Speaker 1: Also media, Ah, what's cold? My open it? Well that
Speaker 1: doesn't sound very good at all. Cody, come on in here,
Speaker 1: help me out with this. I hey, like, I'm floundering here.
Speaker 2: What's intro? Myduction? How's it going? Everybody out there?
Speaker 1: What a pro? What a pro? Just knocked it out
Speaker 1: of the park, Cody, Welcome to my show, d Behind
Speaker 1: the Bastards a podcast bad Thank you all about him? Cody.
Speaker 1: It has been an eventful news week since we started
Speaker 1: the r K Junior episodes.
Speaker 2: It really has.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I didn't realize that until we hopped on again. How
Speaker 2: it happened since last week record?
Speaker 3: I was like, hey, Cody, remember that when we recorded
Speaker 3: the day before former President Trump had an assassination attempt
Speaker 3: on his life.
Speaker 2: It was the day before the day before, and then
Speaker 2: and then it kept going. The news just kept going.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the news kept going.
Speaker 4: Attempted assassination attempt r n C. Who jd Vance?
Speaker 2: What a weird guy?
Speaker 1: Uh? Yeah? Jd Vance buck the couch, all the all
Speaker 1: the hells.
Speaker 5: Then it was then it was Jovid, and then it
Speaker 5: was jover and and now.
Speaker 4: We're here.
Speaker 1: Age I don't know. Yeah, the k Hives glorious return
Speaker 1: I guess what a wild time. So I don't know,
Speaker 1: we'll say what what next week brings.
Speaker 2: Uh, I mean maybe tomorrow or today something will happen.
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe maybe things will just never stop happening now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe things are always going to keep happening. Yeah. Fuck,
Speaker 1: I don't even know what else to say about it.
Speaker 1: But you know who understands the way our current national
Speaker 1: feeling of whiplash and uh, just like mind dulling shock,
Speaker 1: uh is a guy who has been going through it
Speaker 1: longer than we have our FK Junior Junior. I sat
Speaker 1: down to write these episodes basically when I was on
Speaker 1: the plane to the RNC right after Trump had been
Speaker 1: a shot, and like the whole the jarring nature of
Speaker 1: just that, which was several twists in the national story ago,
Speaker 1: made me think of RFK Junior. Obviously, the you know,
Speaker 1: the obvious reason would be that you know, he lost
Speaker 1: his dad during a presidential campaign because an assassin shot him.
Speaker 2: Right, well, yeah, assassination attempts, I think, just make you
Speaker 2: think of Kennedy's.
Speaker 1: Right, right obviously. Yeah, and yeah it kind of continues.
Speaker 1: You know that campaign they had to find a new
Speaker 1: guy to run, didn't wind up working out well in
Speaker 1: this case, and that it kind of continues these weird, distorted,
Speaker 1: maybe reversed echoes of nineteen sixty eight, that this whole
Speaker 1: election has where it's like, it's a lot like sixty eight.
Speaker 2: But not it's so interesting, howeah, it's so like it,
Speaker 2: but so not.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Mostly I thought of RFK Junior, because the whole
Speaker 1: sordid business was clear, Like everything that happened to Trump,
Speaker 1: like everything detail that's come out about the Corey comparatory,
Speaker 1: the guy who died instead of Trump's, it's really clear
Speaker 1: evidence of the severe, maybe terminal brain rot at the
Speaker 1: heart of this country. You know, not just our fetishistic
Speaker 1: love of guns, although that's a part of it, or
Speaker 1: all the conspiracy theories, but the casual derangement of even regular,
Speaker 1: everyday people, the warping of sins and sensibility that you
Speaker 1: have to endure not only is part of life here,
Speaker 1: but to like survive in the United States. In the
Speaker 1: first comments I made to my own posts on the assassination,
Speaker 1: I saw people theorizing that it was a false flag.
Speaker 1: That one of my favorites, and I think we're even
Speaker 1: past this now, was that Trump had bladed himself slicing
Speaker 1: his own ear with the hidden racer like a wrestler.
Speaker 1: And then on the right wing side, obviously people immediately
Speaker 1: decided to blame the female Secret Service age on Trump's team.
Speaker 4: America.
Speaker 2: He means the women after he was already shot at.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, he immediately he thanked during his speech because
Speaker 1: obviously you're not going to talk shit about your bodyguards.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that would be a bad move.
Speaker 1: But what's really going on with all of this is
Speaker 1: that reality has fractured entirely in this country. The shooting
Speaker 1: of Donald Trump was a prism, and the color of
Speaker 1: light that we run through that prism and the direction
Speaker 1: we shoot at it is going to determine what comes
Speaker 1: out the other end. We're living in like reality a
Speaker 1: la carte. You and me and everyone we know. We're
Speaker 1: in the process of coping with this, and we're doing
Speaker 1: mixed jobs of it. But RFK Junior has spent his
Speaker 1: entire life pretty much in this space. Right for him,
Speaker 1: reality fractured back in nineteen sixty eight, and there's never
Speaker 1: really been any chance of fixing what's broken. We've already
Speaker 1: discussed a few of the ways that he started coping
Speaker 1: with this brokenness as a young man. Some of these
Speaker 1: ways were not unhealthy. You know. He leaned into his hobbies,
Speaker 1: even if they are crazy, rich guy hobbies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he leaned into his hobbies. Described the hobbies before.
Speaker 1: They're baffling. Yeah, they're unhinged hobbies, but they are hobbies, hobbies,
Speaker 1: And he and his friends used humor to help themselves
Speaker 1: cope and find control in the chaos, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: not a bad way to deal with it. But he
Speaker 1: also turned to drugs to cope. And when you've got
Speaker 1: a fracture, you know, a fractured bone or a fracture
Speaker 1: of reality, nothing covers up the pain like heroin. Bobby
Speaker 1: was using heroin and any other narcotic he could get
Speaker 1: his hands on by the time he got to Harvard,
Speaker 1: and that was not his only coping tactic for dealing
Speaker 1: with the pain and uncertainty of a world that for
Speaker 1: him had never been quite sane. Lim Billings remained his
Speaker 1: primary adult authority figure and anchor to sanity. Now Lim
Speaker 1: legitimately cared about him, which put Bobby ahead of a
Speaker 1: lot of his fellows. But Lim also wanted him to
Speaker 1: be the new JFK, and Bobby wanted to oblige him.
Speaker 1: JFK had first risen to superstardom by dint of his
Speaker 1: perceived tremendous heroism as the captain of PT one O nine.
Speaker 1: That heroism had already helped drive another Uncle Joe to
Speaker 1: an early grave. But Lim felt that for Bobby to
Speaker 1: have a chance of taking on that mantle, he needed
Speaker 1: to do something brave, something that would just as crucially
Speaker 1: let him make the news for being brave. And I'm
Speaker 1: going to quote again from Oppenheimer's book here as to
Speaker 1: what they decided to do in the summer of nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy four, before Bobby began his junior year at Harvard.
Speaker 1: Lim Billings proposed that they explore the very isolated and
Speaker 1: dangerous a paramac Reverence Southern Peru, and adventure that Bildings
Speaker 1: had convinced Bobby would engrave his name alongside that of
Speaker 1: his father and his uncle Jack in terms of bravery
Speaker 1: and daring. Several of his school chums went along, as
Speaker 1: well as David Kennedy, and they benefited from the best
Speaker 1: guides and equipment that money could buy. But there's a
Speaker 1: fairly low ceiling on how safe a journey like this
Speaker 1: could be right. You're all you're going to be in
Speaker 1: danger even if you have the money for the best equipment.
Speaker 1: And Bobby immediately gets dysentery, and his dysentery is exacerbated,
Speaker 1: as Oppenheimer writes, by his refusal to eat anything but
Speaker 1: the weirdest shit he could find, quote including boiled rat,
Speaker 1: pulling out the eyes from the dead rodan's head and
Speaker 1: popping them into his mouth. Billings, who idolized Bobby, did
Speaker 1: the same. Bobby could also kill a chicken for food
Speaker 1: in a split second by snapping its neck between two
Speaker 1: of his fingers, and he had the ability to drink
Speaker 1: half a bottle of beer then press his hand down
Speaker 1: on the bottle's mouth, making the thick glass bottom fall out.
