Kennedy Family Member. The son of US Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and nephew of the 35th US President, John F. Kennedy. Born David Anthony Kennedy in Washington, DC, he was the fourth of eleven children to Senator Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Skakel Kennedy. In 1967, his father decided to run on the Democratic ticket for President in the 1968 elections, and David was there to help his father in the primaries. On June 5, 1968, just after his father had won the California primary, 13-year-old David was watching television in his hotel room when he witnessed his father's murder at the hands of Sirhan Bishara Sirhan. Of all of the siblings, David apparently took his father's death the hardest, leaving him emotionally scarred. During Christmas 1968, he wrote to his mother, "There will be no more football with Daddy, no more swimming with him, no more riding, and no more camping with him. But he was the best father there ever was, and I would rather have him as a father for the length of time I did than any other father for a million years." It was shortly thereafter that he turned to drugs. In 1973, he was in a Jeep accident in which his eldest brother, Joseph Kennedy II, was driving. David sustained a fractured vertebra, and his girlfriend, Pamela Kelley, was left paralyzed. David became addicted to the painkillers he was given, and that autumn, he began shooting heroin. After graduating from the Middlesex School in Concord, Massachusetts, he was admitted to Harvard, pursuing a major in American History, before dropping out in 1976. He was considered a good writer and decided to pursue a career as a journalist, working for a Tennessee newspaper. Although some of the staff thought he had a good style and aptitude, others thought he was often high. David would alternate his time between the Kennedy family home "Hickory Hill" in McLean, Virginia, and New York City until February 1979, when he decided to live in New York full-time. He was often seen in the various hot spot nightclubs of the city with a variety of attractive women. At that time, he was involved with British actress Rachel Claire Ward. Between 1976 and 1979, he was twice diagnosed with bacterial endocarditis, an inflammation of the heart, a common result of using intravenous drugs. He also suffered from drug overdoses in 1976 and 1978. During the winter of 1978, he spent two months in Sussex, England, under the care of Dr. Margaret Patterson for treatment of drug addiction. In September 1979, he was robbed and beaten while buying heroin in Harlem. Police did not charge him for driving with an expired license or with lying to police about the circumstances of the robbery. A month later, he moved to Sacramento, California, to live under the supervision of a drug counselor, and once drug-free, he obtained work through his family contacts, adopting a quiet lifestyle. In the fall of 1982, he moved to Boston, Massachusetts, working for "Atlantic Monthly" magazine, and spent time in Spofford Hall, a drug and alcohol abuse treatment center, to get his drinking habits under control. He enrolled in Harvard for the fall semester of 1983 but left at the end of the semester when he relapsed and began using again. In March 1984, David completed a month at St. Mary's Hospital and Rehabilitation Center in Minneapolis, trying to break his drug habit. On April 19, 1984, he flew down to Palm Beach, Florida, to be with his family for an extended Easter break, checking into the Brazilian Court Hotel. He apparently spent the first two days partying, but after several days of absence, his family asked the hotel to check on him. The hotel staff found him dead in his room. An autopsy determined he had died on April 25, following an overdose of cocaine, combined with the tranquilizer Mellaril and the painkiller Demerol. Traces of cocaine and Demerol were found in the bowl and tank of the room's toilet, and 15 mg of cocaine was found on a $20 bill in his room. He was buried in the family plot at Hollywood Cemetery in Brookline, Massachusetts.