Kick Kennedy, the daughter of former 2024 presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., left observers gobsmacked after she told Town & Country Magazine how her father once cut off a beached whale's head when she was 6—before proceeding to drive five hours home with the head strapped to the roof of the family's car.
When she was 6, her father heard that a whale had washed ashore on Squaw Island in Hyannis Port. Indulging his fascination with studying animal skulls and skeletons, Kennedy decapitated the whale with a chainsaw and strapped the head to the car, then spent five hours driving it back to their home.
She recalled:
“Every time we accelerated on the highway, whale juice would pour into the windows of the car, and it was the rankest thing on the planet. We all had plastic bags over our heads with mouth holes cut out, and people on the highway were giving us the finger, but that was just normal day-to-day stuff for us.”
Notably, her father's actions may have violated the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), which was enacted by President Richard Nixon on October 21, 1972.
The MMPA aims to protect marine mammal populations from declining to levels that would compromise their role in their ecosystems. It prohibits the "take" of marine mammals, which includes hunting, harassing, capturing, collecting, or killing them within U.S. waters. Additionally, the MMPA forbids the import and export of marine mammals and their parts or products without a permit.
Kathleen Alexandra Kennedy got her nickname from her great-aunt Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy, who was just 28 when she died in a plane crash in 1948.
The younger Kick said:
“I always thought Dad and I were the same person, but I got fascinated by Kick a few years ago, and it’s funny how similar we are. She was fun and social and a performer in many ways."
"Of course, I don’t think my parents would ever call my own death divine retribution. Well, maybe if I became a Republican.”
People were undeniably weirded out by the story.
Kick Kennedy's story is all the more troubling given her father recently admitted that he once found a dead bear cub on the road and then bizarrely placed it in New York City's Central Park to make it look like it had been hit by a bicycle.
Kennedy revealed to MAGA actor Roseanne Barr that he and some friends were responsible for dumping the bear cub after finding it dead. He said "people were drinking with me who thought [it] was a good idea" to stage an accident. He claimed the idea came to him at the time because he was running late for another engagement.
Kennedy's admission was published to his personal X account in a dig at The New Yorker, saying the story "stayed dead for a decade" before it came to the attention of the publication, which did publish an article that revisited the bear incident.
In addition to this weirdness, a recent New York Times report about Kennedy's past revealed he'd said in a 2012 deposition that doctors believed a parasite "got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died," to which doctors attributed his significant memory loss and mental fogginess.
