In 1994 Kennedy married Richardson, who had been Kerry Kennedys best friend since they attended Putney School in Vermont together. She and Bobby had four children, Conor, Kyra, Aidan, and Finn. In the fall of 1998, the Kennedys hired a 23-year-old woman, Eliza Cooney, as their part-time babysitter. She was a recent college graduate interested in working on environmental causes and had looked after Kerrys and Maxs children in Hyannis Port that summer. Cooney moved into Bobby and Marys family home in Mount Kisco, New York, taking care of the kids and assisting Bobby at his environmental law clinic at Pace University during the week.
One night Cooney attended a meeting in the family kitchen with Kennedy and another young Riverkeeper volunteer named Murray Fisher to discuss business when she felt Kennedys hand moving up and down her leg under the table. She tried making sense of the incident in her diary, which I have read. In an entry dated November 7, 1998, she wrote:
From everything everybody says about the Kennedys + their Babysitters, they had me worried. Like I have to watch out, be careful. And the other night in the kitchen w/ Murray I could have sworn he was touching my leg + hand. It seemed like he thought I was somebody else or wasnt paying attention. Like he would come to every once in a while and snap out of it or I would move away. It was like he was on something or really tired or was missing Mary or was testing me.