Investigative reporter Isabel Vincent mines tales from Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s own diaries to paint a portrait of the current Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Drugs, sex, and exotic pets: The strangest anecdotes from new book RFK Jr.: The Fall and Rise

Investigative reporter Isabel Vincent mines tales from Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s own diaries to paint a portrait of the current Secretary of Health and Human Services.

By Marina Watts

Marina Watts

Marina Watts is a news writer for with seven years experience covering entertainment, pop culture and celebrity news. Her previous work appears in PEOPLE, Bustle and Newsweek.

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April 16, 2026 10:55 p.m. ET

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., 'RFK, Jr.: The Fall and Rise' book by Isabel Vincent. Credit:

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty; courtesy amazon

- Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the subject of a new biography, *RFK Jr.: The Fall and Rise*, written by investigative reporter Isabel Vincent.

- The book delves into his alleged affairs, his famous family, and his fascination with roadkill, among many other topics.

- Vincent mined anecdotes from Kennedy's own diaries.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a man of many stories.

Throughout Isabel Vincent's book *RFK Jr.: The Fall and Rise*, the investigative reporter spoke to many sources and examined the Secretary of Health and Human Service's diaries. Kennedy wrote of his famous family — including his late wife Mary Richardson — his love affairs, how he coped with the grief of his father's 1968 assassination, and his drug use.

"I found the diaries in a plastic shopping bag hanging from my chair at an Upper East Side restaurant in New York City, where I had met a trusted source who knew the Kennedy family well," Vincent, a one-time *New York Post *reporter, writes in the book. "The journals, from 1999, 2000, and 2001, are red-bound volumes festooned with stickers from exotic destinations: the Maui Dive Shop in Hawaii; Ushuaia, Argentina; San Ignacio Lagoon, Baja, California; Antártida. One book features a red, white, and blue 'Gore 2000' campaign sticker. There is also a Continental Airlines baggage tag stuck to the cover of one, on which Richardson had scribbled her name and included two phone numbers with the Westchester County 914 area code, the word 'REWARD' written in capital letters."

The book is packed with strange anecdotes, including ones about RFK Jr.'s fascination with roadkill, the many pets that lived at his parents' home Hickory Hill, and his connection to Jeffrey Epstein.

“The diary served as a tool for self-­ examination and for dealing with my spiritual struggles at the time,” RFK Jr. said regarding the 2001 journal, after initially denying he kept a diary in 2013 to the *New York Post*. “It also contains unedited, unfiltered stream-­of-­consciousness musings about current events and people."

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His diary also featured poignant reflections on his inner demons.

“After daddy died I struggled to be a grown-­up,” he wrote in July 2001 while in Puerto Rico’s Metropolitan Detention Center in Guaynabo. He was sentenced to 30 days in prison on trespassing charges. “I felt he was watching me from heaven. Every time I was afflicted with sexual thoughts, I felt a failure. I hated myself. I began to lie—­ to make up a character who was the hero and leader that I wished I was.”

Below, find some of the most unusual anecdotes from Vincent's book.

How RFK Jr. ranked women

RFK Jr. had a reputation for alleged philandering. Vincent writes that in the back of RFK Jr.s' diaries, he kept a list of his "romantic conquests" with a ranking system of 1 to 10 judging their performance. Sometimes there would be three entries a day, documenting alleged infidelities. Some entries included "victory," perhaps referring to his success of not being “mugged” (his term for seduced) by a woman.

The entries were mostly first names. RFK Jr. included "their full names if they were socially significant," writes Vincent.

"I bought the ticket, as Hunter [S. Thompson] says, and I took the ride. The seeds of it were easy. The restlessness, the shattered dreams, the empty hole that had to get filled with women," RFK Jr. wrote in a July 2001 entry, adding that he wanted to impress his late father, Robert F. Kennedy.

"I knew daddy was watching me and that he loved me,” he wrote. “But I also felt I was disappointing him—­ when I told a lie, had a sexual thought, got a bad grade.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Donald Trump in Glendale, Ariz., in 2024.