Speaker 2: Bobby, what are you doing? Life?
Speaker 1: Just like what a sicko?
Speaker 4: What a sicko. He's not even a weirdo, he's a
Speaker 4: sick of.
Speaker 1: It's like that baffling.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, there's just like a level here. That's it's
Speaker 2: not even like you're like, oh you're up here. It's parallel.
Speaker 2: You've escaled, you've escaped here and you've gone sideways to
Speaker 2: just this other world that is ah, well, did it
Speaker 2: cures dysentery eating the rats.
Speaker 1: I don't think it cured is dysentery, Cody, I do
Speaker 1: think it again, I think it explains the worm.
Speaker 2: I was gonna say, like when you were like, he
Speaker 2: decided they decided to do something like dangerous. I was like,
Speaker 2: so they decided to give him a brainworm. They were
Speaker 2: just like, we're gonna put this in your brain.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're gonna live on the river, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like voluntarily getting a skull.
Speaker 1: America will love you, Bobby, if you live on the
Speaker 1: river and eat rat ies. Some Americans were so funny,
Speaker 1: so they brought with them on this journey down the
Speaker 1: river in Peru a veritable medicine cabinet full of drugs
Speaker 1: which a doctor had given them to accommodate potential illnesses.
Speaker 1: Bobby put himself in charge of the trip's medicine cabinet,
Speaker 1: and mostly he spent the trip downing every bit of
Speaker 1: morphine and every OPIUF that they had been given. Now
Speaker 1: having been I've had dysentery before, and I would have
Speaker 1: taken morphine if I'd had the opportunity. But his friends
Speaker 1: were frustrated because when they were sick and they asked
Speaker 1: for medicine. He would tell them, no, man, we got
Speaker 1: to save the drugs for emergencies.
Speaker 2: Well he's not wrong.
Speaker 1: You shouldn't have saved.
Speaker 2: That's what he was doing. But the thing, it's true
Speaker 2: lie that he said.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a true lie. That's where that movie came from.
Speaker 1: Cody RFK holding out on his friends in the jungle.
Speaker 1: So David became kind of unsettled.
Speaker 2: In the dark the quarter, it's being like, no eat
Speaker 2: the rat. Slowly he did sexually.
Speaker 1: So David was unsettled by his brother's behavior in the jungle,
Speaker 1: but cousin Chris Lawford was amazed. He considered this trip
Speaker 1: they were taking such a JFK worthy act that he
Speaker 1: started referring to Bobby as Jack and Lim Lim is like, yes,
Speaker 1: call him Jack.
Speaker 2: No worse, that makes it so much worse. You're ruining him.
Speaker 2: You're like destroying this man.
Speaker 6: This is like the most most brain damage I can
Speaker 6: imagine giving a young man.
Speaker 2: Just like popping him full of drugs and calling him Jack.
Speaker 2: Like that's not good for doing.
Speaker 1: A heart of darkness, to turn him into his uncle.
Speaker 2: God, what do you expect again? Just like no chance
Speaker 2: this guy, no chance.
Speaker 1: No you gotta remember, he's incredibly good looking as a
Speaker 1: young man. He's got that Kennedy good looks, and so
Speaker 1: his friends he's very photogenic. His friends take pictures of
Speaker 1: Bobby like fording rivers and doing these insane whitewater rapids
Speaker 1: rides and everything, and they get into the news because
Speaker 1: he's a Kennedy, right, anything he does is newsworthy, and
Speaker 1: people are so excited by these pictures of Bobby Kennedy
Speaker 1: Junior looking hot on the river like like a little adventurer,
Speaker 1: that it draws the attention of a forward thinking TV
Speaker 1: executive who like sees these and is like, oh, there's
Speaker 1: potential here, Cody. You want to guess the name of
Speaker 1: that TV executive?
Speaker 2: Oh? No, is it?
Speaker 1: Is?
Speaker 2: It an Ales kind of guy.
Speaker 1: Roger literally Roger?
Speaker 2: As it is? It is, Oh, well, good for that
Speaker 2: relationship to blossom.
Speaker 1: Who else could it have been?
Speaker 2: Who else could it have been? I know? But my god?
Speaker 1: All right, yeah, there's three guys into a world.
Speaker 2: There are three people, like the world has three guys
Speaker 2: and they just bounce around.
Speaker 1: Now, the future father of Fox News was at this
Speaker 1: point consulting for TV in a prototype conservative news network
Speaker 1: funded by the heir to the Core's beer fortune.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: This all culminated in a TV show their relationship. Ales
Speaker 1: and Bobby's on a TV show about Bobby's next adventure
Speaker 1: this time, No, they were going to put him in
Speaker 1: in Africa. They were going to do a safari in
Speaker 1: Africa with Bobby Kennedy Junior, titled The Last Frontier. Some
Speaker 1: of the details of this are interesting. Bobby was a smoker,
Speaker 1: but he refused to be filmed smoking on camera because
Speaker 1: he felt that public figures shouldn't smoke. He at this
Speaker 1: point claimed he didn't want to be He accepted that
Speaker 1: he was a public figure, but he didn't want to
Speaker 1: have a political career, which given what happened to his
Speaker 1: uncle and his dad, makes complete sense. Sure, he told
Speaker 1: this to Ales during an interview. People with advantages in
Speaker 1: our society can use them to change the system and
Speaker 1: help large groups of people. The more they have advantages,
Speaker 1: the more they can help, and the more they should help.
Speaker 1: So's that's his attitude at this point in his life, right, Sure, which.
Speaker 2: Is I mean, I appreciate his position on public figures
Speaker 2: not smoking cigarettes. He like understands like yeah, like this
Speaker 2: is a tacit endorsement, and I can make my decision, but.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I shouldn't push it on kids or use the
Speaker 1: level of cool that I have by virtue of being
Speaker 1: a Kennedy to like make this.
Speaker 2: And I'm a Kennedy, got all these advantages and privileges
Speaker 2: and stuff. I should use them to help people. And
Speaker 2: right right on, you should maybe talk to somebody other
Speaker 2: than Roger Hale's.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'll talk to Roger Ales about this. He may
Speaker 1: not be gat to help, but you get where he
Speaker 1: comes from here. He also get where this can lead
Speaker 1: in toxic directions, right because like the idea that you know,
Speaker 1: to whom much is given, much is owede. There's a
Speaker 1: degree of sense in that, but it also leads to
Speaker 1: this no less oblige idea that like, well, we're the
Speaker 1: natural ruling class, you know, America needs me running things.
Speaker 1: He's not there yet, but that's where he's going to head.
Speaker 1: From what I can tell, he did fine on camera.
Speaker 1: He was a good like person to film, I guess,
Speaker 1: but he claims he didn't really enjoy the work quote
Speaker 1: I'm no actor. If we had to do a second take,
Speaker 1: I just fell apart. It was fun, though I knew
Speaker 1: I did have to adapt to this environment in Africa.
Speaker 1: I wasn't stuck somewhere that I couldn't get out of.
Speaker 1: It was sort of like Harvard students working in a
Speaker 1: factory and playing blue collar workers for a while. I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's how like that it is.
Speaker 2: I mean, well, right, like it's like in that example,
Speaker 2: it's like, oh, you're like kind of faking like you're
Speaker 2: this person. You're doing this thing, like you're like you're
Speaker 2: like that, but like this guy's hawking by like ransom meat. Like, yeah,
Speaker 2: this isn't like he's not cause playing as a weirdo
Speaker 2: who does this right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he does come by the eating bush meat, honestly,
Speaker 1: bush meat morphine. Yeah, that's his breakfast of champions.
Speaker 2: He's not you know, there's no pretending there. That's no
Speaker 2: pure Bobby.
