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The Miami Herald, however, claimed that Kennedy spent the last days of his life "in what hotel employees called an alcoholic haze." The paper said David drank vodka and grapefruit juice at the hotel bar all day; one day it was "straight through to midnight." A hotel employee corroborated that version.
In any case, David was due back in Boston on Wednesday of last week. His mother called the hotel manager's office from Virginia at 11:15 a.m. and said she was concerned because David had not appeared at the Kennedys' oceanside compound for dinner the night before. Someone was sent to check the room. David Kennedy was found clothed in shorts and a shirt, lying face down on the floor between the twin beds in the room. He was dead.
Gerald Beebe, who handles the hotel's public relations, got on the phone to Ethel Kennedy and told her, "We have found your son and the paramedics have arrived." Recalls Beebe: "She said, 'He's dead, isn't he?' I said, 'I'm sorry, yes.' She made a mother's sound, a strange sound, like a gasp, and hung up the phone."
Caroline Kennedy and Sydney Lawford, daughter of Pat Kennedy Lawford and Peter Lawford, were summoned, still in bathing suits, to identify the body. Caroline took charge of the immediate family business. She spent an hour on the telephone in the manager's office, making arrangements, notifying everyone.
There were drugs in David's room. Jay Pintacuda, chief medical examiner of the Palm Beach sheriff's department crime lab, said the police found 1.3 grams of high-grade cocaine. He reported that an autopsy discovered traces of cocaine and Demerol, a powerful prescription painkiller, in his body. But it was too early to know what exactly had caused his death.
Some thought that the real cause of death was Sirhan Sirhan. David was more sensitive and inward than most other Kennedy males. He did not display quite the same sharp, aggressive self-confidence that came down the line to sons and grandsons from Ambassador Joseph Kennedy. David tended to be a loner. Bobby Kennedy, perhaps because he was a third son himself and knew the difficulties of struggling along in the middle of the pack in a large family, paid special attention to David. He gave him more of his time. He often brought David to his Senate office on Saturdays and let the boy putter around while he worked or talked to reporters.
He took David campaigning with him. On June 4, 1968, the day of the California primary, Bobby took his son swimming in the surf off Malibu. A strong undertow seized the twelve-year-old and drew him out toward open water. Bobby Kennedy swam after the boy and saved him.