Did Mary Kennedy Try To Stop Suicide?

Remember a few months ago when we reported that Mary Kennedy died by suicide? Well according to her autopsy, she may have tried to stop herself. Click below for more information (warning: the details are graphic).

Melissa Nash

Did Mary Kennedy change her mind about hanging herself?
In shocking evidence revealed in her autopsy report, the estranged wife of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had her fingers between her neck and the noose when she was found dead May 16 in her barn in Bedford .
Her fingers were cut and blue from the rope’s pressure, Westchester County Medical Examiner Dr. Kunjlata Ashar notes in the report.
Warning: The details are graphic.
“There is a beige rope around her neck around 9/16’’ in diameter,” Dr. Ashar observed. “The knot present on this rope (has) nine loops. Underneath the rope described above are her fingers. The left side of her neck shows (a) brownish red abrasion going upwards behind her left ear measuring 3 1/2’’ in length and 3/8’’ in width.”
Mary’s fingers were bruised and her fingernails were blue, the report shows.
I reached out to Ashar just to be sure I was interpreting these technical, but potentially heartbreaking details correctly. In an email, Ashar confirmed:
“The fingers from both of (Mary’s) hands were between the rope and the neck,” she wrote in the email. “The fingernails were cyanotic (blue) because of compression of the fingers, as they were between the rope and the neck.”
The rope had a hangman’s knot and the abrasion on her little finger was caused by the rope, Ashar told the Daily News.
Could Mary have realized that no matter how awful she was feeling about Bobby Kennedy divorcing her, that it was a horrible mistake to kill herself? Did images of her four children flash before her? Did she fight for her life?
Ashar said, “The fingers caught in the noose may suggest that she was trying to place the rope around her neck.”

And what? She fell? She wasn’t inebriated. Ashar said in the toxicology report that Mary had no alcohol in her system. And Mary’s prescribing psychiatrist said in a statement to The News that the antidepressants found in her blood were her normal dosage.

I asked two of the most respected medical examiners in the country, Dr. Michael Baden and Dr. Shiya Ribowsky, for their opinions. They both read the entire 11-page autopsy report.

Ribowsky, the former NYC Medical Examiner, medical legal investigator who was in charge of forensics for the victims of 9/11 and the author of “Dead Center,” said, “I have investigated many, many suicides by hanging and I’ve never seen that.”

The troubled mom may have changed her mind.
“She may have been trying to pull the rope off. Few people would be able to do it. One essentially has to do a chin-up on the ligature (rope). If she had changed her mind but was already suspended, there would be more than enough pressure to kill her. And in a hanging, the person becomes unconscious within 15 seconds.”
Asked about Ashar’s hypothesis, Ribowsky said, “If she had her fingers around the noose when she stepped off, her fingers could have gotten caught.
“But she could certainly have changed her mind and may have been trying to get the rope off. It’s impossible to tell.”
The Bedford police report obtained by a Freedom of Information request does not specifically say what Kennedy stepped off of, though the medical examiner said scene photos showed three metal wire boxes near her feet.
Baden, a former NYC Medical Examiner, has testified in the cases of O.J. Simpson and Claus von Bulow and the deaths of John Belushi, Sid Vicious, and ironically, President John F. Kennedy. He could not rule out that Mary, who had threatened suicide and researched on the Internet how to tie a noose, tried to reverse her tragic end.
“This does look like a suicidal hanging, but someone putting their hands under the rope is seen only rarely,” Baden said.
“Perhaps she didn’t want any marks on her neck. But one has to ask, ‘Did the individual have second thoughts?’ Once a person starts hanging and their feet are off the ground, the person can lose consciousness in 10 seconds.
“It’s a quick way to die — that’s why it was widely used in executions,” Baden continued.
“But whether she thought, ‘Maybe I don’t want to hang myself,’ we may never know. We can’t read what was in somebody’s mind.”