Speaker 1: That is pure Bobby. Speaking of Harvard, though, Bobby was
Speaker 1: not a student who did very well. Right, there's not
Speaker 1: a lot to write home about in terms of his
Speaker 1: academic performance. But in nineteen seventy five, while he is
Speaker 1: entering his twenties and starting on the path to becoming
Speaker 1: a lawyer and adventuring in his part time, one of
Speaker 1: his cousins probably but not definitely, committed a murder. Cody.
Speaker 1: There's another swing here, right, They're always are. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of deaths and scandals within the Kennedys, and most
Speaker 1: people just know about the big ones, but boy, there's
Speaker 1: a lot.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: We're not going to cover all of them, but this
Speaker 1: one is extremely relevant because Bobby is going to put
Speaker 1: himself in the middle of this case as an adult.
Speaker 1: So the victim here was the daughter of another wealthy,
Speaker 1: prominent family who lived near the Kennedy compound, fifteen year
Speaker 1: old Martha Moxley. And I'm going to quote from an
Speaker 1: article in the New York Times. Here, Martha Moxley, fifteen,
Speaker 1: fails to show up at home after roaming her neighborhood
Speaker 1: in Greenwich with her friends. Her body is found bludgeoned
Speaker 1: and stabbed, half hidden beneath pine trees. A broken golf
Speaker 1: club is found nearby, believed to have been used in
Speaker 1: the killing. The murder rattles the town, which is considered
Speaker 1: extremely safe. Nearly two years after the tea's death, many
Speaker 1: Greenwich residents wonder why a broad police investigation has yielded
Speaker 1: no arrests. Martha was last seen alive on the lawn
Speaker 1: of a friend, Thomas Scackle, seventeen, Michael's older brother. The
Speaker 1: brothers are nephews of Ethel Scackle Kennedy, the widow of
Speaker 1: Robert F. Kennedy. The police traced the golf club used
Speaker 1: in the killings to the collection of the Scackle family.
Speaker 1: Thomas and another young man are considered suspects, though both
Speaker 1: past lie detector tests. So that's fucked up right now.
Speaker 1: Bobby's not involved at all in this at this point, right,
Speaker 1: He's not going to be involved for years. But I
Speaker 1: needed this is kind of when this happens chronologically in
Speaker 1: the Bobby Kennedy story, and I'll need you to remember
Speaker 1: Martha Moxley because this whole case is going to become
Speaker 1: very relevant later. So later in nineteen seventy five, the
Speaker 1: same year that this happened, Bobby got involved in his
Speaker 1: first political campaign, not as a candidate, but helping his
Speaker 1: college buddy Peter Shapiro win election to the local Assembly
Speaker 1: in New Jersey. Bobby mostly knocked on doors, but Shapiro
Speaker 1: would later claim that his mere presence got the news
Speaker 1: attention and is probably what sinsed him the election. Right,
Speaker 1: I got elected because I had a Kennedy on my
Speaker 1: back and like that still holds a lot of water.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy six, Bobby was in his final year
Speaker 1: at Harvard, and he picked as the subject for his thesis,
Speaker 1: recent historical and political changes in Alabama. Governor George Wallace,
Speaker 1: the segregation forever guy, had just been shot and paralyzed
Speaker 1: in an assassination attempt. Bobby recalled later being shocked to
Speaker 1: find that the poor white, working class people who'd been
Speaker 1: the backbone of his uncle's presidential victory had shifted political
Speaker 1: allegiances right basically, like, Wow, these different states that used
Speaker 1: to be the stronghold of the Democratic Party with my
Speaker 1: dad was in charge, they all seem to be very racist. Now,
Speaker 1: what could have possibly happened? How do we solve for this?
Speaker 2: No, there's no political theory about that.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, one's no. One spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time studying, and Bobby eventually he's got to find
Speaker 1: out how to get those people back on his side. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: but we're getting ahead of ourselves. Bobby and his friend
Speaker 1: Peter Kaplan even wound up interviewing Wallace for the thesis.
Speaker 1: Although Oppenheimer speculates that Bobby didn't actually write the thesis.
Speaker 1: He thinks that Bobby had Peter do it for him,
Speaker 1: which is exactly how Bobby works. Right, It's good enough
Speaker 1: that I attached my name to this. I don't actually
Speaker 1: have to sit down and write the goddamn thing, right,
Speaker 1: someone else can? People just need to see a Kennedy's exactly.
Speaker 1: He's a Kennedy. We don't do our own things.
Speaker 4: Plus plus he's he's too busy hawk two eying.
Speaker 1: Oh god, what Sophie. That that joke was two weeks ago.
Speaker 1: We moved on. I have passed that I'm.
Speaker 4: Still at the restaurant, which is a joke.
Speaker 3: You don't.
Speaker 4: Also, that was at.
Speaker 2: Least that was one attempted assassination ago.
Speaker 1: That was one attempted presidential assassination. To go, we're past it.
Speaker 1: I wonder if the hawk twoy girl had something to
Speaker 1: do with shooting Trump. Not impossible, Not impossible? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because I know she's a Biden stand now, so.
Speaker 4: You know, what is possible that it's time for ads?
Speaker 1: It is possible that it's time for ADS. I can't
Speaker 1: guarantee that, I can't prove it, you know, I just
Speaker 1: have a gut feeling in my heart, deep down inside, mate,
Speaker 1: that it might be time for ads. We are back.
Speaker 1: So RFK, you know, nineteen seventy six, does his thesis
Speaker 1: and it's going to be a couple years later after
Speaker 1: he's he's out of college, kind of doing law school,
Speaker 1: so he's graduated from Harvard that he's going to help
Speaker 1: in another election campaign. This one in nineteen eighty is
Speaker 1: his uncle Ted's reelection campaign. David Horowitz, future co writer
Speaker 1: of the book The Kennedy's, was with him for this,
Speaker 1: and even though Bobby had a girlfriend at the time,
Speaker 1: Horowitz later wrote, Bobby had a girl in every place.
Speaker 1: There were women there like moths to the flame. I
Speaker 1: just know that he was fucking everything in sight. By
Speaker 1: the end of the day, the rest of us were exhausted,
Speaker 1: and Bobby was ill, had the flu or something, and
Speaker 1: all of us collapsed. But there was a girl waiting
Speaker 1: for him. I was younger then, and I'm a healthy male,
Speaker 1: but I wouldn't have wanted just to go to bed
Speaker 1: with a strange woman. What is another fuck going to
Speaker 1: do for you? It was just insanity, compulsive, nutty with him.
Speaker 1: Maybe in his mind he was building this heroic myth.
Speaker 1: He certainly couldn't have been getting a lot of pleasure
Speaker 1: when he was running over a one hundred fever and
Speaker 1: looked really ill and was horse. He had one girl
Speaker 1: who was a campaign worker, so he always had that one.
Speaker 1: At one campaign event, he just went off to screw her.
Speaker 1: So I think what's interesting about that because Horowitz is
Speaker 1: kind of a slimy figure in this He's writing this
Speaker 1: book basically taking notes on his friends as they're doing this.
Speaker 1: But I'm interested in the fact that he's, like, maybe
Speaker 1: he was having all of this casual sex with every
Speaker 1: woman he could find, even when it did not make
Speaker 1: him happy he was ill. He saw it as part
Speaker 1: of the myth, like his dad and his uncle are
Speaker 1: both these famous philanderers, and he's like, he's New Jack, right,
Speaker 1: He's New Jack. Right, I have to fuck everything that'll
Speaker 1: have me. Right, I'm the New Jack. And that's what
Speaker 1: Jack did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's I mean, yeah, he's trying to do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's in New Jack City here. Yeah. So Bobby
Speaker 1: also keeps using heroin heavily alongside limb billings. Horowitz were
Speaker 1: called that during Ted's campaign, they would drink heavily and
Speaker 1: like one of the things they would do because there's
Speaker 1: no laws for Kennedy's, He and his friends would all
Speaker 1: be in a motorcade together and they would be passing
Speaker 1: beer and cigarettes between each other's vehicles while driving. Horowitz wrote,
Speaker 1: that's the kinds of things Bobby did, perfectly illegal and crazy,
Speaker 1: and he did them because he was used to people
Speaker 1: keeping silent, because nobody wants to be banished from the
Speaker 1: Kennedy magic circle and lose access. Right, He's just like
Speaker 1: breaking the law in dangerous ways to do it because
Speaker 1: he can.
