though, without being able to say he was a Kennedy I couldn’t get the kind of special treatment Ethel wanted for David. I might have been able to get him into a good rehab in a few weeks, but not instantly—and she wanted instantly.”
On Tuesday afternoon, April 24, Ethel placed four telephone calls to Palm Beach lawyer Howell Van Gerbig Jr., a friend of the Kennedy family’s. She was extremely agitated, the attorney would later recall, and wanted to know if there was anything he could think of to help David. “She was at a loss,” Van Gerbig said. “She said that David had been abusive to some of the staff working at his grandmother’s estate, and even to some of his relatives there. When I asked her what drugs he was on, she seemed confused. As far as she knew, she said, all he was taking was the sedative Mellaril. When I observed that he must certainly be on other drugs, she said, ‘He promised me he stopped doing heroin, but I’m afraid he’s lying to me.’ I recommended a doctor in Florida who might be able to be of assistance. I also offered to meet with David myself at dinner. Ethel begged him to call me to set it up, and he did. But then David didn’t show for the dinner. She called me first thing in the morning [Wednesday] and when I told her that he didn’t show, she was upset. I was almost as worried about her as I was about her son.”
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