Robert F Kennedy Jr, now US health secretary, documented a peculiar moment on a New York highway in 2001 when he stopped to dissect the genitals of a road-killed raccoon while his children waited in the car, according to a newly published biography.
The incident appears in a diary entry quoted in the book RFK Jr: The Fall and Rise, released this week. Kennedy described standing in front of his parked vehicle on Interstate 684, removing the animal's penis so he could "study them later." His children remained in the car during the procedure.
Biographer Isabel Vincent told People magazine that Kennedy's stated purpose was scientific examination. The diary entry also captures Kennedy's broader reflection on family, with him musing about relatives he found odd while performing the dissection.
The raccoon incident is one of several documented examples of Kennedy's long-standing interest in animal remains. Vincent's book recounts a 2001 episode in Long Island where a traveling journalist observed Kennedy expressing desire to collect dead seagull skulls for what he called his "skull collection," though scheduling constraints prevented him from stopping to harvest them.
Kennedy's behavior with deceased animals extends well beyond curious roadside pauses. Environmental groups voiced outrage over his use of a chainsaw to sever the head of a beached whale carcass, which he then lashed to his car's roof. In another incident, he admitted to placing a dead bear cub in Central Park, staging the scene to suggest it had been struck by a bicycle.
The new biography arrives as Kennedy serves as health secretary under the Trump administration, leading the Make America Healthy Again movement while also known for his vaccine skepticism and environmental advocacy work over decades.
Author James Rodriguez: "The raccoon story is the kind of bizarre detail that captures Kennedy's character: intelligent enough to have scientific curiosity, but unmoored enough from normal social instinct to act on it with his kids in the backseat."
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