Speaker 2: Yeah, flaunting it. It's almost like a challenge. Uh yeah,
Speaker 2: try and stop me.
Speaker 1: Try and stop me, and if you if you have
Speaker 1: any issue with my behavior, then you're out. You're cut
Speaker 1: off from the Kennedy's, and nobody wants to be cut
Speaker 1: off from the Kennedy's. That's the most exciting thing you
Speaker 1: can be connected to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, God, it's like a must torn with all so
Speaker 2: many of these stories. I'm like, that's like pretty cool,
Speaker 2: but also like yeah, but also like don't do that
Speaker 2: and obviously like you could have killed somebody, right, Like,
Speaker 2: it's just like scumbag rich kid behavior, right.
Speaker 1: Ted Kennedy had that chap aqutic right exactly, like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you get you people do are not do not care
Speaker 1: if you actually hurt somebody, right, as long as it's
Speaker 1: not a Kennedy. Yeah, you don't really care that much
Speaker 1: about hurting a Kennedy used.
Speaker 2: To and you're like, yeah, you got so many.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we've got plenty of Kennedy's. Horowitz describes Bobby's heroin
Speaker 1: use this time at the time as accelerating due to
Speaker 1: his associations with Lim, who goaded him on with promises
Speaker 1: that he's going to be like his uncle JFK in
Speaker 1: the future. Right, we'll do we'll do Heroin and talk
Speaker 1: about the fact that you're going to be the next.
Speaker 2: Jack God.
Speaker 1: Lim was doing. I love the way Horoinz writes this,
Speaker 1: Lim was doing Heroin with Bobby and shooting delusions up
Speaker 1: his ass that he would be president one day.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: That well, it's like he's on heroin, but the real
Speaker 1: heroine is his uncle's legacy.
Speaker 2: Right right then the words of encouragement are the real Yeah.
Speaker 1: Never encouraged kids, you might make them into this god.
Speaker 1: Bobby went to Uva after Harvard to continue his studies,
Speaker 1: and he rented a room at a farm owned by
Speaker 1: the family of one of his friends. One of the
Speaker 1: women who lived there, Connie Dempsey, had serious issues with
Speaker 1: how RFK handled his animals, particularly with the fact that
Speaker 1: after moving away from Millbrook and the pit of rotting
Speaker 1: carcass is there, he continued to want to fee his
Speaker 1: hawk the grossest meat he could find. Oppenheimer writes he
Speaker 1: had built an outdoor cage on Dimpsey's property to house
Speaker 1: his falcon, but he also chose to feed it disgusting
Speaker 1: roadkill that he's stored in Dempsey's home refrigerator. We tried
Speaker 1: to encourage him to buy chickens for this purpose, but
Speaker 1: we weren't too successful.
Speaker 2: The fuck is wrong with this guy, Like like this roadkill,
Speaker 2: like dead rotting flesh thing is so fucking weird.
Speaker 6: Man, Like I've almost I'm gonna put in their family refrigerator, letting.
Speaker 1: Me live with them.
Speaker 2: It's not just like the rotting flesh thing, which is weird,
Speaker 2: but forcing it on everybody in his life, like in
Speaker 2: this aggressive way, like it just it's gotten. It's too far,
Speaker 2: it's too much at a certain age, Like I know, like, ah,
Speaker 2: you're all these people are dying, you know, and like.
Speaker 1: You deal with processing day.
Speaker 2: To go to the rotty flesh pit, fine, but to
Speaker 2: carry that for so long and give it to everybody
Speaker 2: around just what's going on.
Speaker 1: You can buy another refrigerator, but what happening here and
Speaker 1: this is you know, we've talked a lot about how
Speaker 1: I think he has some legitimate skill with animals. He
Speaker 1: has at this point, I think given that up to
Speaker 1: a degree because he's he's so unreliable in terms of
Speaker 1: where he is, Like he just leaves his dog with them.
Speaker 1: He leaves these animals with the people who are like,
Speaker 1: suppose taking care of him. There's always someone who will
Speaker 1: let him live with them because he's a Kennedy and
Speaker 1: he kind of just abandons his animals to them repeatedly.
Speaker 2: Does he go get them back? Like is it like, oh,
Speaker 2: like weeks? Yeah, I'll be.
Speaker 1: It just creates problems and it's very weird. I want
Speaker 1: to read another quote from Oppenheimer. Well, he had taught
Speaker 1: the Dimsees and others in his Uva circle. He's going
Speaker 1: to Uva at this point how to handle his bird.
Speaker 1: He had upset the horse loving Dempsey when he began
Speaker 1: riding with the falcon on his arm, which upset the
Speaker 1: horse and made it crazy, like he just doesn't give
Speaker 1: a shit about how his actions affect anyone around him.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, which is also like it's it's not weird again,
Speaker 2: it's like this, Yeah, I'm sorry, fucked up kid in
Speaker 2: his fuck up family. But it seemed like at least
Speaker 2: a beginning, he'd like had an affinity for animals, like
Speaker 2: maybe he was going to transfer any like empathy or
Speaker 2: care or consideration he would have he should have for
Speaker 2: like human beings and just be like, oh, I care
Speaker 2: about animals. But it doesn't seem like he does that either,
Speaker 2: Like except for his hawk. I guess it's like him
Speaker 2: and his hawk against the world a little bit.
Speaker 1: It's just me and my hawk. That's all that. That's
Speaker 1: all I got. Gotta scare horses and cops with it.
Speaker 2: Gotta have something. It's like again, it's like, yeah, it's
Speaker 2: you know, he's got hobbies and companions. Okay, describe the
Speaker 2: hobbies and companions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, are they healthy hobbies and companions for him to have?
Speaker 1: Maybe potentially, potentially being a hot guy could be a
Speaker 1: healthy hobby, but Bobby has now Bobby always lets it
Speaker 1: go well past the point where it would be healthy.
Speaker 2: He's putting roadkill in his friend's refrigerators. That's the line.
Speaker 1: That's a lot in Bobby. So after he concludes his
Speaker 1: time at law school and he goes to UVA, Bobby
Speaker 1: gets a job as an assistant District Attorney in Manhattan.
Speaker 1: And again that's only a Kennedy could make that jump
Speaker 1: with the record.
Speaker 2: That he's gotten, right, Yeah, he wants to do that.
Speaker 1: And of course his drug use only escalates at the
Speaker 1: point at which he is the assistant DA of Manhattan,
Speaker 1: and he continues pushing drugs on his brother as part
Speaker 1: kind of a hobby, Like getting his brother to do
Speaker 1: drugs is sort of like one of his pastimes, right,
Speaker 1: And I'm going to quote from a Vanity Fair article here.
Speaker 1: David Horowitz remembers Bobby being so cavalier that he cut
Speaker 1: lines of cocaine for his brother Michael Kennedy and allowed
Speaker 1: him to snort a line in front of the rider.
Speaker 1: Only then did he introduce Horowitz as a reporter. Horowitz
Speaker 1: also recalls that Kennedy asked him for a ride to
Speaker 1: Harlem to score trucks. Shits like you're in front of
Speaker 1: a reporter, man, you and your brother, you don't think
Speaker 1: any of this is going to get reported on that
Speaker 1: you guys are doing cocaine.
Speaker 2: I mean it seems like maybe he thought it was funny, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is the brother.
Speaker 2: This is the brother he completely fucked with on acid.
Speaker 1: I think this is a different brother.
Speaker 2: This is a different brother. Okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot of Kennedy brothers. It's hard for
Speaker 1: me to keep track from sometimes. Yeah, but this is
Speaker 1: a different brother. So Bobby takes the bar exam and
Speaker 1: fails it in nineteen eighty three and he has to
Speaker 1: he resigns from office not long after that. He is
Speaker 1: clearly in a downward spiral at this point, and shortly
Speaker 1: after failing the bars, he's taking a flight, you know,
Speaker 1: he's always flying, jetting around everywhere. Did he ever pass
Speaker 1: the bar eventually? Yeah, he gets he gets barred. He
Speaker 1: gets barred. Uh not not on xanax. That might have
Speaker 1: helped him out. But he passes the bar because.
