Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s daughter Kick Kennedy has shared a touching video and tribute to billionaire banking heir Matthew Mellon after he was found dead in his Mexico hotel room before he was due to check into rehab.
Kennedy, 30, was said to be dating the 54-year-old in the months leading up to his death on April 16 in Cancun. Following news of his death, a representative for the model said she was shocked and heartbroken.
The father-of-three, who struggled with drug addiction during his adult life, had been due to check into the Clear Sky Recovery rehabilitation clinic on the same day he was found dead in a hotel room.
Kennedy, who had just spent several months travelling around Europe and the US with Mellon, took to Instagram to share a video of the pair dancing.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s daughter Kick Kennedy, 30, shared a touching video and tribute to billionaire banking heir Matthew Mellon, 54, who she was said to be dating before his shock death in Mexico on April 16
‘Most who knew Matthew knew he had an incredible way of manifesting wildly unpredictable miracles that shocked and awed us all. Simply, he was magical,’ Kennedy wrote alongside the video.
‘We also couldn’t really understand what he was ever talking about, almost ever. He had a way of moving around quickly and mumbling and then all of the sudden saying something completely insightful.
‘I remember him turning to me once and saying ‘Don’t let the fear of losing be greater than the excitement of winning’ before going back to the usual topics (UFOs….!!! Human cloning…!!!). It was hard not to be completely under his spell.’
Kennedy went on to say that Mellon loved his friends and described his two ex-wives, Tamara and Nicole, as the ‘loves of his life’.
She added that he adored his three children – Minty, Force, and Olympia – saying that they would inherit his charm, wisdom and ‘spectacularly bizarre wardrobe’.
‘He was the most generous and fabulous person I have ever met and really only cared about how everyone else was feeling,’ she said.
‘Thank you MM for taking us all on the fun and captivating adventure that was your life, as you would say, in ‘M E L L O N S T Y L E’.’
Mellon, who struggled with drug addiction during his adult life, had been due to check into the Clear Sky Recovery rehabilitation clinic on the same day he was found dead in a hotel room
Kennedy, who had just spent several months travelling around Europe and the US with Mellon, took to Instagram to share a video (above) of the pair dancing
Kennedy, 30, was said to be dating the 54-year-old in the months leading up to his death on April 16 in Cancun. She is pictured above in New York last November
Prior to his death Mellon had been sober for three months but made the decision to check himself into the rehab clinic for follow up treatment, according to a family spokesperson.
The circumstances of Mellon’s hotel death are not yet clear and an autopsy wasn’t carried out before his body was cremated, according to Page Six.
When rumors of his romance with Kennedy surfaced, Mellon implied to Page Six that whatever they had together was over.
‘I’m 54 and she’s 30,’ he said, before adding that she would threaten his sobriety.
Friends said after his death that he was committed to sobriety and had extensive travel plans for the immediate future.
Mellon had been battling an OxyContin addiction and once admitted to spending $100,000 a month on the drug.
The facility where he was due to check-in specializes in drug addiction treatment using Ibogain, a psychedelic plant-based drug which is not approved for any medical uses in the United States.
In 2016, Mellon blamed doctors for his addiction, saying they were ‘writing prescriptions like they were Smarties.’
At the time, he was checked into Passages Malibu, an addiction-treatment center popular with boldfaced names, and said that he was determined to battle the addiction.
The father-of-three had been due to check into the Clear Sky Recovery rehabilitation clinic on the same day he was found dead in a hotel room
The facility where he was due to check-in (pictured above) specializes in drug addiction treatment using Ibogain, a psychedelic plant-based drug which is not approved for any medical uses in the United States
In 2017 he was trying other means to sobriety, sharing this photo of himself in Malibu on a vitamin and amino acid drip called NAD (Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide), which bills itself as a holistic cure for addiction
Mellon is survived by his first wife Tamara Mellon – who is the co-founder of Jimmy Choo – and his second wife, fashion designer Nicole Hanley. He also has three children – one with Tamara and two with Nicole.
In excerpts from her autobiography, In My Shoes, published in the Daily Mail in 2013, Tamara wrote that she and Mellon met at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting in London in 1998.
Their wedding in 2000 was held at the birthplace of Winston Churchill and was attended by 300 guests, including Hugh Grant and Liz Hurley.
She wrote that Mellon suffered from a cocaine addiction during their marriage. Tamara also said he had inherited his father’s bipolar illness.
Mellon and his second wife Nicole met at a wedding in Florida in 2006 months before they launched a clothing line, Hanley Mellon.
He proposed in 2008 and they married two years later at family friend Diane Von Furstenberg’s home in the Bahamas. The pair later divorced in 2016.
Mellon comes from the Mellon and Drexel families of Bank of New York Mellon and Drexel Burnham Lambert.
Mellon is survived by his first wife Tamara Mellon (right) – who is the co-founder of Jimmy Choo – and his second wife, fashion designer Nicole Hanley (left). He has one daughter Minty (above) with his first wife and two more with his second wife
Matthew is pictured with his first wife Tamara at their wedding in the UK in 2000, which was attended by Hugh Grant and Liz Hurley. The couple met in a Narcotics Anonymous meeting two years prior
According to Mellon’s Linked In account and documents of the Securities and Exchange Commission, he attended the Wharton School and later worked in fashion, telecommunications and finance, most recently as an adviser for the digital currency company Ripple Labs.
Mellon also served for a time as the chairman of the finance committee of the Republican Party in New York.
He made a fortune in crypto-currencies, buying and selling off his Bitcoin a number of years ago, before splashing out $2million to acquire XRP coins, which eventually grew to be worth $1billion.
In February, Matthew told Forbes that he liked XRP, used by currency exchange network Ripple, because it was one of the handful of cryptocurrencies that actually operated within the traditional banking system.
‘Crypto is scary and dark. It’s anti-America,’ Mellon told Forbes, explaining that he chose Ripple because he is ‘pro-America, pro-business and pro-bank.’
According to a family friend, Mellon’s family have since been unable to trace the fortune he made in crypto-currency and worry that it has ‘disappeared’.
‘Something weird has happened to all his crypto money and his family can’t find it’.