Mary Richardson Kennedy, wife of RFK Jr., found dead in New York

NEW YORK — Mary Richardson Kennedy, the estranged wife of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was found dead on the family’s property north of New York City on Wednesday, two years after her husband filed for divorce and following a history of drug and alcohol problems.

Kerry A. Lawrence, a lawyer who had represented Mary Kennedy in a 2010 drunk driving case, confirmed the death, but neither he nor police in the town of Bedford in Westchester County, N.Y., released a cause of death. An autopsy was scheduled Thursday, the Associated Press reported.

According to a brief statement from Bedford police, officers were called to the Kennedy home in neighboring Mount Kisco at 1:36 p.m. Wednesday “to investigate a possible unattended death.” The statement said that officers found “a deceased person inside an outbuilding” on the property and that an investigation into the cause of death was underway.

Mary Kennedy, 52, was the second wife of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent environmentalist and lawyer who is the third child of Ethel and the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and a nephew of President Kennedy. The couple married in April 1994, about a month after his divorce from Emily Black. They had their first child, Conor, that summer. They also had a daughter, Kyra, and two more sons, William and Aiden.

“Mary inspired our family with her kindness, her love, her gentle soul and generous spirit,” the family of Robert Kennedy said in a statement, according to the AP. ::snipping2::

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/la-na-nn-mary-kennedy-dead-20120516,0,687453.story