Speaker 4: It's a very very very very difficult test.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know, Sophie. Uh, it seems like he
Speaker 1: passed it eventually. Uh So maybe it's not that sick,
Speaker 1: So maybe it's not that hard.
Speaker 2: It's not that hard pass the bar.
Speaker 1: Could pass the bar. That's that's what kills it. Puffeting
Speaker 1: Bobby through the bar exam of course, son of a bitch,
Speaker 1: used up all his energy. Oh man, So he's he's
Speaker 1: on one of his many flights. I think he's heading
Speaker 1: to North Dakota for some goddamn reason. And as is usual, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's doing a lot of drugs and.
Speaker 2: He got word like there's a pile of rotting meat there.
Speaker 1: They call it the corpse capital of America.
Speaker 2: They do, they do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So he's he's gets sick, dope sick. He's like,
Speaker 1: I think, well, not dope sick. That's when you don't
Speaker 1: have heroin. He gets sick because he does too much
Speaker 1: heroin in the bathroom of a plane that has stopped
Speaker 1: in Rapid City. That because he's sick. I think he's odeed.
Speaker 2: Like that's indeed, Yeah, that's what getting sick from too
Speaker 2: much heroin is, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think he basically o d's in the bathroom
Speaker 1: of this plane and they have to divert the flight
Speaker 1: to Rapid City because Kennedy is now on.
Speaker 2: The Virgin of death and another one, folks, oh ship
Speaker 2: another Kennedy's going down.
Speaker 1: It's bad, bad, luck to be a Kennedy on a plane.
Speaker 2: Such bad luck any way, Like there's no there's no
Speaker 2: wrong end to that sentence.
Speaker 1: No, no, you're right there. So they have to divert
Speaker 1: the flight, and they as they're treating him, they search
Speaker 1: him and they find heroin on him. Right, so he
Speaker 1: gets arrested in charge. He has, you know, been caught
Speaker 1: in possession of heroin on a fucking flight. Bobby gets
Speaker 1: ultimately sentenced to just two years of probation and community service.
Speaker 1: Because again Kennedy, and this is the start of him
Speaker 1: seeking treatment for his drug issues. He does actually get
Speaker 1: better on that at this point. You know, he is
Speaker 1: able to like get sober and stay that way not
Speaker 1: long after this. Yeah, so that's good. That's good.
Speaker 2: Sober like from heroin or is like sober.
Speaker 1: I think he's just sober. I don't know, maybe he
Speaker 1: has some champagne now and again, but I think he's
Speaker 1: basically yeah, he seems like he does. That's that's at
Speaker 1: least what the reporting you will read on this says,
Speaker 1: I have no reason to doubt the matter. We will
Speaker 1: talk about what he I think he replaces due place.
Speaker 2: That's always the question.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's your place to come up. But you know,
Speaker 1: the internet's not around yet. So yeah, So the time
Speaker 1: and access that Bobby and Michael Kennedy had given David
Speaker 1: Horowitz and his author Collier would create another calamity for
Speaker 1: Bobby The next year, in nineteen eighty four, an excerpt
Speaker 1: from the book The Kennedys was published in Playboy as
Speaker 1: part of a pr blitz. Michael, who had struggled the
Speaker 1: most personally as a result of the drug addictions that
Speaker 1: he had accumulated with Bobby, became the black sheep of
Speaker 1: the Kennedy family overnight because he broke amerta right, like,
Speaker 1: he's you're not supposed to talk about this shit with outsiders,
Speaker 1: and he had talked about how fucked up the family
Speaker 1: was to these outside reporters. So they exile Michael basically, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're not allowed to we know, we see, Yeah,
Speaker 2: what's going on? Like you can't Yeah, you can't admit
Speaker 2: that you know that you're fucked up?
Speaker 1: How dare you talk about it? Yeah? I'm going to
Speaker 1: quote from an article in Vanity Fair. Here. The time
Speaker 1: and access that Bobby and David Kennedy had given David
Speaker 1: Horowitz and his co author Collier would create another calamity
Speaker 1: for Bobby the next year. In nineteen eighty four, an
Speaker 1: excerpt from the book The Kennedys was published in Playboy.
Speaker 1: As a result of a pr blitz, David, who had
Speaker 1: struggled the most personally as a result of the drug
Speaker 1: addictions he'd accumulated with Bobby, became the black sheep of
Speaker 1: the Kennedy family. Over at night. He has given away
Speaker 1: all of these secrets that you're not supposed to tell
Speaker 1: outsiders about the family. You're not supposed to let them
Speaker 1: in to the inside Kennedy stuff, right, you know, we
Speaker 1: know what's going on here, but you don't tell other people.
Speaker 1: So David has broken Omerta here. And I'm going to
Speaker 1: quote again from Vanity Fair to talk about what happens next.
Speaker 1: The family turned on David Kennedy for airing the family's
Speaker 1: addiction secrets, and he stayed in a separate hotel during
Speaker 1: a family gathering in Palm Beach, Bobby, David had told
Speaker 1: the books authors was our last illusion. The next day,
Speaker 1: David died of an overdose at age twenty eighth. So
Speaker 1: we're down another Kennedy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, they just can't got your break other than
Speaker 2: being like naturally wealthy and powerful. They caught that break,
Speaker 2: caught that break.
Speaker 1: It turns out there are other breaks that you need
Speaker 1: to catch to be a happy person.
Speaker 2: And it turns out those that kind of yes, yes,
Speaker 2: that's very sad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a real bummer, and this is not you know,
Speaker 1: it's not a miss to look at what happens to
Speaker 1: him as another chapter in the long history of the
Speaker 1: Kennedy curse. But that curse seemed to skip Bobby over,
Speaker 1: and the tragic death of David helped to catalyze the
Speaker 1: need for him to commit to sobriety. So he starts
Speaker 1: attending AA meetings and within a few years he's found
Speaker 1: a cause to throw himself and the weight of his
Speaker 1: Kennedy name behind, an environmental charity called river Keeper. Now
Speaker 1: Bobby gets a lot of praise for his involvement with
Speaker 1: river Keeper. This is legitimately some of the best stuff
Speaker 1: he does in his life. I should note at the
Speaker 1: top of this that he gets involved with river Keeper
Speaker 1: in the first place because he has fifteen hundred hours
Speaker 1: of community service. So it's you wouldn't say that he
Speaker 1: just like found this because he was looking for meaning
Speaker 1: in his life. He is legally required to.
Speaker 2: He was doing something for something to fill that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Courton Manda. Now look that doesn't mean he didn't
Speaker 1: do good things there, but it's just useful context.
Speaker 2: Well, let me ask you this. The time he spent
Speaker 2: with them, was it the mandated the amount of time,
Speaker 2: and that was it.
Speaker 1: He does keep it. He just keep working with me.
Speaker 1: He should get He doesn't get no credit for what
Speaker 1: he does with this this organization.
Speaker 2: It was more like, Okay, the impetus to do this
Speaker 2: was this, and yeah, you'll go to present how you
Speaker 2: find it's how he found the place. But he liked
Speaker 2: it and joined it and kept doing himself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And now you know he's working as
Speaker 1: an environmental lawyer now and he's also kind of the
Speaker 1: figurehead of the organization. And in that in that role,
Speaker 1: Bobby attacks corporate polluters and he's he's actually very successful
Speaker 1: in helping to exact a real cost from big, big
Speaker 1: business bad actors. In this capacity, he plays a major
Speaker 1: role in forcing GM, forcing GM to pay one point
Speaker 1: seven billion dollars to clean up pollution their factories had
Speaker 1: washed into the Hudson River. And that's that's a real
Speaker 1: penalty right there, and you know you're actually, yeah, a
Speaker 1: slap on the wrist. You notice a missing one point
Speaker 1: seven billion in the ballance sheet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the bee makes a big difference. Usually it's God,
Speaker 2: it's usually so much less than that.
