Kids & Family

Mary Richardson Kennedy's Body Exhumed, Moved

The new gravesite is across the cemetery where there is plenty of room for future burials.

Mary Richardson Kennedy's body was exhumed last week and moved to a new, larger grave site in St. Francis Xavier Cemetery, says a report by the New York Daily News.

Kennedy's body was originally laid to rest just outside of a circle of shrubs where Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Sargent Shriver are buried but was moved about 700 feet away to a larger section with room for relatives to be buried alongside her, according to the story.

Gravedigger Frank Maki told the Daily News that Robert Kennedy wanted her moved to an area where the Kennedy family is now negotiating to buy 50 plots.

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"He (Robert) didn’t realize how crowded the area was until after the funeral, and he wanted to have the ability to lay his wife to rest among her family members," Maki said. "He opted for an area of the cemetery where there is room for future expansion."

Read the full story here. Photos of the gravesite are provided by the Barnstable-Hyannis Patch.

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Kennedy was found dead on her property May 16. She was married to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in 1994 but the coupled filed for divorce in 2010, shortly after Mary Kennedy involving prescription drugs and alcohol. They couple had four children together.

The according to the Westchester County Medical Examiner was asphyxiation due to hanging. Her autopsy revealed her to have a normal amount of antidepressants but no alcohol in her bloodstream.

Since the release of the autopsy report, news outlets have speculated that Kennedy had second thoughts about committing suicide in her final moments because her fingers were caught between her neck and the noose when she died.

Her friends in Bedford remember her as a warm, caring and gracious individual. Read


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