According to a biography by Isabel Vincent, Kennedy is accused of once severing the penis of a roadkill raccoon for later study. The biography cites a 2001 diary entry in which Kennedy described standing in front of his parked car on I-684 cutting the penis out of a road-killed raccoon and thinking about how weird some of his family members had turned out to be. Kennedy also described his kids waiting patiently in the car during the incident. Vincent writes that Kennedy took the raccoon’s organs to study them later. Kennedy spotted the animal while driving on the highway with his family.
Kennedy’s lifelong interest in animals is documented in the biography, which notes he wanted to be a veterinarian as a kid and had an after-school job at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. Vincent claims Kennedy has a great love and interest in animals and likely has a freezer full of roadkill for study. In 2024, Kennedy admitted to leaving a dead bear cub in New York City’s Central Park a decade earlier and making it look like the animal had been hit by a bike. In a video posted on social media, Kennedy said he was driving in the state’s Hudson Valley and saw a different driver hit and kill the bear cub. He stated he pulled over and picked up the bear and put him in the back of his van because he was going to skin the bear, noting it was in very good condition and he was going to put the meat in his refrigerator. Kennedy told reporters in 2024 that he has been picking up roadkill his whole life and has a freezer full of it.
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.
Kennedy’s daughter, Kathleen 'Kick' Kennedy, told Town & Country magazine in 2012 that RFK Jr. once used a chainsaw to decapitate a whale carcass that washed ashore near the Kennedy family compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, and strapped the head to the family car for a five-hour drive. Kathleen 'Kick' Kennedy described that every time they accelerated on the highway, whale juice would pour into the windows of the car, calling it the rankest thing on the planet. She also described that they all had plastic bags over their heads with mouth holes cut out, and people on the highway were giving them the finger, but that was just normal day-to-day stuff for them.
In a letter urging the Senate not to confirm RFK Jr., Kennedy’s cousin Caroline Kennedy claimed that he blended chicks and mice in a college dorm room to feed them to a pet falcon. RFK Jr., a prominent environmentalist and anti-vaxxer before taking office, has said he follows a carnivore diet, eating mostly meat and fermented foods.
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.
Kennedy’s background includes an early interest in animals, with the biography noting he wanted to be a veterinarian as a child and worked at the National Zoo. This context aligns with his later actions involving roadkill and animal study.
It is not known whether RFK Jr. has responded to the allegations in the new biography about severing the raccoon's penis. The current status of any official investigation or response from HHS regarding these animal-related allegations remains unclear. The full context and verification of the alleged diary entries used in the biography have not been independently confirmed. Whether the freezer full of roadkill mentioned by Kennedy and Vincent is still maintained and for what specific purposes is also unknown. The impact of these allegations on Kennedy's role as Health and Human Services Secretary and any potential political or professional consequences has yet to be determined.