Speaker 1: It's usually way less than that. Usually it's like the amount.
Speaker 2: They're like, well, we can do this because we're just
Speaker 2: gonna have to pay this, and that's fine, We're still
Speaker 2: gonna make Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yes, now you're doing some damage at that point. Bobby
Speaker 1: and his partner at River Keeper also succeeded in going
Speaker 1: after Exxon, and in his speeches and writing around this time,
Speaker 1: Bobby fits pretty seamlessly into the narrative of a left
Speaker 1: leaning environmental crusader going after conservative polluters. Right he is.
Speaker 1: He is the lefty little guy, you know, standing up
Speaker 1: and fighting for the environment against the bad dudes from Ferngully. Right,
Speaker 1: Like that's that's that's where he slots in at this point. Right.
Speaker 1: In a book Bobby co authored, he complains about right
Speaker 1: wing stereotypes about environmental elitism and the monopolization of resources
Speaker 1: for cat by special interests. Al Gore writes the forward
Speaker 1: of his book, so you can see him pretty firmly
Speaker 1: on like the liberal lefty side, you might even say,
Speaker 1: like progressive left right side of the podicle equation here, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that aggressive against corporations for these kinds of things. Yeah, yeah, it's.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's weird how we got from there to hear
Speaker 1: where we are today, But this is where he is
Speaker 1: at the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that trajectually makes sense to me still, but
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: It does, it does. He's actually an important role part
Speaker 1: of that whole national trajectory changing for a lot of people.
Speaker 1: As the nineties gave way to the two thousands, he
Speaker 1: was one of the most prominent dims on the East
Speaker 1: Coast and widely seen as a potential candidate for higher office.
Speaker 1: Bobby like flirted with the idea of running for election,
Speaker 1: but he never quite managed to make anything happen. And
Speaker 1: you get writing from his like in one of the
Speaker 1: books I read about him from twenty fifteen, you hear
Speaker 1: from like people who care about Bobby. Thank god he
Speaker 1: didn't get into politics, like we were really worried he
Speaker 1: was going to. And I'm just so glad he's never
Speaker 1: run for president, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that's if you can give advice to any Kennedy.
Speaker 2: It would be, don't run for president.
Speaker 1: Don't get into politics, don't get into politics, stay off planes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, stay plans politics and a new rule I would
Speaker 2: say for Kennedy's, uh, stay clear of rancid meat.
Speaker 1: Avoid meat. Yeah, probably heroin too.
Speaker 2: Probably heroin too. Yeah, just general, just general advice that
Speaker 2: weirdly applies also to specifically the Kennedy's. Yeah. But that's good.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's good to find your place in some
Speaker 2: you know, a position where like you feel like you're
Speaker 2: doing something and a difference and you have meaning, but
Speaker 2: you're not necessarily in politics and that in that way,
Speaker 2: so good for him.
Speaker 1: For a while, while Bobby seemed to be a model
Speaker 1: for recovery and a human repost against the notion that
Speaker 1: the Kennedys were doomed, the family curse continued. His cousin
Speaker 1: William Kennedy Smith, had been tried for but acquitted of rape.
Speaker 1: In the early nineteen nineties, His other brother Michael was
Speaker 1: revealed to be sleeping with an underage person working as
Speaker 1: his babysitter, and then Michael died in a skiing accident
Speaker 1: and aspen in nineteen ninety seven. His older brother Joseph's
Speaker 1: ex wife wrote a tell all memoir about him that
Speaker 1: scuttled his bid for the governor's chair in Massachusetts. And
Speaker 1: then in nineteen ninety nine, John F. Kennedy Junior, believed
Speaker 1: by many to be the future president, crashed his plane
Speaker 1: into the ocean near Martha's vineyard. The nineties are rough
Speaker 1: for the Kennedys. You know, the sixties were bad.
Speaker 2: Jesus, some of those I yeah, just didn't You don't
Speaker 2: even absorb them all, you know, you're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: Like jfk. Junior is like the big one that you
Speaker 2: think of when you think of the nineties and Kennedys.
Speaker 2: But like, damn, that's so much. Yeah, I assume we
Speaker 2: want to talk about babysitters a little bit later.
Speaker 1: We are going to talk about babysitters. But you can
Speaker 1: see how by like two thousand you could you could
Speaker 1: think Bobby's the one the curse skipped over, right, Like
Speaker 1: he's doing a lot, like compared to the rest of
Speaker 1: his family. Yeah, he had that little brush with heroin,
Speaker 1: but he got over it. Well, yeah, he's really doing great.
Speaker 1: He's over in the seventies. Yeah, yeah, he's been over
Speaker 1: it for a while. He's doing something that matters in
Speaker 1: the world. You know, he's doing great. Yeah, he is
Speaker 1: not doing great, that is all. There's more going on
Speaker 1: under the surface than you would want to say, and
Speaker 1: we'll get back to that. But first, Cody, you know,
Speaker 1: it also has more going on than you'd guess.
Speaker 2: Wow, my guess is either products and services or the
Speaker 2: stuff that I do online.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, both of those things. Products and Cody's here,
Speaker 1: they are. We're back. So we talked a little earlier
Speaker 1: about Martha Moxley, who was bludgeon to death with a
Speaker 1: golf club by somebody in nineteen seventy five. Michael Skakel,
Speaker 1: a Kennedy cousin, was blamed because they found one of
Speaker 1: his family's golf clubs by the scene and he had
Speaker 1: been around there. Now, the evidence linking him to this
Speaker 1: crime isn't great, right, Like I think it's it's there's
Speaker 1: enough there that I think it's likely he did it,
Speaker 1: but it's not in court terms, especially when you have
Speaker 1: Kennedy money, it's not perfect. Right. He is, however, eventually
Speaker 1: brought to trial. It takes a long time. He's brought
Speaker 1: to trial and found guilty in two thousand and two.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna say it takes a long time, and he
Speaker 2: goes on to serve eleven years of a twenty year sentence.
Speaker 1: Now, one of the major pieces of evidence in favor
Speaker 1: of conviction was that Skagell had attended the Alan School,
Speaker 1: subject of a recent of a bTB episode. This is
Speaker 1: one of those like troubled teen boarding schools where you
Speaker 1: send your kids to be hideously abused.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, yep, yeah, yeah, that's the description of those schools.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we did two episodes on the Elan schools. Michael
Speaker 1: Is said people who went to school with him were like,
Speaker 1: he admitted to the murder during group. We would have
Speaker 1: these group sessions where we talk about the bad stuff
Speaker 1: we did. And for most because it's like I smoked pot,
Speaker 1: you know, in my parents' golf house or whatever, and
Speaker 1: with him, he's like, yeah, I beat a lady to
Speaker 1: death with a golf club. It's not funny. It's just
Speaker 1: the Kennedy's are so much extra than everyone else.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, like there's a uh, there's a dark laugh
Speaker 2: that you can you can Jesus Crest like what yeah,
Speaker 2: but like what a horrific It's it's like a it's
Speaker 2: off place to be like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, God, yeah, so that all comes out. He gets
Speaker 1: convicted in two thousand and two, and as soon as
Speaker 1: he gets convicted, r FK Junior, who is again at
Speaker 1: this point looks like the hero at Kennedy, bounds onto
Speaker 1: the scene trying to defend his cousin by attacking the
Speaker 1: witnesses in a very Trumpian fashion and also in a
Speaker 1: fashion that's going to become increasingly associated with Bobby Kennedy Junior.
Speaker 1: He embraces a conspiracy theory.
Speaker 2: Just like imagine RFK outside like the houses of the witnesses,
Speaker 2: with like his hawk in the darkness, just like you
Speaker 2: see the silhouette, and these start to smell like is
Speaker 2: that ranso and meat smell.
Speaker 1: Of hundreds of caws?
Speaker 2: Is that rant? And the answer is yes, yes, sorry.
Speaker 1: So he in what's gonna increasingly become a thing for him.
