Patrick escorts Michele Cassone to her car and politely says good night.
Farther down the beach, things are unfolding differently.
Left without a ride when his uncle and cousin took off earlier, Willie asks Patricia Bowman for a lift home when Au Bar closes at 3:00 a.m. She’s happy to oblige, and when they arrive, the two of them go for a walk on the sand, despite a brisk breeze.
According to Bowman’s version of what happens next, Willie then asks her if she’d like to go skinny dipping. She declines. But he goes ahead, stripping off his clothes and wading into the cold surf.
Bowman turns to go up to the house and to her car. “I’ve had a nice night with a nice guy,” she later recalls thinking as she left. “It would be nice if he called again, but hey, let’s be realistic, he’s a Kennedy.”
But as she reaches the concrete steps, she claims, she feels a hand grab her bare ankle from behind. She trips and falls. It’s Willie, who she says has suddenly undergone a “surreal” aggressive transformation. She breaks free and starts “running, to get away,” but Willie, who is six-two and around two hundred pounds, tackles her on the lawn by the pool.
“I tried to arch my back to get him off me,” five-six, 130-pound Bowman will later testify, “and he slammed me back into the ground. I was yelling, ‘No!’ and then ‘Stop!’”
But Willie won’t stop. “I was struggling, and he told me to ‘Stop it, Bitch,’” she alleges. “Then he pushed my dress up and he raped me. I thought he was going to kill me.”
Per her police report, Bowman “remembers hearing herself screaming and wondering why no one in the house would come out and help her, especially since she knew that Senator Kennedy was in the house.”
Yet Ted and Patrick will swear in court they never heard any screams—nor did the other dozen or so people staying in the house. Willie’s mother, Jean Kennedy Smith, was sleeping at the Palm Beach estate that night, but says she didn’t hear anyone crying for help, or any other noises. Other houseguests, including William Barry (the former FBI agent who wrested the gun from Sirhan Sirhan after he shot Bobby Kennedy) and two prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office (friends of John Kennedy Jr.’s) also assert it was a peaceful night.
Nevertheless, Patricia Bowman says she finally manages to escape from Willie and runs into the house, where she hides in the kitchen. When she spots a phone on the counter, she uses it to call her friend Anne Mercer.
“I wanted somebody to come and help me feel safe. And I didn’t know that the police would care or would come,” Bowman says, explaining why she calls Mercer instead of 911. “I had just been raped by a Kennedy. And I didn’t know what power they held,” she says. “These are political people and…maybe they owned the police.”
As soon as she hangs up, Bowman says, she hears Willie calling for her. He finds her hiding in the kitchen and pulls her into another room. But this time Bowman confronts him.
“I told him that he raped me, and he looked at me, the calmest, smuggest, most arrogant man, and he said, ‘No one will believe you.’”
Chapter 44
Anne Mercer and her boyfriend, Chuck Desiderio, arrive at the Kennedy estate about fifteen minutes after getting the call from Patricia Bowman. “She was literally shaking and she looked messed up, her hair and makeup was running,” Mercer recalls. Willie, on the other hand, looks “disheveled” but calm.
Mercer and Desiderio take Bowman back to Mercer’s house, but before leaving the house on North Ocean Boulevard, they swipe a few small items—a framed photo, a notepad, a decorative urn—as proof they have indeed all been there.
Mercer gives Bowman a change of clothes.
Nine hours later, Patricia Bowman is at the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s office to file a report of rape—and to name her attacker. The Kennedy name drops with a thud.
Later that afternoon, Bowman is at Humana Hospital, where she undergoes forensic tests and is treated for minor back injuries. “I felt all this fear and this dirtiness,” she says. “I was just so afraid and confused by everything that had happened to me. I was a mess.”