A newly released biography of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has revived several unusual stories from his past, including a journal entry in which he described stopping on the side of a highway to remove body parts from a dead raccoon.
The claims appear in RFK Jr.: The Fall and Rise, written by Isabel Vincent. The book reportedly draws from interviews, records, and journals Kennedy kept while living in New York City between 1999 and 2001.
One journal passage describes Kennedy standing beside his parked car on Interstate 684 while cutting into a raccoon that had been struck on the road.
The entry states: “I was standing in front of my parked car on I-684 cutting the penis out of a road killed raccoon, thinking about how weird some of my family members have turned out to be.”
The same passage continued: “My kids waited patiently in the car.” Kennedy later told People magazine he kept the animal’s genitals so he could “study them later.”
The resurfaced account has added attention to other animal-related stories Kennedy and members of his family have publicly discussed over the years.
One of the most widely repeated stories came from Kennedy’s daughter Kick Kennedy in a 2012 interview with Town & Country magazine.
She said the family was traveling to Hyannis Port when Kennedy learned a whale carcass had washed ashore near Squaw Island.
According to her account, he went to the beach, used a chainsaw to remove the whale’s head, and secured it to the roof of the family minivan with a bungee cord for transport.
She told the magazine: “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.”
Kick Kennedy also recalled: “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.”
Another incident drew national headlines during Kennedy’s 2024 presidential campaign when he acknowledged leaving a dead bear cub in Central Park.
In comments reported by The New Yorker, Kennedy said he had intended to skin the cub but did not complete the effort.
Before that article was published, Kennedy released a social media video in which he said he and friends had been drinking when they decided to place the cub in the park and “make it look like he got hit by a bike.”
Kennedy said he found the dead cub during a falconing trip in Goshen.
Following Kennedy’s later nomination by Donald Trump to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, cousin Caroline Kennedy reportedly sent lawmakers a letter criticizing his past conduct.
According to reporting cited from The Telegraph, she alleged Kennedy once placed chicks and mice in a blender while in college to feed hawks he kept, describing his dormitory as “a perverse scene of despair and violence.”
Kennedy has not publicly disclosed any research findings tied to the whale head, raccoon remains, or other specimens mentioned in the revived accounts.
The release of the new book has again placed those episodes into the public spotlight as Kennedy serves in one of the federal government’s top health positions.