Tom Brenner for The Washington Post via Getty

Drug use at Harvard

Kennedy attended Harvard University, just like his grandfather Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., father Robert F. Kennedy and uncles John F. Kennedy, Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., and Ted Kennedy. During his freshman year at the Ivy League school, Vincent writes that RFK Jr. was dealing and using drugs.

“I was so angry in my early life,” RFK Jr. wrote in his diary years after his time in college. “But I was out of touch with the feeling. . . . Those violent fantasies I entertained all those years as I sat in the back of 1,000 classes during my interminable education . . . were rooted in anger."

Per Vincent, he was known by friends to do "speedballs," which was a combination of heroin and cocaine.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cheryl Hines in Philadelphia in 2023.

Hannah Beier/Bloomberg via Getty

Raccoon roadkill pit stop

Vincent's book features an anecdote about RFK Jr.'s longstanding fascination with roadkill. She writes that he would pick up and stash them in a freezer "so that he can study them later or feed them to his birds of prey."

In November 2001, RFK Jr. wrote about stumbling upon one on a highway between Connecticut and New York: "I was standing in front of my parked car on I-684 cutting the penis out of a roadkilled raccoon, thinking how weird some of my family members have turned out to be."

RFK Jr. found his brother Douglas Kennedy's and cousin Bobby Shriver's power to carry "deep resentments" was its "own category of weird."

While RFK Jr. collected the raccoon's remains, he writes, “my kids waited patiently in the car.”

When asked about the dead raccoon's penis by TMZ, RFK Jr. appeared to laugh it off, offering no comment.

RFK Jr. compares Cheryl Hines 'unfavorably' to Mary Richardson, new book says

RFK Jr. and ex-wife Mary planned to spend time with 'depressed' JFK Jr. and Carolyn before fatal plane crash

Relocating his ex-wife’s gravesite

After Mary Richardson's death and funeral in 2012, RFK Jr. moved her remains to the edge of the Saint Francis Xavier Cemetery in Centerville, Mass., after originally burying her close to Kennedy family plots at the site.

Richardson's siblings sued the Kennedy family to have her buried in Westchester, N.Y., where her children lived at the time. The Kennedys won, and Richardson was originally buried close to RFK Jr.'s aunt and uncle, Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Sargent Shriver.

However, per NBC News, her coffin was exhumed and relocated 700 feet away that July.

“We were unaware of this, and we were not informed about it,” Patricia Hennessey, the Richardson's family lawyer told *New York Daily News** *at the time.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr and Mary Richardson Kennedy in New York in November 2010.

Charles Eshelman/FilmMagic

Flying with Epstein

Later on, RFK Jr. admitted to flying on "the so-­called Lolita Express to South Dakota to go fossil hunting with his children and Mary," Vincent wrote. She added that RFK Jr. eventually admitted that Richardson's friendship with Ghislaine Maxwell got them free rides on the notorious private jet.

'RFK Jr.: The Fall and Rise' by Isabel Vincent.

Exotic pets

RFK Jr. grew up surrounded by pets at Hickory Hill. Per Vincent's book, after a trip to Africa with his cousin Bobby Shriver and uncle Sargent Shriver, who was director of the Peace Corps, RFK Jr. brought back a 16-pound leopard tortoise. He smuggled it in a "Gucci suitcase that doubled as a diplomatic pouch"; therefore, evading customs inspection. Carruthers, the tortoise, lived at Hickory Hill for over 20 years.

His father also bought him a a red-­tailed hawk when he expressed interest in falconry and even got a job at the Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington, D.C. At one point, among the "menagerie" at Hickory Hill was a seal named Sandy.  At one point, the seal prowled their neighborhood with a pack of dogs and caused a traffic jam, leading the Kennedy family to donate her to the zoo.

RFK Jr. delineated the nature-loving tendencies of his father's Kennedy side of the family and his mother Ethel's Skakel side.

“Both families shared a love of nature that might have provided the genetic antecedents to my predilection for the outdoors, but while the Kennedys embraced the challenges of sea, river and wilderness, the Skakels glorified in capturing, collecting or subduing," RFK Jr. wrote in his diary.

*RFK Jr.: The Fall and Rise *is now available for purchase.**

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