Speaker 1: He embraces a conspiracy theory. And in this specific conspiracy theory,
Speaker 1: it's that Martha had been murdered not by his cousin,
Speaker 1: but by a group of black men. And I'm going
Speaker 1: to quote from the New York Times in two thousand
Speaker 1: and three, Getano Bryant, a former classmate of mister Skygull
Speaker 1: and a cousin of the basketball star Kobe Bryant, came
Speaker 1: forward with information that he and the two teenagers had
Speaker 1: been in the exclusive Bell Haven section of Greenwich on
Speaker 1: October thirtieth, nineteen seventy five, the night of the murder.
Speaker 1: Mister Bryant said that he had left early, but the
Speaker 1: other two stayed behind and told him they want to
Speaker 1: attack a girl man style. Both men have denied any involvement,
Speaker 1: and prosecutors have called accusations against them baseless. I am
Speaker 1: dead certain they did it, mister Kennedy said in an
Speaker 1: interview in Bedford. But people should read up the facts
Speaker 1: and meet and make up their own mind. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: Kobe Bryant's family gets into the gets in the case.
Speaker 4: I should note that this guy claims to be Kobe
Speaker 4: Bryant's cousin.
Speaker 1: Oh right, not really? Oh yeah's fake cousin.
Speaker 3: Yeah I should, I should, because I was like, wait
Speaker 3: a second, I think this might be that guy. Sure,
Speaker 3: he claims to be the cousin. I don't know if
Speaker 3: you guy. So there's as asterisk no confirmation.
Speaker 1: He claims he was with these guys who said basically
Speaker 1: said we're going to brutally murder a white woman.
Speaker 2: Right, Like, what are you doing, Bobby? What is this?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Like what the fuck?
Speaker 2: When Like when Bobby says, like, look at the facts,
Speaker 2: what is he referring to? Like what just like the
Speaker 2: what are the facts that he's referring to? Just that
Speaker 2: they were in town?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, what what counts as the facts in this case?
Speaker 1: So was it their golf club?
Speaker 6: Bobby, golf club's even more than your cousin.
Speaker 2: Now caveman style, what if he says that talks like
Speaker 2: that fucking freak.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Kennedy writes to defend his cousin. He gets to
Speaker 1: because he's a Kennedy. He gets to write an article
Speaker 1: for The Atlantic. If you want to know how reliable
Speaker 1: the Atlantic can be, And it's it's a crazy long
Speaker 1: article like he writes, basically a goddamn novella for the
Speaker 1: fucking Atlantic, in which he throws out baseless allegations to
Speaker 1: defend his blood at the expense of victims and their families.
Speaker 1: To continue from The New York Times. In addition to
Speaker 1: implicating the two teenagers in the murder, mister Kennedy suggests
Speaker 1: involvement by others. They include the Scaygow family's former tutor,
Speaker 1: Kenneth w Lyttleton, who was granted immunity in exchange for
Speaker 1: testimony and had long been a suspect, and Missus Moxley's
Speaker 1: older brother, John Moxley, now fifty seven, who's account of
Speaker 1: his whereabouts the night of the murder varied considerably over
Speaker 1: the years, mister Kennedy wrote. In separate phone interviews this week,
Speaker 1: Dorotha Moxley, Missus Moxley's eighty four year old mother, said
Speaker 1: the book had left her at a loss for words,
Speaker 1: adding that she had never seen the truth so twisted
Speaker 1: and manipulated in my entire life. She added that she
Speaker 1: still believed that mister Skagel was the one who swung
Speaker 1: the club. So yeah, he's reopened to wound for this lady,
Speaker 1: you could say.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, very publicly and aggressively. Is is the implication that
Speaker 2: like these guys did the murder and then like these
Speaker 2: other people he's talking about covered it up. I think
Speaker 2: the implication is it like they did it, like he
Speaker 2: seems to be accusing like a bunch of different unrelated
Speaker 2: people of this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of like so like whatever theory wanting to hide it,
Speaker 1: I don't understand why what the theory would be?
Speaker 2: Right, Okay, right, Like it's it's something happens a lot
Speaker 2: with this stuff. We talked alluded briefly to the uh
Speaker 2: Trump assassination attempt, but like stuff like that where there
Speaker 2: are always these like people jumping to conclusions of like, oh,
Speaker 2: it's this conspiracy this or this this. I'm always like,
Speaker 2: but what is what is the theory that you're saying,
Speaker 2: like you're pointing to like this person and this person
Speaker 2: in this like event, but like, what do you think happened?
Speaker 1: That's that That's always what you should ask yourself with conspiracies,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't always like it's part of why I
Speaker 1: think some conspiracy theories it's not unreasonable to buy into
Speaker 1: to a degree. Right, Is there a logical line you
Speaker 1: could draw on why someone would want JFK dead? Why
Speaker 1: the CIA would have wanted to make sure that's a
Speaker 1: you can you have a theory there with a motivation?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Is there a logical reason why people would have wanted
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Epstein murdered? Yes, you don't have to like, you
Speaker 1: don't have to explain, right.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, Yeah, And those lots those are lines are
Speaker 2: very clear, but you know, like a like see people
Speaker 2: say like they tried to kill Trump? Who's they? Who
Speaker 2: are you talking about? Like what do you mean why
Speaker 2: would they do it this way?
Speaker 1: If it's from this but like Trump and he didn't
Speaker 1: even benefit from.
Speaker 2: It, like right, and like yeah, it's like just so
Speaker 2: many things like that where I'm like, but what do
Speaker 2: you mean?
Speaker 1: Are you saying Trump had a man shoot past his ear?
Speaker 1: Did he blade himself like a wrestler?
Speaker 2: Did they want to spook him? Like they got this
Speaker 2: kid who sucks at shooting, and like like what do
Speaker 2: you what is your what do you think happened?
Speaker 1: Yeah, like what do you think happened? That is likelier
Speaker 1: than a twenty year old with an ar fifteen did
Speaker 1: something crazy?
Speaker 2: Like yeah, Like I just don't know what they're saying happened.
Speaker 2: And this is another example of that where it's like
Speaker 2: you're just saying like throwing all the stuff out, but
Speaker 2: like if you look at all the pieces, who's.
Speaker 1: Involved fits, they don't fit. There's nothing that makes this
Speaker 1: fit together. I don't know why, right, Like yeah, now,
Speaker 1: what I will say makes sense in this case is
Speaker 1: Bobby's obsession with being Michael, because Michael is one of
Speaker 1: the members of the family who's stuck by him after
Speaker 1: he got busted for drugs and helped him get sober.
Speaker 1: And I get that that's painful, Bobby, but your cousin
Speaker 1: probably murdered a young woman, and by backing him and
Speaker 1: attacking the people trying to get him keep him in prison,
Speaker 1: Bobby has laid a clear line against the family of
Speaker 1: a victim. Yeah, and it's interesting Vanity fair Wrights quote.
Speaker 1: Bobby was the only Kennedy to defend Scackle, showing up
Speaker 1: twice to the Connecticut courtroom. Theories at a bound about
Speaker 1: why Kennedy felt compelled to defend Scackle, including speculation that
Speaker 1: Scackle was blackmailing him. According to one of Kennedy's diaries
Speaker 1: obtained by The New York Post, he thought his cousin
Speaker 1: was delusional and paranoid, even as he publicly maintained that
Speaker 1: Scackle was innocent of the murder. So maybe Bobby is
Speaker 1: just doing this for his own skin. Maybe there's some darkness,
Speaker 1: and we have an idea of what that darkness might be.
Speaker 1: As Bobby starts to get accused by more women of
Speaker 1: sexual harassment, made his cousin knew something about him, and
Speaker 1: it's like, look, you use your juice, your your pr
Speaker 1: juice to try and get me out of this, or
Speaker 1: I will ruin your life that you've carefully built back
Speaker 1: up right, I'll tell people the real Bobby.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like yeah, I mean there's already like all the
Speaker 2: stuff we do know is fucked up.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, there's a lot that as it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And he's like alluded many times to like I've
Speaker 2: got like millions of.
Speaker 1: Skeletons, skeletons in my closet and like, you know, I
Speaker 1: got more skeletons than that rotting corpse pit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, And I believe me. I got at I know, skeletons.
Speaker 2: If you need you need some? Do you need some?
