Updated: Sun., May. 27, 2012, 11:22 AM 
My (twisted) life with the Kennedys
Last Updated: 11:22 AM, May 27, 2012
Posted: 10:24 PM, May 26, 2012
Robert Kennedy Jr., who has spent the last week and a half publicly absolving himself of any responsibility for the suicide of his estranged wife, Mary, has been a coarse, entitled womanizer for decades, according to a former family intimate who fended him off.
Patricia Lawford Stewart, who was married to former Kennedy in-law Peter Lawford, reached out to The Post after last week’s funeral for Mary, appalled — but not surprised — by the Kennedy clan’s insistence that Mary was a lifelong depressive and alcoholic.
Before the funeral, Mary’s former sister-in-law and self-described “best, best friend,” Kerry Kennedy, strolled over to the press pool. “Mary suffered from depression,” Kerry said. “She was battling those demons.”
Robert, according to Robert’s eulogy, was just a good husband who tried so hard to help, not the boozy ex-heroin addict who publicly ran around on his wife, cut her off financially and took custody of their children, thereby demolishing every aspect of her life and identity.
“The Kennedy family is on damage control 24/7,” Stewart says. “They were ruinous to my husband, and they have harassed me for the last 28 years. I’m 54 years old, and I can’t deal with this crap anymore.”
Stewart first met the young RFK Jr. in 1976, when he showed up on the Lawfords’ doorstep in LA unannounced, having been kicked out by his widowed mother, Ethel. He was wearing his late father’s suit, rumpled. Robert sat on the sofa, and they made small talk for a few minutes while Peter was in the shower.
“Then he said, ‘I wish you weren’t married to my uncle — I’d like to f--- you right here on the couch,’ ” Stewart says. “That was a shocker. I knew him for four minutes.”
At the time, Stewart and RFK Jr. were both 19 years old. She says she took her husband aside and told him what had happened. “He said, ‘Nothing’s changed,’ ” Stewart says. “I was taken aback. But he was sucked in too.”
Lawford blamed Ethel for how poorly her 11 children turned out: “Peter called her a broodmare,” Stewart says. “He didn’t like that she had all these kids she couldn’t cope with. She was always throwing them out.”
Stewart was Lawford’s fourth wife, though they had been “married” in an unofficial ceremony in Calcutta when she was 15 years old after meeting at the Roxy on Sunset Boulevard in LA.
Lawford had first been married to JFK’s sister Patricia, and they had four children together before divorcing in 1966, due largely to Lawford’s drinking and philandering.
“Peter would bring women home all the time when he was married to Patricia,” Stewart says. “And I think that he loved her. She was a wonderful woman, but drugs and alcohol got to her.”
Stewart, too, found herself like many a Kennedy wife — alone at home, husband off partying, expected to accept heavy boozing and rampant infidelity as the trade-off for becoming a member of America’s royal family.
She soon realized that, when it came to the Kennedys, nothing was as it seemed. Stewart says that in June 1980, when she called Ted Kennedy’s office to request a favor for Peter, she was rattled by his greeting.
“He gets on the phone and says, ‘I hear you’re the one with the big t--s. The kids all told me.’ I got quiet. He said, ‘So when are you going to come to Boston and campaign for me? We’ll go skiing, we’ll go to Vermont, we’ll do this, we’ll do that.’ It wasn’t familial; I’d never met him. I said, ‘I’m married to Peter.’ ”
And Peter, she says, had his own issues with Ted. Namely, “He found that Ted was an a--hole. He was at a party with the Kennedys, and he watched Ted spike some punch and give a glass to [then-wife] Joan. Joan had been sober for eight years. Ted says, ‘Here, have some.’ And she gets picked up by the cops driving home.”
To this day, Stewart thinks that Ted set Joan up; the Kennedys, she says, are ruthless when it comes to destroying anyone who’s outlived their usefulness.
“They’re bullies,” she says. “Just plain bullies. They treat their women like crap. Everybody’s an outcast. If you’re not a sycophant, you’re out — and everyone gets their turn.”
Peter Lawford first met the Kennedys as a young aspiring actor, when he was hired to park cars for patriarch Joe. He fell in love with the entire family, and by the time he married Patricia Kennedy in 1954, Lawford was a major movie star.
He was also deeply enamored of Jack.
“Peter adored the president,” Stewart says. “They were very close.”
But Lawford, too, suffered for his idolatry. Stewart says that when Jack Kennedy would visit Lawford on the MGM lot, he’d often pocket whatever cash Lawford had left laying around his dressing room, often hundreds at a time.
“Finally, Peter said, ‘Jack, I had $300 there. Why are you taking my money?’ And Jack would say, ‘Oh Peee-taah, it doesn’t matter.’ Peter was pissed, because he worked for a living. And Jack was president at the time! But the Kennedys never carry money. They’ll invite you to lunch, then make you pay.”
Lawford, she adds, never got over the death of Marilyn Monroe, who had been involved with President Kennedy and, after him, the president’s brother Bobby. Lawford often facilitated these rendezvous, with both brothers conducting multiple affairs in his house — and, unbeknowst to all, the FBI and LAPD were keeping watch.
