Kennedy curse

The Kennedy curse is invoked to describe a series of misfortunes (known as the Kennedy family tragedies) involving members of the powerful and celebrated Kennedy family of the United States of America. Skeptics have argued that many of the events are normal, and it is not improbable that a large extended family would experience them.

Background

There are many stories about the placing of the curse on the Kennedy family. Some accounts have the curse originating with the fleeing of European Jews during World War II and of Joe, Sr.'s anti-Semitism. Other accounts have the curse originating in Ireland by disgruntled countrymen or spirits angered with Kennedy patriarch, Thomas Fitzgerald.

Chronology

Believers in the curse generally cite the following events as evidence of the family's misfortunes:

• November, 1941—Rosemary Kennedy was often believed to have been intellectually disabled, and due to her severe mood swings and the worry that she would damage the Kennedy reputation, her father, Joe, Sr., arranged in secret for her to undergo a lobotomy. The lobotomy instead left her unable to walk or speak well, and as a result, Rosemary remained institutionalized until her death in 2005.
• August 12, 1944—Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. died when his plane exploded over East Suffolk, England, as part of Project Anvil.
• May 13, 1948—Kathleen Cavendish, Marchioness of Hartington died in a plane crash in France.
• October 3,1955- George and Ann Skakel, parents of Ethel Kennedy were killed when their plane crashed near Union City, Oklahoma.
• August 23, 1956—Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy gave birth to a stillborn daughter. Although she is buried at Arlington National Cemetery next to her parents with a marker reading "Daughter", her parents had intended to name her "Arabella".
• February 11, 1958- 15-year-old Francis Michael Medaille, (son of Betty Skakel Medaille, Ethel Skakel Kennedy's first cousin) strangles then pushes 7-year-old Kathleen Hegmann to her death from their New York City apartment building.
• August 5, 1962- Marilyn Monroe found dead. The night before her body was found, Robert F. Kennedy and a Doctor are seen entering and leaving her home. They are the last to see her alive. Apparently the day before Marilyn was found dead she had threatened to hold a press conference and give away the truth about her romances with John and Bobby. John's affair with Marilyn reportedly started in 1953, only five months after he married Jacqueline Bouvier.
• August 9, 1963—Patrick Bouvier Kennedy died two days after his premature birth.
• November 22, 1963—U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas by Lee Harvey Oswald.
• June 19, 1964—U.S. Senator Edward M. "Ted" Kennedy was involved in a plane crash in which one of his aides and the pilot were killed. He was pulled from the wreckage by fellow senator Birch E. Bayh II and spent weeks in a hospital recovering from a broken back, a punctured lung, broken ribs, and internal bleeding.
• June 5, 1968—U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated by Sirhan Bishara Sirhan in Los Angeles immediately following his victory in the California Democratic presidential primary. Sirhan pleaded guilty to Kennedy's murder and is serving a life sentence at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility.
• July 18, 1969—In the Chappaquiddick incident, Ted Kennedy accidentally drove his car off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, that fatally trapped his young colleague, Mary Jo Kopechne, inside. In his televised statement a week later, Kennedy stated that on the night of the incident he wondered "whether some awful curse did actually hang over all the Kennedys."
• August 13, 1973—Joseph P. Kennedy II was the driver of a car which crashed and left his passenger, Pam Kelley, paralyzed.
• November 17, 1973 - Ted Kennedy, Jr. had his right leg amputated because of bone cancer.
• January 23, 1974- Athalia Ponsell Lindsley, former fiancé of Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. was brutally murdered on the front steps of her home in St. Augustine, Florida. Her murder remains unsolved to this day.
• October 30, 1975 - Martha Moxley was bludgeoned to death with a golf club. In 2002, Michael Skakel was convicted of murder, but a new trial was ordered in 2013.
• April 25, 1984—David Kennedy died of a cocaine and pethidine overdose in a Palm Beach, Florida hotel room.
• April 1, 1991—William Kennedy Smith was arrested and charged with the rape of a young woman at the Kennedy estate in Palm Beach, Florida. The subsequent trial attracted extensive media coverage. Smith was acquitted.
• December 31, 1997—Michael LeMoyne Kennedy died in a skiing accident in Aspen, Colorado. Earlier that same year, Kennedy was suspected of statutory rape after his affair with a 16-year-old babysitter was alleged to have started when the babysitter was 14.
• July 16, 1999—John F. Kennedy Jr. died when his plane, a Piper Saratoga, crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Martha's Vineyard due to pilot error and spatial disorientation, while en route to his cousin Rory Kennedy's wedding. His wife and sister-in-law were also on board and killed.
• September 16, 2011—Kara Kennedy Allen died of a heart attack while exercising in a Washington, D.C. health club. Kennedy had reportedly suffered from lung cancer nine years earlier, but she had recovered after the removal of part of her right lung.
• May 16, 2012—Mary Richardson Kennedy hanged herself on the grounds of her home in Bedford, Westchester County, New York.
• July 13, 2012 - Kerry Kennedy sideswiped a tractor trailer on Interstate 684 while under the influence of zolpidem, which Kennedy had mistaken for her daily thyroid medication. She was acquitted on all charges on February 28, 2014.