Kyle Kennedy, the granddaughter of Robert F Kennedy, has died at her home in Westwood, Massachusetts, aged 42.
Kennedy died on September 21, according to an online obituary. The cause of death has not been disclosed.
She was a mother of three and had been left permanently paralysed after suffering a severe spinal cord injury in 2020. Her obituary said she “fought to maintain her dry wit and determination through it all, trying to be the best possible mother”.
Kennedy was the daughter of Michael Kennedy and Victoria Denise Gifford. Her father was the son of Robert F Kennedy, while her mother is the daughter of former American football star Frank Gifford.
She was also the niece of Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US Secretary of Health and Human Services, and the great-niece of President John F Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963.
Kyle Kennedy’s death adds to a long list of tragedies involving one of America’s best-known political families. Her father, Michael, died in a skiing accident in 1997 when she was 13, while her daughter Josephine died in infancy in 2014.
Tragedies surrounding the Kennedy family
President John F Kennedy was shot dead in Dallas on November 22, 1963, as he travelled in an open-top motorcade with his wife, Jacqueline Kennedy. He was 46.
His younger brother Robert F Kennedy was assassinated five years later, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, shortly after winning the California Democratic presidential primary. The New York senator died the following day, aged 42.
Another generation was affected in 1999, when John F Kennedy Jr died after crashing his small plane into the Atlantic Ocean near Martha’s Vineyard. His wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and her sister Lauren Bessette were also killed.
The family has endured other fatal accidents. In 2020, Maeve Kennedy Townsend McKean, the granddaughter of Robert F Kennedy, and her eight-year-old son Gideon drowned during a canoeing trip in Chesapeake Bay, Maryland.
The pair had gone out to retrieve a ball that had been carried into the water. Maeve’s body was found four days after they disappeared.
Drug-related deaths have also touched the family. David Kennedy, the son of Robert F Kennedy, died of an overdose in a Palm Beach hotel in 1984, aged 28.
In 2019, Saoirse Kennedy Hill, another granddaughter of Robert F Kennedy, died aged 22 following an accidental overdose at the family compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts.
Kara Kennedy, the eldest daughter of Senator Ted Kennedy, died in 2011 after suffering a heart attack following a workout at a health club in Washington DC. She was 51 and had previously undergone treatment for lung cancer.
Michael Kennedy, Kyle’s father, was killed in Aspen, Colorado, after striking a tree while skiing and playing football without protective equipment. He was 39.
The family’s history also includes the death of Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, the premature son of John and Jacqueline Kennedy, who died less than 40 hours after his birth in August 1963.
Earlier generations suffered similar losses. Joseph P Kennedy Jr, the eldest son of Joseph and Rose Kennedy, was killed when his aircraft exploded during the Second World War in 1944. He was 29.
His sister Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy died in a plane crash in 1948, aged 28, while travelling from Paris to the French Riviera.
The series of deaths and accidents has led some to describe the family’s misfortunes as the “Kennedy curse”, although the phrase has never been an official explanation for the tragedies.