One of the LAPD detectives often on Kennedy detail was a young officer named Daniel Stewart. His assignments ranged from standing guard at the LA apartments the Kennedys used for extramarital affairs to guarding Bobby during the 1960 Democratic convention in LA to getting the call to go to Good Samaritan Hospital when Bobby got shot at the Ambassador Hotel in 1968.
Years later, Daniel would marry Patricia Stewart Lawford. They had much in common — not least their disdain for the Kennedys.
“They were open about the philandering,” Daniel says today. “They thought they had a regular pass to do it.”
He most vividly remembers the scene at Good Samaritan, with members of the Kennedy family taking over an entire floor while RFK languished on life support.
“They commandeered this medicine cart, and suddenly booze appeared on it,” Daniel says. “Bourbon, scotch, vodka, gin. They were in an open waiting room, smoking and drinking, just waiting for everyone to show up. They weren’t falling-down drunk, but they were feeling the effects.”
Many of the Kennedys have been famously ravaged by drugs and alcohol, and Stewart says that Lawford’s drinking worsened after he divorced JFK’s sister Patricia. Until that point, the Kennedys, who depicted themselves as devout Catholics, had never had a single divorce.
Peter, she says, told JFK that he’d hold off on leaving Patricia if there was a chance it could hurt the re-election campaign. “JFK said, ‘If you’re not getting along, do it,’ ” says Stewart. “He did, and he was out of that family. He gave them their first divorce.”
Lawford, his career ebbing and his health on the decline, struggled emotionally and financially. Stewart says none of this much mattered to the children Peter had with Patricia, who would come to visit and ring up hundreds of dollars in charges for booze, cigarettes, take-out from Chasen’s — glamourous indulgences that the Lawfords had begun to pare down.
“One day a letter came addressed to Peter and [his son] Christopher,” Stewart says. “Peter opened it, and inside was a check to Christopher for $750,000, from his trust fund. Meanwhile, he’s using all of our charge accounts. Peter said, ‘I wish I had never opened that.’ ”
The worst offender, she says, was Bobby Shriver, brother of Maria. Shriver had invited the Lawfords to a big lunch at LA’s Daisy restaurant, to celebrate his new job as a reporter at the Herald-Examiner. By this point, Stewart says, Peter was so sick with pancreatitis that he had a drainage tube in his stomach, but even still, he relished any connection with the Kennedys and insisted upon going.
“We didn’t have much money then,” Stewart says. “We ordered tea and soup. At the end of the lunch, Bobby gets up and says, ‘I’d like to thank my Uncle Peter for this lovely lunch’ — 30 bottles of wine later. The bill was close to $3,000, and they all just left. Peter was horrified. I can’t tell you how many times that happened.’ ”
Stewart still finds it upsetting to think about her husband bargaining with the manager, a former matinee idol reduced to setting up a payment plan. She remains ashamed that she didn’t stand up for him.
“I didn’t have the guts then,” Stewart says. “I was quelled by people who anointed the Kennedys with supreme power.” Of all the Kennedy women, she most admired Jackie, the only member of the family who would not be cowed.
“Jackie knew where she was at, who she was,” Stewart says. “She kept her kids away. I think the sisters were jealous of her. They just didn’t like her.” And Jackie, Stewart says, didn’t care.
Stewart says she finally realized how cruel and controlling the Kennedys could be after Lawford’s death from organ failure on Christmas Eve 1984. Stewart had her husband cremated, which incensed the Kennedys as it went against Catholic doctrine. And so the family refused to pay for the interment of Lawford’s ashes, informing Stewart in a phone call.
“Christopher [Lawford] says to me, ‘We’ve convened at Mummy’s, and we’ve decided Daddy’s not worth it.’ ” Four years later, when Stewart was so late paying for maintenance that Westwood cemetery was demanding Lawford’s remains be removed, Lawford’s daughter Victoria sent a check to cover the $430 disinterment fee.
The family also insisted on sending a Kennedy out to LA, to make sure Lawford’s ashes were, in fact, removed.
“I called the National Enquirer, bumped up the disinterment by one day, then put the ashes in the ocean,” Stewart says. “I couldn’t take it.”
She wanted to send a message to the Kennedys: They could no longer control her in life, nor could they control her husband in death.
“The Kennedy family called me a grave robber,” she says. “I was this piece of crap that had done this horrible thing. Going up against them is like going up against the panzer division. You always feel like you’re going to be attacked.”
Even today, Stewart believes the Kennedys find ways to harass her. “I’ve been audited,” she says. “I have inaugural footage in a vault that they want. People call all the time about it, and I know the Kennedys are behind it. The long line of Kennedys reaches into everything. They’ve got their hands in every cash register in the world.”
After she heard the Kennedys publicly assail Mary as a lifelong depressive and drunk — characterizations that Mary’s siblings and friends categorically deny — Stewart says she felt compelled to come forward.
“Botox is nice, eye creams are good, but none of it will take away the wear and tear they put on me,” Stewart says. “I don’t for one minute think that Mary was a drunk, or a drug addict, or depressive. I think she was tormented by her husband, and I think he could do that.
“Because that’s what the Kennedys do. And they’re very good at it.”
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