Latest tragedy to hit the Kennedy dynasty shocks all in US

America’s great political dynasty is grieving again after Mary Richardson Kennedy, the estranged wife of Robert Kennedy Jr, hanged herself at the family’s estate in a New York City suburb.

...she was truly a Kennedy...She was a Kennedy in her interests. Her husband is one of America’s leading environmentalists. So was she...

Her death, aged 52, came as a shock to some friends and family, even though the past two years had been undeniably tough ones.

The couple was going through a divorce, and Mary had been charged twice with driving while intoxicated in 2010.

But Victoria Michaelis, a friend since Mary’s college days, said she had not seemed suicidal or crippled by the alcohol problems that briefly landed her in the headlines two springs ago.

“She was definitely suffering, but she was very, very spiritual and a resolute Catholic,” Ms Michaelis said.

“I’d say she was depressed the last two years since the divorce. But she would put that aside and ask you how you were. I saw her a couple of weeks ago, and she was fine.”

Her death resonated, too, with a public that has watched tragedy march through the ranks of the Kennedy clan again and again.

“I think every family has its tragedies. But this is too much,” said Kim O’Connell, who dropped off a bouquet of Calla lilies at the family’s home in Bedford.

Mary Kennedy had lived much of her life at the edge of the spotlight that shines on the Kennedy family. An architectural designer with New Jersey roots, she met her estranged husband’s sister, Kerry, in boarding school when they were still teenagers and had stayed close to the clan through the decades before marrying Robert in 1994.

Robert is the son of Robert F. Kennedy, the former US attorney general who was killed in 1968 while running for the Democratic presidential nomination, and the nephew of assassinated President John F. Kennedy and the late US Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts.

Mary was RFK Jr’s second wife and she entered the family in less-than-storybook circumstances.

When they married, she was already pregnant with their first child and Mr Kennedy was only weeks removed from the divorce of his first wife.

She had been with the family long enough to become a partner in its rituals of grief.

She was there when the clan buried Michael Kennedy, killed in a New Year’s Eve skiing accident in 1997, and John F. Kennedy Jr, who died in a plane crash in 1999.

“Mary married into the family. But, believe me, the Kennedys don’t marry into your family, you marry into their family. So you’re transformed when you marry into their family,” said Laurence Leamer, author of the book The Kennedy Women.

“And she was truly a Kennedy,” he added. “She was a Kennedy in her interests. Her husband is one of America’s leading environmentalists. So was she.”

In recent years, police in Bedford had been called several times to the family’s home. Twice in 2007, Robert told police that he was afraid his wife would try to hurt herself, according to records obtained by The Journal News for a 2010 report about the series of disturbances.