Her last night was filled with music, laughter and celebration alongside a close friend, ending only after she stayed awake to watch the summer sunrise wash over a Cape Cod beach.
Hours later in 2019, 22-year-old Saoirse Kennedy Hill — remembered by her uncle Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as an “adorable” and “bright light” — was found dead at the Kennedy family’s storied Hyannis Port compound.
Now, a cryptic social media tribute posted by RFK Jr. this month, then quickly removed, has prompted fresh questions about the circumstances surrounding the final hours of her life.
In an Instagram post honoring the Boston University student, Kennedy described Saoirse as “a luminous soul who died seven years ago this week of an accidental fentanyl overdose.”
The post was later deleted.
However, Saoirse’s death certificate, obtained by Our News Outlet, lists her date of death as August 1, 2019, and attributes it to accidental acute toxicity involving methadone, diazepam, nordiazepam, fluoxetine, norfluoxetine and ethanol.
Put plainly, fluoxetine is widely known as the antidepressant Prozac, while ethanol toxicity refers to alcohol.
Fentanyl is not mentioned anywhere on the death certificate, making RFK Jr.’s August 6 Instagram reference to the powerful opioid especially perplexing.
RFK Jr described his late niece Saoirse Kennedy Hill as ‘a luminous soul who died 7 years ago this week of an accidental fentanyl overdose’ in a puzzling Instagram post on the seven-year anniversary of her death
Kennedy shared a touching tribute, sharing never-before-reported details of her death in 2019 aged 22. It is unclear if he misspoke in his tribute or had another reason for mentioning fentanyl
Kennedy is yet to explain why he would describe her death as such when official record attributes to it a different combination of drugs and alcohol.
The post has since raised questions as to whether it was simply an embarrassing and massive blunder or if there was something not revealed at the time that now puts a question mark over the cause of death.
The discrepancy is also particularly striking given RFK Jr’s role in America’s war on fentanyl as Health Secretary.
It appears to observers curious to say the least that he might wrongly attribute the death of his niece to a drug so powerful that the Trump administration has declared it a ‘weapon of mass destruction.’
He himself is quoted as saying of the opioid epidemic: ‘This Administration is going to treat this urgent crisis in American health as the national security emergency that it is.’
So fentanyl, one assumes, is not a word he would bandy about lightly.
The Daily Mail has asked RFK Jr’s media office for a clarification of the post and also why it was deleted. There has been no response.
Saoirse’s death certificate lists her cause of death as acute methadone, diazepam, nordiazepam, fluoxetine, norfluoxetine, and ethanol toxicity. Fentanyl is not listed anywhere in the document. Her death was ruled an accident
Kennedy is yet to explain why he would describe her death as such when official record attributes to it a different combination of drugs and alcohol
The mystery surrounding Kennedy’s post comes seven years after Saoirse spent her final night celebrating with her best friend Sinead Donnelly in the vibrant village of Hyannis, a neighbor of Hyannis Port where sits the Kennedy compound, a three-house ocean-front estate established in 1928 by patriarch Joseph P Kennedy Sr.
According to RFK Jr himself it was a ‘flight of her characteristic exuberance’ after finishing a 25-page paper for university completed after ‘laboring for a week in my garage and attic and of which she was immensely proud.’
He added in his eulogy at the packed Our Lady of Victory church in Centerville, Massachusetts: ‘She announced that she would spend the remainder of the evening in an all-night celebration of that feat.’
First, she had dinner with her grandmother Ethel Kennedy, the human rights activist who had 11 children with assassinated Robert Kennedy, including RFK Jr and Saoirse’s mother Courtney, 69.
The pair watched that evening’s televised debate for Democratic presidential candidates.
By 10.30pm she and Donnelly were at Embargo, a bustling bar and restaurant in Main Street, Hyannis, where karaoke is also on the menu along with $59 for an eight-ounce filet mignon, Cajun swordfish for $34 and $18 martinis.
It describes itself as ‘Cape Cod’s premier location for casual dining and a big city atmosphere… enjoy big plates, raw bar, great steaks and world class tapas… and live entertainment in the evenings!’
Kennedy family members at Saoirse Kennedy Hill’s funeral on August 5, 2019 in Massachusetts. Her father Paul Michael Hill is on the left helping carry her casket
Saoirse ‘went out singing… to a karaoke bar and then dancing at a gender fluid pageant (gay bar),’ RFK Jr told funeral mourners stunned by the tragedy.
‘She came home at 2am and sang and danced with Sinead in the cottage,’ he continued, referring to one of the buildings in the six-acre compound, dubbed the Court of Camelot during the presidency of John F Kennedy.
He then described what should have been remembered as one of the most pleasurable experiences for two high-spirited young women enjoying life on that warm and humid night of July 31.
‘They toured Hyannis Port in grandma Ethel’s golf cart and swam at dawn before watching the sunrise from the beach,’ he continued.
‘She went to bed looking forward to her trip to Los Angeles that day. It was a perfect night and, as was her habit, she documented much of it on social media.’
He said ‘the two friends’ slept in the room typically used by another uncle, Douglas, before adding: ‘Saoirse woke up with God.’
According to People, no one disturbed the pair early because they knew they hadn’t got to bed before 6.30am. ‘When they finally went up she was dead,’ a friend was quoted as saying.
Saoirse’s time of death was recorded on her certificate at 3.14pm.
Saoirse Kennedy Hill spent her final night celebrating with a friend before staying up to witness the summer sun majestically rise over a beautiful Cape Cod beach
The discrepancy is particularly striking given RFK Jr’s role in America’s war on fentanyl as Health Secretary
Donnelly, now aged 27 and living in South Carolina, said she did not want to comment about her friend’s tragedy when contacted by Our News Outlet. She has not given interviews.
Barnstable, which has a population of roughly 50,000 and includes the villages of Hyannis and Hyannis Port, was battling an increasing fentanyl problem around 2019, with 22 opioid deaths recorded there that year.
Massachusetts Department of Health figures showed fentanyl was present in 93 percent of fatal opioid overdoses statewide then.
However, Embargo has no reported history of problems with drugs apart from in 2022 when a woman claimed she visited the bar and believed she might have had her drink spiked by another customer.
Whatever the curious Instagram posting, it’s clear from RFK Jr’s effusive eulogy that he adored Saoirse and that she was a much loved member of the powerful political dynasty.
Her father was Irishman Paul Hill, one of the ‘Guildford Four’ who spent 15 years in British prisons wrongly convicted over the IRA bombings in 1974 of two pubs in Guildford, near London. Hill and mom Courtney married in 1993 and split in 2006.
Between the ages of four and eight she lived in Ireland, RFK Jr recalled to mourners. ‘When my younger kids first met her on Cape Cod, she was an adorable, flaxen-haired Irish sprite, with sparkling eyes, peeling laughter and thick brogue,’ he added.
‘She was an outgoing imp with a rebellious nature, an irreverence towards authority and deep commitment to mischief, all of which she might have inherited both from Paul and Courtney.
‘We all considered her our own. She had a knack for friendship that put her at the center of an enormous network of our relatives.’
He continued: ‘She had a kind of endearing recklessness that made her life a series of embarrassing predicaments. At the apex of each of these episodes, she was at the height of her powers…
‘Saoirse shared with each of us a little piece of herself, a little ray of starlight that we each get to keep.’
The Daily Mail was unsuccessful in reaching other close members of Saoirse’s family for comment.
