RFK Jr. cut off raccoon's genitals on family road trip, new book claims

In mid-April 2026, a story circulating on social media alleged that U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. once cut off a raccoon's penis to study it while on a family road trip.

Entertainment news outlet TMZ reported on the claim, and it spread further on Facebook, Bluesky and X. Snopes readers also asked us to verify the claim. 

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— Adam Kinzinger (@adamkinzinger.substack.com) April 15, 2026 at 5:17 PM

The claim originated from New York Post reporter Isabel Vincent's book "RFK Jr: The Fall and Rise." Vincent wrote that Kennedy recorded the story in one of his diaries, which she said she obtained from an unnamed source. Kennedy's deceased second wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy, reportedly kept these journals as leverage during their divorce.

Snopes has reached out to HHS for Kennedy's comment on whether the reported incident took place but had not received a response by the time of publication. We also contacted Vincent to request information confirming the entry's existence and authenticity, and await a reply. Because we were unable to independently confirm the contents of Kennedy's diaries or the accuracy of his personal accounts, we've left this claim unrated.

Vincent noted in her book that Kennedy's diary entry about the dead raccoon was dated November 2001, though the exact date of the alleged incident remains unclear. Below is an excerpt from Vincent's book describing what Kennedy wrote in the entry:

"I was standing in front of my parked car on I-684 cutting the penis out of a road killed raccoon, thinking how weird some of my family members have turned out to be," he wrote. For him, his cousin Bobby Shriver's and his brother Douglas's ability to hold on to "deep resentments" was its "own category of weird" — not slicing off a raccoon penis on the side of the road! "My kids waited patiently in the car."

TMZ approached Kennedy after the book's release to ask about the raccoon story. Video of the encounter showed Kennedy laughing, but he did not respond to any of the outlet's questions.  

This is not the first time Kennedy has been associated with animal carcasses. A journalist traveling with Kennedy in 2001 described his fascination with dead animals, according to Vincent's book. Kennedy reportedly saw a dead seagull on the road in Long Island and said, "I'd like to pick up some of these dead seagulls for my skull collection."

In August 2024, Snopes reported on Kennedy admitting to dumping a bear carcass in New York's Central Park a decade earlier, staging the scene to look like a bike accident. In September 2024, law enforcement opened an investigation into an allegation that Kennedy had cut off the head of a dead whale decades prior. 

For further reading, Snopes has covered an array of rumors about Kennedy.