Death at home in Westwood

Kyle Kennedy, the daughter of Michael Kennedy and one of 34 grandchildren of Robert F. 'Bobby' Kennedy and Ethel Kennedy, died at 42 at her home in Westwood, Massachusetts, on 21 September. News of the death emerged on 20 October, when People, citing her obituary, reported it. According to People, which said it had seen her death certificate, the cause of death had not been determined and the case was still being investigated. She left two sons, aged 12 and 10, along with her mother, Victoria Denise Gifford, and her former husband, the obituary says. A private funeral service was held.

Career and activism

Kyle was born on 6 July 1984 in Washington, D.C. After graduating from Georgetown, she worked for two years with Teach For America, according to ABC, and later earned master's degrees in education, including one at Harvard's Graduate School of Education. Her work focused on children from disadvantaged backgrounds and on education for people with disabilities. ABC also reports that she worked with technology companies to improve school curricula and tutored other teachers. In 2020 a serious spinal cord injury left her paralysed, and in her final years she campaigned for people with disabilities. Tgcom24 reports that she testified at a hearing on disability discrimination in healthcare at the Massachusetts State House.

A family shaped by loss

Kyle married Liam Kerr at the Fairmont Copley Plaza in Boston in August 2012. The couple had twins, and one of them died a few days after birth, while Declan was born two years later, according to Adnkronos. Her father, Michael Kennedy, died in a skiing accident in 1997. Adnkronos also notes that Tatiana Schlossberg, a granddaughter of John F. Kennedy, died of leukaemia at 35 in December 2025. Several outlets describe a long run of deaths in the family that some call the 'Kennedy curse', a label ABC uses. 20 Minuten's list begins in 1948 with the plane crash in France that killed Kathleen Kennedy at 28, and it includes the assassinations of John F. Kennedy in 1963 and Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. It also cites the 1999 plane crash that killed John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife and her sister, and the 1997 skiing accident that killed Michael Kennedy at 39.