KENNEDY FAMILY RELEASES LIST OF TRAGIC WAYS REMAINING MEMBERS COULD DIE

The Onion / May 23, 2012

HYANNIS PORT, MA—Following last week's tragic loss of yet another family member, the grieving Kennedys released a list of numerous heartbreaking ways the dynasty's remaining living relatives could die, sources confirmed Tuesday.

This list, which is formatted very simply with the name of a family member followed by 10 to 15 upsetting ways that each specific person could die, was faxed to all major news outlets, and includes such methods of death as "car crash, pill overdose, murder, and water-skiing accident."

According to the Kennedys, all family members could potentially die in a private plane crash.

"Robert F. Kennedy Jr." the document read in part: "Deadly fall, drowning in Martha's Vineyard, brain aneurysm during a speech in front of a large crowd of people, boating accident, carbon-monoxide poisoning, assassination at the hands of Sirhan Sirhan Jr., heart attack during some kind of humiliating sexual experience, house fire, reported missing and then later found decapitated in the woods, stroke."

"Crushed by large wooden beam," Kennedy's section concluded.

While the original list was sent at 11:40 p.m. Tuesday, sources have speculated that the Kennedy family felt it was incomplete, because at 12:40 a.m. an addendum to the document was released, adding "mutilation of some kind" to 84-year-old Jean Kennedy Smith's list of potential ways she could die, accidental self-strangulation to 27-year-old Kyle Francis Kennedy's section, and SIDS to the myriad ways 5-week-old Owen Patrick Kennedy might unexpectedly and tragically be killed.

"I see this list as a self-coping mechanism on the part of the Kennedys, and a way to emotionally prepare themselves for the inevitable sudden deaths of their relatives," University of Pennsylvania psychology professor David Claflin told reporters. "This way, if Rory Kennedy dies after a bout of anorexia, or is found with a broken neck at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, nobody in the family will be surprised because it's on the list."

At press time, Edward Moore Kennedy Jr., 50, was driving 20 mph over the speed limit on a very windy road in Nashua, NH.