Issue of the day: The Kennedy ‘curse’
THE Kennedy dynasty is one of America’s most renowned and influential families, but it is also one of the most tragic, with another fatal accident again sparking talk of “The Kennedy Curse”.
A curse?
It’s a term that has been used to describe the long list of deaths, accidents and calamities that have beset the Kennedy clan through the years.
What has happened now? Maeve Kennedy Mckean and son Gideon, 8, disappeared on April 2 after getting in a canoe to retrieve a ball they had been playing with that bounced into the Chesapeake
Bay in Maryland. It is thought they were pushed by the wind or tide into the open bay. Their bodies were found five days later.
She was related to
Robert Kennedy?
Maeve, 40, a human rights lawyer, was a granddaughter of the assassinated presidential candidate, Robert F Kennedy.
He died when?
RFK was 42 when he died in the middle of his presidential campaign. He had just addressed supporters at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968, when he took a shortcut through the kitchen and in a crowded passageway, he was shot three times.
Who killed him?
Palestian-born Jordanian citizen, Sirhan Sirhan, was quoted as saying, “I did it for my country”.
Conspiracy theory?
Robert F Kennedy Jnr – the third oldest of RFK’S 11 children – visited Sirhan in prison in California in 2018 and later said he supported a reinvestigation of the case, joining those who believe there was a second gunman involved.
Conspiracy is nothing new?
It still swirls around the death of John F Kennedy, the 35th president, who was assassinated at the age of 46 in one of the 20th century’s most shocking events.
JFK was riding in an open-top presidential limousine on a visit to Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, with his wife Jackie beside him, when he was shot.
Mafia?
Against the backdrop of the Cold War, it was found Marxist Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the killing, but a range of theories have been put forward, that the mafia were involved or that Oswald was acting either with Russia or Cuba.
JFK Jnr?
The late president’s son, John F Kennedy Jnr, died at the age of 38, along with his wife, Carolyn, 33, when the light aircraft he was piloting crashed into the Atlantic as they headed to Martha’s Vineyard in the summer of 1999.
Ted?
In July, 1969, in the infamous “Chappaquiddick incident”, a car driven by another Kennedy brother, 36-year-old Ted, went off a bridge on Chappaquiddick island on Martha’s Vineyard. He swam to safety, but his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, died. In a statement following the incident, Kennedy said he had wondered “whether some awful curse did actually hang over all the Kennedys”.