[2][3] Kennedy graduated from Harvard College in 1980 and subsequently earned his Juris Doctor from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1984.

[4] A Boston lawyer,[8] Kennedy briefly worked for a private law firm before becoming chairman of his brother Joseph's non-profit organization, Citizens Energy Corporation in 1986, which provides heating oil and services to elderly and low-income households in Massachusetts.

[4] That same year, he helped organize his uncle Ted Kennedy's successful re-election campaign for the U.S. Senate against Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

[4][10] In 1992, Kennedy, his wife Victoria, and his mother Ethel made a cameo appearance on the NBC sitcom Cheers in Boston.

[6] Kennedy took and passed three polygraph tests arranged by his attorneys, claiming he had not had sex with the Cohasset teen until she was 16, the legal age of consent in Massachusetts at the time.

[6] Norfolk County District Attorney Jeffrey Locke decided to drop the investigation into statutory rape allegations because of a lack of cooperation from the babysitter.

[17] After the accident, Kennedy was taken to Aspen Valley Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 5:50 p.m.[18] He was interred on January 3, 1998, in the family plot at Holyhood Cemetery in Brookline, Massachusetts.