Robert F. Kennedy Jr. apparently ignored his suicidal wife’s pleas for help the day before she hanged herself.
“She told me that she was sorry for everything . . . She said that I was right about everything, and everything was her fault,” Kennedy told investigators after his estranged second wife Mary Kennedy’s suicide on the grounds of their Bedford estate.
“She then told me that she needed me to take care of her,” RFK Jr. said, according to Bedford Police investigative reports.
The records, obtained by The Journal News, do not specify what the son of the slain former attorney general, New York senator and presidential candidate did following the foreboding call from his soon-to-be ex-wife, who was battling depression and substance abuse.
But Kennedy said the next day, May 16, he and the family caretaker looked all over for Mary and couldn’t find her.
It was her Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor, Shannon White, who discovered her body hanging in the barn.
Earlier that day, RFK Jr. told White “he was worried something had happened to Mary and that she may have hurt herself,” according to the documents.
The family caretaker had also warned Kennedy about Mary’s deteriorating condition before her suicide, the documents show.
“I noticed some changes in Mary,” the caretaker said. “I thought something was wrong with her. I told Bobby about her, and I told him that she needs help. Bobby told me that she doesn’t want to help herself.”
She further told Kennedy that Mary “asked me to pray for her, because she got more bad news from her lawyer.”
A Kennedy family spokesman didn’t return calls for comment.
Mary Kennedy, 52, who battled alcohol addiction for years, was in the middle of a nasty divorce with RFK Jr. at the time of her death. She had also repeatedly threatened suicide over the years.
Friends said she was horrified at the prospect of losing custody of their four children, then aged 11 to 17, and tortured over how her estranged husband flaunted his relationship with actress Cheryl Hines.
She was in debt and being sued for $32,000 by American Express when she killed herself. She also risked losing the Bedford mansion in the divorce, which was scheduled to go to trial in September.
After her death, the records show Kennedy asked both cops and a confidant on what to tell the kids.
“Bobby asked me and then the police separately how to tell his children about this,” said a person interviewed by police.
“I suggested telling them himself and gathering people around him who are supportive. I also suggested he clear his calendar to be with them. He said maybe he should take them away somewhere. I said they may need to be close by their mother’s things for a bit,” the confidant said.