Speaker 2: Sorry side question, but do you need some rotting meat?
Speaker 2: Because I have some? Do you want?
Speaker 1: Who trunks full of it?
Speaker 2: Like it's funny you bring up rotting meat, because I've
Speaker 2: got a lot of it for you. I just can't
Speaker 2: give it away. I can't.
Speaker 1: There's no room in the fridge room in.
Speaker 2: My friend fridges.
Speaker 1: Oh Kennedy money and Bobby's tireless legal advocacy eventually did
Speaker 1: pay dividends in twenty thirteen, after about a decade behind bars,
Speaker 1: his conviction was overturned on technical grounds. In twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: the Connecticut Supreme Court confirmed that he had received insufficient
Speaker 1: legal representation. A new trial was ordered, but the prosecution
Speaker 1: chose to cut bait and he was not put back
Speaker 1: in or charged again. So I don't know where you
Speaker 1: want to apportion that blame wise, because I think there's
Speaker 1: a chance he really believed that he was freeing an
Speaker 1: innocent man. But I don't know, maybe not probably in
Speaker 1: the evil column probably, Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, No, I know, it's weird. I mean it's weird
Speaker 2: how aggressive he was about it, and his again, like
Speaker 2: his defense is weird, like his defense and like his
Speaker 2: explanation of the alternative is like odd. So I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, we'll see. Well, I don't know. We won't see.
Speaker 1: Maybe we'll never know the answer.
Speaker 2: We won't see.
Speaker 1: The YaST thing we're going to talk about is a
Speaker 1: clearer mark in the bad guy column. I'll say that.
Speaker 1: In late nineteen ninety eight, the Kennedy's hired day babysitter,
Speaker 1: twenty three year old Eliza Cooney. She was interested in
Speaker 1: working as an environmental activist, and basically the idea is
Speaker 1: this will be part of your internship effectively, like I
Speaker 1: will teach you can shadow me, you can like learn
Speaker 1: how to do what I do as this powerful and
Speaker 1: beloved environmental lawyer. But I need you to watch my kids, right,
Speaker 1: you know, not a bad trade as these things go.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately Bobby doesn't really have any plan to give
Speaker 1: her to mentor her, right, That's how he frames this,
Speaker 1: like I need someone to watch my kids and I'll
Speaker 1: mentor you.
Speaker 2: That's not what I mean, that's what you assume. Like
Speaker 2: that's not I think, you know, Okay, I get to
Speaker 2: watch the Kennedy's kids whatever, But like that's not like
Speaker 2: a legit deal or situation or like there's not like
Speaker 2: that's already a shady yeah but yes thing to yes,
Speaker 2: move over, Like by the way, what like that's weird.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So basically she comes over there having a meeting
Speaker 1: with another person at Riverkeeper, and like as they're sitting
Speaker 1: around the table talking business, she feels Kennedy's hand moving
Speaker 1: up and down her leg under the table, and she
Speaker 1: you know, one of the she talks because she has
Speaker 1: recently come out to that journalist at Vanity Fair, and
Speaker 1: she sends him like a copy of her diary with
Speaker 1: an entry date in November seventh, nineteen ninety eight, where
Speaker 1: she writes, from everything everybody says about the Kennedy's and
Speaker 1: their babysitters, they had me worried, like I have to
Speaker 1: watch out, be careful. And the other night in the
Speaker 1: kitchen with Murray, who's one of the other river keepers,
Speaker 1: I could have sworn he was touching my leg in hand.
Speaker 1: It seems like he thought I was somebody else or
Speaker 1: wasn't paying attention, Like he would come to every once
Speaker 1: in a while and snap out of it, or I
Speaker 1: would move away. It was like he was on something
Speaker 1: or really tired, or was missing Mary, or was testing me. Now,
Speaker 1: Cooney hopes in vain at first that this is some
Speaker 1: bit right. He's just exhausted. He just kind of reached
Speaker 1: for me. He wasn't really thinking it through. But just
Speaker 1: a week later she walked in to see her boss
Speaker 1: standing in her bedroom reading her diary, which was open
Speaker 1: next to the bed and filled with notes on her
Speaker 1: romantic life with her boyfriend. The harassment continued after this,
Speaker 1: and she is shocked at one point when a shirtless
Speaker 1: forty five year old Bobby Kennedy asks him to rub
Speaker 1: lotion on his back. She thinks, isn't you know Mary,
Speaker 1: your wife home, doesn't she do this for you? But
Speaker 1: she agrees She like rubs him down, even though she
Speaker 1: feels like it's inappropriate, because what else is she going
Speaker 1: to do. She's alone with the man, and she stops
Speaker 1: writing about her experiences after this point because she knows
Speaker 1: that he's coming in and reading her diary. Really yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but she says, they continue. I'm gonna quote from Vanity
Speaker 1: Fair here. A few months later, Cooney says she was
Speaker 1: rifling through the kitchen pantry for lunch after a yoga class,
Speaker 1: still in her sports bra and leggings, when Kennedy came
Speaker 1: up behind her, blocked her inside the room, again, groping her,
Speaker 1: putting his hands on her hips and sliding them up
Speaker 1: along her rib cage and breasts. My back was to
Speaker 1: the door of the pantry and he came up behind me,
Speaker 1: she says, describing the alleged sexual assault. I was frozen, shocked,
Speaker 1: and yeah, that's bad. So that's Bobby Kennedy Part three.
Speaker 1: Sorry on such a bleak note, disgusting.
Speaker 2: Well that's so gross. You'll get more many reasons it's
Speaker 2: also like, not the one time, it's not the one
Speaker 2: person that you would have.
Speaker 1: His response makes clear.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly exactly. That's gross.
Speaker 4: What a gross motherfucker.
Speaker 1: You know what's not gross? You're pluggables.
Speaker 2: Oh good, So, speaking of nothing we just talked about. Uh, Hi,
Speaker 2: find me offline. I host a show called some More News.
Speaker 2: You can watch on YouTube and listen to it as
Speaker 2: a podcast. We've got a podcast called even More News.
Speaker 2: My band is called the Hot Shapes. You can find
Speaker 2: us on SoundCloud or buy our album Laverne on bandcamp.
Speaker 2: I'm on websites as doctor mister Cody X.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's gonna give it to you a bad time.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Robert, I'd like to plug Cools of Media's newest podcast.
Speaker 1: We have a podcast.
Speaker 5: I mean you're currently on one, but yes, we have
Speaker 5: many podcasts, but we have a brand new one that
Speaker 5: has the trailer out right now, and it's called Weird
Speaker 5: Little Guys and it's hosted by Molly Conger.
Speaker 4: Do you want to tell the people about it, Robert?
Speaker 1: Uh. Yeah. Basically Molly is the best researcher I know,
Speaker 1: and she obsessively trawls the internet court records. Uh, for
Speaker 1: very weird little guys. These are. These are like little
Speaker 1: strange Nazi freaks, businessmen, running cons, all sorts of like
Speaker 1: tiny evil people who you're not going to hear about
Speaker 1: from anybody else. Like what they do mostly stays locked
Speaker 1: into like local small claims cases or weird little corners
Speaker 1: of the internet. But these are some of the some
Speaker 1: of the craziest people in stories that you'll ever hear about.
Speaker 1: So check out Weird Little Guys.
Speaker 4: Taylor trailers out now.
Speaker 5: Sounds amazing, zerop one on August eighth.
Speaker 2: August eighth, I was, I was like, uh, it sounds
Speaker 2: like basically like d like f tier local Jacob Walls.
Speaker 4: Yeah, these are like the weird little guys that.
Speaker 2: Like they just don't get that sort of national Most of.
Speaker 4: Them I've never heard of, but they're like trying to
Speaker 4: ruin our lives.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what a great show that I haven't listened to
Speaker 2: yet that I love already. The Best pays the Best
Speaker 2: and we'll be back.
Speaker 4: With part four so soon, Robert any any final thoughts?
Speaker 1: Uh No, I think that's it.
Speaker 4: Well bye.
Speaker 5: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
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Speaker 4: dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
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